The Drop

at all.
    If it’s done properly, the mug on the receiving end of this patter will walk away convinced that the legitimate businessman who, after all, has been solidly vetted in advance, has an eccentric but touchingly heartfelt belief in, for example, the provision of community bobbies, who will patrol the streets every night, catching burglars as they shin down drainpipes with bags marked ‘swag’ on their shoulders. Frankly, he will deduce that for a quarter of a mill in the party coffers, humouring the old boy seems a small price to pay.
    A discreet missive will then go out to the Chief Constable of Northumbria Police Force, telling him that the Home Office wishes to see an increased clean-up rate on burglaries. There may even be a follow-up phone call, containing a hint that their Chief Constable is on the shortlist the next time the Head Boy at the Met implodes and there’s a vacancy. Overnight the emphasis on solving a certain kind of crime shifts. Officers once earmarked to investigate the supply of blow and Es in nightclubs suddenly find themselves stepped down and redirected to intelligence gathering on burgling crews. A few months down the line and a notorious gang of burglars is arrested, charged then convicted, receiving lengthy jail sentences for their evil deeds. The Police Commissioner will even go on television to boast of his officers’ success in combating a crime he himself finds personally abhorrent. He will then do everything in his power to ensure footage of this interview finds its way to the relevant minister in Whitehall. It’s all perfectly legitimate and everybody involved, kids themselves, are somehow fulfilling a public need. Meanwhile we carry on earning our living largely unmolested.
    You might not believe it works like that but I’m telling you that it does. Why do you think people like Bobby Mahoney carry on operating for so long when everybody out there knows who they are?
    We parked the car down by the river next to a little hotel I’d stayed in once before. Not today though. I wanted to be in and out of there as quick as you like. We walked through Shepperton. It was a small place, just a couple of pubs and restaurants, the hotel and some houses normal people couldn’t afford. Not much to do but pretty enough. The place seemed to exist purely to give prosperous southerners somewhere respectable to retire to.
    ‘It’s a bit quiet,’ said Finney, looking about him at all the trees that lined the route between the centre of the little town and Amrein’s property.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said looking about me at the old houses bathed in a sunlight that rarely ventured as far north as Newcastle, ‘I quite like it.’
    You’d be forgiven for assuming a place like Shepperton is about as far removed from the world of drugs and protection money as it is possible to be and it is, at first glance, which is why we bring the Drop here. What’s the alternative? Handing it over in disused factories or at the top floor of an NCP car park after dark? That’s strictly for the movies. Those places are usually covered by CCTV or full of junkies shooting up. Not the kind of venue you’d choose to hand over a lot of cash safely.
    Here, at the weekend, the population is swelled by amateur boatmen mucking about on the Thames, but during the week it’s quiet. It was the kind of place where the vicar walked by and said good morning to strangers, somewhere there’d be a cricket match played on Sundays. I had to remind myself that we were on our way to meet the most dangerous man I knew.

SEVENTEEN
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    A mrein’s house was at the bottom of a country lane. All the houses here were set back discreetly from the public road and we had to press a buzzer at the gate. I looked up directly into the CCTV camera so they could get a good look at my face, frowning impatiently as if this was a routine drop and I didn’t have the time to be messed about. There was a loud buzzing sound and the gate clicked and swung in on its hinge. We walked up the long, gravel driveway and Finney looked about him at the vast expanse of manicured lawn on either side.
    ‘Jesus,’ he hissed, ‘how the other half live eh? You could put a full size football pitch on that lawn.’
    ‘I think you should suggest it,’ I said.
    Our destination was a huge, white-painted house at the end of the drive. It was tucked away just far enough round a natural bend that it