The Drop

by Howard Linskey

  He was looking well rattled by this stage, ‘that’s crazy. I don’t know who’s been… ’

  ‘Shut up.’ I put my hand firmly on his shoulder then and he couldn’t help it, he looked out of the corner of his eye, searching in vain for his bodyguard, knowing he’d been a fool, suckered by the friendly lunch, the amiable chit-chat from the deferential young man and the increased Drop. Now he knew he’d been conned. I could end him here before his bodyguard got anywhere near him. For all he knew, Kinane and Palmer had killed his guys already. ‘Don’t shit yourself Amrein, I’m not going to kill you. If I was I wouldn’t waste my breath talking to you like this, I’d just do it. I’m planning to work with you. I just want to make sure you never forget who you are dealing with, ever. I’m a bit sharper than you think, see. Anyone ever comes to you again wanting to take over our business, you send them packing without any encouragement, then you call me and tell me all about it, straight away, no delays or I’ll hold it against you later,’ he didn’t interrupt. ‘If you don’t, I’ll win anyway because I know my city and I’m cleverer than all of the others. When we’ve won and they’re dead, there’ll be no more Drop. I’ll leave you to explain that to the people you kick the money upstairs to. If they don’t kill you, I’ll come looking for you,’ I gripped his shoulder more firmly and leant in close, ‘and Amrein, I will find you, wherever you go.’

  He had gone pale and there was a light sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  ‘You got that?’ I demanded.

  ‘Of course,’ he swallowed before he said it. He looked well nervous. I knew he prided himself on keeping a good distance from anything bloody. Like a general, he gave out the orders that lead to men dying but he never had to do it himself or witness any of it. I used to be like that myself I supposed. What had Jerry Lemon called me? A plastic gangster, so I knew the impact violence and fear can have on a man like Amrein.

  ‘Good,’ I nodded my satisfaction, released my grip from his shoulder and actually patted him on the cheek, like he’d been a good little boy listening to Daddy. ‘I’m glad you feel that way,’ I concluded, ‘because I wouldn’t want to see you end up like him,’ and I nodded towards the summer house.

  Amrein peered at the summer house, trying to work out what I was on about. He walked a little closer, squinting into the sunshine through those wire framed spectacles. It took him a moment or two to make out the dark shadow through the glass. Then I heard him shout ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘One last thing,’ I told him, ‘that story you gave me about having a man in HUMINT who knew we had somebody ratting to SOCA but not who it was. That was bullshit. I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now. If he knew we had a rat he’d know who it was. You kept the name back to make me go looking for him. To distract me, while Gladwell was coming after us.’

  I wasn’t certain but it looked like a little dark patch had formed on the groin of his expensively tailored trousers.

  ‘I want that name and I want the proof. Let’s call it a gesture of good faith. You’ve got one week.’

  I walked away then, back across that enormous lawn with the birds chirruping happily in the trees above me, leaving Amrein still staring at the summer house where Tommy Gladwell’s severed head sat neatly on the sill, peering back at him through the window.

  THIRTY-NINE

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

  Iphoned Arthur Gladwell on the morning of his son’s memorial service. ‘How did you get this number?’ he asked me. He sounded in a state.

  ‘Doesn’t matter how I got it. Do you know who you are talking to?’ We’d not met that often and he was unlikely to remember my voice.

  There was a long pause before he finally admitted, ‘No.’

  ‘No but I know everything about you. It’s Tommy’s memorial today but you’ve got other sons, daughters, grandchildren… ’ He didn’t utter a word while I told him the names and addresses of everyone that was near and dear to him, right down to the nursery his youngest grandchild went to four mornings a week. I had to hand it to Sharp. He’d done a thorough job.

  ‘How do you want to end this?’ he asked me when I was done, his voice breaking.

  ‘It’s already over. I just want to make sure you understand that. Your son’s dead because he was stupid. He thought he could come down here and take over a long established concern but Bobby wasn’t having it. Stay out of our city Gladwell - or we’ll kill your whole family, including the grandbairns, and no one will ever find your body either. Understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly.

  And I hung up.

  It was a German Shepherd that finally found the body. A bloke out walking his dog told the police and his local paper that the dead man had a badly scarred face and a needle sticking out of his arm. Everyone agreed it was just another sad but unsurprising case of a junkie, so far out of it he’d taken too much for his poor little body to cope with. The newspapers duly reported the death of a career-criminal called Andrew Stone, a professional burglar who had accidentally killed himself with heroin. They did include a quote from a so-called friend who swore blind that Stone had never touched heroin before. This friend even suspected foul play, but the tone of the article made it clear the reporter didn’t believe such a farfetched theory. The gist of the article being, it was never too late to become an addict and the results were almost always tragic. Andrew Stone’s death was just another senseless, drug related tragedy in the squalid tenements of Glasgow.

  A week later, Amrein delivered the name we were looking for, along with incontrovertible, documented proof lifted from the files of SOCA itself; the name of our rat.

  I looked at it and did a double take, then I felt a little surge of relief. At least we were spared another execution. Northam, our harmless, little bent accountant was going to shop us all. Apparently he had failed to keep up with the times and SOCA managed to trace some of his dodgy international cash transfers, as they went from an uncaring bank in Luxembourg to a blind-eye-turning clearing house in the Caymans and finally arrived, laundered more times than a whore-house bed-sheet, into an account run by every criminal’s favourite accomplice in Geneva. You’ve got to love the Swiss. If their bank accounts were good enough for the Nazis then, they were good enough for us. A bank that welcomes Herman Goering is hardly going to blanch at the prospect of Bobby Mahoney as a client.

  Trouble was, the investigators were getting a little smarter and we should have kept up. Once they were able to prove to Northam he was ruined, he rolled over like he was having his tummy tickled, offering to tell them everything; names, dates, places and amounts, everything a judge and jury could ask for. He’d have sent us all down to save his own arse. Fucking accountants.

  And to think I’d even felt sorry for him lying there with a bullet in his brain. It turned out Tommy Gladwell just saved me a job. Finding another accountant wasn’t going to be hard. They were ten a penny, especially bent ones. I just had to make sure the next one was more scared of me than the law.

  Well, there would be no trials now, what with the chief witness for the prosecution disappearing like that. It made me realise that if, Tommy Gladwell hadn’t come along we would have carried on obliviously for a few more months, until the fateful day when we were all nicked. It made you think.

  A couple of days later, I read a lead article in The Times about the Serious Organised Crime Agency and its woeful record since its inception at great public cost. The British FBI had completely failed in its quest to bring to justice the country’s top 130 ‘crime lords’, including Bobby. The article cited a top heavy management structure, overburdened bureaucracy and inefficient systems, leading to collapsing morale and an exodus of officers. It was nice to know we were not the only ones with troubles.

  There was a period of transition. The word had to slowly get round that the personnel may have changed but the organisation was intact, rejuvenated in fact, by new blood. I made sure the people who mattered all knew where the authority
now lay to do business with us.

  The new organisation was tighter and more ruthless. Our whole outlook was geared around making sure that what was done to Bobby and Finney could never happen to us. We increased the muscle, used Kinane and his sons, plus the boys from their gym. They weren’t greedy and they owed me for elevating them; most of the time they seemed pretty grateful just to be out of the wilderness.

  I gave a lot of responsibility to Palmer. After all, he’d come good against the Russians so I owed him and he showed no signs of wanting to be boss. He didn’t need the hassle - but then I used to say that too, so I would be keeping a closer eye on him in future.

  Before I left, he told me, ‘there’s a rumour doing the rounds that Jerry Lemon underestimated you. Word on the street is you had him killed because he showed you up in front of everybody down at the snooker hall. They say you are not a man to be fucked with.’

  I did nothing to contradict that rumour.

  I also gave more responsibility to Hunter, because he’d done well when I’d needed him and he knew where the bodies were buried, or at least where the pigs lived that ate the bodies. I made sure all of these men had plenty of money in their pockets, and jobs that made them feel like a face around town. I paid better than Bobby. It was my insurance against the kind of resentful, blind ambition that brought down Bobby Mahoney after nearly thirty years as king of the Midden.

  It made my brother. Whatever self respect he’d lost on that battlefield, he got back when I put him in charge of some of our dirty laundry. People started seeing him round the city in our clubs and casinos but this time he’d had a haircut and a shave, was dressed in a smart jacket and he laid off the sauce. He tidied himself up big style and the next time he was in one of our lap dancing bars, the girls were throwing themselves at him because they knew he was my brother. I even persuaded him to move out of his shit hole of a flat and take over my old apartment. After all, I wouldn’t be needing it where I was going.

  If they needed advice we used web phones, so much more secure than mobiles or landlines, or someone flew out to see me. Kinane, Palmer, Hunter and Danny took it in turns so the authorities wouldn’t become too suspicious of any frequent flyers. I came back to Newcastle from time to time to oversee things but it was deliberately infrequent and it became less and less over time. I’d set the thing up and told them what to do, how to handle themselves with the police, other villains, our employees, everything. If they did what I told them it would be sweet and the money would continue to roll in, just so long as they remembered my cut, same time every month, regular as clockwork. Another Drop that was never to be forgotten.

  Before I left the country, Detective Inspector Clifford hauled me in for a chat. I went voluntarily with my solicitor. She sat next to me in the interview room. We were complying with a request to assist the police with their enquiries. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help.

  ‘I am obviously aware that Bobby Mahoney has disappeared,’ I told Clifford and his tape recorder, ‘and it is deeply upsetting to me that my former employer, a respectable businessman after all, has vanished into thin air like this, but I have heard that hundreds of people go missing every year for no apparent reason.’

  ‘You’re trying to tell me that Bobby Mahoney has cracked up, lost the plot and gone walkabout?’ asked Clifford, while Sharp sat stone-faced beside him. Nothing ever came from that Police Complaints Commission visit. It wasn’t even about Sharp. Like I’d told him, he’d been worrying about nothing.

  ‘I think it just goes to show how little you really know anyone,’ I said. ‘Have you called the homeless hostels in London, just in case? It might be a good place to start?’

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’

  ‘Inspector, my client has attended this interview voluntarily,’ my solicitor reminded him, ‘he is merely trying to assist you in your missing person’s enquiry.’

  ‘It’s not a missing persons enquiry, it’s a murder investigation.’ His face was turning puce again, ‘one of the rumours doing the rounds on the streets of this fair city is that Bobby Mahoney is in fact dead and that a person or persons unknown is now running his empire.’

  ‘Indeed, well, where is the body?’ asked my solicitor and Inspector Clifford looked even more irritated.

  He turned his disparaging gaze back onto me. ‘So, what are you going to do, now that your employer has apparently fucked off?’

  ‘I am in the fortunate position that Mister Mahoney’s daughter is overseeing the family business for now, until we have news of his safe whereabouts. She has asked me to remain as Group Sales and Marketing Director, in the medium term, to assist her.’

  ‘Sales and M… ’ he clenched his teeth and shook his head, ‘so I take it you have no knowledge of another missing person’s case we are working on?’

  ‘I’d be glad to help of course but I’m not sure how… .’

  ‘A gangster from Glasgow called Tommy Gladwell, his wife and two bodyguards have also mysteriously vanished into thin air around the same time that Bobby Mahoney went AWOL. The difference being, we found blood on the ground outside his home.’

  ‘I can’t help you there Inspector. I’m afraid I’ve never met any gangsters, let alone one from Glasgow.’

  The Inspector took a deep breath and I got the impression it was only the presence of my eminently respectable, female solicitor that was keeping him from leaning over and smashing my face into the table.

  ‘Perhaps I can get your opinion on a little matter closer to home then,’ he persisted. ‘How about the violent turf war that has erupted on the Sunnydale estate?’

  ‘Oh, this I do know all about,’ I assured him.

  ‘You do?’ he seemed surprised.

  ‘Yes, after all it has been on the front pages of both The Evening Chronicle and The Journal, a dreadful business. I believe it involved the abduction and murder of some established heroin dealers. The reporter from The Journal said you suspected some sort of vigilante group?’

  ‘Do we fuck,’ he hissed, ‘it was your lot. We are not bloody stupid.’

  At this point my solicitor interjected, ‘can I once again remind you that my client is a company director who has never even been charged with, much less convicted of, any crime.’

  ‘Might I remind you Miss,’ DI Clifford hissed through gritted teeth, ‘that I am very much aware of your client and his role within the so-called Gallowgate Leisure Group.’

  At this point I wanted to say ‘if you’re so clever Inspector, how is it that I’ve got your right hand man on my payroll and you haven’t even worked that out, but I obviously thought better of it. He turned his attention back to me. He leaned forward so that he was stretching right over the desk, deliberately invading my personal space, ‘I suppose you are going to try and convince me you have never even heard of a man called Vitaly Litchenko?’

  ‘Oh yes, I have heard of him’ I said calmly and DI Clifford frowned in surprise. I could see Sharp looking a little nervous at this point, ‘doesn’t he play for Chelsea?’

  I was almost at my car when DI Clifford caught up with me. He sounded excitable.

  ‘I want you to know something, off the record,’ he told me, ‘with no solicitors around. This is just between you and me. I want you to be aware that I know what’s going on. I just can’t prove it yet but I’m going to.’

  ‘Really,’ I said trying to look unconcerned.

  ‘Yes I do,’ he told me, ‘Bobby Mahoney isn’t dead. He’s very much alive. He just used a war with that piss ant, little pretend gangster from Glasgow to get the fuck out of it. I know Tommy Gladwell. I know all about him and he didn’t have the brains to mastermind a takeover of this city. Bobby killed him, his wife and their bodyguards and they probably deserved it too, the bloody fools. Bobby’s abroad somewhere but he’s still running things. I know it and I won’t rest until I prove he’s alive and bring him back here in handcuffs. You tell him this from me. He can run but he can’t hide!’ I tried to look a little bit sideswi
ped by this outburst and it worked. ‘I knew it!’ he said triumphantly, ‘I’m right. Go on, admit it, just between us.’

  I paused then, waiting for as long as I could before answering him, watching his piggy little eyes glaze with expectation.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I told him as I climbed into my car. I closed the door on his indignant face and started the engine.

  ‘I will find him,’ he called through the glass, ‘I will!’ ‘Give my regards to Lord Lucan while you’re at it,’ I muttered to myself as I drove sharply away.

  EPILOGUE

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

  Look at him. Go on, look. Take a good, long look. Scary isn’t he; standing there by the swimming pool, five feet eight inches of muscular, killing machine and about as hard as granite.

  Not a big guy but he’s a Gurkha, ex-British Army, Palmer put me on to them. Him and his mates don’t come cheap but they are worth it because they have a very important job to do, the most important there is. They are keeping me alive.

  He won’t leave my side today and his mates are patrolling the grounds of my new home right now; a huge, luxurious, state-of-the-art, all-mod-cons, gated compound, not a stone’s throw from the Hua Hin resort where I took Laura on holiday, about a lifetime ago now. Funny how things work out isn’t it?

  Sarah comes out of our house looking beautiful in her tiny, little, white bikini and he doesn’t even notice her as she pads past him in her bare feet, hips rolling. At least he pretends not to, doesn’t even give her a look, not even a quick, furtive, sidelong glance as she flips her pert, little arse up in the air into a perfect dive before disappearing beneath the cool, clear water. Instead he just stands there, that big fuck-off Kalashnikov slung on his shoulder, staring straight ahead like a tin soldier. He can’t be human. I mean if you can’t enjoy a sight like that you’re not alive, not really. But me? I’m just glad he is so dedicated, so focused, so completely in the zone, concentrating on nothing more than keeping me breathing, just so long as I keep on paying.