Free The Last Big Job by Nick Oldham Page B

met, who I’d
dealt with, and I really, really struggled to see why the cops
moved on to me. I even got a private detective to go over all the
witness statements against me to see if there was any clue in them
as to who might’ve dropped me in it with the cops, and to check out
people I know. Just out of curiosity, like.’
    Henry’s controlled outer-body language did not betray his
inner turmoil. He feigned a stifled yawn of indifference and
belched. He folded his arms and allowed his head to drop back on to
the soft white leather headrest. ‘Any conclusions?’ he asked Lee
laconically, closing his eyes.
    ‘ Oh yeah, too fucking true.’ Jacky Lee’s eyes bored across at
the side of Henry’s head. Henry opened his own slowly and clicked
his tongue as though there was a nasty taste in. his mouth.
Actually there was. It was a taste called terror. But even so, if
Lee thought he was going to rattle Henry into spouting a confession
of some sort, he was wrong.
    ‘ And?’ Henry asked.
    ‘ I thought about you. I thought you could’ve been the
one.’
    Shit. Henry’s mind raced whilst his face remained impassive.
So this was it, he thought. The time of confrontation. The moment
Henry dreaded happening. He knew that his reaction to Lee’s
statement was crucial as to whether he, Henry, lived or died. The
significance of the following BMW struck him at that moment. The
hit team.
    Henry eyed Lee narrowly for a few tense seconds. Lee was
waiting, testing.
    Henry’s mouth kinked into a grin and his eyes flushed with
humour. The grin evolved into a smile which became a chuckle and a
head-shake of disbelief. Lee responded with a giggle.
    ‘ I had to think about you, pal. I had to think about every
cunt,’ Lee explained when the mirth had subsided. ‘But you - I knew
it couldn’t be you. You’ve put too much bent gear my way for it to
be you.’
    Henry’s mind breathed a sigh of relief.
    ‘ Yeah, you know me too well, Jack,’ Henry said, remembering
how he had once spent a whole Christmas with Lee and his family up
in the North-East - mother, sisters, granny, nieces and nephews and
even had a holiday in Spain with the guy once. They knew each other
very well. ‘I’m just like you. Making a living. Buying and selling.
Just a commodity broker.’
    ‘ Yeah, you’re right. That’s all we are - commodity brokers,
market traders without a pitch. Just selling on goods. I like that
- commodity broker.’
    The Rolls drew to a halt outside an apartment block. New,
swish with good security, overlooking one of the basins of the Ship
Canal. Lee had built the whole complex, financed it one hundred per
cent. The eighty apartments he’d already sold had netted him
somewhere in the region of six million.
    ‘ Love to invite you up, pal,’ Lee said, ‘but I got some hot
totty waiting up there. Gagging for it, she is.’
    ‘ Hey, no problemo.’
    ‘ Good. So - see ya.’ Lee opened his door but crimped back
suddenly to Henry before getting out of the car. ‘The issue we’ve
just been discussing, by the way. . .’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘Y’know, the grass?’
    Henry waited.
    ‘ Sorted it,’ Lee said with a wink. ‘Fish food. No more
problems for Jack. See ya.’ He got out, slammed the door and
slapped the roof and strode briskly, if unevenly, to the apartment
block.
    ‘ Where to, sir?’ the driver asked through the
intercom.
    Henry told him the name of a hotel in the city centre. The
Rolls pulled quietly into the night. A quick glance over his
shoulder confirmed that the BMW was staying with him all the
way.
    He sank into the comfortable seat and tried to control his
pulse-rate, careful not to let the mask slip because the driver was
constantly monitoring him in the rearview mirror. Henry was
actually elated by the way things had gone. Without any pushing or
probing, which could have put Lee on his guard, the crim had begun
to talk about ‘having sorted his problem’ and once people like him
began to brag, the rest