Body Blow

by Peter Cocks

  Meanwhile, my own state of mind had improved. I sent a postcard home to tell my ma that things were working out and I was fine.

  The work kept me occupied, and I didn’t touch the narcotics. It was all right hanging out in the clubs on 24-Hour Square, and although the girls I was meeting weren’t really the kind I’d usually go for, they scratched the itch. They were fun; mostly airheads, easily distracted by flashing lights, bright colours and flaming Sambucas.

  I had a bit of a fling with one or two party girls, but I had memories of better. And the more time passed, the more I yearned for what I’d had with Sophie Kelly. Impossible to go back now I’d stitched up her old man and she was God knows where, but I felt the loss like a hole, deep in my stomach.

  Then one night I got back to the berth about two in the morning and heard a load of screaming and shouting. One semi-clothed girl was on Gav’s back, grabbing his hair, while another yelled “Pervert!” at him as she nursed a bloody nose, pulling a shirt back on over her naked shoulders. Once I’d got the first girl off his back, I helped them both back to the pontoon as they protested that they would report him to the Guardia Civil. Never a good idea: the Guardia were pretty rough and not keen on foreigners kicking off.

  When I got back to the boat, Gav was smoking, sitting looking out to sea. He dabbed at a bleeding scratch on his face with tissue. I didn’t like to ask what had happened, but with two naked women, a couple of bottles of vodka and a mirror covered in cocaine below deck, I didn’t imagine it was good clean fun.

  “You need to calm down a bit, Gav,” I said.

  He didn’t look around at me or smile. “What’s it to you?”

  “We’ll get into grief with the Guardia Civil if we’re not careful.”

  “No worries,” he said. “We won’t be around the next few days. We’re going back, me mam’s ill.”

  I’d never heard Gav mention his mum before. “Do I need to come with you?” I asked.

  “Our tickets run out in ten days, so we may as well make use of the return flight, pick up another cheapie in the UK. We’ll be back in a week.”

  I thought for a moment. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to catch up with my mum for a couple of days. I missed her. I’d neglected her. Apart from the postcard, I’d let it all slip and I knew she would be worried about me. I felt a warmth creep over me at the thought of going home.

  “Get a proper bit of English grub inside us,” Gav said. “Bit of R&R and back to work week after next.”

  “OK,” I agreed. “I’ll come with you.” I yawned, unprotesting, ready for my bunk.

  “Pack your fookin’ bag then,” Gav said. “The flight leaves from Málaga in four hours. We’re going ’ome.”

  TWELVE

  Apparently the N-340 road between Benalmádena and Fuengirola had been improved in the last few years, no longer the major accident black spot of the south of Spain. The new motorway had reduced some of the traffic, but in Donnie’s opinion it was still a piece of shit; too narrow for the traffic it carried and too twisty for the Spanish nutjobs that hurtled along it, sitting on Donnie’s bumper and flashing their lights to overtake.

  Donnie noticed he was doing a steady 100 km/h. Slow, really, but his hands were shaking on the wheel. He felt he had ring rust; out of practice. He’d been assigned a guy called Curtis Tucker as his partner, an Essex boy who had cut his teeth at the firm by blasting the head off an ambitious Southend club owner with a sawn-off somewhere on the Essex marshes. The case had drawn quite a lot of publicity; there’d been so little left of the victim’s face. The forensics had had to pick teeth out of the roof of the Range Rover to identify him. The publicity had been a good thing, showing what happened when you tried to muscle in on Kelly business.

  Donnie glanced across at Tucker, chewing ferociously on an Airwaves, stinking of Armani and adrenalin, constantly checking and rechecking the gun in his hand. Donnie sighed.

  It had been a crap week since he had reacquainted himself with Patsy Kelly. Valerie had caught the whiff of trouble the evening he’d gone up to the bar in the hills. She’d gone back to her own flat the same night and hadn’t come over to his apartment since. Donnie had done his best: taken her to the beach, treated her to lunch once or twice, bought her flowers. He’d had a word with Barry at Bodega Jubarry and got Juana a job serving and doing some of the front-of-house stuff that Barry himself was increasingly less inclined to do.

  Valerie was grateful up to a point, jobs were scarce down here since the economic slump. But, she made it clear, she didn’t want herself or her daughter caught up in any of the funny business that seemed to accompany the resident Brits.

  Donnie felt he was having to charm her all over again, but she was worth the effort. He liked her; liked having someone to share his lonely life with. He liked the fact that she lived for her daughter and fought like a tigress for Juana’s well-being. Donnie understood that the girl was well worth fighting for. The germ of humanity that lurked in his soul would fight for her too.

  Lovely girl. He had always had a soft spot for charming, gracious girls who seemed so far removed from his own ugly, brutal life. Far removed from his own daughter, Donna, now on her second kid by another bloke and spending all her benefits on scratch cards, weed and cider.

  Donnie breathed deeply and let it out slowly. He had also shaken Patsy Kelly’s hand and that was a bond of a different kind. He had a long-standing loyalty to the Kelly family. Women would come and women would go, but Donnie had made a promise to Patsy that you kept or you died. Simple.

  The exit for Fuengirola loomed up ahead and Donnie swerved across to the inside lane, cutting up a lorry so as not to miss it. “Here we go,” he said flatly to his partner.

  They drove slowly through the backstreets, down towards the seafront. Donnie knew that at various points along the coast others would be doing the same. Stav Georgiou was taking Torremolinos, Georgie Nash was a few miles back in Mijas Costa, and Terry Gadd, with Billy Gorman, Gypsy Tom and a couple of others, would be doing the big number in Puerto Banús.

  When Patsy Kelly had explained the plan inside Casa Pampas, with a big map and a flip chart, it had seemed masterful. A military strategy: Night of the Long Knives, he had called it, borrowing one of Hitler’s phrases. They needed to put on a good show. A good, hard, coordinated whack that would let the new boys know who was in charge.

  Various nationalities had taken towns as their own. The Albanians had tried to secure Torremolinos and get the bulk of the tourists, while at the other end, the Russians were trying to nail the big business around Marbella and Puerto Banús. Plus there were rumours of a Serbian gang trying to muscle in on Benalmádena.

  Bottom line, it was all about trying to monopolize the sale of drugs, cocaine in particular, in those areas.

  Donnie had to hand it to Patsy – while he was nothing like the smooth operator his brother Tommy had been, he worked in broad brush strokes. Tommy would have thought around the problem, dealt with it by stealth and subtle manoeuvres. Patsy had always been the wild card, lashing out left, right and centre, which had landed him out here in Spain in the first place, exiled by Tommy as too much of a risk to the UK operation. But Donnie admired the way that Patsy likened the whole thing to a boxing match: damage the body and the head will drop; then batter the head and the body will collapse.

  Donnie was no stranger to fighting and knew the tactics: if you pummel away at the ribs and solar plexus, digging hooks into the kidneys and heart, the heavy body blows drain the energy from the fighter.

  Then the head, the brains of the machine, will finally drop, ready for the killer punch. The big right hand that no one sees coming. The punch that will finish it all off, stunning the brain and sending the whole lot crashing to the canvas.

  So now the plan was for Donnie and his cohorts to deliver the body blows: to hit the middle men who held the whole drugs business together, drawing the bosses out from the safety of their yachts and mountain hideaways and into the open, ready to be picked of
f.

  Donnie pulled up outside La Bamba, a flashy joint near the front in Fuengirola. He took care parking the car in a proper space, something he might not have considered a few years before.

  “Worried about getting a ticket?” Curtis quipped, trying to disguise his nerves.

  They got out of the car and Donnie checked the automatic stuck in the waistband of his trousers in the small of his back.

  The two of them stood around in front of the marble steps of the club, smoking, acting like a couple of drivers waiting for their pickup. A few gorgeous, drunk girls spilled out. One asked Donnie for a light, which he reluctantly gave, never taking his eyes from the door. Then his phone bleeped. A signal from someone inside. Donnie and Curtis stamped out their fags, and ten minutes later the target came out, a Romanian called Cezar Lupescu. With him was his sidekick, a man known as Gabor.

  The Romanian gangsters had been the most recent imports to try to take hold of some of the turf. They were vicious and lawless, but disorganized. Apparently, Lupescu seemed to think that he now controlled some of the cocaine traffic in Fuengirola. He also brought Romanian girls in on the promise of a job and put them to work in the sex industry as lap dancers, strippers and whores. Patsy had made it clear that Lupescu was a nasty piece of work, and Gabor even nastier. If any of their girls played up, they were usually found in bits in wheelie bins or in black bin bags washed up on the shore.

  To Patsy Kelly, Cezar Lupescu was still a relatively small operator – and on the basis of last in, first out, Patsy wanted to hit him hard and get him off the turf.

  Lupescu and Gabor walked towards the kerb, past Donnie and Curtis. Donnie noticed that the neon lights reflected off their shiny jackets.

  “Taxi?” Curtis Tucker asked, nudging Gabor on the elbow as he passed. The Romanian turned, furious at having been touched. He was ready for a row but too slow to react. Tucker took half a step forwards, held the silenced 8 mm Baikal IZH-79 to the man’s face and blew his brains out in a single movement. Donnie simultaneously stepped up to Lupescu, but the Romanian, given a split second, brought his knee up into Donnie’s crown jewels, wrong-footing him. The gun went off in Donnie’s hand, but the bullet only grazed Lupescu’s jaw and he attempted to run. Donnie lurched forwards and dived on him, driving Lupescu’s injured face into a parked limo, leaving a bloody face print on the shiny white paintwork. Donnie raised the pistol again and shot him in the back. Lupescu slumped to the floor and Donnie stood over him, firing a third shot into the side of his skull at point-blank range. The Romanian went limp as blood spouted from his head and poured into the gutter.

  Job done. But messy.

  “Don!” Curtis shouted. Donnie turned to see two more Romanians running towards them from the door of the club. The first fumbled with a gun inside his jacket, but Curtis shot him before he reached the bottom step. The second ducked behind a potted palm in a huge urn, pulling a gun and letting off two shots.

  Very messy.

  Hearing the shooting, people began to pour out of the club, and suddenly the air was full of screams. Curtis let off a final bullet, pinning the Romanian behind the urn, before turning and running towards the car.

  “Leg it!” he shouted to Donnie, who stood clasping his shoulder.

  “I don’t know if I can,” he wheezed. “I’ve been hit.”

  THIRTEEN

  I necked a small, bitter black coffee at the bar in Málaga airport. My eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep and I blinked to stay awake. Gav seemed to have a new lease of life, probably from having hoovered up what was left of the cocaine on the boat. He was smoking and chattering, drinking beer at five-thirty in the morning.

  He was getting on my tits.

  We checked in at 6.00 a.m. for the 7.30 flight. A dour Spanish girl with thick make-up and scraped-back hair checked our passports, looked at us and asked if we’d packed our bags ourselves. I nodded, barely paying attention, tired and bored by the usual run of questions. Gav had different ideas.

  “Actually, a bloke with a big beard and a towel round his head crept into me room and packed mine,” he said. The girl glowered. “Joking, love,” he added.

  “It’s not funny,” she said. She was weighing up whether or not to call security.

  Gav checked himself. “Sorry, love, just a joke. I was out there, you see. Iraq, Afghanistan.” He pulled up the leg of his jeans, showing metal.

  The girl behind the desk looked at him from behind dead eyes, as if the leg might have been a joke too – that it did not compute – but decided to move on; too early in the day for ructions. She pushed our passports and tickets back across the desk. “Gate Fourteen.”

  “Thanks,” I said, embarrassed. She gave a tight, mirthless smile and went back to her screen.

  The flight was full of families on low-budget package deals; fractious kids and depressed parents heading back to the humdrum after their couple of weeks in the sun. The cabin crew looked weary too. Most of them were starting shifts that would finish late that night, having taken them back and forth between the UK and the Costa del Sol four or five times over during the day. They had a shit job – they were like well-dressed bus conductors, dishing out drinks, food and duty-frees, duty-bound to keep the smiles on their faces through the demands of drunk passengers, badly behaved kids and bags of vomit.

  I sat by the window, ignored the standard safety demo and shovelled down a block of wet scrambled egg and damp sausage before shutting my eyes. It was difficult getting to sleep next to Gav, who fizzed with nervous energy. He jiggled his knees in his seat and rustled magazines, but plugged into my iPod, I finally dozed off.

  A couple of hours later, we shuffled across the tarmac into a drizzly Manchester morning. No change there then. I helped Gav with his bag as his dodgy leg had stiffened on the flight. We queued at immigration. My false passport got me a second look, but something obviously came up on the system that gave me the green light.

  “I feel like a bag of shite,” Gav informed me. “Me mouth tastes like the bottom of a budgie’s cage and I need a shit.”

  “Too much information, Gav,” I said.

  He hobbled off to the toilets while I waited with the bags. I found myself looking forward to getting back to my mum’s for a fry-up and half a day in a comfortable bed.

  “Weight off me mind,” Gav said as he came back from the bogs. “Made me mark on English soil. Nice to be ’ome.”

  He didn’t look too good. He looked grey, his eyes red-rimmed; his hands were shaking and he was sweating like a pig. The excesses of his past few days were catching up with him. I felt smug. A bit of kip on the plane had done me good and I felt healthy, suntanned and clean compared with Gav Taylor.

  By the time Gav had sorted himself out, most of the charter flight families had already picked up their bags at reclaim. We followed the remaining few through the customs queue. Gav made the most of his limp but then picked up the pace and started chatting to a family returning from their holiday.

  “Have a good time?” he asked. “Nice sombrero. Where were you? Torremolinos? Sweet. I got some mates there. Cracking place.” While Gav sailed through the customs with his adopted family, I found myself several steps behind, alone with my rucksack.

  A customs officer in a white shirt stepped out from behind a desk and stood in my way. He directed me towards one of the stainless steel benches that lined the customs hall.

  “Gav,” I called ahead. “Hang on.” But Gav had gone, limping across the airport concourse with his new friends.

  I watched, helpless, as the sliding doors closed and I thought I saw him glance back, then disappear into the Manchester Airport crowds.

  “Can you empty your bag for me, sir?” the customs man asked.

  Huffily, I dumped my rucksack on the desk and unzipped the top. There wasn’t much in there. My good shoes, a couple of shirts and trousers, some crumpled pants. I’d left most of my stuff behind on Adie’s boat, fully expecting to be back in a week. The official turned out the pockets, sho
ok out the shirts and scanned the heels of my loafers. He looked inside the bag, felt around with his hand and then turned it upside down. There was a zipped section on the bottom where I kept my wash bag – toothbrush, toothpaste, paracetamol, aftershave and stuff.

  “Open this for me, please?” the officer said. I did as he asked, and he pulled out my washbag. He checked the toothpaste tube, the shampoo bottle and the pack of paracetamol and seemed satisfied. I was just getting ready to move on when he reached further into the pocket, dug around and pulled out a package wrapped in cling film, about the size of a bag of sugar.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, panicked. I really didn’t.

  “You’ll need to come through here, sir,” he said, gesturing behind the screens. Two more customs officials appeared. I had no choice.

  I was sitting in a white room, lit by fluorescent lights. Cold and harsh. My rucksack and washbag had been dumped at one end of the table and at the other, in front of me, lay the package. Two customs officers sat and watched, while the third opened the package with a penknife. He scooped out a sample of the white powder on the tip of his knife.

  “Finest Colombian, I’m guessing,” he said. “Brought in via Morocco and up through the Costa, am I right?”

  I shook my head. I was beginning to sweat. “I’ve no idea.”

  “How much have you got there?” the second officer asked. “A key?”

  “I honestly have no idea,” I repeated. “I don’t know what a key is. This stuff has been planted.”

  They both smirked.

  “Never heard that one before,” the first man said.

  “A key, as if you didn’t know,” said the second, “is a kilo of cocaine. One thousand grams, which, at today’s price of around fifty quid a wrap, is fifty grand’s worth on the street. You might even double that by the time you’ve cut it with baby laxative and whatever other shit you use.”