When we were back in the train Bobby said, ‘how has he heard about my troubles?’
‘Eh?’ asked Finney.
‘I said, how does he know about my troubles?’
‘I dunno,’ answered Finney. He seemed a little perturbed to be asked the question. I kept silent, assuming it was rhetorical.
We had the first class carriage to ourselves, except for a business type who was busy reading his paper.
‘What did you think about that Davey?’ Bobby asked me.
‘Well, he’s saying it has nowt to do with him and I tend to believe it.’
‘You believe that fucking snake,’ said Jerry Lemon, ‘he’d grass on his own grandma if it suited him.’
‘And so would we,’ I reminded him, ‘I don’t know, I may be wrong but my instinct says it isn’t Arthur Gladwell. He doesn’t want a war right now. In fact it’s the last thing he needs, though… ’
‘What?’ asked Bobby
‘He didn’t say anything about Stone, when you showed him the picture. He didn’t say a word.’
‘Well, he would know him, a professional operator on his patch,’ said Bobby.
‘Yeah but he didn’t deny using him, he didn’t ask you what any of this had to do with him, he just didn’t say anything.’
‘So what you’re saying is, you don’t know if it’s him or not?’ challenged Jerry Lemon.
‘Yes, that’s right Jerry, that’s exactly what I’m saying.’
‘Then going up there was a complete waste of time,’ added Jerry.
‘No it wasn’t!’ snapped Bobby, ‘if it was him, he knows we are on to him and he’s been warned off. If it wasn’t, well he knows we don’t fuck about down here, we come up and confront people if we think they are taking the piss, so him and his boys will know that too, for future reference.’
‘Sorry Bobby,’ said Jerry Lemon, ‘I was only saying… .’
‘Maybe you should do a bit less saying and a bit more thinking. Do you reckon word won’t get round that we went up there to have it out with Arthur Gladwell face to face on his own patch?’ Course it will. Every grass in the city will be onto it by now. We’ll have been picked up on CCTV arriving at the station. That shows we’ll stand, against anyone. Anyone,’ Bobby stared out of the train window and he carried on addressing Jerry without even looking at him, ‘why don’t you do something useful for a change. Go down to the buffet car and get us all a drink.’
I was beginning to think it was worth the journey to Glasgow just to see Jerry Lemon get slapped down like that.
TWENTY-SEVEN
...................................................
We were back to square one. We had nothing; just a photofit of a petty criminal from Glasgow and a Russian connection we didn’t understand. It was doing my head in. I wasn’t getting anywhere. Bobby still didn’t have his money and, more importantly, I hadn’t found out who was behind his ‘troubles’, as Arthur Gladwell so tellingly referred to them.
I was at home watching the football when the phone rang. Out of the blue, Joe Kinane called me. His happiness was in direct contrast to my mood.
‘I just thought I’d give you a ring about my lad,’ he told me.
‘How’d he get on?’
‘Beat it,’ he said.
‘Really?’ this was more than I could have hoped for, ‘that’s brilliant. What happened?’
‘Self-defence,’ he said laughing, ‘which it was of course, kind of, but that lawyer of yours was the dog’s. She took the other guy apart.’
‘Told you,’ I said.
‘Aye, well, he got a more comprehensive beating from her than he ever did from my boy. It helped that she seemed to have a lot of information about his character, stuff he wouldn’t want a jury to hear. Turns out he wasn’t a very nice bloke,’ he said dryly.
‘You don’t say? Amazing what a good lawyer can turn up.’
‘It is,’ and he laughed, ‘anyway, I just wanted to thank you for putting me onto her.’
‘My pleasure mate,’ I told him. I was glad he was expressing his gratitude discreetly. If anyone was listening into this, all they could accuse me of was knowing a good lawyer. ‘That’s in return for all the help and guidance you gave me when I was a snot-nosed kid.’
‘Aye, er sorry about that like,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry about it Joe.’
‘Well, I owe you one,’ he told me before he rang off, ‘if I hear anything about that other thing, anything at all, I’ll let you know.’
‘Cheers,’ I said. Maybe he would turn something up but somehow I doubted it. We had every man in our outfit on it permanently and not one of them had come up with anything worth a light.
I had never seen Sharp so rattled before. My tame DS was shitting it. It was not a good start.
‘I can’t meet you here,’ he hissed at me after I ordered a drink a few feet from him in Rosies.
‘I thought I was your major criminal source,’ I said, playing his game and not looking directly at him. Instead I stared at the mirror in front of me then up at the weird assortment of ghoulish mannequin heads that were arrayed on a ledge above the bar. They didn’t really fit in with all of the framed football shirts on the walls. The bar staff were busy bottling up and the pub was quiet so this nonsense was do-able but I seriously doubted if it would fool anyone for long.
‘It’s not funny.’
‘I never said it was,’ I assured him, ‘where then?’ I took a big gulp of my beer.
‘The Angel,’ he said, ‘one hour - but don’t be surprised if I don’t show.’
‘You’d better show,’ I warned him and I took another large swig of beer.
He turned to face me then and he looked wild eyed, ‘you don’t get it, you don’t know what’s going on. They’re everywhere, all over the station, asking questions, questions about me.’
‘Who is?’
‘Police Complaints Commission. They’ve been in with my gaffer all morning.’
‘Maybe it’s him they’re interested in?’
‘No chance, not him. He’s a fucking android.’
I drained my pint, ‘like I said, he sounds like heart attack material,’ I told him, ‘and so do you, now get a grip.’ I put my empty glass down on the bar and left him to it.
By the time I’d driven out of the city, parked and trudged up to the monument with the wind whistling around my ears, I was beginning to feel mightily pissed-off. There was no sign of Sharp, so I was left standing there, hands thrust deep in my pockets, shivering under the Angel of the North, wondering what could be so important he had to see me straight away but not so urgent he couldn’t just tell me about it in Rosie’s.
Like most people from my city, I held a hypocritical view of the Angel. When it first appeared I thought it was an expensive and pointless monstrosity, representing the very worst excesses of modern art, two hundred tonnes of metal, part man, part aeroplane, neither one thing or another, signifying nothing. Now though, I had to admit to a grudging affection for its rusting presence. As usual, it stood tall, upright and broad-chested, like it was particularly proud of itself. I sat down between the tapered metal strips at its feet and waited, looking out at the surrounding fields under a clear blue sky. It could have been summer if it hadn’t been so typically cold.
A shape in a dark raincoat emerged from the woods on my right and walked quickly towards me. There was no one else around and my first thought was Sharp had set me up for a hit. I was about to leg it when I realised the shape was him. He was out of breath by the time he reached me, ‘too many fags,’ he gasped.
‘Was this really necessary?’
‘Maybe not. But it makes me feel better. I can see people coming from here.’
I looked around. There were some figures in the field behind the monument now. ‘I can see four kids and a kite,’ I told him, ‘I haven’t got a lot of free time at the moment Sharp, what is it?’
‘Something that couldn’t wait.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘It’s Jerry Lemon.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead? Jerry Lemon’s dead?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Jesus,’ I said trying to take it in. It was only forty eight hours earlier that Jerry was on the train with us and now he was dead? ‘What the hell happened? I’m guessing it wasn’t suicide.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘he was shot in the head’. He was still panting. I wondered how he ever caught villains, ‘we got a call last night from some shit-scared anonymous pervert who’d been out by a truck stop, walking the dog, you know.’
‘Eh?’
‘Walking the dog,’ he said again, like I was an idiot, ‘only he didn’t have a dog, they never do.’
‘What are you going on about?’
‘Dogging, he was dogging. They call it that because when we catch them they always say ‘I was walking the dog’ and when we say ‘where is it then?’ they always go ‘oh, it must have run off’.’
‘What has dogging got to do with Jerry Lemon?’
‘That’s what he was doing when he was killed.’
‘You’re joking me.’
‘No,’ he assured me, ‘I take it you had no idea he was into that sort of thing.’
‘Course not, but then it isn’t the sort of thing people usually talk about is it? I mean if you ask somebody what they did last night they usually say ‘watched the match’ or ‘went to the pub’ not ‘went dogging’. Bloody hell, it’s not my idea of fun either if I’m honest, standing there with a bunch of strangers all wanking over some fat, married lass while her husband watches. Jesus, his missus will be fucking devastated when she finds out.’
‘Er… No… She won’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m afraid she was the fat, married lass and he was the husband watching all the blokes getting off. Well I assume he was, it’s not like we can confirm that exactly but I don’t s’pose he was just doing it for her pleasure.’
‘Bloody hell. You’re telling me Jerry’s missus likes… ’ I couldn’t find the words.
‘Being spunked on by strangers? Yeah, by all accounts.’ He reached for another cigarette, lit it then said, ‘I mean she used to like it. She’s dead an’ all.’
‘Christ, what happened?’
‘At first we thought some sicko was on the prowl, randomly shooting dogging couples. You know, a religious nutter cleaning up the city in the name of the baby Jesus or something. Then we got the name of the victim and it turned out it was Jerry Lemon and his not-so-good lady. So, then everyone said “oh it’s a gangland war”.’
A gangland war? What an odd phrase. Did I live in gangland? I supposed I did, according to the tabloids. Tomorrow they’d be writing up the story of Jerry Lemon and his moll, coldly assassinated by a ruthless, underworld hit man.
‘It looked like they drove in and parked up, flashed their lights in the normal secret way they are s’posed to; you know, one flash and you can watch, two you can join in, three you can take us both up the bum-hole, whatever. We have one witness who must have been even fatter and slower than your average dogger because by the time he comes out of the trees, the window was already coming down and he sees a big shaven-headed bloke step out of a car that’s pulled in behind Jerry Lemon’s.’ It had to be one of the guys who’d gone steaming in on Barry and his lads at the bar. ‘This bloke walks right up to the opened window but instead of pulling his cock out he brings a gun up and blows Jerry’s head off at point blank range. His missus started screaming apparently, as you would when you get a different kind of facial from the one you were expecting, so he pops her as well.’
‘Christ almighty. This witness, can we get to him? He might tell Finney a bit more than he’s telling your lot.’
He shook his head, ‘Anonymous. He called it in, left a description of what he had seen but wouldn’t cooperate further and didn’t leave his name,’ he shrugged, ‘who would?’
Sharp puffed away at his cigarette for a while, as if he was reflecting on the fate of Jerry Lemon. We watched as the kids walked down the mud track in front of us. They tried to fly their kite but the wind kept swooping it up high then smashing it straight back down into the ground again. Eventually Sharp said, ‘I’m serious about what I was saying before. It’s grim. I’m worried, really worried,’ then he turned to look at me, ‘you would look after me, wouldn’t you? If I got sent down because of stuff we’d done together?’
‘Yeah, sure. I’ll send you a cake with a file in it.’
‘Will you stop pissing about for five minutes? I mean it. I need to know you’ll look after me, like you would if I was a proper member of the firm. You know what I’m saying.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I know what you’re saying. You’re implying I’d better look after you or you’ll make a deal and bring me and Bobby down with you in exchange for a lighter sentence.’
‘Now hang on a minute, I wasn’t… ’
‘Yes you were and I would do the same in your shoes but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. You’ll be looked after if it all goes tits-up but remember there’s a flip-side to that generosity. If Bobby Mahoney thinks someone is going to betray him he doesn’t mess about. Know how easy it would be to have a bent detective stabbed while he’s on remand? There’s people inside who would do it just for fun. Throw in a couple of grand and they’d be queuing up, a couple more would make a prison officer look the other way, they get paid even less than Detective Sergeants and we both know what people are prepared to do for money. There’d be no witnesses and about a thousand suspects. Villains in the nick don’t like coppers, especially bent ones. So you better keep your lip buttoned and take what’s coming to you. Getting caught and being sent down comes with the turf for dodgy detectives, but that’s the least of your worries.’
Sharp had gone pale, ‘I never meant anything by it, honest.’
‘My guess is you’re worrying about nothing. Your DI probably lamped a suspect in a past life and they put in a complaint, so stop shitting yourself and start acting like a man.’
‘Yeah, yeah, that’ll be it. You’re right. I’m sorry.’
‘You get any leads on who killed Jerry Lemon you ring me first,’ I left him watching the kids, still struggling to get their kite off the ground.
I walked back to my car. Up ahead of me I could see the high rise blocks of flats from the estate nearby. They were a monument to a different kind of Tyneside. Politicians were always talking about rejuvenating the areas around Newcastle but I reckoned they were kidding us and themselves. Around the turn of a new and hopeful millennium, a housing association in North Benwell had to sell off houses for fifty pence because nobody would pay any more than that to live there. They were on a hiding to nothing.
TWENTY-EIGHT
...................................................
I knew Bobby would want to hear this kind of news right away. I went straight round to his house.
‘First Geordie Cartwright now Jerry Lemon,’ he said in disbelief. He walked over to the drinks trolley, picked up the bottle and poured himself several fingers of scotch. He found an empty glass tumbler and held it up to me. I shook my head. I realised that lately I’d not seen him without a glass in his hand.
He took a sip of his whisky then sat down on his big old Chesterfield couch and took another mouthful.
‘I’ve know these men for years,’ he said, ‘right back to when we first started out. We’ve been through some stuff... ’ And he shook his head at the magnitude of it all, ‘and now someone’s killing them off, one by one, just like that.’ He clicked his finger and thumb together. I thought for a second he might even be getting a tear in his eye but then his face reddened like he was fighting his emotions, his teeth set into a snarl and he growled the words, ‘I want whoever is behind this dead.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘But I want to look them in the eye first,’ he told me,
‘I want them to suffer before they die. I owe Jerry Lemon that much.’
‘I think you should keep Finney with you for a while,’ I told Bobby, ‘until we get this sorted. I know you don’t like the idea of him moving in but look at it as extra insurance.’
‘I dunno,’ he said then fell silent, like he was affronted by the suggestion that he, Bobby Mahoney, might actually need a little extra protection.
‘Bobby, seriously, no one is saying you can’t handle yourself, but we still don’t know who we are up against and it’s my job to keep you secure. You used to say Jerry Lemon was a hard man but they got to him. Whoever did it knows if they can get you out of the way then they’ve won.’
He thought about this for a long while, ‘okay,’ he said finally, but I could tell he still didn’t like it, ‘send him round - but what are you going to do for protection without Finney shadowing you?’
‘I figure it’s time Palmer earned his money.’
‘I hope he’s as good as you say he is,’ Bobby told me.
‘So do I.’
‘Trouble is, nobody in the city knows him.’ said Bobby.
‘And that’s just the way I like it.’
I’d thought it might be a good idea to get the two of them together, sort of like a blind date for ex-squaddies but, after a shed load of beer I was beginning to wonder if it had been such a wise move. Both of them could drink, my brother Danny and Palmer. I mean really drink.
Palmer and I had downed a few pints straight after Jerry Lemon’s funeral but I didn’t want to sit in my flat moping. We’d talked to everybody we knew in the city but we were still drawing blanks. Nobody had any info on our Russians, so we had to assume they were coming into the city to attack us then melting away somewhere. I was starting to think we would have to wait for them to show themselves again. The trouble being that, every time they did, our people got hurt or killed.
The Drop Page 19
