Howard Linskey - The Drop

Finney smirked to himself at that. He was clearly enjoying his day. I drove for a little while then a thought struck me, ‘why does Barry get called Maggot in the first place?’

Finney thought for a moment, ‘cos he’s a fucking maggot,’ ‘Fair enough.’

Our next stop was across the river in Gateshead; the Railway arches and an appointment with Mickey Hunter. The arches all had solid metal doors on them, emblazoned with the names of the small businesses that operated out of the offices and workshops within. If you could stand the noise and vibration from the trains that went whizzing overhead you could get a very good deal on premises right by the city.

Hunter ran a little body shop that knocked dents out of cars, put new bumpers and bonnets on for you if you’d had a smash, and might stretch to a respray, if you had the cash and didn’t mind him not declaring it. There was always a demand for low maintenance, cheap repair work and it was a lovely cover for his real business. That’s why he could afford to undercut the main dealers.

‘He wanted a piece.’ Hunter told me as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He was sitting back in his chair in the garage’s tiny office, which overlooked three dilapidated cars that were all being worked on at once by blokes in grease-stained overalls. Our conversation was constantly being interrupted by the high pitched squeal as wheel nuts were unscrewed, then an angle grinder screamed as someone sorted out some body work. Mickey wore overalls too but I never saw him getting his hands dirty. He was a tall, stocky bloke in his late forties and his dark hair was flecked with grey. He was also a bit boss-eyed. You wouldn’t notice at first. It was only when he was talking to you and was meant to be looking right at you that, instead, you suddenly realised he was staring at a space somewhere above your right shoulder. It wasn’t his fault his eye was a bit out of sinc but it made him look decidedly shifty nonetheless. Hunter had been with Bobby since he was a teenage tearaway, nicking cars, re-spraying them and selling them on. Now he was the firm’s quarter-master.

‘Geordie Cartwright wanted a gun?’ I still couldn’t believe it. I’d never even known him fire a gun much less carry one around with him, ‘what kind?’

‘Handgun,’ he said, ‘a Sig Sauer, one of those flashy pistols the cops have in the States.’

‘I know what a Sig Sauer is. Did you get him one?’

‘Of course.’

‘On whose say-so?’

‘Well,’ he looked at me dumbly, ‘yours.’

‘Mine?’

‘He said you’d asked him to get a piece in case things got a bit hairy down south like.

‘He said what?’

‘That’s what he said. You mean you didn’t… ’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t.’

‘Christ, I’m really sorry man,’ he told the wall behind me, ‘but it sounded legit. I mean I’ve known Cartwright as long as I’ve known any of you and, well I mean, why would he lie?’

‘That’s the big question,’ I wasn’t really annoyed with Hunter. It’s not as if we have written orders or signed requisition sheets for his bent weaponry, and he could hardly phone me on a land line and say ‘is it true you asked Geordie Cartwright to get tooled up in case you had a spot of bother with some southerners?’ We didn’t work like that. A lot of what we did, strangely enough in our game, was based on trust, that and the fear of a sickening retribution afterwards if you were caught doing something that was against Bobby’s interests. So what would drive a mild bloke like George Cartwright to get a Sig Sauer from our armourer and collect the Drop all on his own?

‘When was this? What time?’

‘Last Monday afternoon… No, Tuesday; I remember because the Toon were playing their cup replay that night and we were talking about it. We didn’t think they’d get a result… And of course they didn’t… They were knocked out… So we were right like.’

I held up a hand, ‘yeah, yeah, did he say anything else? Was there anything odd about the way he was handling himself?’

‘Well he seemed a bit distracted I suppose, looking back on it.’

And I understood why he was distracted. He was scared -but what would scare him so much he needed a gun? Answer that question and we were closer to the truth. Whatever it was, the gun hadn’t done him any good in the end of course. Geordie Cartwright still wound up dead.

The massage parlour was an understated little building that looked like a doctor’s surgery, perched at the end of a residential street in an area that was almost but not quite the suburbs. Its frosted glass windows and discreet signage, which indicated it was the place to go to with a sports injury, was intended to ensure no one objected too much to its presence.

I didn’t know what the neighbours really thought about having a knocking shop on their doorstep but they didn’t make too much of a fuss about it. The whole operation was designed to be as discreet as possible, to avoid attracting the attention of the police or any self-appointed moral guardians in the neighbourhood.

To be fair, we ran a good, clean operation. All the girls were volunteers and there was absolutely no trafficking of any kind. We only put willing lasses into jobs like that. The police knew it was a brothel, everybody did, but they didn’t give a shit.

I walked in first, so as not to startle Barry Hennessy, aka Maggot, but it looked like he wasn’t there. Instead we were met by Elaine, our housekeeper. She took the bookings, vetted the clients as they walked in and looked after the girls, making sure they were all right, earning money and paying us our proper cut. It was 30 quid to get through the door, which included the straightforward massage, not that anyone ever wanted just that. The rest was negotiable with the girls but a basic service, including a BJ and a shag would set you back another £100, which was cheaper than dinner for two in a lot of Newcastle’s restaurants these days. The girls kicked another £20 back to the house, so we took 50 quid for providing them with a safe, secure environment where they wouldn’t get beaten up, ripped off or arrested for soliciting. They took home £80 a punter and with a steady stream of clients they could earn upwards of £300 a shift. Put another way, that’s £60,000 to £70,000 a year for lasses who would rather be doing this than earning minimum wage on a check-out till.

The girls here weren’t drug addicts or nymphomaniacs. They were paying off debts their no-account blokes had left them with, putting themselves through college or bringing up their kids, feeding and clothing them, and they were doing okay but it wasn’t exactly Pretty Woman. It’s not what I’d have called easy work having some fat, sweaty Herbert lying on top of you and it certainly wasn’t for everyone but they didn’t have to do it. They could leave whenever they liked. We never held a gun to anyone’s head or kept anybody against their will and they weren’t that hard to replace.

‘He not in?’ I asked Elaine.

‘He was,’ she replied, ‘I’ll fetch him,’ she wandered away down the corridor and we watched her go. Just as she reached the end I saw Maggot coming the other way. He clocked us, spotted Finney and his eyes went wild then he turned round and pegged it. Whatever Finney had done to him last time, Maggot wasn’t up for a repeat performance.

‘Maggot!’ I shouted, ‘don’t fucking run. Christ.’ I took off after him. Finney was the hardest man on our books but he was no athlete. He wouldn’t be able to catch Maggot when he was pegging it away like the devil himself was after him.

I tore down the corridor and Elaine flattened herself against the wall as I hurtled by. I went through a door that had a little lounge area beyond it. No sign of Maggot. Two bored-looking girls in smart black cocktail dresses were sitting there sipping tea, waiting for their next John. We didn’t want them sitting round in their skimpies. It made the place look less respectable. They looked up and I was about to ask them which way Maggot was headed when, ahead of me, a door banged and I ran on down a little flight of stairs that led to the showers, sauna, jacuzzi and the tiny rooms the girls took their clients into.