Body Blow

by Peter Cocks

  Her words didn’t make me feel any better.

  An hour and a half later I dragged Gav Taylor’s corpse out by the heels, cling film wrapped around his bloody wounds. There was plenty of cover and shadow in the back alley to hide him away. I had scrubbed and swabbed and tidied until the kitchen shone like new. Anna had suggested the possibility of dumping the body in the harbour, using one of the barrows the sailors use along the pontoons. I rejected the idea: the harbour was busy all through the night. Suddenly I had found myself becoming as practical as Anna.

  I took two black bin bags outside and rolled the body over. I couldn’t bear to look at the face and averted my eyes as I pulled the first bag over the head and down over the shoulders. I stuffed a key of cocaine inside his jacket to keep the story straight if he was ever discovered, then I put the second bag over his feet. I felt the artificial limb as I pulled the bin bag over his legs and, along with it, a renewed surge of guilt. But, like Anna said, I had plenty of time later to consider the rights and wrongs.

  She had promised that as long as the body was tucked away out of sight, she would get someone to deal with it. Like she disposed of bodies on a weekly basis. Hidden down a dark alley, there was nothing to link Gav Taylor to Jubarry’s or to me. If the police took any interest at all, Taylor would be written off as yet another statistic in the Costa’s dismal roll-call of drug casualties.

  Panting with the effort, I hauled the wrapped body down the alleyway and tucked it tight into a corner where it couldn’t even be seen in daylight. An area of crushed cans, needles, plastic bottles, rats and feral cats. Somehow fitting for a louse like Gav. I covered the body with flattened-out cardboard boxes; I couldn’t wait to make him disappear and get myself away from there as quickly as possible.

  With Gav finally hidden under several layers of stinking card, I walked back, took my filthy, bloody clothes off in the kitchen and put them into another bag. I checked my watch: just past 5 a.m. I padded, naked, up to the flat vacated by Barry and Julie and had a shower. I found an old grey suit in a cupboard and a white vest. Complete with flip-flops and my face a mass of swellings and cuts, I looked quite a picture. I had to get back to the apartment before Carlos or anyone got in. After locking the back door from the inside, I checked the kitchen again and let myself out by the front.

  I zigzagged through all the tiny side streets on the moped. I didn’t want to be stopped by a stray police car: my strange appearance and bag full of blood-stained clothes might just have raised suspicion. As soon as I could, I ditched the bag in a row of bins behind some shops, then wound my way back to the apartment just as the sun was coming up.

  I paced the room, swigging from a bottle of sticky Spanish brandy, but it didn’t seem to settle my nerves. It looks so easy when someone gets hit in the movies. Bang! Dead. Move on.

  I could still smell Gav’s breath, his body odour, his blood under my fingernails. And now, by my doing, he no longer existed.

  I had knocked back too much brandy and I suddenly felt the acidity rise in my throat and a wave of nausea creep up from my chest over my face. Dropping to my knees in front of the toilet bowl, I retched and heaved. Not much came up; I’d eaten nothing for hours.

  Finally I lay on my bed, waiting for the morning to come, looking at the water stains on the ceiling and only seeing Gav Taylor’s face in them, staring accusingly back at me.

  I must have eventually drifted off, because when I opened my eyes again it was nearly ten. The memories of the night before came rushing back, hitting me like a body blow. I sat bolt upright and looked at my phone. No messages. Nothing unusual there; I didn’t communicate with Juana much by phone. It pissed her off at first, but I think she understood my reluctance to use it. Now I needed to talk. I pressed her number.

  “Hola, guapa!” I said, trying to sound normal.

  “Where are you? You sound strange.”

  “I got into a bit of trouble last night,” I said. “I got mugged, but I’m OK, I think.”

  She gasped. “Are you sure? You aren’t hurt?”

  “I’ll live. Are you there already? I’m late.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s quiet in the restaurant. Carlos is here.”

  “Good,” I said. My leg was shaking. “Fine. I’ll be in soon.”

  “No hurry,” she said. “But there’s something going on in the alley behind. The police were there earlier. It makes me nervous.”

  The blood drained from my face again as I cut the call. I ran into the bathroom and retched dryly into the sink.

  FORTY-TWO

  Donnie sat in the car facing out over the harbour. He looked at the domed apartments that surrounded the marina and watched as a Chinese junk ferried tourists from one side to the other.

  His life had improved, marginally.

  In the days since he’d recovered from the beating he’d taken, he’d been on the wagon and cut down on the fags. The painkillers required to dampen the agony of a broken nose and collarbone, three fractured ribs and a ruptured spleen did not work well with a diet of forty fags and twenty-plus units of alcohol. The drinking wasn’t helping him, he’d concluded, and he needed to straighten out. Needed to get his life back on track if he was to have any future at all.

  He’d made a decision.

  He’d called Dave Slaughter and explained his predicament. Pledged his undying loyalty once again to the Tommy Kelly branch of the family and told Dave that as long as he was sober, he could be really useful to them. He’d got some new information from a British doorman he’d met at the hospital. A doorman with a couple of Albanian bullets rattling around his gut.

  Dave had wired him some money, sorted out a phone and a car and put him in touch with a couple of bods who could give him the odd driving job or security work. Donnie knew he was in the last-chance saloon and had vowed to Dave that he would do anything for him, no task too big or small.

  His job today was to collect a package from a bloke off one of the boats. A sample. He’d been told to look out for an ex-serviceman with a limp answering to the name of Gav. It was getting hot in the car and the guy was already twenty minutes late.

  Donnie got out and smoked a fag, flicking his ash down into the greenish harbour water. Tiny fish flocked to the surface as the ash hit, in the hope that it might be nutritious. He waited another ten minutes, then locked the car and walked down to the pontoons. Sweat patches were beginning to show under the armpits of his light jacket, which he was only wearing to conceal the Baikal tucked into a shoulder holster. There was little activity on the yachts, just the odd middle-aged man tinkering about, repairing a hatch or retying a rope. Keeping out of the way of the missus, Donnie imagined, envying them a little.

  After an hour, he became impatient. He hated ringing Dave with anything but positive news, but this clearly wasn’t shaping up.

  “Dave? Don.”

  “Yes, Don.”

  “It’s a no-show, Dave.”

  “What do you mean, a no-show, Don?” Dave sounded angry. Donnie felt guilty, like it was his fault.

  “The geezer ain’t turned up, Dave. I been here an hour.”

  Dave swore on the other end of the phone. “What’s going on down there, Don?”

  “Nothing, far as I can see, Dave. All quiet on the western front.”

  “I don’t like it, Don. Last night this wanker promised he’d get a sample of the blow and get it to our contact.”

  “Tell me about it, Dave,” Donnie said. “The tip-off was good. Maybe I can help.”

  “It’s a big effing deal is what it is. That’s all you need to know.” Dave sighed. “It’s the second thing that’s gone Pete Tong today and I don’t like the smell of it.”

  “What, Dave?”

  “They’re not moving Tommy after all. Just found out, the guv’nor’s staying in Belmarsh for the foreseeable.”

  “What?” Donnie felt a hot flush of shame. He had not been exactly discreet with the information.

  “Tommy thinks they never intended to m
ove him,” Dave said. “Thinks they wanted to see how quickly information would leak out and get back to them. Thinks the prison authorities or whoever just put it out as a red herring to see who got excited about it. You didn’t hear anyone discussing it down there, did you Don?”

  “No, Dave. Like I said, I’m a bit out of the loop.” Donnie wiped guilty sweat from his brow. Not only had he told Patsy about the move, but he had an idea he’d not exactly kept it under his hat while he was in his cups.

  “It’s not the end of the world. Tommy’s still well in control where he is, but a move might have made him a bit more comfortable.”

  “Right,” Donnie said. “Well, let me know what I can do, Dave.”

  “There’s a lot of gear on its way in and it looks like Patsy’s trying to corner the supply. It’s one thing keeping the small-timers out, but we’ve got deals to fulfil ourselves. Long-standing arrangements. We can’t have Patsy monopolizing it. Tommy’s not very pleased with him. Not at all. He’s upset some of our best customers, so we need to sweeten them up, get them back onside.

  “So what can I do?” Donnie asked.

  “For a start, find this limping gimp,” Dave said. “He’s our contact. Find out where they’re keeping the gear. Then we need to get a half-kilo sample to this Serbian, whoever he is. Then I’ll give you further instructions. And mind yourself, Don.

  “Sure.”

  “Bad things happen in threes.”

  IV

  Tercio de Muerte

  Tercio de muerte (“third of death”). In this stage the matador re-enters the ring carrying a red cape stretched over a wooden dowel, and a sword. From the point at which the first pass is performed, the matador has no more than fifteen minutes to kill the bull.

  FORTY-THREE

  I got myself into Jubarry’s as quick as I could, although every bone in my body resisted returning to the scene.

  “You look terrible,” Juana said when she saw my face.

  “I feel worse.”

  “Go back home,” she said sympathetically.

  It was weird, but now I was in the restaurant with Juana I didn’t want to go back to the apartment. I felt all over the place; maybe it would be better to be here if anyone started asking any questions, rather than hide away.

  I didn’t have long to wait.

  I couldn’t keep myself away from the kitchen. I needed to have a look, to make sure everything was as it should be. Carlos was tidying out there. He said hello, and sympathized with my bruised face, but otherwise everything was normal. Knives in their places, floor clean, cellar door locked. Despite myself, I was drawn to the rear door of the restaurant. It was still locked, so I guessed no one had been out back since the night before. I opened it up and walked out into the sunshine. It was really beginning to stink out there from several days’ uncollected rubbish beginning to rot.

  I broke into a sweat as the image of Gav Taylor’s dead body returned to me again. Then my heart beat harder as I watched our neighbour, a hairdresser, turn into the alleyway followed by an inspector. I placed myself across the back alley as if to block it from their view.

  The hairdresser was a stocky, loud man with chestnut-dyed hair who made big gestures with his arms when he spoke. I waved nervously to him, but he ignored me, too busy gesticulating at the row of wheelie bins. I guessed he was complaining about how they weren’t emptied frequently enough and that the stinking refuse was affecting his business. Our food waste was probably making most of the smell. But with a dead body in my back alley and a cellar full of cocaine, a health and safety inspection was not what I needed.

  The neighbour pointed at all the rubbish on the ground, then began to flip the lids of the bins open, one by one, to show how full they were.

  Clouds of flies rose up from each bin, and as my neighbour got halfway down the row, the inspector had clearly seen enough and slammed the bin lid down again before more flies could escape. The alley was now swarming with flies and I felt them hit my head, crawl into my ears and across my eyes.

  An image of Gav Taylor’s face, crawling with maggots, flashed through my mind. I almost wanted to shout out, tell the men that there was a body in the alley. Confessing would have been almost preferable to the terrible tension and stomach-churning fear of being found out.

  The hairdresser gave a resigned shrug as the officer made notes, then spoke into his mobile, increasing my paranoia. Who was he calling? Someone who would inspect the area more closely? Maybe he wasn’t complaining about the rubbish, but telling the officer that he had seen something suspicious the previous night. All sorts of possibilities, both far-fetched and realistic, bombed around my brain. The two men finally turned and left, and my eyes were magnetically drawn to the alley behind me.

  Gav Taylor’s bin-liner-wrapped body had gone.

  An hour later, Donnie Mulvaney came into the bar. He looked hot and short-tempered, overheated in a summer jacket. There was a new scar across his nose, pink and fresh against the leathery brown skin of his face.

  Juana went to pour him a beer, but he waved his hand, asking for orange juice and soda instead.

  “You can tell your mum I’m on the wagon.”

  Juana raised her eyebrows.

  “I want to thank you for what you done the other day.” He sounded almost shy. “There’s not many who’d have done that.”

  “Da nada,” Juana said. It’s nothing.

  “Let me buy you both a drink.”

  We refused, but Donnie wasn’t having it. He ordered a bottle of cava and Juana and I reluctantly poured ourselves a glass. Donnie looked uncomfortable sitting across the bar from us, watching us drink. He didn’t really have any small talk, so it was an awkward moment while we all looked at one another. Donnie pretty quickly seemed to forget that he was on the wagon, or perhaps he didn’t consider fizzy wine a drink, and he poured himself a glass, then rapidly drained most of the rest of the bottle. He ordered another. Juana and I sipped another glass each while Donnie did the same to the next bottle. There were no other customers in, so we became a captive audience for Donnie, who was difficult to refuse. By the third bottle he was acting like we were all old friends.

  I was anxious; worried about what had happened to Gav’s corpse. I reminded myself that the bruiser quaffing cava in front of me had murdered my own brother and had tried to kill me, too. Now, like him, I could add a killing to my CV.

  He appeared to be in the money, judging by the roll of euros in his pocket. When he left, he pressed some crumpled notes on the counter. I began to sort them out, but among the crumpled notes there was a picture of a man. I recognized it immediately: a black-and-white photo of a man with a moustache and swept-back hair. It was the photo that Anna had shown me. I pushed it across to Donnie.

  “Who’s that?” I asked. He picked it up and attempted to focus.

  “Dunno,” he said. “Some foreign bloke.” He put the picture back in his pocket. “Listen,” he said. “This is between us.” He leant in conspiratorially, placing a heavy paw on my neck and breathing alcohol fumes into my face. “I’m looking for a bloke with a limp. Can’t miss him. Northerner, Kev … no, Gav, he’s called. Very important. If you see him, let me know…”

  Donnie winked and crushed up at least another fifty in notes, stuffing them into my hand. I watched, shaking, as he tapped his nose and weaved out of Jubarry’s.

  Wherever his body was, Gav Taylor was already haunting me.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “No way,” I said. I meant it.

  “That’s the deal,” Anna said. “I’ve spoken to Baylis. We bust a gut to get that body out of the way by daybreak, but you’ll have to use the opportunity to step into Taylor’s shoes and get another step closer to Patsy’s business.”

  “But Terry Gadd can’t stand the sight of me,” I pointed out. I remembered the pain he could inflict, and I had only had a small sample.

  “Use your charm, Pedro Garcia,” Anna said. “The boss likes you. He may be using you but he’ll remembe
r that you saved his boy. The Kellys are sentimental about all that family stuff. You should know that better than most.”

  She was right. Saving Patsy Kelly’s kid from drowning did cast me in a good light, but I sometimes wondered about Anna’s judgements.

  Also, the fact that Donnie Mulvaney was looking for Gav had really rattled me.

  “You know what to do. Take them the evidence, tell them what you know,” Anna said. “And while you’re there, make sure you wire the place a little better. We’re getting very little intel from the bugs you planted.”

  “A few days ago you told me just to gather evidence of the cocaine and then I’d be out of it,” I moaned.

  “A few days ago I hadn’t banked on you killing someone, had I?”

  I finished the call and went back into the bar. “I have to go out this afternoon,” I told Juana.

  “Where are you going? I’ll come with you.”

  “I don’t want you to know,” I said. “I can’t take you with me.”

  Juana grabbed my wrist. “Is it that woman again?”

  “No. She’s in England.”

  “When is this going to end, Pedro?”

  “I dunno. Soon, I hope.” I really had no idea, but instinctively I felt that with all the bad vibes and toxins hanging around in the air, mixing and mingling together like a boil, before long something was going to burst.

  “What do you want, ball-bag?” Terry Gadd asked.

  “I’m here to see Mr Kelly.”

  I had been back to the apartment to pick up a few bits and pieces: magnetic bugs, surveillance devices and suchlike. Then I’d got in the Alfa and driven out of town. The afternoon was hot and I had the roof down. I was still shaky with nerves, but I put my foot down on the bends and opened up the throttle along the motorway to give myself a jolt of adrenalin. I put a CD on, a mix of old-school rap and hip hop. Public Enemy, “Harder Than You Think”. The sinister beats of Dr Dre’s “Next Episode” followed, so packed full of “mofos” and “my niggas” that by the time I got out of the car at Casa Pampas I was almost walking with a pimp roll.