The Drop (17 page)

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W
e were back to square one. We had nothing; just a photofit of a petty criminal from Glasgow and a Russian connection we didn’t understand. It was doing my head in. I wasn’t getting anywhere. Bobby still didn’t have his money and, more importantly, I hadn’t found out who was behind his ‘troubles’, as Arthur Gladwell so tellingly referred to them.

I was at home watching the football when the phone rang. Out of the blue, Joe Kinane called me. His happiness was in direct contrast to my mood.

‘I just thought I’d give you a ring about my lad,’ he told me.

‘How’d he get on?’

‘Beat it,’ he said.

‘Really?’ this was more than I could have hoped for, ‘that’s brilliant. What happened?’

‘Self-defence,’ he said laughing, ‘which it was of course, kind of, but that lawyer of yours was the dog’s. She took the other guy apart.’

‘Told you,’ I said.

‘Aye, well, he got a more comprehensive beating from her than he ever did from my boy. It helped that she seemed to have a lot of information about his character, stuff he wouldn’t want a jury to hear. Turns out he wasn’t a very nice bloke,’ he said dryly.

‘You don’t say? Amazing what a good lawyer can turn up.’

‘It is,’ and he laughed, ‘anyway, I just wanted to thank you for putting me onto her.’

‘My pleasure mate,’ I told him. I was glad he was expressing his gratitude discreetly. If anyone was listening into this, all they could accuse me of was knowing a good lawyer. ‘That’s in return for all the help and guidance you gave me when I was a snot-nosed kid.’

‘Aye, er sorry about that like,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry about it Joe.’

‘Well, I owe you one,’ he told me before he rang off, ‘if I hear anything about that other thing, anything at all, I’ll let you know.’

‘Cheers,’ I said. Maybe he would turn something up but somehow I doubted it. We had every man in our outfit on it permanently and not one of them had come up with anything worth a light.

I had never seen Sharp so rattled before. My tame DS was shitting it. It was not a good start.

‘I can’t meet you here,’ he hissed at me after I ordered a drink a few feet from him in Rosies.

‘I thought I was your major criminal source,’ I said, playing his game and not looking directly at him. Instead I stared at the mirror in front of me then up at the weird assortment of ghoulish mannequin heads that were arrayed on a ledge above the bar. They didn’t really fit in with all of the framed football shirts on the walls. The bar staff were busy bottling up and the pub was quiet so this nonsense was do-able but I seriously doubted if it would fool anyone for long.

‘It’s not funny.’

‘I never said it was,’ I assured him, ‘where then?’ I took a big gulp of my beer.

‘The Angel,’ he said, ‘one hour - but don’t be surprised if I don’t show.’

‘You’d better show,’ I warned him and I took another large swig of beer.

He turned to face me then and he looked wild eyed, ‘you don’t get it, you don’t know what’s going on. They’re everywhere, all over the station, asking questions, questions about me.’

‘Who is?’

‘Police Complaints Commission. They’ve been in with my gaffer all morning.’

‘Maybe it’s him they’re interested in?’

‘No chance, not him. He’s a fucking android.’

I drained my pint, ‘like I said, he sounds like heart attack material,’ I told him, ‘and so do you, now get a grip.’ I put my empty glass down on the bar and left him to it.

By the time I’d driven out of the city, parked and trudged up to the monument with the wind whistling around my ears, I was beginning to feel mightily pissed-off. There was no sign of Sharp, so I was left standing there, hands thrust deep in my pockets, shivering under the Angel of the North, wondering what could be so important he had to see me straight away but not so urgent he couldn’t just tell me about it in Rosie’s.

Like most people from my city, I held a hypocritical view of the Angel. When it first appeared I thought it was an expensive and pointless monstrosity, representing the very worst excesses of modern art, two hundred tonnes of metal, part man, part aeroplane, neither one thing or another, signifying nothing. Now though, I had to admit to a grudging affection for its rusting presence. As usual, it stood tall, upright and broad-chested, like it was particularly proud of itself. I sat down between the tapered metal strips at its feet and waited, looking out at the surrounding fields under a clear blue sky. It could have been summer if it hadn’t been so typically cold.

A shape in a dark raincoat emerged from the woods on my right and walked quickly towards me. There was no one else around and my first thought was Sharp had set me up for a hit. I was about to leg it when I realised the shape was him. He was out of breath by the time he reached me, ‘too many fags,’ he gasped.

‘Was this really necessary?’

‘Maybe not. But it makes me feel better. I can see people coming from here.’

I looked around. There were some figures in the field behind the monument now. ‘I can see four kids and a kite,’ I told him, ‘I haven’t got a lot of free time at the moment Sharp, what is it?’

‘Something that couldn’t wait.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘It’s Jerry Lemon.’

‘What about him?’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Dead? Jerry Lemon’s dead?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Jesus,’ I said trying to take it in. It was only forty eight hours earlier that Jerry was on the train with us and now he was dead? ‘What the hell happened? I’m guessing it wasn’t suicide.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘he was shot in the head’. He was still panting. I wondered how he ever caught villains, ‘we got a call last night from some shit-scared anonymous pervert who’d been out by a truck stop, walking the dog, you know.’

‘Eh?’

‘Walking the dog,’ he said again, like I was an idiot, ‘only he didn’t have a dog, they never do.’

‘What are you going on about?’

‘Dogging, he was dogging. They call it that because when we catch them they always say ‘I was walking the dog’ and when we say ‘where is it then?’ they always go ‘oh, it must have run off’.’

‘What has dogging got to do with Jerry Lemon?’

‘That’s what he was doing when he was killed.’

‘You’re joking me.’

‘No,’ he assured me, ‘I take it you had no idea he was into that sort of thing.’

‘Course not, but then it isn’t the sort of thing people usually talk about is it? I mean if you ask somebody what they did last night they usually say ‘watched the match’ or ‘went to the pub’ not ‘went dogging’. Bloody hell, it’s not my idea of fun either if I’m honest, standing there with a bunch of strangers all wanking over some fat, married lass while her husband watches. Jesus, his missus will be fucking devastated when she finds out.’

‘Er… No… She won’t.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m afraid she was the fat, married lass and he was the husband watching all the blokes getting off. Well I assume he was, it’s not like we can confirm that exactly but I don’t s’pose he was just doing it for her pleasure.’

‘Bloody hell. You’re telling me Jerry’s missus likes… ’ I couldn’t find the words.

‘Being spunked on by strangers? Yeah, by all accounts.’ He reached for another cigarette, lit it then said, ‘I mean she used to like it. She’s dead an’ all.’

‘Christ, what happened?’

‘At first we thought some sicko was on the prowl, randomly shooting dogging couples. You know, a religious nutter cleaning up the city in the name of the baby Jesus or something. Then we got the name of the victim and it turned out it was Jerry Lemon and his not-so-good lady. So, then everyone said “oh it’s a gangland war”.’

A gangland war? What an odd phrase. Did I live in gangland? I supposed I did, according to the tabloids. Tomorrow they’d be writing up the story of Jerry Lemon and his moll, coldly assassinated by a ruthless, underworld hit man.

‘It looked like they drove in and parked up, flashed their lights in the normal secret way they are s’posed to; you know, one flash and you can watch, two you can join in, three you can take us both up the bum-hole, whatever. We have one witness who must have been even fatter and slower than your average dogger because by the time he comes out of the trees, the window was already coming down and he sees a big shaven-headed bloke step out of a car that’s pulled in behind Jerry Lemon’s.’ It had to be one of the guys who’d gone steaming in on Barry and his lads at the bar. ‘This bloke walks right up to the opened window but instead of pulling his cock out he brings a gun up and blows Jerry’s head off at point blank range. His missus started screaming apparently, as you would when you get a different kind of facial from the one you were expecting, so he pops her as well.’

‘Christ almighty. This witness, can we get to him? He might tell Finney a bit more than he’s telling your lot.’

He shook his head, ‘Anonymous. He called it in, left a description of what he had seen but wouldn’t cooperate further and didn’t leave his name,’ he shrugged, ‘who would?’

Sharp puffed away at his cigarette for a while, as if he was reflecting on the fate of Jerry Lemon. We watched as the kids walked down the mud track in front of us. They tried to fly their kite but the wind kept swooping it up high then smashing it straight back down into the ground again. Eventually Sharp said, ‘I’m serious about what I was saying before. It’s grim. I’m worried, really worried,’ then he turned to look at me, ‘you would look after me, wouldn’t you? If I got sent down because of stuff we’d done together?’

‘Yeah, sure. I’ll send you a cake with a file in it.’

‘Will you stop pissing about for five minutes? I mean it. I need to know you’ll look after me, like you would if I was a proper member of the firm. You know what I’m saying.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I know what you’re saying. You’re implying I’d better look after you or you’ll make a deal and bring me and Bobby down with you in exchange for a lighter sentence.’

‘Now hang on a minute, I wasn’t… ’

‘Yes you were and I would do the same in your shoes but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. You’ll be looked after if it all goes tits-up but remember there’s a flip-side to that generosity. If Bobby Mahoney thinks someone is going to betray him he doesn’t mess about. Know how easy it would be to have a bent detective stabbed while he’s on remand? There’s people inside who would do it just for fun. Throw in a couple of grand and they’d be queuing up, a couple more would make a prison officer look the other way, they get paid even less than Detective Sergeants and we both know what people are prepared to do for money. There’d be no witnesses and about a thousand suspects. Villains in the nick don’t like coppers, especially bent ones. So you better keep your lip buttoned and take what’s coming to you. Getting caught and being sent down comes with the turf for dodgy detectives, but that’s the least of your worries.’

Sharp had gone pale, ‘I never meant anything by it, honest.’

‘My guess is you’re worrying about nothing. Your DI probably lamped a suspect in a past life and they put in a complaint, so stop shitting yourself and start acting like a man.’

‘Yeah, yeah, that’ll be it. You’re right. I’m sorry.’

‘You get any leads on who killed Jerry Lemon you ring me first,’ I left him watching the kids, still struggling to get their kite off the ground.

I walked back to my car. Up ahead of me I could see the high rise blocks of flats from the estate nearby. They were a monument to a different kind of Tyneside. Politicians were always talking about rejuvenating the areas around Newcastle but I reckoned they were kidding us and themselves. Around the turn of a new and hopeful millennium, a housing association in North Benwell had to sell off houses for fifty pence because nobody would pay any more than that to live there. They were on a hiding to nothing.

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I
knew Bobby would want to hear this kind of news right away. I went straight round to his house.

‘First Geordie Cartwright now Jerry Lemon,’ he said in disbelief. He walked over to the drinks trolley, picked up the bottle and poured himself several fingers of scotch. He found an empty glass tumbler and held it up to me. I shook my head. I realised that lately I’d not seen him without a glass in his hand.

He took a sip of his whisky then sat down on his big old Chesterfield couch and took another mouthful.

‘I’ve know these men for years,’ he said, ‘right back to when we first started out. We’ve been through some stuff... ’ And he shook his head at the magnitude of it all, ‘and now someone’s killing them off, one by one, just like that.’ He clicked his finger and thumb together. I thought for a second he might even be getting a tear in his eye but then his face reddened like he was fighting his emotions, his teeth set into a snarl and he growled the words, ‘I want whoever is behind this dead.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘But I want to look them in the eye first,’ he told me, ‘I want them to suffer before they die. I owe Jerry Lemon that much.’

‘I think you should keep Finney with you for a while,’ I told Bobby, ‘until we get this sorted. I know you don’t like the idea of him moving in but look at it as extra insurance.’

‘I dunno,’ he said then fell silent, like he was affronted by the suggestion that he, Bobby Mahoney, might actually need a little extra protection.

‘Bobby, seriously, no one is saying you can’t handle yourself, but we still don’t know who we are up against and it’s my job to keep you secure. You used to say Jerry Lemon was a hard man but they got to him. Whoever did it knows if they can get you out of the way then they’ve won.’

He thought about this for a long while, ‘okay,’ he said finally, but I could tell he still didn’t like it, ‘send him round - but what are you going to do for protection without Finney shadowing you?’

‘I figure it’s time Palmer earned his money.’

‘I hope he’s as good as you say he is,’ Bobby told me.

‘So do I.’

‘Trouble is, nobody in the city knows him.’ said Bobby.

‘And that’s just the way I like it.’

I’d thought it might be a good idea to get the two of them together, sort of like a blind date for ex-squaddies but, after a shed load of beer I was beginning to wonder if it had been such a wise move. Both of them could drink, my brother Danny and Palmer. I mean really drink.

Palmer and I had downed a few pints straight after Jerry Lemon’s funeral but I didn’t want to sit in my flat moping. We’d talked to everybody we knew in the city but we were still drawing blanks. Nobody had any info on our Russians, so we had to assume they were coming into the city to attack us then melting away somewhere. I was starting to think we would have to wait for them to show themselves again. The trouble being that, every time they did, our people got hurt or killed.

We’d bumped into my brother in the Bigg Market and I just thought fuck it, let’s have a beer. Now it was late and we were back in my flat, with three stubby glasses in front of us, looking at a half-empty bottle of scotch.

‘I hear you were in the Paras?’ asked Danny, ‘before you joined the Regiment.’ Like Palmer, my brother never called it the SAS, only the Regiment.

‘Yeah,’ said Palmer.

‘How come you left then?’

‘Danny,’ I warned him.

‘It’s alright,’ said Palmer, ‘I’m not touchy about it. I got RTU’d.’

‘Oh,’ said Danny.

‘Don’t you want to know why?’ asked Palmer. Danny shrugged, ‘course you do. Everybody always does.’ Danny shrugged again but this time the twinkly little smile was an admission. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you, since we’ve had a good drink up,’ he sipped his whisky. ‘It was nothing spectacular though, quite the reverse in fact.’

‘Go on then,’ said Danny, ‘tell us. I could use a laugh.’

‘Fuck me,’ I said, ‘is this how you army boys discuss each other’s hardships?’

‘Aye,’ said Palmer, ‘that’s about right.’ He took another sip of his drink and said, ‘it was the daftest thing. Like you said, I was in the Paras, made a hundred and twelve jumps, no bother at all, never a moment’s hesitation. Then one day, I was out on a routine top-up jump to keep my wings. I shuffled up to the front of the line no different to normal, but something strange happened.’

‘What?’ asked Danny.

‘I didn’t jump.’

‘You didn’t jump?’

‘I didn’t jump,’ he repeated patiently.

‘Why?’

‘I wish I knew. To this day I can’t even explain it to myself. It wasn’t like I was suddenly terrified, just that I didn’t want to go out the door. Not then, not that day, at that point.’

‘What? You mean you had a premonition your chute wasn’t going to open or something?’ asked Danny, ‘you thought you were going to die?’

‘No, nothing so… dramatic. It was more like, out of the blue, after all those jumps, it suddenly seemed…’

‘What?’

‘A bloody stupid thing to be doing.’

‘Christ almighty,’ said Danny laughing, ‘what did they do to you?’

‘Made me sit down in the plane, everybody else went out. They landed the plane and I was returned to unit.’

‘Just like that?’ I asked. ‘Could they not have given you a second chance to go?’

‘Nope, that’s the rule, if you don’t jump,’ he said, ‘there are no second chances. That’s the army.’

‘So is that why you left?’ Danny asked, ‘because you were RTU’d?’

‘Well, yes and no.’

Danny was laughing again, ‘go on,’ he urged, ‘what happened?’

‘It was a while after. I think by then I’d lost my love of the army and, well, me and the missus had split up and I think I was going a bit mad at that point. Then they gave me this shitty guard duty, driving round the perimeter one Friday night and, by this point, I just really didn’t want to be there so… ’

‘What did you do?’ asked Danny.

‘I drove the jeep into the mess.’

‘Through the door!’ laughed Danny, his eyes like saucers.

‘Through the plate glass, locked, double doors and right across the room,’ we were all laughing now, ‘I cleaned out a few tables, everybody was diving out of my way. They were having curry. I remember because I knocked over a massive pan of it, it went all over the floor.’

‘You sure that was the curry?’ I asked.

‘Aye,’ said Danny, killing himself laughing now, ‘a fucking jeep’s flying straight at you across the mess hall!’ and he put a hand under his arse and made a long wet farting noise, ‘me? I’d shit all over the floor and say “it’s just the curry, honest!”.’

‘I bet they gave you a right kicking when the jeep finally stopped,’ I said.

‘There were a few harsh words exchanged,’ he admitted, ‘then they chucked me in a cell and before I knew it, I was out of the army.’

It didn’t surprise me that Palmer had done a little time. They reckon about ten per cent of the prison population is ex-forces. Of course, you don’t see that statistic on the recruitment posters.

You always need a bit of luck. I don’t care who you are or how clever you think you might be, if you don’t get the breaks it won’t make any difference. Look at any sportsman, general, politician or rock star. They’ll all tell you it started because they got a break. The next morning we finally got ours.

I was a bit hungover after my evening with Danny and Palmer, so I arrived at the gym late in the afternoon. I’d been varying my time since the attack, to make it harder for any one to pick up my routine. I’d seen this pasty, grey-haired bloke once before while I was down there. He was sitting on a lounger by the pool while I was doing my lengths. Then another time he was in the café when I came out and I noticed he’d chosen the one seat that looked directly onto the exit door of the men’s changing rooms. When I looked over he looked away.

Now he was here again. I was on one of the benches in the changing room and, as soon as I saw him, I just knew he wasn’t legit. He studiously ignored me as he walked in and opened a locker, then started to undress for the pool. It was hard to explain why but it was a combination of instinct and common sense. When you walk into a public room, the first thing you do is clock who’s in there already. You quickly glance at them and they look back at you, to make sure you don’t represent a threat to them. It’s a primeval instinct, Desmond Morris-style behaviour. We can’t help ourselves then we quickly look away, so as not to challenge the other person. No one likes it if you look at them for too long. Hence the standard, it’s about to kick off phrase of ‘What you looking at?’

The thing is, this guy didn’t do any of that. As soon as his tubby body rounded the corner, my eyes went to him automatically but he made sure he was looking the other way right from the off. I could have been a knife wielding hoody for all he knew but he just didn’t take me in and that wasn’t right. I’d varied my routine and this was the third time I’d clocked him. Because of that and the way he avoided looking at me, I just knew this bloke was there because of me. He was watching and he was waiting for an opportunity to set me up. He didn’t look like muscle but, if he had been wanting to take me out, it was all a bit too public in here anyway. I wasn’t daft like Jerry Lemon. I wasn’t about to go driving into darkened truck stops to offer them an easy target.

I was ready before him, so I went to the pool but instead of going straight into the water I sat down on a lounger. He walked in a moment later, went by me and headed for the sauna. I’d wrapped my phone up in my towel and as grey-hair disappeared into the sauna I reached for it. It was one of many pay-as-you-go phones we used and rotated, so there was less danger of it being picked up by anyone listening. I spoke to Palmer. I had to be quick so I didn’t even try to talk in code.

‘I’m at the gym. I want you to get one of the lads down here pronto, use one of our spare swipe keys, get into the men’s changing rooms then turn over a locker for me. Number 468. Take everything, get his details. I want him checked then lifted.’

‘No problem,’ he said, ‘a wrong ‘un?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘I’ll sort it.’

I clicked the phone shut, lay back in the lounger and waited.

I gave it forty-five minutes, swimming a few lengths, during which time our fat friend waddled from sauna to steam room to pool, then, as soon as he waded into the Jacuzzi, I left and quickly dressed. Grey-hair was on his way back in to get changed just as I was leaving. I didn’t hang around to see the look on his face when he realised all we’d left him was the trunks he was standing up in.

I moved my car so that I could see everything from a distance but he wouldn’t be able to spot me when he emerged. It took him ten minutes to work out what his options were. Eventually he had no choice but to kick up a fuss with the girls on the front desk, who must have been bemused by the sight of a middle aged bloke, dripping all over the floor in front of them.

Finally the big, glass doors at the front of the building slid apart and he emerged, dressed in a too tight, blue sweatshirt with the club’s logo on it and a pair of grey leggings they must have retrieved from lost property. They’d found him some manky tennis shoes as well and he was hobbling along in them. He looked over to where his car had been parked and swore at the empty bay. Even from this distance I could tell he was muttering and cursing as he sloped away. He walked towards the main gate, looking like he was going to head into town.

There was a white Transit van with the council logo on it, parked just outside the main gate. I watched as he drew level with the four workers in bright orange high-visibility jackets who looked like they were just about to start digging up the road. He paid them no attention at all, until one of them stepped in his way and, before he could work out what was going on, another marched up behind him and zapped him with a Tazer. He let out a strangled gurgle as his legs gave way and they grabbed him before he hit the ground. A heartbeat later, he was in the back of the van with the doors locked behind him and they were driving away. Smooth as you like.

I’d known having our own van with the council’s logo on it had been a good idea. Now I just hoped I’d given the right order. Hopefully Palmer just lifted someone who’d soon be telling us who he was working for and what was going on. Then we’d finally know who was behind the murders of Jerry Lemon and Geordie Cartwright. Either that or we were about to torture an innocent civilian on my say-so based on little more than a hunch. I tried not to think about that as I drove away.

Palmer called in and I told him to take the guy to a lock-up we used, then get Finney over to scare the hell out of him. I didn’t think Bobby would mind sparing Finney if he thought it might lead to a breakthrough. I went back to the Cauldron and waited for Palmer to call me again.

When he rang, I asked him if Finney was on it. ‘I’ve called him a few times but he’s not picking up,’ he told me, his voice unconcerned. This didn’t sound good to me. Finney was normally reliable when it came to that sort of thing.

‘Shit,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry,’ Palmer assured me, ‘you want the fear of God putting into this prick, right?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Then leave it to me.’

I waited a couple of hours at the club. I ate a meal, trying not to think about the imaginative methods Palmer was going to employ on our grey-haired stranger to get him to talk. Did I have sympathy for him? No. He’d been following me around, noting my movements. He might even have been the guy who’d told Weasel-face I’d be at the match when he broke into my apartment and almost killed me.

I’d long finished lunch when my mobile vibrated into life again. It was Palmer.

‘He’s copped for it,’ he told me calmly, though he sounded a little out of breath, ‘the whole story. You are going to want to hear this.’

‘Good,’ I said, ‘keep him there.’

‘Oh he’s not going anywhere,’ he assured me.

‘Did he give you a name?’ I asked impatiently, ‘did he tell you who?’