The Drop

genuinely grateful.
    ‘One other thing,’ he told me, ‘you’ve not got any answers yet, so it’s time you went to see Kinane,’ I’d known this was coming and been dreading it but I nodded like it was a sensible idea. ‘Get down that gym of his and find out what he knows. He must have heard something.’
    ‘Okay Bobby,’ I said.
    ‘And take Finney with you,’ Christ, that’s all I needed. Finney and Kinane in the same room together. Having them both in the same city was scary enough.

TWELVE
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    K inane’s gym was called, The Cronk, in tribute to Emanuel Steward’s original, justifiably famous, Kronk gym in Detroit; a place where hard men entered and champions emerged; Gerard McClellan, Dennis Andries, Michael Moorer and Thomas ‘Hitman’ Hearns, to name just a handful of them.
    The only thing that emerged from Kinane’s version was a little drug money and some unquestioning muscle, capable of guarding the door to a club on a Saturday night.
    ‘Stay in the car.’ I told Finney.
    ‘What? You’re fucking joking aren’t you?’ he growled.
    ‘It was four years ago and I wasn’t involved remember. He has no argument with me.’
    ‘Aye, well, maybe but you tell him I’m out here and I’ll rip his arms and legs off if he dares to show his face. Any time he wants. He just has to come out and say the word.’
    ‘I don’t doubt you would, which is why you’re staying in the car. We haven’t got time for all that macho shit right now. We’re here to find out who killed Cartwright and that’s all.’ He was pissed off at me because he genuinely wanted an excuse to have a crack at Kinane but I was not having that.
    I’d never been in the Cronk before. It was a real throwback. Talk about no frills. The entrance was bare except for a framed photograph on the wall, taken about twenty years ago, which constituted the gym’s hall of fame; a 24 year old bare-chested fighter with an IBF Cruiserweight belt fastened proudly around his waste. Glenn McCrory is still the only world champion boxer the north east has ever produced, our very own great white hope.
    The only other decoration on the walls of the Cronk was a big fist-shaped hole where someone had taken it out on the plasterboard. I walked past McCrory and on through a door that took me into the main gym.
    The smell of sweat hit me as soon as I walked in. The gym was a big, open room with breeze-block walls and a dusty wooden floor. There were eight or nine tough looking men in there pumping iron or shadow boxing. Light shone down on them from a row of old windows set high up in the walls. I knew Kinane had three grown-up sons and, sure enough, some of the guys in there looked like younger, slightly smaller versions of him. They were still pumped up like it was a fulltime occupation to look ripped.
    There were no fancy touches here. No modern weight-lifting machines, it was all just free weights, as if anything else was an affront to manhood. A big guy was lifting what had to be in excess of three hundred pounds, the veins on his neck and face standing out with the strain. He was making a noise like he was struggling to finish a shit. He completed his lift, bringing his weights up to his chest then over his head before letting them slam back down again on the floor with an almighty crash. I felt the vibrations through my feet even though I was yards away.
    Joe Kinane wasn’t hard to spot. He was a massive bloke, about six-six with hands like shovels and a chest like the bonnet of a Transit van. He was in the ring, supervising a muscular heavy-weight who was pounding a bag being held by a little bloke who had to be in his mid sixties. Every punch landed with such force it threatened to lift the old trainer off his feet. It made me wince just watching it. Kinane glowered at me when I walked into the room. He broke away from his fighter, stepped out of the ring and crossed the floor to meet me.
    ‘David Blake, what the fuck do you want?’
    ‘It’s good to see you too Joe,’ I told him, ‘I need a word, if you could spare me a minute of your time.’
    He said nothing to me just turned to the young boxer, ‘take a break,’ before adding, ‘five minutes.’ The big lad didn’t argue. The old guy looked mightily relieved.
    We walked to a small office with a timber and glass front that seemed to have been added to an inside wall of the old gym as an afterthought.
    ‘He looks useful,’ I