‘Absolutely,’ I said.
‘So he’s seen it all before, hasn’t he?’ she hesitated, keeping the robe pressed tightly against her young body, but her eyebrows knitted together in a frown that told me she was unsure how she should be behaving. ‘Hasn’t he?’ he repeated. Mark tutted at her like she was being a silly girl then asked patiently, ‘what would Keeley Hazell do?’
She smiled then, blushed, giggled and finally dropped the robe, standing in front of me in all her Page-three-hopeful, naked glory. ‘That’s better,’ he told her and, all of a sudden, she seemed to be enjoying the exposure. She blew air out of the corner of her upturned bottom lip, disturbing a wisp of blonde hair over her forehead, put her hands on her hips and stood straight so there wasn’t an inch of her I couldn’t see, then she did a self-conscious little wiggle from side to side. ‘Good girl,’ he told her then turned to me, ‘I think Kayleigh here has got everything it takes to go all the way.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ I told them. She beamed at us both, the silly cow.
‘And he ought to know,’ said Miller and somehow we both managed to look serious. ‘Nearly done mate, why don’t you just take a seat for a minute.’
I waited till he shot another roll of film while young Kayleigh stood there and posed. She tried to look serious, then pouted like a naughty schoolgirl, then adopted what she presumably thought was a coquettish pose and all on Miller’s instructions. He asked her to raise an arm, cup a breast, roll her nipples between her fingers to make them hard then stick out her tongue at the camera and laugh like he was the funniest guy she had ever seen. He even got her to bend forwards over the arm of the sofa so her bum was up in the air and her face was practically buried in the cushions. That way she couldn’t see he was no longer looking at the camera, just pointing it at her bare arse. He shot pictures one-handed while winking at me, silently laughing and giving me the thumbs up.
‘Thanks love,’ he said when he was done, ‘you were brilliant. I tell you what, that Keeley Hazell will be shitting herself,’ she laughed as she pulled up her knickers and put on her jeans. When she’d gone, he said, ‘that last roll was just for you, you did realise.’
‘I guessed as much. Interesting hobby you’ve got there Mark.’
‘Hobby?’ he asked, ‘bit more than a hobby. It brings in the money, which is always much needed round here I can tell you. I can’t retire early on what Bobby pays me you know.’
‘Yeah? How much do you have to shell out to get a lass like that stark naked then? And what will you get for the photos?’
He laughed, ‘No mate, you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t pay them. They pay me.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘No, think about it. There are hundreds of young lasses all over Newcastle who’ve got big tits and they all think they’re going to be the next big glamour model but they don’t know how to go about it. Then they see my advert in their local paper; ‘professional modelling portfolios artistically created to your specification’, a snip at just £350.’
‘Three-fifty?’ I whistled.
‘I know,’ and he chuckled.
‘And has young Kayleigh got what it takes?’
‘In my considered professional opinion?’ I nodded. ‘Has she fuck. Got legs like a giraffe, she’s too top-heavy in the breast department, they’ll be sagging before she’s twenty and she has a smile like a frightened rabbit caught having a dump in the woods.’
‘Yet you told her she was gonna be a star. Shameless.’
‘Who am I to destroy a young girl’s dreams? That’ll come soon enough. At least this way she’ll have something to show her grandkids.’
‘A bunch of pictures with her arse in the air?’
‘Yeah,’ and he put on a dumb voice, ‘I used to be a mod-dull.’
‘Looking on the bright side, she gave you a cheap thrill at least.’
‘Oh yeah, definitely but she don’t mind,’ he laughed, ‘she did at first but I said I was gay.’
‘Unbelievable.’
‘I told her I’m immune to fanny. “Think of me like your family doctor,” I told her and she took her clothes off, easy as you like.’ He clicked his fingers to illustrate how quick she’d been to shed her knickers in pursuit of fame. ‘Ironic isn’t it. Some poor young bloke’ll blow a month’s wages tonight, buying her drinks so she’ll let him put his hand up her top. Look at me, I’m just an old git yet I saw the lot - and she’s paying me!’ and he laughed like it was the best joke ever, and maybe it was.
As soon as I told Miller why I was there, he stopped laughing, ‘I heard about it,’ he admitted as he handed me a mug of tea. We were sitting at a table in the studio. ‘Been worried. I know it sounds a bit lame but me and Geordie Cartwright go back a lot of years. He’s a good lad. We used to take our boys to play football on Sunday mornings. He’d be there in all weathers,’ he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what the world had become. ‘So what have you heard?’
‘The same as you,’ I said, ‘Cartwright’s gone missing.’
‘With some of Bobby’s money,’ he added, so the word was already out. Shit.
‘Yeah,’ there was no point denying it.
‘Jesus,’ he said.
‘Won’t help him if he’s taken it,’ I assured him.
‘It’s got to be a misunderstanding,’ he said with conviction and I just looked at him. ‘I know but he isn’t like that is he, not Cartwright? He wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t have the nerve to cross Bobby.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ I assured him without pointing out that the alternative was probably worse for Cartwright, as it was more than likely he’d be dead already. At least if he had stolen Bobby’s money he had a chance of getting away with it; a very small chance but a chance nonetheless.
‘What have you heard about Geordie and this Russian?’
‘Come again?’
I shrugged, ‘I heard he’d done some business with a Russian, that’s all.’ I was stretching it a bit but I wanted to see how it would play, ‘wondered what you knew about it?’
‘Sorry mate,’ he said simply, ‘not heard that one,’
Miller was pretty helpful though and I didn’t leave empty-handed. He gave me a sizeable list of names to look up and places to check. Surely one of them would have a lead on Geordie. The drive out here had been worth it.
‘Good luck,’ he told me, ‘and I mean it. Geordie Cartwright’s a gent. I hope he’s alright.’
‘So do I Mark,’ I said, ‘so do I.’
I spent the rest of the day and most of the night getting round Miller’s names with Finney. It was the same wherever we went. Nobody had seen Cartwright. Nobody knew what he’d been planning. We were drawing a complete blank.
More in hope than expectation, we called in on Jerry Lemon. I thought he must have heard something. He went back as far as any of Bobby’s crew, had known the big man for years, Cartwright too. He was one of Bobby’s originals. Unfortunately he was also a complete tosser but I was hoping loyalty to Bobby might prompt him to help me. I was badly wrong.
Jerry operated out of a pool & snooker hall, imaginatively named ‘Lemons’. There was a big wooden sign over the front door which had two crossed snooker cues and two lemons painted on it, above his name. Clearly Jerry was a marketing genius.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ he said loud and aggressively and a lot of people in the room started to pay attention, which was exactly what the big mouth had intended. The great man was holding court. He was dressed in a style of bleached jeans that went out of fashion around 1985 and a T-shirt with no arms that showed off his bulging biceps and fading tatts. He went back to his shot, missing an easy pot into the middle pocket, which made me realise he was pissed.
‘A quiet word, if it’s alright with you.’
‘No, it’s not alright with me. Can’t you see I’m playing pool? I thought you were supposed to be the clever one Davey. If you want to say something to me, say it now, I’ve nothing to hide.’
The place was half full of the old villains and apprentice wannabes Jerry liked to have hanging round in case he could find a use for them. He was a regular Fagin and his tales of the old days always had them hanging on his every word, which he loved.
‘I never said you did Jerry. I wanted to speak to you about our mutual friend,’ I wasn’t going to mention Cartwright’s name out loud in here.
‘ “Our Mutual Friend”, that’s Dickens that is,’ he was very pleased with himself, ‘bet you didn’t think I knew that. Well, you’re not the only one round here who’s read a book. You mean Cartwright I suppose. How long has Bobby given you to find his money eh, until Monday wasn’t it?’
‘Jerry,’ I said his name as a warning.
‘Don’t you try and shut me up in my own place,’ he told me, straightening and pointing his cue at me, ‘you’ve got no chance. You don’t know what you’re doing, you never have done. If you did you wouldn’t be down here wasting my time, you’d be out looking for the real guilty party.’
‘I know you don’t like me much these days Jerry, but can we not put that to one side while we try to find Cartwright?’
‘Correction,’ he told me, ‘I have never liked you son. I don’t even know who you are.’
‘You’ve known me for years.’
‘What do I know? That your name is David Blake and you appeared out of the blue one day and next thing I know you’re part of the crew. You set yourself up fair with Bobby while we weren’t looking. You kissed his arse and all of a sudden you’d risen through the ranks while better men made their money the hard way, on the doors of Bobby’s clubs. Well, we don’t want any of that whiz kid stuff around here. Cartwright’s gone missing? Tough, that’s your responsibility, you find him. The Drop’s gone? Tough, it’s your fault so it’s your arse on the line and when Bobby finally realises you’re all mouth and no action, no one will be laughing harder than me. You’re a plastic gangster and you’re going to get what you deserve boy. Your big words and your bullshit won’t help you. You’re shitting it aren’t you? Well you should be, you cocky little fucker. You’re gonna learn what it means to be a face in this city. It’s not just about wearing a sharp suit and getting the best table in the restaurant. I’ll bet Finney here can’t wait to get to work on you. Isn’t that right Finney?’
It would have been better for me if Finney had said something at this point, anything really - though I was actually hoping he would tell Jerry Lemon to shut his big mouth - but it didn’t happen. His silence told me everything I needed to know about the accuracy of Jerry’s little prediction. Everyone was waiting for Bobby’s cocky young protégé to come crashing down.
‘Thanks Jerry,’ I told him quietly, ‘you’ve been a big help,’ and I walked towards the exit, all the while wondering if he was going to break his cue over my head. Finney ambled after me. It must have looked like I was being followed by the Grim Reaper.
When I reached the door I turned back. Jerry Lemon was still watching me intently, every eye in the room was on me. I gave him what I hoped looked like a faintly amused, half smile. ‘I’m glad you like my suit Jerry.’
EIGHT
...................................................
Eventually Finney left me on my own. So I went for a couple of drinks in Akenside Traders, right at the bottom of the hill on the Quayside. Miller was sitting at a table when I walked in. It could have been a coincidence but he knew I called in there for a pint sometimes, mainly because the place had nothing to do with us, so I wondered if he was hoping to bump into me. Maybe he had something else to tell me?
I walked over to the long bar, bought myself a pint and got him his usual diet coke before joining him. The place was pretty busy and it was a young crowd but we had a quiet table in the corner, ‘don’t know how you can be in a pub and not drink,’ I told him.
‘You get used to it,’ he said calmly, ‘I like the craic in pubs but I got to the stage where I didn’t like what the booze was doing to me. It made me into an angry person, so I stopped.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that,’ he confirmed. I admired him for that because he would have had to put up with a huge amount of shit from the lads for drinking pop in a pub but he had stuck to his guns, ‘been four years now.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said, sipping my bitter, ‘what brings you to town?’ I nodded at a group of twenty-something lasses on a night out, ‘looking for more gullible girls to photo in the buff?’
‘I pop in often enough. Got to make a couple of collections for Bobby later,’ Miller picked up protection money and loan repayments where real muscle wasn’t required, amongst other things. He was a veteran of the firm, who did the low–risk stuff for Bobby but it gave him a decent enough income, ‘I thought I might see you down here.’
Before I could ask him what was on his mind we were interrupted by a silver-haired old lady who’d come into the pub dressed in her Sally Army hat. She was selling ‘War Cry’ so I dropped a quid in her collecting tin but turned down a copy of the magazine.
‘How can you believe in religion or a god if you take just one minute out of your day to think about the universe?’ Miller asked me as he watched her doing the rounds.
‘Most people don’t take a moment to think about the universe mate,’ I told him, ‘most people are unthinking morons. They need to believe in a god because if they didn’t their whole meaningless existence would come crashing down around them. It would make them realise how bloody pointless they are. Not you though eh?’ I asked him, ‘you were always the philosopher in Bobby’s crew, the thinker. You were the only one I ever caught buying the Times.’
‘One doesn’t buy the Times, dear boy,’ he told me in a voice that was almost Oscar Wilde, if he’d been raised in Gateshead, ‘one takes the Times.’
‘Does one?’
‘Yes, one does,’ he said, ‘and if one does, one will have read their fascinating piece on the stars recently. Not the Hollywood variety. Apparently there are one hundred billion stars like the sun in our galaxy that are likely to have at least one planet capable of supporting life. And there are one hundred billion galaxies in the universe, so that means there are… ’
‘A fuck of a lot?’
‘A fuck of a lot, thank you, of planets that could have life on them but we won’t get to see any of it because the nearest star from ours is hundreds of thousands of years from here at the speeds we are currently capable of. Now, when you consider the vast scale of our galaxy and the ludicrously huge size of the whole universe, you’d have to be completely puddled to believe there’s a god up there somewhere who gives a tinker’s toss about you and yours on planet earth,’ he raised his glass of coke and clinked it against my pint, ‘life is a load of random shite and all of us are just spinning helplessly round the sun. When you can confront that fact head on and still keep your sanity, well, then you are a man my son.’
‘I knew you were a fucking hippy,’ I said, ‘and it may be random shite to you but I have to put some sense into it all and quickly. I’ve got to find Cartwright and I have a funny feeling that, alive or dead, he is still on this planet.’
‘That ought to narrow it down then, eh?’ he said cheerfully.
We had a couple more drinks, him sticking with his coke and me sipping more of the local bitter. People carried on getting bladdered around us.
Sitting with Miller reminded me of my early days working for Bobby. He was a veteran back then but he’d been alright when others had treated me with suspicion if not downright hostility, ‘You know, you’re one of the few from the old crowd who doesn’t treat me like a leper,’ I told him.
‘Well, they don’t always get it, that lot. I don’t think they understand what you do for Bobby, but I can see it David,’ and he thought for a moment. ‘They probably can too, they just don’t want to admit it.’
‘Maybe, but whatever the reason I’ve always found it easier to deal with you, which is why I didn’t bring
Finney with me when I came out to see you earlier.’
‘Finney?’ he looked a bit alarmed, with good reason, ‘why would you bring him?’
‘I don’t think you’re telling me everything Mark.’
‘How do you mean like?’
‘About Cartwright,’ I said, ‘everyone I speak to says he’s not the sort of man to get mixed up with anything that’s likely to piss Bobby off but we know he lied about the Drop. He said he was going to take Maggot with him but he didn’t. Now that’s strange behaviour for a man like Cartwright; a quiet, unassuming bloke who seems happy enough with his missus and his football, and a few pints at the weekend, so what the hell happened? You knew him as well as anyone. So what are you not telling me?’ he hesitated then, his eyes moving from me to the floor and back again, ‘you’d be better off telling me Mark, you know I’ll find out sooner or later and I’d rather hear it from you. You’re protecting him aren’t you? What is it?’
He let out a deep sigh, ‘there was something but if I tell you, you have to go easy on him.’
‘No promises and no ifs. You’re going to tell me or I’ll phone Finney and he’ll ask you.’
‘There’s no need for that but please, I’m asking you, can you see what you can do for Geordie if it does go tits up like?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I told him, knowing that my influence wouldn’t count for much if he’d screwed Bobby.
‘Gambling,’ he said simply.
‘Gambling?’ I was stunned, ‘Geordie Cartwright? Are you sure?’
He nodded reluctantly, ‘been doing it for years man, low key at first. I mean he was losing but all gamblers lose don’t they, whether it’s football, horses, casinos, the house always wins.’
‘So what happened?’
‘It’s the same sad and simple story. He started small, he mostly lost but he had a few wins. The wins just made him feel like he should have had a bit extra on the horses that came in. So he started betting more, only he wasn’t very lucky.’
The Drop Page 5
