Body Blow

by Peter Cocks

  “How did this happen?” she asked.

  “Boring,” I said. “An operation. Or maybe I should have told you I was gored by a bull, or got into a sword fight over a girl…”

  “Would you fight a duel for my honour?” She leant over me and her long, dark curls formed a curtain around my face as she planted small kisses on my lips. I could smell the faint muskiness of her hair and the sweetness of her breath.

  “To the death,” I said, wanting to keep hold of the moment. I returned her kisses and stroked her back, feeling her smooth bottom under my hand.

  “Promise?” She shifted and climbed on top of me. The feeling of her body brushing the length of mine made me tingle. My breath came in short bursts.

  “Promise,” I said.

  At that moment, I would have promised the world. And then some.

  THIRTY

  “Do you know what the hell’s going on here, Tony?”

  I used my hotline to Tony Morris as little as possible. It had been made clear to me that my deep cover meant I was to communicate with London only in emergencies, but I was angry and scared.

  I had waited until Juana left to see her mother to make the call. I needed to talk to someone else, to play out and share the horror of the past twenty-four hours. After all, I wasn’t long out of post-traumatic stress rehab.

  “You OK, kid?” Tony enquired. He might have been asking if I’d caught a cold.

  “Yeah, just fine,” I said, sarky. “Yeah, you’ve only put me in a restaurant that just happens to service another branch of the Kelly family and their lovely friends. So I work my nuts off all hours of the day and night to cater for a party where the birthday surprise is that half the guests get mown down by machine-gun bullets. Ta-dah!”

  “You’re not hurt, are you?” Tony asked, concern nearly perceptible down the line. I considered a moment. I wasn’t hurt. But how many milliseconds, how many centimetres stood between me and one of those random bullets?

  “No,” I said finally.

  “So there you go,” Tony answered. Safe and sound, his tone implied.

  It was like my mum telling me not to be so silly when, as a kid, I almost fell off my bike. Almost came off the swings.

  Almost took a bullet to the head.

  “Listen,” Tony continued. “We know it’s kicking off over there, but we also know you can handle it.”

  “Why me?” I asked. “You chucked me in right at the deep end. You never mentioned anything about Patsy Kelly, and you’ve delivered me right to his doorstep. Cheers.”

  “And would you have gone if we’d told you that you’d be dealing with Patsy?”

  “No,” I said.

  “There you go,” Tony answered. Point proved.

  “I thought I was free of the Kelly business.”

  “You’re our expert in the Kelly business,” he said. Despite myself, I felt a quick rush of pride. “No one has been closer to that family, no one knows it from the inside like you do. There’s no one else we could have sent in, Eddie. They’d have sussed me, or Anna, or anyone else in five minutes.”

  Eddie.

  Tony had slipped up, used my classified name rather than my code name. I realized he wasn’t quite as cool as he was pretending to be. He was on edge.

  “Pedro,” he corrected himself quickly.

  “You called me Eddie.”

  “It’s OK,” he backtracked. This is our one-to-one. It isn’t recorded. This is your helpline, remember?”

  “Good evening, Samaritans,” I joked. “I’ve been stitched up by people I thought were looking after me, and find myself in a basket full of bullet-spitting cobras. I was thinking about jumping out of the window to my death. Can you help?”

  “You’re not, are you?” Tony asked, concern suddenly clearer in his voice.

  “Leave it, Tony.” I said. “Do you take me for a sap?”

  Silence.

  “Don’t forget, this is part of a deal, mate,” he reminded me. “A deal that keeps you out of the nick.”

  I half-suspected them of setting me up with the drugs bust in the first place. If I had never worked for them, I would never have found myself in Stoke or in rehab with Mr Stitch Up, aka Gav Taylor.

  But then again, I didn’t know who I would be now, or what I’d be doing if Tony hadn’t recruited me.

  That’s life.

  Tony continued. “If it makes you feel better – and I shouldn’t be telling you this – Baylis has been over there a couple of times, gathering intel.” My heart sank.

  “I thought he was after Serbian war criminals or something,” I said. “He told me he’d moved on to bigger things.”

  “Mate, if there’s one thing you should have learnt by now, it’s that it’s all linked. I’ve told you before. Any warlord worth his spots is at some point going to be involved in all the other illegal trades: drugs, guns, money laundering. They need to raise funds either to fuel a revolution or to feather their own nest when it’s all gone tits up. They can’t exactly try and overthrow a small Eastern European state, then, when it doesn’t work out, go and get a proper job, can they?”

  I supposed not.

  “So they go to places where there’s fast bucks to be made, where they can hook up with other people like them. Bigger picture, kid, bigger picture.”

  “Yep.”

  “Baylis is on it. He’s on the trail of some Serbian warlord who’s supposed to be holed up down there. Keep your ear to the ground.”

  “Working for Baylis again?” I said. “Great.”

  “He’s good at his job,” Tony reminded me.

  Tony had a knack of making me feel like hanging out with the villains – whether it was in South London or southern Spain – was a breeze compared with what was going on in the big, wide, dirty world.

  “Let me tell you,” he continued, “we’re keeping a close eye on what’s going on down there and if, for one moment, I think it’s going to blow up and that you are in personal danger…”

  I waited to see where this was going.

  “…we’ll be on it like a sack of newts.”

  “Nice one, boss,” I said, smiling at his phrase. “Thanks for the heads-up,” I added, batting back the kind of corporate jargon I knew he liked to hear. “I’m on message.”

  Even though I had little faith in Tony’s pep talks, I always felt an almost paternal warmth come from him down the phone. I knew he wasn’t perfect, but I liked the man. After all, I’d known him all my life. Like it or not, he was part of my background, part of who I was, part of the person I had become.

  “Reassured?” he asked.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said, knowing what he wanted to hear.

  “Keep calm and carry on.” He hung up.

  I wasn’t calm and I didn’t want to carry on at all.

  THIRTY-ONE

  We tried to keep business as usual at Jubarry’s.

  Barry was still in hospital up in Málaga hooked up to a drip. They had operated on him to remove the bullets, but they had trouble repairing his torn gut. No doubt years of poor diet and a daily bottle of spirits had done little for his internal health. He never looked that great on the outside.

  Julie went to see him most days. When she wasn’t at the hospital, she was upstairs, hitting the bottle and feeling sorry for herself.

  Carlos ran the kitchen, but without Barry fidgeting and fussing around him, he seemed a bit aimless and distracted. I would often find him missing or out the back on his mobile when we had orders to complete. Instinctively, or following my training at the Iberico, I found myself stepping up to the plate, driving orders along, carving ham, serving tapas, uncorking wine, waiting tables with Juana. We weren’t rushed off our feet, but there was a steady stream of custom and we began to find our own rhythm.

  A week to the day after the Kelly party, Juana came into the kitchen looking worried.

  “Pedro,” she said. “He’s here.” She did the thing with her fingers to describe Terry Gadd’s mullet. “He wants to s
ee you.”

  My stomach lurched. A lunchtime visit from Terry Gadd couldn’t be a good thing. I wiped my hands and took off my apron, unconsciously smartening myself up to go front of house, or maybe to face a man as dangerous as he was unpredictable.

  “All right?” he said when I appeared. He wore his customary twisted smirk, as if he was keeping something to himself. He threw some keys on the bar – Playboy Bunny key ring, black car key – and gestured for me to pick them up. I did. “Come outside,” he instructed.

  My heart was thumping as I followed Gadd into the street. Paranoia chewed my gut as I tried to remember what he may or may not have seen me do at the house the week before. Maybe he’d found a bug. I half-expected a hail of bullets or at least a blow to the back of the head. I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight.

  Gadd was standing next to a shiny red car, its convertible roof folded back. It had tan leather seats and a matching steering wheel. Nice touch.

  “Alfa Romeo Spider,” Gadd croaked.

  I made admiring noises.

  “Drive,” he said. He pointed at the driver’s door. I hesitated; in all the movies I’d seen, an invitation to drive was usually a one-way ticket to your own shooting.

  “Where am I going?” I asked shakily. I glanced back at Juana, who stood in the doorway of the restaurant, chewing her lip.

  “Anywhere you like,” Gadd said. His face split into a hoarse laugh, showing flattened, piggy teeth. “It’s yours.”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “The kipper’s yours, a present from Mr Kelly.”

  I finally found my voice. “What?”

  “Mr Kelly is giving you this car,” Gadd spelt out. “As a thank you for saving the kid.”

  “I didn’t really…” I began.

  “And he reckons you pushed him out the way of a shell.”

  “I just did what anyone would have done,” I said, regaining my composure. I really didn’t want to be credited with saving Patsy Kelly from a well-deserved bullet. “I can’t take the car.” Now it was Gadd’s turn to look as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “You what?” he said. His face became more serious.

  “It just doesn’t feel right,” I said. “I can’t take it.”

  Gadd shook his head and scratched at the back of the blond mullet. “No, no, no, no,” he said. “You don’t understand. If Mr Kelly says he wants you to have the car, then you have the car, comprendez?” He spat white phlegm into the gutter. “Patsy’ll be very offended if he hears that you even tried to refuse it.”

  I stood, looking at the Alfa Romeo. It was a nice car, but it came loaded with a boot full of heavy baggage.

  “I don’t want it,” I said.

  “You ain’t got a choice.” Gadd laughed. His usual white Porsche Cayenne roared into the square and the driver swung the door open for Gadd to get in. He jumped in and opened the window. “Just take it, you dry lunch,” he called out cheerfully. “And say thank you very much next time you see him.”

  I watched the Cayenne disappear out of the plaza and up the side street that led away from the port area. I turned to Juana, who shrugged, confused.

  “Looks like we have a car,” I said.

  “I hate that man, Pedro,” she said. “He is like a devil. That car is bad luck.”

  “I know what you mean, babe,” I said. “But you can’t be superstitious over a car. It looks like I haven’t got any choice.”

  We closed after lunch and I persuaded Juana to come and try the car out. She reluctantly agreed.

  It felt good.

  I had grabbed a CD that we’d been listening to a lot late in the restaurant – a Ministry of Sound Ibiza mix – and by the time we were doing 90 km/h along the dual carriageway with the volume up full, we were laughing and singing along with the wind in our hair.

  We had quickly forgotten about Terry Gadd, Patsy Kelly and bad luck.

  I pulled down off the coast road and tried the car out on the bends, testing its road holding, flooring it on the straights. Juana shouted at me to slow down, but when I looked across at her, nothing could disguise the suppressed smile at the corners of her mouth and her exultation as the wind whipped her hair across her face.

  I felt alive; my nerve endings singing with the thrill of it all.

  We parked up in a small cove with a thin stretch of sand and a few rocks that opened into a deep pool of clear green Med. No bar, no restaurant. No one.

  I kicked off my Havaianas and hopped across the hot sand, pulling off my T-shirt and dropping my shorts at the water’s edge. I jumped a few steps through the surf, then dived in. I surfaced and looked back to Juana on the shore. She was daintily untying her tie-dyed sarong and taking off her vest, laying them out in a neat patch on the beach with her bag.

  “Come on!” I shouted. “It’s lovely.”

  Juana got in slowly, and I watched as the ocean rose up her shins, then over her knees and her brown thighs until she took a lady-like dive and did a lazy, natural crawl out to where I was, chest-deep in the warm sea.

  I pulled her close and kissed her, then a solitary cloud appeared above, changing the bright orange light to warm grey and pouring rain on us. The heavy raindrops burst on the surface of the water like bullet traces, and in the temporary coolness the sea felt extra warm.

  I held her tight; my toes gripped the smooth sand and Juana wrapped her legs around my waist. We stayed like that for a while, holding, kissing, until the cloud emptied and blew further along the coast.

  Once we had dried off on the sand, we drove back towards Benalmádena along the coast road, stopped off at a beach bar and ate sardines grilled on sticks over the embers of an open fire.

  We sipped Coke, watched the sun lower and ate until it was time to go. The memories of that afternoon were etched into my memory by the sun.

  A rare, perfect afternoon.

  The mood had changed as the light turned golden and we headed back, so I tuned the radio to a local rock station. Between the interference, the Rolling Stones crackled out “Gimme Shelter”. It was one of my brother Steve’s all-time favourites. A Desert Island Disc. I didn’t want to bring Steve back to mind right now.

  Didn’t want to go there.

  I was over his murder, and I suddenly realized I was over a lot of things. Since I’d been here I’d hardly spared a thought for Anna Moore, Cath, therapists or anyone else who had been the focus of my emotions for the best part of a year. Barely even spared a thought for Sophie Kelly. I’d moved on.

  I was living in the sun, with a job I enjoyed and a beautiful, grounded Spanish girlfriend. We were getting on fine, working and playing together, far away from the scabby nightclubs that I’d frequented with Gav Taylor. Juana made me feel like I belonged; one of the natives.

  I was really beginning to fall for her.

  I looked across at her and smiled. She smiled back at me; wide, white grin and brown eyes. Full, dark pink lips. She reached over and stroked my cheek with her palm, as if she had been reading my thoughts. It felt like our relationship had deepened to a new level that afternoon.

  She felt in her bag and pulled out a pack of Fortuna. She dipped her head into the footwell to light a cigarette, escaping the wind that funnelled across the open top. Lit it on the third attempt.

  “You wanna give those up,” I shouted over the wind and the music. “They’ll kill you.”

  Juana exhaled, flicked the first ash into the slipstream and laughed. “If your driving doesn’t kill me first,” she shouted.

  “Death by driving is quick,” I joked. “Smoking, slow.” I took the turning into Benalmádena.

  “You make it sound like immortality is an option, amigo,” she said.

  I took the thought on board as I drove through the shabby backstreets into town.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Barry died that Wednesday.

  There was no weeping and wailing as such. Julie came down early that morning, looking marginally worse for wear than
usual. She’d been at the hospital till 3 a.m. when poor old Barry had given up the ghost.

  “He’s gone,” she told us flatly. From the resignation in her voice you’d think she had been expecting it not just for the last two days, but for as long as they had been here on the Costa.

  Juana, Carlos and I managed to hug her thin shoulders, but there was no give in her.

  “Pneumonia got him,” she said. “Complications.” As if three bullets in the intestines hadn’t made the difference.

  The funeral was late one afternoon the following week, in a small cemetery above the town. There were few mourners: one or two broken-nosed faces from the criminal fraternity; some of the silver-surfer expats who used Jubarry’s; us – the staff; and Terry Gadd, loitering on the edges, representing the Kelly family.

  Patsy wasn’t appearing in public at the moment, it seemed. He’d sent his wife and kids back to England after the shooting and rumour had it that he barely left his room.

  While Barry was being interred in dry, red Spanish soil, my eyes wandered to a figure who had joined the circle of twenty or so mourners, shuffling uncomfortably as if his shoes didn’t fit. He was standard-issue bouncer but bigger than most, with a wide, muscled back that strained against his thin summer jacket. He was dark-tanned and shaven-headed with two gold earrings and a Zapata moustache. He looked familiar. I began to feel a queasiness in my stomach.

  I lost sight of him as the party turned away from the grave and back to their cars for the real business of the funeral. The wake.

  Jubarry’s was closed for other business that evening, but once we had started serving drinks and tapas, the numbers swelled, tripling from the few that had been at the graveside.

  With Julie playing the merry widow, sitting on a banquette in the corner surrounded by a gaggle of wrinkled, tanned witches, I found myself playing host.

  I managed to grit my teeth and smile while resenting every drink I poured. I played up my “Spanishness”, making Pedro Garcia a bit like Manuel off “Fawlty Towers”, nodding politely and agreeing every time some Thames Estuary voice whined “Barry would have loved this”. Or “It’s how he would have wanted it.”