Body Blow

by Peter Cocks

  The flat was spacious, with big rooms and real fireplaces, and I was impressed, complimenting Anna on having such a nice place. But, having stayed there a week, I was becoming aware that there was something missing. Most women have the trick of making places cosy and comfortable. Anna seemed to lack those skills. The place was clean and tidy, but cold, with no imprint of Anna’s personality: no family photos, no pictures or ornaments.

  Anna was still up when I got in. She was in her dressing gown, her hair still shower-damp, drinking a large glass of red wine and watching a late film on TV.

  “Hey,” she said, turning to smile at me.

  “Hi,” I said. I got myself a beer from the fridge. “Do you want something to eat?” I called from the kitchen.

  I decided to take her a small plate of paella, whether she liked it or not. I wanted her to try my first attempt.

  “I made it,” I said, going on to explain how I’d cooked it, how I’d fried the chorizo before the onions to give it depth of flavour, how I’d made the fish stock, that we only used the best saffron and Calasparra rice. Anna laughed at my enthusiasm.

  “You sound like you’re enjoying the job,” she said. I realized that I was. “I wish I could cook,” she added. “I even burn baked beans.”

  “I’m sure you could learn.”

  Anna shook her head. “No, I don’t have the knack. It’s not in my skill set. Besides, I like being cooked for.” Anna scraped up the remaining rice with her fork and put it in her mouth. She licked her lips. “Plus I have you to cook for me now. Delicious.”

  I laughed but saw a look flash across her eyes. For the first time, I think I saw a chink in Anna’s armour. She was lonely.

  “You OK?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s been a long week, that’s all. I’m tired, but my mind’s racing and I can’t sleep.”

  I felt the same, the adrenalin of a night in the restaurant still in my system. I glanced at Anna again, looked at her lovely profile as she turned back to the TV. Without make-up and with her hair tied up, she looked vulnerable and a bit girlish. Her dressing gown gaped a little and I could see the beginning of the curve of her breast. I took a gulp of my beer.

  “I like cooking for you,” I blurted out. Anna looked at me, puzzled. “I think you need a bit of looking after.” I felt my face redden.

  She smiled. “Thanks, Eddie,” she said. “We’ll look after each other.”

  I leant across and put my arm around her shoulder. She yielded slightly and I went to kiss her. Her lips met mine, close enough that I could taste a hint of red wine, but then she pulled away.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Eddie,” she said. “It’ll confuse things.”

  I didn’t really care how confused things got. The more confused, the better. She stroked my face and kissed me lightly again.

  “Let’s just sit here together, can we?”

  I pulled my legs up onto the sofa and lay my head in her lap. Anna stroked my newly dark hair.

  “I’m not used to this new you yet,” she said. “You’re good at this, Eddie, it’s like you’re a different person.”

  “I’m the same inside,” I whispered into the warm white towelling of her dressing gown. She smelt delicious; clean and fresh, a cocktail of hair conditioner, moisturiser and baby oil.

  I nuzzled at her bathrobe, pushing open a gap in it. I placed my cheek against the smooth skin of her upper leg and breathed in heavily. As I breathed out, I felt her leg twitch. Her hips shifted as if she was adjusting her position. I breathed again, and placed my lips against her skin.

  I felt her fingers tighten in my hair and her hips move again. I put my hand on her knee and pushed the bathrobe away from her leg.

  And when she didn’t move my hand away, I thought I might try kissing her again from this position.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The routine went on for a few weeks. I stayed in London and increased my shifts at Meson Iberico, and as I did, both my cooking and my Spanish improved. The whole kitchen was Spanish-speaking: from the patron, Anibal, and the sous-chef down to the Brazilian washer-up. I eventually became capable of understanding different speeds and dialects.

  My repertoire of Spanish dishes also expanded. Anibal told me that an apprentice would not usually progress so fast, but I was being hothoused on Anna’s instructions, plus I was a good pupil.

  I learnt to make Gazpacho Andaluz – cold tomato and vegetable soup – and a Portuguese fish stew with orange peel and anise. I was shown how to cook hake in salsa verde – I’d never even heard of hake before. Anibal told me if you can cook hake, merluza en salsa verde, then you’ll get by in a Spanish kitchen.

  I learnt a rustic recipe for rabbit stew and couldn’t believe how simple it was. One onion, chopped and fried in olive oil, one rabbit cut into pieces and browned in the same pan, a tablespoon of flour sprinkled over it, plus half a bottle of white wine. Throw in some carrots and herbs, cover for 45 minutes and it’s done. Sprinkled with fresh parsley and with mash or rice on the side, it is good. Conejo guisado al vino blanco.

  I cooked it for Anna one night and she loved it. In my opinion, she didn’t eat properly if left to her own devices. Her fridge was full of half-eaten tubs of coleslaw and cottage cheese and bottles of sauvignon blanc. I started bringing back proper food, and when it was presented to her she ate like a horse. Although she was supposed to be my boss and mentor, sometimes it felt like I was treating her paternally. Making sure she was properly fed and watered.

  Over a few weeks, we had slid into an odd arrangement. Some nights I would sleep in my own bed, other nights Anna would call me into hers. I began to get a growing sense of her loneliness; hungry for physical closeness one night, withdrawn and distant the next.

  I knew very little about the real Anna Moore. All I’d ever seen was the confident, fast-talking, great-looking woman who seemed to take everything in her stride and could hold her own in a dangerous, violent world. I remembered how originally she’d been set up to keep me sweet and how I’d felt cheated by her. I realized now that she considered petty morals unimportant in the scheme of things.

  She must have been in her early thirties but seemed to be married to the job. The only things I knew about her background were that her father had been in the army and that she’d been to twenty different schools. She was pretty closed off about the rest of it. A combination of habit and training, I suppose.

  In sensing Anna’s loneliness, I became aware of my own. When I looked at my circumstances, I realized we were not so different. I had an absent, alcoholic father, a depressed mother and dead brother. No real home. The only girl I had ever been really close to, Sophie Kelly, had gone.

  But Anna was here now, and she made me feel secure. Plastered the gap in my own life. She had already saved my life once and knew the ins and outs of the business we were both in.

  I enjoyed my job, too. I was working hard and it gave me the sense of purpose I had been missing.

  After six weeks, Anna told me that my basic training was nearly complete. I remember the morning, lying back on her bed with the sun streaking through the high Victorian window. I was watching her hooking up her bra and thinking, idly, how good her bum looked. She turned round and caught me in the act.

  “Never seen a naked woman before?” she asked cheekily.

  “Not one as good-looking as you,” I said. It was only half true.

  “Don’t get too comfortable, will you, Eddie?” she said. “They’re making noises about sending you over pretty soon.”

  My stomach sank. She was right. I was getting comfortable. The job was hard work, but I enjoyed it, not to mention coming home to a beautiful older woman every night with no strings attached. What’s not to like? An eighteen-year-old’s dream.

  I got out of bed and headed for the shower. Anna grabbed my wrist as I passed.

  “Don’t be spoilt, now.” She must have seen the look on my face. “It’s been good while it’s lasted. Hasn’t it?”
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br />   “Yeah,” I agreed reluctantly. “It’s been good.” I kissed her cheek and got into the shower.

  I was signed off the following week and I said goodbye – in reasonable Spanish – to my friends at Meson Iberico. They were genuinely sad to see me go, and I was sad too. It had been good. Anna drove and we headed across Vauxhall Bridge and up towards the A40 and Beaconsfield.

  “I’ll be keeping a close eye on you,” Anna said. “And I’ll be over to see you now and again.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. “How does that work?”

  “I’ll be your sister who’s come to visit or something. You’ll have an apartment.”

  “Sure.” I was being surly and I knew it.

  “Come on, lighten up, you know the way this business works.”

  I did, but it didn’t mean I liked it.

  Tony Morris was there to meet us at HQ. He laughed and gave me one of his bear hugs.

  “Hola, Pedro.” He chuckled. “I still can’t get used to you looking like this, kid.”

  It was funny how quickly I had got used to being Pedro Garcia. Under Anna’s guidance, I knew how to top up the dye in my hair and did it without thinking every five days or so. I took out the contact lenses as soon as I got back to the flat every night and put them back in again automatically every morning. Eventually I just left them in. Anna and I had pretty much forgotten what I looked like before.

  Tony briefed me about what to do. He gave me an address and the keys to an apartment tucked away in the backstreets of Benalmádena.

  I was a bit surprised to be sent back exactly where I’d started and said so to Tony.

  “You hit the jackpot straight off,” was all he said. Then changed the subject. “You can see the sea,” he remarked. “If you go up to the roof and use a periscope.”

  He also gave me keys to a moped to get around. I would find it underneath the apartment block. There was a floorplan that indicated a loose panel in the bathroom where I would find everything I needed, including currency, a cash card, a Spanish driving licence and two Baikal IZH-79s – a Russian pistol, the gun of choice on the Costa – plus two hundred rounds of ammunition.

  “If you’re found with a converted blank pistol, a Walther PPK or anything else, people will want to know where you got it,” Tony explained. “If you happen to be caught with a Baikal, no one will think twice. I hope you won’t need to use them.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I’d done some firearms training with Jim Owen and I was pretty accurate, if I say it myself, although confronted with a real person rather than a cardboard cut-out with a target over his heart might be a different matter.

  “There’s a variety of bugs and listening devices in the apartment as well. You know the drill.”

  I did know the drill; I had planted plenty of them in the Kelly house in my time. I knew the fear of being caught out every time I planted a new one. Remembered how I had felt when one was discovered and I looked like the only sucker who could have planted it.

  “It’s mostly a looking and listening job,” Tony said. “You need to keep your eyes sharp and your ear close to the ground, and once you’ve made some contacts, do a bit of covert surveillance. It’ll take you a while to find out what’s what, so don’t dive in at the deep end.”

  “I won’t,” I promised. Pedro Garcia is a little slower than me, and I could imagine him taking his time, looking blank when necessary.

  “We’ve got you a little job down there,” Tony said. “Give you something to do while you keep your nut down. It’s a bit of a blood bath where the drug deals are concerned, and our priority is for you to be delivering intel back to us to keep Revenue and Customs sweet.”

  “Gotcha,” I said. “Where am I working?”

  “Our contacts have got you a place working in a restaurant owned by a couple of expats,” Tony said. “It’s just a few streets back from the harbour. It’s called Bodega Jubarry.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  The body count was rising on the Costa, but since he had recovered from his shoulder wound, Donnie had been put on lighter duties in and around Benalmádena.

  Nearly twenty middle-ranking drug dealers had either been shot or had disappeared, and the paranoia created by this was having the required effect, turning dealer against dealer, gang against gang.

  And Donnie had only scored one scalp.

  He knew he wasn’t going to earn his stripes this way and he realized that in Patsy Kelly’s eyes he had probably already failed. Not only had Tommy Kelly’s downfall back in London happened on his watch, but he’d also got shot on his first job on the Costa and been seen. Plus he was getting on, forty-eight next birthday, and at this rate destined to be a foot soldier for the rest of his working life.

  While Terry Gadd and the rest took out the big boys in Puerto Banús and Marbella, Donnie had been assigned to keep an eye on the clubs and the small-time pushers closer to home.

  Benalmádena had been hit harder by the recession than most of the coastal towns. It did not have a big, smart harbour to attract real money, neither did it have the architecture or scenery to be a proper holiday resort. Dozens of bars and small businesses had closed their doors in the past three years; building sites were abandoned and chained up and new developments stayed undeveloped.

  Donnie had noticed the change in the Spanish youth since he’d been here. They were no longer respectable kids who avoided trouble and went home to large families; with the huge unemployment in the area, they had begun to hang around the streets, and in particular an area known as 24-hour Square. They had begun to do anything for a quick buck – spliff, trips and Es – and had started to look like the “gangstas” they modelled themselves on, wearing tattoos and baseball caps, pimp-rolling around the backstreets and port area looking like something they’d seen on MTV. They drank, too, aping the habits of the British holidaymakers who swamped the coast in the summer, and now they were dipping their toes in the drugs trade.

  Bizarrely, Donnie found himself feeling a little moralistic about this change in the Spanish kids. He’d liked it here before, when everyone was pretty well behaved – apart from him and his colleagues, of course. He hated the idea that the local youth were now getting involved in the business; didn’t feel it was theirs to become involved in. Like Patsy said, the drugs trade had always been controlled by Brits. Now, to Donnie’s disgust, his job was like being a village policeman, mopping up these small-time Spanish dealers and giving them a slap.

  Stav Georgiou had joined him. Everyone knew Stav was as thick as two short planks and had messed up on his second mission, shooting a British doorman in the face instead of the Albanian gangster he’d gone for. So, he was assigned to the small clubs with Donnie. The only benefit of working with Stav was that his stupidity meant he didn’t question anything. He simply followed orders.

  He made Donnie feel like a mastermind.

  The night before they’d been to a club called Kon-Tiki, a Hawaiian-themed dive near 24-Hour Square. Some young Spanish kid had made it his base for dealing and was acting like something from Goodfellas, standing at the bar, smoking; good-looking and sharp-suited. Cocky, like he was José Big-Bollocks. That was until Donnie and Stav arrived around 1 a.m.

  The kid had cut up rough, telling them that it was his town and that he needed to make a living. He said his uncle was the mayor of some village. Suggested they could do business together.

  Donnie said he could be the Lord Mayor of Bleedin’ Madrid High Street for all the difference it made, laughing with Stav at the boy’s presumption and, while they were still laughing, dragged him outside, flattened him and kicked his head around like a football before stamping on his face. He would never be quite so good-looking again.

  If he lived.

  Donnie and Stav had left the scene calmly, satisfied that they had given an effective warning, while the Spanish kids picked up their friend’s limp body.

  Donnie reached for the alarm clock. 10.30 a.m. He’d not got to bed much before five, after a few bee
rs and the best part of a bottle of brandy. He put the clock back and looked at his fist. There were a couple of tooth marks from where he’d laid out the Spanish youth. His knuckles throbbed with arthritis. He lay still for a moment, trying to identify the other aches and pains in his head and body, then reached out again, this time for a packet of fags. He pulled one out and lit it, instantly convulsing into a fit of coughing. He was still coughing when his mobile rang.

  Number blocked. He looked at it for a moment, got the better of his cough and answered it.

  “Arthur Sixpence…”

  “Don?” the voice asked.

  “Who is it?”

  “Dave.”

  “Dave?”

  “Don, it’s Dave.”

  “Dave who?”

  “Dave, Don. Dave.”

  “Dave Dave? Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I … listen, Don. I need to know what’s going on.”

  Dave Slaughter’s voice finally got through to Donnie’s hung-over brain. Donnie hadn’t seen or heard anything of Dave since Tommy had gone down and he’d come to Spain. In the old days Dave had been Tommy’s driver and closest confidant.

  “Where are you, Dave?” Donnie asked.

  “Can’t tell you, but I’m not over there.”

  “Lucky you,” Donnie grunted. “It’s shit.”

  “I know,” Dave said. “That’s why I’m calling you. I need to know what kind of shit. We’re getting all sorts of reports back and the guv’nor doesn’t like what he’s hearing.”

  Donnie’s head was beginning to clear. The guv’nor meant only one person: Tommy Kelly. And he was in Belmarsh.

  “What do you know, Dave?”

  “I know that Patsy thinks he’s running the show; that he’s started some kind of turf war down there. But Tommy doesn’t trust Patsy to see the bigger picture. He’s trampling over all sorts of stuff Tommy set up and he’s really going to mess things up with the Russians and that. If Patsy thinks he’s running anything, he’s wrong… You know as well as I do that Pats couldn’t run an under-age cider-drinking contest at a school fucking disco. Tommy still has a lot of clout even from where he’s sitting.”