The Last Big Job (46 page)

‘
I feel so dirty, so unclean. I can’t get it off myself, the
smell- it’s still clinging there. I utterly despise myself for
letting it happen ... how
could
I let it happen, Danny?’ he cried plaintively. ‘I
should have stopped him. I’m a man, for God’s sake.’ He shook his
head sadly, constantly re-thinking the night.

‘
You mustn’t punish yourself for this, Henry. Like you said,
there was no other choice, no decision, except to live. You were
overpowered and it was against your will. Don’t blame
yourself.’

‘
But I do, I do. I’m so fucking ashamed.’

‘
Another thing is, y’know? Me and sex. I mean, Christ, he
rubbed his dick all over my face, his penis, dirty, smelly ... and
I think, God, is that what men are really like? Is that what it’s
like for a woman? To have that shoved in? To have to hold it, to
suck it, just because a man wants it to happen? Am I going to have
a hang-up about sex for the rest of my life?’

‘
. . . God, everyone getting to know about it. What’s that
going to be like for me? I can just see people’s faces, their
sniggers, their talking behind my back. "Got well buggered, he did.
What sort of a man is he?" They’ll despise me . . . they won’t know
what to say to me, they’ll laugh and I won’t ever get treated
seriously again. The implications completely fuck me up
inside.’

Henry stared hard at Danny. ‘My mind whizzes round and I
wonder how the hell they found out I was a cop. Somebody
must
have bubbled me! I
have my suspicions ... but they can’t be right. Nahh . . . one cop
wouldn’t do that to another, surely? Just because I said I’d go for
him.’

‘
What are you talking about, Henry?’

‘
Detective Superintendent Rupert Davison.’

Danny frowned. ‘You mean
the
Rupert Davison?’

‘
One and the same. That dickhead of a PC as was. Now a GMP
Superintendent.’

‘
Bloody hell!’ Danny blurted. ‘He once asked me to sleep with
him. I refused, of course.’

Another class product of the fast track - but even so, it
seems absurd he would have gone to the lengths of. . . Christ, I
was going to say “shafting me” . . . of putting my life in
danger.’

‘
I wouldn’t put it past him,’ Danny said darkly, recalling the
immature PC who, if dismissal procedures had been anything like
proper and effective, should have been out on his ear years ago.
But that was one of the main causes of malaise in the police
service: it was virtually impossible to sack someone once they had
completed their probation. Many unsuitable people, therefore, went
on to become unsuitable managers and high-rankers.

But Henry could not believe that Davison would have fed him to
the wolves. It was far more likely to have been Billy Crane who had
recognised him and then warned Thompson and Elphick.

‘
It’s been good for me, this, Danny.’ Henry breathed out. He
had been talking for three-quarters of an hour. ‘Thanks - I needed
it. I’m just sorry it had to be you.’

‘
I’m not sorry, but I do need to ask you
something.’

‘
Go on, fire away.’

‘
Why haven’t you talked to Kate about it?’

The question stumped Henry. He was silent for a few moments,
then: ‘I love the girls, I really do. They mean everything to me.
I’d die for them without hesitation.’ He sighed through his nose.
‘But as for Kate . . . I don’t know any more. She’s a really good
wife. Ugh! I hope that doesn’t sound patronising, but she is. But
there’s something not right any more. Over the last few months we
seem to have drifted slowly away from each other. We hardly speak,
other than in monosyllables. We never even sit down to watch TV
together. Hardly ever make love. . .

‘
I feel as if I’ve fallen out of love with her, and other than
for the kids, I don’t feel like going home any more. I’ve been off
sick nearly two weeks and it’s been crap at home. I’ve just avoided
her.’ He sighed.

‘
I know she suffered a few years ago - when she herself got
raped - and I suppose that should give us some common ground. I
just don’t want to tell her, though. I haven’t told anyone but you,
and that counsellor I saw down at Occupational Health. No one in
the job knows, though like I said, Terry has an idea. Thank Christ
he turned up when he did. That bastard Gunk was going to kill me.
He’d threatened to stick a knife in my anus. . .’ Henry shuddered,
‘but he panicked when he heard Terry’s van coming back. No, I’ve
just told people I got bubbled and that was why I pulled out of the
U/C job - because I’d been compromised.’

There was a pause, then Henry regained eye-contact with Danny.
‘I don’t know if all that answers your question. It sounded like a
jumbled mess to me, like all I’ve been saying. Did it make sense,
or what?’

It was 2 a.m. Henry and Danny stood in her hallway. Henry was
preparing to go, jacket in one hand, rolling his shirt-sleeves down
with the other. They stood by the front door, facing each
other.

‘
Thanks again.’

‘
No problem. Are you sure you won’t let me call a taxi? It’s a
long way on foot to your house, and you’re not going to drive, are
you?’

‘
No.’ His car was outside the house. He had already driven
there having had a few drinks and with the amount of alcohol he’d
imbibed since, he would have been well over the limit, although he
was not drunk. It was a risk he wasn’t about to take. There were
too many uniformed PCs who would have liked the scalp of a DI on
their belt. ‘The walk’ll clear my head.’

‘
I’ll pick you up in the morning.’

‘
Thanks.’ He reached for the door handle, bobbing down quickly
and kissing Danny lightly on the cheek. Instead of pulling away
immediately, he hovered longer than was necessary, inhaling the
aroma of her body. She gasped.

Henry drew his head away, gave a quick smile and fumbled for
the door again. ‘Must go.’

Danny could not stop herself. She reached out and laid a hand
on the side of his face, beating herself up as she did so, yet
finding it impossible to resist. Why, she demanded, do you want
another married man, another heap of trouble and consequences? Why?
Because you love the soft sod, that’s why.

‘
You don’t have to go, Henry,’ she breathed. ‘Not yet,
anyway.’

She stood on tiptoe and covered his mouth with her lips,
forcing her tongue inside. He responded immediately, discarding his
jacket and holding Danny’s head between his hands as they kissed
urgently.

One hour later, Henry shook himself out of a doze. He was
lying on his back, his left arm wrapped around Danny’s shoulders.
She was tucked up underneath his armpit, her hand idly stroking his
chest, touching his nipples as she dozed dreamily. Henry blinked
and focused on the ceiling. Danny murmured contentedly and huddled
in even closer to him, folding a leg across his thighs. Her hand
drifted down to his groin and took hold of his limp penis which
began to grow, but not by much.

Henry was drained. The act of a long bout of wonderful sex had
taken all his energy and emotion out of him. He touched Danny’s
cheek with his fingertips and they looked at each other.

‘
That was out of this world,’ he admitted with a grin. ‘Sex
doesn’t seem to be a problem after all.’

‘
Now I want more and more.’

Henry’s manhood responded to Danny’s gentle manipulation. He
groaned throatily and languished in the sensation for a few moments
before the reality of the situation dawned on him. Here he was,
once again, lying beside a woman who was not his wife.
Cheating.

He rolled on to his side so they lay face to face. His eyes
flickered down to her wonderful, soft breasts with the big nipples
hard as stones again. He kissed her, lingering for a moment, biting
her bottom lip.

‘
I need to tell you something.’ He ran his mouth across her
cheek to her ear. ‘I’m ... ahhh!’ She had gently squeezed his
testicles.

‘
That we’re going to make love again?’ she guessed.

‘
Very, very probably.’

She kissed him hard, and slid her long leg over him, pushing
him back and straddling him, never once breaking the kiss or
letting go of his cock which, now solid, she positioned for
entry.

‘
I want you to make me come again and again,’ she
whispered.

‘
I’m not sure I’m that good,’ he admitted honestly.

‘
Oh, you are,’ she promised, ‘you are, you are,’ and slowly
eased herself down on to his thick shaft, straight away starting to
moan as her next orgasm built quickly. . . only to be interrupted
by the sound of Henry’s pager which, during the throes of ripping
each other’s clothes off earlier, had been tossed across the
bedroom. ‘Shit,’ she said.

‘
Don’t stop,’ he warned her. ‘Finish what you’ve
started.’

And she did. Twice for herself, once for him, to the
accompaniment of the high-pitched bleep.

Only then did Henry respond to the message, which was for him
to contact Control Room immediately. The Duty Inspector told him
that a security van had been found abandoned near to Stafford with
a great deal of blood on the passenger side and no trace of the
security guards or the money it had been carrying.

‘
We’ve got the job,’ he told Danny, outlining the phone
call.

‘
Do we need to go in now?’

‘
No, but let’s get there for seven.’

They were sitting side by side on the bed, naked. Henry rubbed
his eyes. He was exhausted and needed sleep. ‘Can I stay here?’ he
asked.

Danny hesitated. ‘Yeah,’ she said unsurely, ‘but what about
Kate? Won’t she be worried?’

His face wrinkled shamefully. ‘No, it’s OK. She thinks I’m at
Headquarters.’ And already he was feeling the guilt of the lie he
had spun to Kate on the phone before turning up at Danny’s house at
midnight. He had told Kate he was stuck on a big job at
Headquarters which looked likely to run through the night; as a
consequence he had taken a bedroom at the Training School. Even at
that early stage, he had subconsciously wanted to end up in bed
with Danny.

Now that it had actually happened, something he had been
resolutely trying to deny to himself struck him like a mallet blow.
The difficulties at home over the past few months were down to this
one thing alone: he had fallen in love with Danny
Furness.

Ever since working with her on an enquiry which pre-dated
Jack Sands’s suicide, and then helping her through the aftermath of
that tragedy, they had grown very close to each other. That was the
underlying reason why he’d taken the undercover job against Jacky
Lee. His professional instincts had told him
not
to take it, but it had offered a
convenient escape route from an increasingly uncomfortable domestic
life and a working environment in which he was in daily contact
with Danny. Outwardly, at work, he had maintained a completely
professional stance towards her, but below the surface something
had been bubbling; and intuition told him it had been happening to
her, too.

The undercover job had been the ideal opportunity to break
away, put Danny out of his mind and get his marriage
together.

But, as tonight proved, it had not worked.

‘
We need to talk, Danny.’

She kissed him. ‘We do, but not now. Now we need to get some
sleep and give ourselves a fighting chance of getting through the
day ahead, because it’ll be another long one. . .’

Two a.m. Another motorway service area, this time on the
M1.

Billy Crane sat in the 24-hour self-service restaurant,
staring blankly down at the plate full of food he had not touched.
It was going cold, but he did not have the energy to lift a fork up
to his mouth. He looked around at his fellow night-time travellers
and wondered when the man would turn up, the one contracted by Don
Smith to deal with the money. The one who would launder it, then
make it reappear clean and as if by magic in bank accounts around
the world - half for Crane, half for Smith. At least, that’s how it
should’ve been. Now it all belonged to Crane.

He was exhausted, felt like a zombie, unable to be
enthusiastic about the thought of all that cash. The events of the
day had drained him, mentally and physically. Just as the
commission of the crime had been a greater rush than maintaining
hard drugs, the aftermath was even worse than the worst cold
turkey. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep and then get
back to Tenerife and recuperate in the sunshine. But even that
wouldn’t be so easy now because the cops would be hunting him
worldwide: they might not know exactly who they were looking for,
or where he lived, but they’d definitely want him. He would have to
keep a very low profile for a long time. Wind up the drugs
business, sell off his bars - without too much of a show - maybe
just keeping Uncle B’s going, maybe not, and spend lots of time at
the villa on La Gomera being a model citizen.