The Drop

by Howard Linskey

  The bell has never worked as long as I’ve been coming here, so I banged on the door. No answer. I hammered again, a bit louder this time, and still he didn’t come to the door. That wasn’t like him. Danny wasn’t a heavy sleeper even when he’d been drinking. I reached for my keys and found the spare one for the front door that I kept on the fob for emergencies. This was definitely an emergency. I told myself everything would be alright, as I opened the door, but I was already beginning to have a very bad feeling about it.

  My brother could be a bit jumpy, what with his war experiences and everything, so I made sure I didn’t burst in there unannounced. Instead I pushed the door wide and, before I stepped in, I called his name. No answer. The flat was quiet, the lights were on but he didn’t seem to be about. I called his name again, louder this time and that’s when I saw him.

  Danny was sitting in his old arm chair in the lounge. Because his back was to me, the only bit of him I could actually see was his left hand, which was resting on the arm of the chair. It was quite still. My brother wasn’t moving.

  ‘Danny,’ I called quietly at first, because my heart had shot up into my throat, and it was stopping the words from coming out. How could he have not heard me banging on the door? Unless…

  Oh no, not him, not my brother as well.

  ‘Danny!’ I called his name louder now. After all, he could be asleep. I told myself that he could be asleep but I knew he wasn’t asleep. A sleeping person would have heard me by now, ‘oh Christ,’ then I was running across the lino towards him. The bastards had killed my brother.

  I reached the chair and in the same moment I put my palm onto his hand and leaned round to see his poor, dead face.

  And he screamed.

  Danny screamed. He spun towards me and grabbed me by the throat. Next thing I knew I was being lifted off the ground and I was so relieved to see his scared, startled, lovely face that I forget to be annoyed when he upended me in one instinctive, fluid movement and threw me down on the deck. Then he was standing over me, one hand tight round my throat again and the other pulled back and formed into a fist like he was about to smash my bloody face in.

  ‘It’s me, it’s me,’ I gurgled and at that point he seemed to snap out of whatever auto pilot he was on. His eyes narrowed in confusion and he looked at me like I’d gone mad, ‘you’re alive,’ I said, not quite believing it myself, ‘I knocked, I called your name,’ I blurted out by way of explanation, ‘Christ I thought they’d killed you.’ And it was only then I finally realised why he didn’t answer, why he couldn’t hear me. There was a long, thin, white wire hanging down from his ear.

  ‘I was listening to me iPod man!’ he told me with not a little irritation, ‘I said I was going to sort it,’ he was shouting, as one ear piece from the iPod was still in place, the other one had fallen out. He pulled the remaining one free, ‘anyway,’ he asked, ‘who’s supposed to have killed me?’

  Palmer’s guy Toddy sorted me out with a BMW 7 series. He gave Danny his semi automatic. I issued instructions and they left without a fuss. Now that I had Danny with me I could leave Palmer to it.

  In my pocket I still had the shabby little business card Joe Kinane had given me down at the Cronk. I reached for the new phone Palmer’s man had supplied me and dialled. Kinane answered like he’d just woken up.

  ‘I need to meet you,’ I said.

  He recognised my voice straight away, ‘What? Right now? Where? Why?’

  I didn’t have time for subtlety and there was no need for it. I had to get my message across to him so he understood what was going on right away with no pauses, no questions and no fucking about. ‘Bobby’s dead,’ I said and I waited for that to sink in.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said a moment later. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he added. ‘I don’t believe it.’ He wasn’t doubting me, it was a figure of speech.

  ‘Believe it,’ I told him, ‘it’s true. Bobby’s dead and so is Finney. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said as he came to terms with the fact that the man he hated more than any other was dead. I guessed that, more than any other emotion, he would feel cheated.

  ‘Bobby Mahoney is dead,’ I told him again so it would sink in, ‘Finney’s dead, Northam’s dead. Jerry Lemon and Geordie Cartwright you know about already. They are all gone, all dead.’

  ‘Fuck! What’s happened?’

  I ignored him, ‘I’ll explain it all to you when I see you. I need you to come to the house of a guy called Palmer who works for me. He’s coming round to fetch you now, you and your sons. I’m going to need all of your boys from the gym, but tonight just bring your sons. Don’t bring anybody with you who isn’t family.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘what have you got in mind?’

  ‘I’m offering you a deal Kinane,’ I told him, ‘a very good one.’

  THIRTY-TWO

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

  Our-young-’un and me headed west across the city. I was driving as fast as I dared but I still had to be careful because I couldn’t run the risk of being pulled over by the police, not with a gun on me.

  ‘I need to know I can rely on you,’ I told Danny, ‘because of what’s happened, you and Palmer are just about the only people left I can trust.’

  ‘Of course,’ he sounded almost offended. ‘You can rely on me man,’

  ‘I mean it Danny. You used to say that you and your mates in the army were like brothers, you’d do anything for each other, well I’m your real brother and I need to know what you are prepared to do for me.’

  He mulled that over for less than a second, ‘anything, name it.’

  ‘Even if it’s dangerous.’

  ‘Well, yeah, no sweat like.’

  ‘Even if it means killing.’

  He thought that one over for a moment. ‘You wouldn’t ask me unless it was the only choice. I know that. I owe everything to you man, everything. Don’t know where I’d be without you but it sure as hell wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, feeling grateful and uncomfortable at the same time.

  ‘Anyhow,’ he said quietly, ‘killing’s not as hard as you might think.’

  He was right there.

  ‘I’ve never asked you this before,’ I told him, ‘and I wouldn’t ask it now but I’ve got to because I’m trusting you with my life and the lives of the people who work for me. What happened to you in the Falklands that made you the way you are?’

  ‘The way I am?’ he asked as if he didn’t comprehend me.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ and he fell silent for a time.

  ‘Aye,’ he said quietly, ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Was it at Goose Green?’

  He just nodded.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I admitted, ‘but I have to know that, whatever it is, it won’t stop you from being on top form when I need you.’ I was starting to think this might have been a bad idea, that I should have left Our-young-’un in his flat and done this on my own, except I didn’t know how.

  ‘It’s alright,’ he said, ‘I was only eighteen,’ and he shook his head as if he couldn’t imagine being that young in a war zone, ‘eighteen but I can remember most of it like it was yesterday,’ then he let out a bitter laugh, ‘and I can’t remember yesterday.’ He leant back in his seat, against the headrest. ‘When the battle started we got pinned down, they had more men and about a dozen trenches with machine guns zeroed in. We couldn’t get through them and it looked like we were in the shit big style. I thought we were all going to die, I really did. Then Colonel H, he got up and led the way, went after a couple of machine guns with two of our NCOs and well, you know what happened.’

  I nodded, ‘that’s how he got his VC,’ I knew the tale of Lieutenant Colonel H Jones, Commanding Officer of 2 Para, well enough to recite it myself.

  ‘Posthumous VC,’ Danny corrected me, ‘he went straight at them but the machine guns got him in the end. Bravest thing I ever saw.
It was his example that got the boys up the hill that day.’

  I could see how much Danny respected bravery and I was starting to get a sick feeling like he was going to admit something to me that I might not want to hear. All these years I’d took it as read that my brother was a hero who went into battle in a hail of bullets, against awful odds. I didn’t think I’d be able to cope with it now if he suddenly told me he was a coward. Having one in the family was quite enough.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I did my job,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t do enough,’ his voice faltered, ‘I found cover when I had to, I went forward when the NCOs ordered me to, I fired my rifle, I even killed a man, shot him from a distance and found his body when we went forward again. He didn’t look any older than me, but… ’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘That’s all,’ he said, ‘I didn’t distinguish myself. I kept my head down when some of the others were running through the bullets. I moved after they moved. I fired after they fired, I was never the first to get up that hill. I made sure I didn’t get my head blown off. I came out the other side without a scratch. We lost seventeen men. Seventeen dead and sixty four wounded and I didn’t even stub my toe on a rock. When I look back on it now I sometimes feel like I wasn’t really there, the fear stopped me from performing the way I know I could have, the way they’d trained me to. I should have been quicker. I should have been stronger. I should have been first.’

  ‘Christ!’ I shouted in exasperation, ‘is that it?’

  ‘What do you mean is that it?’ he looked at me like I was crazy.

  ‘I thought you’d seen something awful or done something awful. All these years I thought maybe you’d accidentally shot one of your mates, or murdered some Argie prisoners or run away or something.

  ‘Run away?’ he asked me, ‘Course I didn’t fucking run away. What do you take me for?’

  ‘I don’t know Danny, maybe not run away but I thought it was something worse than… well what you’ve just told me. Jesus, your whole life,’ I couldn’t comprehend him, ‘you’ve been so messed up since then and that’s all it’s been about? Just because you weren’t bloody Rambo?’

  ‘I did see something awful,’ he told me calmly, ‘the whole battle was awful, people having their arms and legs blown off, mates from my company getting shot in the head, of course it was awful.’

  ‘But that wasn’t what kept you awake at night?’ I said quietly, ‘was it?’

  ‘No,’ he told me, ‘you don’t get it, you weren’t in the army. The thing that gets you through it is your mates and the fear of letting them down. That’s worse than being shit scared of dying or ending up paralysed or a vegetable. Worse than all the god-awful horror of a battle is how scared you are that you are going to let your mates down when it comes to the crunch. That’s the code. I can’t tell you how it feels when you are standing in the pissing rain next to one of those big, open graves full of body bags, while the padre reads out the names of your friends and all you can think of is “I could have done more”,’

  ‘Did someone say something to you?’ I asked him, ‘afterwards. Did someone say you’d let your mates down, that you’d not done enough?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, nobody said anything, but I knew I had and that’s all that matters.’

  ‘Shit Danny, you didn’t fuck up. You did your job. It’s not like you dug a hole and hid in it crying. You moved, you fired your gun, you engaged the enemy and you killed one of them. You weren’t Audie Murphy but Jesus man, who is? If you’d done any more they’d have been burying you on that bloody hill. You were 18 for Christ’s sake. Everybody I know still thinks you’re a total hero just for being there and walking through that. You didn’t fuck up and you have no reason for feeling like a failure. The only thing you really feel guilty about is surviving and I can understand it, but that’s just the luck of war. Thank God you weren’t one of the poor bastards who didn’t come back. We did. Me and ma, we thanked God.’

  ‘I thought you were an atheist?’

  ‘I am but back then I was only a wee bairn, so I prayed anyhow, every night.’

  ‘I know you did and I’m grateful but I tell you there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t relived that bloody battle in my head and wished I’d done better, wished I’d been the soldier I know I could have been.’

  I thought about this for a moment that seemed to stretch out in front of us.

  ‘You still can be Danny,’ I told him firmly, ‘you still can be.’

  The front door to the Gosforth mansion was hanging off its hinges when we got there. I held the gun out in front of me, in case the fifth Russian was still there with Sarah, and walked inside. Danny followed me in. I hadn’t forgotten there were meant to be five of them. I’d been dialling Sarah’s mobile number on and off with Palmer’s phone since he picked me up outside the railway station. No answer. I was worried sick but I couldn’t let that distract me. I’d be no use to her dead.

  The only sign of a struggle was in the hallway; an up-ended table, the phone lying redundantly on the carpet next to it. We gave the downstairs a quick once-over and found nothing. There wasn’t a sound. I left Danny watching the door and slowly inched my way up the stairs, not bothering to call out because I didn’t want to warn anyone who might still be up there keeping a guard on Sarah. I could feel my heart thumping. I’d have sworn the sound was audible it was pounding so fast.

  The landing was clear, the door to Sarah’s room open. It was empty, the posters from her pre-college days seeming absurdly innocent, all pop stars and cute animals.

  There was a light on in what I took to be the master bedroom. I could see it beneath the crack in the door. I listened intently but heard nothing. I began to feel too vulnerable on the landing. This Russian could drop me through the door before I even saw him, but it was too late to go back now. I had to find Sarah. I took a few quick steps towards the door and kicked it open, pointing the gun out in front of me Jack Bauer-style as I stepped through.

  THIRTY-THREE

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

  Sarah was on the floor. She was sitting up, dressed in just a fleece and knickers like she’d been about to go to bed but there was a pair of torn leggings on the floor nearby. From the look on her face, she was in shock. And she had good reason to be judging by what else was on the floor in front of her; a big, shaven-headed, presumably Russian, bastard, lay face down and motionless. His trousers were round his knees and there was an old lock knife sticking out of his neck. The full size mirror had a big, wide arc of blood across it and more blood covered the floor. Some of it had even reached the ceiling. As I drew nearer, I realised some of it was on Sarah’s face.

  Good girl, I thought, and the relief flooded through me. Sarah Mahoney had never been near her old man’s world, yet the minute she was cornered, her instincts kicked in and she killed rather than be killed. Talk about a chip off the old block.

  It looked like the Russian had been dead a while. She must have been sitting here on her own looking at the body for hours, too shocked to move, just waiting for someone from Bobby’s crew to turn up and help her but, of course, no one came. I was the only one left.

  When she finally registered it was me, Sarah jumped to her feet and ran towards me. I had just enough time to move the gun before she threw her arms around me. I couldn’t tell you how relieved I was that she was alive.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he hurt you?’ I asked.

  ‘Tried,’ she said.

  We left the dead Russian where he lay and I steered her to her bedroom. I pulled an old suitcase down off of the top of the wardrobe and told her, ‘pack some clothes, enough for a couple of days,’ then I added, ‘you’ve got two minutes.’ I didn’t want the other Russian guys turning up looking for their friend.

  Sarah pulled on her jeans, stuffed some clothes and toiletries in her bag and we got out of there.

  ‘Th
is is my brother Danny,’ I told her when we reached the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Good to meet you pet,’ he said.

  The keys to Bobby’s Jag were on the floor by the phone. I picked them up and said, ‘Danny, take the Beamer and follow me.’ I didn’t want Bobby’s car sitting there in the morning. That wasn’t part of my plan.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked as I roared along the driveway.

  ‘They took dad and Finney,’ she said. ‘I was in my room and I heard a big bang and when I went to the top of the stairs to see what had happened the door was hanging off and there were these big blokes with shotguns - Russians or Poles?’

  ‘Russians,’ I told her. ‘Was anybody else with them?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said with anger in her voice, ‘a Scottish bloke and a fucking bitch.’

  ‘A woman?’ she nodded. So Lady Macbeth was in on the act. She’d live to regret that if I had my way. ‘Did she say anything to you?’

  ‘She told one of the guys to stay behind and watch me then she called up the stairs, telling me to come down. I could see they were dragging dad and Finney away, so I legged it into dad’s office. He keeps his lock knife in a desk drawer so I opened it up and stuffed it in the pocket of my fleece. When I got back to the top of the stairs she was sneering at me from the bottom with that big lunk next to her. She said “little girls need to learn to do what they’re told by their elders” then she turned to the bastard and said “keep her quiet, you can do what you like”.’ Sarah put her hand up to her forehead like she might be about to pass out but she managed to continue, ‘I started shouting “leave me alone, my father will fucking kill you” and the bitch laughed,’ Sarah shook her head, ‘she just laughed, then she said “oh get over yersell hen”.’ It was a pretty good impression of Lady Macbeth’s thick Glasgow accent.