Body Blow

by Peter Cocks

  “Indeed. Tedious work, but important. Genocide: still going on in the late twentieth century, three hours from our doorstep. Most of them are dead or in prison now. That bastard Slobodan Milošević was lucky enough to have a heart attack in prison. We have Karadžić and Mladić, but there are still plenty of them about. Many will have moved on, some living in Switzerland, working as doctors, lawyers and so on. But there are others who will have taken advantage of the new freedoms in Eastern Europe – Russia, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Albania – and used their experience, expertise and connections for organized crime. They have no national loyalty. Whoever is paying – arms dealers, terrorists, drug barons… They will be there to oil the wheels.”

  “So you’re going back to Eastern Europe?” I wondered why he was telling me all this. Baylis swelled again and I could see it written all over his face. Promotion. It was as if he was an estate agent who had been elevated from flogging terraced houses to negotiating the sale of stately homes.

  “I will be based here mostly,” he said. “But don’t forget, yesterday’s Serbian war criminal will be today’s drug baron or arms supplier. There are still some big fish out there that I am – we are – out to catch.”

  I nodded, trying to look suitably impressed, allowing him the moment to be pleased with himself.

  “So, you will understand, Mr Savage, given the kind of work I have done—” Baylis shuffled my file and stacked it on the desk— “why I might not be so enamoured of a young man who is thrown into the thick of South London crime, living it large and making my job difficult, with scrappy and random results?”

  I was more than a little narked. They’d got their man and I’d got shot. Result.

  “Different times?” I suggested. Baylis prickled.

  “I’m not that much older than you, Savage, but fifteen years’ experience makes a big difference in this game.” He stood up, our meeting at an end. He held out his hand across the desk and I shook it, as limp and damp as I remembered. “I suggest you have an early night and start mugging up on that Spanish. You will meet your new case officer in the morning. I’ll follow your progress with interest. Good luck.”

  “And good luck to you,” I said. He looked at me as if he didn’t need my good wishes. It was down to him to dish out the good fortune.

  “Er, yes,” he said. “Carry on.”

  NINETEEN

  The hard bed in the accommodation block kept me awake half the night, but finally I’d nodded off with my iPod still in my ears, Spanish repeating over and over again and sending me to sleep. Then I woke up, panicking, wondering where I was. Once I had worked that out, I panicked more – about the situation I now found myself in.

  Again.

  The night went like a tape loop: a little sleep, panic. Nod off. Panic again. Shit.

  At four in the morning, as the dawn was fingering its way through the institutional blinds, I got up and had a swig of water from the basin in the corner, then lay back on the bed. I drew the lumpy pillow around my neck and looked at the ceiling, seeing faces in the mottled paintwork and damp patches. I plugged the earphones in again and switched the playlist over to shuffle.

  I found the heavy bass line of Public Enemy strangely inspiring so early in the morning: samples of Martin Luther King and James Brown, with Chuck D’s deep voice rapping out mantras of protest and aggression. Like a call to arms, it got me out of bed, out for an hour’s run and back for a shower.

  By 7 a.m. I was in the canteen. It had only just opened and a few people who looked like they had come off a night shift sat around drinking tea and flicking through newspapers. I was starving after my run and browsed the selection behind the canteen glass. I went for porridge, followed by scrambled egg, tomato and beans, washed down with black coffee and grapefruit juice. Quite healthy, I thought, then returned for bacon and a sausage. I sat alone and was just reading the music review in the paper when someone sat down opposite me.

  “Hello, handsome.”

  I looked up, my jaw dropping open mid-chew. It took me a moment to register her: the hair was a different colour, longer maybe. She had lost a little weight but still looked great.

  Better than great.

  The last time I’d seen Anna Moore had been just as I was losing consciousness on the floor of my flat in Deptford. At the time I had been bleeding heavily from the two bullets Donnie Mulvaney had popped into my stomach and lung. Anna had saved my life.

  “I thought…” I began.

  I didn’t really know what I’d thought. The last time I’d seen her properly had been in Croatia while I was dicking about with Tommy Kelly, shifting champagne bottles full of cocaine and several million euros’ worth of moody pictures. She’d left me instructions in a dead-letter drop in a newsagent and I’d fluffed the pickup, causing her no end of problems, no doubt.

  Anna smiled at me wryly across the table. “What did you think?”

  “I dunno,” I said. “I guess I felt I’d let you down. I didn’t know where you’d gone after Croatia. I was worried you’d been killed.”

  Anna took a bite from a piece of my toast and wiped a crumb from her lip. “I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you, Eddie,” she said. “I know my way around.”

  I realized she was lifting a big lump of guilt that I had buried in the back of my mind.

  “Obviously when you found me in Deptford I knew you were alive,” I said. I tried to bring to mind the picture of Anna leaning over. But my life, or what remained of it at that point, was a blur of pain and morphine. It was just a bad dream now.

  “Don’t look so worried.” She smiled. “I hopped across to Italy from Croatia, then went north and chartered a small boat to cover my tracks. I even managed a couple of days on the beach in Venice.”

  I must have looked taken aback.

  “I’d got you tracked, of course,” she explained. “I made sure I locked on to your phone when we were in Skradin. I sat on the Venice Lido watching your progress back to London, spent a couple of days in the Paris office just while you settled in, and then I was back on your case.”

  She was good.

  “I never knew,” I admitted.

  “Of course you didn’t. I’m very good at my job.”

  My hand went unconsciously to my stomach and touched the scar tissue of my bullet wounds. Anna caught the gesture.

  “Although not so good that I could get there before you were shot, I’m afraid.”

  “Wasn’t your fault,” I said stoically.

  “There were a lot of cock-ups that night, Eddie,” she said. “But nothing that you can be blamed for.” I was grateful for that. Like Tony, she seemed to be letting me off the hook.

  “I’m back here though, aren’t I? Whether I’m to blame or not.”

  Anna shrugged. “Nature of the business. Once you’re in, you’re in.”

  “At least they’ve taken Ian Baylis off my case.”

  “Yup,” Anna said. “Good news for you.”

  “Do you know something I don’t?”

  Anna nodded. “Bad news for me, though.” She smiled. “I’m your new case officer.”

  TWENTY

  “So, Pedro Garcia,” Anna said. “What do you think he looks like?”

  We were sitting in Anna’s office in the training centre a couple of hours later. I had run through my cover with her again and again, detailing my background.

  “As little like me as possible,” I said.

  “I have a few ideas.” Anna pushed some photos across the table. They were pictures of me, but they had been Photoshopped and digitally altered. They ranged from faces that looked pretty much the same as mine but with darker skin to someone with a completely different face shape and long black hair.

  “How would you make me look like that?” I asked. Methodically I arranged the pictures from those with the least changes to the most extreme.

  “Cosmetic surgery is an option,” Anna said matter-of-factly. “A lot of war criminals and major villains will have a nose
job, cheek or jaw implants or their eyelids tweaked to look a little different.”

  “I quite like my nose as it is,” I said.

  “It’s a very nice nose.” Anna smiled at me. “But we need to make some changes. A moustache or beard can make a big difference, or a change of hair colour.”

  “I don’t think I can grow much of a beard,” I admitted.

  “Let’s look at hair colour then.” She held up some coloured swatches against my own dirty-blond hair. “We don’t want to go too dark,” she said. “Pedro has some English blood and if it’s too dark, the regrowth will be too dramatic.”

  She pulled out a strand of chestnut brown from the hair swatch and layered it into my own. I felt her strong fingers and sharp nails against my scalp and found myself swallowing hard.

  “Looks good,” she said, “and your skin’s already quite tanned. But you’ll need to keep the colour up. Now, eyes.”

  Anna went to the desk and opened a small box full of tinted optical lenses. She planted herself in front of me and leant down, looking into my eyes. Hers were clear and greeny blue; wide with large pupils and full lashes. She held the coloured lenses in front of my own eyes, adding and subtracting tints. I broke away from her stare and found myself looking down the front of her shirt. It was a good view. Anna caught me at it and rolled her eyes.

  “You don’t change much, do you?” She laughed. She didn’t seem to mind – after all, I had seen it all before. But our relationship had shifted. She was now effectively my boss.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “We’ll have to go brown, but again, not too dark.” She selected a tint. “Contact lenses,” she said. “Big difference.”

  For the rest of the morning I was seen by a hairdresser, an optician and a dentist. My longish hair was cut into a choppy, layered style and dyed, along with my eyebrows and lashes, the brown Anna had chosen. The hairdresser covered me with fake tan until my body was a couple of shades darker too. I was measured for contacts and the dentist took impressions of my upper teeth.

  After lunch Anna took me through a rail of clothes that my alter ego might wear. None of them were what I would have chosen for myself and I grumbled a bit.

  “That’s the point, Eddie,” Anna said. “It’s not supposed to look like anything you’d have chosen. We’re trying to hide you.”

  There were worn, sun-bleached sweats and vintage hoodies. T-shirts advertising metal bands and American bourbon. Board shorts and Levi’s almost through at the knees. A pair of Camper shoes, some worn suede desert boots and a few pairs of Havaianas flip-flops.

  That was about the size of Pedro Garcia’s capsule wardrobe.

  “You’re quite scruffy. You probably wear your T-shirts a bit too long before they get washed,” Anna said. “If your jeans were frayed at the bottom from dragging on the ground, it wouldn’t worry you. Most days you hang out in just flip-flops and shorts.”

  I looked at the dark-skinned, dark-haired beach bum who stared back at me from the full-length mirror and began to feel Pedro Garcia take over. I walked around and found that the flip-flops gave me a certain splay-footed swagger. I rolled my shoulders, like I thought I was a bit hard but none too clever with it.

  An hour later, the guy was back with the lenses and he showed me how to fit them. They were scratchy at first, as I’d never worn lenses before, but he told me I would soon get used to them. I would have to: I’d have them in for days on end.

  Finally the dental assistant came back with a plastic box. Inside was a section of gum with three teeth attached, along with two spare sets. He sat me down and I opened my mouth. The extra teeth were wafer-thin and clipped over my own.

  “Why three teeth?” I asked. I noticed already that the change in my mouth made me sound a little different, with a slight lisp.

  “Four would look too symmetrical,” Anna explained. “Most people have asymmetric faces. It’s more natural.”

  The dental assistant held up a hand mirror to my mouth and I saw that the teeth matched my own in colour and size. The front incisors were perhaps a millimetre or so longer, but the effect just gave me a slightly more rabbity look. The third tooth was set at an angle and made my upper lip curl in a barely discernible way, as if I was doing a subtle Elvis impersonation.

  Anna grinned and looked at me strangely, even she was convinced by the changes, despite having watched the process. I felt quite excited and ran my tongue around my mouth. I felt different. I got up and walked over to the mirror. I didn’t recognize the dark-haired, brown-eyed bloke staring back at me.

  Pedro Garcia.

  And if I didn’t recognize myself, I was pretty certain no one else would recognize me.

  “Buenas dias,” Anna said.

  “Buenas dias,” I replied. I shrugged, and noticed that even my body language had changed.

  Anna picked up the phone. “Ready,” she said into it. She turned to me. “There’s someone here to see you.”

  A minute or two later, Tony Morris walked through the door. His mouth dropped open. He gave me the same strange look that Anna had, like he knew it was me but couldn’t quite believe it.

  “Bugger me,” he said. “Pardon my French. I wouldn’t recognize you in a million years. Great job, Anna. Genius.”

  “Thanks, Tony,” she said. “Now we’d better get him trained for the job.”

  “What job?” I asked.

  “Didn’t I mention it?” Tony said. “You’ll be working for a living.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  In the days that followed, I spent my mornings training and my afternoons learning Spanish.

  I was reacquainted with Jim Owen, the martial arts instructor. He put me back in the ring, sparring and shadow-boxing, then came with me on five-kilometre runs to improve my stamina. We moved on to some knife-fighting techniques and he showed me the differences between fighting with a long blade and a short one. Next to a gun, he said the knife was the weapon I was most likely to come across in southern Spain. He showed me how to parry an attack from a long knife or machete and how, if attacking with a longer knife, to get the dominant position. Very little was about chopping or stabbing: ninety per cent of it was to do with finding the right position then making a clean cut – across the eyes or to the throat.

  Short-knife fighting was different, but again, like judo, was about finding the right position, using your opponent’s weight and momentum against them. Then once you had your opponent where you wanted them, preferably in a headlock, you used the knife like a short, sharp punch into the thin bone of the temple or the cartilage of the windpipe. There was none of the dancing and circling you see in films; it was hard, fast and brutally effective. People didn’t recover from this kind of combat. They didn’t carry a brave-looking trickle of blood from a decorative nick on the cheek. These techniques left the opponent with blood pumping from the jugular vein or twitching as their brains shut down from a puncture wound to the skull. Dead as a dodo.

  The next part of my training used sharp knives as well. Kitchen knives.

  My evenings were to be spent training on the job. Once I’d covered everything I needed with Jim, Anna drove me to a restaurant in Clapham, Meson Iberico. She introduced me as Pedro Garcia to the patron and chef, Anibal Fonseca. He greeted me warmly in Spanish and I replied in my own halting way. Anna explained about my English origins and that I was coming to my mother tongue late in the day. He clapped me on the back and assured me that any friend of Señorita Moore was a friend of his and he would take good care of me.

  Anna left me at the Iberico to work my first shift. While I was working there, the plan was for me to stay with her in her flat in Vauxhall.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I’d asked when she explained the plan.

  “I’m cool with it if you are,” Anna had said. “I need to keep an eye on you.”

  I wasn’t sure I was cool exactly, Anna was still as hot as she’d ever been.

  Anibal Fonseca started me on onions, keeping my fingers
behind the blade and chopping them in an even dice. After I’d prepared enough for the evening’s sitting he started me on tomatoes. I blanched, skinned and deseeded three crates, then chopped them into a concassé, the all-purpose tomato pulp used in much of Anibal’s cooking.

  During my first week, I learned how to make a stock from chicken carcasses and another from fish heads, bones and crab shells. My afternoons were spent stirring steaming vats of stock, full of onions, carrots, celery and parsley and seasoned with salt, black peppercorns and bay leaves. It was hot work, and in the evenings I would be running around, sweating, burning my arms on scorching pans and my fingers on hot plates.

  You learn fast in a kitchen. It’s a dangerous place, full of sharp instruments, scalding liquids and frayed tempers. Things are constantly going wrong: you have to think on your feet and most evenings are spent firefighting, forever keeping one step ahead of disaster.

  It was good training for the kind of world I was getting involved in.

  The atmosphere at the end of a busy night in the Meson Iberico was great. As the last guests rolled out, the tops were flipped off iced San Miguels and dozens of Marlboros were smoked in quick succession out by the bins. We would unwind with loud chatter and leftover plates of tapas: meatballs, calamari, gambas (prawns) and paella.

  During my first three weeks at Iberico, I picked up more Spanish than I had in all the previous months. I found myself relaxing into the rhythm of the language and, because we were constantly busy, I didn’t have time to think too much about what I was saying. Words started to click into place.

  After service, late at night, I would walk back to Anna’s flat. It wasn’t far, but the streets around there were rough. I found myself walking with Pedro Garcia’s swagger; I felt harder than if I’d just been myself – or Eddie Savage. Pedro was quite streetwise and my recent training in hand-to-hand knife fighting made me feel that I could handle anything.

  Anna’s flat was on the top floor of a big Victorian house near Vauxhall Bridge. It was a week into my stay and I was just arriving back after a busy night. As I walked up the steps, I looked up. The lights were still on. I let myself in and headed up to the top floor.