by Peter Cocks
Patsy took a long pull at his vodka and gestured for me to take a beer from the stack on the floor. It was almost warm, but welcome. He lit a cigarette.
“Do him tomorrow, Tel,” Patsy said. “First job of the day, blow Mulvaney’s ugly face off. I want him out of the way. That gorilla’s been nothing but grief. Do him.”
Gadd nodded. “You should think about getting some sleep, Pats.” The light was coming up outside.
“I can’t bleeding sleep!” Patsy shouted.
“You need to be in good shape tomorrow, it’s a big day.”
“I’m not going anywhere tomorrow, Tel,” Patsy protested.
“You can’t bottle this one, Pats,” Gadd said. “We’ll look like Frankie Howerds. We need a show of strength, need to show the mayor that he’s still in our pocket. Let these Serbs see that and all. We need to act like nothing’s happened. If this Dragonfly Radish, whatever he’s called, sees us cave in over this, we might as well pack up and go home.”
“Yeah, right,” Patsy said. “And be in line for a twenty-year stretch if some people have their way.”
“So…” Gadd said. “Not the time to throw in the towel. I’ve got some jellies if you want some kip.”
“What sort?”
Gadd fished in his pocket and pulled out some sleeping pills. “Temazzies. Go on, have a couple. The rest will do you good.”
Patsy held his hand out, took two pills and swigged some vodka. Gadd watched as Patsy swallowed them down. I wondered how long Terry Gadd had been administering drugs to Patsy Kelly. Patsy pulled himself to his feet and staggered out of the room. I heard his bedroom door slam.
Gadd looked at me, gestured for me to follow him. “Time for bo-bos, cocky-dick,” he said, almost paternally. “You’re in there.” He pointed to a small room off the hall. There was a small sofa and a rowing machine. He opened a wardrobe and pulled out some tracky bottoms. “Get yourself a shower and put these on. You stink of piss.” He threw the pants at me and I caught them. He put some sleeping pills on a side table. “Then take a couple of them and get some kip. You’ve still got a job to do.”
“What job?” I asked.
“You’ve got to look after Patty-boy, hold his hand and make sure his nerve holds; make sure he don’t run away. And stay where I can see you. After that we’ll decide what to do about all these big mistakes you’ve made.” He slapped my face lightly then made towards the door.
“Where’s Juana?” I asked. I fully expected another slap.
“Who? Carmen Vagina? I dunno.”
“You didn’t take her?”
Gadd shook his head. “You should have taken more care of that bird. She’s probably being screwed by a Serbian, like everyone else around here.”
Then he shut the door and locked it behind him.
FIFTY-THREE
“Mr Taylor’s got you off the hook,” Terry Gadd said.
“What?” My head was still thick with sleep. I had taken the tamazepam: there was no way I would have slept without them.
“They’ve pulled Gav Taylor’s body out the harbour.”
A renewed sense of panic took hold of me and suddenly I was fully alert. I didn’t know where Juana was and now Gav Taylor returned to haunt me again. I couldn’t shake him off. My mind raced, wondering if there was anything to connect me to the body, how it had got there and what state it must be in by now.
I followed Gadd out of the room and onto the patio where Patsy Kelly, wrapped in a dressing gown, was pacing up and down after a swim. It was mid-afternoon and the sun was already on its way behind the hills.
“They identified him by his teeth and his false leg,” Terry Gadd said. “He had plenty of gear on him. They found the package, but it had all dissolved.”
Patsy lit a cigarette and swore under his breath.
“You ain’t going to like this bit, Pats,” Gadd said, “but he had papers and stuff relating to the Serbian on his body. Details of our drop in the Strait, floorplans of Jubarry’s.”
I kept quiet. As far as I knew, that was impossible. Gav was dead before even Gadd knew the details, I was certain. My brain was hurting, working overtime, trying to work out the real story behind Gav’s reappearance. But one thing was for certain, it made me look better; less liable for the fake cargo and the Jubarry raid.
Bizarrely, Gav’s dead body had probably saved my life.
Patsy was beyond swearing now. It seemed that he had been outwitted on every count. And there would be people, heavy people up and down the foodchain, who would want to know how millions of pounds of class A drugs had gone adrift on Patsy’s account.
I felt pretty outwitted myself and almost felt sorry for him. He remained quiet, puffing on the cigarette. Then he turned to Gadd, resigned.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly five,” Gadd said.
“We’d better get ready. Seven, it starts?”
Gadd nodded. “That’s the ticket, Pat. Show them who’s boss.”
Patsy went inside.
“You’re coming with,” Gadd told me. “Keeping an eye out.”
“To the bullfight?” I wondered why he wanted me there.
“No, round my nan’s for egg and chips, you knob … of course it’s to the bullfight. You need some clothes. You’re sweating like a pig and you look like a bag of shit.”
An hour later I was showered and dressed in a tight white shirt, grey slacks and shiny black shoes that Gadd had pulled out of a cupboard for me. I looked like an Essex boy on a blind date.
The Kelly heavies gathered out on the patio, smoking and joking loudly, disguising hard-man nerves. They patted pistols under armpits and slid knives into pockets, comparing weapons.
I watched them through the window, acting out their bravado. The adrenalin was passing from one to another, growing and swelling with their pumped-up muscles.
Finally, Terry Gadd came out onto the terrace, freshly showered and shaved and swigging a beer. He was wearing probably the most disgusting shirt I had seen him in so far: canary yellow with palm trees and pink lotus flowers, totally at odds with the macho backslapping and hugging. There were shoulder squeezes and neck rubs dished out all round as Gadd galvanized them into action. Bull necks swelled with pride, cuffs shot from sleeves, and shoulders rolled under tight shirts as he gave each one his undivided attention.
Patsy joined me in the lounge, dressed for the occasion in true Patsy style. Cream silk shirt open at the neck, beige linen suit and two-tone shoes, like an old-school gangster.
“Look at them,” he said. “They love Terry.”
“Do they?” I found myself saying. “Or are they just scared of him?”
“His reputation means they respect him,” he said. “They admire his fearlessness, his violence, his lack of remorse. He never weakens.”
I glanced sideways at Patsy. I could have sworn I saw tears brim in his eyes as he looked out across the poolside. I looked away.
The afternoon sun washed everything with golden light. The spray from the water sprinklers on the lawn made rainbows in the light, and the men on the patio cast dark shadows; silhouettes as black as their hearts.
Patsy checked the chunky Panerai diver’s watch on his wrist. “Here we go,” he said.
I followed him onto the terrace and there was a respectful cheer and a small round of applause. Patsy waved his hand in the air, simultaneously accepting and quelling the applause.
“Right, gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Everyone made their way down the steps and through the gates. There were half a dozen cars lined up outside, Mercs and Beemers.
Gadd got into the front one and told me to go in the one behind, with Patsy. I sat in the back with Patsy, while Stav Georgiou and another monkey who was driving sat in the front. I felt uncomfortable being singled out in this way. It had happened before, and it wasn’t necessarily a good place to be, so close to the boss.
We rumbled down the hill in a convoy. Patsy looked out of the window,
across the dry valley, past dots of white houses, turquoise swimming pools and golf courses and on to the distant blocks of urban sprawl that lined the coast.
“Thirty years I’ve been here,” he said. “Most of that down there was small fishing villages still. Just package tourists in Torremolinos, out the way. It was like the Wild West for a young bloke. No extradition treaty and a few Great Train Robbers setting up the blow business across the water. I was in at the start. Now it looks like the end. I can’t go home now, no matter how bad it gets here.”
He turned to me.
“I’m glad,” he said. “I knew it wasn’t you. Otherwise I’d have had to kill you.”
I gulped and nodded.
“Terry had his suspicions, but my instincts are good about this kind of thing. I knew you were on the level.”
Clearly Terry Gadd’s instincts had been better. Which was worrying.
“You saved my boy,” Patsy said.
“It was instinctive,” I muttered, embarrassed.
“And you saved me.” He looked straight at me and I was forced to hold eye contact. The anger had gone from his eyes. He patted me heavily on the leg.
“Thank you,” he said.
FIFTY-FOUR
The Plaza de Toros was on the outskirts of town, up between Benalmádena Pueblo and the motorway, next to the football ground. It was not an old, traditional ring, but modern-built, hard-edged and concrete. This made it look less like a place of tradition and ritual and more like a place devoted to killing, which I guess it was.
I had never been to a bullfight before and I had picked my moment, arriving in a cavalcade of German cars driven by psychopaths. The Sunday bullfight after the fiesta was still a popular event with the locals, and the road up to the bullring was crowded with pedestrians. None of our drivers seemed embarrassed as they honked car horns, parting the sea of bodies in front of them. Spanish faces peered in through the car windows in curiosity and in annoyance at having been moved out of the way.
If Patsy was trying to make his presence felt, it was already working.
We parked right outside and watched as Patsy’s assembled bodyguards got out of their cars and tugged again at jackets and shirt collars. Terry Gadd came over and opened our car door. I got out first, then Patsy. He was wearing sunglasses, which, with the suit, drew discreet glances from the passing Spaniards. We walked straight in through an ugly stone entrance, made only marginally prettier by a badly painted mural of bulls. Inside, I was instantly hit by the smell of animal, manure and straw. The bar was hot and crammed and full of excited Spanish chatter, but the people parted as Gadd pushed through and ordered beers.
There was a stuffed bull’s head on the wall above our heads, and old bullfight posters. One proclaimed El Inglés – The Englishman – and was dated two years before.
“Frank Evans,” Patsy said. He pointed at the poster. “I knew him. Ex-butcher from Salford. Been fighting bulls for forty-odd years. Still at it and he’s nearly seventy with a knee replacement and a heart bypass. Bollocks the size of a house.”
“Señor Kelly?”
I turned to see the mayor’s driver and another man standing at Patsy’s elbow.
“Señor Dominguez is here now and requests the pleasure of your company,” he said, his English heavily accented. He gave a small bow and gestured towards the exit of the bar. Patsy glanced nervously at Terry Gadd, who winked confidently and assigned two bruisers to accompany us.
The mayor was sitting with other local dignitaries on a raised balcony on the shady side of the ring. He stood up when he saw Patsy and introduced him to some other stony-faced officials, then to his brother-in-law, Jesus Ybarra, the district commissioner from Mijas, who nodded without shaking hands.
Patsy sat down uneasily, his eyes darting here and there. I looked around the bullring. It was getting full, especially on the shady, sombra side. The cheaper seats were on the sunny side, which even in the evening was uncomfortably hot, but that too was filling up. I scanned the crowds for any sign of suspicious activity, suspicious faces … anything. The only obvious villains as far as I could see were our own, their shaven heads sweating and shiny.
A mournful trumpet squealed a fanfare. It was joined by a flute, drums and brass and had a settling effect on the crowd, the sorrowful sound that was bred in their bones. This was the paseíllo – the parade of all those taking part in the bullfight.
Horses entered the ring, mounted by weatherbeaten men in wide black sombreros. Behind them, younger men – novilleros – dressed in tight grey suits swaggered in on foot and raised their hats to the crowd, their bravado barely disguising their nerves. A polite rustle of applause spread around the arena, then grew louder as the toreros with their capes were followed by a procession of matadors in their sparkling traje de luces, “suits of light”, which glinted in the late sun.
One, who stood at the centre dressed in a gold suit, appeared to be the star. He came to a halt in front of our box and saluted the mayor.
“Paco Barrera,” the mayor said, clapping. “He is a big star from Madrid.”
The crowd applauded loudly and the procession filed out of the ring for the corrida to start.
The first bullfighter out only looked about sixteen. He was whip-thin with a narrow, horse-like face and his suit fitted tightly, making him look small and frail.
“A novillada,” the mayor told Patsy. “The bulls are less than four years old and it gives the young novilleros a chance to show their cojones.” He glanced at me as if I was a waste of space by comparison. But then, I reminded myself, I probably didn’t need to stab a few cows to prove myself.
I was proving myself daily.
Gates were flung open and a small bull hurtled into the ring, circling the arena, tossing its head in the air and snorting, finally coming to a standstill in the centre, where it stood, panting.
A couple of the older men ran around with pink capes, distracting it and getting it hot and bothered. Then a third, a banderillero, ran up and planted two long barbs into its shoulder. The bull bucked and stamped as the barbs lodged in its flesh and a streak of dark red blood ran sticky down its black hide.
Another fanfare, and then the young bullfighter approached the bull with his cape. He arched his back and goaded the animal until it made a run for him, then he swerved at the last minute with a flourish of the cape. The bull passed within centimetres of him. The crowd cheered and an old woman in front of me shouted “Olé!” in a deep, throaty voice that sounded like she gargled with gravel.
The bullfighter taunted the bull until it was panting heavily, its lips flecked with foam, then put it through a series of tighter turns and manoeuvres. By now it was confused and exhausted, and I could see the whites of its eyes, fearful and rolling, and strings of drool dangling from its mouth and dripping onto the sand. As this went on the sweat was pouring into the bullfighter’s eyes, making him blink, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths inside his tight jacket. One of the older men gave him a smaller cape and a sword, which he exchanged for the larger cape and concealed behind his back. He pulled faces at the tired beast and stamped his feet in front of it until the bull, summoning up its remaining energy, lowered its head and went for him.
Standing on tiptoes, the young bullfighter revealed the sword from behind the small red cape, then threw himself forwards and stabbed the sword between the bull’s shoulders, behind the neck.
It was not a clean kill. In theory, the accurately placed sword finds a gap between the shoulders and slips in up to the hilt, penetrating the heart, and the bull dies quickly. In this case, the sword had hit something solid, taken a turn sideways and appeared again, sticking out between the bull’s ribs. The animal bellowed in pain as it bucked around the ring. It was only a young bull and its eyes rolled wildly as it took in the last, tortured moments of its life.
The older men came out and distracted it again with bigger capes, while the young bullfighter ducked out of its way.
The young man
had to prove his bravery once more. As the older men retreated, he tried to draw the bull to him again with the small cape. Then, as the exhausted animal passed, he withdrew the sword, holding it high, dripping with blood.
There were more triumphant Olés from the crowd.
Although the animal was spent, it was still desperate, wild and dangerous, and the young bullfighter had to show his courage in finishing the job. He was handed another sword, long and sharp, but this time with a bar fixed across the blade a few centimetres down from the tip. He knelt in front of the bull and I could see him shaking as he tested himself, reaching out to touch its bloodied nose. The bull, trembling on its legs, lowered its head. The bullfighter stood, raising himself again on his toes, then with a sharp, stabbing motion, stuck the sword into the bull’s neck just behind the skull. The sword went in a short way, and then stopped as the bar prevented deeper entry. But the first few centimetres of blade had severed the animal’s spinal cord.
A tremor shot through its legs and it fell, stunned, onto its side, while one of the older men ran in and stabbed a short knife into the back of its neck, twisting it, making sure it was finished. The bull’s legs twitched and jerked, then lay still as a pool of urine released itself from the animal’s bladder, forming a dark pool on the ground.
The young man, pride restored, strutted around the ring, sword in the air, while the crowd waved handkerchiefs, shouted and applauded.
My feelings were mixed. I was not sure whether the young bullfighter had done a good or a bad job. He had finished it, but not without pain, grief and mess. Whichever way I leant, my focus was fixed on the bull, which had a chain fixed around its neck and was dragged, limp and lifeless, from the ring behind a four-wheel drive, leaving a trail of blood in the yellow sand.
Señor Dominguez, the mayor, stood and applauded while the young bullfighter presented himself to the box, holding high a bloodied ear, which he had been granted in recognition of his efforts.
To my right, Patsy Kelly clapped absent-mindedly, looking out across the ring, his mind elsewhere. Jesus Ybarra, the mayor’s brother-in-law, leant across to him.