Yeah, thought Henry, the Russians do not do favours without a payback day.
Gunk grinned lopsidedly at Henry, who thought fleetingly that he was just a big, dumb lad with a very violent streak in him.
‘ Where’s your bird?’ Henry enquired innocently.
‘ Me? I don’t have a bird. I shag blokes, mate. I’m a poof, queer, whatever you wanna call me… and to be honest, I fancy shagging you.’ Gunk’s ‘dumb lad’ face turned menacing. ‘But I think you know that already.’
They commandeered the restaurant manager’s office, the man reluctantly vacating the room when he realised it was probably in his best interests to do so. The verbal request for him to up-stakes came from the drunken Gunk; behind him stood Gary Thompson, Drozdov and Henry. Four very intimidating characters to say the least.
Gary took the manager’s seat behind the desk. Drozdov and Gunk settled into a ragged two-seater sofa. Gunk immediately loosened his belt, parted his legs and farted loudly and proudly. Henry caught the most fleeting expression on Drozdov’s face, making the detective guess that when the time was right, Gunk would be the first to be fitted with a cement overcoat when the Russians took over.
Henry, chairless, perched on the corner of the desk. He picked up a letter-opener and scraped his nails — because he’d seen some gangsters do it in films. He very quickly learned that letter-openers are not designed to clean behind fingernails.
‘ Sorry to push this through so fast,’ Henry said apologetically, ‘but I’ve got to get on to another appointment, after which,’ he added as a sweetener, ‘I’ll probably be able to offer you some very cheap ciggies. I have a contact in Kent who deals in duty frees. Excellent prices, amazing mark-ups… so I need to get going. Sorry, because it’s a good party.’
‘ OK, what’re you saying?’ Gary asked.
‘ I’d like that down payment we agreed on — and tomorrow I’ll arrange delivery wherever and whenever you like.’
‘ How do I know you won’t fuck off with the money?’
Henry laid the letter-opener down, a very pained expression on his face. ‘I thought we’d been through all this. My word is my bond. I’ve got a good history as you know. I never once let Jacky Lee down and I won’t let you down.’ He was holding his arms wide in an ‘Honest John’ gesture. Then he decided to throw in a bit of a wobbler like Frank Jagger would have done. ‘And anyway, what is all this shit? I’m here, aren’t I? You’ve beaten the crap out of me, put me through the ringer ‘cos you thought I might be a cop, and I’m still here, putting business your way. If I had been a cop, I would’ve dropped this job pretty damn quick, and if I hadn’t wanted to do a deal with you, I wouldn’t be here. So what do you want? More blood? I need the down payment to get this deal up and running. If you don’t want to give it, I’ll fuck off.’
Gary snorted. ‘ You don’t half get on your high horse, don’t you, Frank? You’re hyper, man. Touchy, touchy, touchy. Cool down, chill out. I asked a valid question, that’s all.’
Henry took a deep breath. ‘Right — you’re right, Gary. Sorry.’
‘ However, there is a slight change in the down-payment details. It’s ten per cent, not the fifteen per cent we agreed. That’s three and a half now, the rest the day after delivery.’
Henry bridled again. ‘A deal should be a deal.’ His voice was stone.
‘ It will be,’ Gary said reassuringly.
Henry made a show of considering it. ‘OK, to show I trust you, I’ll take it — but don’t mess me around on delivery. That’s when I want the full balance.’
Gary allowed himself a small smile. His eyes flickered across to Drozdov, who shifted, leaned forwards and took a brown package from his jacket. He gave it to Henry who opened it and peered inside at the contents.
‘ I know it’s a corny line — but do I need to count it?’
‘ It’s all there, Frank, three and a half thou.’
Henry slid it into a pocket.
There was a knock on the office door. The four men turned to look.
‘ Yep,’ Gary shouted.
The door opened a few inches. A guy Henry recognised as having been one of Jacky Lee’s gofers — now having changed allegiance and employed in the same capacity for Thompson — poked his head in. ‘Sorry to bother you, boss, but the guy you were expecting is here.’
He opened the door.
Behind him stood Billy Crane.
Chapter Thirteen
It had been a summer of rain in Britain. Records had been broken, many towns and villages devastated by flooding. Days of sunshine had been few and far between and no water authority had dared mention the dreaded hose-pipe ban. Most non-rainy days were overcast, dull and cold. The majority of people in Britain — and Danny Furness was no exception — were desperate to get some sunshine on their bodies to warm their creaking bones.
With the way things had gone for her over the last few months, particularly in terms of Jack Sands’s suicide and its aftermath, she had not been able to escape to sunnier climes. A long Caribbean holiday was planned for the New Year with a girlfriend. So, although the Tenerife trip was primarily work-related and short, she intended to take full advantage of it.
The morning after her arrival, Danny was up at eight and in the hotel dining room for the buffet breakfast shortly after. She sat contentedly alone at a table with a view across the pool and beyond that to the sea-front promenade which led to the centre and harbour of Los Cristianos.
Whilst eating she worked out her timetable for the day.
First thing was a pleasant stroll down to the resort centre, grabbing a coffee at one of the cafes to watch life meander by for a while. Then she was going to make her way on foot to Playa de Las Americas where Gillrow lived in his apartment. Danny aimed to be knocking on his door at ten o’clock. The interview would take as long as it took. After that she would return to the hotel, ease herself into her swimming costume, trying not to be too concerned by the bulges — and spend the rest of the day by the pool, with several long cool drinks to hand, chain smoking and reading a paperback.
She folded the last bite of the warm roll into her mouth, washing it down with black coffee, wiping her lips with a napkin. Then she stood up and walked out of the hotel on to the sun terrace surrounding the large free-form pool.
She almost collapsed with bliss from the heat of the sun, even at that time of day. She slipped her sunglasses on and breathed in the warm air deeply.
She felt better already.
Henry Christie and Terry Briggs were at the ‘unit’, the Undercover Operations Headquarters on a Blackburn industrial estate. They were planning the delivery of the whisky whilst waiting for a phone call from Thompson to tell them where and when.
Henry’s mobile rang. It was his own phone and he answered it using his own name. Karl Donaldson’s voice came clearly down the satellite link, speaking from his office in the FBI section of the American Embassy in London.
‘ Gimme a fax number if you can,’ he instructed Henry. ‘Read what I send, then call me back on a landline, not a mobile. You never know who might be listening.’
Henry gave him the secure fax line number of the unit.
A few minutes later the machine fired up and Donaldson’s fax spewed forth.
Henry settled down to read it, Terry peering over his shoulder.
‘ Henry,’ he read, ‘I have been following up the details you gave me since we spoke the other day and have come up with a few interesting and disturbing facts.
‘ Firstly, Nikolai Drozdov. As we’ve already discussed, and you know, the Russian Mafia are very powerful, but as in the Cosa Nostra, they are very divided, fractious and families are often at war with each other. Some families are more powerful than others and one of the top five are the Drozdovs, headed by an old-fashioned patriarch called Alexandr. Their power base is Moscow. They are one of the richest and most pro active of the families, very strategically-minded with long term goals. They are also one of the most extreme in terms of violence — if measured by the number of people they are alleged to have murdered. They specialise in drugs, prostitution and extortion rackets — extorting mainly from multi-national companies, not corner shops, incidentally. Nikolai Drozdov is Alexandr’s grandson. Nikolai’s father was killed in a gang shoot-out four years ago. Nikolai is being groomed to take over the number one spot when the old man (he’s about 90!) either dies or abdicates.