The Drop

his head as if he couldn’t believe what the world had become. ‘So what have you heard?’
    ‘The same as you,’ I said, ‘Cartwright’s gone missing.’
    ‘With some of Bobby’s money,’ he added, so the word was already out. Shit.
    ‘Yeah,’ there was no point denying it.
    ‘Jesus,’ he said.
    ‘Won’t help him if he’s taken it,’ I assured him.
    ‘It’s got to be a misunderstanding,’ he said with conviction and I just looked at him. ‘I know but he isn’t like that is he, not Cartwright? He wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t have the nerve to cross Bobby.’
    ‘That’s what I thought,’ I assured him without pointing out that the alternative was probably worse for Cartwright, as it was more than likely he’d be dead already. At least if he had stolen Bobby’s money he had a chance of getting away with it; a very small chance but a chance nonetheless.
    ‘What have you heard about Geordie and this Russian?’
    ‘Come again?’
    I shrugged, ‘I heard he’d done some business with a Russian, that’s all.’ I was stretching it a bit but I wanted to see how it would play, ‘wondered what you knew about it?’
    ‘Sorry mate,’ he said simply, ‘not heard that one,’
    Miller was pretty helpful though and I didn’t leave empty-handed. He gave me a sizeable list of names to look up and places to check. Surely one of them would have a lead on Geordie. The drive out here had been worth it.
    ‘Good luck,’ he told me, ‘and I mean it. Geordie Cartwright’s a gent. I hope he’s alright.’
    ‘So do I Mark,’ I said, ‘so do I.’
    I spent the rest of the day and most of the night getting round Miller’s names with Finney. It was the same wherever we went. Nobody had seen Cartwright. Nobody knew what he’d been planning. We were drawing a complete blank.
    More in hope than expectation, we called in on Jerry Lemon. I thought he must have heard something. He went back as far as any of Bobby’s crew, had known the big man for years, Cartwright too. He was one of Bobby’s originals. Unfortunately he was also a complete tosser but I was hoping loyalty to Bobby might prompt him to help me. I was badly wrong.
    Jerry operated out of a pool & snooker hall, imaginatively named ‘Lemons’. There was a big wooden sign over the front door which had two crossed snooker cues and two lemons painted on it, above his name. Clearly Jerry was a marketing genius.
    ‘What the fuck do you want?’ he said loud and aggressively and a lot of people in the room started to pay attention, which was exactly what the big mouth had intended. The great man was holding court. He was dressed in a style of bleached jeans that went out of fashion around 1985 and a T-shirt with no arms that showed off his bulging biceps and fading tatts. He went back to his shot, missing an easy pot into the middle pocket, which made me realise he was pissed.
    ‘A quiet word, if it’s alright with you.’
    ‘No, it’s not alright with me. Can’t you see I’m playing pool? I thought you were supposed to be the clever one Davey. If you want to say something to me, say it now, I’ve nothing to hide.’
    The place was half full of the old villains and apprentice wannabes Jerry liked to have hanging round in case he could find a use for them. He was a regular Fagin and his tales of the old days always had them hanging on his every word, which he loved.
    ‘I never said you did Jerry. I wanted to speak to you about our mutual friend,’ I wasn’t going to mention Cartwright’s name out loud in here.
    ‘ “Our Mutual Friend”, that’s Dickens that is,’ he was very pleased with himself, ‘bet you didn’t think I knew that. Well, you’re not the only one round here who’s read a book. You mean Cartwright I suppose. How long has Bobby given you to find his money eh, until Monday wasn’t it?’
    ‘Jerry,’ I said his name as a warning.
    ‘Don’t you try and shut me up in my own place,’ he told me, straightening and pointing his cue at me, ‘you’ve got no chance. You don’t know what you’re doing, you never have done. If you did you wouldn’t be down here wasting my time, you’d be out looking for the real guilty party.’
    ‘I know you don’t like me much these days Jerry, but can we not put that to one side while we try to find Cartwright?’
    ‘Correction,’ he told me, ‘I have never liked you son. I don’t even know who you are.’
    ‘You’ve known me for years.’
    ‘What do I know? That your