Howard Linskey - The Drop

‘Of course,’ I said. He was teaching me to suck eggs but I understood. He was stressing out, making sure no detail was left to chance. I’d have done the same in his shoes. ‘I’ll get it there, no problem.’

‘Good, make sure you do.’

I spent Monday morning at our restaurant in the Quayside. I knew I’d get some peace there. I sat at a table before it opened to the public, making calls, sending members of our crew out on errands, following up leads and leaning on people, anybody I could think of who might know anything about Cartwright, however trivial. My meeting with Bobby had bought me some time but I knew I couldn’t relax, not until I’d got his money back, every penny.

The sun came out, shining through the big open windows, bathing the place. It was a lovely spot and Bobby hadn’t skimped on the décor; bright white linen tablecloths topped with outsized wine glasses and expensive flower arrangements, welcomed the diners, who could sink into soft leather banquette seating and chose from a wine list that had more pages than the phone book. This was about as classy as we got.

The place opened up around me and people started to wander in. It was quite busy for the beginning of the week; mostly business lunches by the look of it, but there were one or two well-heeled couples and some ladies who lunched.

I took calls from our guys as they reported back to me. Nobody had come up with anything new. No one knew anything about this mysterious Russian. One of the waitresses brought me a plate of halloumi and chorizo, some foccaccia and hummus and a glass of Sauvignon. She was a pretty little thing, neat in her crisp, white blouse, short black skirt and dark stockings, with her honey coloured hair tied back, not much make-up, natural looking, the way I like them.

‘Chef thought you might fancy a plate of something, Mister Blake?’ she said, then she smiled, ‘the wine was my idea.’

‘Tell the chef he’s a mind reader,’ I told her, ‘and you’re a darling.’

She gave me a big smile before she walked away. It was a nice little spread but I made sure I got through it quick before any of our crew caught me eating ‘poncy foreign food’. Most of our lads thought lasagne was exotic. Me? I’m different. I’m interested in good food and decent wine. One day, I’ll have enough money to open a restaurant like this myself, somewhere classy with a good chef and a respectable wine list, that you wouldn’t be ashamed to take your other half to on her birthday. Until that day though, well, as they say, this beats working for a living. Well, usually. Today was a bit different of course.

I was just finishing my lunch when in walked DS Sharp followed by a man I’d never seen before. He was a short, rotund guy in a long, black overcoat with a cheap grey suit beneath it, the collar of his white shirt slightly frayed. He was obviously one of those men who never looked entirely comfortable in a suit – that fact alone would probably prevent further promotion.

Sharp pointed me out. The shorter man walked up to me determinedly.

‘David Blake?’ he asked me, ‘Detective Inspector Clifford,’ he added sternly, with the unmistakeable accent of East London. He made sure he showed me his warrant card, holding it high enough for the other diners to satisfy their curiosity. It was a form of harassment I was used to and I was hardly going to be embarrassed by it, ‘you’ve probably heard, I’m the new kid on the block,’ I thought that was an odd description for a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a straggly little moustache that contained a greasy fragment of his breakfast. What was it with these two and their ‘taches?

‘No,’ I said, as if his arrival was of no consequence to me whatsoever.

‘Detective Sergeant Sharp you do know,’ he told me.

‘We’ve had the pleasure,’ we all shook hands. ‘Inspector,’ I said giving him my best hundred-watt smile, ‘would you like to join me for some lunch, your colleague too of course? This Sauvignon is excellent,’

‘No thank you Mister Blake,’ he said, like I had just offered him an all-expenses trip to the Bahamas in return for forgetting a murder I’d committed, ‘do you have somewhere for a private conversation?’ A bit rich, considering his very public entrance.

‘Of course,’ I assured him, ‘always happy to assist Northumbria’s finest.’

I led them into a poky little office out back and we sat around a desk normally used by the restaurant’s bookkeeper, ‘how can I help?’

‘By dispensing with the usual bullshit,’ he told me. He was leaning forward in his chair, an excitable sort who couldn’t wait to tell me what was on his mind.

I decided to play the genteel, slightly-incredulous suspect, the kind you might see on an episode of Inspector Morse . ‘I’m not sure if I follow Inspector.’ Sharp smirked slightly.

‘Heard of the Marshall brothers?’ he asked, ‘Don’t answer that, course you have.’

‘I think I may have read about them in the newspaper.’

‘I’ll bet you did,’ he nodded emphatically, ‘A lovely bust, that one. They’d ruled half of Manchester for donkey’s years, then, one day we took down one of their dealers for the third time. I mean, he was looking at more Porridge than Ronnie Barker.’

‘Use that joke a lot do you?’ I asked him.

He ignored me. ‘So he lays down for us and starts bleating; names, dates, places, money, grams and kilos. Yeah, they were shifting kilos, the cocky buggers. He gave us a name and we busted him, that bloke gave us a name and we busted him too, and so on, all the way up the big, long, greasy pole right to the very top. You see, nobody wants to be the only one doing life. You’d have to be a right mug, so you sneak on the guy who’s giving you orders and taking home more money than you for less risk, in theory,’ he added the ‘in theory’ like it was darkly significant, ‘there’s a kind of resentment that we find quite easy to tap into. Before you know it we’d got all the lieutenants, knocked them down one by one like dominoes, till the Marshalls had no one left to do their dirty work for them. Then we came after the brothers, see. Did you hear what they got in the end?’

‘Ninety-nine years.’

‘You do remember,’ he said triumphantly.

‘Of course, he had a good eye for the headlines the old “hanging judge”. I thought at the time it was quite a coincidence how his carefully considered sentences all added up neatly to ninety-nine years.’

‘Terry Marshall got thirty-two years,’ and he whistled like he was impressed, ‘minimum recommendation was twenty-five. The judge may have liked headlines but he had a good sense of humour an’ all. There’s Terry standing in the dock at his age and he says “I can’t do all that time” meaning he is going to be long dead by the end of his sentence and do you know what the judge said. “Do your best,” and DI Clifford laughed until he almost choked. “Do your best?” You should have seen the look on poor Terry’s little face. I mean imagine it, you’ve robbed and thieved and battered and murdered till you are at the top of the whole shitty pile and how do you spend your last days; sharing a tiny cell for twenty-three hours a day with a mugger and a rapist until you finally die. He’s got to be asking himself every hour of every day what was it all for?’ he paused to let that sink in, ‘that’s how it ends for people like him – but it doesn’t have to be like that for everybody who works for the top boys.’ He leaned forward like he was sharing a conspiracy with me. ‘You know Bobby Mahoney is on a list don’t you? I mean right at the top of that list, along with a few cockneys, a couple of Scousers and some Jocks I could mention.’