The Drop (9 page)

‘When was this? What time?’

‘Last Monday afternoon… No, Tuesday; I remember because the Toon were playing their cup replay that night and we were talking about it. We didn’t think they’d get a result… And of course they didn’t… They were knocked out… So we were right like.’

I held up a hand, ‘yeah, yeah, did he say anything else? Was there anything odd about the way he was handling himself?’

‘Well he seemed a bit distracted I suppose, looking back on it.’

And I understood why he was distracted. He was scared -but what would scare him so much he needed a gun? Answer that question and we were closer to the truth. Whatever it was, the gun hadn’t done him any good in the end of course. Geordie Cartwright still wound up dead.

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T
he massage parlour was an understated little building that looked like a doctor’s surgery, perched at the end of a residential street in an area that was almost but not quite the suburbs. Its frosted glass windows and discreet signage, which indicated it was the place to go to with a sports injury, was intended to ensure no one objected too much to its presence.

I didn’t know what the neighbours really thought about having a knocking shop on their doorstep but they didn’t make too much of a fuss about it. The whole operation was designed to be as discreet as possible, to avoid attracting the attention of the police or any self-appointed moral guardians in the neighbourhood.

To be fair, we ran a good, clean operation. All the girls were volunteers and there was absolutely no trafficking of any kind. We only put willing lasses into jobs like that. The police knew it was a brothel, everybody did, but they didn’t give a shit.

I walked in first, so as not to startle Barry Hennessy, aka Maggot, but it looked like he wasn’t there. Instead we were met by Elaine, our housekeeper. She took the bookings, vetted the clients as they walked in and looked after the girls, making sure they were all right, earning money and paying us our proper cut. It was 30 quid to get through the door, which included the straightforward massage, not that anyone ever wanted just that. The rest was negotiable with the girls but a basic service, including a BJ and a shag would set you back another £100, which was cheaper than dinner for two in a lot of Newcastle’s restaurants these days. The girls kicked another £20 back to the house, so we took 50 quid for providing them with a safe, secure environment where they wouldn’t get beaten up, ripped off or arrested for soliciting. They took home £80 a punter and with a steady stream of clients they could earn upwards of £300 a shift. Put another way, that’s £60,000 to £70,000 a year for lasses who would rather be doing this than earning minimum wage on a check-out till.

The girls here weren’t drug addicts or nymphomaniacs. They were paying off debts their no-account blokes had left them with, putting themselves through college or bringing up their kids, feeding and clothing them, and they were doing okay but it wasn’t exactly Pretty Woman. It’s not what I’d have called easy work having some fat, sweaty Herbert lying on top of you and it certainly wasn’t for everyone but they didn’t have to do it. They could leave whenever they liked. We never held a gun to anyone’s head or kept anybody against their will and they weren’t that hard to replace.

‘He not in?’ I asked Elaine.

‘He was,’ she replied, ‘I’ll fetch him,’ she wandered away down the corridor and we watched her go. Just as she reached the end I saw Maggot coming the other way. He clocked us, spotted Finney and his eyes went wild then he turned round and pegged it. Whatever Finney had done to him last time, Maggot wasn’t up for a repeat performance.

‘Maggot!’ I shouted, ‘don’t fucking run. Christ.’ I took off after him. Finney was the hardest man on our books but he was no athlete. He wouldn’t be able to catch Maggot when he was pegging it away like the devil himself was after him.

I tore down the corridor and Elaine flattened herself against the wall as I hurtled by. I went through a door that had a little lounge area beyond it. No sign of Maggot. Two bored-looking girls in smart black cocktail dresses were sitting there sipping tea, waiting for their next John. We didn’t want them sitting round in their skimpies. It made the place look less respectable. They looked up and I was about to ask them which way Maggot was headed when, ahead of me, a door banged and I ran on down a little flight of stairs that led to the showers, sauna, jacuzzi and the tiny rooms the girls took their clients into.

‘Shite.’ There were too many doors, they all looked the same, white painted, deliberately neutral and I didn’t know where any of them led to. Fuck it, I thought and I ran right through the one that looked most likely to be the back door.

I nearly knocked over the naked girl who was in the middle of giving a middle-aged business type a hand job on his lunch hour. Nadia looked at me like I’d gone mad. He almost had a coronary. ‘Oh fuck, no please. I’m sorry. I only wanted a massage. She grabbed me. Please, let me go,’ he pleaded.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘it’s alright, I’m not the police.’

‘Shut up Tony,’ she scolded him sharply, properly aggrieved at being accused of a sexual assault, ‘he’s one of us,’ then she turned to me and hissed, ‘are you going to fuck off?’

‘Back door?’ I gasped and she pointed.

This time I tried the door first before I opened it. When I got a crack of daylight I went through, just in time to see Maggot at the other end of the back yard, rounding the corner which would take him out and down the side of the building. Predictably he ran straight into Finney, who’d come round the front at a more leisurely pace. Maggot swore and skidded to a halt like some cartoon character in a chase scene. I half expected smoke to come from the heels of his shoes. He turned back, saw me and realised he had nowhere left to run. Maggot backed away from Finney, heading for the crumbling brick wall that covered three sides of the back yard. His eyes were darting around as he desperately searched for somewhere to go.

‘What you going to do now Maggot?’ asked Finney, ‘shit bricks and build a wall?’

Finney saw him eyeing up the actual walls like he was about to attempt to climb them.

‘Don’t be fucking stupid. You’re going nowhere,’ barked Finney. Maggot was terrified. When I drew near I noticed for the first time that he had a large red mark in the centre of his forehead. It looked pretty permanent, the kind of scar you are never going to lose completely.

‘Look at you,’ said Finney, staring at the red spot he had presumably inflicted, ‘you look like a fucking Hindu or something,’ Finney advanced on Maggot, ‘never, ever run away from me again you cunt,’ and Finney gave Maggot what he would have described as ‘a little slap’.

Maggot sat on the sofa, holding a damp towel hard against his right eye to dampen down the bruising caused by Finney’s ‘little slap’ - a blow that had knocked him off his feet and propelled him several feet across the yard. We were back in the knocking-shop’s lobby. The girls who did not already have clients had been told to go for a walk around the block.

I was about to start questioning Maggot when a vaguely familiar figure came into view. A pale-faced overweight bloke, dressed in a dark blue business suit and tie emerged from downstairs. He saw me, flushed and immediately looked away, keeping his gaze fixedly towards the front door. He left as quickly as he could without actually breaking into a run. Nadia, back in her black cocktail dress, was right behind him. She was quite an attractive woman for her mid-thirties and she’d kept her figure, judging by what I’d seen earlier.

‘You certainly put him off his stride,’ she said.

‘Sorry I made you work for it,’ I told her.

‘He got there in the end but I’d be surprised if he ever showed his face round here again.’

‘Believe me Nadia, it’s not his face I’ll be trying to banish from my dreams.’

She thought about that for a moment, then cackled like one of Shakespeare’s witches before leaving us to it.

‘What happened there then?’ asked Finney.

‘I accidentally burst in on them while she was pulling him off.’

‘You prat,’ said Finney.

‘I don’t know,’ I told him, ‘I reckon it was a blessing in disguise.’

‘How?’

‘Don’t watch the local news do you?’

‘Never,’ he said.

‘That was Councillor Jennings,’ I said. It was always good to have a couple of friendly councillors on your books, ‘and I have a funny feeling that, after today, me and him are going to be the best of mates. Particularly when I tell him about the camera and the two-way mirrors.’

‘We haven’t got a camera and two-way mirrors,’ said Finney, ‘have we?’

‘No,’ I admitted, ‘but he doesn’t know that.’

Maggot was actually physically trembling. He couldn’t tear his fearful eyes away from Finney and I figured I’d get more out of him without our enforcer’s malevolent presence.

‘Finney, you know that pub on the corner?’

‘Aye.’

‘Why don’t you go and have a pint in it?’ he frowned at me like I was trying to hide something from him, ‘I think you being here is making it hard for our good friend Barry to express himself.’

Finney wordlessly accepted the logic of this. He rose to his feet but couldn’t resist suddenly pulling his arm back and pretending to throw a punch into Maggot’s face, stopping the blow almost as soon as it had started. The pretend punch still made Maggot jump like a cat that’s been shot with an air rifle. Finney laughed and wandered down the corridor whistling ‘we’ll meet again’. I waited till he had left.

‘Right Magg… Barry,’ I said, ‘I just want a little word about Geordie Cartwright.’

‘I told him everything I know,’ he nodded at the door Finney had disappeared through, ‘which was fuck all by the way! I don’t know anything about Geordie or what he was up to. If I did, do you think I wouldn’t tell him? He’s a fucking animal! Do you know what he did? He’s only come at me with me drill. I was in my own garage, minding my own business and he comes in, takes my drill off me and starts waving it in my face. He had me pinned to my workbench and he said he was going to drill right through my head unless I told him where Geordie Cartwright is. I said “I don’t know where Geordie Cartwright is”, and he did this!’

He jabbed a finger at the little red welt on his forehead where Finney had let the drill bit glance against Maggot’s skull. Most people wouldn’t be capable of such an act, because they’d be too worried their hand might slip and the drill would go right into someone’s brains but not Finney. His hand was steady because he didn’t care two fucks if it slipped and killed Maggot.

‘I believe you don’t know anything about Cartwright’s disappearance Maggot. If I had a drill shoved in my face I’d tell Finney the truth too. I believe you. I just want to know if you had any contact with him before he disappeared, that’s all.’

‘No, well no, not really.’ He stammered.

‘No, well no, not really,’ I mimicked, ‘meaning yes you did. Look Maggot, I’m not as daft as I look and I know there’s probably stuff you are too shit-scared to admit to Finney, in case he tries to drill you a new pair of nostrils, but this is me. I don’t work like that. What you say to me stays with me and nobody needs to know it came from you, okay? But if I find you are holding out on me I will tell Finney to go round to your house and turn you into a colander. Now where was it and when?’

Maggot put a hand to his injured forehead and instinctively rubbed the red spot there, ‘a few days ago. I only saw him around that’s all.’

‘Where and fucking when, you tool?’ I told him.

His injured forehead creased as he tried to recall when it was. ‘Okay, well it was in the Bigg Market and it must have been the night when the Toon lost the replay at home ‘cos I remember the city was packed with pissed-off people drowning their sorrows. You know the usual “the-season’s-over-in-bloody-January-again’ feeling.”

‘I know it well. So it was Tuesday night, the place was crawling with fans. Where did you bump into Cartwright and who was he with?’

‘Well, he wasn’t with nobody like but he was happy as Larry. That’s what I remember seeing, everybody else in the pub’s acting like their mother’s just died and here’s Cartwright laughing and joking, buying drinks an’ all.’

‘He wasn’t noted for that.’

‘No, exactly. So I asked him, “what’s gannin’ doon man, you win the lottery or summat?” and he says, “aye, summat like that.” ’

‘What else did he say?’ and he gave me an uncertain look. ‘Elaine!’ I shouted, ‘Go and fetch Finney from the pub!’

‘No! Don’t do that man!’

‘It’s okay Elaine!’

‘I asked him what had happened and he just said he had a bit of business lined up. He didn’t say ‘owt but I took it to mean it was tax free like, yer knaa.’

‘Yes, I know, a bit of freelance that Bobby needn’t worry about. I take it you didn’t share this bit of wisdom with Finney and Bobby because you were worried they might use a whole tool kit on Geordie?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Except I know you Maggot, you’re a crafty little fucker so you wouldn’t have left it there, not if there was a chance of you making a few bob out of it as well. You’d have bought Geordie one or three drinks and you’d have got it out of him. He was in the mood to talk, boasting about it even, so a pro like you could have got him to cough in half an hour. “Eeh you’re such a clever bugger Geordie, oh you’re the man Geordie, ooh can I suck your cock Geordie.” ’

‘Hey man, steady on.’

‘So what was the deal and who was it with? Come on, I told you it’ll stay with me. They won’t know you passed on the info.’

‘Well he didn’t tell me what the product was but when he told me the name it wasn’t hard to guess like.’

‘And the name was?’

‘Billy Warren.’

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I
wanted to have another word with Billy Warren anyway. There’d been something about him when I’d seen him in Faces. It wasn’t that he was avoiding me or being guarded, it was the exact opposite and that wasn’t right somehow. Had he been trying to knock me off track? That day, as soon as he spotted me he came over and, when I mentioned Cartwright, he’d admitted he’d seen him, then told me about the Russian. He probably wasn’t lying about that, because Kinane’s lad backed up his story but I reckoned he wasn’t telling me everything.

‘Remind me why we are here,’ said Finney as I rang the bell on the front door of his Wallsend flat for the fourth time.

‘I just want another word.’ I told him.

Billy eventually answered the door looking bleary eyed, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. He pretended to be pleased to see me.

‘I’ve been leaning on your doorbell you dopey fucker,’ I told him.

‘Sorry man, had my music on.’

‘Bet your neighbours love you.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but they’re old cunts. Er… the thing is I’ve got a bit of company right now, you know.’ He meant he was in the middle of a deal.

‘That’s alright,’ I told him, ‘we’ll introduce ourselves,’ Finney pushed passed him and I followed.

When we got in the flat I told him, ‘nice place you’ve got these days Billy, must be doing alright?’

‘I get by,’ he said, still with the cocky smile.

‘We’re not taxing him enough,’ I told Finney who nodded solemnly.

‘Oh no,’ he protested, ‘don’t be like that. I’ve got overheads and everything. I’m a good little earner, you know that. The boss knows that.’

I was glad he knew better than to say Bobby’s name out loud because when we walked into the lounge there was a bleached blonde piece there. She was wearing a short skirt so tight she had to sit with one bum cheek parked sideways on his sofa. Her legs were stick-thin and she was browner than a burns victim. She looked like her make-up weighed more than she did, yet her enormous, very fake breasts stuck out in front of her like the cantilevered roof on a football stand. She looked up but paid us no attention, returning instead to her nails, which she scrutinised as if they were a crossword puzzle.

‘Do I know you?’ asked an obviously confused Finney because he clearly recognised her face. He seemed a bit baffled that a bird that looked like this could have any place in Billy Warren’s life, even as a customer.

‘Yeah, you probably do,’ she said airily, which confused him even more. She was acting like she was Angelina Jolie and he was a fan.

‘She’s a WAG,’ I told him and when she gave me a dirty look I asked, ‘which one are you seeing these days love, Stevie or Gary? Or are you between careers at the moment.’

‘I’m a model,’ she told me, ‘and an actress.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but were you a model before you started shagging that bloke from Spurs?’

‘Well
you
recognised me,’ she said sharply.

I nodded towards Finney, ‘just because your tits were plastered all over his
Daily Sport
for a week doesn’t make you Meryl Streep, now does it?’

Finney was peering down at her now, ‘oh yeah, I know you,’ and he chuckled, ‘you’ve got a right pair of thruppenny’s, haven’t you?’ he asked her as if the evidence wasn’t right there in front of them both.

‘Fuck off,’ she told him. This was her signal to call her latest lover’s name and, right on queue, the toilet flushed noisily and out walked a familiar face to any one who had ever watched Sky Sports or bought a tabloid.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Finney, ‘it’s you.’

‘Yeah,’ mumbled the Premier League player who’d exposed his coke habit as he came out of Billy’s toilet sniffing audibly. He was still doing up his fly and I noticed the gold rings on his fingers and the chunky Rolex that gleamed from his wrist. If you added in the diamond earring he probably had twenty grand’s worth of bling on him that afternoon just to go and score some blow at Billy Warren’s flat. I wondered how much he wore when he really wanted to impress. He turned to his girlfriend, ‘what is it babe?’

‘These two have been dissing me while you woz like nowhere.’

‘Is that right?’ he asked, puffing his chest out at me like the hard man he was always telling everybody he was, ‘what you got to say for yourselves then?’ Either he was completely insane or he was so coked-up already that he actually believed he was capable of kicking Finney’s arse, ‘you’d better apologise right now.’

I wondered if he’d seen something like this in a movie. If he had, things weren’t going to go the way he expected. Belting some sixteen-year-old apprentice or turning a table upside down in a bar and smashing a few glasses, before the bouncers raced across to protect you from yourself, was one thing but threatening us was an entirely different matter altogether.

All I had to do was sigh and Finney moved towards him. The idiot tried to throw a punch which just bounced off Finney’s advancing chest. Finney reacted like he’d been hit by a snowball. Next thing, the Premier League’s finest had been spun round to face the other way, his arm pulled right up his back. He cried out and tried to struggle but Finney just tightened his grip.

‘Steady man,’ cautioned Billy but my look silenced him.

‘Leave him alone,’ screeched the WAG.

‘Shut it you noisy mare,’ Finney told her and she fell silent. He turned his attention back to the man he held, ‘you disgusting cunt,’ Finney hissed as he tightened his grip on the footballer, pulling his head back by his ear so he could speak right into it ‘all that talent, all that money and what do you do? You piss it all away on coke and slags like that dirty bitch.’

‘Get off me,’ he was clearly terrified and even the WAG had shut up now, too scared to take exception to being called a slag, or maybe she just recognised the truth when she heard it.

‘No,’ said Finney, ‘I’m going to break your legs, both of them. I don’t think a wanker like you deserves to be a footballer.’

Our man groaned in protest as Finney picked him up and dumped him hard onto the floor. He rolled over onto his back and pushed against the carpet with his feet, scuttling backwards across it until he was pressed against the wall.

‘Don’t go crawling away from me you dirty junkie.’ Finney told him. He raised his boot high above the guy’s leg.

‘Which leg first then?’

‘No, no please, not my legs.’

‘The right one or the left?’

‘Do you even know which one’s which?’ I asked Golden Boots.

‘No, no, don’t.’

‘What are you on eh? Fifty, sixty grand a week? Got to be. Tell me, tell me now!’ ordered Finney.

‘Sixty,’ he managed to say without taking his eye off the massive boot that was hovering over those famous legs. Amazing, three million quid a year to a scumbag like this. If he wasn’t playing football he would be the one selling the coke. ‘How many cars have you got?’ asked Finney.

‘What?’

‘How many?’ Finney ordered him, ‘go on, tell me!’

‘F… Four. No five, five!’

‘See he can’t even remember,’ Finney went to stamp on his leg again and the bloke screamed like a nine-year-old girl. Finney stopped.

‘What are they then?’

‘Eh?’

‘Tell me what you got, those five cars. Name them or I’ll break your arms too. You won’t even be able to wipe your own arse.’

‘A Maserati,’ he squealed, terrified now, ‘a Ferrari Enzo… a… a… ’

Finney raised his leg again, ‘a what?’

‘A Lamborghini Gallardo, a BMW X5 and… and… a Bentley Continental.’

‘That figures,’ I said, ‘break his legs Finney, he deserves it for the Baby Bentley alone.’

‘No! Please!’

Finney raised his foot once more, ‘disgusting,’ he said again and he brought his boot down as hard as he could.

The girl squealed, the footballer screamed. Finney’s boot slammed into the wooden flooring between the bloke’s knees. The Bentley-driving tosser screamed again and hid his eyes behind his hands. When he finally realised he was unharmed he barely dared to peer out from behind them.

Finney wasn’t through lecturing him, ‘when Bobby Robson was captain of England he didn’t even have a car! Now get out of here and take that minging slag with you.’

‘Tell anyone about this and we’ll make sure your piss is the most tested in the country,’ I told him, ‘and my friend here will definitely come back and break both those precious legs.’

Finney let him get up, the WAG followed him sharpish and they both headed for the door.

‘Just a minute,’ hissed Finney as they reached it and they both froze, ‘come here.’ Golden Boots reluctantly walked back over to face Finney, ‘you haven’t said thank you.’

‘Eh?’

‘For teaching you a valuable lesson,’ the Premiership’s finest just stared at him like a frightened rabbit, ‘well go on then, say it.’

There was a sizeable pause while he tried to find the words, ‘Thank you.’ His voice was a high pitched squeak.

‘What for?’

Another pause.

‘For teaching me a valuable lesson.’

Finney nodded, giving them permission to leave. As Golden Boots walked out of the door, I told him, ‘welcome to the real Premier League.’