The Drop (5 page)

I already had a bad feeling about it.

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C
artwright 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 sides 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 without 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.

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.

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W
e 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.