The Drop (2 page)

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.

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W
hen 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!’

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A
s 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.

The door opened then. It was Michelle, back in her bra and pants, giving me an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry,’ she told me, ‘I was just checking to see if you were alright like,’ and she went a bit red in the face, which was strange for someone who could take all her clothes off in a room full of strangers without blushing.

‘We’re good thanks,’ I told her.

‘Smashing,’ she said, ‘sure you don’t want a cup of tea or anything?’

‘He’s got a brew, thanks. I’m fine.’

‘Right,’ she said, ‘okay.’ And she hung on for a second. ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ and she gently closed the door behind her.

‘Fuckin’ hell young’un, you could have been in there man. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t tell Poshy.’

‘Come on,’ I told him firmly, ‘let’s get you home before that other lass sues you for groping her.’