I changed the subject, ‘tell me about your boy, your youngest. I hear he’s in some bother.’
As I’d hoped, this took his mind off what he’d like to do to Finney. ‘GBH,’ he said simply.
‘Chip off the old block.’
‘I tell him not to get involved but some big tosser had a few drinks and fancied himself. Our Gary broke his jaw, a couple of ribs and an arm. He’s in court next month.’
‘I’ve got some bent law working for me. I’ll get him to do some digging on the other bloke if you give me a name. By the time he’s finished, your innocent victim will be lucky to escape jail time he’ll look so crooked.’ I took a business card out of my wallet and gave it to him, ‘a friendly solicitor, very clever. She’ll make it look like the most honourable case of self-defence the jury can imagine. Give her a call.’
‘Thanks Davey,’ he said.
‘But this is on me,’ I warned him, ‘if Bobby ever finds out I’m using a family lawyer to help your boy, I’ll be in the shit, so it goes no further, you hear.’
‘Yeah, cheers man,’ he pocketed the card gratefully and to my surprise he handed me a cheap business card with the name of the Gym and a boxing glove on it and his mobile number underneath. ‘When you hear what happened to Geordie Cartwright. Let me know like,’ I assured him I would.
As I was leaving he said, ‘don’t trust Finney, he’s a snake that one. He might look dumb but he’s not. He’s clever, in his own way, sneaky like.’
I smiled, ‘I don’t trust anyone.’
It had been worth it to come here. Hearing it from Billy was one thing. He could have been wrong, pissed, high or just plain lying to me but now we’d got it from two sources. We’d had two definite sightings of Cartwright in a pub discussing business with a foreigner. What was going on? What the fuck was Geordie Cartwright doing talking to a Russian in the Bigg Market?
THIRTEEN
‘He mention me?’ asked Finney when I climbed back into the car.
‘Nope.’
‘Good job an’ all,’ he said, turning the key in the ignition and revving the car for no good reason. ‘Where next?’
‘The accountant’s.’
‘I hate that slippery fucker.’
‘Me too,’ I said.
‘He acts like his shit don’t stink.’
‘At least we agree on that,’ and he gave an affirming grunt.
‘Coffee, gentlemen?’ asked the lady receptionist in a voice that you could have cut glass with. She was acting as if Finney resembled a respectable member of the upper middle-class customer base she was used to greeting, rather than the violent criminal low-life he obviously was.
‘No thanks,’ I said and Finney shook his head.
‘Another cup Mister Northam?’ she offered.
‘No thank you Barbara,’ he covered his empty cup with his hand, ‘I’ve had an elegant sufficiency.’ When Northam said this, Finney gave him a look like he’d just caught our accountant sodomising a minor.
Alexander Northam’s small accountancy firm was on the second floor, over an estate agent in Grainger Street, slap bang in the middle of the city. He wasn’t entirely crooked, there were legitimate clients too, but none of them put as much money through him as we did. Despite this he had the manner of a city banker and usually looked at us as if we were something he’d picked up on the bottom of his shoes.
‘Excuse me gentlemen,’ she was using that word again. Finney peered at her as if he suspected she might be taking the piss but she was oblivious. She merely smoothed her skirt with the palms of her hands and bent to clear away the cup, ‘I’ll be outside if you need me Mister Northam.’ And she left us to it.
‘Doesn’t she know your first name?’ I asked. He gave me a withering look and ignored me. ‘Nice couch,’ I said, ‘must have cost a pretty packet,’ I patted the soft Italian leather and we sat down uninvited. As usual, Northam didn’t look too pleased to see us. Having Finney in his well appointed office, all teak and leather furnishings, must have been like having a naked hooker at a WI meeting.
‘Yes, well, it did but then one has to maintain a veneer of prosperity, even in these testing economic times. There’s a crisis of confidence out there – or don’t you read the newspapers?’
‘I read them,’ I assured him, ‘all of them. And you reckon a leather sofa and a few old books are going to fool people into thinking you know what to do with their money?’
‘Did you come here to talk about my new couch Blake?’ he asked testily, ‘I rather doubt that.’ He was a Geordie born and bred but he didn’t want to be. He’d spent his life trying to shed the accent. He folded his arms, which made him look like he was wearing a straight jacket made of Harris tweed. Northam was a heavily balding man in his late fifties, who couldn’t summon up the nerve to shave off the last thin wisp of combed-over ginger hair that rested on his head like a Brillo pad.
‘I’ve come to talk to you about the Drop,’ I informed him.
‘Thought as much,’ and his expression was almost a smirk, ‘in a spot of bother with the boss eh? Not having a good time of it right now, are we?’ He leaned forward and gave me an undertaker’s smile, ‘I hear your brother was making a nuisance of himself at Privado the other day. Does Bobby know about that as well? I realise he was at Goose Green but the Falklands Conflict was a long time ago and it’s hardly a get-out-of-jail-free-card.’
‘A long time,’ I agreed, ‘I wonder where you were when Our-young-’un was up to his nuts in mud and bullets? Probably sitting your accountancy exams in Thatcher’s Britain?’ He straightened, clearly not liking my tone but he didn’t have the balls to say as much. ‘Bet you took a few moments out of your day to raise a glass to our fine boys in the army for showing those bloody Argies who was boss. Salt of the earth weren’t they Northam, just so long as you didn’t ever have to meet any of them. Funny you don’t feel that way about gangsters but they tend to have more money than squaddies and that’s what it all boils down to with you doesn’t it, the money.’
‘Is there a point to this conversation? I’m surmising there must be.’ He was trying to sound unruffled but I had evidently got to him.
‘Let’s not fuck about, shall we Northam? Yes, I am in a spot of bother with the boss, in fact there’s a good chance he will cut my arms and legs off and feed me to the pigs if I don’t come up with some answers and I’m stuck for some right now, which is why I might have to resort to wondering aloud to Bobby why you ignored all of our safeguards and procedures.’
‘Ignored what?’ he stammered, ‘but I never… ’
‘Yeah you did,’ I said cheerfully, ‘what are we not supposed to do with the Drop Northam? Think hard.’
‘I don’t know what… ’
I interrupted him, ‘the Drop does not get released into the hands of just one individual, always two. That’s the rule, the golden rule, there really is only one and you either forgot it, which makes you a fuckwit, or you wilfully ignored it, which makes you a suspect, so which is it?’
‘Now wait a minute… ’ his face flushed. He sounded flustered. He’d known he’d done wrong all along and was just hoping nobody was ever going to pull him up on it.
‘No, you wait a minute,’ I told him, ‘I wasn’t there and Cartwright didn’t have Maggot with him, did he? So why let him take the money?’ I knew the answer or at least I thought I did. He’d been sloppy, we’d all been sloppy this time and our bent accountant was no exception.
‘He told me he was with him.’ he said, his mouth going dry.
‘Sorry, who told who what?’ I was being deliberately awkward.
‘Cartwright told me that Barry Hennessy was in the car outside.’