4

I said to a guy, "Tell me, what is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful?" And he said, "Because it intensifies your personality." I said, "Yes, but what if you're an asshole?"

— Bill Cosby

John Pope didn’t get the nickname ‘Popeye’ because he was particularly strong, nor because he smoked a pipe or was a lovable cartoon-like character. He’d got it when he was fifteen and he’d gouged out the eye of one of his mates in a dispute about who was due to buy the next round at the pub. Funny enough, he didn’t have too many people queuing up to be friends with him after that – that, and the fact that he had joined the bizzies a couple of years later.

There are many good men and women who do a brilliant job in the police in Liverpool, Pope wasn’t one of them. His own mum thought he was an asshole, and for a woman who’d got by in life by defrauding benefits and turning the odd trick that wasn’t a ringing endorsement.

Pope had joined the police for one reason and one reason only – to fulfil his destiny to become the nasty, horrible, corrupt bastard that God had always intended him to be. From bribery to blackmail to backhanders, he had every angle covered. But enough was never enough for Pope; he wanted more, and drugs was the house where more lived.

This was his first big drug deal. He glanced at his watch and looked out at the empty dock. The rain was now coming down like stair rods, hammering on the roof of his BMW, and whilst the cacophony of sound was unsettling, the rain at least helped guarantee there wouldn’t be any causal observers. Nerves weren’t Pope’s thing, but he’d have been lying if he didn’t admit to a few butterflies as he waited for his cargo to arrive.

The Guillemot cruised up the Mersey, past New Brighton and Wallasey, and just before Birkenhead turned into a narrow channel which opened out into the North Alfred Dock. Almost directly opposite, on the Liverpool side of the river, the Three Graces — the magnificent Victorian buildings that adorn Liverpool’s waterfront — watched its progress silently as it manoeuvred over and moored up next to the pothole-ridden access road.

Pope took a final drag on his cigarette and threw it out of the car window. He picked up a sports bag from the passenger seat, opened an umbrella, and made a point of swaggering over to the boat with much more confidence than he felt inside.

“Hello Billy,” he smirked, “fancy seeing you here.”

“Let’s just get this done, Pope. Do you have our money.”

“I do indeed, lad. I’m guessing you’ve got my little package in there too?”

“It’s here. But let’s see the cash first or that’s where it’s going to stay.”

Pope wasn’t used to being told how to do things, but he overcame the temptation to tell the coxswain to go fuck himself — there was too much at stake to have a row over something petty, no matter how irritating.

They swapped bags and he opened the rucksack briefly to check its contents. Almost before he’d managed to pop it into the boot of his unmarked police car the Guillemot had turned and was heading out of the dock.

Pope got into the car and wiped the rain from his face. He lit up another cigarette, pressed the ignition to fire up the engine, and headed back up the access road to the Dock Road, and from there to the Mersey tunnel and back into Liverpool.

He emerged from the Tunnel onto the Strand; the rain even more relentless as he drove down alongside the river towards the south of the city. As he passed the Grosvenor Casino on Chaloner Street he smiled slightly, thinking of Moses losing his mortgage money there not so long ago.

On an impulse he elected to turn down Sefton Street and along Riverside Drive rather than take the busier route along Park Road. It was not to prove one of his better decisions.