Howard Linskey - The Drop

And to think I’d even felt sorry for him lying there with a bullet in his brain. It turned out Tommy Gladwell just saved me a job. Finding another accountant wasn’t going to be hard. They were ten a penny, especially bent ones. I just had to make sure the next one was more scared of me than the law.

Well, there would be no trials now, what with the chief witness for the prosecution disappearing like that. It made me realise that if, Tommy Gladwell hadn’t come along we would have carried on obliviously for a few more months, until the fateful day when we were all nicked. It made you think.

A couple of days later, I read a lead article in The Times about the Serious Organised Crime Agency and its woeful record since its inception at great public cost. The British FBI had completely failed in its quest to bring to justice the country’s top 130 ‘crime lords’, including Bobby. The article cited a top heavy management structure, overburdened bureaucracy and inefficient systems, leading to collapsing morale and an exodus of officers. It was nice to know we were not the only ones with troubles.

There was a period of transition. The word had to slowly get round that the personnel may have changed but the organisation was intact, rejuvenated in fact, by new blood. I made sure the people who mattered all knew where the authority now lay to do business with us.

The new organisation was tighter and more ruthless. Our whole outlook was geared around making sure that what was done to Bobby and Finney could never happen to us. We increased the muscle, used Kinane and his sons, plus the boys from their gym. They weren’t greedy and they owed me for elevating them; most of the time they seemed pretty grateful just to be out of the wilderness.

I gave a lot of responsibility to Palmer. After all, he’d come good against the Russians so I owed him and he showed no signs of wanting to be boss. He didn’t need the hassle – but then I used to say that too, so I would be keeping a closer eye on him in future.

Before I left, he told me, ‘there’s a rumour doing the rounds that Jerry Lemon underestimated you. Word on the street is you had him killed because he showed you up in front of everybody down at the snooker hall. They say you are not a man to be fucked with.’

I did nothing to contradict that rumour.

I also gave more responsibility to Hunter, because he’d done well when I’d needed him and he knew where the bodies were buried, or at least where the pigs lived that ate the bodies. I made sure all of these men had plenty of money in their pockets, and jobs that made them feel like a face around town. I paid better than Bobby. It was my insurance against the kind of resentful, blind ambition that brought down Bobby Mahoney after nearly thirty years as king of the Midden.

It made my brother. Whatever self respect he’d lost on that battlefield, he got back when I put him in charge of some of our dirty laundry. People started seeing him round the city in our clubs and casinos but this time he’d had a haircut and a shave, was dressed in a smart jacket and he laid off the sauce. He tidied himself up big style and the next time he was in one of our lap dancing bars, the girls were throwing themselves at him because they knew he was my brother. I even persuaded him to move out of his shit hole of a flat and take over my old apartment. After all, I wouldn’t be needing it where I was going.

If they needed advice we used web phones, so much more secure than mobiles or landlines, or someone flew out to see me. Kinane, Palmer, Hunter and Danny took it in turns so the authorities wouldn’t become too suspicious of any frequent flyers. I came back to Newcastle from time to time to oversee things but it was deliberately infrequent and it became less and less over time. I’d set the thing up and told them what to do, how to handle themselves with the police, other villains, our employees, everything. If they did what I told them it would be sweet and the money would continue to roll in, just so long as they remembered my cut, same time every month, regular as clockwork. Another Drop that was never to be forgotten.

Before I left the country, Detective Inspector Clifford hauled me in for a chat. I went voluntarily with my solicitor. She sat next to me in the interview room. We were complying with a request to assist the police with their enquiries. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help.

‘I am obviously aware that Bobby Mahoney has disappeared,’ I told Clifford and his tape recorder, ‘and it is deeply upsetting to me that my former employer, a respectable businessman after all, has vanished into thin air like this, but I have heard that hundreds of people go missing every year for no apparent reason.’

‘You’re trying to tell me that Bobby Mahoney has cracked up, lost the plot and gone walkabout?’ asked Clifford, while Sharp sat stone-faced beside him. Nothing ever came from that Police Complaints Commission visit. It wasn’t even about Sharp. Like I’d told him, he’d been worrying about nothing.

‘I think it just goes to show how little you really know anyone,’ I said. ‘Have you called the homeless hostels in London, just in case? It might be a good place to start?’

‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘Inspector, my client has attended this interview voluntarily,’ my solicitor reminded him, ‘he is merely trying to assist you in your missing person’s enquiry.’

‘It’s not a missing persons enquiry, it’s a murder investigation.’ His face was turning puce again, ‘one of the rumours doing the rounds on the streets of this fair city is that Bobby Mahoney is in fact dead and that a person or persons unknown is now running his empire.’

‘Indeed, well, where is the body?’ asked my solicitor and Inspector Clifford looked even more irritated.

He turned his disparaging gaze back onto me. ‘So, what are you going to do, now that your employer has apparently fucked off?’

‘I am in the fortunate position that Mister Mahoney’s daughter is overseeing the family business for now, until we have news of his safe whereabouts. She has asked me to remain as Group Sales and Marketing Director, in the medium term, to assist her.’

‘Sales and M… ’ he clenched his teeth and shook his head, ‘so I take it you have no knowledge of another missing person’s case we are working on?’

‘I’d be glad to help of course but I’m not sure how…’

‘A gangster from Glasgow called Tommy Gladwell, his wife and two bodyguards have also mysteriously vanished into thin air around the same time that Bobby Mahoney went AWOL. The difference being, we found blood on the ground outside his home.’

‘I can’t help you there Inspector. I’m afraid I’ve never met any gangsters, let alone one from Glasgow.’

The Inspector took a deep breath and I got the impression it was only the presence of my eminently respectable, female solicitor that was keeping him from leaning over and smashing my face into the table.

‘Perhaps I can get your opinion on a little matter closer to home then,’ he persisted. ‘How about the violent turf war that has erupted on the Sunnydale estate?’

‘Oh, this I do know all about,’ I assured him.

‘You do?’ he seemed surprised.

‘Yes, after all it has been on the front pages of both The Evening Chronicle and The Journal , a dreadful business. I believe it involved the abduction and murder of some established heroin dealers. The reporter from The Journal said you suspected some sort of vigilante group?’

‘Do we fuck,’ he hissed, ‘it was your lot. We are not bloody stupid.’

At this point my solicitor interjected, ‘can I once again remind you that my client is a company director who has never even been charged with, much less convicted of, any crime.’