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I was expecting a sombre mood at the Cauldron and was more than a little surprised to hear the sound of raucous male laughter coming from the bar, which was closed to the public this early. We’d still got problems, big bloody problems and I wondered what was going on to make everyone so damned cheerful. I walked in to find Bobby, Jerry Lemon, Finney and Mickey Hunter all having a bottle of Newcy Brown together. Bobby spotted my incomprehension and walked over to me.
‘You’re back in my good books son,’ he said, slapping a huge hand on my shoulder, ‘for now.’
‘Really?’ I asked, trying not to sound pathetically grateful, ‘why’s that then?’
‘That little tip you gave me the other day?’ he said, eyes sparkling.
‘What?’ I asked, more than a little surprised, ‘the one you said was a non-runner?’
‘That’s the one,’ he nodded at me, then actually winked, ‘well it came in didn’t it, and at very long odds,’ and he smiled a beatific smile, before repeating, ‘very long odds,’ then he patted me on the back, ‘have some Geordie champagne,’ He thrust a cold bottle of Broon at me and, even though I don’t normally touch the stuff, particularly this early, I took a big swig.
I supposed I should have been delighted but I had mixed feelings. On the one hand I was glad that a plan I concocted for Bobby, to rob a casino that was a little less secure than it should have been, had come off. It was on the outskirts of town, in a side street, not many passers-by, and we knew they kept too much cash on the premises. Most importantly, the idiots weren’t paying protection money to us, or anyone else. I figured it was prime to be turned over at the end of a busy night. We put a lot of surveillance work into that place but when I initially went to Bobby, he rejected my idea.
He must have been desperate for some extra cash by now to replace the Drop, because he had been willing to take what he had seen as too big a risk. From the way Bobby was talking, it reaped us a better-than-expected dividend. There’s nothing like an earner to get you back on the right side of the boss and now he was all smiles - and the rest of the crew might even remember why I was on the payroll in the first place, now they had some money in their pockets because of me. I was an ideas man and none of them ever had an idea in their lives, except Bobby.
The thing was, even though he had given my plan the green light and set a heavy duty crew onto it, he had done it without telling me, which meant he still didn’t fully trust me. It continued to trouble me even as I downed my beer and laughed along with the rest of the boys.
‘I do like a successful day at the races,’ laughed Bobby.
‘Aye,’ said Hunter, ‘and here’s to our very own king of the tipsters,’ they raised their glasses to me.
I had to content myself that my plan had led to a successful job, with no casualties or arrests. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do for now.
Bobby did get round to asking me quietly about the missing money and I answered him honestly, ‘nothing conclusive yet, but we are turning over every stone, believe me.’ He just nodded but didn’t say another word.
I had a couple of drinks that day, more than a couple if I’m honest, as I moved from place to place trying to fathom what was going on around me. I got one of our lads to drive me around on the pretext of following up some leads but really it was just an excuse to leave Bobby, Finney and the rest celebrating on their own while I got the fuck out of it.
When I finally got back that evening, Laura had, as usual, opened a bottle of white wine. Before I met her, I only ever used to drink beer, now it was a nightly ritual to lose our stresses in the bottom of a bottle of Pinot Grigio. I chose one of our big wine glasses and poured it almost to the top, sitting down heavily on the couch.
‘Bobby still giving you a hard time?’ she said breezily, as if Newcastle had just lost again; another thing she didn’t seem to understand the seriousness of.
‘That’s one way of describing it.’
Laura leaned forward in her chair, tilted her head to one side and gave me her wide-eyed empathising look.
‘What’s happened?’
I wasn’t sure how to put it into words but then I figured I should try. There was something about her pitying, supportive look that spurred me into making an effort, ‘suppose you had an idea, a good idea but your boss rejected it as. . . too risky. . . in the context of an overall business plan?’
‘Right.’
‘Then, because things changed, he suddenly decided that your idea was worth the risk after all, so he went ahead with it and it worked.’
‘Right,’ she said, frowning, ‘but that’s good isn’t it? If it worked I mean.’
‘But. . .’
‘There’s a but?’
‘There’s a but. He didn’t tell me about it, implementing my idea that is. Until he had actually gone ahead with it.’
‘Right,’ she kept saying ‘right’ but this time she said it doubtfully, ‘I’m not sure I. . .’
‘Which means he still doesn’t fully trust me, don’t you see?’
‘Well,’ she thought for a moment, ‘not really. I mean could he not just have forgotten to tell you?’
‘No.’
‘It’s not all bad surely? I mean, you’ll get credit for this idea won’t you?’
‘Yes but that’s not what I care about right now. It’s the trust thing that’s worrying me.’
‘I know, I do know what you mean,’ she said enthusiastically, ‘it’s like with the Watson case, when Thomas wouldn’t hand it over to me without continuing to be involved. It was like he just didn’t trust me to do a good job.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘no, with respect to you Laura, it’s not like that at all. The consequences could be very different.’ I actually wanted to say ‘why does it always have to be about you?’ but I managed to not go down that road.
‘Alright,’ she said, through gritted teeth, ‘if you think your boss doesn’t trust you any more, here’s a radical idea. . .’
‘What?’ She gave me a challenging look, ‘no, seriously I’m interested, I really am, honestly. What’s your radical idea?’
‘Think the unthinkable,’ she offered enigmatically.
I creased my eyebrows together, in what I hoped was a silent way of conveying the question, ‘what the fuck are you talking about?’
‘Leave.’
‘Leave?’
‘Yes,’ she said, almost triumphantly, ‘why not. If you’ve had enough, just leave. Go and do something else.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. What would you like to do?’. She was acting as if I could turn up for work at an RAF base tomorrow and start flying Tornado jets instead.
‘In case you haven’t noticed, my Curriculum Vitae is a little unorthodox; graduated from college, worked for a notorious gangster. . . That’s it. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to get me into Microsoft.’
‘I’m only saying. . .’
‘What?’ I interrupted her, even though she hates that, ‘what are you saying? You’ve used that big lawyerly brain to help me and you’ve come up with a whole new radical idea? Leave? Simple as that, leave?’
‘Why the fuck not?’ she raised her voice.
‘Why the fuck not? I’ll tell you why the fuck not, because I don’t work for Marks & Spencer or the local council. Get real. You don’t leave a job like mine. It doesn’t fucking happen. Bobby won’t allow it. He’s not going to give me severance pay and a bloody carriage clock.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ I almost screeched, ‘are you fucking mental? Because I know all about him and his business. He’s not going to let me go off on a gap year, is he? Don’t you know anything?!’
‘No!’ she was still up for a fight, ‘I don’t know anything and why is that? Because you never tell me anything! I don’t know what you do for Bobby because you keep telling me I don’t want to know. I know you’re not a gangster because you’ve told me that one over and over again but it seems you do work for one. So what does that make you then eh? Sometimes I think I don’t even know you at all.’
‘You didn’t mind me working for a gangster when it was all about corporate hospitality and money coming in, expensive presents and holidays in Thailand. You didn’t mind me working for Bobby Mahoney then. You even like the guy.’
‘I do not!’
‘Yes, you do. Don’t deny it Laura. Wandering over to chat with him, flirting with him at his parties, laughing at his jokes, so some of that gangster glamour rubs off on you.’
‘I laugh at his stupid jokes because he’s your boss.’
‘Bullshit. It’s so you can go back to your chambers and tell everybody you’ve had a barbeque at Bobby Mahoney’s house, the home of Newcastle’s most wanted. With all of those divorce cases it’s the closest you’ll ever get to any real crime but believe me, it isn’t so glamorous when you’re stuck right in the middle of it.’
‘You’re a complete bastard sometimes, do you know that?’ she said and she climbed off the sofa, ‘you’re so cold and you can’t even see it.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘I don’t want to hear any more of this,’ she said and she walked out of the room.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ I called after her, ‘is that what you tell the judge when he says something you don’t like? “I don’t want to hear any more of this” and then you walk out, eh!’ .