by Peter Cocks
On the wall above the bar, a widescreen TV relayed live racing from somewhere on the globe. A red-haired man sat watching it at the bar with his back to Donnie, a white silk shirt stretched across his shoulder blades. The race finished and he slapped angrily on the counter: clearly it had been a loss. He jabbed at a remote control and the screen went off, leaving the room in silence for a second before the sour-faced woman behind the bar put on a Neil Diamond CD. The man didn’t look round, and Terry Gadd nudged Donnie. Donnie walked up behind the man.
“Patsy?” he said.
“You been avoiding me, Don?” the man answered, still not turning round.
“No, Patsy,” Donnie said. “Of course I ain’t.”
Finally, Patsy Kelly cocked his head sideways to look at Donnie. “Guinness?” he asked. He nodded at the vinegar-tits behind the bar who was already pouring Patsy Kelly’s next one, complete with shamrock in the froth.
“Lovely,” Donnie said. “Cushty.”
“It’s just I hear you’ve already been here for months at my expense,” Patsy Kelly said. “And not had the courtesy to give me a tinkle, let me know you’re about … invite me for a drink?”
“I needed to lie low for a bit, Pats,” Donnie confessed. He was aware that there was a slight whine beneath the gravelly growl of his voice. “I had a rough time, you know. I thought the apartment was on Tommy’s bill.”
“Tommy who?” Patsy Kelly asked. There was silence for a moment. “Didn’t I used to have a brother called Tommy?” he asked the bar in general.
Donnie said nothing. Couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Even from inside, surely Tommy Kelly was still pulling the strings.
“Anyone here know a Tommy?” Patsy called around the bar. There were shrugs and shakes of the head. “That’s showbiz,” Patsy said, turning back to Donnie, looking him right in the eye.
Donnie felt the ground shifting under his feet.
“You work for me now,” Patsy Kelly said. “Turn up tomorrow.”
Donnie breathed heavily as he pressed the entry buzzer on the steel gate outside Casa Pampas.
Although the white painted walls were covered with fragrant jasmine and bougainvillea, barbed wire was laced along the top of the walls and security cameras swivelled and trained on Donnie as he approached.
He heard a click and placed his face close to the intercom. His mouth felt like a train driver’s sock and salty sweat poured off his shaved head, stinging his eyes.
“Donovan Mulvaney,” he said hoarsely into the speaker. The door buzzed and was opened by a squat Spaniard with a face that could have been carved into an ancient Inca monument. A face that would not have flinched as it tore someone’s heart out as an offering to the sun god. Without speaking, he stepped back to allow Donnie in.
Donnie followed him through the cool, tiled house, past vast screens and white leather sofas. He could smell disinfectant, as if the place had been thoroughly scrubbed after the previous night’s debauch. They went out through French windows onto a terrace and Donnie blinked in the harsh sunlight, his eyes having adjusted to the shade of the house. Terry Gadd was standing by the side of the pool, ready to greet him with a handshake and a grin that showed flattened, ground-down teeth. He was naked except for Nike flip-flops and the smallest pair of turquoise Speedo budgie smugglers, tucked under his proud belly and around his tight buttocks. Wedged into the back of the Speedos was an automatic pistol.
Apart from Gadd’s beer belly, the rest of him was in good shape, Donnie thought: worked-out arms and chest. No beer tits, just a drum-tight gut, reflecting his lifestyle.
“This is the life, eh, Don?” Gadd slapped his deeply tanned paunch and took a sip from a clear drink full of ice cubes.
Brown as a turd, Donnie thought. Said: “You look well, Tel.”
“Stop pulling my plonker, Don,” Gadd said. “It’s not your style.”
Donnie followed Terry Gadd round to the far side of the pool. A couple of girls were wallowing in the shallows. Nice nips, he thought, his attention straying despite himself.
They walked past three more stretched out on sunbeds, topless, sun-oiled and wearing thongs. Donnie glanced at them, trying not to stare. They did not glance at him. A few big guys, Patsy’s firm, floated in the pool, red faces slick with sweat.
Patsy Kelly lay face down on a sunbed at the end of the pool. A blonde was rubbing cream into his back and shoulders. The sweet smell of coconut oil in the air made Donnie feel sick.
“Mr Mulvaney to see you,” Gadd said.
Patsy Kelly turned over. He gave the girl a playful pat on the bottom, dismissing her. Donnie saw the girl’s white tanline momentarily as she giggled and wiggled off, then dived into the pool. Patsy picked up a cigar from the ashtray by the sunbed and relit it. Then he took a swig of a cold drink and Donnie felt himself swallow, his throat grating with thirst.
Patsy lifted his sunglasses off his face and rested them on his head among the red curls. He fixed Donnie with pale eyes, the bleached eyebrows and sunburn over his eyelids giving him a permanently angry expression.
“What do you want, Don?” he asked. “You look like you want something.”
Donnie was only aware of the clothes stuck to his body by sweat. Of his mouth, parched as the Sahara. “I could do with a drink, Patsy,” he said. “I feel like I’ve swallowed a sock.”
Patsy Kelly nodded and gestured to Terry Gadd. “Get Don a drink, Tel, will you?”
Gadd took a used glass off a nearby table and dunked it in the pool, filling it with water. Handed it to Donnie.
Ever since last night, Donnie had been trying to get his small, wired brain around the power shift that had taken place. Now he had turned up at Casa Pampas, Donnie realized that, in Patsy’s view, he had somehow fallen short. The ritual humiliation was part of his penance. He would have to swallow it, all of it, or die.
Donnie put the used glass to his lips and swallowed half a pint of warm, chlorinated water straight down. It was wet. That was all.
“You let us down, Don,” Kelly said, shaking his head. “You let Tommy go down. You dropped the ball.”
“I never…” Donnie protested. They were trying to make him feel as if Tommy Kelly’s downfall was all his fault.
“Saul Wynter was getting fed up with Jason,” Donnie began.
Patsy Kelly cut him off. “As I understand,” Patsy said, “Solly Wynter’s getting a bit of P&Q in some concrete off the M20/A20 intersection. I always told Tom not to trust a front-wheel skid. They only ever care about the money.”
“The kid grassed him up,” Donnie said. “Sophie’s boyfriend. I done him. I shot him. It’s all over.”
“I don’t know nothing about the tossing kid,” Patsy spat. “The kid was a decoy. He wasn’t connected. He just gave the Micks a chance to hit us while we wasn’t looking. They must love that boy, Sophie’s choice.”
“They all loved that boy,” Donnie told him, “Tommy, Cheryl. A right old charmer, he was.” He thought for a moment. “The Micks?” he repeated. He was gradually coming up to speed.
“Real IRA. All them Irish bastards at The Harp. They were determined to invade our pitch. And while Tommy’s busy buying shoes in Bond Street, bidding for paintings a monkey can do down at Sotheby’s and planning his daughter’s wedding with the first jockey who thinks he’s big enough to have a go, they stitch him up like a kipper.”
Donnie remained silent. Patsy Kelly’s words were beginning to make sense. After all, how could an eighteen-year-old have engineered the downfall of Tommy Kelly? Donnie knew in his heart of hearts that what Patsy said was true: Tommy Kelly had gone soppy over his daughter, and the boy Eddie who was becoming like a son to him. His protégé.
And he’d let his guard down.
Patsy watched the cogs work as Donnie processed the information; sensed his change of mood. “Get Don a proper drink,” he instructed Gadd.
An ice-cold beer found its way to Donnie’s grateful hand. He enjoyed the prickling sensation as half
of it glugged down his throat.
“So the Paddys might have the upper hand over there right now, with Tommy-boy banged up,” Patsy continued. “But they know that the Clapham Junction of all deals is right here on Spanish soil.” Patsy prodded his strong, blunt finger into the ground to reinforce his point. “Forget a few lorry-loads of E and all the stuff you can make in your bedroom over there. The big gear comes through here. Argentineans fly to Morocco and the Moroccans organize the drops here by ferry. Colombians bring ships up the Atlantic coast off Casablanca and we bring it in the rest of the way. We had it sewn up before, and we’ll get it back under control.”
Patsy poured another clear drink from a thermal cocktail jug by his sunbed. Lit a cigarette.
“And where the Micks are, the Russians follow, then come the Albanians and the Ru-fucking-manians. They’re all at it now. Ten years ago we had a ninety per cent share of the charlie going into mainland Europe. Now everyone wants a go at the trough. And they’re hungry, so they don’t mess about. They’ll chop your head off for a couple of grams; they’re terrorists. But they won’t frighten me into submission. We’re British, Don. The bulldog breed. We don’t roll over.”
Donnie felt a certain pride rise in his chest. He downed the second half of his beer and Terry Gadd replaced it with a strong rum and Coke. He felt like he was listening to Churchill on the eve of a battle. Patsy passed him a cigarette and he lit it.
“We’re going to have to hit them hard, Don. Hit them where it hurts. Take out some of the key people. I need a couple doing straight off the bat.”
He fixed Donnie with his pale eyes again.
“Then we whack at least one small-time dealer a week until they’ve got the message that we still run the show. You’re a soldier, Don,” he said. “Are you in?”
Galvanized by the alcohol, nicotine and relief that coursed through his system from his own stay of execution, Donnie nodded.
“I’m gathering troops,” Patsy explained. “Some of the old school: Stav Georgiou, Johnny Reggae, Gypsy Tom and Georgie Nash, Billy Gorman, Jas Singh, Mehmet Engorulu, the Dentist…”
Donnie took a swig of rum and Coke, swelling as if he was up for selection for the first eleven at Eton. Patsy was listing the A-team of British hard men and hit men, guaranteed to quell a riot in Broadmoor.
Leaving no one alive.
“I’d like Donnie Mulvaney on the team,” Patsy said. The stare again. “If he hasn’t gone soft?”
Donnie enjoyed hearing his own name among a roll-call of hard bastards. He nodded again, definite this time. For the moment, thoughts of a quiet life and semi-retirement with a good woman were shelved.
“I need foot soldiers, lieutenants and generals,” Patsy told him. “Couple of results as a soldier, you’ll become a lieutenant. After that, who knows? You with me?”
Donnie nodded once again.
“Good,” Patsy said. “Now let’s have a proper drink, because we’re going to war.”
ELEVEN
I was sitting on a plank, suspended by ropes over the side of a boat. I had rubbed down the fibreglass filler, which had repaired the hole in the hull where a drunken crew had given the boat a dink on a hard mooring, and with a steady hand I was touching up the navy blue waterline. This kind of damage was par for the course down here. English or German bankers and brokers would charter boats and then go on to drink their annual bonuses as they zigzagged them across to the Balearic Islands and back, crashing them into the jetty on their return. That’s where the extra money was made.
The punters didn’t want to get involved in complicated insurance raps that would spoil their holiday and land them with an extra week’s admin, so they’d hand over wads of fifties to repair the boats and then piss off back to their five-figure salaries in the city.
That’s where us bottom feeders would come in: no income tax, no VAT, take a slice of the cash and make the boats ready for the next merchant bankers on a jolly, and so it would go on.
I say I had a steady hand, but in my first couple of weeks there was a bit of a shake some mornings. Not as bad as Gav Taylor, though. He caned it; burned the candle at both ends.
He got the lighter duties on account of his dodgy leg and he had a soldier’s eye for detail: scrubbing out the galleys until you could eat your breakfast off them, hosing and bleaching the heads – toilets to you and me – doing hospital corners on the bunks, shining the metalwork and coiling the ropes until the boat looked like new. If there’s one thing the army teaches you, it’s how to get pissed as an arsehole at night, then be up at the crack of dawn and make everything look spick and span.
By the time I’d crawled out of my sleeping bag – or “scratcher” as Gav called it – and stumbled up on deck at 7 a.m., blinking in the sunlight, Gav was on his third strong black coffee and fag, ready to assign me my duties.
Which were the shit ones.
I felt like the cabin boy. I’d have to take the rubbish ashore, empty endless bottles into stinking bins, arrange to have all the shite pumped out of the bilge-tanks, then get myself wet unclogging the propellers in stagnant harbour water and polishing the green mould off the waterline. Then it would be unfurling coarse sails that smelt of stale washing and drying out damp ropes from the lockers, taking the skin off my constantly wet hands in the process.
It was hard graft. Despite the picturesque setting, I reckoned I’d have an easier gig digging roads.
By 7 p.m. I’d shower on whichever yacht wasn’t in use, get some clothes on, and head ashore for a drink, cream-crackered. Gav and I would start at a workman’s bar at the far end of the harbour, have a couple of beers there and a game of pool or table football. Or Gav might shovel euros into the fruit machine while I stood at the bar. The locals, mostly weatherbeaten old sea dogs off fishing boats, were pretty friendly. They’d grin at me as they smoked, but they spoke no English. Over time my Spanish expanded a bit into greetings and short descriptions of the weather.
“Es muy caliente.” It’s very hot.
“Si.”
“Mucho trabajo.” Hard work.
“Si.”
It was limited, but I was doing better than Gav, who was still asking for “Beer … pint.” With gestures.
Later on we’d pick up something to eat, usually a pizza, toasted sandwich or burger, but sometimes I could persuade Gav to sit down for something proper like a steak or a plate of sardines. By ten in the evening I would begin to find my second wind, and as the restaurants filled around the harbour we’d head into town to the clubs around 24-Hour Square.
Gav was on nodding terms with most of the doormen. The majority of them were English anyway, ex-servicemen or bouncers recruited from more dubious security firms in the UK. In this environment, Gav’s less likeable side came out. He’d bump fists with the heavies like he was their best mate and call them “my friend”, “bro” and “dood”, which made him sound like a wanker. When they weren’t exchanging hard-man stories about this ruck or that, or listening to Gav dishing up some gruesome tale from Iraq, they would go into a quiet huddle, leaving me standing around like a spare part.
The more Gav’s stories were trotted out, the bigger and more violent they became, as did his role in them, and I started to get the sense that some of his tales were porkies. Once he’d had a few, he’d tell anyone who’d listen. We were in a bar one evening, standing next to a couple of blokes who were on a golfing holiday. Gav was spouting off as usual, describing his lucky escape from a Taliban ambush, when one of the blokes, pretty drunk himself, started quizzing him about exactly where he’d been. You can spot a forces bloke a mile off: something about the way they stand, their tidy hair, clean denims. Turns out this bloke had been in Afghanistan eighteen months before and wanted to know exactly where Gav had been stationed, who he’d been with, and he wouldn’t let it drop, like he was trying to catch him out. The more he questioned, the more prickly Gav got.
“You calling me a fookin’ liar?” he spat. He rolled up his trouser leg to show
metal. “That a lie, is it?”
He started pulling the bloke’s shirt, and within seconds it all kicked off. As Gav’s associate, I got caught up in it, taking a right-hander from the bloke’s mate. Then Gav started swinging a pool cue and a couple of Spanish guys dived in. I ended up dragging Gav out into the street and sending him away, then going back in to apologize. They were pretty reasonable about it, considering – once I’d bought them all drinks and put fifty euros behind the bar. But I didn’t want to be clearing up after Gav.
When girls started getting involved, it got more uncomfortable. There were plenty of them to go around in the clubs we hung out in. The summer season hadn’t really kicked off, but there were weekend hen parties and groups of girls taking early summer holidays while the flights were cheap. 24-Hour Square was the hub of all the clubs in Benalmádena: Mango’s, Kui, Los Brothers, Lineker’s. As the name suggested, they were pretty busy all day and night.
This kind of nightlife was pretty new to me. Clubs and dancing aren’t really my thing, but I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t take advantage of what was on offer. You could get a snog and feel a girl’s lumps and bumps after just a couple of drinks. At the end of the night it was like all-in wrestling. The girls were all out for a good time, drinking for England, looking for blokes. Blokes like me with a bit of cash on the hip, a deep suntan and a yacht in the harbour. The boats were a great pull: “Ey, Stace, he’s got a yacht. Are you a millionaire, mate?”
Gav would rarely tell them otherwise. He was sound most of the time, happy as a pig in shit. He would sit drinking vodka on a club banquette surrounded by drunk girls hanging on his every word. His false leg just added to the attraction.
Then things started to unravel.
He’d be hitting the Es and the blow and whatever else was knocking around and go missing for a few days, leaving me to do all the work. Then he’d turn up looking yellow and sweaty, then sleep for another two days before starting again. He said he was getting the flashbacks again, panic attacks – couldn’t sleep at night. I suspected it might have more to do with the amount of pills and booze he was swallowing but didn’t like to mention it.