Free The Drop by Howard Linskey

road in front of him. I’d already seen half a dozen hens that evening; little groups of lasses dressed as soldiers, policewomen or cowgirls in pink Stetsons; now a dozen young girls were done up like burlesque dancers from the Moulin Rouge; all fishnets and red basques, with cleavage hanging out all over the place. One of them waved at me through the windscreen and did a little dance in front of us twirling a feather boa while her mates pissed themselves laughing.
    ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ commented my driver, ‘if you asked wor lass to dress like that in the bedroom she’d call you a dirty bastard and tell yuz to fuck off but if it’s a hen night and all her mates are doing it then all of a sudden it’s ‘girl power’.’
    He had a point.
    I got in late with my lukewarm takeaway in a leaking carrier bag. Laura was in bed. I still hadn’t seen her since the airport.
    I’d have probably sat on the couch with my dinner in my lap but, as usual, I couldn’t get my arse near it for cushions. What is it about women and cushions? Instead of chucking them all on the floor, I sat at the kitchen table, poured myself a beer, had two forkfuls of Chicken Bhuna then my mobile rang. It was Sharp, my bent DS.
    ‘There’s something you need to see.’ He said and he sounded rattled.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Can’t say, just come to the last place and we’ll take it from there.’ His voice was grim so I agreed and he hung up.
    I took two more mouthfuls of curry and a big bite of Peshwari Naan, put my jacket back on and left the rest of my dinner congealing on the plate.
    I had to get one of our crew to pick me up and drive me. The last thing I wanted was to be done for drink driving on top of everything else. I got him to take me to the spot where DS Sharp had told the uniformed copper to fuck off. His Range Rover was parked there and he flashed his lights once. I got out of the car, let my driver go and climbed in next to Sharp.
    ‘This better be good,’ I said, knowing Sharp wasn’t prone to this kind of melodrama.
    ‘Depends on your definition of the word,’ he said grimly.
    I already had a bad feeling about it.

NINE
    ...................................................
    C artwright didn’t look too pretty under the torchlight. He’d only been lying there for three or four days but a rat had already messed with his face. It had taken the flesh off his cheeks leaving two obscene-looking holes where the skin had been and had a go at his throat too.
    George Cartwright’s body was lying on the cold concrete floor of a disused factory, the derelict sight of a minor manufacturing company that went bust years back. The factory was open on both sides and all that was left was the metal skeleton of the building, which had huge holes in its sides and roof. A cold wind was whistling through it that night and there were puddles on the floor where last night’s rain had come in. What was left of George’s face was white, his eyes open, staring up at us. It made me feel sick right down in the pit of my stomach to see him like that. I had spent a lot of time with Geordie Cartwright over the years. We’d drunk together in the pubs when things were going well and we’d shared a car countless times when we’d taken the Drop. Now here he was lying dead in a disused factory, his stone cold body open to the elements, where any scavenger could crawl in 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