Long Reach

by Peter Cocks

  Although there was laughter, and a couple of the best-looking girls in tow, Tommy, Saul and Bashi, as they called him, were having businesslike discussions. As if they were at a cocktail party.

  Saul clocked me and called me over.

  “Here’s the man,” said Tommy, and kissed me on the cheek. He’d had a few by now. “Show the dog the rabbit.” Bashi laughed and we went over to the big chart table in the centre of the saloon.

  I heaved up the portfolio and unzipped it. Tommy flicked through the plastic sleeves and pulled out my Schwitters.

  “Here we go,” he said. “My gift to you. Kurt Schwitters. English period. Up your street, I think?” He handed it to Bashmakov, who immediately flipped it over and studied the back. He put on his glasses to read the inscription, turned it back over and looked at the front, studying the corners of the frame and then finally the collage itself.

  “It’s good?” he asked.

  Tommy held his hands up, mimicking an East End trader. “Of course it is,” he said. “I nicked it myself!”

  They all fell about laughing at that one, and Tommy’s bravado seemed to be enough to convince Bashmakov of its authenticity. Perhaps he didn’t care.

  Tommy removed other paintings and drawings from the sleeves: other stuff I’d bought at auctions online, on his say-so. They were pretty ordinary, and I now realized that they were there just to pad out the collection.

  “Piece of crap … piece of crap,” Tommy said, turning them over one by one until he came to another drawing on thick watercolour paper. I hadn’t seen it before. “Here we go.”

  It was a pencil drawing of a Gypsy girl, with high cheekbones and flashing eyes. I was getting better at this. I quite liked it myself. It had a date of ’07, which I guessed was 1907, but it looked really modern. Maybe it was.

  “Augustus John,” Tommy said. “Classic piece, 1907.”

  Bashi nodded approvingly. “I have the two oil portraits already. This I like.” He put it to one side and I assumed the deal was done.

  “You have good taste, Mr Bashmakov,” Tommy said. “Show him our pièce de résistance, Eddie.”

  I uncapped the tube and eased out the rolled canvas from inside. Tommy peeled away the cheap painting that was protecting the good one and unrolled the Bacon on the chart table. It was pretty similar to the one I’d seen in Barney Lipman’s studio months before, but I wasn’t going to say so.

  “The last one of these to come on the open market sold for twenty-five mil,” Tommy said. “It’s a study for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion, which is in the Tate Gallery in London.”

  He poured Bashmakov another glass of Krug, then one for himself. He didn’t appear hurried or eager to sell. It was more like he was showing off something from his own collection. I guess that was the trick. Bashmakov looked closely at the Francis Bacon, examining the edges of the canvas. There were nail holes where it had once been attached to a stretcher.

  “It’s 1944,” Tommy continued. “All the critics agree that this was the real starting point of Bacon’s career. He destroyed almost everything he’d done before that. Which is what people assumed had happened to this one. It’s as rare as rocking-horse shit.”

  Bashmakov sipped his champagne and lit a fag. He was beginning to look serious, like he was being seduced by Tommy’s words – which, I admit, were pretty convincing.

  “So where does this one come from?” asked Bashmakov.

  “It’s been out of circulation since the sixties,” Tommy told him. “Everyone assumed it had been binned. But through an associate we found it in the home of an old poof in Bayswater. He’d been one of Bacon’s boyfriends and had nicked the picture when they fell out.”

  The story sounded good to me. I believed it, and I was the one who’d made it up. I’d put in the research. Francis Bacon was well known for hanging out with villains in Soho. One of his boyfriends had been a burglar, Tommy had told me. Back then, being gay was as illegal as armed robbery. You could get banged up for receiving swollen goods, Tommy had joked.

  “So it’s stolen?” Bashi sounded unconcerned.

  Tommy shrugged. “Apparently Bacon didn’t notice it was missing. The old fruit was so pissed most of the time, he couldn’t remember what he had or hadn’t destroyed. But, strictly speaking, it was acquired illegally, so it can’t go on to the open market.”

  “How much?” Bashmakov asked. He’d heard enough and Tommy’s story stacked up.

  “Like I say, Damien Hirst paid twenty-five for another one like this. You’d have a painting that most of the museums in Europe would give their cobbler’s for.”

  “Just tell me straight.” Bashmakov laughed and put his arm round Tommy’s shoulders. “Just give it to me without all the romancing. I’m not a lady.” He squeezed Tommy and made a kissy noise.

  “As you like it,” Tommy said. “Five.”

  Bashmakov pursed his lips. “Euros? You’re not shafting me, are you, Kelly?”

  “Hand on heart,” Tommy said.

  “Three.”

  “Four and a half and you’ve got a deal.”

  Bashmakov grinned and they shook hands. Four point five million euros. Just like that.

  One of Bashmakov’s sidekicks came into the saloon and spoke to him in Russian.

  “Sounds like the rest of the stuff’s arrived, Tommy,” Bashmakov said.

  We peered out of the window and saw a yacht motoring up alongside us in the dark. I followed Tommy and Bashmakov out on to the deck and saw that there was a crew of four on board, Dave Slaughter among them.

  “All right, Dave?” Tommy shouted down. Dave saluted in a naval fashion. They tied the yacht by the side of Bashmakov’s and a couple of his staff went aboard and started unloading crates from the lockers. They were cases of what looked like champagne, taped up with polythene to protect them from the damp.

  Dave hopped aboard. He looked as if he was bringing his own bottle of champagne to the party. He handed it directly to Bashmakov, who looked at the label and nodded approvingly, then took out a folding knife from his pocket and sliced clean through the top of the bottle as if it was butter. It was made of wax.

  He then tapped the severed cap out into the palm of his hand and crumbs of lumpy white powder fell out. Bashmakov tipped the lumps on to the white fibreglass of the hull and crushed them into a powder with the side of his knife, chopping it into a line the size of half a pencil. One of his men handed him a rolled-up note and Bashamkov leant over and snorted the powder up his nose. He sniffed it back and then wiped his finger in the remaining dust, testing it on his tongue and rubbing it over his gums.

  “Good,” he said after a few seconds. “Pure. We’ll keep this one for ourselves.” He handed the bottle to his man and signalled his approval to the boat alongside. “We’ll have a party.”

  It was true that they could make the finest vodka and synthesize their own pills, but for the newly affluent Russians the Bolivian marching powder was the drug of choice. And it needed to be brought in from further afield. By people with the right connections.

  In the distance I could hear the buzz of another motor, an outboard coming from the far side of the lake. I broke into a sweat when Bashmakov’s men muttered to one another and tried to find it with their night-vision binoculars. A sigh of relief went up when a flashlight signalled from the approaching boat. It was the one they were expecting.

  The smaller boat came into view and moored alongside the yacht Dave had arrived on. It was like a fishing fleet had come in. The men passed the crates from one boat to the other, where they were stashed below, and the second boat was loaded and away within about five minutes.

  Stav Georgiou took Dave’s place on the other boat and it left several minutes later. Bashmakov and Tommy watched them go, shaking hands on a deal smoothly done. Tommy’s trick, it seemed, was to make sure of the delivery. Do the deal, but never be on the same boat as the goods. Once he’d checked it, he was offski. And once we were back on our boat, there would be nothin
g to see except a few bottles of duty-free gin.

  I strolled along the rear deck, where I found Tommy debriefing Dave, waiting for our tender. He wanted to get gone. My deck shoes were silent on the teak, and I realized that they hadn’t heard or seen me approach. I was hidden under the shade of the upper deck. To take another step would look like I was creeping up on them; to turn around would look like I was sneaking away. I pushed myself back against the bulkhead, caught between a rock and a hard place.

  “Nice job, Dave,” I heard Tommy say. “Good trip from Brindisi?” He was on form. The deal on the picture was done and the cocaine had been delivered safely.

  “Yeah, not bad.” Dave sounded like he was holding something back.

  “What then?” Tommy asked.

  “Just a bit of grief at home,” Dave said. “Nothing to get worried about.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  Dave’s voice dropped to a whisper and I heard him mumble, sounding apologetic, not wanting to upset the boss.

  Tommy let out a stream of four-letter words that made my eyes water. His voice was rasping and harsh.

  “Get back to Donnie. Tell him to damage him. Open him up like a bag of crisps.”

  I shivered at the image the phrase conjured up. The light from our approaching tender cast a beam across the deck, and as Tommy turned, he saw me. I took a step, trying to look as if I was out for a stroll on deck.

  “Eddie?” he said. “What’s your game?”

  FIFTY-TWO

  Tommy’s mood had changed overnight.

  I’d been shitting myself, unable to sleep. I realized that I’d got too comfortable with all this and that I was in danger of slipping up. Tommy’s words the night before had reminded me sharply of who he was and what he did for a living.

  He wasn’t nasty to me the next morning, just cold and withdrawn. Then he locked himself in the forward cabin with Saul and Dave. I could hear him shouting.

  I’d never heard Tommy Kelly shout before.

  When they came out, he told me they had a bit more business to tie up with Bashmakov and would be a couple of hours. I clearly wasn’t invited. Saul winked at me, like it was nothing for me to worry about. I felt relieved. Whenever anything went wrong around Tommy, I immediately felt like I was to blame, in case any of the information I had leaked had come back to bite him.

  And was about to come back and bite me.

  “I wondered if it’d be OK to go ashore for a bit?” I said.

  “Why not?” Tommy’s mood seemed to lighten. “Maybe pick up a present or two for the girls.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I said.

  Tommy smiled for the first time that morning and tapped his nose. “Good thinking, that man.” As if buying souvenirs for Cheryl and Sophie was more important than the business he had to do. “We’ll drop you on the quay when we go over to Bashi’s yacht.”

  It was a bright, sunny day, so I walked around the cafés and bars on the quayside wearing my Ray-Bans, looking here, there and everywhere for Anna.

  For a moment I was tempted to just run, I didn’t know where. My emotions were mixed. Tommy’s show of teeth had rattled me, but somehow I felt safer going back into the fold with him than taking my chances on the run in the big wide world.

  The Kelly world was full of shady dealing and uncertainty, but it included Cheryl and Sophie, who in many ways felt like family to me now. Sure, I’d been doing collections and pick-ups for a few months whenever Dave had told me to. I’d seen one or two punters persuaded with a slap or three. But I didn’t feel the need to report back everything I saw. My life also included family dinners at Kelly Towers, weekends away, the best seats in restaurants and shows in the West End. It was a cushy number, all the time Tommy was happy.

  On the other hand, the legit world of Tony Morris, Baylis and Anna felt like a cold, hard place: manipulative and, bottom line, one that didn’t have any real concern for my comfort or well-being. I didn’t know which way to turn.

  I’d put on shorts and a black Lacoste polo shirt so I didn’t stick out like a bacon sarnie at a Bar Mitzvah. When I found her, I saw she had done the same: black vest, denim skirt. She had been hard to spot because of the colour of her clothes, but her attractiveness alerted another radar altogether and I quickly homed in – as had half a dozen other blokes, who were hovering around furtively. She was reading a paper outside the same shop as before.

  As soon as she had noticed me, I walked on ahead, up a cobbled side street towards a small square with a church. In the middle was a fountain, so I sat down on its stone surround. There were a couple of nuns and a few of those old women dressed in black that always hang around churches in foreign countries. Old, black widows. Anna and I seemed to be following their dress code.

  Other than the women, the square was empty. When Anna arrived, she studiously ignored me. She looked up at the carved architecture of the church. The bell in the church tower clanked the half-hour like someone bashing a saucepan with a spoon. Anna took a shawl out of her bag, wrapped it round her shoulders and entered the church.

  I waited a moment, looked around, and followed her in.

  The air was cool and musty inside, with that joss-stick smell you get in old churches. I walked down the aisle towards a gruesome-looking, life-sized Crucifixion. It must have been carved from wood and painted: the nails through Jesus’ hands looked for real and the hole in his side was like a recent stab wound, oozing blood. His glass eyes had rolled upwards and even his tongue had been carved lolling out between his teeth. It looked more like a scene of crime reconstruction than a religious carving.

  To the side was a small chapel with a black-and-white tiled floor. A rack full of melting candles burned at the entrance, and inside was an altar covered with old lace. Anna was sitting, rather than kneeling, on a bench in front of the altar. Praying wasn’t exactly her style.

  I slid into the bench behind her. “Hi,” I whispered.

  “What kept you?”

  “It’s not that easy to get off a yacht out at anchor. I can’t just park it up on the quay.”

  “I know, playboy,” she said. “I’ve seen it. Impressive.”

  She sounded pissed off, like I was pulling a fast one, which I thought was a bit much.

  “Listen,” I said, “I know you were set up to keep me sweet.”

  “Don’t be wet, Eddie.” She looked back over her shoulder. “I like you. You know I do. But grow up, it’s part of the job.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “Best you don’t know,” she said. “Listen, Nimrod is getting anxious. He thinks you’re not feeding back often enough.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” I asked. “To keep an eye on me for Baylis?” I’d almost forgotten his stupid code name. Anna winced when I forgot to use it.

  “Ssh! Yes, of course that’s why I’m here. To see how the land lies.”

  “I’m deep cover,” I said. “I shouldn’t have to report back until something happens.”

  “And hasn’t it?” she asked. “Why are you here?”

  “Paintings,” I said.

  “And?”

  In the past months I had got so used to parcels of this and that being delivered, I had almost forgotten about the cocaine-filled champagne bottles. The shipment of drugs hardly came as a surprise. Perhaps there was part of me that wanted to turn a blind eye to it. So as not to upset the apple cart.

  “Dunno,” I said. “They’re out there now, discussing something or other. I’m not privy to all the information, as you can see. I’m here.”

  Anna looked at me through narrowed eyes, like she didn’t believe me. “No mention of guns or arms?” she asked. “Nimrod thinks they’re cooking up something bigger.”

  “Haven’t heard anything like that,” I said. It was true, I hadn’t.

  “You seem to be enjoying yourself, Eddie.” She raised her eyebrows. “Have you been seduced by all the money and glamour?”

  I shook my head, but I
felt myself go red. Maybe I had.

  “Nimrod wonders if you’ve gone native,” she said. “I hope you still know where your moral compass is pointing, Eddie.”

  “That’s rich coming from you,” I said. Suddenly I felt like a sulky boy. I dropped the bravado as my fear bubbled to the surface. “Listen, Anna,” I whispered. “I’m shitting myself. This is scary out here. I’m beginning to worry he suspects me of something. If I wanted to, what are my chances of jumping ship?”

  “None,” Anna said. “Sit tight, get back home and report in. Try to remember which side you’re on.”

  There was clearly no messing. At that moment I felt I just wanted to get into a taxi with her and run for the nearest airport.

  “Listen, we’ve been here long enough, I’ve got to go,” she said. She stood up. “Remember to pick up the postcard. I left it in case you couldn’t come.”

  “Sure.”

  We left the church. The day looked supernaturally bright once we stepped back outside. My eyes adjusted to the light as we walked into the square. I could see the blurred image of a man coming towards me and Anna, and as I blinked the image came into focus and my mouth went dry.

  “Eddie.” It was Saul Wynter. He was carrying a briefcase.

  “Hey,” I said, flustered, still adjusting to the light, fiddling with my sunglasses. Anna walked away.

  “Merci,” she said to me over her shoulder. “Sank you.” Her accent was faultless franglais. Saul watched her walk off across the square.

  “Bloody hell,” he said. “Leave you five minutes and you’re picking up foreign birds in churches. Catholic girls are always the worst.” He winked at me.

  “She was lost,” I said. “French.” My knees were shaking.

  “Bet she was,” Saul said. “Did you show her the way?”

  We both laughed.

  “What goes on tour stays on tour,” Saul said as her long, brown legs disappeared across the square. “But you’ll have to be nice to me on the way back so I don’t tell Sophie.”