The Drop E-Book

Howard Linskey

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: David Blake
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 464

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Readers can't get enough of The Drop: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'A real page turner!' Amazon reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Humorous, violent, current and fast paced' Amazon reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Utterly engrossed' Amazon reviewer 'Geordie Cartwright has disappeared, along with Bobby Mahoney's money. I have to find him and fast, or it's going to be my face staring into the business end of a nail gun.' David Blake is no gangster, or so he likes to think. He's a white-collar criminal, working for boss Bobby Mahoney, enjoying the good life while the money pours in. Trouble is, a big chunk of that money has gone missing, along with Geordie Cartwright, and Blake is getting the blame. Has Geordie fled with The Drop or has he been killed by rivals? As Blake dives into the Newcastle underworld, a seedy, violent place filled with dodgy clubs, pubs, strip joints and brothels, he starts to uncover the truth. Meanwhile the police are closing in on Bobby. It's just a matter of time before he's nicked for good. Blake must discover the truth before it's too late for them all. If that were not enough, he has to choose between his girlfriend, the beautiful lawyer Laura, and the irresistible Sarah, his boss's gorgeous daughter. Sarah might just be the most dangerous person in his life right now, if Bobby finds out. In a desperate and bloody finale, Blake has to make an agonising choice and someone pays the ultimate price in The Drop.

Leseprobe

' 'Geordie' Cartwright has disappeared, along with Bobby Mahoney's money. I have to find him and fast, or it's going to be my face staring into the business end of a nail gun'

David Blake is no gangster, or so he likes to think. He's a white-collar criminal, working for gangster Bobby Mahoney, enjoying the good life while the money keeps on pouring in. Trouble is, a big chunk of that money has just gone missing, along with Geordie Cartwright, and Blake is getting the blame.

Has Geordie done a runner with The Drop or has he been killed by a rival gang? As Blake goes deeper into the Newcastle underworld, a seedy and violent place filled with dodgy clubs, pubs, lap-dancing bars and brothels, he slowly starts to uncover the truth; there's a rat in Bobby's crew and someone else is planning a take-over. Meanwhile the Serious and Organised Crime squad and an ambitious D.I are both closing in on Bobby. It's just a matter of time before he's finally nicked for good. Blake must uncover the truth before it's too late for them all.

If that were not enough, he has to choose between his girlfriend, the beautiful lawyer Laura and the impossible-to-resist Sarah, his boss's gorgeous young daughter. Sarah might just be the most dangerous person in his life right now, if her dad finds out.

In a desperate and bloody finale, Blake has to make an agonising choice and someone has to pay the ultimate price in The Drop.

Harry Potter producer David Barron and JJ Connolly, author of Layer Cake, are joining forces to produce a TV adaptation of Howard’s debut novel, The Drop, which was voted as one of the Top Five Thrillers of 2011 by The Times.

Howard Linskey has worked as a barman, journalist, catering manager and marketing manager for a celebrity chef, as well as in a variety of sales and account management jobs. Originally from Ferryhill in County Durham, he now lives ‘down south’ with his wife and daughter.

Howard is a long-suffering Newcastle United fan.

howardlinskey.com

Critical Acclaim for The Drop

'Linskey delivers a flawless feel for time and place, snappy down to earth dialect dialogue mixed in with unrelenting violence and pace. A Tyneside Dasheill Hammett to put Martina Cole firmly in her place.'

Peter Millar, The Times

'writing that leaps off the page in its lacerating forcefulness... a classic British gangster novel that evokes and matches some of the best writing in the genre'

Vic Buckner, Crime Time

'The Drop is overflowing with the grit that defines the very best of British gangster fiction'

M. K. Hume, Bookgeeks

'Howard Linskey does for Newcastle what Ian Rankin has done for Edinburgh'

Sam Millar, New York Journal of Books

'Howard Linskey does for Newcastle what Ian Rankin has done for Edinburgh'

Sam Millar, New York Journal of Books

'a brutal, hard-hitting debut which opens up Newcastle's dark, violent underbelly like a freshly-sharpened stiletto'

Simon Kernick

'A cracker of a tale unrolled with great understatement but loaded with verve and pace. The backdrop is brutal, harsh and downright fatal for some, the characters jump right off the page, and I found the book difficult to put down. No Exit Press has found a real winner. '

Adrian Magson, Shots

'A cracker of a tale unrolled with great understatement but loaded with verve and pace. The backdrop is brutal, harsh and downright fatal for some, the characters jump right off the page, and I found the book difficult to put down. No Exit Press has found a real winner. '

Adrian Magson, Shots

'a razor-sharp debut and Linskey is sure to be at the forefront of Northern crime writing in 2011. A writer to keep an eye on.'

Nick Quantrill, Harrogate Festival website

'a very successful first novel'

Chris Shepherd, newbooks magazine

'A fast-paced, hard-boiled tale that zips along'

The Crack

'Linskey has a knack of expressing a mindset with clarity, humour and realism which along with the earthy vocabulary combines to create a marvellous tale.'

Crimesquad

'A deftly written crime thriller, which really shows off Linskey's skill at storytelling'

Luca Veste, Guilty Conscience

'Brilliant. Gangster writing at its best.'

Paul Cleave - winner of the Ngaio Marsh Award

THE DROP

HOWARD LINSKEY

NO EXIT PRESS

For Erin & Alison

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the following for their faith and unflagging support during the writing of this book; Adam Pope, Andy Davis, Nikki Hurley and Gareth Chennells.

Sincere thanks to my publisher Ion Mills, at No Exit, for believing in The Drop. Thanks also to the whole team at No Exit, in particular Annette Crossland, Alan Forster for the cover design plus Claire Watts, Chris Burrows, Jolanta Kietaviciute and Alexandra Bolton for their hard work on my behalf, and also my anonymous copy editor – you know who you are.

A very big thank you to my Literary Agent, Phil Patterson at Marjacq, for his sound advice, editorial assistance and general good company, all of which is very greatly appreciated by me. Thanks also to the incomparable Isabella Floris at Marjacq for her amazing efforts in foreign markets and also to Luke Speed and Jacqui Lyons. Thanks also to Simon Kernick for taking the trouble to read The Drop and for his kind words thereafter.

Finally and most importantly a huge thank you to my loving wife, Alison, and beautiful daughter Erin for their amazing support and for putting up with me and all of this writing. This one is for you!

PROLOGUE

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Look at her. Go on, look. Take a good, long look. Beautiful isn’t she; standing there by the swimming pool; five feet six inches of slim, tanned, hard-bodied, healthy young woman. I mean, what’s not to like about Laura?

Look at the way the water slides reluctantly from her hips as she climbs out of the water in that tiny black bikini. She turns and grabs the long, dark hair that trails down her back then squeezes the water out, before combing it back with her fingers, making it hang straight. Then she looks up and smiles at me. She’s got a good smile, warm and naughty and it’s making me wonder what my chances are of peeling that little black bikini off her just one last time before we have to fly home again.

She’s bright too, a lawyer and it’s always useful to know one of those, particularly in my profession. She knows what I do for a living, well mostly, and it doesn’t bother her. I mean, it’s not as if I’m a gangster exactly, not really. I don’t go telling her the details of my day but she knows I work for Bobby Mahoney, so it’s obvious I’m no chartered accountant.

We’ve been together more than two years now, and I am beginning to think she might be the one. We’d been bickering a bit lately, a lot actually if I’m honest, but I reckon we were just over the honeymoon period, that’s all. We’ve both been working hard and we needed a rest. This holiday could have been make-or-break but it’s been great; lots of late nights, long lie-ins, lounging by the swimming pool, then back to the hotel for some of that lovely, unhurried, afternoon sex you only ever seem to get when you’re on holiday. If only life was like this all the time.

And Laura is loyal, which helps. Loyalty is a rare and underestimated commodity these days. At least it is in my game. You want my opinion? You can’t put a price on loyalty. So I have landed on my feet with Laura, no one can dispute that. Even Bobby thinks she’s alright, for a posh bird.

It’s funny now, looking back on it, how I had no inkling, no instinct whatsoever, while I was lying there by the pool, soaking up the sun that hovers over this part of Thailand like it just loves the place and never wants to leave, that everything was going so badly wrong back home while I was away. I can honestly say that, right then, I really did have no idea just how much shit I was in.

ONE

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Finney was there to meet us at the airport so I knew, as soon as I saw his pug-ugly, scarred face that it had all gone tits-up.

I spotted him easily. He towered over everyone else; the relieved parents collecting back-packing teenagers, the minicab drivers on autopilot, holding up their cardboard signs with the names of self-important businessmen hastily scrawled on them in biro. We were tired by now. The plane from Bangkok to Heathrow was bang on time but the connecting flight back to Newcastle arrived an hour late, which tells you everything you need to know about this country.

Laura hadn’t noticed Finney. She was too busy restoring her lifeline, as she called it, attempting to wrestle her mobile phone from her handbag while simultaneously dragging the smallest of our two cases, mine obviously, along behind her on its squeaky wheels. I could hear them squealing in protest with every step, because they were full of handcrafted, wooden nick-nacks she’d insisted on buying but had no room for in her own case. That was full to bursting with the clothes she’d packed in Newcastle but hadn’t worn on the holiday because they were too bulky for the heat. ‘Why do you need three different dresses for every day we are out there?’ I’d asked her before we left, as I sat on her case and tried to flatten it. Now, I was dragging Laura’s case behind me, feeling no happier for being right.

Ten days later, we were back in Newcastle and the look on Finney’s face told me. I was in trouble.

There was no greeting, no small talk from the big man, all I wanted to know was why he was standing there, his huge frame dwarfing those flimsy, metal barriers at the arrivals gate, gnarled fists bunched like he was about to start a fight.

‘What?’ I asked him simply.

‘Bobby needs a word Davey,’ he said in that unmistakeably nasally Geordie voice of his, which had been caused by the iron bar that broke his nose years ago. I was reliably informed that it was the last thing the guy with the iron bar ever did.

‘Now?’ And he just nodded.

‘What is it?’

He looked over at Laura, who was still a few yards behind me but preoccupied by voicemails from her girly mates and her bloody mum.

‘It’s the Drop,’ he said and I immediately thought, oh shit.

Laura didn’t take the news well. ‘He needs to see you now?’ she asked, as if I’d been called in at late notice for a shelf-stacking shift at the Co-Op. ‘Christ David.’

I realised she was jetlagged but then so was I, and I could have done without the grief, because she was embarrassing me a little in front of Finney. I might have been a new man compared to most of our mob but, if she carried on like this, the word would go out that I was pussy-whipped.

‘You know who I work for.’ I hissed the words at her and was relieved when she fell silent. Finney lifted Laura’s case into the boot of her Audi and I added the other one. She didn’t thank either of us.

‘You don’t know when you’ll be back?’ she asked, though she already knew the answer to that stupid question.

‘No,’ I said through gritted teeth, my mind already on Bobby Mahoney and the reasons why he had sent his top enforcer out to the airport to bring me in. Why did he not just leave me a message or send some low-level member of the crew with a car, unless this was serious and I was somehow to blame for it? What the hell had gone wrong with the Drop? Was it light? Had Cartwright gone completely out of his mind and skimmed off the top. No, he’d have to be mad. It would be spotted immediately. So, if not that, then what?

We waited till Laura drove away with a face like thunder, then walked over to Finney’s 4x4 and climbed in. He drove us out of the car park and away.

I had a little over ten minutes to get to the bottom of what was going on before we were back in the city. I hung on for what seemed like an eternity then finally asked, ‘So, you going to tell me what this is all about or do I have to guess?’

‘I’m not s’posed to say. It’s… ’

‘Don’t be a total cunt.’ I was deliberately talking down to him, like he was being a complete wanker for holding out on me like this, which he was. I only had a short drive to convince him he could safely let me know what had happened. ‘I’m not going to let on, am I?’

It was a bit of a risk talking to a man like Finney like that and he gave me a look. We both knew he could have ripped my head off my body without even breaking sweat. He was a huge guy with a barrelled chest and fists like mell hammers. His face was marked with the scars from a thousand fights, all of which I am willing to bet he won. Put it this way, I have never heard of anybody beating Finney, not once, not in the illegal, bare-knuckle boxing bouts where he came to Bobby Mahoney’s attention in the first place, not inside, when he got his ten stretch, commuted to six, and certainly not on the streets. Nobody has ever taken down Finney on the streets. He is the firm’s main muscle and I take him anywhere where there might be even a hint of trouble. People soon stop giving me jip when he walks in.

He didn’t say anything at first, just watched the road ahead. Then finally he quietly told me, ‘It’s the Drop.’

‘Yeah, you said,’ I replied irritably and while I was racking my brains wondering what could possibly have gone wrong, he added, ‘It didn’t happen.’ And I am not afraid to tell you that, right then, the blood in my veins ran to ice.

TWO

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Bobby Mahoney has meetings in lots of different places. He has to; in the back rooms of the pubs he owns, or the spa he has a stake in, or down at the Cauldron, the first club he had before he went on to control an empire. It’s safer that way and makes it hard for the local plod or SOCA to get anything on tape. We sweep every location twice a week obviously, we’re no mugs - and Bobby Mahoney isn’t some John Gotti figure, shooting his mouth off all over Tyneside until they get enough to put him away for life. He doesn’t piss about does Bobby and it’s part of my job to make sure he never takes chances.

I’m not too surprised when Finney tells me we are meeting at the Cauldron. It’s a sort of home from home for Bobby and I suspect he views it sentimentally, like some huge retailer who returns to his first corner shop every now and then to recall the good old days when he had nothing but naked ambition. Well, that and, in Bobby’s case, the proceeds from the robbery of an armoured car which his fledgling crew turned over back in 1973. They stormed in with stocking masks over their faces and sawn-off shotguns, which they brandished under the noses of the unarmed security guards. Those guys were paid a pittance and were hardly going to act the hero.

That’s how you got started in those days. You’d take out a wages van to secure the funds to start you off. It was the first step on the ladder. Nowadays if we need to be more liquid we talk to venture capitalists. It’s a funny old world.

No one but a complete numpty would take out a security van these days. There’s nothing like as much cash about for one thing, everybody gets their salary through BACS transfer and the wage packet stuffed with tenners is a distant memory. Police intelligence is a lot sharper as well, gangs get spotted early, their members put under round-the-clock surveillance and, if they do make a move, they get taken out by police marksmen with itchy trigger fingers, who all think they’re Al Pacino in Heat.

We watched one botched armed robbery unfolding on Sky News a few weeks back, at least the aftermath of it. The cops weren’t content with arresting the dumb shits, who hadn’t realised things had changed since the days of Regan and Carter and a gruff shout of ‘you’re nicked son’. As soon as they pulled a handgun on the security guard they were dropped, calm as you like, by snipers they never even saw, leaving passers by to catch images of their bodies on mobile phone cameras, so they could sell the grainy footage to the 24-hour news channels. It seems we are all journalists these days. Everybody knows you can get a few bob for footage of blood on the walls of your local building society.

Bobby watched it all with interest before pronouncing, ‘aye, things have definitely changed since my day,’ before taking a sip of his whiskey and adding, ‘course, we weren’t fucking amateurs.’

Back in Bobby’s younger days, the proceeds from one or two vans would set you up with a controlling stake in a club and enough readies to invest in slot machines, stolen booze or fags and old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness whoring. As Bobby told me, ‘men have needed women since time began but it’s still illegal thank God - and long may that continue, or they’d be offering you one when you went for your groceries at Tescos,’ and he mimicked the sing-song voice of some simple-minded checkout girl, “That’s ninety quid sir. Oh, got your loyalty card have you? I see you’ve enough points on there for one fuck, two blow jobs and a tit-wank. Would you like them now while the wife gets your petrol?” and he’d laughed, “do you think they wouldn’t do it if they could” They sell everything from TVs to insurance and you can buy a vibrator on every high street these days. Where would we be if they really let retailers sell sex, eh? I’ve made more money out of massage than I have out of armed robbery. It just takes a bit longer, one hand job at a time.’

Finney and I were back in the city way too soon. It was the start of an October weekend and people were out and about, forgetting their cares for a few hours in the pubs and clubs of the Bigg Market and the Quayside; dozens of lasses done up to the nines and lairy lads out on the prowl looking for their one-night-Juliet. The bridges on the Quayside were all lit up, so the evening’s revellers could tell which direction they were staggering.

I’d been thinking about Bobby’s violent start in life for a reason. He was still a hard bastard. If he felt aggrieved, he was not afraid to use some of that famous ruthlessness on any man, even one of his trusted lieutenants. I was worrying quite a lot about that in fact, because this time the trusted lieutenant was me. I am not as used to violence as the other guys in his crew. They’ve all been around a lot longer and they’ve had to scrap their way into his outfit. They all got their hands dirty at one point or another, but me? I’m a lot younger and I’m strictly white-collar, an ideas man. I have made Bobby Mahoney a lot of money over the years and he always made sure I got my slice but none of that matters now. The Drop didn’t happen and frankly, I admit it, I am shitting myself.

‘Not a fucking word to Bobby, you hear me Davey?’ cautioned Finney, ‘no matter what he says.’

My name is David Blake but most of the firm still call me Davey, even though I grew out of it years ago.

‘I said, didn’t I?’

We parked outside the dirty, red-brick, windowless façade of the Cauldron, a stone’s throw from China Town and a goal kick from St James Park. It was Friday night, just after traditional pub kicking-out time and the punters were already massing outside to get into the Cauldron. It’s not our coolest spot but it’s cheap and has a pretty loyal following. They were queuing two or three deep; teenage girls dressed in skirts so tiny they looked like they were fashioned from their grandad’s hankies. Their tight shirts were buttoned or tied just far enough up the middle to leave an acre of bare, white-fleshed cleavage spilling out over the fabric. Christ, I thought, they must be freezing. Then I realised how old that made me sound. The young don’t notice the cold. I remembered my poor, late ma saying the same thing to me every time I left the house without a coat on. ‘You’ll catch your death one day, you will.’

Finney chucked the keys at one of the bouncers and he moved the car off the double yellows. The other one hastily unclipped the red, velvet rope that was meant to give the place a veneer of class and stepped back out of our way to admit us. We walked past the lass who took the money, Julie I think her name was, and she smiled at me. I found myself wondering if she would testify if I didn’t make it out of the building alive. Would she fuck.

The thought kept going round and round in my mind; the Drop didn’t happen so, right now, I was about as popular in Newcastle as Dennis Wise. I was already wishing I was on the return flight back to Thailand.

We climbed a steep flight of stairs covered in sticky, lager-encrusted, maroon carpet and I got a brief glimpse of the dancefloor ahead of me with the 80’s style smoke machine billowing till the place looked like it was on fire. The club was slowly filling up with pissed-up, randy young blokes and bored-looking but equally drunk lasses. They were gyrating to Rihanna’s ‘Disturbia’. For some reason it sounded jarring and ominous, the bass thumping at probably the same rate as my heart, but I knew that was just my overwrought mind fucking with me.

I caught the eye of one girl in particular. I don’t know why she stood out but she looked desolate. She was sitting on her own and had more than likely just realised her friend wasn’t coming back for her, probably getting her tits felt in the taxi rank outside. She’d soon be on her way back to some apprentice sparky’s flat because he’d told her he played for Newcastle reserves. I looked into her doleful, hurt face and wanted to tell her ‘pet, you think you’ve got problems?’

It was two more flights to the inner sanctum and when I got there Bobby was sitting behind his big, solid oak desk, waiting for me. There were a couple of senior members of the firm there with him; Jerry Lemon, as usual in a T-shirt, all bare arms and prison tatts, filled with so much pent up aggression I was always expecting him to have a heart attack. Standing next to him was Mickey Hunter looking uncomfortable in a supposedly smart jacket, a tie strung so loosely round his neck you could see the top button of his shirt. I wanted to march up to the big fellah and pull it taut so he didn’t look like such a scruff. He obviously felt obliged to dress smart in Bobby’s nightclub but it just didn’t suit him. He ended up looking like a manual worker forced by his missus to wear a good suit at his niece’s wedding.

Even our bent accountant Alex Northam was there, in a tweed suit that was far too old for him. He was one of those middle-aged guys who can’t wait to get old so they can tell everybody how far back they go.

I’d known these guys for a long while but they all avoided my gaze now. I wondered if any of them had put in a good word for me or if they couldn’t wait to dance all over my grave. No honour among thieves.

While not quite as violently psychotic as Finney, Bobby Mahoney was still a man to be reckoned with, even in his late fifties. He might have had the grey hair and lined face of a man contemplating retirement, but you could still put him in a room full of twenty-year olds and I’d bet he’d be the only one left standing at the end.

He didn’t look pleased to see me.

‘Alright Bobby?’ I said, knowing that he wasn’t.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ the big booming voice silenced every one else immediately. It was so sharp it made Northam twitch in alarm.

‘Thailand.’ I told him as defiantly as I could manage. Rightly or wrongly, since I’d done nothing wrong I was gambling that my best form of defence was a little bit of defiance, mixed with a healthy dose of bemusement. ‘Why?’

Bobby climbed to his feet and came out from behind his desk. Jerry Lemon and Mickey Hunter parting like the Red Sea so he could get at me. My mouth was dry and I didn’t like the way his enormous fists were balled up. I was preparing myself for a bad beating.

‘What happened to the Drop?’ he asked me outright.

And this is where it got difficult for me, because I wasn’t supposed to know it hadn’t happened but Finney knew that I knew and he was standing there with me, so I had to be convincing. If I started looking shifty because I was denying all knowledge of what had happened to the Drop then Bobby might start to wonder why and draw the wrong, dangerous conclusion.

‘I don’t know, I was away. I’ve been on holiday remember.’ Then I acted like it was just sinking in, ‘what do you mean “what happened to it?”’

‘You were responsible for the Drop!’ the volume rose to a dangerous level. He crossed the floor towards me and the others started looking elsewhere; their shoes, the framed prints of half-naked Pirelli calendar girls on the walls, anywhere but at me, ‘don’t take me for a cunt Davey,’ he hissed at me when he was right up close.

The situation was serious enough for me to immediately stop acting defiant. ‘Yeah, I know Bobby, but I was on holiday so Geordie Cartwright said he’d do it,’ I said this quietly, hoping to calm the big man down, ‘just like he always does when I’m on holiday. He said he’d clear it with you and he’d take Maggot down there with him.’

He walked right up to me and stopped just in front of my face, so he could take a long look at me to see if I was lying. They say Bobby Mahoney can smell a lie. ‘Well he didn’t fucking clear it with me and he didn’t take Maggot with him.’ He was up so close to me I could smell the stale tobacco on his breath.

‘You’ve spoken to Maggot have you?’ I asked.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Finney wryly, ‘we spoke to him alright.’ By his tone I realised they must have put the fear of God into the poor bastard to make sure he was telling the truth. Finney was famous for his powers of persuasion, his trademark weapon of choice being a nail gun. He had a fondness for putting nails through people’s hands, leaving them stuck to their kitchen tables, garage doors and, in one memorable case, the skull of a deceased accomplice.

‘You didn’t ring me,’ I offered, surprised that this was not the first thing he’d thought of. I didn’t have a fancy mobile with an international connection but I wasn’t hard to trace.

‘We phoned the hotel you gave us,’ said Jerry Lemon, ‘they said you weren’t staying there,’

‘That’s bullshit,’ I said, ‘I was there. I’ve been on the same fucking resort for ten days. Laura brought back half the gift shop. Course I was fucking there.’ And then a thought suddenly struck me.

Laura.

Laura made the booking.

Oh Christ.

‘So, what’s happened then?’ I asked, looking to deflect them from the subject of my strange absence from the hotel register. For a second, I thought Bobby was going to belt me and when Bobby Mahoney starts belting people he doesn’t stop. Believe me, I’ve seen it. It takes Finney and all his mates to drag Bobby off once he’s started and by then it’s usually too late.

‘Nothing happened!’ he snarled, ‘the Drop certainly didn’t happen and Cartwright’s disappeared.’

‘Shit!’

‘Yeah, shit’s the word. A whole heap of shit and we are all in it, particularly you. The first I hear about it is when I get a call to tell me the Drop’s late. The Drop’s never late so I know something’s wrong straight away and I look into it sharpish. Turns out nobody can find Cartwright and nobody can find the money. Only thing anyone knows is it didn’t fucking get there. So my question, once again, is where the fuck have you been?’

I am bright enough to realise that he is not talking literally. I know if I even say the words ‘holiday’ or ‘Thailand’ again I am liable to get a beating that would not entirely be undeserved. ‘I’m sorry Bobby, I really am. I fucked up,’ he doesn’t seem to know how to react to that level of honesty. He’s clearly not used to it. ‘I should have made sure the Drop was in safer hands than Cartwright so you had nothing to worry about.’

‘I’m not worried about Cartwright. I’ve known him for years and he’s fucked either way son. It looks like someone’s killed him and taken my money. That’s my guess and, if it’s not that, it means he’s so stupid he’s stolen it himself, and I’ll bloody kill him. Don’t worry about Cartwright, worry about yourself because the Drop is your responsibility. I thought I’d made that pretty clear. Now you get out there and you find Cartwright or you find his body. I want to know who’s behind this and I want my fucking money back – then I am going to let Finney cut whoever’s responsible into tiny pieces while they are still breathing. You have got two days to sort this mess out. I want my cash back on this desk on Monday morning. Nobody takes from me, nobody, you know that!’

Christ, my heart sank on hearing that. I already knew my chances of finding Cartwright, or his rotting carcass, and Bobby’s money by Monday were slim to none, but I was definitely not going to tell Bobby Mahoney that right now. If I did, I reckoned he would have killed me, so I took the path of least resistance and bought myself some time.

‘Yeah Bobby I know that. Leave it with me. I’m on it.’

‘Go on then,’ he said and I didn’t wait to be told twice, ‘and take Finney with you.’

Finney lumbered after me, which I could have done without. I needed some time on my own to think, but now I’d got Finney with me I was going to have to start making enquiries, darting round the city on a Friday night like a lunatic. Jesus, where would I even begin?

‘Where to?’ asked Finney as soon as we’d left the room. I was starting to get the funny feeling he was secretly enjoying this. The ‘whiz kid’, as he used to refer to me when I first joined the team, had been firmly put in his place and was clearly shitting himself at the prospect of a good kicking or worse. I had no idea ‘where to’.

‘Simple,’ I said with as much nonchalance as I could muster under the circumstances, ‘known associates,’ he frowned at me like his simple brain couldn’t quite digest the concept, ‘Cartwright’s nearest and dearest. We quiz them all. Let’s get the car.’

I was keen to halt his questions about my plans. I didn’t have any.

THREE

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When we were back in the car Finney asked, ‘where first?’ ‘Jesmond,’ I told him, thinking on my feet, ‘there’s a side street just off Osborne Road. Cartwright shacks up there with his bird, what’s-her-name, Amanda something, the one who used to be a stripper way back when?’

‘Mandy McCauley,’ he told me. I was surprised he knew her full name. ‘Used to take it all off in a back room at the Sunbeam Strip in the eighties before they closed it down. I couldn’t believe it when Cartwright took her on full time.’

‘Why, what’s wrong with her?’

‘You mean apart from showing her growler to every man in Newcastle?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘apart from that.’

‘Well she shagged virtually the entire crew,’ he told me, ‘no actually, I tell a lie, she did shag the entire crew. If you hadn’t have been in short trousers back then you’d have got your end away too. If she turned up anywhere with George after it was like…’ he seemed lost for a suitable phrase.

‘An old boyfriends’ reunion?’ I offered.

‘Yeah, well no, not really. None of us ever took her out. You didn’t have to with Mand,’ and he chuckled, ‘she didn’t seem to mind. Though, to tell you the truth, it was like chucking a Smartie tube up the Tyne Tunnel.’ Finney laughed harder, ‘I dunno,’ he said reflectively, ‘maybe he felt sorry for her.’

‘Or maybe he just had a bigger cock than you,’ but he didn’t laugh at that. Instead he just pressed the accelerator more firmly and we sped closer to Jesmond.

Whatever looks Mandy McCauley once had, she’d lost them. The woman that answered the door in her dressing gown might have taken her clothes off for money twenty years ago but these days you’d have paid her to leave them on. She was an overweight, badly made up specimen with a cig in her nicotine-stained hand trailing smoke up into her bloodshot eyes. ‘Finney,’ she said unhappily, ‘and you,’ I wondered if she’d forgotten my name. She took a deep breath and when she spoke once more her voice was harsh, ‘what have you done with him you bastards!’

She eventually let us in, once I’d persuaded her we were looking for Cartwright too. The house was shabbier than I would have expected, the white flock wallpaper in the hall turning brown and peeling in a corner.

‘Wipe your fucking feet,’ she ordered.

‘Watch your dirty mouth Mandy or you’ll get a slap,’ Finney told her. It was moving to see these two lovers reunited. ‘Now where is he?’

We followed her into a grubby little front room with a high ceiling, a three-bar electric heater and a large sofa that sagged under my weight when I sat down. When Finney sat next to me I swear I felt a spring snap under him. Mandy sat on a battered armchair and crossed her legs primly, which to me seemed like locking the door after the entire stable has bolted, ‘I don’t know,’ she said with some feeling, ‘I thought he was with you or… .’

‘You thought we’d hurt him?’ I said reasonably.

She flicked her cig into an ashtray, set it down and pulled the sleeves of her dressing gown taut so they half covered her hands. It wasn’t cold in the room. It was a nervous gesture ‘I s’pose.’

‘Well, you would,’ I said, ‘if he’s not been around. How long has he been missing?’

‘Three days,’ and saying it aloud set her off. Her lip quivered and the tears formed, ‘Geordie’s never been away for more than a night, not ever.’ North east men christened George are always known as ‘Geordie’ and George Cartwright was no exception.

‘When you last saw him where he was he off to?’

‘The office. He said he had to see the accountant then he had a trip but he’d be back that night, late.’

‘Collecting the Drop,’ said Finney almost to himself. Cartwright would have collected it from Northam, our bent accountant. He was just like a real accountant. The difference was he knew where all the dirty money came from and he never, ever wanted your signature on anything.

‘Only he didn’t come back, did he?’ she said accusingly.

‘Was he okay when he left?’ I asked her, ‘not upset about anything, worried?’

‘No’

‘Not acting different in any way you can remember?’

‘I’ve just told you!’

‘Mandy,’ warned Finney. I got the feeling he would have liked an excuse to belt her one. Maybe he was still smarting about that cock joke.

‘It’s alright,’ I assured him, ‘I think we’re done. We’ll get in touch with you as soon as we find him Mandy. You make sure you contact us if you hear from him. You’ve got the number for the club?’

She nodded. We were leaving when she suddenly said, ‘has something bad happened to him?’ looking like she was going mad with worry. Her eyes met mine imploringly. There was love there, for Cartwright, somewhere deep down, beneath all the fake toughness that comes from a fucked-up life, ‘tell me the truth.’

‘The truth?’ I asked and she nodded, ‘I dunno Mandy. I really don’t.’

We headed back into the city and I had a bit more time to think. I stared out of the window as the concrete walls of the underpass sped by. I’d known seeing Mandy was likely to be a dead-end but I had to check her out in case she knew something, though I was no nearer solving the mystery of George ‘Geordie’ Cartwright’s disappearance than before. I couldn’t fathom it. Like Bobby had said, he’d known Cartwright for years and he didn’t strike me as being a man who was dumb or greedy enough to steal from his employer, particularly an employer like Bobby. But, if it wasn’t him, then who would have the temerity, the sheer fucking brass balls to take money away from Bobby Mahoney. If it was someone who knew about the Drop, and there can’t have been many, then it made even less sense. You wouldn’t want to steal that money believe me. Not for all the shit it would land you in.

Bobby was right though, which didn’t make me feel any better. It was my responsibility to make sure the Drop got there. I’d been careless, and now I was in deep, deep trouble. How the fuck was I going to find Cartwright and get the money back? It would probably be easier to raise the money for the Drop myself by Monday - and that would still be impossible, even with my talents.

Bobby was right in another way too. Nobody took from him. If somebody got away with that he was finished. The message it sent out would be clear. Bobby had turned into a soft touch, somebody who could be taken on or taken out by an ambitious rival. He simply couldn’t afford for that to happen. So he had to get the money back and punish the person who’d stolen from him. The punishment would have to match the crime and stealing the Drop was one down from raping his late wife’s corpse, so the thief was going to wind up dead - but not before Finney had spent a long time making him see the error of his ways. Suddenly I was terrified. If I couldn’t find Cartwright, I couldn’t retrieve the money and I couldn’t discover who was responsible, it was going to be me staring into the business end of a nail gun, because Bobby would have to show the world that somebody had paid for ripping him off.

‘Pull over,’ I said to Finney in a panic.

‘What? Now?’

‘Just pull over!’ I managed to get the passenger door open just in time. I leaned out and sicked up the horrible airline meal they’d given us, all over the side of the road.

‘Jesus,’ hissed Finney, ‘mind my upholstery!’

FOUR

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

As soon as we hit the Bigg Market, I tried to light a cigarette but my hand was shaking so badly the match burned down to my fingers and I had to start again. All around me in the square, drunken youngsters were propelling themselves towards the next night spot, some more steadily and silently than others. Close by, a girl fell on her arse and her friends shrieked with laughter. She cackled along too because she wouldn’t be feeling that bruise until the morning. In a doorway of a pub that had long since closed, a very pissed-up teenager was trying to pull a couple of young lasses by dancing in front of them, even though he could barely stand by now. He tried a couple of moves then stopped, his head lolling like a Thunderbird puppet.

The girls thought it was hilarious, ‘Eeh,’ said one, ‘you’ll get all the ladies tonight with those moves.’ They both laughed at him and walked away, leaving him staring uselessly into the space they had just occupied like he couldn’t quite work out where they had gone.

There was a lot of noise, a lot of shouting, most of it good natured. One young couple were having a violent row about something or nothing but there was a good deal of laughter coming from the long queue of early-darters at the taxi rank. I reckoned Finney and I were the only sober people in the Bigg Market by this hour.

Finney asked, ‘Where now?’

In an uncharacteristic move, I told him, ‘fuck knows,’ and immediately regretted saying it. Finney had already seen me so frightened I was throwing up out of his car, so I had to at least look like I wasn’t entirely losing control. I’d blamed that on dodgy Thai food but he hadn’t looked convinced. ‘Everywhere.’ I told him emphatically, ‘he drinks round here, always has, never liked the Quayside, it’s too modern for him. Speak to everybody. We need to know when anyone saw him last.’ I was already thinking that if Mandy didn’t know where he was then nobody would. I was worried he’d left the country along with all of Bobby’s money. ‘Some of his pubs will be shut by now but we’ll go to all the ones that stay open late, speak to the lads on the door and the bar staff, ask them if any one has seen Geordie Cartwright.’

‘Right,’ he said.

‘I think we should split up. We’ll cover them twice as fast,’

He looked at me, ‘not trying to run out on me are you?’

‘Do I look that fucking stupid?’

As soon as Finney left me, I rang Laura. Her mobile trilled for what seemed like an age. Where was she? It was normally stapled to her ear.

While I waited for her to answer I ran the whole saga of the hotel back through my mind. Laura had offered to make the booking, ‘I’ll do it David, you’ve already sorted out the flights, found all the nice restaurants and changed the currency, so I’ll do this.’ I’d been touched that she appreciated my efforts and was looking to lend a hand, not taking me for granted.

Of course, when weeks then dragged by and, guess what, the booking had not been made, I was starting to feel very differently about her offer. All I heard was ‘I’ll do it later, I’m tired,’ as if I wasn’t, or ‘work has been a bastard this week’, as if I spent my days auditioning teenaged porn stars.

I could have picked up the phone or gone on the web and sorted it in minutes but no, she wouldn’t let me do that either, even though I offered to take the task back off her hands. It eventually became a cause of real friction between us. Every night I would bring up the subject and every night I would chose a different way to raise it; jocular, teasing, impatient, pissed-off, very pissed-off, then finally up to Def Con Two. It was only then, when I was literally screaming at her, ‘why can’t you just make the fucking booking?’ that she finally snapped.

‘Alright, alright, stop bloody going on and on about it! Jesus!’

‘I would stop going on about it if you would just bloody do it. You’re like a teenager who won’t tidy her room!’

She stormed off and did the job on the internet in all of about twenty minutes. It was a lot longer than twenty minutes before she spoke to me again.

Trouble was, when Laura had first said, ‘I’ll book the hotel,’ I distinctly told her to make the booking in both our names.

When Laura finally answered her mobile I asked, ‘It’s me, when you booked the hotel, did you book the rooms in both our names like I asked?’

‘Eh? Er, I don’t know, yes, I think so, why?’ ‘You think so or you did so? This is important.’

‘I can’t remember,’ she wailed, ‘you’d been shouting at me. I don’t know and I’m very tired. Where are you?’

I ignored her question, ‘you don’t know?’

‘No, I don’t know, which bit of that last sentence did you not understand?’

‘I could have been killed tonight because you didn’t do what I asked. Bobby was trying to find me and when he phoned the hotel they had no record of me staying there. He didn’t think to ask if they had a Laura Collins in their hotel because he probably can’t even remember your surname. Jesus, I don’t understand you sometimes. It was the only thing I asked you to do!’

‘Oh shut up David,’ she shouted, ‘stop exaggerating. Your boss is not going to kill you.’

My God, was she deliberately trying to wind me up? ‘Have you forgotten who I work for?!’

‘No! I haven’t!’ she shouted, ‘in fact I am sick of hearing about it!’ That was a bit rich, since I had to listen to every banal detail of her working day the minute she walked through my door each evening.

‘You stupid bitch!’ I screamed at her. My answer was the dead sound of her mobile being switched off, ‘Laura? Laura!?’ I didn’t know why I was still shouting at her. She had already gone.

I’d had a shit evening. By now we were well into the early hours and getting nowhere. Finney and I had spoken to everyone and come up with zilch. My eyes were burning with tiredness. I was just starting to contemplate getting home for a few hours shut-eye to shake off the jet lag and start afresh in the morning, when the mobile began to vibrate in my jacket pocket. It was Vincent phoning from Privado.

‘I’m sorry to bother you so late man,’ he said.

‘I’m not sleeping.’ I told him, ‘what is it?’

‘Well… I’m afraid… ’ he seemed reluctant to come to the point.

‘Go on.’ I prompted him.

‘… it’s your brother like.’

This was the last thing I needed. I persuaded Finney to drop me at Privado and leave me to it. I could always borrow Vincent’s car or get a cab if I needed one and I didn’t want Finney to see Danny in one of his states. Vincent was waiting by the door for me when I arrived, which I appreciated. He was either a very good bloke or he hadn’t heard about my fall in prestige now that I was the man who’d cost Bobby Mahoney a small fortune. He led me into the place.

Privado was a low-rate, lap dancing bar just off the Quayside that Bobby controlled. It was pretty busy. It looked like the credit crunch wasn’t stopping men from coming in here and parting with large amounts of cash for a quick flash of a girl’s tits. The blue lighting was so subdued you would have had to squint to see anything though, even when the lass pressed herself right up against you, but they still turned up. There were half a dozen girls in the room, dressed in, or slowly removing, their bra and pants. The men looked drunk, sitting on their own around the leather seating that lined the bar’s walls. The girls made them sit on their hands so they didn’t get tempted to touch what they were supposed to just be looking at but that clearly hadn’t stopped Our-young-’un from disgracing himself. They straddled the men, perched on their knees and gyrated while they draped their long hair in the guy’s faces or rubbed their breasts together a couple of millimetres from their slavering mouths. The routines were all pretty similar but the men didn’t seem too bothered by the lack of variety.

I saw one girl I recognised. Michelle had just climbed off a guy’s lap then bent down in front of him so he could stare at her arse. She gave her bum a half-hearted smack, but her eyes told me how bored she was. Who was she trying to kid, I thought, but then I saw the look on his face. His mouth was open wider then a guppy’s and his eyes looked like they were about to roll right up into their sockets. Clearly he thought this whole spectacle was an unrestrained display of raw, female sexuality, not the student-loan-busting source of revenue that Michelle viewed it as.

It took a while to cross the floor while the girls were doing their thing. I had to virtually step over one of them as she writhed on the ground. The music ended as I passed Michelle, just as she whipped her bra off so she could do the second of the fish-faced bloke’s two dances topless. That was the deal; two dances for twenty notes, twenty quid spunked in around six minutes. At that rate he would be a couple of hundred quid down in around an hour, excluding tips. For the same amount he could have had full sex with one of Bobby’s escorts, which made more sense to me, but I guessed he was too shy for that.

The second song was Khia’s ‘My Neck My Back’ and Michelle bent down again to show him everything Khia was singing about. He stared at her arse once more as she peeled her knickers off. She looked up as I walked by, smiled, blew me a little kiss and gave me a wave, which he didn’t spot. He didn’t seem to notice Michelle wasn’t giving him her undivided attention but then he wasn’t looking at her face.

Michelle was a nice girl and certainly a looker. She was around twenty with long, dark hair and a cracking figure, but I couldn’t understand the appeal of all this myself. I’m no prude but this didn’t seem to be one thing or the other. If you needed sex and were prepared to pay for it, then have sex. Don’t piss about in a lap dancing club. I didn’t sleep with Bobby’s escort girls and I didn’t need to pay for it either, even before Laura, but I didn’t have an issue with people who did. It seemed to me that all the guys in here were cowards. They wanted it but they weren’t prepared to properly go for it. This was safe, it was sanitised, it was a tease but that’s all it was. They’d still leave here frustrated. Like I said, I just didn’t get it.

Vincent took me through an unmarked, metal door into a dimly lit corridor. The door swung shut behind us and the music was immediately muffled to a low drone in the background. We were headed for a back room and before he opened that door he spoke to me in a low whisper.

‘We had to put him in here. I hope that’s alright with you. He was a bit worse for wear when he came in, noisy like, disturbing the other punters. I sent a girl over to give him a couple of dances on the house, on account of him being your brother and it calmed him down for a while but when she took her top off he just grabbed her tits and she screamed blue murder.’

‘Oh Christ.’

‘The bouncer came right over and your bro got a bit aggressive but our doorman didn’t hurt him. I made sure of that but we couldn’t let him stay in there. I hope you understand.’

‘Of course Vince,’ I told him.

‘We gave him a bit of a talking to, made him a strong cup of coffee and locked him in there to cool off then I called you. Nobody else knows anything about it and I’ve told the doorman to keep his trap shut. Of course there were a lot of punters in there so… ’ he shrugged, meaning that word could still get back to Bobby if I was unlucky and my luck seemed to be in short supply tonight.

‘Thanks Vincent, I appreciate you handling it like you did and I’m sorry for the trouble he caused you.’ I took out my wallet and peeled off ten twenty pound notes and handed them to him, ‘give this to the lass.’ I knew Vincent would give her whatever he thought she’d accept to keep quiet about having her tits groped in public and he would keep the rest and that was fine by me.

‘Hey, no problem,’ he said pocketing the cash, ‘he’s your brother. You don’t have to apologise for him. He’s still a bloody hero an’ all. I haven’t forgotten that. I know he’s had his problems.’

I patted Vincent on the back and he unlocked the door and left me to it. Danny was sitting on the kind of cheap, red plastic chair they use in school dinner halls. He was still very drunk and swaying a bit, his coffee cup was full to the brim on the table in front of him. His lank hair hung down over his eyes because his head was bowed but I couldn’t tell if it was shame or if he had fallen asleep in his seat. He heard me come through the door and his head shot up.

‘Oh I’m sorry bro’. I’m a fucking wreck, I’m really sorry.’ He was slurring but at least he wasn’t violent drunk and he knew he’d done wrong. I was relieved. I didn’t want to end up scrapping with my older brother. Even in this state he could still kick me all round the room.

‘That’s alright Danny,’ I told him, ‘though I doubt that lass’ll be going on a date with you any time soon.’

He grinned like a schoolboy then. ‘She had a cracking pair of top bollocks,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t resist. You should have seen them man.’

‘What makes you think I haven’t seen ‘em?’

His smile went broader then, ‘aye, you probably have an’ all you dirty bastard. Bet you get to shag all of Bobby’s birds. Does Posh Spice know?’ and he laughed, as he always did when using his nickname for Laura. I don’t think he’d ever used her real name. It was always Posh Spice or Posh Knickers and occasionally Tara Palmer Topbollockson, which was his favourite name for her but he was far too drunk to attempt that just now.