Body Blow

by Peter Cocks

  She pulled my shirt up over my ribs and I had to raise my hands, as if in surrender, for her to lift it over my head. Then she spun me round and pushed me towards the bed. I toppled backwards as my knees hit the edge. Anna laughed and pushed me onto my back, climbing on top of me. She tugged at the waist of my chinos as she pinned me down.

  “Now, let me remind you what you’ve been missing,” she said, kissing me, and I kissed her back then pulled away.

  As I lay on the soft hotel bed looking up at the ceiling fan, feelings of guilt churned in my stomach. I was cheating on Juana, no two ways about it, and it didn’t feel right.

  “What’s the matter?” Anna asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  My tiff with Juana the night before had given me pause for thought. I thought about her before I went to sleep; dreamt about her. She was the first thing on my mind when I woke up. She was everything that Anna wasn’t: passionate, loyal, warm. In Juana I had a real human being with blood in her veins, and I had found an emotional connection with her that had been missing in my life. I would have been mad to mess with that.

  Anna sensed my reservation. She shrugged and pulled on her dressing gown as I got up off the bed.

  “OK, that’s that out of the way,’ she said, businesslike, as if the sexual heat was something she could turn on and off at will. “Now, work.”

  She poured coffee from a thermal jug and we sat together at the small table in the hotel room as if the previous few minutes hadn’t happened at all.

  Anna took a cardboard folio from her bag. It was marked GARCIA and had a government stamp on it, declaring it Top Secret and Confidential. There were papers on Patsy Kelly, and one she singled out on Terry Gadd.

  “So. You know this one, right?” she asked.

  “Know him? We’re practically best mates.”

  “Nice friends you have.”

  “I’m joking. He does all Patsy Kelly’s running around. He comes down to the restaurant when Kelly wants to get a message to someone.”

  “Well, don’t get too pally with him. He’s a nasty piece of work.”

  “I think I know that,” I said dryly.

  “He got off a murder charge five years ago in the UK,” Anna said. “Stabbed an undercover copper in his own back garden. Gadd was under surveillance and he caught the copper hiding in the bushes. No questions asked, he stabbed him there and then, straight through the heart with a sharpened bayonet.”

  “Nice,” I said. “How did he shake that one off?”

  “He said that the bayonet was part of a collection of antiques. Claimed self-defence, that he was attacked on his own premises. Self-defence so savage that the knife went all the way through and stuck out of the bloke’s back. But the jury bought it.”

  “Or maybe the jury had been bought?” I ventured.

  “It looks highly likely,” Anna said. “A lot of juries that have anything to do with the Kelly family seem to vote in favour of the defendant. They literally get away with murder. I’d love to make something stick on Terry Gadd,” she added, “but he’s pretty clever. We think he’s been here on and off for nearly ten years now, but he’s also been spotted in Jamaica and South America. He’s very well connected. I know plenty of people who would like to see him collared and sent home. Dead or alive.”

  “And Patsy Kelly?”

  “He’s the focus for all the other activities in this area. When Tommy was in command, he was the one we needed to keep an eye on. Patsy was just the kid brother, his every move sanctioned by Tommy. But now Tommy’s inside, Patsy seems to think it’s his birthright to take control of the business.”

  “Can he?”

  “Patsy’s more likely to slip up than Tommy; he’s nothing like as smart. He thinks he’s got the nuts to dominate the whole drugs trade down here. Our bet is that he hasn’t, but he’s having a good try at monopolizing the cocaine trade by bringing in massive quantities from South America. We suspect Terry Gadd is the brains behind it.”

  “Why don’t the Spanish get on Patsy’s case?” I asked.

  “Of course, we work with the Spanish police, but from their point of view at least they know who they’re dealing with. Patsy’s had the business tied up for a long time, so he’s like a guard dog against all the other, smaller traders that might have a go at setting up here. Plus he’s probably – no, certainly – paying a few of them to keep it sweet.”

  “And now I’m on the same payroll,” I said a little bitterly. “Again.” Anna looked at me and raised her eyebrows.

  “Who better?” she asked. “You know more about that family than anyone else. And God knows why but they seem to like you.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “Maybe they get the sniff that you’re as dodgy as they are. Takes one to know one?” She raised her eyebrows again, this time questioningly.

  “Do I take that as a compliment?”

  “Take it how you want,” Anna said. “But there’s clearly something about you that Tony, and I, spotted a while back. You have a certain charm, you make things happen, and you seem to have an ability to assimilate yourself into your surroundings wherever you are. People, and villains in particular, warm to you.”

  My ego began to swell a little.

  “Plus you have an ability to land yourself in the middle of a load of shit.”

  Ego deflated again. For all my usefulness, I was obviously also troublesome to them. Like a difficult teenager who occasionally pulled a good result out of the bag.

  “So,” I said, “let me get this straight. I have to run a bar, work my butt off for the Kelly family and deal with psychopaths like they’re my mates – at great personal risk. Then lie to people I genuinely like, all for some faint praise from you lot?”

  “You’ve just given the textbook definition of working undercover, Eddie. Deep cover. You have to be like them, talk like them, do the deals. To all intents and purposes, you are one of them.”

  “So what’s in it for me?” I asked.

  Anna laughed. She pulled the bathrobe and tugged it tight around herself for comfort. Shrugged. “What’s in it for me?” she countered. “Sometimes you just have to do things for the greater good.”

  I felt trapped, and she could see it from the look on my face.

  “Listen,” she said. “You know, if things got really sticky, we could pull you out. But for the moment it’s not that bad, is it?”

  I thought back to Jubarry’s, to Juana, the flat, the afternoons by the sea. Remembered living in rainy Stoke-on-Trent with the old girl.

  “Guess not,” I said.

  “So give me a kiss and let’s go to work, eh?”

  She leant over and kissed me on the mouth, then gathered the papers up.

  “One more thing.” She opened another folio and took out an A4 sheet. There was a passport-type photo printed on the page. A dark man with big, swept-back hair and a moustache. Underneath was a candid shot, grainy, taken on a phone camera, of the same man sitting at a table in a restaurant.

  “Something rings a bell,” I said. “But there are a hundred Spanish blokes knocking around the square every evening who look like that. It’s a pretty standard look in these parts.”

  “This one’s not Spanish,” Anna said. “He’s Serbian. His name is Dragomir Radic, although he won’t be using that name, he’ll be passing himself off as Spanish or South American or something. He’s a smart bloke. Trained as a doctor and then a lawyer, so he could reappear in any guise. Baylis thinks he’s down here.”

  “So what’s he done?”

  “Well, apart from escaping the UN forces in Serbia nearly twenty years ago with a bank’s worth of euros, he personally orchestrated and oversaw the slaughter of two hundred Muslims from his own village.”

  I remembered Baylis telling me about men like him and saw what Anna meant about doing things for “the greater good”. Reminded myself that I was a small cog in the bigger set of wheels.

  “He organized the trucks to take them out into t
he fields – grandfathers, fathers, boys and male babies – and then watched while they were gunned down. Watched while the local militia clubbed any remaining signs of life out of them.”

  I shuddered. Violent British drug runners suddenly appeared small beer compared with this kind of wholesale murder. Anna had taken the wind out of my sails. The trump card I’d felt I was holding for this meeting had been out-trumped. So I changed tack.

  “It’s probably not important,” I said. I fished in my wallet and found the SIM card I had found near Donnie’s beaten body. “But I think this might be the SIM card from Donnie Mulvaney’s phone.”

  Anna looked at me, open-mouthed. “Donnie?”

  “He’s here as well,” I said. “If it’s what I think it is, it might be useful. Could be some contacts, recent phone calls, you know.” She took the SIM between finger and thumb.

  “Of course it will be useful,” she said.

  I turned to leave. I needed to get to work. Anna stood up.

  “I’ll see you soon. Talk to me, Eddie.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re good,” she said.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Juana looked daggers at me.

  It may have been a guilty look on my face that betrayed me, but I couldn’t be sure. It was only 10.30 a.m., so I wasn’t even late, but when I arrived she was waiting on the terrace in front of Jubarry’s, smoking.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “Nowhere,” I said. Stupid answer.

  “I’ve been trying to call you.”

  “My battery’s dead. I couldn’t find the charger. Why? What’s up?”

  She jerked her head back towards the restaurant and followed me in through the door. She guided me through to the kitchen.

  There were two Spanish blokes stacking up polystyrene crates and another taking them down to the cellar. The back door out to the goods entrance in the alley was open. Juana looked at me questioningly, like this was something I’d organized.

  “They were here when I arrived,” she said. “Carlos is off. They had a key to the back and let themselves in.

  “Cuál es este?” I asked one of the guys loading the boxes.

  “Gambas,” he replied. He gave me a consignment note that said there were twenty crates of frozen prawns. We already had prawns. And this delivery was enough to last until the middle of the next decade – if we were planning to cater for several weddings … and funerals. I studied the consignment note and wondered if it was some kind of deal Barry had done before he popped his clogs. But there was no mention of the late Mr B Ambrose on the form.

  Besides, delivery men didn’t tend to let themselves in.

  I started to get shirty. “No mas,” I said to the guy. But the crates just kept coming. He gave me one of those Spanish shrugs and pointed out the back. I went out into the alley, where the refrigerated truck had reversed.

  There he was. Gav Taylor. Acting like the overseer, smoking a fag.

  My mouth went dry as I forgot for a moment that I looked completely different. Even so, my heart was in my mouth at the thought of approaching him, but when he looked at me I had little choice.

  “Hablas Español?” I asked, knowing very well that he didn’t.

  “No, pal. What’s your problem?” I felt a little relieved – he didn’t have a clue who I was. I switched to English. I put a little more Spaneesh in my accent just to make sure.

  “I didn’t order this stuff. I run the place,” I said.

  “No problemo, pal,” he said. “It’s taken care of.”

  “Not by me it isn’t.”

  Now my initial fear had subsided, anger surged up inside me. I’d had quite a morning already. I was angry with Anna for manipulating me, making it difficult for me to be straight with the new girl in my life. A girl I really liked. I’d had this bar thrust on me, with all its responsibilities, under the jurisdiction of a psychopath, just to be able to feed intelligence back to London. And now I was being mucked about by the flaky ex-squaddie who’d stung me with a kilo of coke so he could slip through with a bigger haul. I felt blood rush to my face and my fists tighten by my sides. I was absolutely ready to lay him out. I looked at his cocky face, still slick with the sweat of last night’s toxins, and as he took another drag from his Benson and Hedges I could see exactly where I would hit him. I took a step forward to smack him, and would have done … if Terry Gadd hadn’t appeared from behind the truck.

  “All right, lads?” he asked. Chipper. “Wassup, Pedro? You look like you’ve got the blouse on.”

  Gav Taylor chuckled dryly. “Nearly done,” he said. Looked at his watch.

  “What is all this stuff?” I asked Gadd. “I never ordered it.”

  “’Course you didn’t, treacle,” he said. “I did.”

  I was so fired up, I might have had a pop at Terry Gadd at that moment. But he was used to this kind of thing.

  “Pedro, Pedro … me old mate,” he said. He put a strong hand on my shoulder. “Get used to it, son.” He steered me back into the kitchen, his strangler’s hands kneading the corded muscle across my shoulders. “You’re in the import and export business now. Goods in, goods out. You don’t even need to know about it.”

  “It’s on my watch,” I said. My mouth was still fuelled by adrenalin, ready for a scrap.

  “No it’s not, you shit bag,” he said. “All you need to do is mind the bar, serve the food, keep the opening hours and be nice to all our friends, and life will be sweet.”

  “Yeah, but I’m sitting on top of this.” I’d begun to get the idea. Seen something like it before. “Whatever it is, it’s my name above the door.” Gadd looked like he was considering this idea.

  “Oh, yeah. It is, isn’t it?” The expression on his face changed and he guided me down the cellar stairs. “Since you seem to be a member of the awkward squad, and you’re not going to cock a deaf’un to all this, then maybe I have to explain it to you clearly.”

  He shoved me down the remaining steps into the cellar and opened a box. There was a layer of what appeared to be frozen prawns – maybe they were plastic, I don’t know.

  “I don’t like your attitude, Pedro. You’ve always had a funny look on your face as far as I’m concerned.” He grabbed me hard by the neck and forced my head down into one of the poly crates. “All you need to know is that they’re fuckin’ prawns, all right?”

  Gadd swept away the first layer of shellfish, and beneath them were white blocks of what could have been ice. “And underneath, there’s the stuff which you didn’t need to know about. But now you do. Because you pushed me. And if you breathe a word, you’re as dead as them prawns, and you will leave this place, like them, in little pink bits, frozen in a box. Do you understand?”

  He rammed my face into the crate, bringing my nose into sharp contact with the hard plastic lumps in the box. I saw stars and felt the metallic taste of blood as my lip split. I nodded. It wasn’t good enough for him.

  “Do you understand?”

  Terry Gadd punched me, as hard as I’d ever been hit, in the stomach. The wind left me and I doubled up on the concrete floor, gasping for breath.

  “Do you understand?” he hissed.

  “Yes,” I wheezed.

  “Good.” He kicked me in the stomach again for good measure and I thought I was going to die fighting for breath. Then he lifted his leg up and stamped his heel down hard into my groin. I curled into a ball, my mind a white world of pain.

  Gav Taylor came limping down the cellar stairs. “That’s the lot,” he said.

  Terry Gadd straightened his shirt and went back up the stairs, job done. He’d got his message across; got the terms of the deal straight.

  Gav Taylor looked at me writhing on the ground.

  “You fookin’ tosser,” he said. “You could have avoided that.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Juana found me sobbing on the beach.

  All traces anger or jealousy or whatever it was had gone. She sat stroking my back w
hile I continued to hold my sore gut and aching nuts, rocking back and forth on the sand, crying out my anger, pain and frustration.

  I had kidded myself that I was in a safe place under the protection of Patsy Kelly. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “Shh, shh…” she whispered. I dried my eyes with the back of my arm.

  “I can’t go on like this,” I said. My first thought had been to contact Tony or Anna, but I knew I couldn’t go bleating to them so soon. Tony had already baled me out big style.

  “What’s happened, Pedro?” Juana asked softly.

  “I’ve been totally stitched up,” I said. “They’ve filled the cellar with cocaine, and if the place gets busted it’ll be me who takes the rap. We’re sitting on a time bomb.”

  “OK. This time maybe we go to the police. Explain exactly what has happened…” She had the good grace not to say that she’d told me so, but I laughed at her naivety.

  “Baby, the first guardia we talk to would be on the phone to Kelly. He pays them all, surely you know that? They have the whole town tied up. If I say a word, I’ll be dead meat.”

  Juana stroked my hair, running her fingers over the back of my head. She kissed me lightly on the ear and cheek and I began to feel a little better. I turned to kiss her back but she held my face between her hands, stopping me, fixing me again with black eyes. I knew now that I had begun to rely on Juana for her strength and her loyalty. Her clear judgement between right and wrong.

  “So, who was that woman?” She certainly didn’t give up easily.

  I considered for a moment. “No one” was not going to wash. “I love you,” I said. “And I hope you feel the same about me. But if I tell you who that woman was, you will think very differently about me. You may not want to be with me any more.”

  She kissed me on the lips, then pulled away. “I love you, too, amigo. But if you don’t tell me, I won’t be staying around anyway.”

  I knew I couldn’t tell her. But then if I wanted her to trust me… Breaking every rule in the book, I decided I would give her the economical version of the truth.