‘Look I’m sorry, I am, but it got so late there didn’t seem any point in phoning or texting you. I’d have woken you up.’
‘Woken me up? Do you think I sleep when you’re not here? I was worried sick David.’
I had to bite my tongue so as not to say ‘well, why the fuck didn’t you call me then?’, because I realised this would just escalate things. Laura was spoiling for a fight and it was a bit sad how we had got right back into our old, bickering habits again just 24 hours after such a wonderful holiday. It was, however, the least of my worries right now.
‘Look it’s complicated alright? It’s not as if I was out having a few drinks with the boys. I’ve got a problem.’
‘What kind of problem?’ this is the type of stupid question I wouldn’t have expected from Laura and I didn’t say anything, just exhaled wearily down the phone at her. ‘Alright, okay, I know you can’t tell me,’ she moaned.
‘You don’t want me to tell you, believe me. It’s not about shutting you out, not letting you in, not trusting you or any of that utter bollocks, it’s just that I cannot tell you.’
‘Okay, okay,’ she said making the two words sound like the absolute opposite of their meaning, ‘it’s fine,’ another lie. The word ‘fine’ never means fine to a woman. ‘I’ll see you back at the flat,’ and she hung up on me before I could say anything else.
‘Bitch,’ I hissed into the phone even though, or perhaps because, I knew she couldn’t hear me. Christ, where was the girl’s imagination? She knew the circles I moved in. The very fact that I even bothered to tell her there was a problem should have alerted those highly-educated brain cells of hers that I was in deep, deep shit. Women come home every night and go through their entire day, telling their men every trivial bloody problem they’ve encountered, so they can get some weird kind of catharsis from reliving the whole damned thing. Men aren’t like that. We like to switch off and forget our troubles, so me saying ‘Laura, I’ve got a problem’ is like watching a drowning man frantically waving with both hands. It’s a sign I thought she might have picked up on.
I bought my bro a fry-up in a greasy spoon near the station. Then I gave him a few quid and left him to it, knowing he’d mooch round the pubs for a few hours and hoping he’d keep out of trouble. Then I phoned Sharp.
He picked me up outside the Royal Station Hotel and I quickly climbed into his old VW. I’d hung back a bit, playing it safe, in case anyone spotted us.
Sharp was just north of thirty but he looked older, mainly because he was the only man I knew who still thought a moustache was a sensible choice. We drove out of the city for a while, not saying much until he pulled up in a tiny industrial estate, which was totally empty as it was Saturday morning.
‘So,’ he said, ‘must be pretty serious for me to risk picking you up in broad daylight in the city on a match day.’ He seemed a bit narked but I wasn’t going to allow that.
‘You get paid enough to justify a bit of weekend work.’
He spread his palms, ‘I’m not complaining. What can I do for you boss?’
‘I have a problem,’ I said, ‘a missing person,’ and I told him about Cartwright going AWOL, though I left out the bit about the Drop going missing with him. The fewer people that knew about that the better.
‘You want me to find him for you?’
‘It’s what you’re good at it isn’t it?’
He nodded, ‘that and other things,’ he thought for a moment, ‘and when I find him? Call you or deal with it?’
‘Call me. I need to talk to him before any decision is made on the man’s future.’
‘Okay.’
I spent the next fifteen minutes telling him everything I knew about Cartwright that might help him to track the man down. ‘I’ll be looking for him as well, so if you hear about someone asking after Cartwright it’s probably me.’ That bit was true but that morning I’d also phoned Palmer and set him on the task as well and I didn’t want Sharp and him getting in each other’s way.
‘You’re out on the streets for this one?’ he seemed genuinely surprised, ‘what’s he done?’ I didn’t say anything. ‘Hey, it’s none of my business but you must want him bad, that’s all.’
‘We do.’
‘And you sure you don’t want me to just… ’
‘Not until I’ve spoken to him,’ I told him sharply, ‘did you not just hear me?’
‘Hey, no problem, it’s cool.’
I must be slipping, because I didn’t see the uniformed bobby who came walking up to the car from behind and tapped on the window.
Sharp let the electric window wind down and the uniform said, all sarcastic like, ‘would you two lover boys like to tell me what you’re doing out here?’ and he nodded at the empty office opposite, ‘casing the joint are we gents? Well you can forget about that now.’
Sharp raised his hand to the window and showed the uniform his warrant card, ‘DS Sharp,’ he said firmly, ‘you just compromised a confidential meeting with a major criminal source,’ which even I found amusing but I didn’t crack a smile.
‘I’m really sorry Detective Sergeant,’ and the uniform didn’t look so smug all of a sudden, ‘but I had no way of knowing… ’
‘Fuck off,’ Sharp interrupted him, ‘go on, fuck off, now.’ And he did, sharpish.
‘Fucking uniforms,’ said Sharp, ‘really piss me off,’
‘You were one too,’ I reminded him, ‘once.’
‘Not for long,’ he said quietly, ‘I knew the real money was in plain clothes.’
‘I’m curious,’ I told him, ‘were you always bent, or did you only cross over to the dark side when you realised how far a policeman’s pay goes?’
He chuckled but didn’t really answer the question, ‘well, I do have a wife and kids… and a mistress… a girlfriend… and a couple or three floozies when the mistress and girlfriend are busy.’
‘Expensive.’
‘Yeah, all of them. Believe me.’
‘Well, let’s make sure we don’t kill the golden goose then, shall we? Find Cartwright for me and find him quick.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ he assured me, ‘there is one other thing you should know.’
‘Yeah?’
‘My new boss,’ he told me, ‘he’s got a hard-on for Bobby.’
‘Really?’
He nodded, ‘He’s a careerist, my new DI he knows the quickest way to the top is a high profile bust. There’d be nobody bigger round here than Bobby Mahoney.’
‘True.’
‘That doesn’t worry you?’
It did but I wasn’t going to tell him that, ‘Should it?’
‘Dunno, he’s a determined little shit. He’s got a picture of Bobby on the office wall with arrows going down to other pictures of Finney, Jerry Lemon and Mickey Hunter. It’s like something out of one of those Mafia films where the FBI are trying to take the whole family down, you know.’
‘Yeah, I know. Is my picture up there yet?’
‘No but it’s only a matter of time.’
I’d never heard Sharp talk like this before. He seemed resigned. ‘You’re worried aren’t you?’
‘Bit,’ he said, ‘he’s a quick one this bloke. Not like the others. He’s ambitious, you know, wants to be a Chief Super one day.’
‘Well, he won’t be the first to try will he?’
‘No, nor the last.’
‘What’s his name?’
SIX
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That afternoon I decided to check out all the small, low key boozers in the Bigg Market and the Quayside. There weren’t too many left that had that combination of decent ale and 80’s music that Cartwright favoured but I went in them all, starting in the Quayside and working my way up the hill and through the Bigg Market, right up to Newcastle’s ground. I started early, as soon as they opened, because it was match day and they’d be filling up before you knew it.
From my own knowledge of the man, he
had half a dozen regular haunts, all of which looked likely to close down at any minute, judging by the number of old blokes that were slowly nursing pints that could keep them going until closing time. I don’t mind these old-man pubs myself but they don’t make any sense financially, not when a bunch of teenagers can spend more in five minutes than some bloke in a flat cap is willing to part with in four hours. They were a relic of a bygone era, about as relevant to the modern age as pit boots and football rattles. I walked in one and, no word of a lie, they were playing Dean Martin. While Deano was singing Little Old Wine Drinker Me, I spoke to some of the old gadgies, then the landlord and bar staff. They all knew Geordie Cartwright of course but couldn’t shed any light on his whereabouts. Nobody had seen Cartwright since the night before he’d calmly announced to his missus that he was off to meet Northam before going on a trip.
When I reached the top of the town, I walked right up to the ground and looked into the Strawberry. When I was a kid, the closest pub to St James Park used to almost always have its broken windows boarded up. Now it had a roof terrace; a sign of the times. It was fairly quiet as it was still early, just a few die-hards in there, sipping beers and craning their necks to watch the wall-to-wall Sky coverage. Anyone who didn’t have a ticket for the game could wait here until Jeff Stelling announced the inevitable black and white collapse.
The bitter taste of my pint rejuvenated me. I figured I’d start again and do the rounds of all the pubs and clubs Cartwright didn’t drink in just in case it turned out that he did drink in them after all. I knew I was clutching at straws but that was what drowning men did. I went from the Strawberry to Rosie’s, my own preferred pre-match venue. Most of the crew had a couple in one or other of these pubs before the game, and I half expected Cartwright to be sitting there with a pint in his hand but then, if he had been, he would have been a dead man. There was no sign of him of course and no fresh sightings either.
I called in at the Newcastle Arms then outside Faces a teenage girl in a bikini, with goose bumps on her arms, stuffed a leaflet into my hands promising me ‘live entertainment’. An obscure former Toon ‘legend’ was due to talk to the fans and there would be more girls in bikinis plus a couple of strippers. With football, beer and half-naked girls on offer I would have been surprised if I hadn’t spotted at least one of our lads in there, so I walked in. The music was pumping and it was pretty dark. I ordered another pint while I waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom and then I spotted Billy Warren heading towards me. He fought his way through a crowd of football fans ogling a blonde stripper with a boob job that made her look like an adult Barbie doll.
‘Good to see you man,’ he told me like I was a long lost friend. He offered me a cold and pasty hand which I shook. He looked terrible. I didn’t know how much of his own product he was using these days but he definitely had the undernourished look of the professional dope head.
‘How’s business Billy?’ I had to shout it into his ear to make myself heard.
He raised his hand and wobbled it from side to side, ‘Same old, same old,’ he said, ‘it’s all gone a bit credit crunch thanks to K.’
‘Ketamine?’
‘Yeah, time was when everybody did a bit of blow, which is pretty pricey so it had more profit. Now they all want Ket, which is cheaper so… ’
‘Less profit.’
‘Exactly,’ he said it like I was the Brain of Britain for working that out. ‘Can’t blame ‘em I s’pose. K is half the price of coke. Twenty quid a gram these days so all the young ‘uns want it instead of blow.’
‘Yeah but vets use it don’t they?’ Call me old-fashioned but I wouldn’t take something that’s used to tranquilise horses.
‘I s’pose,’ he admitted, ‘but it works for people too. It gives them that nice boozy high without the paranoia, know what I mean?’
I did and I didn’t. Drugs might be the foundation of our business model these days but they left me cold. I liked to stay in control and most coke heads I’d met had a pretty thin grasp on what constituted reality. I’d heard about people taking Ketamine and floating off to happy land. It was meant to be the recession-busting drug. Why go out when you can just invite your mates round, take some K and sit there giggling at each other? To me it just sounded boring. Booze was more my thing. I liked to go out.
There was a brief burst of applause for the blonde with the boob job as she finished one dance and began another. She wasn’t my type. I preferred the natural look, ‘What have you heard about Geordie Cartwright?’ I asked Billy.
‘The last time I saw him was a few days back, he was in City Vaults,’ he replied a bit quickly.
‘Yeah?’ I wondered why he didn’t ask me why I was asking. Maybe he thought that was my business.
‘Yeah, he was at the bar, talking to some Russian bloke.’
‘A Russian bloke,’ I asked, ‘you sure?’
‘Well, he sounded Russian, yeah I’d say so. I dunno, I s’pose he could have been Polish or something, how should I know, but he looked like a Russian.’
‘And what did this guy look like, apart from Russian?’
‘A big fucker, about six-foot-five. A beefy bloke with a shaved head,’ and he laughed, ‘he looked like something James Bond would have to fight.’ And he grinned and waved his hands around in front of me like he was doing martial arts.
‘Okay,’ I said, trying to disguise my very obvious interest in this development, ‘and what were they talking about?’
He shrugged. ‘Fuck knows, I wasn’t really paying attention. I just ordered my pint near them, said hello to Cartwright and left them to it.’
‘Did it look like they knew each other well then?’
‘Well it looked like they hadn’t just met but I dunno. Maybe the bloke was on his holidays and Cartwright was just chatting to him.’
‘On his holidays? In Newcastle?’
‘I dunno, maybe he was a football fan or something.’
‘I repeat, in Newcastle?’
‘Yeah, well, I dunno, right. All I know is Cartwright was talking to a Russian bloke and they seemed pretty pally. That’s all I know mate. What can I say?’
‘That’s alright Billy. No bother.’
‘Was that useful like?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Who knows mate, who knows?’ I drained my pint. ‘Enjoy the match.’
He snorted, ‘doubt it.’
Normally I would have gone to the match. Usually, only the cast iron guarantee of a threesome with Cameron Diaz and Kylie Minogue would have tempted me to give up my place and, even then, I’d have been checking text messages for the score while they were going down on each other. But this wasn’t usually. I didn’t think Bobby would want to see my unpopular face in his executive box today. He’d want to know I was out there pounding the streets looking for Cartwright and, since I’d already tried that and got nowhere, except for the strange tale of a big Russian, drinking pints with our missing friend, I picked up my car and set off up the A1.
I’d not had the Merc CLS long but I was getting used to it. It had every feature going and looked pretty cool in black with its matching leather interior. In fact I was more chuffed with it than I let on. Anyway, it made short work of the A1, which was quiet now that half the city was at the match. Before I knew it I’d left the city’s houses and high rises behind me. People who’ve never been up here still think the north east is one big slag heap or derelict pit site, but a fair bit of it is countryside, stretching out for miles either side of what used to be called the Great North Road, in a sea of green.
When I reached the farmhouse, I walked up to the door and rang the bell. No answer. The place was looking a bit dilapidated these days. It had been a working farm once but the owner pissed away the family legacy with the usual money-shredding combination of gambling and booze. When he eventually took a shotgun to himself, the land was bought by an adjacent farm. Our old associate Mark Miller bought the house for a song because it was surplus to requirements.
I asked him once, ‘doesn’t it bother you that the bloke blew his brains out in here?’
‘No man, not me,’ he said, shaking his head and its accompanying long mane of greying hippy hair, tied back in a pony tail, ‘don’t believe in ghosts or any of that bullshit.’
I rang the bell again and again. Still no reply, so I called his mobile.
‘Where the fuck are you?’
He laughed, ‘my studio.’
‘You mean the cow shed?’
He laughed again, ‘it’s not a cow shed. It’s a custom built, state-of-the-art, professional, photographic studio,’ then he whispered, ‘come round David. It’ll be worth the walk.’
SEVEN
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I went down the side of the house and crossed a small patch of rough ground. The door of the so-called studio, an enormous metal-roofed lock-up that looked like a World War Two era Nissen hut, was unlocked, so I pulled it open and went inside. The entrance way was a dark corridor. All I could hear up ahead was the staccato click-click-whir coming from deep within the darkened room then a high pitched whine as if a flash gun was charging up again. I walked towards the big studio lights, passed metal shelves filled with car parts and tools set aside for DIY and gardening. There was a big, old-fashioned steel girder supporting the roof and the flash from Miller’s camera was rebounding off it. I turned into the large, open area of the studio where Mark ‘Windy’ Miller worked and, seeing me, a stark naked young girl squealed.
I got a quick flash of her pale body as she jumped down from the sofa Miller had her standing on. She grabbed a white towelling robe and clasped it tightly to her in an effort to avoid any more of her intimate bits being placed on show to a complete stranger.
‘Come on Kayleigh,’ he told her, like she was the worst kind of prude, ‘you’ve got to learn to be less body conscious than that.’ I was trying to take in the fact she was actually called Kayleigh. No prizes for guessing what band her dad was into back in the 80s. ‘This here is David Blake. He’s not just an old friend, he’s a professional photographer too. Aren’t you mate?’
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