The Drop

tragic. Andrew Stone’s death was just another senseless, drug related tragedy in the squalid tenements of Glasgow.
    A week later, Amrein delivered the name we were looking for, along with incontrovertible, documented proof lifted from the files of SOCA itself; the name of our rat.
    I looked at it and did a double take, then I felt a little surge of relief. At least we were spared another execution. Northam, our harmless, little bent accountant was going to shop us all. Apparently he had failed to keep up with the times and SOCA managed to trace some of his dodgy international cash transfers, as they went from an uncaring bank in Luxembourg to a blind-eye-turning clearing house in the Caymans and finally arrived, laundered more times than a whore-house bed-sheet, into an account run by every criminal’s favourite accomplice in Geneva. You’ve got to love the Swiss. If their bank accounts were good enough for the Nazis then, they were good enough for us. A bank that welcomes Herman Goering is hardly going to blanch at the prospect of Bobby Mahoney as a client.
    Trouble was, the investigators were getting a little smarter and we should have kept up. Once they were able to prove to Northam he was ruined, he rolled over like he was having his tummy tickled, offering to tell them everything; names, dates, places and amounts, everything a judge and jury could ask for. He’d have sent us all down to save his own arse. Fucking accountants.
    And to think I’d even felt sorry for him lying there with a bullet in his brain. It turned out Tommy Gladwell just saved me a job. Finding another accountant wasn’t going to be hard. They were ten a penny, especially bent ones. I just had to make sure the next one was more scared of me than the law.
    Well, there would be no trials now, what with the chief witness for the prosecution disappearing like that. It made me realise that if, Tommy Gladwell hadn’t come along we would have carried on obliviously for a few more months, until the fateful day when we were all nicked. It made you think.
    A couple of days later, I read a lead article in The Times about the Serious Organised Crime Agency and its woeful record since its inception at great public cost. The British FBI had completely failed in its quest to bring to justice the country’s top 130 ‘crime lords’, including Bobby. The article cited a top heavy management structure, overburdened bureaucracy and inefficient systems, leading to collapsing morale and an exodus of officers. It was nice to know we were not the only ones with troubles.
    There was a period of transition. The word had to slowly get round that the personnel may have changed but the organisation was intact, rejuvenated in fact, by new blood. I made sure the people who mattered all knew where the authority now lay to do business with us.
    The new organisation was tighter and more ruthless. Our whole outlook was geared around making sure that what was done to Bobby and Finney could never happen to us. We increased the muscle, used Kinane and his sons, plus the boys from their gym. They weren’t greedy and they owed me for elevating them; most of the time they seemed pretty grateful just to be out of the wilderness.
    I gave a lot of responsibility to Palmer. After all, he’d come good against the Russians so I owed him and he showed no signs of wanting to be boss. He didn’t need the hassle - but then I used to say that too, so I would be keeping a closer eye on him in future.
    Before I left, he told me, ‘there’s a rumour doing the rounds that Jerry Lemon underestimated you. Word on the street is you had him killed because he showed you up in front of everybody down at the snooker hall. They say you are not a man to be fucked with.’
    I did nothing to contradict that rumour.
    I also gave more responsibility to Hunter, because he’d done well when I’d needed him and he knew where the bodies were buried, or at least where the pigs lived that ate the bodies. I made sure all of these men had plenty of money in their pockets, and jobs that made them feel like a face around town. I paid better than Bobby. It was my insurance against the kind of resentful, blind ambition that brought down Bobby Mahoney after nearly thirty years as king of the Midden.
    It made my brother. Whatever self respect he’d lost on that battlefield, he got back when I put him in charge of some of our dirty laundry. People started seeing him round the city in our clubs and casinos