The Drop (20 page)

We’d been sloppy, we’d taken our eye off the ball, we’d thought we could go on like this forever. Like every top champion that has ever lived, there came a day when we were knocked off our perch by someone else but that wasn’t the only thing burning into my brain. We had been out-thought and out-fought by wee Tommy Gladwell, the unproven, first born son of Arthur Gladwell. I told myself if it had been anybody else, someone more worthy of respect, then I could have accepted it but this just wasn’t right. I knew a bit about Tommy Gladwell and if he ran Newcastle there’d be no hope for anyone. Bobby knew how to be Top Boy. Hell, even I knew how to be Top Boy. I’d watched Bobby do it for years, learned it from him, given him new ideas that helped him to be the successful boss that he so obviously was. Together we knew how to keep order, we helped to keep the city ticking over. His other lieutenants weren’t there to advise him, give him big ideas, work out the strategy and the tactics needed to run an empire. I was the only one who could do that for him. I’d watched him for so long. It was always just a question of judgement. You had to say the right things to the right people at the right time, keep the wheels oiled, control the men who work for you and never give them an excuse to turn against you. Easy, except I still wouldn’t trust anybody from our crew, alive or dead, to do the job after Bobby. There was nobody I could work for without the risk of ending up in prison or the mortuary being way too high. I wouldn’t trust anybody.

Not one.

Well, maybe one.

Jesus, after all,
I
was the man who
really
shot Billy the Kid.

And there was one more thing that clinched it. I’d tried hard not to think about her. I’d told myself there was nothing I could do, no way I could help. It was somebody else’s problem now but I knew that wasn’t going to work. There was no way I could just ignore it. I’d been so damn scared, I wanted to banish any thought that kept me from putting at least three hundred long miles between myself and Vitaly but I couldn’t help myself because I knew I had to help her.
Sarah
.

I got off the train at Darlington.

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

I
t was starting to rain. There were some young lads standing around outside the station trying to look hard. I walked straight up to them,

‘I’ll give you a tenner for a use of your phone.’ The lad looked at me like I was mental. I stuffed the note into his shirt pocket and I must have looked as if I’d had a very bad night because, without a word, he handed me his mobile. They all eyed me suspiciously, as if I was going to run off with his precious Nokia, ‘don’t worry,’ I told him, ‘you’ll get it back.’ And I turned away as I dialled Palmer.

‘Jesus,’ he hissed, ‘where’ve you been? I’ve been ringing you for ages.’

‘My phone’s gone but don’t worry about that. Get in your car and drive. I need you to pick me up, now.’

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘where are you?’

‘Standing outside Darlington station.’

‘Darlington?’ he asked, ‘what are you doing there?’

‘Just get here,’ I snapped, ‘on your way down I need you to make sure I have a car, a phone and a few hundred quid waiting for me when we get back to Newcastle. Get one of your boys to meet you with that outside my brother’s place.’

‘No problem,’

‘And I want you to bring something with you now.’

‘What?’

I kept my voice low as I told him then I rang off and threw the phone back to the young lad. I walked out of the station and down the ramp, turning the collar of my jacket up against the rain.

Palmer didn’t say anything when I climbed into the car. There was plenty of time for explanations on the drive back to Newcastle. I waited till we were on the main road before I asked him.

‘Did you bring it?’

‘Glove compartment.’

I opened the glove box and took it out, weighed it in my hand but kept it low, out of sight, ‘loaded?’

“Course,’ then he gave me a look, ‘not taking the piss, but have you ever fired a gun before?’

‘Yep,’ I told him casually, not adding how recently.

‘Fair enough,’ he said.

I put the Glock back in the glove compartment and closed it.

‘I need to tell you what’s been going on,’ I told him, ‘I am going to be relying on you, so you’d better be on your game.’

‘Right,’ he said simply. What I liked about Palmer was that he never seemed fazed about anything. It was hard to imagine a jeep through some plate glass doors. He didn’t look like that sort of guy - but then I probably didn’t look like a murderer.

‘Tommy Gladwell and his Russians are trying to take over the city tonight,’ I said.

He nodded sagely, ‘and we are going to stop them?’

‘Yeah,’ I said resisting the temptation to add, ‘we are going to try.’

‘There’s just one thing,’ I told him, ‘you know that Tommy is Arthur’s boy and you know all about Arthur Gladwell?’

‘That scussy wee shite. Aye, I’ve heard of him but he doesn’t scare me if that’s what’s worrying you?’

‘It’s not that,’ I said, ‘it’s just, you’re both from Glasgow so, if that’s going to be a problem, I need to know it now.’

‘If it’s a question of loyalty,’ he said, ‘Tommy Gladwell didn’t put food on my table when I was cashiered out of the army. You did.’

I wasn’t expecting a big speech and I didn’t get one but what he’d said was good enough for me.

‘In any case, Arthur Gladwell is a boil on Glasgow’s arse, always has been. He won’t be winning any popularity contests up there.’

Palmer had a couple of questions but it didn’t take long to put him in the picture. He’d already tortured most of the story out of grey-hair, whose real name turned out to be Terry apparently, but there was one last piece of the jigsaw that I still didn’t have.

‘Did you get that name for me?’

‘Yeah,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I did.’

And when he told me who had been selling us out, I have to say that, for some reason I still can’t fathom, I wasn’t even a bit surprised.

I’d never been happier to experience the unmistakeable smell of tobacco and stale piss outside the flats, especially when I noticed there was a light on in Our-young-un’s window. I left Palmer in the car to watch my back and wait for his man to show up with the cash, the phones and the car. I went to collect Danny. I didn’t want to hang about. We needed to be gone from there as soon as. I couldn’t afford to be caught in the city by Vitaly and his thugs.

I was pretty sure Danny would be okay. I couldn’t see why anyone, even someone who had been tailing me for weeks, would consider my bro to be anything other than a washed-up version of his former self. He was obviously a civilian who had nothing to do with any part of Bobby Mahoney’s business but, just to be sure, I had the Glock.

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.’

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

O
ur-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.