The Drop Read online

  THE DROP

  HOWARD LINSKEY

  NO EXIT PRESS

  For Erin & Alison

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  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 and Jolanta Kietaviciute 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

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

  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

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

  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

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

  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 fr
eezing. 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 passed 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?’