The Last Big Job hc-4 Read online

  The Last Big Job

  ( Henry Christie - 4 )

  Nick Oldham

  Nick Oldham

  The Last Big Job

  Prologue

  Blackburn, Lancashire, 1986

  They moved into action at midnight.

  Billy Crane checked his watch, eyed his two companions in the darkness and nodded sharply. The three men were sitting in a stolen Ford Sierra Cosworth fitted with clean number plates. It was the preferred getaway car of the moment — a big, powerful brute of a car which usually stuck two fingers up at the cops.

  They pulled on their nylon Balaclavas, obliterating their faces with the exception of their eyes and mouths. Next they each eased on a pair of tight surgical gloves and over them, another pair of thin woollen gloves. Crane wasn’t too bothered about fingerprints being left in the Cosworth because within four hours of the job being done, it would be comprehensively destroyed; first by gutting it with fire and then dropping in into a crusher in the scrap yard owned by one of his questionable friends. From there it would be spewed out as a twisted metal box the size of a policeman’s helmet.

  Crane climbed out of the Cosworth, his companions close behind. They went to the boot and grabbed their equipment for the job ahead. Then, tooled up and laden down, they moved cautiously through darkened alleyways until they reached the rear of a terrace of shops and offices at the edge of town.

  By then it was 12.10 a.m.

  Crane dropped to his haunches, as did the other two behind him.

  ‘ We wait,’ he hissed, looking at his watch again. ‘Five minutes.’

  The same Friday night-Saturday morning.

  Over any given year, Blackburn — statistically — is the busiest town in Lancashire from a policing point of view. Blackpool may have horrendously hectic summers, but in winter it can be a ghost town from Monday to Friday each week; Preston may not lag far behind, but Blackburn consistently puts them both in the shade in terms of officer deployments and public demand.

  And weekends are always busy, even when they are quiet.

  The only thing that made that particular Friday night any different was that it was the first night of the year warm enough for officers to turn out in shirt-sleeve order.

  Since the night shift came on duty at ten, the few officers out on the streets had been run ragged. Sixteen people had been locked up over a two-hour period; sixty jobs been logged in the Comms Room. The town was heaving. Situation normal. However, things were about to take on a new dimension.

  The first call which was out of the ordinary was logged at 12.16 a.m. At that exact moment a young policewoman called Danielle Furness was storming angrily through the underground cell complex at Blackburn police station. Scurrying sheepishly behind her was a male colleague, much the same age, but barely out of his probation.

  Both of them were dishevelled — owing to the fact that fifteen minutes earlier they had been rolling around on the ground, fighting. Not each other, but with a crowd of drunken youths who had taken it upon themselves to give the two officers a good hammering.

  When Danny had paraded on duty at ten o’clock with the rest of her shift, she had been partnered up with the less experienced man and given the keys for one of the patrol cars. The younger officer had yet to earn a permit to drive police cars, having recently failed a standard driving course; in fact, having narrowly scraped through his probationary period by the skin of his teeth, he was fortunate even to have a job.

  Rupert Davison had that certain knack of getting himself, and others, into trouble. Consequently, nobody wanted to work with him.

  And yet, when Danny drew the short straw that night and found herself working with him, at first she did not mind. Blackburn is a tough Northern town, and night duty is always potentially dangerous. Bobbies needed partners for safety’s sake.

  Danny received several comments about Davison and was told to watch her back. The guy was dangerous.

  ‘ He can’t be that bad,’ she responded.

  ‘ Oh he is, he fucking is,’ she was assured.

  The first hour and a half or so of the tour had gone well. Danny was pleasantly surprised. She hated people who prejudged others and always tried to avoid doing it herself This was the first time she had ever gone out on patrol with Rupert, and contrary to reports, she found him amiable — charming — almost good company and pretty competent. If she had started off believing all the crap about him, she knew she would have struggled to remain positive. As it happened, they were busy, going from job to job, and Rupert had done his whack without any problems. Danny got to thinking that everybody was completely wrong about him… give a dog a bad name and all that.. she was quite impressed.

  Just before midnight, they were cruising along Darwen Street, one of Blackburn’s busiest thoroughfares, night or day.

  ‘ What I really want is to get involved in cracking some serious crime. International stuff, if you know what I mean,’ Rupert was saying, revealing his pipe dreams. ‘I’m going to get on the Fast Track and I really want to be an ACPO officer…’ As he talked he spotted a couple of youths urinating in a shop doorway. ‘Stop!’ he shouted to Danny. ‘I want a word with those guys. Dirty gits.’

  Danny slammed on the brakes, reversed back up the street. ‘Just warn them,’ she told Rupert. ‘We can’t afford to get involved in trivia tonight.’

  He either chose not to hear, or genuinely did not. He jumped out of the car and strode authoritatively to the offending pissers, both of whom were completely drunk.

  Danny remained behind the wheel, watching Rupert deal with the incident. It all seemed to be going well. There were a few smiles, nods and the typical drunken behaviour of wanting to shake hands. Then suddenly it all went banana-shaped.

  Rupert began prodding one of the lads in the chest with a very attitude-filled forefinger, backing him up against a shop window. The drunk swung a punch and Rupert’s flat cap went flying through the air like a Frisbee. Rupert grabbed the lad’s lapels and then the second youth leapt on to the young PC’s back, trying to strangle and punch him in the head and face.

  ‘ Oh hell,’ Danny moaned. ‘So it is all true.’ She dived out of the car, radioing for back-up.

  Danny hauled the youth off Rupert’s back, stumbled and found herself flat on her back with the lad on top of her about to head-butt the bridge of her nose. She smacked him hard on the side of his head, sending him sprawling across the pavement.

  Out of the corner of her eye she was conscious of Rupert and his opponent thrashing hell out of one another. Danny’s attention returned quickly to the youth she had belted. He had already staggered to his feet and was bearing down on her again, intent on delivering a mighty kick to her body.

  She was up in a flash, but he was on her and once more she found herself on the ground fighting wildly.

  Six other youths staggered noisily out of the Cathedral grounds at that point. All were drunk, carrying cider bottles. The moment they saw the scene in front of them, they joined in. Any opportunity to have a dig at a cop was not to be missed.

  Moments later, two police vans screeched on to the scene disgorging the two ‘Strike Force’ teams: six bobbies with very hairy backsides, heavy boots and ugly dispositions.

  Six arrests were made from the melee and, fighting all the way to the station, the youths were bundled — and battered where necessary — into cells. The documentation and processing would come several hours later when they had all sobered up.

  Danny’s tights looked as though her cat had been using them for scratching practice. Her skirt was ripped down one seam, her white shirt had lost several buttons and her white, functional bra and generous cleavage was on view for everyone to see.

  She was severely pissed off b
y the whole episode — not least because that night, of all nights, she did not have a spare shirt or skirt in her locker. Rounding on Rupert who had been trailing at her heels like a puppy, she hissed. ‘Just tell me this — what the hell did you say to those lads?’

  ‘ I… er…’He hesitated.

  ‘ All they were doing was peeing,’ she remonstrated.

  ‘ Erm… I think it might have been something like, “Only dogs piss in the street”,’ Rupert admitted quietly.

  Danny’s face sank in disbelief. She took a beat to prevent herself from blurting out something she might regret. ‘I think you need to work on your interpersonal skills, don’t you?’ Then she turned away from him with the word ‘Wanker’ playing on her lips.

  ‘ Danny,’ someone called from the Comms Room. It was one of the PCs who worked in there who was constantly hassling her for a date. ‘Can you deal with this one?’ He waved a message pad in the air. Danny opened her arms and invited him to look at the state of her. Lust clouded briefly across his face when he saw her bra and what was in it. She picked up the expression and quickly pulled her shirt together. The PC gulped, returned to normal and said, ‘I know, I know. I’m sorry — but there’s just no one else to go.’

  Her shoulders drooped. ‘What is it?’I she asked with resignation.

  ‘ Report of a riot up on Fishmoor.’

  ‘ Ugh, that’s all I need.’

  She pushed her way out of the Custody Office door which led to the car park and ran to her car, Rupert close behind, fired up by the prospect of a riot. As she manoeuvred out of the station yard the radio operator informed her that two further calls in quick succession backed up the first one. Fishmoor looked like it was kicking off.

  Danny hit the rocker switch for the rather pathetic blue light which rotated dimly on the roof of her Metro, screwed the car in its lower gears and tried to coax maximum performance from a vehicle well past its sell-by date. Six minutes after leaving the police station she was on the Fishmoor council estate. She careered, almost on two wheels, into Fishmoor Drive to find… nothing. The streets were deserted.

  She radioed her findings to Comms and cancelled other patrols who had since been deployed. A quick sweep of the estate confirmed it was a hoax. Fishmoor was as quiet as she had ever seen it. The Comms operator gave her the addresses of the people who had called in, and Danny and Rupert drove by their houses; each one was in total darkness. However there wasn’t much time to dwell on it as a genuine call came in: a punter had just had a beer glass screwed into his face in one of the town centre clubs. Big trouble was brewing.

  Danny gunned the small car back into town.

  Crane and his team entered the rear of the building next to the target premises. He knew it was not alarmed and the entry, therefore, was done with little finesse. It was the office of an insurance broker’s with nothing of interest or value kept there, hence the lack of protection.

  The three men moved swiftly through the rear kitchen and into the front office. They went straight to the window, unrolled a large sheet of thick black polythene from their equipment bag and covered the glass quickly and smoothly in a well-rehearsed manoeuvre, running masking tape around the edges to ensure no light passed through the polythene.

  Only when Crane was satisfied that the temporary blind had been correctly fixed, did he allow himself and the others to switch on their torches.

  So far, so good. It was 12.30 a.m. Crane allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. He turned and looked at the dividing wall which separated the insurance broker’s from the Halifax Building Society office next door.

  His target.

  This was when the heavy work began.

  A few moments later Crane and his men waltzed four heavy filing cabinets away from the wall to reveal an empty fireplace, the chimney of which had been boarded and blocked up many years ago.

  Crane knew that set into the corresponding fireplace on the other side of the wall was a safe which — so he was led to believe — contained?60,000.

  All he had to do was get through the wall, open the safe, steal the cash, escape. Easy. It was what he did for a living.

  At the first opportunity, Danny raced to her flat, which was less than a quarter of a mile from Blackburn police station, to get a change of uniform. She emerged cleaned and pressed as a message came over the radio asking all patrols to make for the Army Recruiting Office in the town centre. A report from an anonymous passer-by had been received to the effect that what appeared to be a bomb was on the front doorstep of the premises. Patrols were asked to take the job seriously. The Provisional IRA were very active and this could be the real thing.

  By the time Danny arrived with Rupert in tow, the night patrol Inspector had sealed the scene and cordoned off a 200-metre area away from the premises — as per minimum guidelines — and called out the Army Bomb Disposal squad. The latter were en route from their base in Liverpool, at least three-quarters of an hour away.

  Which meant that a large number of police officers were going to be tied up for a long time doing absolutely rock-all other than preventing the drunk and the curious from breaching the cordon.

  Danny and Rupert were designated a point.

  ‘ What if it isn’t a bomb?’ Rupert was saying. ‘What if it’s just another hoax?’

  ‘ We can’t take the chance,’ Danny said.

  ‘ I’ve a bloody good mind to march up to it and see for myself.’

  Danny’s blood literally froze in her veins. ‘You will do no such thing,’ she said as icily as she felt. If it hadn’t completely dawned on her before, it did now: Rupert Davison was a liability. She never ever wanted to work with him again.

  Rupert spun away from Danny and had a moment’s rumination.

  Then, without warning, he ducked under the cordon tape and marched towards the Army Careers Office, oblivious to Danny’s shrieks.

  There was no quiet way to get through into next door, not when using a hammer and chisel to dislodge the brickwork. The only saving grace for Crane and his team was that the row of shops was set far away from any residential property and on a road, which though busy with traffic, was not one many people walked down after midnight.

  The men took it in turns, working hard for very short periods.

  The first brick took about ten minutes to dislodge; others soon began to follow. After twenty minutes they had removed one layer of bricks and had an opening large enough for a man to crawl through.

  There were more layers to come.

  Crane was sweating profusely under his mask. He leaned back and took a swig from a bottle of mineral water. He checked his watch and smiled grimly.

  The fireworks were about to begin.

  ‘ You are the most dangerous, idiotic, irresponsible individual I have ever worked with. You put yourself in danger and what is more, you put other people in danger — your colleagues, the public.’ Danny was seething, could not remember a time in her short life when she had been more angry. ‘I’m surprised the Inspector didn’t put you on paper there and then,’ she said, using colloquial parlance to describe the process of disciplining an officer. ‘I thought the poor man was going to have a heart attack!’

  ‘ I don’t know what everyone’s so het up about,’ Rupert murmured. ‘I saved a lot of time and effort doing what I did. I mean, it was obvious it wasn’t a bomb. Just a pathetic attempt to make people think it was. A lunchbox with a few wires sticking out of it and a couple of batteries strapped to it. I ask you!’

  Danny slammed the brakes on and screeched to a stop.

  ‘ Rupert, you arsehole. The IRA makes bombs to look like that on purpose so that idiots like you will think it’s not a bomb, walk up to it, shake it and boom! You’re blown to bits.’

  The young officer shook his head, unwilling to admit a mistake. ‘The fact is, it wasn’t a bomb. It was a hoax — the second of the night, I might add.’

  ‘ Mmm,’ Danny muttered dubiously. She selected first gear with difficulty — the synchrome
sh had all but evaporated — and moved off. At least Rupert was right about one thing: there had been two well-executed hoaxes that night. Most hoaxes were perpetrated by stupid kids: tonight’s bore the mark of the adult. Danny was already beginning to wonder if there was a link. If another hoax came in, the possibility had to be seriously considered and investigated.

  It had gone past 1 a.m. Danny and Rupert should have been in for their refreshments at one, so she was meandering slowly back to the station, not really anticipating with relish the tuna paste sandwiches that awaited her there. She was starving and would devour them, but she knew they would give her serious indigestion for the rest of the night.

  The entrance to the police station car park on Northgate, Blackburn, was a throwback to days gone by when vehicles were narrow and tall and few in number. Though Danny was only driving a Metro, she was slow and cautious as she drove under the stone archway, down the cobbled incline, past the Custody Office door on her right, then up the asphalt slope into the car park proper.

  As she peered round for a space, she thought she saw a dark shape flit between two police cars over in one corner of the car park. But she couldn’t be sure, her tired eyes might be playing tricks. Anything was possible on this, her fifth out of seven straight night shifts. She was aiming her car for a tight spot between her own private car — a battered Renault 12 — and someone else’s private car, when the first explosion came and she found herself thrown across Rupert’s knees.

  Right in the corner of the car park, a police Montego had erupted in a ball of flame. A black mushroom cloud of dense smoke rose away into the clear night sky.

  ‘ Fuck!’Danny grimaced, trying to shake some sense into her dazed head. But before she could get a grip, the next car along exploded too. It was a Ford Granada traffic car.

  Still dazed, Danny got out of the Metro, stunned by what she had experienced. Then her training clicked in.