The Drop

by Howard Linskey

  Sure enough he answered his mobile on the first ring. He sounded guarded, defensive.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said impatiently.

  ‘I want a meet,’ I told him.

  ‘What? Now?’

  ‘No not now,’ I told him, ‘tomorrow, as soon as you can do it. There’s something I need to tell you.’

  There was a short pause on the line while he digested this. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘meet me at Frank’s in the morning.’ We agreed a time and I rang off. I went back to bed then and slept like a baby.

  TEN

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

  We were both naked, lying face down on two massage tables, a pair of soft white towels draped across our arses to preserve our modesty. Tina and Susan, the two fittest young lasses in the place, no coincidence there, were expertly kneading the tension out of our necks with their soft, oiled hands and it felt good, really good.

  Bobby was on form considering. Maybe he had already stopped suspecting I’d ripped him off, now that I had found Cartwright’s body, but most likely it was just for appearances. That’s why he was having such a good craic with the girls. When things were bad in your business you carried on like everything was rosy. Some people call it fiddling while Rome burns. I call it common sense, because if people started to lose confidence in Bobby’s ability to control things then he was as good as dead already.

  ‘You know this is about the only legit massage parlour I have any involvement with,’ he told Tina who chuckled at this. She was in her mid twenties and a trained therapist, masseuse and a holistic white witch, or whatever it is they like to call themselves these days when they graduate with their certificates in that alternative therapy shit.

  ‘That’s right pet,’ she told him confidently, ‘you won’t get any hand jobs here,’ and the other girl laughed, ‘well,’ she added cheekily, ‘mebbe’s on your birthday,’ and that set all of us off laughing.

  ‘He’s 29 today as it happens,’ I said and that prompted more laughing but there was no phasing Tina.

  ‘In that case you’re on,’ she said. She paused for effect then told us, ‘I’ll go and fetch Gary. He’s the hand job expert round here.’

  ‘And you can fuck right off,’ said Bobby but he was still laughing. I’ve seen Gary, the in-house male masseuse and if he isn’t gay, he should be. Personally I couldn’t give a fuck who anybody shags, as long as it isn’t children, but I wouldn’t be comfortable getting a massage from any man, especially Gary. I reckon he’d enjoy it more than I would.

  The massage Tina’s mate was giving me was excellent. It was just what I needed and chilled me right out, unwinding all the knots of tension in my back and neck. ‘Frank’s’, named in honour of Bobby’s personal favourite Frank Sinatra, was a gym and spa that Bobby had a share in. His fellow investors may or may not have been fully aware that his stake was based on ill-gotten gains but they didn’t seem to care and it was a legitimate form of income, which supported our story that Bobby was, to all intents and purposes, a successful, local businessman.

  When Tina was done, Bobby said, ‘leave us to it pet,’ and the girls disappeared. We wrapped the towels around ourselves and I followed Bobby out into the steam room to talk business. I closed the door tightly behind us and we almost disappeared in the vapour, but I could still make out Bobby’s face as he sat opposite me on a little wooden slatted bench. He was wearing that frown again.

  ‘What you got to tell me?’

  ‘Not much,’ I replied, ‘just the reason why you should start trusting me again.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘It’s not enough.’ I said.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘The money,’ and I made sure I looked him right in the eye when I said this, ‘the amount that’s gone missing wouldn’t be worth the risk for crossing you. Let’s put aside for one minute the fact I’ve known you since I was a nipper, let’s ignore the years of loyal service shall we? We both know that right now that doesn’t mean much. Someone has ripped you off and it could be anybody, including me. If I was you, I wouldn’t trust me either. Maybe I’ve got money worries you don’t know about, debts or perhaps I just want a bigger house. Maybe my bird’s been bending my ear about it.’

  ‘Go on,’ we were staring each other out at this point.

  ‘Or look at it another way. What if I’m just too ambitious? You’ve said no to a couple of my ideas this year so perhaps I think you’re slipping and I could do a better job than you as the boss. Suppose I can’t be bothered to wait till you retire to someplace hot and I want you out of my way.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ he told me with something like astonishment, ‘you tell it straight don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t kid me you haven’t had those thoughts in the last few days.’

  ‘Maybe I have.’

  ‘Course you have. You’re trying to work out who’s brave enough or stupid enough to move against you by stealing the Drop, but my point is, the Drop isn’t large enough for me to chuck in a good screw with your firm. Think about it, if I was going to rip you off, it would have to be big, really big. We both know I’m a clever cunt and I wouldn’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life waiting for Finney to turn up and put me in the ground. For that, it would have to be millions and I would never be able to sleep easy at night if I left you breathing.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, clearly shocked by my lack of tact but I could see he understood my point.

  ‘If I was working with Cartwright I’d have had to split the Drop and there’d be fuck all left for either of us, so let’s assume that’s why I topped him. If I wasn’t working with him I’d have to kill him anyway, but we both know I’m no killer and I can prove I was in Thailand when he was last seen, so I must have paid someone and the same logic applies. I’m not going to give the job to a couple of crack-heads and watch them balls it up, so it would have to be a professional and they aren’t cheap. Same problem, I’m a young man, I’d be on the run and I’d have sod all left to retire on.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said. The sweat was pouring down Bobby’s face and I could feel drops of it sliding down my torso. They had the heat up high in the steam room today.

  ‘Besides, you know I could earn the same money in two good years with you so why would I jeopardise that? You taught me to pay top men well enough so they don’t even think about betraying you.’

  Bobby looked at me for a long while without saying anything. Then he looked away, like he was thinking. In my fevered state I was starting to wonder if I’d gone too far and he was going to suddenly lose it and smash my head in on the floor tiles.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally.

  I wasn’t expecting that.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘For not trusting you.’

  I let this sink in for a bit then said, ‘you shouldn’t trust me,’ and he looked me right in the eye, ‘you shouldn’t trust anyone Bobby, not right now.’

  ‘You’re right Davey,’ he said, ‘but you are the only one who ever tells me that, which is why I do trust you.’

  He was looking straight at me again in that unflinching way he had of sizing people up, ‘you can forget tomorrow’s deadline.’

  I nodded gratefully. I felt the pressure visibly lift until he jabbed his finger at me and said, ‘but that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. That money was still your responsibility and Cartwright was one of your boys, so it’s still your neck…’

  He didn’t have to finish.

  ‘Course,’ I said, ‘I’m all over it, believe me.’

  ‘Good, you should be,’ he didn’t look much happier now that he’d stopped suspecting me of personally ripping him off. I guess he had the same problem; someone had done it and we still didn’t know who, ‘and I’ve got a job for you.’ He finished.

  ‘What kind of job?’ I didn’t know why but I was suddenly worried he was going to ask me to kill somebody to prove my loyalty. It was an absurd notion but
I got a little surge of panic anyway. The heat in the steam room was making me feel weak and I wanted to get out of there.

  ‘The Drop. I need to make good on the Drop. I want you to deliver it and I want you to take Finney, just in case.’

  Just in case someone tries to kill me or just in case I try and run off with it, I wondered, probably both.

  ‘When we realised it hadn’t reached him I managed to buy us some time but it did not go down well,’ he continued, ‘so I’ve put some extra in there to sugar the pill. Northam will let you have it when you turn up with Finney. Make sure you hand it over to Amrein personally and whatever you do make sure he understands we are back in control.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. He was teaching me to suck eggs but I understood. He was stressing out, making sure no detail was left to chance. I’d have done the same in his shoes. ‘I’ll get it there, no problem.’

  ‘Good, make sure you do.’

  I spent Monday morning at our restaurant in the Quayside. I knew I’d get some peace there. I sat at a table before it opened to the public, making calls, sending members of our crew out on errands, following up leads and leaning on people, anybody I could think of who might know anything about Cartwright, however trivial. My meeting with Bobby had bought me some time but I knew I couldn’t relax, not until I’d got his money back, every penny.

  The sun came out, shining through the big open windows, bathing the place. It was a lovely spot and Bobby hadn’t skimped on the décor; bright white linen tablecloths topped with outsized wine glasses and expensive flower arrangements, welcomed the diners, who could sink into soft leather banquette seating and chose from a wine list that had more pages than the phone book. This was about as classy as we got.

  The place opened up around me and people started to wander in. It was quite busy for the beginning of the week; mostly business lunches by the look of it, but there were one or two well-heeled couples and some ladies who lunched.

  I took calls from our guys as they reported back to me. Nobody had come up with anything new. No one knew anything about this mysterious Russian. One of the waitresses brought me a plate of halloumi and chorizo, some foccaccia and hummus and a glass of Sauvignon. She was a pretty little thing, neat in her crisp, white blouse, short black skirt and dark stockings, with her honey coloured hair tied back, not much make-up, natural looking, the way I like them.

  ‘Chef thought you might fancy a plate of something, Mister Blake?’ she said, then she smiled, ‘the wine was my idea.’

  ‘Tell the chef he’s a mind reader,’ I told her, ‘and you’re a darling.’

  She gave me a big smile before she walked away. It was a nice little spread but I made sure I got through it quick before any of our crew caught me eating ‘poncy foreign food’. Most of our lads thought lasagne was exotic. Me? I’m different. I’m interested in good food and decent wine. One day, I’ll have enough money to open a restaurant like this myself, somewhere classy with a good chef and a respectable wine list, that you wouldn’t be ashamed to take your other half to on her birthday. Until that day though, well, as they say, this beats working for a living. Well, usually. Today was a bit different of course.

  I was just finishing my lunch when in walked DS Sharp followed by a man I’d never seen before. He was a short, rotund guy in a long, black overcoat with a cheap grey suit beneath it, the collar of his white shirt slightly frayed. He was obviously one of those men who never looked entirely comfortable in a suit - that fact alone would probably prevent further promotion.

  Sharp pointed me out. The shorter man walked up to me determinedly.

  ‘David Blake?’ he asked me, ‘Detective Inspector Clifford,’ he added sternly, with the unmistakeable accent of East London. He made sure he showed me his warrant card, holding it high enough for the other diners to satisfy their curiosity. It was a form of harassment I was used to and I was hardly going to be embarrassed by it, ‘you’ve probably heard, I’m the new kid on the block,’ I thought that was an odd description for a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a straggly little moustache that contained a greasy fragment of his breakfast. What was it with these two and their ‘taches?

  ‘No,’ I said, as if his arrival was of no consequence to me whatsoever.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Sharp you do know,’ he told me.

  ‘We’ve had the pleasure,’ we all shook hands. ‘Inspector,’ I said giving him my best hundred-watt smile, ‘would you like to join me for some lunch, your colleague too of course? This Sauvignon is excellent,’

  ‘No thank you Mister Blake,’ he said, like I had just offered him an all-expenses trip to the Bahamas in return for forgetting a murder I’d committed, ‘do you have somewhere for a private conversation?’ A bit rich, considering his very public entrance.

  ‘Of course,’ I assured him, ‘always happy to assist Northumbria’s finest.’

  I led them into a poky little office out back and we sat around a desk normally used by the restaurant’s bookkeeper, ‘how can I help?’

  ‘By dispensing with the usual bullshit,’ he told me. He was leaning forward in his chair, an excitable sort who couldn’t wait to tell me what was on his mind.

  I decided to play the genteel, slightly-incredulous suspect, the kind you might see on an episode of Inspector Morse. ‘I’m not sure if I follow Inspector.’ Sharp smirked slightly.

  ‘Heard of the Marshall brothers?’ he asked, ‘Don’t answer that, course you have.’

  ‘I think I may have read about them in the newspaper.’

  ‘I’ll bet you did,’ he nodded emphatically, ‘A lovely bust, that one. They’d ruled half of Manchester for donkey’s years, then, one day we took down one of their dealers for the third time. I mean, he was looking at more Porridge than Ronnie Barker.’

  ‘Use that joke a lot do you?’ I asked him.

  He ignored me. ‘So he lays down for us and starts bleating; names, dates, places, money, grams and kilos. Yeah, they were shifting kilos, the cocky buggers. He gave us a name and we busted him, that bloke gave us a name and we busted him too, and so on, all the way up the big, long, greasy pole right to the very top. You see, nobody wants to be the only one doing life. You’d have to be a right mug, so you sneak on the guy who’s giving you orders and taking home more money than you for less risk, in theory,’ he added the ‘in theory’ like it was darkly significant, ‘there’s a kind of resentment that we find quite easy to tap into. Before you know it we’d got all the lieutenants, knocked them down one by one like dominoes, till the Marshalls had no one left to do their dirty work for them. Then we came after the brothers, see. Did you hear what they got in the end?’

  ‘Ninety-nine years.’

  ‘You do remember,’ he said triumphantly.

  ‘Of course, he had a good eye for the headlines the old “hanging judge”. I thought at the time it was quite a coincidence how his carefully considered sentences all added up neatly to ninety-nine years.’

  ‘Terry Marshall got thirty-two years,’ and he whistled like he was impressed, ‘minimum recommendation was twenty-five. The judge may have liked headlines but he had a good sense of humour an’ all. There’s Terry standing in the dock at his age and he says “I can’t do all that time” meaning he is going to be long dead by the end of his sentence and do you know what the judge said. “Do your best,” and DI Clifford laughed until he almost choked. “Do your best?” You should have seen the look on poor Terry’s little face. I mean imagine it, you’ve robbed and thieved and battered and murdered till you are at the top of the whole shitty pile and how do you spend your last days; sharing a tiny cell for twenty-three hours a day with a mugger and a rapist until you finally die. He’s got to be asking himself every hour of every day what was it all for?’ he paused to let that sink in, ‘that’s how it ends for people like him - but it doesn’t have to be like that for everybody who works for the top boys.’ He leaned forward like he was sharing a conspiracy with me. ‘You know Bobby Mahoney is on a list do
n’t you? I mean right at the top of that list, along with a few cockneys, a couple of Scousers and some Jocks I could mention.’

  I tried to look blank, ‘New Year’s Honours?’

  ‘SOCA’s hit parade.’

  SOCA or the Serious Organised Crime Agency, was created with the merger of the National Crime Squad and the National Criminal Intelligence Service, to become an organisation the tabloids had taken to referring to as the British F.B.I. They were meant to tackle drug barons, people traffickers and large scale money laundering.

  ‘It’s like top of the pops,’ DI Clifford continued, ‘only you don’t want to be in their chart and I wouldn’t be surprised if Bobby isn’t number one with a bullet. The man most wanted. You know they have a list of all the major players in organised crime right across the country and they are gunning for them all. They are going to get them too. You know who’s in charge at SOCA, the former head of MI5, Britain’s Counter Intelligence service, the spooks. They fought the cold war, the IRA and Al Qaeda so they are going to make mincemeat of your lot.’

  ‘So why are you even here?’ I asked, ‘if they are that good, you can just sit back and relax and watch while the show happens all around you.’

  ‘I am here to offer you a way out. Your only way out, come to mention it. Cooperate with me and when the wheels do come off, as they will, spectacularly, you’ll have at least one friend who can put a word in for you when it matters. Otherwise you’ll be just another pretty boy getting gang-raped in the showers at Strangeways.’

  ‘Cooperate? How exactly?’ I asked him calmly.

  He straightened, full of adrenalin now. He was doing a selling job on me and I could tell he was pretty sure I was interested, ‘tell me what you know and maybe it will be easier for Bobby if his local nick does the arresting. I might even be persuaded to bust him on lesser charges just as long as it takes him off the streets. We could focus on his role in the vice game and play down his little drugs empire?’ He said that last bit like I should be impressed he knew we were shifting drugs. Well whoop-tee-doo. He folded his arms smugly and sat back in his chair.