‘ What now?’ Danny enquired.
He opened his mouth to respond when his pager vibrated on his hip bone. He slid it off his belt and read the display. ‘Hang on,’ he said to Danny, ‘just got to make a call.’ He picked up the phone and jabbed in a number.
‘ American Embassy, London. Julie Duke speaking,’ came the voice after an interminable wait. ‘May I help you?’
‘ Yes, please, Julie. Can you put me through to the FBI office? Karl Donaldson, please. This is Henry Christie calling.’
‘ Hold the line please, Mr Christie.’
Smith sauntered across the warehouse to the office, leaned through the door. ‘He’s having a few problems.’ He jerked his head backwards to indicate the guy at work on the money cases. The faces of the four men showed pain and impatience. Gunk groaned angrily. Smith quickly added, ‘Nothing insurmountable. It’ll be OK. Bill, can I have a quick word?’
Crane necked the last dregs of his coffee and followed Smith out of the office.
‘ They’re getting edgy,’ Crane said, ‘and so am I. Every minute we spend in here, we’re at risk.’
‘ I know.’
‘ What’s his problem?’
‘ There isn’t a problem, not with this guy, anyway. He’s cracked it. He’s opened the first one and he’ll take about an hour to get the rest of them done. But there’s only half a mill in each one — well short of what Hodge had us believe.’
‘ I can live with that,’ Crane said, stifling a laugh. Then he became serious. Referring to the men in the office, he said, ‘We need to think about how we’re going to sort these three cunts out now.’
Smith waited for Crane to call the shots. They eyed each other.
‘ Don’t know about you, Don,’ Crane whispered, ‘but I think we should cut them out of the deal completely and split it fifty-fifty, me and you — not forgetting to payoff Hawker and Price and everyone else. Those bastards killed my mate Jacky Lee and that’s a good enough reason to slot the twats. I’ve used ‘em, now let’s abuse ‘em.’
‘ I was hoping you’d say that,’ Smith responded.
‘ FBI office, Karl Donaldson, how can I help?’ The second cheery American voice came down the telephone line.
‘ It’s me, Henry.’
‘ Hey, pal — thanks for calling back so quickly. Got some snippets I thought you might be interested in concerning our Russian comrade, Yuri Ivankov.’
Henry did not have the heart to tell Donaldson he was not really interested, but feigned it nonetheless. ‘Fire away, Karl.’
‘ First off, from your Customs people in Manchester Airport… they spotted him going through and catching a BA flight to Paris the day after the Jacky Lee shooting. Got a pretty good photo of him from one of the surveillance cameras on a travellator. We’ve checked the passenger list, but we haven’t been able to pin any particular name to him. There were lots of single businessmen on that flight.’
‘ He went to France?’
‘ Yeah, but that ain’t all. Just to expand on something else I mentioned to you before: you know the Paris underworld is one of the busiest in the world, a real mish-mash of ethnic groups operating there. Recently the Russians have been expanding there, muscling in to a big degree and throwing their weight around when the Frogs haven’t seen the benefits of cooperation. One particular sticking point for the Russians was a high-ranking mobster called Serge Garnier. Controlled a lot of business to the north of Paris. The Drozdovs had been very interested in what he was doing, particularly in terms of prostitution and drugs, and wanted a percentage of the action. Garnier told them to go away in no uncertain terms. Then we think the Russians approached some of Garnier’s lieutenants, promised power and money and they set the poor bastard up.’
‘ Just like Jacky Lee,’ Henry observed.
‘ Exactly.’ Donaldson continued, ‘And within hours of Ivankov landing in Paris, poor old Garnier was dead meat. We think our man left Paris by road or rail and we haven’t had any sightings of him since. As usual, it’s all conjecture based on intelligence — but he definitely did it.’
‘ Can you fax me a copy of the airport surveillance photo? I’m on…’
Whilst Henry was telling Donaldson the number, Danny’s pager vibrated. She rang the number displayed from another phone.
‘ Rik Dean? It’s Danny Furness. You got something for me?’
‘ Yeah — bit of a result from that mugshot of Billy Crane that you sent me.’
‘ That was quick — go on.’
‘ I got a sheet of similar-looking dudes together as per PACE and showed it around the waiters and reception staff at the Imperial. Two picked out Crane as the man who was in company with Don Smith.’
‘ Well done, Rik. I owe you one — but don’t show the photos to anyone else now, please, just in case we need to go for an ID parade. What you’ve done is brilliant.’
‘ Thanks, Danny. I’m still sorry about the other night.’
‘ Don’t fret — I’ve frightened off more men than just you. Look, Rik, make sure everything is properly documented and recorded. This could be very important. I’ll tell you more when I know myself, but thanks again.’ Danny hung up, a smirk of triumph on her face.
Henry ended his call to Donaldson at the exact same moment as Danny did with Rik Dean. Danny could not resist observing saucily, ‘Henry, dear, we finished together. How sweet.’
He laughed for the first time. ‘Unusual too. Generally I finish first.’
He worked diligently, sweating and breathing heavily. He kept to his promise and each of the remaining boxes was opened within a minute. With the occasional breather and fag break, seventy minutes later he had completed the job. He packed away his tools and pulled on his coat. Smith handed him a roll of notes.
‘ Two and a half, as agreed.’
The man blinked. Smith knew he was going to chance his arm and was ready for it. ‘There’s a hell of a lot of money in there,’ the man said. His greedy eyes flickered towards the Sherpa. ‘I think I deserve some more.’
‘ We agreed a price,’ Smith growled low. He stepped close to the man. ‘Don’t even think about it. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go right this minute and suffer memory loss. If you don’t, and I hear about it, I promise you’ll be a dead man, guaranteed.’
‘ Fine,’ the man said brightly. ‘No harm in trying.’ He stuffed his money into his jacket. Smith shepherded him to the door.
The slow-moving security van driven by Hawker pulled off the motorway after an uneventful but bottle-testing journey. A couple of minutes later he slowed on a quiet country lane and turned into a track, driving the van out of sight of the road. He leapt out, abandoned it and joined Price in the Audi. They looped back towards the motorway and headed North, knowing they were half a million pounds richer.
Crane and Smith were standing near to the back of the Sherpa.
Thompson, Elphick and Drozdov were in the office. Voices in low conversation could be heard coming from there.
Crane grabbed Smith’s elbow and pulled him across to the holdall in which the guns had been stashed.
The faxed photograph from the airport camera was good quality. It showed the Russian clearly, standing on a travellator at Manchester Airport, and was timed and dated. His face was circled with a black ring to highlight him. To be honest, Henry could not be certain if it was the same man who had so publicly taken out Jacky Lee at the transport cafe. But that fact did not concern him too much. He pushed the fax over to Danny. She peered at Ivankov, as he knew she would.
‘ Recognise him?’ Henry asked.
‘ No, can’t say I do.’
‘ I don’t mean Ivankov — I mean the guy standing next to him.’ Danny looked closely. She sat up sharply. ‘It’s Billy Crane… is it?’
‘ Sure looks like him.’
‘ But what’s he doing with Ivankov?’
‘ That’s a good question.’ Henry sighed. ‘But, whatever, this gives you something very good in terms of the job at Blackpool — a time and a date. That shows Crane was in the country on the morning after the murders. If you can pin him down by means of some good ID evidence to the Imperial Hotel the night before, at least you can prove he was in the vicinity at the right time. Proving he actually pulled the trigger might be a trifle more problematic. What you could do with is finding out exactly where Crane is living now. I know we think it’s Tenerife, but we could do with finding out for sure. You also could do with trying to check the passenger lists for all flights leaving Manchester around that time.’ Henry picked up the fax. ‘This could mean absolutely nothing, but on the other hand…’