Shadow Box

by Peter Cocks

  “Nicely done.”

  “Thank you,” Tony said. “I nearly got caught, though. I had to be spirited out of Northern Ireland overnight. I was becoming a bit conspicuous. We were deeply embedded in the IRA and I became a suspect.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I knew the IRA had their suspicions about me and I was asked to go and see a bloke called Padraigh Lynch. He was in charge of their punishment squads.”

  “Punishment squads?”

  “Yeah, they would dish out retribution to anyone they felt wasn’t following the rules. They would kneecap a fourteen-year-old for shoplifting, fire a 9 mm into a kid’s ankles for breaking into a pub.”

  “Rough justice,” I said.

  “It got rougher,” Tony said. “The last IRA informer on my watch was hung upside down in a garage, beaten, burned with fags and had his shins smashed with iron bars until the bones poked through…”

  I winced. “Shit.”

  “They kept him like that until he confessed. When the police – the RUC – eventually found his shallow grave, his captors had finally executed him with two bullets to the back of the head. And do you know the worst thing? He was no informer. He was innocent, an IRA man through and through, and just a kid.” Tony paused, shut his eyes momentarily. “And it was me who dobbed him in to Lynch to divert attention from myself.”

  He opened his eyes and a change of expression came over Tony’s face.

  “’Dere was no way Michael O’Neill could stay in the old country.”

  It was as if Tony, boring, featureless Tony, had channelled a different personality. A convincing one at that.

  “That was your cover? Michael O’Neill?”

  He laughed, shrugged. There really was more to Tony than met the eye.

  “So, when I started with the service back here, I was kept on the Northern Ireland case as it was my area of expertise. And when Steve started to work for us, I trained him up to pick up some of the pieces.”

  I did a mental calculation. “That must have been a few years later?”

  “A few,” Tony agreed. “But all the leads were still up and running, a couple were brown bread but I was able to place Steve right where all the action was. And by that time, Tommy Kelly was helping out the IRA too. Steve hooked up with the Kelly firm through the Irish connection, and as you know, the rest is history.”

  “Steve did well, didn’t he?” I wanted to hear good of my brother, who I had worshipped for so much of my childhood – before he lost the plot.

  Tony nodded. “Yeah. He did some good work, but you know Steve, he was a bit of a wild card. The Irish began to suspect quite quickly, so we pulled him out.”

  “And that’s when he started working on the Kelly business?”

  Tony nodded again. He looked me.

  “I know you think the sun shone out of Steve’s arse, mate. But you’re the better agent.”

  I shook my head. “I cock up all the time, Tony.”

  “We all cock up,” he said. “It’s not an exact science. Your cock-ups are as useful as a lot of other people’s successes.” Tony had the knack of making me feel that everything I’d done so far was child’s play in terms of the big picture, but that at the same time I was useful and doing well. He gave me a sideways glance.

  “So what about going to see Tommy?”

  “I’ve told you I am not going to visit Tommy Kelly,” I said. “No way.”

  A week or so later, I found myself in the back of a darkened car with my new case officer, Simon Sharp, headed towards Belmarsh high security prison.

  Sharp was in his late twenties, with cropped blond hair and a face that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a boy band. He was a little taller than me, but wiry.

  I looked out of the window at the familiar puzzle of roads that formed the Blackwall Tunnel approach.

  “Nervous?” Sharp asked.

  I would have been lying if I’d said no: my mouth was bone dry and my stomach was in a tight knot. If I’d eaten, I would probably have vomited.

  “A bit,” I said. I looked at his knee jigging up and down, and guessed that he wasn’t exactly relaxed either. But as far as I knew, he didn’t have history with the man I was about to visit.

  “Did Tony tell you Paul Dolan’s appeal has come up?”

  He hadn’t. The last time I’d seen Dolan was a couple of years ago on the Thames, the night they arrested him and Tommy Kelly on my tip-off.

  “He hasn’t got a hope in hell,” I said.

  “You never know, if Tommy Kelly’s pulling the strings.”

  “Even if he could pull strings from inside, I think he’d be pulling them for himself, not Dolan. Have you met Tommy?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, but I’ve done my homework, and pretty hairy reading it makes. They reckon you’re the expert in the field.”

  I shrugged, flattered that my case officer was deferring to me. “I guess I got closer than most.”

  He paused. “What’s he actually like?” Sharp looked at me. The enquiring note in his voice revealed a trace of an accent that had otherwise been carefully concealed.

  I tried to recall Tommy Kelly. It had been a while. “If you forget everything you know about him, you could mistake him for a prosperous builder or a car dealer,” I said, then reconsidered. “No, actually that makes him sound naff. He’s classier than that, knows all about art. Dresses well. In person he’s warm, good manners…”

  Sharp raised his eyebrows. “Interesting,” he said. “I get the feeling you almost like him.”

  I looked out of the window again, at the industrial wasteland of Woolwich speeding by, and acknowledged to myself that in a strange way I did have a reluctant liking for the old villain.

  “The prodigal returns,” Tommy Kelly said.

  The man waiting for me in the scruffy interview room in Belmarsh did not look quite as polished or expensively dressed as I had described to Sharp, but he had managed to make his prison kit look dapper. The sandy hair was paler, shorter and not as shiny as when I’d last seen him. He’d aged quite a bit.

  “So, Eddie Savage back from the dead, eh? I must be losing my touch.”

  “Hello, Tommy,” I ventured. My voice cracked with nerves. I stood in front of him like a right plum and continued to stare.

  He smiled at my nervousness, and I caught a glimpse of repairs made to his teeth. Repairs to damage that I had personally inflicted. He gestured to a chair opposite him at the table. The room had scuffed vinyl floor, plastic chairs, a mirror. I was grateful to sit down; my legs had been shaking from the moment I was processed through security and allowed into the inner sanctum of HM Prison Belmarsh.

  On a nod from Tommy, the prison warder left the room. However he had changed, there was no disguising the air of authority that still hung around Tommy Kelly. It wasn’t every Category A prisoner that could call an audience with someone from the outside, then dismiss the screw. It made me more nervous. This was a man I’d seen shoot his own best friend in the head at point blank range.

  He crossed his arms and looked at me. The look wasn’t unkind or menacing, but it was one I had seen before: searching, locking on to my eyes. I tried to hold contact, but couldn’t.

  “So we still don’t know who you really are, do we, Eddie Savage?” he asked. I said nothing. “Though we do know you’re a pretty sneaky little operator,” he continued.

  I held my silence. I really didn’t know what to say, or how or why I was here.

  “Cat got your tongue, son?” he asked. “I remember you as quite chatty, especially round my wife and daughter.”

  The mention of Sophie pricked my conscience, and I looked up into his questioning face.

  “How did you know I was alive?” I asked.

  “I know everything,” he said, smiling. “Surely you know that?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “I may be in here, but I have eyes and ears everywhere.” He nodded towards the mirror, clearly two-way, that was fixed to t
he wall at eye level. “All of them sitting behind the mirror know that, and there’s not much they can do about it. They think it’s better that I speak freely and they can sweep up what crumbs I drop them.” He gave a little wave of his fingers at the mirror and smiled at me, the old, confident Tommy coming to the surface.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your brother,” I ventured.

  Tommy’s cheek twitched. If he was about to ask me something, he thought better of it. He nodded instead.

  “I know what it’s like to lose a brother,” I continued. I was gaining a little confidence; I felt sure that he didn’t know much about my time in Spain. Although his man Terry Gadd had clearly been on my case by the end, I don’t think my cover had ever been blown.

  “So, Eddie Savage,” he said. “How have you been? You seem fit and healthy, but when I look at your eyes I can see that you’re not a happy bunny.”

  I looked at the floor, avoiding his searching gaze.

  “How would you like to work with me again?”

  “What?” I was incredulous. My case officer and God knows who else were listening to this: Tommy Kelly trying to recruit me from inside Belmarsh under their noses.

  “I thought we worked quite well together until, well…”

  “Until you got caught out?” I suggested. He smiled.

  “You really think you were responsible for sending me down, boy?” He shook his head. “You may have wrong-footed me a couple of times, but there was someone bigger and dirtier behind that sting. Don’t flatter yourself: Tommy Kelly doesn’t get brought down by a kid.”

  I felt slightly put out. While there had clearly been other fingers in the pie, I had played a significant part in Tommy’s capture and conviction.

  “You haven’t answered me, Eddie,” he said. “About working for me?”

  “Of course I won’t work for you.”

  “You don’t know what the job is,” he pointed out.

  I guessed he had some idea of who I might be working for. He had known I was still alive, and through his lawyers, or the police, the word had filtered through to Tony Morris’s government intelligence department. But I wasn’t going to spell it out for him. Neither did he seem to expect me to.

  “I trust no one,” he said. “Not even my closest friends and associates, and I certainly don’t trust you.” He jabbed a finger at me. “But of all the fuckers I don’t trust, you are the only one I can trust with this job.”

  “What is the job?” I asked, intrigued. I looked up at him and his expression had softened. He slid a postcard across the table to me.

  “I want you to find Sophie.”

  Sophie.

  Her name, spoken by her father, brought my mind back into sharp focus.

  South London on the way back from Belmarsh went by in a blur, images, places and events from my time with Sophie Kelly replaying vividly in my brain.

  It was as if my suppressed memories had been rebooted. I stared at the postcard Tommy had palmed me. The picture was of a non-specific sunset. I turned it over. The blurred postmark was from somewhere in Spain, the message simple: I’m OK, Dad. Hope you are. Love you. S xxxx

  Sophie was clearly up to speed at giving nothing away. The thought that she was alive somewhere, right now, gave me a buzz. In the seat next to me, Simon Sharp nattered on, clearly excited about his first view – albeit from behind a two-way mirror – of Tommy Kelly. He seemed almost starstruck, eager to know details about the Kelly family business. He quizzed me all the way into town, not stopping until we arrived outside a fish restaurant in Soho.

  “Lunch?” he asked. Sharp ran a long finger down the dishes on the menu, settled for scallops with black pudding and a grilled Dover sole. Then he took out his briefcase and opened a dossier of photos. “Tony thought you might like to see these,” he said.

  They were of Sophie Kelly – surveillance pictures taken on a long lens. They looked like paparazzi shots from a celeb magazine: Sophie and her mum sitting outside a restaurant; Sophie in a white bikini, sunbathing on a yacht and putting on sun cream; Sophie walking out of the waves, topless. I felt a pang of protective indignation, they were like those “snooper” pics you see of footballers’ wives on the front of tabloid newspapers.

  I swallowed hard and placed the pictures face down on the envelope.

  “Where were these taken?” I asked Sharp.

  “Miss Kelly’s been travelling quite a lot,” he said. “Once the guvnor got nabbed, she and her mum went straight to Majorca to the family villa. It was the obvious choice. Probably where the card came from.”

  It crossed my mind that while I had been in the south of Spain infiltrating the circle of the other Kelly brother, her Uncle Patsy, Sophie might have only been a short boat trip away.

  “That’s where the first of the pictures were taken, about a year ago. I was assigned to keep an eye on them. I was out there anyway, keeping tabs on one of the nightclub syndicates.”

  “Tough gig?” I asked.

  Sharp shrugged. “Bit like being on the night shift. You start about 6 p.m. round the bars, and then you hop from club to club, keeping an eye on who’s selling what to whom. Have a few drinks, chat to people. You know the score.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Tiring. It messes with your body clock, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m pretty much a night owl anyway,” Sharp said. “But those places aren’t really my scene. I’m sure you know the ones I mean.”

  I did. It took me back to 24-Hour Square in Benalmádena, and the clubs: the endless house music and drunken girls staggering around – and worse – in the street. It reminded me of hanging out with Gav Taylor. Took me back to the bar in Benalmádena where I’d stabbed him in self-defence, notching up my first killing. I’d “done my one” and didn’t feel too proud about it.

  “I’d start a bit earlier in the day,” Sharp continued. “Keeping the Kelly villa under surveillance, following Sophie and Cheryl if they went out to a restaurant.”

  “Did they know they were being watched?” I asked.

  “I’m sure they did, eventually. They’d committed no crime themselves but they were paranoid that with Tommy out of the way someone might have a pop at them, so they moved on pretty quick.”

  “How did they seem?” I asked, eager for information about Sophie.

  “Edgy, obviously. I managed to get close enough to them for a bit of small talk. I said I was a designer doing up some apartments for Russian clients.”

  “Didn’t that make them suspicious? They have quite a few Russian friends, or at least Tommy does.”

  “If it did, they didn’t bat an eyelid. The Russians are everywhere now; they’re taking over. Of course, I was hoping they might have been a bit more forthcoming and dropped a name or two, but they’re cagier than that. They became a little more relaxed with the wine, and once Cheryl could see I wasn’t trying to hit on her daughter.”

  A defensive instinct rose in me.

  “Lovely, isn’t she?” he said. “A real warm, classy girl.”

  I nodded. Whatever might have happened between me and Sophie, I still had a soft spot for her. Very soft.

  “Then one day they didn’t turn up.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “It’s more a case of where didn’t they go,” Sharp said. “They sailed out of Palma Majorca, then stopped in Ibiza. That’s where the bikini shots were taken. Terry Gadd has a place tucked away there. He can’t use it, so Cheryl and Sophie holed up there for a month or so.”

  “Where’s Terry now?” I asked.

  “Good question,” Sharp said. “He’s slipped off the radar. We suspect Turkish Cyprus. Easy to get lost, no extradition treaty.”

  “What about Sophie and Cheryl – when did you lose track of them?”

  “Someone else watched them in Ibiza. For me to have followed them there would have been too obvious. Then I got the nod when they packed their bags and left Gadd’s place.”

  I picked at the plate of whitebait I had ordered and
resisted the urge to turn the photos back over.

  “They got on a yacht from Ibiza, registered to a Russian company that we think is an offshoot of a larger firm owned by an oligarch called Alexei Bashmakov. Ring a bell?”

  “I’ve met him,” I said. Sharp nodded; it must have been on my file. I had been there when Tommy Kelly hooked up with him in Croatia. Tommy had sold him a moody Francis Bacon painting for a fortune, plus a huge consignment of cocaine disguised in wax champagne bottles.

  “Anyway,” he said. “I chartered a small boat from a holiday company out of Palma and picked up a sighting of the Kelly girls as they crossed south of Majorca. It’s difficult to keep track of a boat when you’re out in the open water because you’re easy to spot, so we kept half a day behind them, relying on satellite surveillance. Our last report was in a marina on the south coast of Sardinia. We kept an eye on the boat, but by the time we got an agent down there the boat was all locked up and there wasn’t a trace of Sophie or Cheryl.

  “Where do you think they’ve gone?” I asked. I lost interest in the cold plate of small fish in front of me.

  “Anyone’s guess,” Sharp said. “They could have been driven overland, then gone up to Italy. They could have found somewhere pretty and isolated there. Puglia, Tuscany… Italy’s so rural and full of Brits they could easily have hunkered down. Or they could have gone to Rome and flown almost anywhere in the world. Or they could have changed boats and headed off towards Greece via Cyprus, and up the coast to eastern Europe.”

  Suddenly I wanted to find Sophie.

  “Do you have a clue?” I asked. “Are you putting me on her case?”

  Sharp pursed his lips and signalled for the bill.

  “Probably,” he said. We’ll talk to Tony, see if he has one of his hunches.”

  Simon Sharp picked up the photos again and cast his eyes over them before putting them back in the envelope.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, smiling and handing it to me. “She’s not really my type.”

  I looked around at the rest of the restaurant’s clientele and realized that she probably wasn’t his type at all.