by Peter Cocks
“Russian,” Sharp said. “Someone told him you were doing a drugs deal and that you were holding plenty of cash that had been delivered for you in a black suitcase.”
“Who?”
Sharp shrugged. “Anyone’s guess. This lot had me tied in knots, trying to get you out. I’ll tell you about it. But let’s deal with Trotsky first.”
Sharp made a phone call.
Forty-five minutes later, a knock at the door made me jump. Sharp opened it and two utility men in boiler suits pushed what looked like a large laundry trolley into the room. Sharp led them into the bathroom and they wrangled the trolley inside. There were voices and I heard muffled shouts of protest followed by silence as they pulled the trolley from the bathroom, heavier now.
Sharp opened two bottles of beer and some crisps from the mini bar.
“So how did you get me out?” I asked.
“We’d have found you quicker, but I had to get hold of our London guy on the inside of the IRA. We only make contact in the most extreme circumstances. You have to understand, letting you go is very high risk for him.”
“So how did you persuade him to get me out?”
“We had a bargaining chip.”
“What?”
Intel about Paul Dolan,” he said. “The London IRA and Martin Connolly are very interested in his whereabouts for one reason or another. ”
“Do you have much?” I asked. I knew I wouldn’t get a straight answer.
“Probably more than you know,” Sharp said. “But less than you think.”
“But that way, all sorts get to know what we … you know?”
“Collateral damage,” Sharp said. “Of course we’re selective, but we have to balance it out.”
“I didn’t know I was worth that much.”
“You’re important to us,” Sharp said without irony. “So we offered Martin Connolly what little we have. He took the bait, and he has quite a bit of clout.”
“What is he? A drug dealer?”
“Martin’s old-school IRA. He’s more political, tries to keep himself respectable. As far as we know, he’s separated himself from the Real IRA, who are manufacturing masses of synthetic drugs, turning over millions, rearming and still bombing when the mood takes them. But we’re under no illusion that the political branch is still sympathetic to the gangsters; it’s all about stockpiling funds and gaining power and control. The Real IRA boys have forged big international contacts, particularly in the States, where there’s a lot of sympathy for them. Meanwhile, the old guard are lining up to shake hands with the Queen to look kosher. Thirty years ago they were blowing up her family.”
We sat silently for a moment. Sharpie swigged the last of his beer. I sipped mine. I was beginning to feel sleepy again.
“Well, thanks for getting me out, I guess.” Inside I blamed them for getting me in. “Wish you’d been a little earlier.”
I pulled my sleeve back and showed Sharp the angry cigarette burn. He winced, wrinkling his nose in sympathy.
“Your captors must have realized you were a bigger fish than they’d originally thought. Whatever you told them saved you as much as our man on the inside.”
“I kept my cover straight,” I said, proud of holding up under torture. “I just gave them names.”
“Names?” He looked worried.
“Only ones that fit with my cover,” I said. “Tommy, obviously. Patsy Kelly, Gadd. Paul Dolan, Bashmakov.”
“Bashmakov?” Sharp raised an eyebrow. Looked at his watch. “We can talk further in the morning,” he said. “But I want to get you out, away from here, asap.”
I had no objection.
“I’m going to bunk down in here,” Sharp said. “Just in case.”
“Sure,” I said.
I went to the bathroom and brushed the taste of beer from my teeth. When I got back into the room, Sharpie was curled up on the sofa wrapped in a blanket. I could see the handle of a pistol sticking out from the cushion under his head.
“We’ll leave early,” he said. “Alarm six fifteen, breakfast starts about seven.”
“OK.”
“G’night,” he said, and just before I switched out the light I saw an expression cross Sharpie’s face that told me he was as frightened as I was.
Breakfast was a silent affair.
We both hunched over grapefruit juice and scrambled eggs: our nervous stomachs would struggle to digest anything else. Sharpie leafed through a complimentary Times.
“Not much good news,” he said.
“Is there ever?”
We were the only customers in the dining room at 6.50, and the tired foreign girls who waited on us couldn’t conceal their huffiness at having to start a little early. I regarded them all with suspicion, expecting any of them to pull a gun or stab me in the neck with a fork at any moment.
At reception I stood by with the bags while Sharpie checked us out. My original receptionist did the business with Sharp and cast me a glance.
“You look better than when you arrived, Mr Kelly,” she said.
I did. Clean shirt, jacket and chinos. Bruises fading a little.
“You must have found your stay with us relaxing. Would you like to fill out one of our customer satisfaction forms?”
I remembered the bloodstains we had cleaned from the bathroom door an hour before.
“Very relaxing,” I said. “No, thanks, I’m afraid I haven’t got time.”
It was a short drive through the West End to Vauxhall, but we sat in nose-to-tail London rush hour traffic. Some talk radio rattled off useless traffic updates. Sharp switched it off.
“We’ll do a full debrief back at base,” he said, looking at the screen, “but run me through the bullet points of what happened.” I didn’t answer. He looked sideways at me. “What?”
“I’d like to know what the point was first, before I have to relive it all again.”
“I know you think it was all a wild goose chase putting you on to Hannah Connolly, but, believe me, there was good reason behind it.”
“Yeah? Right.”
“You know Tony spent a long time in Northern Ireland?”
“Yes, he’s told me.”
“Well, he has a strong feeling that he knows Martin Connolly, but not by that name. They are about the same age. Tony would have been there when Connolly was in his twenties too, when he would have been at the sharp end of the IRA; the bombers and the killers. So when we get a lead that an IRA suspect’s daughter is in London and there are a few drugs involved, Tony’s mind starts to work overtime. One of his hunches. More than a hunch: you found real evidence.”
I knew that Tony had a good track record with his hunches.
“And I’m the sucker sent in to sniff about since Tony’s off-limits?”
“Correct. You were the man for the job anyway. We followed a lead; that’s all we can do. And on the way you’ve picked up some very good intel on the London IRA.”
“I guess there’s a link,” I said, grudgingly. “Tommy was financing them in a small way through The Harp, Bashmakov’s hooked up with them in some way. Like Tony always says, these things have a habit of linking up.”
“Sure,” Sharp said. “It’s a question of joining the dots. What about Bashmakov?”
“The bloke who got me out said his name was the magic word.”
“Did he say why?” Sharp glanced sideways at me.
“Not really. Why does everyone jump at the mention of his name?”
“He’s a new breed of villain,” Sharp said. “He works on a global scale – you’ve seen it yourself. One minute he’s floating off Croatia trading a few million in cocaine and the same again in stolen art. The next day, he’s probably got a helicopter into Afghanistan to do the same again with heroin.
“Tommy Kelly’s genius was to hide the skulduggery behind several business fronts. The other smart thing he did was to keep it friendly with the other factions, like the yardies and the triads … and the IRA. Tommy convinced them that
working together against the law while respecting each other’s territories was to all their advantages. That’s how organized crime works, and that’s what made him so strong, but to be honest, Tommy’s operation looks like a village post office compared to Bashmakov’s multinational corporation.”
“But Tommy gets on with Bashi, as he calls him.”
“Well, he did initially, I think. Bashmakov fluffed Tommy up when he moved in on London. Don’t forget, the Russians didn’t really arrive here until six or seven years ago, and Bashmakov needed Tommy as a strong London connection to do business with. Like before, Tommy thought it better to cosy up to the Russian rather than make an enemy.”
“Like giving him gifts of fake pictures and stuff. So what’s changed?”
“With Tommy inside, he’s little use – or more importantly, little threat – to Bashmakov unless Tommy has something the Russian wants, in which case he just uses his muscle and cherry picks, taking over bits of Kelly business. Just takes it. There’s little Tommy can do about it.”
“Does Tommy know?”
“Of course he does. It’s driving him nuts. He’s hired the top law firm for his appeal. He’ll spend his last penny if it means he can get out and back in the saddle. It’s taken him all this time to realize that there are certain things he can’t control from inside and it’s making him mad as hell.”
“Like finding Sophie?”
Sharp nodded.
“What’s your hunch?”
“Anna’s working on it,” Sharp said. “But I think we’re going to have to spread our net a little wider.”
Donnie was in the garden, smoking a fag and driving Brandy the Bichon Frise mental with a rubber ball on a bit of elastic. He would bounce it hard on the path so the ball would rebound well out of reach of the small dog as she leapt into the air. On its downward trajectory, the ball was given extra momentum by the elastic and would hit the dog hard on the nose as she tried to catch it, making her yelp.
Donnie chuckled and repeated the action multiple times, laughing out loud when the ball caught the dog a corker. Finally he tired of the game and offered Brandy the ball from his hand. Instead of taking it, Brandy bit her tormentor’s finger and held on.
Dave returned just in time to find Donnie releasing the dog’s grip by kicking her.
“What you doing, Don? Don’t kick the fucking dog.”
“Sorry, Dave. It bit me.”
“She never bites, Don.”
“She did this time, Dave, hard.”
“Not as hard as my missus will bite you if she finds you’ve kicked Brandy.”
“Sorry, Dave.”
Donnie knew he had outstayed his welcome. The night before, tucked under his frilly duvet in the single bed, he had heard Dave and Pam rowing. Through the wall, Pam’s voice sounded hissy and Dave’s low rumble sounded conciliatory – promises to get him out as soon as, Donnie was sure.
“How’s the guvnor, Dave?” Donnie asked. Dave had just been to Belmarsh to see Tommy.
“Not in the best of moods. The appeal’s coming up soon. Them lawyers are shit hot, worth every penny. All Oxbridge and Cambridge, finest minds in the country, they’re all over it like the pox, covering every angle: bent coppers, paid witnesses, unreliable evidence, the lot.”
“So, isn’t he happy about that?”
“Yes, Don. But it’s taking too long. He thinks he’s been had about finding Sophie, there’s not been a peep. The longer he’s in there, the more chancers have a go at our biz. He thinks he’s being wound up so that he might give something away. When he’s really down, he thinks Sophie might already be brown bread.”
“No, Dave!” Donnie protested.
“Nothing from Cheryl, neither. You’d have thought, wouldn’t you? Just a note. In my view he was always too good to her, yet nothing was ever good enough for her, you know?”
“Perhaps she don’t want to send anything that would impli … get anyone into trouble?”
“I just think she didn’t like it when the shit hit the fandango. It interfered with her lifestyle. She’s been with TK nearly thirty years and had it easy the last ten: lunches and shopping and that.”
“D’you think so, Dave?” Donnie’s experience of relationships was limited to six months maximum.
“Women don’t like it when the biz goes tits-up, Don. They’re frightened they’ll lose the gaff, the Lexus and the tanning salon membership.” Dave leant forward confidentially, patted Donnie on the knee. “That’s why I always keep it sweet with Pammy. On the level.”
As far as Donnie had seen, Dave was terrified of the woman. All six foot three of him flinched when he heard the front door open. “Hello darling, you home? Cuppa tea?”
It wasn’t that Donnie disliked Pam, far from it. She had been very kind putting him up, feeding and watering him. She just sometimes gave Dave a look that would melt steel at fifty paces, her mouth tightening into lines like a washbag that had had its string pulled.
Donnie wondered at the power these women had over big, strong men.
“There’s something I want to talk about, Don.”
“I know, Dave,” Donnie sighed. “You want me out.”
“Well, I did promise Pam you wouldn’t be here longer than a week. But there’s a bit of business to do before we decide where you go, Don.”
“Oh?”
“Remember that hit you done up in St John’s Wood a while ago?”
“The Russian?”
“Correct. Well, it looks like the warning wasn’t taken. They’ve snatched up a bit more of our territory. Just like that, muscled in because they can. We’ve got foot soldiers out there who can take care of theirselves, but these Russkis are something else. They think we’ve had it our way too long. Tommy doesn’t want to start effing World War III, it’s not his way. He’s got some good eastern European allies, but he wants to give them a dry slap, let them know he’s not messing about.”
“How big a slap?”
“A large one. Well aimed. There’s this guy, Oleg Komorov. They call him OK.”
“OK, Dave?”
“Yeah. OK. He’s one of Alexei Bashmakov’s chief negotiators. He works out of the Russian Embassy in London, so he looks kosher but he’s as bent as a bottle of chips. A big dealer; Tommy reckons that Komorov is the one muscling in on our business.”
“OK.”
“Yeah, OK – Komorov. Working on Bashmakov’s behalf, like his front man, picking up our contacts, buying them off.”
“I thought Bashi and the guvnor were comrades-in-arms?”
“Course they was, until one sees the other one down and can pick up some action. There’s a vacuum, a power shift. Like what happened with Patsy in Spain. These boys don’t get on by opening doors and giving it the ‘After you, Cecil’, do they? They just pile in and grab it. Nature abhors a vacuum and this behaviour cannot be tolerated.”
Donnie could hear the echo of Tommy’s phrases in Dave’s.
“S’pose not, Dave.”
“Right, so here’s the deal. We know Komorov is meeting a Harp contact who has worked with us in the past. So Tommy wants you to be at that meeting. We’ll find out where it is…”
“You know I’m not a good negotiator, Dave – you’d be better.”
“Tommy doesn’t want you to negotiate, Don. He wants you to do what you’re best at. He wants to send Bashmakov a clear message by shooting Komorov. And whoever he’s doing business with. Make it loud and clear to Bashmakov and all concerned parties.”
“OK, Dave.”
“Exactly: OK, Don.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
Dave cruised round the outer circle of Regent’s Park until they found a bay.
Late breakfast had been the full monty in one of the few remaining Italian greasy spoons in Camden. Where Camden had once been almost entirely peopled by Irish and Italians, now all the caffs, chippies and small businesses were run by Turks, Estonians and Poles.
Dave remarked on t
he fact as they walked around the park, past the giraffes and the elephant houses at London Zoo.
“It’s not racialist, Don,” Dave said. “It’s just they all have different habits, different ways of doing things. Like the difference between them giraffes and elephants.”
Donnie watched as a giraffe obligingly drifted past, several metres of neck visible above the fence.
“So which ones are we, Dave? Elephants or giraffes?”
“Neither, Don,” Dave said. “We’re the lions. The kings of the jungle. We have to show our teeth and claws.”
“What about the Russians?”
“Big bastard ugly brown bears,” Dave said. “Not proud and wily like us lions. No class. We’re the bulldog breed.”
“I thought we was the lions, Dave, make your mind up.”
Donnie was suddenly struck by the infantile turn of the conversation when the business of the day was to shoot a Russian in the face.
They had recced the restaurant, off Regent’s Park Road: The Lemon Tree, a well-established Greek, whitewashed with green blinds. It would be open in an hour or so. They walked across the bridge and sat by the canal, watching ducks drift by in the morning sun. Donnie smoked while Dave checked his BlackBerry. He read an email a couple of times and smiled to himself.
“Bit of good news, Don.”
“Dave?”
“The Savage kid’s back. I thought we’d lost him while you was indisposed – he went off piste.”
Donnie wasn’t overjoyed to hear this. Just meant another job he didn’t want to do.
“I’m too hot to keep an eye on him,” Donnie said. “Get Jimmy Gallagher back on it. I’m a wanted man. Bit risky.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, Don. I look after you, don’t I? No beat copper is going to feel your collar. Listen, let’s concentrate on the job in hand and tool you up.”
They got back in the car and slowly drove out of the park and across to Primrose Hill. Donnie admired the pretty, ice-cream-coloured houses that he guessed were worth a couple of million each.
Dave turned into a narrow mews off Regent’s Park Road that ended in a row of garages. He took two pistols, wrapped in a cloth, from the glove compartment. Donnie unfolded the cloth and examined them; they were sleek with freshly applied oil.
