The Drop

cantilevered roof on a football stand. She looked up but paid us no attention, returning instead to her nails, which she scrutinised as if they were a crossword puzzle.
    ‘Do I know you?’ asked an obviously confused Finney because he clearly recognised her face. He seemed a bit baffled that a bird that looked like this could have any place in Billy Warren’s life, even as a customer.
    ‘Yeah, you probably do,’ she said airily, which confused him even more. She was acting like she was Angelina Jolie and he was a fan.
    ‘She’s a WAG,’ I told him and when she gave me a dirty look I asked, ‘which one are you seeing these days love, Stevie or Gary? Or are you between careers at the moment.’
    ‘I’m a model,’ she told me, ‘and an actress.’
    ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but were you a model before you started shagging that bloke from Spurs?’
    ‘Well you recognised me,’ she said sharply.
    I nodded towards Finney, ‘just because your tits were plastered all over his Daily Sport for a week doesn’t make you Meryl Streep, now does it?’
    Finney was peering down at her now, ‘oh yeah, I know you,’ and he chuckled, ‘you’ve got a right pair of thruppenny’s, haven’t you?’ he asked her as if the evidence wasn’t right there in front of them both.
    ‘Fuck off,’ she told him. This was her signal to call her latest lover’s name and, right on queue, the toilet flushed noisily and out walked a familiar face to any one who had ever watched Sky Sports or bought a tabloid.
    ‘Bloody hell,’ said Finney, ‘it’s you.’
    ‘Yeah,’ mumbled the Premier League player who’d exposed his coke habit as he came out of Billy’s toilet sniffing audibly. He was still doing up his fly and I noticed the gold rings on his fingers and the chunky Rolex that gleamed from his wrist. If you added in the diamond earring he probably had twenty grand’s worth of bling on him that afternoon just to go and score some blow at Billy Warren’s flat. I wondered how much he wore when he really wanted to impress. He turned to his girlfriend, ‘what is it babe?’
    ‘These two have been dissing me while you woz like nowhere.’
    ‘Is that right?’ he asked, puffing his chest out at me like the hard man he was always telling everybody he was, ‘what you got to say for yourselves then?’ Either he was completely insane or he was so coked-up already that he actually believed he was capable of kicking Finney’s arse, ‘you’d better apologise right now.’
    I wondered if he’d seen something like this in a movie. If he had, things weren’t going to go the way he expected. Belting some sixteen-year-old apprentice or turning a table upside down in a bar and smashing a few glasses, before the bouncers raced across to protect you from yourself, was one thing but threatening us was an entirely different matter altogether.
    All I had to do was sigh and Finney moved towards him. The idiot tried to throw a punch which just bounced off Finney’s advancing chest. Finney reacted like he’d been hit by a snowball. Next thing, the Premier League’s finest had been spun round to face the other way, his arm pulled right up his back. He cried out and tried to struggle but Finney just tightened his grip.
    ‘Steady man,’ cautioned Billy but my look silenced him.
    ‘Leave him alone,’ screeched the WAG.
    ‘Shut it you noisy mare,’ Finney told her and she fell silent. He turned his attention back to the man he held, ‘you disgusting cunt,’ Finney hissed as he tightened his grip on the footballer, pulling his head back by his ear so he could speak right into it ‘all that talent, all that money and what do you do? You piss it all away on coke and slags like that dirty bitch.’
    ‘Get off me,’ he was clearly terrified and even the WAG had shut up now, too scared to take exception to being called a slag, or maybe she just recognised the truth when she heard it.
    ‘No,’ said Finney, ‘I’m going to break your legs, both of them. I don’t think a wanker like you deserves to be a footballer.’
    Our man groaned in protest as Finney picked him up and dumped him hard onto the floor. He rolled over onto his back and pushed against the carpet with his feet, scuttling backwards across it until he was pressed against the wall.
    ‘Don’t go crawling away from me you dirty junkie.’ Finney told him. He raised his boot high above the guy’s leg.
    ‘Which leg first then?’
    ‘No, no please, not my legs.’
    ‘The