The Drop (8 page)

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‘H
e mention me?’ asked Finney when I climbed back into the car.

‘Nope.’

‘Good job an’ all,’ he said, turning the key in the ignition and revving the car for no good reason. ‘Where next?’

‘The accountant’s.’

‘I hate that slippery fucker.’

‘Me too,’ I said.

‘He acts like his shit don’t stink.’

‘At least we agree on that,’ and he gave an affirming grunt.

‘Coffee, gentlemen?’ asked the lady receptionist in a voice that you could have cut glass with. She was acting as if Finney resembled a respectable member of the upper middle-class customer base she was used to greeting, rather than the violent criminal low-life he obviously was.

‘No thanks,’ I said and Finney shook his head.

‘Another cup Mister Northam?’ she offered.

‘No thank you Barbara,’ he covered his empty cup with his hand, ‘I’ve had an elegant sufficiency.’ When Northam said this, Finney gave him a look like he’d just caught our accountant sodomising a minor.

Alexander Northam’s small accountancy firm was on the second floor, over an estate agent in Grainger Street, slap bang in the middle of the city. He wasn’t entirely crooked, there were legitimate clients too, but none of them put as much money through him as we did. Despite this he had the manner of a city banker and usually looked at us as if we were something he’d picked up on the bottom of his shoes.

‘Excuse me gentlemen,’ she was using that word again. Finney peered at her as if he suspected she might be taking the piss but she was oblivious. She merely smoothed her skirt with the palms of her hands and bent to clear away the cup, ‘I’ll be outside if you need me Mister Northam.’ And she left us to it.

‘Doesn’t she know your first name?’ I asked. He gave me a withering look and ignored me. ‘Nice couch,’ I said, ‘must have cost a pretty packet,’ I patted the soft Italian leather and we sat down uninvited. As usual, Northam didn’t look too pleased to see us. Having Finney in his well appointed office, all teak and leather furnishings, must have been like having a naked hooker at a WI meeting.

‘Yes, well, it did but then one has to maintain a veneer of prosperity, even in these testing economic times. There’s a crisis of confidence out there - or don’t you read the newspapers?’

‘I read them,’ I assured him, ‘all of them. And you reckon a leather sofa and a few old books are going to fool people into thinking you know what to do with their money?’

‘Did you come here to talk about my new couch Blake?’ he asked testily, ‘I rather doubt that.’ He was a Geordie born and bred but he didn’t want to be. He’d spent his life trying to shed the accent. He folded his arms, which made him look like he was wearing a straight jacket made of Harris tweed. Northam was a heavily balding man in his late fifties, who couldn’t summon up the nerve to shave off the last thin wisp of combed-over ginger hair that rested on his head like a Brillo pad.

‘I’ve come to talk to you about the Drop,’ I informed him.

‘Thought as much,’ and his expression was almost a smirk, ‘in a spot of bother with the boss eh? Not having a good time of it right now, are we?’ He leaned forward and gave me an undertaker’s smile, ‘I hear your brother was making a nuisance of himself at Privado the other day. Does Bobby know about that as well? I realise he was at Goose Green but the Falklands Conflict was a long time ago and it’s hardly a get-out-of-jail-free-card.’

‘A long time,’ I agreed, ‘I wonder where you were when Our-young-’un was up to his nuts in mud and bullets? Probably sitting your accountancy exams in Thatcher’s Britain?’ He straightened, clearly not liking my tone but he didn’t have the balls to say as much. ‘Bet you took a few moments out of your day to raise a glass to our fine boys in the army for showing those bloody Argies who was boss. Salt of the earth weren’t they Northam, just so long as you didn’t ever have to meet any of them. Funny you don’t feel that way about gangsters but they tend to have more money than squaddies and that’s what it all boils down to with you doesn’t it, the money.’

‘Is there a point to this conversation? I’m surmising there must be.’ He was trying to sound unruffled but I had evidently got to him.

‘Let’s not fuck about, shall we Northam? Yes, I am in a spot of bother with the boss, in fact there’s a good chance he will cut my arms and legs off and feed me to the pigs if I don’t come up with some answers and I’m stuck for some right now, which is why I might have to resort to wondering aloud to Bobby why you ignored all of our safeguards and procedures.’

‘Ignored what?’ he stammered, ‘but I never… ’

‘Yeah you did,’ I said cheerfully, ‘what are we not supposed to do with the Drop Northam? Think hard.’

‘I don’t know what… ’

I interrupted him, ‘the Drop does not get released into the hands of just one individual, always two. That’s the rule, the golden rule, there really is only one and you either forgot it, which makes you a fuckwit, or you wilfully ignored it, which makes you a suspect, so which is it?’

‘Now wait a minute… ’ his face flushed. He sounded flustered. He’d known he’d done wrong all along and was just hoping nobody was ever going to pull him up on it.

‘No, you wait a minute,’ I told him, ‘I wasn’t there and Cartwright didn’t have Maggot with him, did he? So why let him take the money?’ I knew the answer or at least I thought I did. He’d been sloppy, we’d all been sloppy this time and our bent accountant was no exception.

‘He told me he was with him.’ he said, his mouth going dry.

‘Sorry, who told who what?’ I was being deliberately awkward.

‘Cartwright told me that Barry Hennessy was in the car outside.’

‘So you went out to verify this?’

‘Well no.’

‘You looked out of the window at least, saw him sitting there?’

‘No.

‘Why not?’

‘I didn’t think… ’

‘You didn’t think?’

‘No, well why would I?’

‘I dunno,’ I shrugged, ‘maybe because you were handing over a very large amount of Bobby Mahoney’s money to one guy, even though that same Bobby Mahoney had personally instructed you never to hand over a very large chunk of his money to only one guy. That’s why you might just have given it a thought.’

‘I had no reason to suspect Cartwright.’ he protested.

‘Why? Are you two old mates? ’

‘No, he is not my mate.’

‘Not your friend and not a blood relative or anything? He’s not part of the family?’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘Me, absurd? I’m not the one giving big wadges of cash out to people who are neither my friends nor my relatives. That’s fucking absurd. You realise nobody saw Geordie Cartwright walk in here or leave with the cash. So how do we know he ever received it from you? How can you prove you gave him the money when we don’t sign for anything?’

‘Now hang on a moment.’

‘No moments and no hanging on. You’re forgetting yourself Northam. I’m responsible for security in our organisation, whereas you are just a fucking bean counter with delusions of grandeur.’

‘Don’t you talk to me like that.’

‘I’ll talk to you anyway I want until you start giving me some answers. We are staying here until you can prove you gave that money to Cartwright and you had nothing to do with his murder.’ I didn’t think for one minute he was responsible for Cartwright’s death but I was enjoying watching the slimy little shit sweat.

‘Murder?’ that took the wind out of his sails, ‘this is ridiculous,’ he stammered, ‘I don’t have to… ’

‘Finney,’ I said quietly and Finney rose to his feet. Northam went white. When Finney pulled a flick knife from his pocket, pressed a button and a blade popped out, I thought Northam was going to keel over right there and then and have a heart attack in his own office.

Finney took a step forward, ‘Please,’ pleaded Northam, ‘don’t,’

Finney reached behind him, plucked the soft, Italian leather cushion he had been sitting on from out of the outrageously expensive sofa and plunged his knife deep into it, until there was a huge gash in the middle of the pristine leather.

‘Oh,’ Northam drew his hand up to his mouth in agitation but didn’t dare say a word in protest. I stood up and Finney reached for the cushion I’d been sitting on and gave it the same treatment.

‘I don’t know what you want from me,’ Northam pleaded. Only when I was convinced he had almost soiled himself did I give him any leeway.

‘Sit down Northam,’ and he almost fell into his desk chair, ‘now, let’s start again shall we? I want you tell me everything that happened that day. What time Cartwright arrived, what he said, what you said, what he was wearing, what mood he was in, what the weather was doing outside, what you had for breakfast that morning and if you had a dump afterwards. And if you go running off bleating to Bobby about us coming here I’ll drop you right in the shit with him, understand?’

Finney held up the knife.

‘Yes,’ whimpered Northam.

Finney folded the knife back up.

‘Go on then,’ I said.

Finney chuckled as we drove away, ‘I enjoyed that,’

‘It was a moment of light relief,’ I admitted, ‘and he had been holding out on us.’

Putting the fear of god into Northam had worked. He’d told us two things we didn’t already know; firstly Cartwright had taken the Drop a day early and of course he’d blamed that on me. I’d apparently told him to collect it twenty four hours before it was due. Because I was on holiday, Northam couldn’t verify that with me at the time so he just assumed it was legit, the idiot.

The other thing Northam remembered, when we took him through the meeting minute by minute, was that mild-mannered Geordie Cartwright had been carrying. He’d spotted the gun in Cartwright’s shoulder holster when he’d leaned forward to pick up the bag.

‘What would Geordie need a gun for?’ Finney wondered aloud.

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted, ‘but there’s a good chance he got it from Hunter.’

‘Yeah, probably,’ he said, ‘him and Cartwright go back years, to the old days.’

Doesn’t everybody in our organisation, I thought, except me.

‘I’m not sure how far forward we are getting here. Every time we learn something new it just throws up more questions. Why collect the Drop early? Why carry a gun when that isn’t your line of work? Why tell Northam that Barry Hennessy was waiting outside in the car when he wasn’t? Unless Barry was lying when you saw him after?’

‘Doubt it, we scared the shite out of him, literally.’

I didn’t want to think about that. ‘And Northam looked too scared to lie to us in there, so it was Cartwright telling porkie pies but why would he risk that?’

‘He was on the run with it?’ suggested Finney, ‘he knew we’d be after him if he lifted the money so he had the gun, just in case.’

‘I don’t think so. He’d know a gun wouldn’t do him much good and the Drop had to be handed over in twenty four hours or he’d be in the deepest shit imaginable, so what was to be gained by it? Anyway, we should go and see Hunter and I think it might be worth having another word with Barry Hennessy.’

Finney smirked to himself at that. He was clearly enjoying his day. I drove for a little while then a thought struck me, ‘why does Barry get called Maggot in the first place?’

Finney thought for a moment, ‘cos he’s a fucking maggot,’ ‘Fair enough.’

Our next stop was across the river in Gateshead; the Railway arches and an appointment with Mickey Hunter. The arches all had solid metal doors on them, emblazoned with the names of the small businesses that operated out of the offices and workshops within. If you could stand the noise and vibration from the trains that went whizzing overhead you could get a very good deal on premises right by the city.

Hunter ran a little body shop that knocked dents out of cars, put new bumpers and bonnets on for you if you’d had a smash, and might stretch to a respray, if you had the cash and didn’t mind him not declaring it. There was always a demand for low maintenance, cheap repair work and it was a lovely cover for his real business. That’s why he could afford to undercut the main dealers.

‘He wanted a piece.’ Hunter told me as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He was sitting back in his chair in the garage’s tiny office, which overlooked three dilapidated cars that were all being worked on at once by blokes in grease-stained overalls. Our conversation was constantly being interrupted by the high pitched squeal as wheel nuts were unscrewed, then an angle grinder screamed as someone sorted out some body work. Mickey wore overalls too but I never saw him getting his hands dirty. He was a tall, stocky bloke in his late forties and his dark hair was flecked with grey. He was also a bit boss-eyed. You wouldn’t notice at first. It was only when he was talking to you and was meant to be looking right at you that, instead, you suddenly realised he was staring at a space somewhere above your right shoulder. It wasn’t his fault his eye was a bit out of sinc but it made him look decidedly shifty nonetheless. Hunter had been with Bobby since he was a teenage tearaway, nicking cars, re-spraying them and selling them on. Now he was the firm’s quarter-master.

‘Geordie Cartwright wanted a gun?’ I still couldn’t believe it. I’d never even known him fire a gun much less carry one around with him, ‘what kind?’

‘Handgun,’ he said, ‘a Sig Sauer, one of those flashy pistols the cops have in the States.’

‘I know what a Sig Sauer is. Did you get him one?’

‘Of course.’

‘On whose say-so?’

‘Well,’ he looked at me dumbly, ‘yours.’

‘Mine?’

‘He said you’d asked him to get a piece in case things got a bit hairy down south like.

‘He said what?’

‘That’s what he said. You mean you didn’t… ’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t.’

‘Christ, I’m really sorry man,’ he told the wall behind me, ‘but it sounded legit. I mean I’ve known Cartwright as long as I’ve known any of you and, well I mean, why would he lie?’

‘That’s the big question,’ I wasn’t really annoyed with Hunter. It’s not as if we have written orders or signed requisition sheets for his bent weaponry, and he could hardly phone me on a land line and say ‘is it true you asked Geordie Cartwright to get tooled up in case you had a spot of bother with some southerners?’ We didn’t work like that. A lot of what we did, strangely enough in our game, was based on trust, that and the fear of a sickening retribution afterwards if you were caught doing something that was against Bobby’s interests. So what would drive a mild bloke like George Cartwright to get a Sig Sauer from our armourer and collect the Drop all on his own?