The Drop

get a copy of the sketch and send it round that other little world we are familiar with, till one of our grasses comes up with a name to match the face. If he’s out there, if he’s known, we’ll get him eventually.’
    Sharp had the right idea. If we found anything it would more than likely be through a grass. There’s a lot of shite spoken about the criminal code. People bang on about it as if the last thing any villain would ever do is grass up another crook to the police. What a load of crap that is. The city is full of informants, from the lowest dealer on the street right up to the very top. At street level, a dealer might keep himself out of nick if he informs regularly to a local DI or DS. Some of them just do it to eliminate the competition and the police are cool with that, as long as they get the arrests.
    We are no different. When some cocky young fucker starts dealing blow or selling guns, sets up a brothel or starts a crew that does robberies, we get to hear about it sooner rather than later. Then we pay them a visit. If I do it, I make sure Finney is there to back me up. The message then goes out to them like a biblical prophecy. And Lo’ the Lord said ‘all the world shall be taxed’. The only difference being that their local lord is Bobby Mahoney and the tax in question is a percentage of their estimated earnings. If they are sensible, they pay. If they are not they get another visit from Finney. This time he is on his own or he might bring some of the other lads down with him. They always pay after the second visit, if he has left them in a fit state to do it, that is. We tax our local villains and no one should feel too sorry for them. Everyone else in the country has to pay tax and it’s not as if they are declaring their income to the Inland Revenue.
    Sometimes we take another tack though. From time to time, if it suits us, we will shop their whole operation to the Northumbria Police, removing our competitors at a stroke and gaining us some much-needed goodwill in the process. How do you think a corrupt cop like Sharp becomes a DS in the first place? By busting-up crews we tipped him off about.
    So don’t talk to me about a code. There isn’t one.
    It took a few days for the bruises to heal and I was wary of everybody for a while, strangers coming towards me, people walking too close behind me. For a day or two, I had Palmer watch my back from a distance but there was nothing, so I told him to stand down. I had more important things for him to be doing.
    Bobby seemed to find the whole thing faintly amusing. While he took it seriously on one level - someone had the cheek to burgle my flat to try and find some dirt on us - he was pleased I had seen off my assailant and done him some damage. I was right, it did seem like he was more trusting of me after that. After all, I was hardly likely to arrange a serious beating to deflect suspicion, was I?
    Finney surveyed my bruises as they changed colour, eventually settling into a sickly, jaundiced yellow and said, ‘you got a comprehensive tuning there.’
    ‘You should have seen the other guy,’ I said.
    ‘I saw the blood,’ he admitted, ‘turns out you were harder than I thought.’ Since he’d always assumed I was soft as shit, this was a pretty back-handed compliment.
    I’d been trying to steer clear of Sarah for a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I had no regrets about Laura, none at all. I was just annoyed it had taken me so long to realise how barking mad she was.
    Sarah texted me a few times, checking I was okay, which was nice and for the next few days I got some light-hearted messages about what she was doing, how bored she was, how daft her mates were, that sort of thing. I always replied eventually but I made out like I was well busy, which I was. Trouble was, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. To tell the truth, I was beginning to crave her.
    Inevitably my thoughts would come back round to Sarah and how much I wanted her. I tried to remind myself it was suicide to even contemplate shagging Bobby Mahoney’s daughter but, in the end, I knew that desire, or simple plain lust, was beginning to win out over caution. Men are slaves to that kind of thinking. It can bother you all day until you eventually run out of reasons for not doing what you know you should be not doing . And so we do it, no matter how stupid, even if we know it will make our lives more complicated in the long run and we’re very likely to regret it. We just