The Drop

I tried to work out what they wanted from me, where they were taking me and what they intended to do to me when we got there.
    If they planned to drive me to a remote spot and kill me like George Cartwright, I would rather at least try to get away now. Smashing the moving car into oncoming traffic or a lamp post at speed seemed about the only option left to me. I didn’t fancy my chances of hurting these two like that without seriously damaging myself in the process but I knew I might not come up with a better plan. It crossed my mind that if they’d wanted me dead, they could have easily killed me in the quiet side street. So, I was still alive and I told myself that was a good thing, as I edged the car away from the club and out into the traffic.
    ‘Don’t do anything crazy,’ the same guy told me, ‘ve vont to talk, that’s all.’
    All very reassuring except I’d used that line myself on people Bobby wanted a little word with - and some of them had ended up face down in the Tyne with their fingers missing. The Russian said they didn’t want to kill me but his word meant nothing. There really are worse things than death.
    They drove me through the city and out the other side, telling me when to turn and, though they didn’t explain where we were going, it worried me they hadn’t bothered to blindfold me or shove me in the boot. I wondered why they weren’t concerned about me knowing where I was going. Maybe I wouldn’t be coming back.
    The place was another disused factory. It looked lifeless, like it hadn’t produced anything for months, another victim of the downturn.
    There was a Porsche Cayenne with blacked-out windows parked outside. They made me stop by a pair of big metal doors then pushed me out of the car. They took my phone and my wallet and shoved me forwards through those same doors, which clanged shut behind me. I was now in a large, windowless room, but the electricity was still connected and I blinked at the bright strip lights above me.
    There, in the middle of the room, stood a familiar figure. Tommy Gladwell, Arthur Gladwell’s oldest boy, was smiling at me, looking about as pleased with himself as it was possible to be. He had the other two big Russians with him. Palmer had managed to get the right story out of the bloke we’d lifted at the gym. Whatever my man from the SAS had done to him, it had worked. He had told Palmer everything and suddenly it all made sense to me; Weasel-face and the Glasgow connection, even Tommy’s black eye. It wasn’t tired old Arthur Gladwell, the king of his city, who’d been gunning for us. It was Tommy, his eldest lad, the prince-in-waiting who’d grown tired of the wait. He was a gangster without an empire, too impatient to stand by until his dad finally croaked. He needed his own city to run, so now he was taking ours.
    ‘What the fuck do you want?’ I asked him, though I knew the answer to that already. I was doing my best to sound hard even though I didn’t feel it. I would have given every penny I had to see Finney march through those big metal doors at that moment with a shotgun, with Bobby at his side. I wondered where they were and if they had any inkling of what was going on. Was there any chance they might get here before it was too late?
    ‘Well first I want to give you a message,’ Tommy Gladwell told me cheerfully then he glanced at the Russian who’d forced me into my car, ‘Vitaly,’ he said simply. Without a second’s pause the guy punched me so hard in the guts I doubled up rapidly and fell face first onto the ground. I went down so fast I didn’t even put a hand out to stop my head from smashing into the concrete floor. I tried to get up but the Russian had hit me with such force I couldn’t even move. I felt blood trickle down my forehead. The pain was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Christ, this bloke knew what he was doing.
    ‘That’s from my lad Stone,’ he told me, ‘the fellah you put in hospital with a broken jaw. He’s got more stitches in his face than an eiderdown,’ I made a note to get even with Stone if I ever got out of this mess, which right now seemed unlikely. ‘You’re lucky,’ said Gladwell, ‘he wanted me to break your jaw and carve your face up, an eye for an eye and all that, but I told him I needed to have a little chat with you first. Maybe there’ll be time for breaking jaws later.’
    ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ I told him when I finally got enough breath