Howard Linskey - The Drop

I’d known having our own van with the council’s logo on it had been a good idea. Now I just hoped I’d given the right order. Hopefully Palmer just lifted someone who’d soon be telling us who he was working for and what was going on. Then we’d finally know who was behind the murders of Jerry Lemon and Geordie Cartwright. Either that or we were about to torture an innocent civilian on my say-so based on little more than a hunch. I tried not to think about that as I drove away.

Palmer called in and I told him to take the guy to a lock-up we used, then get Finney over to scare the hell out of him. I didn’t think Bobby would mind sparing Finney if he thought it might lead to a breakthrough. I went back to the Cauldron and waited for Palmer to call me again.

When he rang, I asked him if Finney was on it. ‘I’ve called him a few times but he’s not picking up,’ he told me, his voice unconcerned. This didn’t sound good to me. Finney was normally reliable when it came to that sort of thing.

‘Shit,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry,’ Palmer assured me, ‘you want the fear of God putting into this prick, right?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Then leave it to me.’

I waited a couple of hours at the club. I ate a meal, trying not to think about the imaginative methods Palmer was going to employ on our grey-haired stranger to get him to talk. Did I have sympathy for him? No. He’d been following me around, noting my movements. He might even have been the guy who’d told Weasel-face I’d be at the match when he broke into my apartment and almost killed me.

I’d long finished lunch when my mobile vibrated into life again. It was Palmer.

‘He’s copped for it,’ he told me calmly, though he sounded a little out of breath, ‘the whole story. You are going to want to hear this.’

‘Good,’ I said, ‘keep him there.’

‘Oh he’s not going anywhere,’ he assured me.

‘Did he give you a name?’ I asked impatiently, ‘did he tell you who?’

‘Yes he did,’ and Palmer proceeded to tell me the whole bloody tale. I didn’t say a word. I just listened. When he’d finished I thanked him and said, ‘there’s something else I need from you, well, from him.’

‘Name it.’

‘There’s someone on the inside. Somebody’s been handing our organisation to these bastards one bit of information at a time. They couldn’t have known so much just by following us around for a few weeks. Get me a name. Who’s their man on the inside?’

‘You’ve got it,’ he said

I got straight to my feet, my heart thumping with a combination of anger, adrenalin and dread. I now knew what was going on. Our enemy finally had a face and a name. I had to get to Bobby quickly. Things were about to get rough.

On my way out of the club I dialled Bobby’s mobile and it rang out. ‘Pick up the phone Bobby,’ I said aloud. I was walking quickly and I pressed the key for the Merc. It bleeped a couple of times to show it recognised me. I ended the call and tried to dial Finney before I reached the car. It rang eight times without any answer. I hung up and, as I did so, my phone rang.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘It’s me,’ it was Sharp, ‘I’ve been making calls like you said and I think I’ve finally turned something up.’ Unsurprisingly, he seemed eager to please after our last meeting.

‘And?’

‘A big Russian bloke with a shaved head rented a farmhouse out in the sticks. It sleeps half a dozen people and you know, I thought, how many groups of big Russian blokes can there be on their holibobs in Tyneside.’

‘That’s them alright.’

He gave me the address.

‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘while you’re on I need another address. It’ll be easier to find but you can’t give it to any one who’ll want to link it back to you later, so don’t use your police computer.’

There was a pause while he digested my meaning. ‘Name?’ he asked. I told him.

I was almost back to my car when I phoned Palmer again and gave him the address Sharp had supplied for the Russians.

‘You’re going to be working this weekend,’ I replied.

‘What’s the plan boss?’ he asked nonchalantly.

‘Wait till I have a word with Bobby,’ I told him.

‘Fair enough.’

I hung up and opened the door of the car. I was about to climb in when two huge blokes suddenly appeared from nowhere. One blocked the door I was about to open and the other appeared from behind me. I hadn’t heard a thing and they were on me so fast I couldn’t even think about walking away. They were both big guys with shaven heads. They looked exactly like the guys who’d steamed into Benny the doorman. The same guys who’d murdered Jerry and George. I was trapped.

I knew immediately that I was fucked. I’d been stupid and careless. I was so exhilarated that I’d landed grey hair, so full of my own clever-clogs instinct that I’d parked my car in a side street by the club. That was fine in daylight, but by the time I’d walked out again it was dark and there was no one around. I’d made it easy for them.

The guy behind me pressed a gun into my side, ‘get in the car,’ he ordered me in heavily-accented English. He sounded Russian alright.

Instinctively I looked about me for help or some way to escape but there was no one else around and I could hardly call out. It would have been the last sound I ever made, ‘don’t be stupid,’ he told me, ‘now get in before we hurt you. You drive.’

So I got in. What option did I have?

It was all I could do to start the car, my hands were shaking so bad. My mind was racing as I tried to work out what they wanted from me, where they were taking me and what they intended to do to me when we got there.

If they planned to drive me to a remote spot and kill me like George Cartwright, I would rather at least try to get away now. Smashing the moving car into oncoming traffic or a lamp post at speed seemed about the only option left to me. I didn’t fancy my chances of hurting these two like that without seriously damaging myself in the process but I knew I might not come up with a better plan. It crossed my mind that if they’d wanted me dead, they could have easily killed me in the quiet side street. So, I was still alive and I told myself that was a good thing, as I edged the car away from the club and out into the traffic.

‘Don’t do anything crazy,’ the same guy told me, ‘ve vont to talk, that’s all.’

All very reassuring except I’d used that line myself on people Bobby wanted a little word with – and some of them had ended up face down in the Tyne with their fingers missing. The Russian said they didn’t want to kill me but his word meant nothing. There really are worse things than death.

They drove me through the city and out the other side, telling me when to turn and, though they didn’t explain where we were going, it worried me they hadn’t bothered to blindfold me or shove me in the boot. I wondered why they weren’t concerned about me knowing where I was going. Maybe I wouldn’t be coming back.

The place was another disused factory. It looked lifeless, like it hadn’t produced anything for months, another victim of the downturn.

There was a Porsche Cayenne with blacked-out windows parked outside. They made me stop by a pair of big metal doors then pushed me out of the car. They took my phone and my wallet and shoved me forwards through those same doors, which clanged shut behind me. I was now in a large, windowless room, but the electricity was still connected and I blinked at the bright strip lights above me.

There, in the middle of the room, stood a familiar figure. Tommy Gladwell, Arthur Gladwell’s oldest boy, was smiling at me, looking about as pleased with himself as it was possible to be. He had the other two big Russians with him. Palmer had managed to get the right story out of the bloke we’d lifted at the gym. Whatever my man from the SAS had done to him, it had worked. He had told Palmer everything and suddenly it all made sense to me; Weasel-face and the Glasgow connection, even Tommy’s black eye. It wasn’t tired old Arthur Gladwell, the king of his city, who’d been gunning for us. It was Tommy, his eldest lad, the prince-in-waiting who’d grown tired of the wait. He was a gangster without an empire, too impatient to stand by until his dad finally croaked. He needed his own city to run, so now he was taking ours.