‘ Come on, you bastard, suffer like you made me do.’ Loz held up his bandaged hand and waved it at Nero. With his other hand he poked the bamboo into the cage. Nero reacted this time by turning quickly, swiping at the — offending stick and dragging it out of Loz’s grasp.
‘ Shit!’
Nero licked his lips and looked down his long nose at Loz and growled.
‘ In that case, you can wait for this, you swine.’ Loz kicked the bucket at his feet.
Loz was now a very unhappy person. Following his faux pas in hiring a stupid girl with an even stupider boyfriend to deliver drugs which had ended up in the hands of the cops, Billy Crane had been treating him very badly indeed. After the incident with Nero, Crane had virtually shunned Loz, used him as a gofer and a waiter and told him to forget about hiring any more mules. ‘Your judgment is so clouded,’ Crane had once screamed at him, ‘that I wonder if you’re a junkie yourself.’
Loz had denied it, even though it was beginning to be true.
When he had started in the game, he’d been clean. But then he got a taste for it, bit by disastrous bit. Until he reached a point where he was skimming for his own use, something Crane did not know, but may have suspected.
Now he was being denied access to free drugs and he had been forced to go buying himself — and it was a problem. Money was getting tight. He’d dipped his fingers into a few of Crane’s tills even though he was aware that this was a quick way to a very dusty death if he wasn’t very careful. The thieving had to stop, but unless he could persuade Crane to let him get back into the trade, it would be a struggle.
Crane had also cut him off from everything else that was happening.
Loz could feel something big was in the air, but did not know quite what. The appearance of Smith and that pathetic little turd called Colin had signalled something on the horizon. Try as he might, Loz could not quite work out what.
Then Crane and Smith had suddenly departed for the UK, separately, leaving a festering man ‘in charge’.
Loz desperately needed to get back into Crane’s good books.
Teasing Nero, he suddenly thought, was not the way to do it. He emptied the disgusting horseflesh into the feed tray and kicked it through to the lion. Nero grabbed a huge chunk with an enormous roar and began to chew it. ‘Choke on it, you bastard,’ Loz said.
No, teasing Nero was not the way, but possibly acting on the phone call he had received earlier might be. Time to meet the guy and see what it was all about. It was 7.55 p.m.
At 8 p.m. Henry still had not heard from Thompson or Elphick. He was beginning to think the deal might be off. He and Terry were still at the unit, the only two police officers there at that moment in time. Henry had just finished a phone call to Kate and had also had a quick chat with both his daughters. The conversation with his wife had been strained, to say the least, but the girls were chatty and full of news, including the fact that the older one, Jenny, now had a boyfriend who had his nose pierced. Henry’s heart skipped a beat or two backwards at the news. It made him realise how grown-up she was, and how much of her growing up he had missed. It was a horrible feeling.
He helped himself to a strong black coffee from the machine and sat next to Terry at the table in the small canteen. Terry was scribbling notes down in his pocket book.
Henry’s phone rang. He answered it, listened, ended the call, looked at Terry. ‘We’re on.’
Danny was showered, made up and ready to roll by 8.15 p.m. This would be her last evening in Tenerife and she was going to fly home next day if she could get a flight. She intended to make the most of her time and planned to have another harbour-view meal at the same restaurant she had visited last night, then carouse around the bars until well after midnight, get tipsy, smoke too much and stagger back to the hotel.
She walked out on to the balcony, and smiled at the view across the bay. She could see right across to the lights of San Sebastian on La Gomera. It was a wonderful clear evening. Her thoughts, however, turned to Gillrow.
She hated coincidences. She tried to talk herself out of thinking that just because he lived on Tenerife he was involved, somewhere along the line, in the murder of a man who used to be one of his informants, who had ended up dead with two other people who were importing drugs from Tenerife. She gazed up at the star-filled night sky, willing herself not to make any assumptions or jump to any conclusions which could backfire… Yet why had he been so uncooperative? There was no obvious reason for it.
She tried to put herself into his boots. Eight years retired, living a life of moderate luxury in the sun, being asked dumb questions about someone he might not have seen for a dozen years. The more she thought about it, the more she thought that, had it been her, she would have welcomed the opportunity to chat about the good old days. Retired bobbies, in her experience, relished it.
Gillrow’s whole attitude had a certain whiff about it.
Which is why she banged both hands on the balcony rail and said to the night, ‘Mr Gillrow, you’re going to get another visit tomorrow, mate, because I’m not happy with you at all.’
‘ I need to see Billy Crane.’
‘ You can’t, he’s away. I’m in charge. I’ll deal with any problem you might have.’
Gillrow looked unsurely at Loz, not really liking what he saw, but feeling he had no other choice.
Loz, in turn, regarded Gillrow coldly. He knew he was an ex-cop and that he and Crane had some sort of relationship, based on what, he did not know. Probably bribes, he guessed. Or maybe the passing of police intelligence. Or perhaps Billy Crane could have been a snout for Gillrow once upon a time, although Loz doubted that idea.
Loz knew that Crane would definitely appreciate him giving Gillrow help if he required it. Loz could see Gillrow was nervous.
‘ All right,’ Gillrow said, swallowing. He looked around the bar. They were in one of Crane’s dives in Los Cristianos, a small English bar serving lots of fried food, crappy English beer and showing live Premiership matches on a big screen. It was quiet at the moment. By ten-thirty it would be heaving. ‘I’ve got a problem. It concerns Malcolm Fitch, who is now dead with bullets in his brain.’
‘ Go on,’ Loz urged, not having the slightest clue as to who Malcolm Fitch was.
‘ I’ve just been questioned by a detective from Lancashire today, come all the bloody way from Blackpool, would you believe? Investigating Fitch’s murder. Rooted out my file on Fitch and came to bloody see me. Can’t believe it. I didn’t say anything, but I’m not happy. Something needs to be done or me and Billy could be in big trouble. She wasn’t satisfied with what I told her and I’m afraid if she starts digging, there could be ructions.’
‘ Hold on — did you say “she”?’ Loz asked incredulously.
Gillrow nodded.
‘ You’re intimidated by a woman?’
‘ It doesn’t matter that she’s a woman — she’s a detective.’
Loz sneered contemptuously at this. ‘A bloody woman!’
‘ Look, sex doesn’t fucking matter, does it? What does matter is that she’s going to start digging and when she does that, we could be in the shit.’
‘ Why, haven’t you covered your tracks?’
‘ Twelve years ago — yes. Now they have the systems and stuff to dig deeper than we did in my time. I’m worried.’
‘ Is she still on the island?’
‘ I think so.’ Gillrow held up Danny’s card, showing him the back of it where she had scribbled the name of the hotel and her room number.