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on the subject and it had left a deep impression on his poor mind.
    Jackie was impatient. ‘Look, if we do it right, he ain’t never going to come up – or only in little pieces.’
    A sudden thought struck him. ‘Who’s to miss Geordie? I know he ain’t married.’
    Joe shook his jowls. ‘He comes from down Jarrow way, but I know his family didn’t bother with ’im. Since he was in the nick a few years back, his old man wouldn’t have anything to do with ’im.’
    â€˜Has he got a regular woman – someone to miss him?’ He refused to think of his Laura in this context.
    â€˜Don’t think so – right butterfly, was Geordie. Booze and one-night stands was all he cared about.’
    Jackie rubbed his hands. Things were looking pretty good. He was even beginning to feel that knocking off Armstrong was a stroke of genius, a master stroke of a big-time clubman. He forgot that a few minutes back, he was feeling sick with fear over the prospect of facing a homicide charge.
    â€˜Right, we’ll strip him, shove his togs in a bag with a brick inside and dump them in’t river. We’ll take him down Shields way in the car and slide him in.’
    Joe nodded, sharing his master’s obvious satisfaction now. ‘Ay, well away from here, ’case he comes up too quick.’
    â€˜He won’t flaming well come up quick by the time I’ve finished with him.’ Confidence was rapidly changing into bravado. ‘But best keep well clear of here, no sense in dirtying our own doorstep.’
    They finished their drinks, and set about stripping Geordie’s body.
    Then Joe picked up Armstrong’s narrow-lapelled jacket and dipped a hand into the pockets. He tossed some small change, keys and a wallet on to the desk. ‘What we going to do with these?’
    Jackie went through the wallet and transferred some twenty pound notes to his own pocket. ‘Reckon he owes me a lot more than that,’ he grunted. He pawed through the papers in the wallet to make sure there were no love letters from Laura lurking there, then slung it down on to the pile of clothing. ‘Dump it with the togs – don’t want nothing to be traced from him.’
    Joe helped himself to the loose change, then stuffed all the clothing into a plastic bag that he found in the cleaner’s cupboard. ‘I got nothin’ to weight it with,’ he mumbled.
    â€˜Let’s get the body into the back of the Merc. Then you can find some junk on the quayside,’ commanded Stott.
    They wrapped the body in a curtain unhooked from over the toilet door and carried it upstairs, the weight being nothing to the two powerful men.
    â€˜Leave him here inside the door – I’ll back the car up.’
    Jackie reversed the white Mercedes so that the boot was almost touching the end of the gangway. Then he came back, watched and listened for a moment, but nothing moved in the cold mist of the riverside. They hustled the bundle out and dropped it into the big boot.
    Jackie slammed the lid and waited in the car, while Joe trudged off along the quayside, looking in the gloom for a brick. A few yards away, he came across a heap of unidentifiable metal junk, amongst it a short length of angle-iron weighing several pounds. Joe slid it into the bag and tied the neck in a rough knot. Walking to the wharfside, he slid it over, hearing a satisfying splash as it hit the water.
    He hurried back to the car and it slithered off in a burst of acceleration towards Shields Road.
    As soon as the noise of its exhaust had faded, a tall figure stepped out of the gritty mist at the side of an old warehouse. On crepe-soled feet, he padded to the water’s edge just where Joe had thrown his bundle. Staring down into the black water, he saw with satisfaction that the ebbing tide had already exposed a little rim of filthy mud and stones immediately below him.
    He looked around the