Howard Linskey - The Drop

‘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.’