I bought my bro a fry-up in a greasy spoon near the station. Then I gave him a few quid and left him to it, knowing he’d mooch round the pubs for a few hours and hoping he’d keep out of trouble. Then I phoned Sharp.
He picked me up outside the Royal Station Hotel and I quickly climbed into his old VW. I’d hung back a bit, playing it safe, in case anyone spotted us.
Sharp was just north of thirty but he looked older, mainly because he was the only man I knew who still thought a moustache was a sensible choice. We drove out of the city for a while, not saying much until he pulled up in a tiny industrial estate, which was totally empty as it was Saturday morning.
‘So,’ he said, ‘must be pretty serious for me to risk picking you up in broad daylight in the city on a match day.’ He seemed a bit narked but I wasn’t going to allow that.
‘You get paid enough to justify a bit of weekend work.’
He spread his palms, ‘I’m not complaining. What can I do for you boss?’
‘I have a problem,’ I said, ‘a missing person,’ and I told him about Cartwright going AWOL, though I left out the bit about the Drop going missing with him. The fewer people that knew about that the better.
‘You want me to find him for you?’
‘It’s what you’re good at it isn’t it?’
He nodded, ‘that and other things,’ he thought for a moment, ‘and when I find him? Call you or deal with it?’
‘Call me. I need to talk to him before any decision is made on the man’s future.’
‘Okay.’
I spent the next fifteen minutes telling him everything I knew about Cartwright that might help him to track the man down. ‘I’ll be looking for him as well, so if you hear about someone asking after Cartwright it’s probably me.’ That bit was true but that morning I’d also phoned Palmer and set him on the task as well and I didn’t want Sharp and him getting in each other’s way.
‘You’re out on the streets for this one?’ he seemed genuinely surprised, ‘what’s he done?’ I didn’t say anything. ‘Hey, it’s none of my business but you must want him bad, that’s all.’
‘We do.’
‘And you sure you don’t want me to just… ’
‘Not until I’ve spoken to him,’ I told him sharply, ‘did you not just hear me?’
‘Hey, no problem, it’s cool.’
I must be slipping, because I didn’t see the uniformed bobby who came walking up to the car from behind and tapped on the window.
Sharp let the electric window wind down and the uniform said, all sarcastic like, ‘would you two lover boys like to tell me what you’re doing out here?’ and he nodded at the empty office opposite, ‘casing the joint are we gents? Well you can forget about that now.’
Sharp raised his hand to the window and showed the uniform his warrant card, ‘DS Sharp,’ he said firmly, ‘you just compromised a confidential meeting with a major criminal source,’ which even I found amusing but I didn’t crack a smile.
‘I’m really sorry Detective Sergeant,’ and the uniform didn’t look so smug all of a sudden, ‘but I had no way of knowing… ’
‘Fuck off,’ Sharp interrupted him, ‘go on, fuck off, now.’ And he did, sharpish.
‘Fucking uniforms,’ said Sharp, ‘really piss me off,’
‘You were one too,’ I reminded him, ‘once.’
‘Not for long,’ he said quietly, ‘I knew the real money was in plain clothes.’
‘I’m curious,’ I told him, ‘were you always bent, or did you only cross over to the dark side when you realised how far a policeman’s pay goes?’
He chuckled but didn’t really answer the question, ‘well, I do have a wife and kids… and a mistress… a girlfriend… and a couple or three floozies when the mistress and girlfriend are busy.’
‘Expensive.’
‘Yeah, all of them. Believe me.’
‘Well, let’s make sure we don’t kill the golden goose then, shall we? Find Cartwright for me and find him quick.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ he assured me, ‘there is one other thing you should know.’
‘Yeah?’
‘My new boss,’ he told me, ‘he’s got a hard-on for Bobby.’
‘Really?’
He nodded, ‘He’s a careerist, my new DI he knows the quickest way to the top is a high profile bust. There’d be nobody bigger round here than Bobby Mahoney.’
‘True.’
‘That doesn’t worry you?’
It did but I wasn’t going to tell him that, ‘Should it?’
‘Dunno, he’s a determined little shit. He’s got a picture of Bobby on the office wall with arrows going down to other pictures of Finney, Jerry Lemon and Mickey Hunter. It’s like something out of one of those Mafia films where the FBI are trying to take the whole family down, you know.’
‘Yeah, I know. Is my picture up there yet?’
‘No but it’s only a matter of time.’
I’d never heard Sharp talk like this before. He seemed resigned. ‘You’re worried aren’t you?’
‘Bit,’ he said, ‘he’s a quick one this bloke. Not like the others. He’s ambitious, you know, wants to be a Chief Super one day.’
‘Well, he won’t be the first to try will he?’
‘No, nor the last.’
‘What’s his name?’
SIX
That afternoon I decided to check out all the small, low key boozers in the Bigg Market and the Quayside. There weren’t too many left that had that combination of decent ale and 80’s music that Cartwright favoured but I went in them all, starting in the Quayside and working my way up the hill and through the Bigg Market, right up to Newcastle’s ground. I started early, as soon as they opened, because it was match day and they’d be filling up before you knew it.
From my own knowledge of the man, he had half a dozen regular haunts, all of which looked likely to close down at any minute, judging by the number of old blokes that were slowly nursing pints that could keep them going until closing time. I don’t mind these old-man pubs myself but they don’t make any sense financially, not when a bunch of teenagers can spend more in five minutes than some bloke in a flat cap is willing to part with in four hours. They were a relic of a bygone era, about as relevant to the modern age as pit boots and football rattles. I walked in one and, no word of a lie, they were playing Dean Martin. While Deano was singing Little Old Wine Drinker Me, I spoke to some of the old gadgies, then the landlord and bar staff. They all knew Geordie Cartwright of course but couldn’t shed any light on his whereabouts. Nobody had seen Cartwright since the night before he’d calmly announced to his missus that he was off to meet Northam before going on a trip.
When I reached the top of the town, I walked right up to the ground and looked into the Strawberry. When I was a kid, the closest pub to St James Park used to almost always have its broken windows boarded up. Now it had a roof terrace; a sign of the times. It was fairly quiet as it was still early, just a few die-hards in there, sipping beers and craning their necks to watch the wall-to-wall Sky coverage. Anyone who didn’t have a ticket for the game could wait here until Jeff Stelling announced the inevitable black and white collapse.
The bitter taste of my pint rejuvenated me. I figured I’d start again and do the rounds of all the pubs and clubs Cartwright didn’t drink in just in case it turned out that he did drink in them after all. I knew I was clutching at straws but that was what drowning men did. I went from the Strawberry to Rosie’s, my own preferred pre-match venue. Most of the crew had a couple in one or other of these pubs before the game, and I half expected Cartwright to be sitting there with a pint in his hand but then, if he had been, he would have been a dead man. There was no sign of him of course and no fresh sightings either.