The Drop

by Howard Linskey

  Her voice was muffled by my shoulder but I could still make out every word when she said them back to me, ‘not every day a girl turns 21,’ she agreed and there was a second’s hesitation, ‘and I’ve not even had a birthday kiss… from any one.’

  ‘A birthday kiss?’ I asked, like I was a simpleton.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Right,’ I said and before I could think of anything cool or dismissive or safer to say than that, she pulled her head out of my shoulder, placed her cool palms gently on either side of my face and quietly said, ‘Just one,’ and softly planted her lips against mine, then kissed me long and slow. And I did nothing about it, even though I knew this was the dumbest, most dangerous thing I’d probably ever done in my life. I just let her go on kissing me, even when she slid her tongue into my mouth, in fact I kissed her back, until I forgot everything; who I was, who she was, who her dad was, somebody called Laura, everything. And just when I was liking it the most, she stopped.

  ‘Phew,’ she said, like she had enjoyed it too, ‘time to say goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight Sarah,’ I managed.

  ‘It’s true by the way,’ she added, as she walked slowly away from the car, ‘what Jo said.’ And she laughed, loud and embarrassed like she couldn’t quite believe she’d admitted it to me then she was off, walking down the gravel drive way - but not before turning back and shouting at me, ‘mull that one over on the way home to your wife!’

  And I did. Of course I did, I didn’t think about anything else if I’m honest, which is exactly what she wanted, the distracting little bugger.

  When I got home Laura was still up. She was sitting on the couch all by herself and her eyes were smudged with tears. I instantly tried to work out what I had done to cause them or, more accurately, I thought about what I had done that she knew about that could have caused them.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I said while my panicked, inner voice told me not to be such an idiot. She wasn’t outside Bobby’s house hiding in the bushes. She hadn’t bugged my car. Had she?

  ‘It’s mum,’ she said softly, ‘she’s dead.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  ...................................................

  The funeral was pretty grim, even by normal standards. I always hate them but Laura and her sister seemed to be competing in the waterworks stakes and I had to play the dutiful partner of the grieving daughter, which made me feel like the proper hypocrite, as I didn’t like the old girl and she never bothered to hide the fact that the feeling was mutual.

  The service seemed to drag on and on and I began to feel completely trapped. There’s just something I can’t stand about funerals. It might sound obvious but it’s the way they have of making you think about your own inevitable demise. They seem such a pointless exercise. The person doing the dying has gone and it’s very sad but they are not coming back and we’ve got to carry on. So there’s no point moping about it. Some people are comforted by funerals but I think they are a load of old bollocks. All those long-lost relatives crawling out of the woodwork, the old ones treating it like a day out, barely able to hide their glee that they are still here and they’ve outlived someone else. Then there’s all the inane chit-chat about a good turn-out and the weather being nice on the day, as if the person in that little wooden box is aware of any of it.

  Death might be an inevitability but I don’t want to think about dying. Funerals always make me want to go out, get pissed and fuck somebody, just so I can prove to myself that I’m still here. Must be some sort of putting-two-fingers-up-at-death thing. I guess that’s not something I should admit to but you are what you are and there’s no changing it.

  ‘I feel as if you haven’t been here for me,’ said Laura as she leant forward on the couch to face me. Since the funeral we’d had a number of conversations about the way Laura had been feeling. Mostly she’d been feeling bad and it turned out this was usually my fault. I was beginning to wonder if she had been secretly visiting a therapist who had urged her to ‘tell your boyfriend how you feel. Make him feel shit instead’.

  ‘But I have been here for you,’ I protested. And I had. I mean, I wasn’t there every night obviously. I was still trying to find out what had happened to Cartwright and Bobby’s money but I wasn’t on it twenty-four-seven like I should have been. I’d made sure Bobby knew Laura’s mum had died and that she had gone a little bit mad as a result, so I was home quite a bit in the evenings even if I then went out again later, after she was tucked up in bed. He was okay about it, considering. Maybe it reminded him of losing his missus and how Sarah must have felt at the time. I had to tell Finney as well but they both agreed to keep it to themselves.

  We’d had lots of long conversations, Laura and I, that dragged on for hours about how her mum’s death was such a shock and how she had always been there for her daughter and how Laura didn’t know how she was going to manage without her mother, which I didn’t really get, as Laura had been an adult for some considerable time now. I couldn’t really understand how her mum’s death had been such a shock either, considering the years of illness she’d had. It had been a bit of a shock to me admittedly but then, I’d thought the old bird was putting it on.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, as if I had somehow proven her point, ‘you’ve been here physically.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘But I don’t think you are really here mentally.’

  She was right. I wasn’t - and with good reason. I was usually mulling over how to get myself out of the shit I was in and, to be fair to me, we had been talking about the same old stuff every night for ages. I’d made the same suggestions; take some time off work, go and see your old friends from Uni, stay with your big sister for a while? I’d also exhausted all the usual platitudes associated with bereavement. ‘Perhaps it was for the best Laura, you wouldn’t have wanted her to suffer Laura, she would have hated not being a hundred per cent Laura, but, after a while endlessly going through the same topic, who wouldn’t let their mind wander? Blokes aren’t like women. We don’t want to regurgitate everything a million bloody times.

  I felt a bit pissed-off at Laura for saying I was unsupportive considering what I could see every time I looked up from my sofa. On one of my bookshelves a space had been cleared for the squat china urn that contained the last remnants of Mrs Angela Cooper.

  ‘Do you mind?’ she’d asked as she’d brought her mum’s ashes home from the crematorium, holding them like a little baby, ‘it’s only for a while.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I’d said because at that moment, she’d looked like any objection from me might very likely push her over the edge into some form of grief-related madness. So she’d moved my books and placed the urn on the shelf with great reverence. I had to stifle a grin. After all, a bookshelf was probably an appropriate place for Angela’s Ashes.

  After a while though, their presence had started to irritate me. I couldn’t think of anything more morbid to have in my flat than my girlfriend’s late mother’s remains. Why couldn’t her big sister, her dim husband and their two overweight children take the bloody urn? It was meant to be a temporary home but just how temporary is temporary? A week, a month, two years? The problem was I couldn’t think of any subtle way of asking Laura, ‘when do you think you’ll be shifting your mother off my bookshelf then?’

  I didn’t want to get into another row with Laura about my lack of support so I asked, ‘do you want me to stay home tomorrow night instead of going to the match?’

  I’d hoped the offer of staying home would be big enough to placate her without actually having to go ahead and do it. I figured she would say something like ‘that’s really nice of you but you love the football, you should go.’ Then I could say, ‘are you really sure, I honestly don’t mind missing it just this once.’ If I was really lucky this might even lead to make-up sex. Any sex would have been preferable to the complete drought I was currently experiencing. Clearly funerals didn’t have the same effect on Laura’s
libido as they did on mine.

  What she actually said was, ‘do you mind not going?’

  Yes, I thought.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Really?’ she asked

  ‘Course not,’ I said.

  Shit.

  I was driving through the city on my way home when Sarah called, ‘I need a hunky man,’ she told me.

  ‘Any particular reason,’ I asked, ‘or have your batteries gone?’

  ‘Cheeky,’ she said. ‘It’s a crisis.’

  ‘Broken a nail have we?’

  ‘No. I’ve got a flat tyre and I need a hunky man to rescue me. I’m a damsel in distress.’

  ‘You’re in luck, I’m doing a special offer on damsels this week. It’s two for the price of one. I’ll throw in a dragon slaying too if you ask me nicely.’

  ‘Sounds like good value, trouble is… ’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m down at the Metro Centre,’ she said, like she was wincing at the level of the favour she was asking, ‘you’re not by any chance passing through Gateshead on your white charger right now are you?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But I could be.’

  ‘I knew there was a reason why I love you.’

  ‘You mean apart from my good looks, charm and raw sexuality?’

  There was a slight pause for effect, ‘has someone been telling you you’re good looking?’

  ‘Do you want this tyre changing or not?’

  ‘Yes please!’ she trilled, ‘love ya.’

  She told me where she was parked and I set off to the Metro Centre, a place I would normally have avoided like the plague. With its acres of shopping hell, all under one big roof, I’d normally rather have a tooth pulled than go there voluntarily.

  When I pulled up beside her she climbed out of her car. She looked very good in her skinny jeans.

  ‘Those the jeans you’ve been banging on about?’

  ‘Seven Jeans,’ she sang and she swayed her bum round and out at me, slapping her rump like they do in the R&B videos, ‘you like?’

  ‘They’re okay.’

  ‘Just bought ‘em. Perfect fit, wore them out of the shop.’

  I found that strangely sexy and I didn’t even know why. I think maybe it was because Laura would never have done something that spontaneous. I looked away from her and surveyed the problem, ‘yep,’ I announced solemnly, ‘your diagnosis is correct, that tyre is definitely flat.’

  ‘Thank you doctor, now are you going to change it for me?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What? I thought this was damsel day. Am I not a damsel then?’

  ‘Yep, you’re a damsel right enough but, if I change that tyre for you, you are going to be late for the match.’

  ‘I’m already late for the match. I’ve had to phone ahead so they’ll save me some dinner in the box.’

  ‘I also phoned ahead. One of my guys is on his way down here. He will take your keys, change your tyre and drive your car home for you. As soon as he gets here, I’ll drive you to the match just in time for your prawn sandwiches. Your dad or Finney can run you back afterwards.’

  She beamed at me, ‘you think of everything,’ then she sighed, ‘why are all the good men taken?’

  ‘Because there aren’t that many of us and you’ve got to be quick to land one.’

  We were inching towards the ground. The traffic had slowed to a virtual standstill from the sheer number of fans striding purposefully towards St James’ Park.

  ‘Can’t believe you’re not coming to the match,’ she sighed.

  ‘I know, neither can I, if I’m honest, but Laura’s a bit upset about her mum, so I said I’d give it a miss.’ I knew I’d have to sit there with her again in virtual silence while she sniffed and moped about her ma, like she’d done every day since the old lady’d croaked. I’d hoped she might ease up a bit after the funeral, but it actually seemed to get worse then because she didn’t have any arrangements to distract her. Let’s be brutally honest, her mum was old and ill and she’d had a bloody good innings. I’ve seen a damn sight more tragic and sudden deaths than her’s I can tell you. Besides, life is for the living.

  ‘We’ll probably be shite tonight,’ consoled Sarah, ‘the back four wanted shooting last time and the food in the box isn’t great these days. It was sausage and mash last time,’ she sounded amazed. ‘I mean they put “balsamic-glazed, onion gravy” on the menu, but it was still bangers and mash.’

  ‘Slumming it eh? Count yourself lucky,’ I told her, ‘when I was a kid, I used to be happy calling into the Metro Café for a plate of chips on my way up to the ground. I could only dream of sausage and mash. No executive boxes back then and, if there had been, I couldn’t have got in them. I was a Gallowgate-ender, standing in the rain. There wasn’t even a bloody roof ’

  ‘Must have been worth it to see Jackie Milburn though?’ She told me.

  ‘Oi, watch it you. You’re not too old to go across my knee.’

  ‘You wish!’

  I dropped Sarah at the ground and wound the window down to shout, ‘behave yourself,’ at her as she walked off.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m a good girl,’ she called back cheerfully.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I said but she had already turned her back and was disappearing into the crowd.

  I got a real pang as the cold air hit me through the opened window. I could smell the onions frying in the burger vans nearby and I was picking up individual shouts from the crowd as this great stream of humanity, all clad in black and white stripes, ascended the stairs to the turnstiles. I was gutted to be missing the atmosphere as much as the game.

  I found myself wanting to be with Sarah tonight too. She’d really developed and not just physically. She’d grown up a lot at college and what had come back was smart and funny and able to banter away with the best of them. And she was beautiful, that had to be admitted. The sixth-former with the teeth braces had long since been transformed into a babe with a cracking figure. Mustn’t think like that though. The one thing I was not going to do was roll around with Bobby Mahoney’s daughter - no matter how tempting it might be. I did keep having to tell myself that, over and over, ever since Sarah kissed me after her birthday party. Bobby loved his daughter more than anything, I reminded myself constantly, and the one thing he didn’t want was her hooking up with a member of his crew. Bobby liked me but not that much. He’d got a doctor in mind for Sarah or, failing that, Prince Harry. If I told him I had nothing but the finest intentions for his daughter, there would be no cosy arm around the shoulder while he discussed me inheriting the family business. More than likely the conversation would end in a short walk off a big cliff.

  I took my time getting home, calling in on Palmer to see if he had made any progress looking for our Russian friend.

  ‘If he was in the city I’d have found him by now,’ he told me.

  ‘So he’s not in the city.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘Keep looking,’ I told him.

  When I got home, I opened the door of my apartment to be greeted by darkness. What the fuck? Where was Laura? I turned on the light and there was a note on the coffee table telling me she’d gone to see her big sister. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I said aloud. I tried to remind myself they were both grief stricken, but Laura had clearly forgotten how she’d pleaded with me to give up the match so I could stay in and take care of her. It was too late to go back up there now.

  I swore and went right out again. There was a Chinese restaurant over the road. It was as good a place as any to eat on your own and I could get goal updates by text message from Sarah.

  After my meal, I returned to my empty flat, still feeling mightily pissed-off. I walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge and took the top off a cold beer, swigging from the bottle. I was about to sit down in the lounge but figured I’d hang my jacket up in a wardrobe first. I put the bottle of beer on the coffee table, slipped off my
jacket and carried it to the bedroom. I opened the door, turned on the light and that’s when the bloke hit me.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ...................................................

  Luckily for me, it was a glancing blow or that would have been the end of me. I must have reacted just in time, raising my left arm instinctively to parry, because the heavy cosh he was carrying skidded off my forehead and he dropped it from his gloved hand. The impact was still hard enough to draw blood, rattle my brains and give me a sick feeling deep in my stomach.

  My attacker was a weasel-faced, gaunt guy about my height. He didn’t look like conventional muscle and if he had been I’d have been dead by now, so I figured he was there just to turn my place over. He was looking for something.

  That’s all I had time to think about. Weasel-face grabbed me round my neck and slammed me back through the bedroom door. Christ he was strong for such a lean guy, with a grip like a vice. He must have been a rock-climbing cat burglar. His fingers were digging into me, closing round my throat until I could barely breathe. As he forced me backwards, I grabbed his arm and tried to dislodge it but I couldn’t shake it loose. It didn’t help that he was pummelling my head with his free fist as he propelled me back down the hall, knocking me half-senseless in the process.

  I fought back of course, hitting him a couple of times in the body and the side of the head but I couldn’t get him off me and I was starting to feel the heat in my face as he was cutting off my airway. He was staring at me like he was mightily pissed-off I’d disturbed him. He must have known he had to finish me or he’d be a dead man.

  He was still pushing me backwards and we ended up in the living room struggling. He knocked me right back to the far wall and I still couldn’t prise him away. I was kicking out at his shins, trying to knee him in the bollocks and punching him but nothing I did seemed capable of stopping him. Eventually, he virtually lifted me off my feet and I felt the wall slam hard into my back, knocking the wind out of me. His fingers squeezed tighter round my throat. I knew I was in serious shit now. He was going to kill me if I didn’t do something, and quick.