Howard Linskey - The Drop

‘One doesn’t buy the Times , dear boy,’ he told me in a voice that was almost Oscar Wilde, if he’d been raised in Gateshead, ‘one takes the Times .’

‘Does one?’

‘Yes, one does,’ he said, ‘and if one does, one will have read their fascinating piece on the stars recently. Not the Hollywood variety. Apparently there are one hundred billion stars like the sun in our galaxy that are likely to have at least one planet capable of supporting life. And there are one hundred billion galaxies in the universe, so that means there are… ’

‘A fuck of a lot?’

‘A fuck of a lot, thank you, of planets that could have life on them but we won’t get to see any of it because the nearest star from ours is hundreds of thousands of years from here at the speeds we are currently capable of. Now, when you consider the vast scale of our galaxy and the ludicrously huge size of the whole universe, you’d have to be completely puddled to believe there’s a god up there somewhere who gives a tinker’s toss about you and yours on planet earth,’ he raised his glass of coke and clinked it against my pint, ‘life is a load of random shite and all of us are just spinning helplessly round the sun. When you can confront that fact head on and still keep your sanity, well, then you are a man my son.’

‘I knew you were a fucking hippy,’ I said, ‘and it may be random shite to you but I have to put some sense into it all and quickly. I’ve got to find Cartwright and I have a funny feeling that, alive or dead, he is still on this planet.’

‘That ought to narrow it down then, eh?’ he said cheerfully.

We had a couple more drinks, him sticking with his coke and me sipping more of the local bitter. People carried on getting bladdered around us.

Sitting with Miller reminded me of my early days working for Bobby. He was a veteran back then but he’d been alright when others had treated me with suspicion if not downright hostility, ‘You know, you’re one of the few from the old crowd who doesn’t treat me like a leper,’ I told him.

‘Well, they don’t always get it, that lot. I don’t think they understand what you do for Bobby, but I can see it David,’ and he thought for a moment. ‘They probably can too, they just don’t want to admit it.’

‘Maybe, but whatever the reason I’ve always found it easier to deal with you, which is why I didn’t bring Finney with me when I came out to see you earlier.’

‘Finney?’ he looked a bit alarmed, with good reason, ‘why would you bring him?’

‘I don’t think you’re telling me everything Mark.’

‘How do you mean like?’

‘About Cartwright,’ I said, ‘everyone I speak to says he’s not the sort of man to get mixed up with anything that’s likely to piss Bobby off but we know he lied about the Drop. He said he was going to take Maggot with him but he didn’t. Now that’s strange behaviour for a man like Cartwright; a quiet, unassuming bloke who seems happy enough with his missus and his football, and a few pints at the weekend, so what the hell happened? You knew him as well as anyone. So what are you not telling me?’ he hesitated then, his eyes moving from me to the floor and back again, ‘you’d be better off telling me Mark, you know I’ll find out sooner or later and I’d rather hear it from you. You’re protecting him aren’t you? What is it?’

He let out a deep sigh, ‘there was something but if I tell you, you have to go easy on him.’

‘No promises and no ifs. You’re going to tell me or I’ll phone Finney and he’ll ask you.’

‘There’s no need for that but please, I’m asking you, can you see what you can do for Geordie if it does go tits up like?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ I told him, knowing that my influence wouldn’t count for much if he’d screwed Bobby.

‘Gambling,’ he said simply.

‘Gambling?’ I was stunned, ‘Geordie Cartwright? Are you sure?’

He nodded reluctantly, ‘been doing it for years man, low key at first. I mean he was losing but all gamblers lose don’t they, whether it’s football, horses, casinos, the house always wins.’

‘So what happened?’

‘It’s the same sad and simple story. He started small, he mostly lost but he had a few wins. The wins just made him feel like he should have had a bit extra on the horses that came in. So he started betting more, only he wasn’t very lucky.’

‘How much was he in for?’

‘He’s been losing twenty or thirty grand a year for a good while now.’

‘Shit – and he isn’t our biggest earner.’ I was taken aback that I didn’t realise one of our main men was pissing his earnings away like that down at the bookies, ‘it would explain the shit hole he lives in,’ I was annoyed at myself. I should have known. I should have been to his house before and checked him out. Here was a guy handling large amounts of the firm’s money and he was blowing thirty large a year on horses and football matches and I knew nothing about it.

‘Yeah,’ he said hesitantly, like he didn’t really want to go on, ‘but he could just about cover that. I mean you know what we’ve always been like; money’s easy come, easy go in our game. You can bury that sort of thing in accounts without the wife knowing. I mean we are not exactly PAYE are we.’

‘No, we’re not. So what happened?’

‘Spread betting happened. It was new, not so long back. If you did well you could make big money in minutes but if you fucked it up or you’re just plain unlucky then you can be thousands down before you know what’s hit you.’

‘I wouldn’t go near it myself. People betting fortunes on the number of throw-ins in the first half of a game.’

‘Yeah, well he lost alright and he lost pretty big; have-to-tell-the-wife-before-you-lose-your-house big.’

‘How much?’

‘Sixty.’

‘Sixty grand. Shit.’

‘That’s not all. He met some geezer down the pub who does spread betting on shares so then he got into that, trying to recoup his losses. He was putting a thousand pounds a point down, so if the share price went up a penny he was quids in and they did go up at first…’

‘Then it all went pear shaped. How much was he down when he finished?’ I asked.

‘Two hundred and thirty grand.’

‘Fucking hell,’

‘Yeah, cleaned him out mate. All the savings, everything he’d put away for that retirement pad in Spain. He had to take a second mortgage which he couldn’t afford.’

‘So he was fucked,’ I said, ‘unless he could find some money from somewhere and the only easy money going was the Drop – and with me on holiday he had his chance, didn’t he? To do one with the money.’

‘You’re putting two and two together and making five. I still don’t buy that. He wouldn’t just fuck off and leave Mandy. He’s hopeless without her, like a little kid,’ he shook his head for emphasis, ‘they’ve got a boy, he’s grown up now, but he’s not going to abandon his family is he? He’s not leaving her with all that debt and no house. Come on.’

‘Maybe you’re right but something’s happened. Perhaps Geordie Cartwright didn’t leave his clothes on the beach, but people do. Every day, people you wouldn’t expect just walk out of the door and never come back, leaving their family wondering what’s happened.’

The table rocked then, as a young lad who’d had one too many climbed out of the seat next to us and blundered into it on his way to the bog. A little of my beer got spilt and Miller’s coke would have been upended if he hadn’t deftly snaked out a hand and caught the glass before it toppled over. The young lad wasn’t a bit apologetic. Miller’s placid countenance didn’t alter much but I could see a change come over him. His brow furrowed into a frown as his eyes locked onto the offending teenager, ‘steady son,’ was all he said. He said it softly but his confident gaze was enough to wipe the smile straight off the youngster’s face. The lad was probably expecting to see fear in Miller’s eyes, not the self assurance of a man who had held his own around villains for thirty years.