The Drop

acts like his shit don’t stink.’
    ‘At least we agree on that,’ and he gave an affirming grunt.
    ‘Coffee, gentlemen?’ asked the lady receptionist in a voice that you could have cut glass with. She was acting as if Finney resembled a respectable member of the upper middle-class customer base she was used to greeting, rather than the violent criminal low-life he obviously was.
    ‘No thanks,’ I said and Finney shook his head.
    ‘Another cup Mister Northam?’ she offered.
    ‘No thank you Barbara,’ he covered his empty cup with his hand, ‘I’ve had an elegant sufficiency.’ When Northam said this, Finney gave him a look like he’d just caught our accountant sodomising a minor.
    Alexander Northam’s small accountancy firm was on the second floor, over an estate agent in Grainger Street, slap bang in the middle of the city. He wasn’t entirely crooked, there were legitimate clients too, but none of them put as much money through him as we did. Despite this he had the manner of a city banker and usually looked at us as if we were something he’d picked up on the bottom of his shoes.
    ‘Excuse me gentlemen,’ she was using that word again. Finney peered at her as if he suspected she might be taking the piss but she was oblivious. She merely smoothed her skirt with the palms of her hands and bent to clear away the cup, ‘I’ll be outside if you need me Mister Northam.’ And she left us to it.
    ‘Doesn’t she know your first name?’ I asked. He gave me a withering look and ignored me. ‘Nice couch,’ I said, ‘must have cost a pretty packet,’ I patted the soft Italian leather and we sat down uninvited. As usual, Northam didn’t look too pleased to see us. Having Finney in his well appointed office, all teak and leather furnishings, must have been like having a naked hooker at a WI meeting.
    ‘Yes, well, it did but then one has to maintain a veneer of prosperity, even in these testing economic times. There’s a crisis of confidence out there - or don’t you read the newspapers?’
    ‘I read them,’ I assured him, ‘all of them. And you reckon a leather sofa and a few old books are going to fool people into thinking you know what to do with their money?’
    ‘Did you come here to talk about my new couch Blake?’ he asked testily, ‘I rather doubt that.’ He was a Geordie born and bred but he didn’t want to be. He’d spent his life trying to shed the accent. He folded his arms, which made him look like he was wearing a straight jacket made of Harris tweed. Northam was a heavily balding man in his late fifties, who couldn’t summon up the nerve to shave off the last thin wisp of combed-over ginger hair that rested on his head like a Brillo pad.
    ‘I’ve come to talk to you about the Drop,’ I informed him.
    ‘Thought as much,’ and his expression was almost a smirk, ‘in a spot of bother with the boss eh? Not having a good time of it right now, are we?’ He leaned forward and gave me an undertaker’s smile, ‘I hear your brother was making a nuisance of himself at Privado the other day. Does Bobby know about that as well? I realise he was at Goose Green but the Falklands Conflict was a long time ago and it’s hardly a get-out-of-jail-free-card.’
    ‘A long time,’ I agreed, ‘I wonder where you were when Our-young-’un was up to his nuts in mud and bullets? Probably sitting your accountancy exams in Thatcher’s Britain?’ He straightened, clearly not liking my tone but he didn’t have the balls to say as much. ‘Bet you took a few moments out of your day to raise a glass to our fine boys in the army for showing those bloody Argies who was boss. Salt of the earth weren’t they Northam, just so long as you didn’t ever have to meet any of them. Funny you don’t feel that way about gangsters but they tend to have more money than squaddies and that’s what it all boils down to with you doesn’t it, the money.’
    ‘Is there a point to this conversation? I’m surmising there must be.’ He was trying to sound unruffled but I had evidently got to him.
    ‘Let’s not fuck about, shall we Northam? Yes, I am in a spot of bother with the boss, in fact there’s a good chance he will cut my arms and legs off and feed me to the pigs if I don’t come up with some answers and I’m stuck for some right now, which is why I might have to resort to wondering aloud to Bobby why you ignored all of our safeguards and procedures.’
    ‘Ignored what?’ he stammered,