Free The Drop by Howard Linskey

and take a bite out of him.
    I kept picturing Geordie’s face before it had been messed up. I could remember his laugh, his soft spoken Geordie accent, the conversations we’d had about the future, his dreams of that retirement home in Spain. Well, he had no future now. It was all over for Geordie Cartwright.
    ‘What happened Geordie,’ I asked him, ‘what did you get yourself mixed up in?’
    As I gazed down on his mutilated face, I couldn’t get the other nagging thought out of my mind; how this could just as easily have been me lying there. If I’d not been on holiday when he was lifted, it probably would have been me.
    ‘Are you alright?’ asked Sharp, his tone suggesting he was a bit rattled by the spectacle himself. I knew what was worrying Sharp. Despite the mess the rats had made of Geordie’s face, the cause of his death was clear to see. There was a bullet hole right in the middle of his forehead. It had gone in, neat as you like, and it looked professional. Most probably it was the exit wound that had attracted the rats. Half of the back of Geordie’s skull had been blown off and there was blood and brain matter all over the concrete floor behind him.
    This was an execution, pure and simple. They had brought poor Geordie Cartwright out to this cold and lonely spot, probably put him down on his knees,, then pressed a gun right into his face so he could see it and pulled the trigger. He must have realised what was coming when they drove him out here. I couldn’t imagine how scared he must have been or what had gone through his mind at the end. I wondered if he had pleaded for his life.
    ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I’m alright,’ and I suddenly felt my sadness turn to anger. The sheer fucking nerve of this was breathtaking and the complete lack of mercy shown to Geordie Cartwright made me resolve to be just as pitiless if I was ever in a position to let Finney off his leash. ‘Fuck!’
    ‘This is bad,’ muttered Sharp unnecessarily, ‘very bad. Is it going to be a war? You don’t need a war. We don’t need a fucking turf war.’
    ‘I don’t know yet, do I? It depends on who it is. If it’s a lone operator or a couple of freelancers, we’ll find them and…’ I didn’t need to finish the sentence.
    ‘And if not? What if it’s someone who thinks he can take out Bobby, someone who wants to be Top Boy, then what?’
    ‘Then he’s a dead man. You don’t mess with Bobby Mahoney, you know that. How many times has he proven it? Time and time again, for more than twenty five years.’
    ‘I know,’ he said unhappily.
    ‘But what?’
    ‘This feels different somehow, more professional.’
    ‘What’s professional about putting a bullet through someone’s forehead,’ I said, even though his thoughts mirrored my own, ‘anyone can do that. They didn’t even get rid of the body properly. You found it in twenty four hours.’
    ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he said, ‘why leave a body out in the open like this, in a Police no-go area that’s crawling with gangs, unless you want it to be found?’
    I’d thought about that too. I figured somebody was sending us a message.
    ‘Word on the street is; Cartwright disappeared with some of Bobby’s money,’ he said, ‘a lot of Bobby’s money.’
    ‘Word travels fast,’ I said, exasperated that the whole damn city seemed to know what was going on, except me, ‘good.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Sounds like somebody’s been talking, bragging about taking on Bobby, stealing from him and getting away with it, which means we’ll hear who it is soon enough and we’ll lift him. End of problem.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘You know that’s how half the young villains on Tyneside get taken down. They can’t resist blabbing about what they’ve done. They think it gets them respect.’
    ‘Yeah, you’re right there.’
    ‘I know I am,’ I snapped. I didn’t need him to tell me. I walked away from Cartwright’s body and Sharp followed me across the cracked