Body Blow

by Peter Cocks

  That I’d been caught in a drug sting, but I was innocent. That I’d been arrested and had done a deal with the authorities that had brought me back here, gathering any information I could about the drugs coming into the country. That “the woman”, Anna, was an officer who came to check up on me from time to time.

  “She must be pretty pleased with your progress,” Juana said.

  I thought for a minute. They never seemed particularly pleased with me. “I dunno,” I said. “They don’t know about this recent development.”

  “You will tell her?”

  “I guess so.” My brain was whirring with possibilities. What Anna had said they could do if things got really sticky. The beating from Terry Gadd had really knocked me for six. I decided I would call her after all. “I think I’ll tell her that it’s getting too hot for me here, and that I want out.”

  A look of pain flashed across Juana’s face.

  “And I’ll take you with me.”

  It was quiet back at Jubarry’s: only a few covers in and the regular barflies. I stayed in the kitchen most of the afternoon, or upstairs in Barry and Julie’s flat during the quiet period. I was in no mood to talk to anyone or be sociable, so at nine Juana suggested we leave the running of the place to Carlos and the duty waitress. I couldn’t wait to leave, claiming a stomach bug, and Juana led me out by the hand.

  I felt a shift in our relationship. She seemed stronger and more capable than me, as if she was taking charge, protective and maternal. I liked the feeling and I squeezed her hand as we walked across the square. She squeezed mine back.

  “It’ll work out OK, amigo,” she said. She smiled and kissed me. Not passionate but soft, her lips warm and comforting on my lips, her fingers combing through my hair.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To my mother’s,” she said. “You need some home cooking and a glass of wine.”

  The apartment block was in a dusty suburb. It had green window shutters and whitewashed walls with peeling plaster. We walked up to the second floor. Tomato plants bearing fruit sprouted from olive oil cans outside the front door.

  Juana’s mother, Valerie, wasn’t quite what I was expecting. She was bigger than her daughter, not fat exactly but sturdy.

  “Encantado,” I said.

  She looked at me warily through dark eyes, sizing me up, and shook my hand. The flat was small but spotlessly clean and a small table was laid with a bright red spotted cloth by the open windows. Juana poured me some wine from a jug and sat me at the table. She and her mother spoke rapid-fire Spanish in the kitchen at such a speed, I could only understand bits of it. I heard Juana explain how I’d been hit by a villain. Her mother rolled her eyes, having heard it all before. I hoped Juana wasn’t giving away too much.

  Her mother put a plate of tapas in front of me: serrano ham, chorizo, cheese. “You have come to a bad town, kid,” she said. Her English was good. She touched my cheek, checking for bruising. “Eat,” she said.

  I had little appetite but I picked at slices of ham until Valerie brought a cazuela to the table full of arròs al forn – baked rice with smoked sausages and pork. The two of them sat down with me and watched as I spooned some onto my plate. It smelt great and I found my appetite, the food warming the empty void I felt in my stomach, the wine slowly returning my confidence.

  By the time I had finished the home-made flan, we were chatting easily and laughing. It felt good to be in a proper home again. Valerie clearly protected Juana like a tigress, and Juana loved her right back. At the end of the evening Valerie enveloped me in strong arms and pulled me to her in a hug. Over her shoulder I could see Juana smile and knew I had made the grade.

  I slept on the lumpy sofa bed in the living room. Valerie wasn’t the kind of mother who would put up with any monkey business under her roof.

  I woke up to sun streaking through the window, not having a clue where I was. My instant reaction was panic, and then the events of the previous evening came back to me, reinforced by the sound of Juana making coffee in the kitchen. I got up and pulled some trousers on, then drank milky coffee with Juana, sitting on the narrow balcony looking across the suburbs while she smoked a cigarette. I wanted to stay here, away from the action. I didn’t want to go back to work at Jubarry’s and to everything it represented. I made up my mind that I would call Anna and try to bale out. But first we had to go and open up.

  Valerie saw us off at the door, wrapped in a dressing gown. She hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. It was like being hugged by a marshmallow. She kissed her daughter all over the face, holding her beautiful features between the palms of her hands, then looked at me.

  “Look after her,” she said. “She is very precious.”

  “I know,” I said, and vowed to do exactly that.

  “That was quick,” Anna said at the other end of the phone. “I’ve only been back a day and you’re calling me already.”

  “Things have changed,” I told her. “A basinful of stuff has just come in, a shipment from somewhere. Gav Taylor’s involved in it, but Terry Gadd’s the man looking after it.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Charlie, I think.”

  “How much?”

  “It’s major. About thirty crates, each holding eight or ten parcels the size of a bag of sugar underneath a layer of prawns.”

  “Smelly,” she said.

  “They’re fake,” I told her.

  There was a pause as she mentally calculated. “Let’s say, conservatively, that’s eight kilos per box, total 240 kilos. With a street value of around fifty quid a gram, we’re talking nearly twelve million quid’s worth.”

  “Shit.” I panicked. “If I get caught with that on the premises…”

  “Don’t,” she said. “But I’ll do what I can to protect you. I’ll inform the top brass here that you’re bringing in high-level intel and they can square your immunity with the Spanish police and customs.”

  “No, don’t, Ysobel. Someone will leak something. The Guardia are so tied in with the villains – you said so yourself. It would only take one loose tongue and I’m dead in the water. I’m more spooked by Terry Gadd than all the Spanish lot put together.”

  “We need to move on this,” she said. “If that kind of quantity gets onto the market, Patsy Kelly will pretty much have the complete monopoly. Is the stuff secure?”

  “Yes. It’s in the cellar and the place is locked up every night with alarms and everything.”

  “OK, but for our information and your protection, I would like you to try and log it in some way. Get some evidence of it. Mobile phone photos texted straight to me and then deleted would do. A pic of all the crates and one of the contents. You can do it after hours, can’t you?”

  My stomach sank. There was no way I wanted to go back down in that cellar.

  “Ysobel,” I said. “I want you to pull me out. You said if things got really sticky … well, now they are.”

  “From what you’ve just told me, the last thing I can do right now is pull you out. I needn’t remind you, this is a big deal. As big as it gets.”

  “What if I get your evidence for you? Will you pull me out then?”

  She paused. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And Juana will have to come too,” I added. I knew I was pushing it. “She’ll be in too much danger here.”

  Longer pause. Even over the phone, I sensed Anna’s female hackles rise.

  “Just do the job you’ve been asked to do, Pedro Garcia, and we’ll take it from there.”

  I’d been told.

  “When do you want the photos?”

  “Soon as. You never know when they might be moving it again. If it looks like they are on the move, let me know straight away. We’ll need to step in.”

  “Sure.”

  “You can do it,” Anna said. “You’re doing great, but you’re going to have to man up.”

  I was about to protest, but she had gone. The phrase rung in my ears.

  Man
up.

  FORTY

  I waited a couple of nights, but, I decided, if gathering evidence of the massive cocaine haul tucked away in the cellar of Jubarry’s was my ticket to freedom, it needed doing sooner rather than later. Carlos had knocked off and it was Juana’s night to see her mum.

  I locked up the front around 2 a.m. then went back into the kitchen. I took out my iPhone and fired up the camera, which had a pretty good lens for low light. The outer cellar door was unlocked, which was not unusual as Carlos would have been up and down during the evening. I pushed the door back and crept down the stone stairs, my heart thudding against my ribs. The bulkhead cellar light shone yellow overhead, and in the corner where the boxes were stacked I could see that the poly lid had been taken off one of them.

  I froze for a moment as I saw the shadowy figure of Gav Taylor hunched over the box, slicing a chunk off one of the lumps inside. The prat had a pair of earphones in and hadn’t heard me coming.

  I tucked myself tight against the wall, half concealed by a brick pillar, then pressed the shutter on the phone. I’d forgotten to switch the flash off and Gav looked up, a rabbit in the headlights. He yanked the buds from his ears.

  “What the fook’re you doing?” he asked.

  “I could ask you the same,” I said. Gav Taylor didn’t scare me.

  “I thought you’d been warned.”

  “Not by you I haven’t,” I said. “And part of the warning was to keep a safe eye on the stuff in my cellar.”

  “It’s got nowt to do with you, mate,” Gav said. “You’re just the fookin’ barman. So sling your hook. I’ve got work to do.”

  I took another picture. “So you won’t mind me sending this photo to Terry Gadd, then, just to make sure it’s all OK, you being down here taking chunks out of his cocaine?” I glanced up the stairs. I was pretty certain that he was here alone, that he wasn’t doing this on anyone else’s behalf. “I’ll send it now if you like?”

  “Give me that phone.” He took a step towards me. “Delete the picture.”

  “Not until you apologize.”

  “What for?”

  “You stitched up a very good friend of mine. He got caught at Manchester Airport with a key. You planted it.”

  Taylor shrugged.

  “And I reckon you dobbed him in so you could slip through ahead of him.”

  “Yeah, what a mug,” Taylor said. A look of suspicion passed over his face. “How the fook do you know? What’s your game?”

  I ignored the question. “So now he’s facing a seven-year stretch. And he thought you were his mate.”

  “There aren’t any mates in this business, pal,” he said. “Just acquaintances. Now, give me that phone.”

  I withdrew the phone as he took another step forwards, but, with a practised flourish, he spun on his good foot, crashing his steel shin across my leg. It felt as if my own shin was splintering with pain. I dropped the phone and Taylor launched himself to try and pick it up, but I managed to smack a hard right hand into his face as he leant down. He dropped onto the floor, scrabbling for the phone, and I jumped on top of him, my knee on his back, pulling him by the hair. He grunted and swore at me as I reached round and grabbed my phone. I shoved it in my pocket, then knee-dropped on his back, attempting to wind him. The cellar was a bit tight for a ruck and I didn’t want to get cornered down there, so I let go of him and headed for the stairs. But with both of us limping, he was soon up and behind me, dragging me back by the waist of my trousers as I tried to climb the steps.

  “Come here, you fooker.”

  I struggled my way to the top, my shin screaming in protest, but the adrenalin kept me going. I tried to turn and kick him back down into the cellar, but he was clinging tightly to me now, shoving me towards the bar.

  Whatever he had or hadn’t learned in the army, he was a pretty tenacious fighter: hard, wiry and vicious. I’d only ever seen him brawling drunk, but this time he had his wits about him. He threw me backwards and I felt myself lose balance and fall against the end of the bar, sliding to the floor. His fist flew into my face and I defended myself as best I could. I didn’t want him busting my veneers or anything else that might reveal me as the bloke he’d stitched up. His wiry hands grabbed my hair and banged my head against the tiles. He punched me in the mouth and I felt my fake teeth crack. I found a bit of leverage and rolled him off me, landed a blow in his eye and another on his nose. That set him back a little and I was able to pull him up by his collar and smack him again in the mouth.

  My blows had connected and he was bleeding from the nose and lip. I staggered to my feet, spitting out the loose teeth, and he pulled himself upright against the bar. He launched himself at me again, tearing at my face and pushing me through the swing door into the kitchen. We were locked together now, his fingers clawing for my eye sockets and my right hand desperately thudding into his ribs while my left hand tried to prise his fingers off my face.

  I roared and spat as I felt his fingernails at my eyelids, losing my contacts, and I bent his little finger back so far it felt about to snap. He yelled and loosed his grip and I managed to pull away, but only as his hand found a thirty-centimetre cook’s knife lying on the work surface.

  He looked at me suspiciously but the kitchen was dimly lit and I guessed I was too dark-haired, battered and bruised for him to recognize me clearly.

  “Who are you?” he asked, gasping for air.

  I looked around desperately, but there were nothing I could use to defend myself. He swung the knife at me, but his efforts were easy to avoid. I clearly knew more about this kind of fighting than he did and was able to back away around the worktops. I reached out and grabbed a steel omelette pan. I now had a small, gladiatorial shield against his sword. As Gav Taylor lunged forwards again, I parried the knife. It clanged as it deflected off the steel and I was able to get a glancing blow to his shoulder with the pan. He swung the knife back and I stepped away.

  He was using his weight all wrong. Even with a long knife, I had been taught, you needed your attacker to come into you so your weight was firmly on both feet, then their forwards momentum would do the work for you.

  I deflected a few more slashes and stabs, reversing, holding up my pan, using it like a steel bat, but I needed something else to even up my chances. I swiped a bowl of olives onto the floor between us and the mushy fruit and oil turned the kitchen floor into a skating rink. I felt behind me, where I knew there was a pot of utensils. I tipped it out and grabbed the short, blunt oyster-shucking knife from the pile. Gav was slithering towards me and if I stepped back much further, I would be cornered.

  I drew him into me again, and he slashed the knife across, missing my throat by millimetres. He brought the knife back, slicing down, and I got inside the blow, twisting his arm away, dropping the pan and grabbing his wrist. I brought my knee up into his Jacob’s and pulled him towards me. We fell into a contorted embrace, me trying to twist the knife free while he tried to get the fingers of the other hand into my eyes.

  The pain in my eyes was excruciating and he had the better of me now. With my free right hand I clenched the oyster knife and swung my arm up, as hard as I could, in a final bid to throw him off. Blinded by his fingers, I felt the knife hit something hard, then give a little.

  It was a strange sensation as Gav Taylor’s body jerked and spasmed against mine, as I tasted hot blood seeping between the fingers that still covered my face. As his body ceased shaking and went limp against my own. An anticlimax as he slid down to the floor, the handle of the oyster knife sticking out from blood-matted hair just above his temple.

  Now I was finally able to open my eyes, I looked down at him, stunned, as the enormity of what had happened crept over me. My scalp tingled and throbbed and my face ran with cold sweat and warm blood. I had managed to do what a roadside bomb in Afghanistan hadn’t.

  I had killed Gav Taylor.

  FORTY-ONE

  “Calm down, calm down.” Anna’s voice sounded tired but steady o
n the end of the phone. “We won’t get anywhere if you panic.”

  It was easy for her to say.

  My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst, I was choking on snotty tears and my brain hurt trying to come to terms with what had happened. My hand shook as I held the phone to my ear. Before making the call I had stood looking at the body for, I guess, minutes, frozen to the spot, not knowing what to do.

  “Deep breaths,” she said. “It was self-defence.”

  “I killed him,” I said. “I took his life.”

  For all the hatred I had built up against Gav Taylor and the anger at being stitched up by him, it was still a life. The life of someone I knew.

  “You can’t think like that at the moment,” Anna said. “We can go through the rights and wrongs later. For now, it’s damage limitation. One option is to leave it as is and let the chef discover the body in the morning.”

  “That’s never going to work,” I said, panicky. “Everyone knows I was the last one there. If the police get involved, they’ll be all over me. They’ll be down in the cellar. And I won’t get any protection from Gadd.”

  Anna thought for a moment. “Here’s what you’re going to do. It’s, what, nearly three in the morning over there?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’ve got a good few hours to clean up. Is it messy?”

  “There’s quite a bit of blood, and the kitchen’s a tip.”

  “Listen,” she instructed. “Take a scene-of-crime photo and text it to me straight away. Then move the body out to the back while you clear up. Do this one step at a time. If you panic, you’re stuffed.”

  “OK,” I said.

  “Clean up all the kitchen surfaces, wash any knives or anything that might have been touched, then once all that’s tidy – and this is the critical bit – clean the floor. Swab it down first, then bleach it and dry it. Check for footprints to and from the kitchen. Fingerprints on doors. We want the place as clean as a whistle.”

  “OK,” I said again.

  “When you’ve done that, deal with the body,” she said calmly. “Think of it as just another drug-related death on the Costa del Sol. Probably one of several tonight.”