The Drop

by Howard Linskey

  ‘How much was he in for?’

  ‘He’s been losing twenty or thirty grand a year for a good while now.’

  ‘Shit - and he isn’t our biggest earner.’ I was taken aback that I didn’t realise one of our main men was pissing his earnings away like that down at the bookies, ‘it would explain the shit hole he lives in,’ I was annoyed at myself. I should have known. I should have been to his house before and checked him out. Here was a guy handling large amounts of the firm’s money and he was blowing thirty large a year on horses and football matches and I knew nothing about it.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said hesitantly, like he didn’t really want to go on, ‘but he could just about cover that. I mean you know what we’ve always been like; money’s easy come, easy go in our game. You can bury that sort of thing in accounts without the wife knowing. I mean we are not exactly PAYE are we.’

  ‘No, we’re not. So what happened?’

  ‘Spread betting happened. It was new, not so long back. If you did well you could make big money in minutes but if you fucked it up or you’re just plain unlucky then you can be thousands down before you know what’s hit you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go near it myself. People betting fortunes on the number of throw-ins in the first half of a game.’

  ‘Yeah, well he lost alright and he lost pretty big; have-to-tell-the-wife-before-you-lose-your-house big.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Sixty.’

  ‘Sixty grand. Shit.’

  ‘That’s not all. He met some geezer down the pub who does spread betting on shares so then he got into that, trying to recoup his losses. He was putting a thousand pounds a point down, so if the share price went up a penny he was quids in and they did go up at first...’

  ‘Then it all went pear shaped. How much was he down when he finished?’ I asked.

  ‘Two hundred and thirty grand.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’

  ‘Yeah, cleaned him out mate. All the savings, everything he’d put away for that retirement pad in Spain. He had to take a second mortgage which he couldn’t afford.’

  ‘So he was fucked,’ I said, ‘unless he could find some money from somewhere and the only easy money going was the Drop - and with me on holiday he had his chance, didn’t he? To do one with the money.’

  ‘You’re putting two and two together and making five. I still don’t buy that. He wouldn’t just fuck off and leave Mandy. He’s hopeless without her, like a little kid,’ he shook his head for emphasis, ‘they’ve got a boy, he’s grown up now, but he’s not going to abandon his family is he? He’s not leaving her with all that debt and no house. Come on.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right but something’s happened. Perhaps Geordie Cartwright didn’t leave his clothes on the beach, but people do. Every day, people you wouldn’t expect just walk out of the door and never come back, leaving their family wondering what’s happened.’

  The table rocked then, as a young lad who’d had one too many climbed out of the seat next to us and blundered into it on his way to the bog. A little of my beer got spilt and Miller’s coke would have been upended if he hadn’t deftly snaked out a hand and caught the glass before it toppled over. The young lad wasn’t a bit apologetic. Miller’s placid countenance didn’t alter much but I could see a change come over him. His brow furrowed into a frown as his eyes locked onto the offending teenager, ‘steady son,’ was all he said. He said it softly but his confident gaze was enough to wipe the smile straight off the youngster’s face. The lad was probably expecting to see fear in Miller’s eyes, not the self assurance of a man who had held his own around villains for thirty years.

  ‘Sorry mate,’ said the teenager and he looked worried. Miller accepted his apology with a little nod and let him go.

  ‘Boys playing at men,’ he told me as he watched the lad make himself scarce, ‘a sniff of the barmaid’s apron and they can’t handle it.’

  When he turned back to face me he said, ‘I’m sorry, I know I should have said summat about Geordie and his betting earlier but I thought you’d reckon he’d just nicked the Drop and I really don’t believe he’s that stupid.’

  ‘No but he’s stupid enough to lose two-hundred-odd grand betting on share prices he knows nothing about. Look, at least you told me now and that’s the main thing.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Keep looking for him. I’ve got to go on doing the rounds with Finney until we get the full story and find our man.’

  ‘Finney?’ he asked doubtfully.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean,’ I retorted, but he didn’t want to say. ‘Come on, out with it.’

  ‘Just be careful mate,’ he warned me, ‘you said yourself, guys like Finney and Jerry Lemon, they don’t really get you. I’d say they wouldn’t pause for the length of a heartbeat before selling you down the river. Just watch your back with Bobby when men like them are talking to him. Look out for yourself that’s all.’

  I wondered if he’d heard about my falling out with Jerry Lemon. It hadn’t been long but bad news travels fast in this city, ‘Cheers mate. I appreciate that,’ I told him, ‘but I can take care of myself.’

  I got an Indian takeaway and grabbed a cab from the rank outside the Akenside Traders. It weaved its way out of the Quayside but not before the driver slowed to let a hen night cross the road in front of him. I’d already seen half a dozen hens that evening; little groups of lasses dressed as soldiers, policewomen or cowgirls in pink Stetsons; now a dozen young girls were done up like burlesque dancers from the Moulin Rouge; all fishnets and red basques, with cleavage hanging out all over the place. One of them waved at me through the windscreen and did a little dance in front of us twirling a feather boa while her mates pissed themselves laughing.

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ commented my driver, ‘if you asked wor lass to dress like that in the bedroom she’d call you a dirty bastard and tell yuz to fuck off but if it’s a hen night and all her mates are doing it then all of a sudden it’s ‘girl power’.’

  He had a point.

  I got in late with my lukewarm takeaway in a leaking carrier bag. Laura was in bed. I still hadn’t seen her since the airport.

  I’d have probably sat on the couch with my dinner in my lap but, as usual, I couldn’t get my arse near it for cushions. What is it about women and cushions? Instead of chucking them all on the floor, I sat at the kitchen table, poured myself a beer, had two forkfuls of Chicken Bhuna then my mobile rang. It was Sharp, my bent DS.

  ‘There’s something you need to see.’ He said and he sounded rattled.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Can’t say, just come to the last place and we’ll take it from there.’ His voice was grim so I agreed and he hung up.

  I took two more mouthfuls of curry and a big bite of Peshwari Naan, put my jacket back on and left the rest of my dinner congealing on the plate.

  I had to get one of our crew to pick me up and drive me. The last thing I wanted was to be done for drink driving on top of everything else. I got him to take me to the spot where DS Sharp had told the uniformed copper to fuck off. His Range Rover was parked there and he flashed his lights once. I got out of the car, let my driver go and climbed in next to Sharp.

  ‘This better be good,’ I said, knowing Sharp wasn’t prone to this kind of melodrama.

  ‘Depends on your definition of the word,’ he said grimly.

  I already had a bad feeling about it.

  NINE

  ...................................................

  Cartwright didn’t look too pretty under the torchlight. He’d only been lying there for three or four days but a rat had already messed with his face. It had taken the flesh off his cheeks leaving two obscene-looking holes where the skin had been and had a go at his throat too.

  George Cartwright’s body was lying on the cold concrete floor of a disused factory, the derelict sight of a minor manufacturing company that went bust years back. The factory was open on both sid
es and all that was left was the metal skeleton of the building, which had huge holes in its sides and roof. A cold wind was whistling through it that night and there were puddles on the floor where last night’s rain had come in. What was left of George’s face was white, his eyes open, staring up at us. It made me feel sick right down in the pit of my stomach to see him like that. I had spent a lot of time with Geordie Cartwright over the years. We’d drunk together in the pubs when things were going well and we’d shared a car countless times when we’d taken the Drop. Now here he was lying dead in a disused factory, his stone cold body open to the elements, where any scavenger could crawl in and take a bite out of him.

  I kept picturing Geordie’s face before it had been messed up. I could remember his laugh, his soft spoken Geordie accent, the conversations we’d had about the future, his dreams of that retirement home in Spain. Well, he had no future now. It was all over for Geordie Cartwright.

  ‘What happened Geordie,’ I asked him, ‘what did you get yourself mixed up in?’

  As I gazed down on his mutilated face, I couldn’t get the other nagging thought out of my mind; how this could just as easily have been me lying there. If I’d not been on holiday when he was lifted, it probably would have been me.

  ‘Are you alright?’ asked Sharp, his tone suggesting he was a bit rattled by the spectacle himself. I knew what was worrying Sharp. Despite the mess the rats had made of Geordie’s face, the cause of his death was clear to see. There was a bullet hole right in the middle of his forehead. It had gone in, neat as you like, and it looked professional. Most probably it was the exit wound that had attracted the rats. Half of the back of Geordie’s skull had been blown off and there was blood and brain matter all over the concrete floor behind him.

  This was an execution, pure and simple. They had brought poor Geordie Cartwright out to this cold and lonely spot, probably put him down on his knees,, then pressed a gun right into his face so he could see it and pulled the trigger. He must have realised what was coming when they drove him out here. I couldn’t imagine how scared he must have been or what had gone through his mind at the end. I wondered if he had pleaded for his life.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I’m alright,’ and I suddenly felt my sadness turn to anger. The sheer fucking nerve of this was breathtaking and the complete lack of mercy shown to Geordie Cartwright made me resolve to be just as pitiless if I was ever in a position to let Finney off his leash. ‘Fuck!’

  ‘This is bad,’ muttered Sharp unnecessarily, ‘very bad. Is it going to be a war? You don’t need a war. We don’t need a fucking turf war.’

  ‘I don’t know yet, do I? It depends on who it is. If it’s a lone operator or a couple of freelancers, we’ll find them and…’ I didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  ‘And if not? What if it’s someone who thinks he can take out Bobby, someone who wants to be Top Boy, then what?’

  ‘Then he’s a dead man. You don’t mess with Bobby Mahoney, you know that. How many times has he proven it? Time and time again, for more than twenty five years.’

  ‘I know,’ he said unhappily.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘This feels different somehow, more professional.’

  ‘What’s professional about putting a bullet through someone’s forehead,’ I said, even though his thoughts mirrored my own, ‘anyone can do that. They didn’t even get rid of the body properly. You found it in twenty four hours.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he said, ‘why leave a body out in the open like this, in a Police no-go area that’s crawling with gangs, unless you want it to be found?’

  I’d thought about that too. I figured somebody was sending us a message.

  ‘Word on the street is; Cartwright disappeared with some of Bobby’s money,’ he said, ‘a lot of Bobby’s money.’

  ‘Word travels fast,’ I said, exasperated that the whole damn city seemed to know what was going on, except me, ‘good.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sounds like somebody’s been talking, bragging about taking on Bobby, stealing from him and getting away with it, which means we’ll hear who it is soon enough and we’ll lift him. End of problem.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You know that’s how half the young villains on Tyneside get taken down. They can’t resist blabbing about what they’ve done. They think it gets them respect.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right there.’

  ‘I know I am,’ I snapped. I didn’t need him to tell me. I walked away from Cartwright’s body and Sharp followed me across the cracked concrete floor of the warehouse, stepping over puddles. Most of the roof had caved in years ago, leaving it open to the elements and I shivered.

  ‘How did you find him?’ I asked.

  ‘I put the word out I was looking for George Cartwright, unofficial like. I said there was a couple of grand in it if anyone found him, alive or dead. I assumed that was okay.’

  ‘Yeah, no problem.’ That was pennies in our game.

  ‘A few hours later, I get this call. It seems the Western Boyz discovered him when they were patrolling their patch.’

  ‘Shit name for a gang. They sound like a bunch of queer cowboys.’

  ‘This is their area apparently. It’s a no-go zone for civilians and uniforms keep away from it as well.’

  ‘That’s good, should make it easier for my lads to get rid of the body. No one would take their dog for a walk down here.’

  ‘Not unless they had a death wish. The Western Boyz called me first. They’re good lads, know the score.’

  ‘Good lads?’ that was an unusual description.

  ‘For drug peddling, robbing, raping scum bags,” he shrugged, “it’s all relative. We meet worse believe me.’

  ‘They’ll get their two grand. I’ll sort it. Cartwright’s body will be gone in an hour. Tell nobody about this and tell the Western Boyz to keep it schtum too. If they do we might be able to use them again, put some money in their pockets from time to time. Would that appeal to them?’

  ‘I’d say so,’ we walked back to his car and got in. ‘What the fuck was Cartwright doing with Bobby’s money in the first place and how would they know who to hit?’ he asked reflectively, like he wasn’t expecting an answer and, to tell you the truth, that was what was worrying me the most right now. Even Sharp didn’t know about the Drop. He didn’t know how much it was or who it was for, let alone the fact that Cartwright and me were both responsible for delivering it. Only a handful of people in Bobby’s organisation knew about it, which meant we had a rat - and a high level one at that.

  ‘Sharp?’ I called to him as we were climbing into our cars, ‘tell no one about this. I want it buried.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘what are you going to do?’

  As soon as I could, I called Bobby.

  ‘We’ve got a problem,’ I said.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We found our rep,’ I was speaking in that guarded way he preferred over the phone. We treated every conversation like it was being taped or someone could be listening in, ‘it turns out he hadn’t resigned.’

  Bobby sighed, like he’d known it all along but didn’t want to believe the truth.

  ‘Someone’s retired him?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Right,’ he said suddenly, a flash of anger in his voice now he had proof that one of his men had been killed. ‘Find out who and sort it,’ before reminding me, ‘that’s what I pay you for,’ then he added the single word, ‘Monday,’ as if I needed reminding of the deadline.

  Laura was still asleep when I got in but I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest if I’d wanted to. The whole thing was going through my mind, over and over again but it boiled down to very simple questions. Who has done this thing and why? I’d gone through everybody I could think of. I’d started with the main players in cities within striking distance of us, the family firms who controlled large patches of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester and Liverpool, but surely they had enough on their plate wi
thout starting a war with us over our city. I put myself in their shoes, dispassionately weighing up the risks and advantages of launching an attack on a rival family in a city I didn’t know and I came to the conclusion I wouldn’t risk it myself, not for millions. It was too dangerous, too likely to threaten their current empires and would just result in tit-for-tat killings with no side fully destroying the other. It would be messy, bloody and expensive and it might just give the police all of the evidence they needed to put everybody involved away for years.

  I poured myself another beer and thought about the smaller local crews that operated under our noses and, if not always with our outright permission, a tacit understanding that as long as they didn’t tread on our toes, they had a right to earn a living. Had the leader of one of those crews suddenly become too ambitious? It was possible, natural even. That was how Bobby became Top Boy - by being more ruthless than the guy who was in his way. There must have been a day when Bobby looked around him and suddenly thought ‘I want to be the man. I’m good enough, hard enough and I’m going to make it happen. Men will die as a result but it’s a price I’m willing to pay’. And he did pay that price, displacing the guy at the top by killing him and all of his main men, with Finney’s help of course. But that was twenty-odd years ago now and the world wasn’t quite the same. You had to be a very political animal to cope with life at the top these days. That was what the Drop was all about, after all. You had to understand politics, big business, the legit world as well as the criminal one, you had to feather nests and keep the money flowing, you needed bent coppers and shady politicians, dodgy journalists and crooked accountants. You had to know when to scare people and when to pay them off. It was a tough job running an empire and somehow I couldn’t see any of the local hoodlums having the grey cells to even attempt it.

  So, who then?

  I was lying in bed that night next to Laura, not sleeping, when suddenly in a flash of realisation it hit me – the reason that Bobby should trust me. It was a risk phoning him in the middle of the night for a meet but my instinct told me it was the right thing to do. It might have been late but he wouldn’t be sleeping either. I knew him too well. He’d be up and pacing, churning over all of the same thoughts in his head that I was having.