Howard Linskey: The Drop

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Is it? Tommy Gladwell may have been a fool but he was a fool from the old school. He knew how things worked. Because of his old man, he knew all about the Drop. He knew who you were and how you operated. He wasn’t so stupid he wouldn’t come and see you first with his business plan because he’d know if you were against him right from the start he’d have no chance. You weren’t going to sit back and let our money slip through your fingers. What did he promise you, eh? A nice big chunk of wedge for yourself, with none of it kicked upstairs? It would have to be that or you wouldn’t run the risk of losing our business, but your employers wouldn’t see it that way, would they? The whole point of our arrangement is that you are supposed to be on our side and they know that. You have gone decidedly off-piste Amrein, I must say.’

He was looking well rattled by this stage, ‘that’s crazy. I don’t know who’s been… ’

‘Shut up.’ I put my hand firmly on his shoulder then and he couldn’t help it, he looked out of the corner of his eye, searching in vain for his bodyguard, knowing he’d been a fool, suckered by the friendly lunch, the amiable chit-chat from the deferential young man and the increased Drop. Now he knew he’d been conned. I could end him here before his bodyguard got anywhere near him. For all he knew, Kinane and Palmer had killed his guys already. ‘Don’t shit yourself Amrein, I’m not going to kill you. If I was I wouldn’t waste my breath talking to you like this, I’d just do it. I’m planning to work with you. I just want to make sure you never forget who you are dealing with, ever. I’m a bit sharper than you think, see. Anyone ever comes to you again wanting to take over our business, you send them packing without any encouragement, then you call me and tell me all about it, straight away, no delays or I’ll hold it against you later,’ he didn’t interrupt. ‘If you don’t, I’ll win anyway because I know my city and I’m cleverer than all of the others. When we’ve won and they’re dead, there’ll be no more Drop. I’ll leave you to explain that to the people you kick the money upstairs to. If they don’t kill you, I’ll come looking for you,’ I gripped his shoulder more firmly and leant in close, ‘and Amrein, I will find you, wherever you go.’

He had gone pale and there was a light sheen of sweat on his forehead.

‘You got that?’ I demanded.

‘Of course,’ he swallowed before he said it. He looked well nervous. I knew he prided himself on keeping a good distance from anything bloody. Like a general, he gave out the orders that lead to men dying but he never had to do it himself or witness any of it. I used to be like that myself I supposed. What had Jerry Lemon called me? A plastic gangster, so I knew the impact violence and fear can have on a man like Amrein.

‘Good,’ I nodded my satisfaction, released my grip from his shoulder and actually patted him on the cheek, like he’d been a good little boy listening to Daddy. ‘I’m glad you feel that way,’ I concluded, ‘because I wouldn’t want to see you end up like him,’ and I nodded towards the summer house.

Amrein peered at the summer house, trying to work out what I was on about. He walked a little closer, squinting into the sunshine through those wire framed spectacles. It took him a moment or two to make out the dark shadow through the glass. Then I heard him shout ‘Jesus Christ!’

‘One last thing,’ I told him, ‘that story you gave me about having a man in HUMINT who knew we had somebody ratting to SOCA but not who it was. That was bullshit. I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now. If he knew we had a rat he’d know who it was. You kept the name back to make me go looking for him. To distract me, while Gladwell was coming after us.’

I wasn’t certain but it looked like a little dark patch had formed on the groin of his expensively tailored trousers.

‘I want that name and I want the proof. Let’s call it a gesture of good faith. You’ve got one week.’

I walked away then, back across that enormous lawn with the birds chirruping happily in the trees above me, leaving Amrein still staring at the summer house where Tommy Gladwell’s severed head sat neatly on the sill, peering back at him through the window.

Iphoned Arthur Gladwell on the morning of his son’s memorial service. ‘How did you get this number?’ he asked me. He sounded in a state.

‘Doesn’t matter how I got it. Do you know who you are talking to?’ We’d not met that often and he was unlikely to remember my voice.

There was a long pause before he finally admitted, ‘No.’

‘No but I know everything about you. It’s Tommy’s memorial today but you’ve got other sons, daughters, grandchildren… ’ He didn’t utter a word while I told him the names and addresses of everyone that was near and dear to him, right down to the nursery his youngest grandchild went to four mornings a week. I had to hand it to Sharp. He’d done a thorough job.

‘How do you want to end this?’ he asked me when I was done, his voice breaking.

‘It’s already over. I just want to make sure you understand that. Your son’s dead because he was stupid. He thought he could come down here and take over a long established concern but Bobby wasn’t having it. Stay out of our city Gladwell – or we’ll kill your whole family, including the grandbairns, and no one will ever find your body either. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ he said softly.

And I hung up.

It was a German Shepherd that finally found the body. A bloke out walking his dog told the police and his local paper that the dead man had a badly scarred face and a needle sticking out of his arm. Everyone agreed it was just another sad but unsurprising case of a junkie, so far out of it he’d taken too much for his poor little body to cope with. The newspapers duly reported the death of a career-criminal called Andrew Stone, a professional burglar who had accidentally killed himself with heroin. They did include a quote from a so-called friend who swore blind that Stone had never touched heroin before. This friend even suspected foul play, but the tone of the article made it clear the reporter didn’t believe such a farfetched theory. The gist of the article being, it was never too late to become an addict and the results were almost always tragic. Andrew Stone’s death was just another senseless, drug related tragedy in the squalid tenements of Glasgow.

A week later, Amrein delivered the name we were looking for, along with incontrovertible, documented proof lifted from the files of SOCA itself; the name of our rat.

I looked at it and did a double take, then I felt a little surge of relief. At least we were spared another execution. Northam, our harmless, little bent accountant was going to shop us all. Apparently he had failed to keep up with the times and SOCA managed to trace some of his dodgy international cash transfers, as they went from an uncaring bank in Luxembourg to a blind-eye-turning clearing house in the Caymans and finally arrived, laundered more times than a whore-house bed-sheet, into an account run by every criminal’s favourite accomplice in Geneva. You’ve got to love the Swiss. If their bank accounts were good enough for the Nazis then, they were good enough for us. A bank that welcomes Herman Goering is hardly going to blanch at the prospect of Bobby Mahoney as a client.

Trouble was, the investigators were getting a little smarter and we should have kept up. Once they were able to prove to Northam he was ruined, he rolled over like he was having his tummy tickled, offering to tell them everything; names, dates, places and amounts, everything a judge and jury could ask for. He’d have sent us all down to save his own arse. Fucking accountants.