The Drop

he started to roll up his sleeves while Billy looked on horrified.
    ‘Make sure it’s not quick.’ I said and walked away. I’d almost reached the door.
    ‘Wait!’ cried Billy, ‘wait, wait, I’ll tell you.’
    We had to make the silly bastard a mug of tea to calm him down. He had to grip it in both hands he was shaking so much. At first he was so scared all we could get out of him was apologies.
    ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I was only trying to… .’
    ‘What have you done Billy?’ I asked him, ‘you’d best tell us and I’ll see what I can do for you. It’s the only way. If you don’t tell us Finney’s going to kill you anyway aren’t you?’
    Finney nodded, ‘definitely.’
    ‘It wasn’t much, honest,’ he assured me, ‘we was just trying to do a little on the side. A bit of business, that’s all, tax free, you know. I always pay my way with Bobby but this was a chance to do something just for me.’
    ‘And Cartwright,’
    ‘And him too.’
    ‘With this Russian?’
    ‘Yeah, how’d you know that?’ and he gave me a look like I was Mystic Meg or something.
    ‘Did you introduce him to the Russian or did he bring him on board?’
    ‘No he was Cartwright’s man. I don’t know how they met, honest I don’t. He brought him down the pub to see me.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because I’ve known Cartwright for ages and I trust him… I mean as much as you can trust people in our game… he’s not greedy you know.’
    ‘Not like you, you mean?’
    ‘I was just trying to put a bit aside. I don’t want to be doing this all my life do I?’
    ‘What was the plan for the coke?’
    ‘I’d told Geordie ages ago that I could sell a bit more than normal if only I could get a supply from somewhere else.’
    ‘Someone other than Bobby?’
    ‘Well, yeah. I told him we could split the proceeds if he could find me someone reliable.’
    ‘Who were you going to sell to?’
    ‘That dopey fucker you just scared off. All his mates are on it. Half the Premier League runs on white powder. You’d be amazed at who’s doing it. They can’t get a buzz from nothing else. They’ve got women on tap, gambling’s pointless ‘cos they’re all millionaires by the time they’re twenty, drugs is the only thing that excites them. They all want to be gangsters.’
    ‘That’s funny, most of the gangsters I know want to be footballers.’ I said.
    ‘Too right,’ said Finney.
    ‘Anyway, the bloke’s a tool right enough but he’s minted and he wants a couple of kilos a time so he can show it off at parties, you know, he wants to be Charlie Big Potatoes. Plus he doesn’t know anything about it does he? We can cut it and pass off any old shite as the purest Bolivian and he’s none the wiser. He pays over the odds because he can and he don’t care. He doesn’t know what a pint of milk costs so he’s not going to know how much a kilo of coke is. There was going to be a big mark-up, very big. Cartwright said he could get the coke off the Russian and he’d pay him. My bit was disposing of it to my football contacts.’
    ‘And you never thought to ask him where he was going to get the money for that amount of blow?’
    ‘It was none of my business was it?’ protested Billy, ‘he said he would get the guy his money but that I had to set up the meet with our footballer for that same day.’
    ‘So he’d pay the Russian for the coke and sell it on through you to Golden Boots straight away for a nice, quick profit?’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘Did he say why it had to be so quick?’
    Billy shook his head, ‘That was his business.’
    ‘So you reckon you didn’t know he was stealing money from Bobby Mahoney to fund this deal?’
    “Course not!’ he said, ‘I would never have allowed… ’
    ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I interrupted, ‘so what happened?’
    ‘Cartwright dropped the coke off like he said he would. I set up the meet but I had to call it off at the last minute.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Well it turned out our client had to play in a reserve match at short notice so he couldn’t come by after all. In any case, Cartwright didn’t come back,’ he shrugged.
    ‘Cartwright didn’t come back,’ I said, ‘because Cartwright was being killed, most probably by his Russian mate.
    ‘Jesus,’ said Billy his eyes widening, ‘he got killed for a few grands worth of coke?’
    ‘No Billy,’ I told him patiently, ‘he got killed because of the money he was holding for Bobby, which was worth a lot more than a couple