by Peter Cocks
“Not sure about the gravel round the rim,” he said, wiping the rest of the pepper from the glass with his finger. “But that’s the best bloody drink I’ve had this year. Get his recipe, Tel.” I thanked him. He took a large gulp and the Tabasco connected with his taste buds. He drew his lips back across his teeth like a dog. “Terry says you’re good. He’s been watching you. Seen how you handle yourself. So here’s the deal.”
He took a large bunch of keys from his pocket.
“Bodega Jubarry,” he said. He waved the keys in front of me. “This place. Yours.”
“But I thought Julie…” I started. Widow Julie wasn’t around. She was probably still nursing her grief with a bottle of cava by one of her mate’s swimming pools.
“Julie-shmoolie,” he cut in. “She can’t wait to get out of here. We’ve arranged a flight and removals for her so she can go back to live with her old mum in a bungalow in Orpington.
“Spend more time with her family.” Gadd grinned, holding his glass out for another beer.
“Anyway, I’ve been paying the effing rent here for years,” Patsy Kelly said. “And I’ll pay yours. You take opening stock, food and all that. Make a nice tidy living and I’ll make sure all the accounts are sorted, bish, bash, bosh. You look after me and I’ll look after you. Deal?”
He held out his hand again. I knew there were only two options with a Kelly handshake: either take it and agree terms, or face whatever shit they chose to heap on you.
I shook Patsy Kelly’s hand.
Done deal.
THIRTY-FIVE
I spent most of the afternoon walking up and down the beach, trying to explain to Juana what had gone on. All thoughts of an afternoon snooze in the sun evaporated, along with a lot of other ideas for a quiet life.
She’d been listening through a crack in the kitchen door as much as possible, but when I filled in the gaps she held her head in her hands in despair, telling me that it was a very bad idea.
I already knew that, thank you.
She told me I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, like she was the expert on crime down here. Of course, she’d had her brushes with it through her mum and her old man, but I couldn’t let her know that I probably knew a hell of a lot more about it than she did – as the scars on my stomach testified.
Thinking about my scars, and perhaps cruelly, I reminded her that it was she who had insisted we took some old lag up to hospital in the early hours. Leaving me sleep-deprived, so that when something like this happened I could barely see straight, let alone make good decisions.
She took note.
After I’d had a swim, and Juana had looked out at the sea and smoked a few Fortuna, she calmed down a little. Although she was usually calm, when things didn’t go right, Juana showed some Hispanic genes and went off like a bottle of pop. Shouting and ranting and stamping.
I quite liked her passionate side. She made me feel like I had ice in my veins.
Maybe I do.
“Things needn’t change,” I insisted, sitting down next to her on the sand.
“No?” She looked straight ahead at the sea.
“We’ll have the same responsibilities as before, but we’ll be in charge and the money we make will be ours.”
“You think so?” she said. “We won’t own this place, it will always be owned by those criminales.”
“Listen,” I said. “Maybe this way, we can put some money aside, then move on. Open up something of our own somewhere else. We could rent somewhere together.”
She looked at me, weighing up the idea. “Can we do that?” she asked.
“’Course,” I said. “If we work hard at the business, we’ll be out of there in months. We can set up together once the summer season’s over. In the meantime I have a flat, we have a car…”
She put her head on my shoulder and her arm round my waist. I think I was winning her over. “You promise, Pedro?”
“Promise. I’ll take you away from here.”
All Juana wanted was some security and a better life. Take away the criminal connections and I guess I looked like a dynamic young bloke who was making his way. A sense of security and a better life was what I was searching for too.
I knew, in my heart, that I had also been seduced by a similar deal. And now I was trying to keep her on the same terms, a better life perhaps, but on the wrong side of the tracks.
What choice did I have?
By the time we walked back towards the bar for the evening, I think I had convinced her that our life here could be good.
The evening crowd was just beginning to gather for drinks before dinner; the time of day when the Spanish come out and stroll around the harbour area to see and be seen. This tradition was one of the things I liked best about Spain. For them, the working day was over, but they didn’t go indoors to eat dinner on a tray and watch crap TV till they crawled to their beds. Whole families came out, drifting from bar to bar – a drink here, a snack there, never getting drunk – before settling down to a family dinner that went on until after midnight. I never knew how the kids got through school with this lifestyle. Everyone seemed to exist on three hours’ kip a night.
I looked around the bar with a new sense of ownership, feeling I’d stepped up a level.
Juana was serving a family inside, so I took a moment to nip into the kitchen and grab myself a snack. I sliced off some Serrano ham and wedged it into a roll with a tomato. I was about to take a mouthful when my phone buzzed against my leg. My phone hardly ever rang – certainly not the little one I kept tucked deep in my pocket at all times.
My lifeline.
I fished it out and checked caller ID. It was one of the London numbers. Not Tony’s.
“Hola?” I said, just in case.
“Hola, handsome,” a woman’s voice said coolly. Anna.
“Ysobel?” I asked, using her code name.
“Si, Pedro.” She sounded as if she was messing with me.
“Qué tal?”
“Bien. Listen, cut the Español for a minute. I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”
“Yes?”
“Why aren’t you talking to me?”
“I thought I was meant to keep shtum until something big happened,” I said, back-pedalling.
“So when there’s an attempt to assassinate one of our major targets, and you’re there to save his life, I don’t get to know about it?”
I was silent for a minute. “I didn’t…” I began.
“You called Tony,” she said. “He’s not your case officer.”
She was right. When the birthday shooting put the wind up me, my instant reaction had been to turn to Tony. Anna was terrific; efficient and strong. But maybe I’d got a bit too close to her. In London, it had sometimes felt like I was the one protecting her.
“We need to talk,” she said. “And if I don’t get a drink soon, I might die of thirst. I want something dry, white and cold with some olives.”
“Where are you?” I asked. I was beginning to twig.
“Sitting out the front of your bar. Now get a move on.”
THIRTY-SIX
I took a bottle of white Torres Rioja from the chiller and pulled the cork out fast. I put it on a tray with a glass and plates of olives, anchovies, bread and garlic mayonnaise.
I wasn’t counting on kissing her.
I rushed towards the terrace, passing Juana on her way back to the kitchen.
“You OK?” she asked.
“Si, fine, guapa,” I said in Spanglais.
“You look funny.”
“I am funny.” I kissed her fleetingly on the cheek and went out into the evening light.
It was typical Anna: sitting alone at a table, looking fresh and immaculate, like she’d just stepped straight out of a shower via a hair salon. Smoking a cigarette. She was dressed in her regulation crisp white shirt, three buttons undone to show the low-cut vest underneath. Just low enough to make any bloke act the fool in front of her.
I p
ut the tray down on her table and noticed a middle-aged man with his family, a regular, casting glances in her direction and smoothing his hair.
“Señorita,” I said.
“Gracias.”
“Why are you here?” I kept my voice low and hoped my body language looked as if I was just being smarmy to a good-looking customer as I put plates on the table. I poured her some wine.
“Day trip,” she said. “Well, two-day trip, if we’re being pedantic. I arrived this morning, go back tomorrow.”
I looked around. Juana was coming back outside. “I can’t talk here,” I said.
“No, of course.” Anna crossed her legs, showing a pale knee from under her wrap-around skirt. Strappy sandals, pretty feet. I couldn’t help but look. “Meet me at the marina in half an hour. I’ll have a quiet drink, ignore you, then wander down there.”
“Looks like we’re going to be quite busy here,” I said.
I saw Anna clock Juana as she served the next table but one. The look couldn’t exactly be described as sisterly. Anna took out her iPhone and began to appear interested in it.
“Well, take a break,” she said, pretending to read something on the phone. “You’re the boss, aren’t you?”
I was, I thought. But putty in Anna’s hands.
I made feeble excuses to Juana. I was popping out to buy cigarettes for behind the bar … and a bottle of Sambuca. We were nearly out, someone might order one. She looked at me and cocked her head.
“Don’t be long, we’re getting busy.”
“Sure,” I said. A couple of Carlos’s waiters were still knocking around, so she wouldn’t be alone. But I already felt I was somehow cheating on her.
I nipped out the back way through the kitchen, bought a carton of Marlboro Lights and a bottle of Sambuca from the supermarket down the road to get my story straight, then jogged the few hundred metres to the marina.
Anna was sitting on a bench looking out at the boats, halyards and cables clanking in the light sea breeze. As I approached, she pretended to check her phone.
“What kept you?” she asked.
“Came as quick as I could,” I said. “Why are you over here? You could have phoned.”
“So could you,” she said.
I had no answer.
“Baylis comes over now and again,” she said. “He thinks he’s got a lead on the Serb, up in Mijas.”
I knew the town she meant. Pretty, well-heeled, up in the hills.
“Nice place,” I said. “Has he got a finca in Mijas?” I trotted out the old joke from these parts.
“Very funny,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“So I thought I’d hop over with Ian for a day or two, just to see how the land lies.”
“Did you know about Patsy Kelly being here?” I asked. She shot me a sideways glance.
“We know all sorts of half-information,” she said. “It’s not until we get a man on the spot –” she squeezed my leg – “that we can really get the inside track.”
“So you and Tony knew what you were setting me up for?” I persisted.
“Of course we knew Patsy Kelly was down here,” she admitted, coming clean. “He was peripheral to our enquiries; he was pretty much an exile. Trust you to become big showbiz buddies with him so quickly.”
“It was a complete accident,” I said. “We were catering for his party. Before that we only ever saw his sidekick, a bloke called Terry Gadd.”
Anna took a deep breath and I thought she was going to tell me about Gadd’s track record. If she was, she thought better of it.
“You’re being naive,” she said. “We know that plenty of bars down here have criminal connections. All our investigations, whether it’s about the Irish, Russians or Eastern Europeans, they all bring us down to the Costa on a regular basis. And to Corfu, Split, Brindisi, wherever. EasyJet’s made our work easier. There’s a hub of activity here. We watch as many clubs, bars and boats as we can, but we’re only human. Although we have the technology, we don’t always have the manpower. Government cuts hit our work as well, you know.”
I had never considered that perhaps they – we – had to work to an ever decreasing budget, like all public service industries. Including getting the cheapest airfares.
I suddenly saw Anna as a manager for an international company rather than as an intelligence agent. Given her abilities, she could have probably switched jobs overnight for a better salary and less aggro. But she clearly loved her job, for all the grief it entailed.
“Having said that,” she continued, “we had a bit of intel about the bar where you work, slap bang next to the harbour, where the rent was paid by one of the Kelly family businesses. So it was interesting. I hear you’re in charge now?”
“Yeah, kind of,” I said.
“So who’s the girl?” she asked.
I looked at her and maybe imagined a hint of jealousy. I was mentally preparing what I might tell Anna about my new, wonderful girl when I saw a yacht manoeuvring into a berth. Sea Dog of Ramsgate.
“Don’t look now,” I said in a low voice, “but that’s the boat I was living on.”
Anna was good. She took an imaginary call on her phone, scanning the harbour as she did so.
I saw Adie, Gav Taylor’s mate, in waterproofs and salopettes, gear you didn’t need unless you’d been out into the Atlantic and down the North African coast. The sails had been furled out on the water, but he was fussing on deck, stowing stuff in lockers.
I stood up to get a better view. There was another bloke in waterproofs on deck, tying buffers to the taffrail, baseball cap pulled firmly down. Couldn’t swear, but from his limp I was pretty sure it was Gav Taylor.
“Go,” Anna said.
Neither of them would have known me from a bar of soap, I realized. I would have looked totally different from the dirty blond bloke who had hung around with them months before. But I needed to go anyway. I had a restaurant to run.
“Leave this to me,” Anna said. She was already filming on her phone’s camera. “I’m here till after lunch tomorrow. Come and find me as early as you can. I’ll text you where I’m staying.”
I went to kiss her but thought better of it, turned and headed out of the marina.
“Who was that woman?” Juana asked.
“Which woman?”
“The woman at the table outside,” she said. “She seemed to know you.”
Anna had been pretty subtle, and I, as far as I knew, had just behaved like a waiter with a pretty customer. Maybe it was a bit careless of Anna to turn up on the doorstep; it was as if she enjoyed the risk. In any case, Juana clearly had a sixth sense for this kind of stuff.
I shrugged, acting dumb. Juana seemed to want to keep digging.
“When she went, you were off pretty quick…” She made a whooshing gesture with her hand and whistled to illustrate the speed of my exit. I looked at her and we made eye contact. I wished we hadn’t: Juana had a coal-eyed look that could burn through your soul.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I insisted. I put the fags behind the bar and plonked down the bottle of Sambuca. She shrugged, but she clearly didn’t believe me.
Despite trying to look nonchalant, I felt so guilty that my head throbbed as I wrestled with my conscience. Sweat poured between my shoulder blades. I hadn’t actually done anything, I thought. And when I had gone out, I justified to myself, all I was doing was my job.
My real job.
I reached for Juana’s wrist, but she twisted her arm away from me and stormed into the kitchen, swinging the door closed behind her.
THIRTY-SEVEN
I woke up alone.
Juana had told me she was seeing her mum the night before. I didn’t argue. I guessed it would be better for her to have a bit of a sulk and then calm down at her mum’s rather than give me the third degree all night.
I was kind of flattered that her passion was matched by a feeling of jealousy. Then again, from my standpoint, I wasn’t su
re if that kind of possessiveness was a good thing. Juana wasn’t needy exactly, but I guess she was prickly when it came to being messed about by men, like her old girl had been.
But whatever I thought about it, the one thing I couldn’t do was actually tell her the truth.
Anna had texted me her hotel address and demanded that I be there to meet her at 8 a.m. It was uncharacteristically early for me and I felt pretty bleary. Even early nights didn’t get me in bed much before three. I took the old moped out of the underground car park, and I was pleased to see that Anna’s hotel was in the opposite direction to the port and Juana’s mum’s place on the outskirts. I was unlikely to bump into anyone, but I still parked in a backstreet and cased the front of the hotel before I went in. Basic fieldcraft.
It was a bright, sunny morning and not yet hot. This was a smarter part of town. The street had been hosed down and I could smell flowers, hanging fresh in baskets in front of the hotel. I’d come straight from the shower and wore a navy blue Lacoste shirt and beige chinos. Ray-Ban Aviators. Espadrilles. Smartened up, sharp enough to look like a young European tourist at home in a four-star hotel. I took the lift up to the third floor and found Anna’s room.
I knocked on the door and it swung open as Anna concealed herself behind it. The room was humid with the aftermath of a bath, and light, citrus perfume hung in the air. She closed the door behind me.
She was wearing a hotel dressing gown. It was open, revealing some pretty classy underwear in peach-coloured silk.
“I was just getting dressed,” she said, looking at me and smiling. She didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. She pulled me towards her, put her arm round my waist and put her face to mine, lips parted. I was glad I had brushed my teeth before I left.
Her breath was minty and fresh, and as her tongue found its way between my teeth I felt my hand rest on her bare hip, stroking the curve of her waist. I felt hot, and guilty and confused.