The Drop

morning. Nobody takes from me, nobody, you know that!’
    Christ, my heart sank on hearing that. I already knew my chances of finding Cartwright, or his rotting carcass, and Bobby’s money by Monday were slim to none, but I was definitely not going to tell Bobby Mahoney that right now. If I did, I reckoned he would have killed me, so I took the path of least resistance and bought myself some time.
    ‘Yeah Bobby I know that. Leave it with me. I’m on it.’
    ‘Go on then,’ he said and I didn’t wait to be told twice, ‘and take Finney with you.’
    Finney lumbered after me, which I could have done without. I needed some time on my own to think, but now I’d got Finney with me I was going to have to start making enquiries, darting round the city on a Friday night like a lunatic. Jesus, where would I even begin?
    ‘Where to?’ asked Finney as soon as we’d left the room. I was starting to get the funny feeling he was secretly enjoying this. The ‘whiz kid’, as he used to refer to me when I first joined the team, had been firmly put in his place and was clearly shitting himself at the prospect of a good kicking or worse. I had no idea ‘where to’.
    ‘Simple,’ I said with as much nonchalance as I could muster under the circumstances, ‘known associates,’ he frowned at me like his simple brain couldn’t quite digest the concept, ‘Cartwright’s nearest and dearest. We quiz them all. Let’s get the car.’
    I was keen to halt his questions about my plans. I didn’t have any.

THREE
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    W hen we were back in the car Finney asked, ‘where first?’ ‘Jesmond,’ I told him, thinking on my feet, ‘there’s a side street just off Osborne Road. Cartwright shacks up there with his bird, what’s-her-name, Amanda something, the one who used to be a stripper way back when?’
    ‘Mandy McCauley,’ he told me. I was surprised he knew her full name. ‘Used to take it all off in a back room at the Sunbeam Strip in the eighties before they closed it down. I couldn’t believe it when Cartwright took her on full time.’
    ‘Why, what’s wrong with her?’
    ‘You mean apart from showing her growler to every man in Newcastle?’
    ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘apart from that.’
    ‘Well she shagged virtually the entire crew,’ he told me, ‘no actually, I tell a lie, she did shag the entire crew. If you hadn’t have been in short trousers back then you’d have got your end away too. If she turned up anywhere with George after it was like…’ he seemed lost for a suitable phrase.
    ‘An old boyfriends’ reunion?’ I offered.
    ‘Yeah, well no, not really. None of us ever took her out. You didn’t have to with Mand,’ and he chuckled, ‘she didn’t seem to mind. Though, to tell you the truth, it was like chucking a Smartie tube up the Tyne Tunnel.’ Finney laughed harder, ‘I dunno,’ he said reflectively, ‘maybe he felt sorry for her.’
    ‘Or maybe he just had a bigger cock than you,’ but he didn’t laugh at that. Instead he just pressed the accelerator more firmly and we sped closer to Jesmond.
    Whatever looks Mandy McCauley once had, she’d lost them. The woman that answered the door in her dressing gown might have taken her clothes off for money twenty years ago but these days you’d have paid her to leave them on. She was an overweight, badly made up specimen with a cig in her nicotine-stained hand trailing smoke up into her bloodshot eyes. ‘Finney,’ she said unhappily, ‘and you,’ I wondered if she’d forgotten my name. She took a deep breath and when she spoke once more her voice was harsh, ‘what have you done with him you bastards!’
    She eventually let us in, once I’d persuaded her we were looking for Cartwright too. The house was shabbier than I would have expected, the white flock wallpaper in the hall turning brown and peeling in a corner.
    ‘Wipe your fucking feet,’ she ordered.
    ‘Watch your dirty mouth Mandy or you’ll get a slap,’ Finney told her. It was moving to see these two lovers reunited. ‘Now where is he?’
    We followed her into a grubby little front room with a high ceiling, a three-bar electric heater and a large sofa that sagged under my weight when I sat down. When Finney sat next to me I swear I felt a spring snap under him. Mandy sat on a battered armchair and crossed her legs primly, which to me seemed like locking the door after the entire stable has bolted, ‘I don’t know,’ she