The Drop (4 page)

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I
went down the side of the house and crossed a small patch of rough ground. The door of the so-called studio, an enormous metal-roofed lock-up that looked like a World War Two era Nissen hut, was unlocked, so I pulled it open and went inside. The entrance way was a dark corridor. All I could hear up ahead was the staccato click-click-whir coming from deep within the darkened room then a high pitched whine as if a flash gun was charging up again. I walked towards the big studio lights, passed metal shelves filled with car parts and tools set aside for DIY and gardening. There was a big, old-fashioned steel girder supporting the roof and the flash from Miller’s camera was rebounding off it. I turned into the large, open area of the studio where Mark ‘Windy’ Miller worked and, seeing me, a stark naked young girl squealed.

I got a quick flash of her pale body as she jumped down from the sofa Miller had her standing on. She grabbed a white towelling robe and clasped it tightly to her in an effort to avoid any more of her intimate bits being placed on show to a complete stranger.

‘Come on Kayleigh,’ he told her, like she was the worst kind of prude, ‘you’ve got to learn to be less body conscious than that.’ I was trying to take in the fact she was actually called Kayleigh. No prizes for guessing what band her dad was into back in the 80s. ‘This here is David Blake. He’s not just an old friend, he’s a professional photographer too. Aren’t you mate?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said.

‘So he’s seen it all before, hasn’t he?’ she hesitated, keeping the robe pressed tightly against her young body, but her eyebrows knitted together in a frown that told me she was unsure how she should be behaving. ‘Hasn’t he?’ he repeated. Mark tutted at her like she was being a silly girl then asked patiently, ‘what would Keeley Hazell do?’

She smiled then, blushed, giggled and finally dropped the robe, standing in front of me in all her Page-three-hopeful, naked glory. ‘That’s better,’ he told her and, all of a sudden, she seemed to be enjoying the exposure. She blew air out of the corner of her upturned bottom lip, disturbing a wisp of blonde hair over her forehead, put her hands on her hips and stood straight so there wasn’t an inch of her I couldn’t see, then she did a self-conscious little wiggle from side to side. ‘Good girl,’ he told her then turned to me, ‘I think Kayleigh here has got everything it takes to go all the way.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ I told them. She beamed at us both, the silly cow.

‘And he ought to know,’ said Miller and somehow we both managed to look serious. ‘Nearly done mate, why don’t you just take a seat for a minute.’

I waited till he shot another roll of film while young Kayleigh stood there and posed. She tried to look serious, then pouted like a naughty schoolgirl, then adopted what she presumably thought was a coquettish pose and all on Miller’s instructions. He asked her to raise an arm, cup a breast, roll her nipples between her fingers to make them hard then stick out her tongue at the camera and laugh like he was the funniest guy she had ever seen. He even got her to bend forwards over the arm of the sofa so her bum was up in the air and her face was practically buried in the cushions. That way she couldn’t see he was no longer looking at the camera, just pointing it at her bare arse. He shot pictures one-handed while winking at me, silently laughing and giving me the thumbs up.

‘Thanks love,’ he said when he was done, ‘you were brilliant. I tell you what, that Keeley Hazell will be shitting herself,’ she laughed as she pulled up her knickers and put on her jeans. When she’d gone, he said, ‘that last roll was just for you, you did realise.’

‘I guessed as much. Interesting hobby you’ve got there Mark.’

‘Hobby?’ he asked, ‘bit more than a hobby. It brings in the money, which is always much needed round here I can tell you. I can’t retire early on what Bobby pays me you know.’

‘Yeah? How much do you have to shell out to get a lass like that stark naked then? And what will you get for the photos?’

He laughed, ‘No mate, you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t pay them. They pay me.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘No, think about it. There are hundreds of young lasses all over Newcastle who’ve got big tits and they all think they’re going to be the next big glamour model but they don’t know how to go about it. Then they see my advert in their local paper; ‘professional modelling portfolios artistically created to your specification’, a snip at just £350.’

‘Three-fifty?’ I whistled.

‘I know,’ and he chuckled.

‘And has young Kayleigh got what it takes?’

‘In my considered professional opinion?’ I nodded. ‘Has she fuck. Got legs like a giraffe, she’s too top-heavy in the breast department, they’ll be sagging before she’s twenty and she has a smile like a frightened rabbit caught having a dump in the woods.’

‘Yet you told her she was gonna be a star. Shameless.’

‘Who am I to destroy a young girl’s dreams? That’ll come soon enough. At least this way she’ll have something to show her grandkids.’

‘A bunch of pictures with her arse in the air?’

‘Yeah,’ and he put on a dumb voice, ‘I used to be a mod-dull.’

‘Looking on the bright side, she gave you a cheap thrill at least.’

‘Oh yeah, definitely but she don’t mind,’ he laughed, ‘she did at first but I said I was gay.’

‘Unbelievable.’

‘I told her I’m immune to fanny. “Think of me like your family doctor,” I told her and she took her clothes off, easy as you like.’ He clicked his fingers to illustrate how quick she’d been to shed her knickers in pursuit of fame. ‘Ironic isn’t it. Some poor young bloke’ll blow a month’s wages tonight, buying her drinks so she’ll let him put his hand up her top. Look at me, I’m just an old git yet I saw the lot - and
she’s
paying me!’ and he laughed like it was the best joke ever, and maybe it was.

As soon as I told Miller why I was there, he stopped laughing, ‘I heard about it,’ he admitted as he handed me a mug of tea. We were sitting at a table in the studio. ‘Been worried. I know it sounds a bit lame but me and Geordie Cartwright go back a lot of years. He’s a good lad. We used to take our boys to play football on Sunday mornings. He’d be there in all weathers,’ he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what the world had become. ‘So what have you heard?’

‘The same as you,’ I said, ‘Cartwright’s gone missing.’

‘With some of Bobby’s money,’ he added, so the word was already out. Shit.

‘Yeah,’ there was no point denying it.

‘Jesus,’ he said.

‘Won’t help him if he’s taken it,’ I assured him.

‘It’s got to be a misunderstanding,’ he said with conviction and I just looked at him. ‘I know but he isn’t like that is he, not Cartwright? He wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t have the nerve to cross Bobby.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ I assured him without pointing out that the alternative was probably worse for Cartwright, as it was more than likely he’d be dead already. At least if he had stolen Bobby’s money he had a chance of getting away with it; a very small chance but a chance nonetheless.

‘What have you heard about Geordie and this Russian?’

‘Come again?’

I shrugged, ‘I heard he’d done some business with a Russian, that’s all.’ I was stretching it a bit but I wanted to see how it would play, ‘wondered what you knew about it?’

‘Sorry mate,’ he said simply, ‘not heard that one,’

Miller was pretty helpful though and I didn’t leave empty-handed. He gave me a sizeable list of names to look up and places to check. Surely one of them would have a lead on Geordie. The drive out here had been worth it.

‘Good luck,’ he told me, ‘and I mean it. Geordie Cartwright’s a gent. I hope he’s alright.’

‘So do I Mark,’ I said, ‘so do I.’

I spent the rest of the day and most of the night getting round Miller’s names with Finney. It was the same wherever we went. Nobody had seen Cartwright. Nobody knew what he’d been planning. We were drawing a complete blank.

More in hope than expectation, we called in on Jerry Lemon. I thought he must have heard something. He went back as far as any of Bobby’s crew, had known the big man for years, Cartwright too. He was one of Bobby’s originals. Unfortunately he was also a complete tosser but I was hoping loyalty to Bobby might prompt him to help me. I was badly wrong.

Jerry operated out of a pool & snooker hall, imaginatively named ‘Lemons’. There was a big wooden sign over the front door which had two crossed snooker cues and two lemons painted on it, above his name. Clearly Jerry was a marketing genius.

‘What the fuck do you want?’ he said loud and aggressively and a lot of people in the room started to pay attention, which was exactly what the big mouth had intended. The great man was holding court. He was dressed in a style of bleached jeans that went out of fashion around 1985 and a T-shirt with no arms that showed off his bulging biceps and fading tatts. He went back to his shot, missing an easy pot into the middle pocket, which made me realise he was pissed.

‘A quiet word, if it’s alright with you.’

‘No, it’s not alright with me. Can’t you see I’m playing pool? I thought you were supposed to be the clever one Davey. If you want to say something to me, say it now, I’ve nothing to hide.’

The place was half full of the old villains and apprentice wannabes Jerry liked to have hanging round in case he could find a use for them. He was a regular Fagin and his tales of the old days always had them hanging on his every word, which he loved.

‘I never said you did Jerry. I wanted to speak to you about our mutual friend,’ I wasn’t going to mention Cartwright’s name out loud in here.

‘ “Our Mutual Friend”, that’s Dickens that is,’ he was very pleased with himself, ‘bet you didn’t think I knew that. Well, you’re not the only one round here who’s read a book. You mean Cartwright I suppose. How long has Bobby given you to find his money eh, until Monday wasn’t it?’

‘Jerry,’ I said his name as a warning.

‘Don’t you try and shut me up in my own place,’ he told me, straightening and pointing his cue at me, ‘you’ve got no chance. You don’t know what you’re doing, you never have done. If you did you wouldn’t be down here wasting my time, you’d be out looking for the real guilty party.’

‘I know you don’t like me much these days Jerry, but can we not put that to one side while we try to find Cartwright?’

‘Correction,’ he told me, ‘I have never liked you son. I don’t even know who you are.’

‘You’ve known me for years.’

‘What do I know? That your name is David Blake and you appeared out of the blue one day and next thing I know you’re part of the crew. You set yourself up fair with Bobby while we weren’t looking. You kissed his arse and all of a sudden you’d risen through the ranks while better men made their money the hard way, on the doors of Bobby’s clubs. Well, we don’t want any of that whiz kid stuff around here. Cartwright’s gone missing? Tough, that’s your responsibility, you find him. The Drop’s gone? Tough, it’s your fault so it’s your arse on the line and when Bobby finally realises you’re all mouth and no action, no one will be laughing harder than me. You’re a plastic gangster and you’re going to get what you deserve boy. Your big words and your bullshit won’t help you. You’re shitting it aren’t you? Well you should be, you cocky little fucker. You’re gonna learn what it means to be a face in this city. It’s not just about wearing a sharp suit and getting the best table in the restaurant. I’ll bet Finney here can’t wait to get to work on you. Isn’t that right Finney?’

It would have been better for me if Finney had said something at this point, anything really - though I was actually hoping he would tell Jerry Lemon to shut his big mouth - but it didn’t happen. His silence told me everything I needed to know about the accuracy of Jerry’s little prediction. Everyone was waiting for Bobby’s cocky young protégé to come crashing down.

‘Thanks Jerry,’ I told him quietly, ‘you’ve been a big help,’ and I walked towards the exit, all the while wondering if he was going to break his cue over my head. Finney ambled after me. It must have looked like I was being followed by the Grim Reaper.

When I reached the door I turned back. Jerry Lemon was still watching me intently, every eye in the room was on me. I gave him what I hoped looked like a faintly amused, half smile. ‘I’m glad you like my suit Jerry.’

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

E
ventually Finney left me on my own. So I went for a couple of drinks in Akenside Traders, right at the bottom of the hill on the Quayside. Miller was sitting at a table when I walked in. It could have been a coincidence but he knew I called in there for a pint sometimes, mainly because the place had nothing to do with us, so I wondered if he was hoping to bump into me. Maybe he had something else to tell me?

I walked over to the long bar, bought myself a pint and got him his usual diet coke before joining him. The place was pretty busy and it was a young crowd but we had a quiet table in the corner, ‘don’t know how you can be in a pub and not drink,’ I told him.

‘You get used to it,’ he said calmly, ‘I like the craic in pubs but I got to the stage where I didn’t like what the booze was doing to me. It made me into an angry person, so I stopped.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that,’ he confirmed. I admired him for that because he would have had to put up with a huge amount of shit from the lads for drinking pop in a pub but he had stuck to his guns, ‘been four years now.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said, sipping my bitter, ‘what brings you to town?’ I nodded at a group of twenty-something lasses on a night out, ‘looking for more gullible girls to photo in the buff?’

‘I pop in often enough. Got to make a couple of collections for Bobby later,’ Miller picked up protection money and loan repayments where real muscle wasn’t required, amongst other things. He was a veteran of the firm, who did the low–risk stuff for Bobby but it gave him a decent enough income, ‘I thought I might see you down here.’

Before I could ask him what was on his mind we were interrupted by a silver-haired old lady who’d come into the pub dressed in her Sally Army hat. She was selling ‘War Cry’ so I dropped a quid in her collecting tin but turned down a copy of the magazine.

‘How can you believe in religion or a god if you take just one minute out of your day to think about the universe?’ Miller asked me as he watched her doing the rounds.

‘Most people don’t take a moment to think about the universe mate,’ I told him, ‘most people are unthinking morons. They need to believe in a god because if they didn’t their whole meaningless existence would come crashing down around them. It would make them realise how bloody pointless they are. Not you though eh?’ I asked him, ‘you were always the philosopher in Bobby’s crew, the thinker. You were the only one I ever caught buying the
Times
.’

‘One doesn’t
buy
the
Times
, dear boy,’ he told me in a voice that was almost Oscar Wilde, if he’d been raised in Gateshead, ‘one
takes
the
Times
.’

‘Does one?’

‘Yes, one does,’ he said, ‘and if one does, one will have read their fascinating piece on the stars recently. Not the Hollywood variety. Apparently there are one hundred billion stars like the sun in our galaxy that are likely to have at least one planet capable of supporting life. And there are one hundred billion galaxies in the universe, so that means there are… ’

‘A fuck of a lot?’

‘A fuck of a lot, thank you, of planets that could have life on them but we won’t get to see any of it because the nearest star from ours is hundreds of thousands of years from here at the speeds we are currently capable of. Now, when you consider the vast scale of our galaxy and the ludicrously huge size of the whole universe, you’d have to be completely puddled to believe there’s a god up there somewhere who gives a tinker’s toss about you and yours on planet earth,’ he raised his glass of coke and clinked it against my pint, ‘life is a load of random shite and all of us are just spinning helplessly round the sun. When you can confront that fact head on and still keep your sanity, well, then you are a man my son.’

‘I knew you were a fucking hippy,’ I said, ‘and it may be random shite to you but I have to put some sense into it all and quickly. I’ve got to find Cartwright and I have a funny feeling that, alive or dead, he is still on this planet.’

‘That ought to narrow it down then, eh?’ he said cheerfully.

We had a couple more drinks, him sticking with his coke and me sipping more of the local bitter. People carried on getting bladdered around us.

Sitting with Miller reminded me of my early days working for Bobby. He was a veteran back then but he’d been alright when others had treated me with suspicion if not downright hostility, ‘You know, you’re one of the few from the old crowd who doesn’t treat me like a leper,’ I told him.

‘Well, they don’t always get it, that lot. I don’t think they understand what you do for Bobby, but I can see it David,’ and he thought for a moment. ‘They probably can too, they just don’t want to admit it.’

‘Maybe, but whatever the reason I’ve always found it easier to deal with you, which is why I didn’t bring Finney with me when I came out to see you earlier.’

‘Finney?’ he looked a bit alarmed, with good reason, ‘why would you bring him?’

‘I don’t think you’re telling me everything Mark.’

‘How do you mean like?’

‘About Cartwright,’ I said, ‘everyone I speak to says he’s not the sort of man to get mixed up with anything that’s likely to piss Bobby off but we know he lied about the Drop. He said he was going to take Maggot with him but he didn’t. Now that’s strange behaviour for a man like Cartwright;
a quiet, unassuming bloke who seems happy enough with his missus and his football, and a few pints at the weekend, so what the hell happened? You knew him as well as anyone. So what are you not telling me?’ he hesitated then, his eyes moving from me to the floor and back again, ‘you’d be better off telling me Mark, you know I’ll find out sooner or later and I’d rather hear it from you. You’re protecting him aren’t you? What is it?’

He let out a deep sigh, ‘there was something but if I tell you, you have to go easy on him.’

‘No promises and no ifs. You’re going to tell me or I’ll phone Finney and he’ll ask you.’

‘There’s no need for that but please, I’m asking you, can you see what you can do for Geordie if it does go tits up like?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ I told him, knowing that my influence wouldn’t count for much if he’d screwed Bobby.

‘Gambling,’ he said simply.

‘Gambling?’ I was stunned, ‘Geordie Cartwright? Are you sure?’

He nodded reluctantly, ‘been doing it for years man, low key at first. I mean he was losing but all gamblers lose don’t they, whether it’s football, horses, casinos, the house always wins.’

‘So what happened?’

‘It’s the same sad and simple story. He started small, he mostly lost but he had a few wins. The wins just made him feel like he should have had a bit extra on the horses that came in. So he started betting more, only he wasn’t very lucky.’

‘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.