Shadow Box

by Peter Cocks

  I followed Sharp to the office we were to share while I was here. It was very tidy: everything was stacked in neat piles on the desk. A Mac laptop glowed on Sharp’s desk; a screensaver with a Wizard of Oz film poster was the only bit of colour in the room. He rebooted the screen, which opened to Facebook.

  “We’re going to do some very basic surveillance to kick off.”

  “FB?” I asked.

  “It’s made some of our work very easy. The link-ups you can get through a few Facebook trawls deliver the kind of basic intel you could have only dreamed about a few years ago. We’re working with the Facebook people so we can access all users. You got your laptop?”

  I opened my Mac and fired it up. My screen showed the purple swirling pattern that came ready loaded. I didn’t like personalizing my desktop and was surprised that Sharp did; I thought it gave too much away.

  “I’m going to send you a new email address to log on to Facebook,” Sharp said. “You will use it only for this case. It will supersede any other addresses you’ve had. You can cache anything else you want to keep on a portable hard drive. Of course, the archives here will always have back-up.”

  Sharp typed in an address and pressed send.

  A new window opened on my desktop: an internal message from Sharp. I opened it and read my new email address: kieran.kelly@gmail.com

  “Kelly?” I asked, incredulous. “Kieran Kelly? What the…?”

  “You’re joking,” I said to Tony. “Kieran Kelly? What are you thinking?”

  Tony was tilted back in his office chair, sipping coffee, weaving a ballpoint in and out of his fingers.

  “New cover. Sharpie’s idea,” he said, and winked.

  Sharp brought up some Photoshop images on his laptop, pictures of me that had been altered. He pointed to one of them. “If you look at the basic shape of your face, it is not a million miles away from the shape of Tommy or Patsy Kelly’s. We’ve run a DNA check and you do share a few of their Celtic genes, probably Irish, so you are roughly within the same food group, so to speak.”

  “What are my other genes?” I asked. I was interested, knowing little about my background beyond my mum.

  “You’re a mixed bag,” Tony said. He grinned. “A bit of a mongrel, but it’s the Mick bit we’re looking for.”

  Sharp laid mugshots of Tommy and Patsy Kelly over the photos of me, stretched and squeezed them in Photoshop until the size and shape roughly matched that of mine. Then he began making the layers of the other faces more translucent until they were just ghosted over my own. I could see a new person emerging. He rubbed out some bits and airbrushed others.

  “Your eyes are already grey-blue, which is close enough,” Sharp said. “We can redden up your hair a little without making you a complete ginge, maybe put a bit of wave in it.”

  “Steady,” I said. My hair had reverted to its natural dirty blond, straight as an arrow.

  The Photoshop picture on the laptop was still recognizably me, but had an unmistakable look of one of the Kelly brothers about it too.

  “You’re Kieran Kelly, Patsy’s son from an earlier relationship.”

  “I’m Patsy Kelly’s son now?” I shook my head in disbelief. “How does that work?”

  “It all stacks up pretty well. I’ve put a watertight cover together for you,” Sharp explained. “Patsy’s no longer around to disclaim you, and because Tommy wants doors opened for you, he’ll back the story up if necessary.”

  “It’s really another layer of protection,” Tony continued. “No villain’s going to question you if you’re family.”

  “So not content with having me infiltrate the most dangerous family of villains you could hope to meet, you now want me to actually be a Kelly?”

  Tony looked at Simon Sharp, who nodded.

  “Yup. ’Bout the size of it,” Tony said.

  “Hello, handsome.”

  I opened my eyes and looked in the mirror to see Anna Moore standing behind me. It had been a while. She’d got me out of Spain the day the car bomb killed Juana. I hadn’t been in any kind of mood to talk at the time.

  I wasn’t in the mood right now, either, but it was a distraction from the scratching pain on my arm.

  “I thought I’d come and see how your makeover’s going.” She cocked her head to one side and studied me in the mirror. “Nice job, Sharpie,” she said. She and Simon Sharp stood back and admired the work that had been done so far. It was fairly subtle, I have to say. My hair had been dyed a little darker and redder and cut into a choppy crop. Some wax had been rubbed in and tousled about, making me look a bit rougher and borderline chavvy. A few freckles had been henna-dyed across my nose and cheeks, breaking up my normally clear skin. My eyebrows had been reshaped and dyed and, sitting there, bare-chested with a gold chain round my neck, I could have mistaken myself for one of the Kelly family, a boyish amalgam of Tommy and Patsy.

  The pain in my arm got momentarily worse and I winced as the buzzing went to a higher pitch. Anna leant in to look as the tattooist stretched the skin taut across my bicep with a latex-gloved hand.

  “Don’t be a wuss,” Anna joked. “You’ve been through worse.”

  I had felt worse pain, admittedly, but although the insistent scratching of the tattooist’s needle burned, what hurt more was submitting voluntarily to being permanently marked as a member of a crime family. Tony had said it could be lasered off at a later date, but in the meantime, the image that was emerging from the bloody mess on my arm identified me as one of theirs. I remembered seeing the same on Jason Kelly’s arm among the Celtic bands and Ninja flashes: a green shamrock and a harp, fake membership of a club to which I didn’t want to belong.

  Half an hour later, with my bare arm wrapped in cling film to protect my fresh tat, I went through my new identity on paper. The birth certificate looked genuine enough:

  Name: Kieran Patrick Kelly

  Date of Birth: 15.03.1997

  Place of Birth: Bexleyheath, Kent

  Father:

  Occupation: Patrick Ronald Kelly

  Builder

  Mother:

  Occupation: Maureen June Kelly (née Carter)

  Housewife

  I knew what a multitude of sins the occupations “builder” and “housewife” covered in the Kelly family.

  As Kieran Kelly I had gone to primary school in Bexley, then the family had moved to Spain. Patsy and Maureen had divorced soon after and “Kieran” had gone back to live with his mother in Kent. For a Kelly, Kieran had lived a pretty anonymous and blameless life.

  “All make sense?” Sharp asked. He passed me a driving licence and passport made up with my new photo.

  “Sure,” I said. The cover was so simple, and the disguise not a million miles away from how I looked anyway, that it was completely convincing.

  Having spent nearly two years getting close to the family, it was a surprisingly easy step for me to actually become a Kelly.

  The pub was one of the oldest on the Thames, supposedly the place where the Mayflower set sail for America.

  Donnie remembered it from his childhood. The jetty hung over the muddy riverbank at Rotherhithe. As kids, they’d fight around in the mud for the coins, clay pipes and other treasures that had been dropped by generations of drinkers. He leant over the rail now, ignoring the rain, and looked down at the greasy shore forty years on: rubber tyre; shopping trolley; plastic water bottle. Where the water lapped, the bloated body of a dead rat lay on its back, yellow teeth gnawing at thin air.

  “I’m going inside, Don,” Dave Slaughter said. “I’m drenched.”

  Donnie flicked the stub of his cigarette down into the water, where it went out with a hiss.

  They headed upstairs to the private bar for lunch. Donnie scanned the menu, moving his lips as he read.

  “What is pulled pork anyway?”

  “Dunno, Don, but I know when someone’s pulling mine,” Dave laughed. “Hurry up.”

  Both had the ribeye steak with chips. Dave, rare. Donn
ie, well done.

  “So: Eddie Savage,” Dave said.

  “Does Tommy think I buggered up?”

  “Probably.” Dave raised an eyebrow. “A bit. But then you’ve done better since, so that’s redeemed you in his eyes.”

  Donnie felt a queasy relief as he swallowed the best part of a pint of Guinness. No matter what Tommy Kelly said to your face, you could never really tell where you stood. Dave was the most reliable barometer of how you were regarded by the boss.

  “You’ll need to do a bit more, though,” Dave told him. He carved a huge, bloody slice off his steak, speared a dozen chips and rammed them into his mouth.

  “He said I got to keep an eye on him,” Donnie said.

  “Bit more to it than that,” Dave said. Of course there was. “Miss Sophie’s been on the missing list for over six months and she’s done it in good style. We’ve had not so much as a peep from her or Cheryl.”

  “Ransom thing?” Donnie asked.

  “There’s been rumours,” Dave said. “Red herrings, mostly. Any villain who knows she’s missing might have a go at extracting a few quid from TK. But Tom’s no mug, he knows it would be the easiest thing in the world to hand over a mil in ransom in exchange for his daughter, and he doesn’t think anyone would dare. He thinks it goes bigger than that, and although he don’t show it, that’s what’s making him sweat.”

  “So, what about the Savage kid?” Donnie asked.

  “Tommy knows he’s like a frickin’ terrier where Sophie’s concerned. Plus, whoever the kid’s working for will be helping him with information in tracking her down.”

  Donnie tried to keep up.

  “So hang on, who is the Savage kid working for? The Old Bill?”

  “Don’t be daft,” Dave laughed. “It’s some intelligence set-up.”

  “And Tommy’s using them to help find his daughter? It don’t sound right.” Donnie shook his head.

  “It’s very smart. From inside, the guvnor is manipulating intelligence to get them to find his daughter when he can’t. Any information they gather on the way isn’t likely to harm the firm: they pick up something that points at us, we chuck ’em a googly about someone else. Disinformation. Intelligence works both ways, Don. Tom’s getting them to work for us without giving nothing away … apart from a large drink to one or two of their operators.”

  Donnie wrestled with the idea of Tommy working alongside a legitimate agency.

  “How do I fit in?” he asked.

  “It’s mostly a watchin’ and waitin’ job for you, Don.” Dave smiled. “You just stick close to the kid. Shadow him. Follow where he goes, who he talks to, keep tabs.”

  “How will I do that?”

  Dave took a photo from his pocket and handed it to Donnie.

  “He’s changed a bit,” he said. “Disguised his’self, or someone else has. Probably got an alias, but we’re on it.” He passed another across the table. “There’s also this other bloke…”

  Donnie looked at the photo, taken on a long lens, of a slim young man outside a Spanish restaurant. He was talking and drinking with Cheryl and Sophie.

  “This bloke was spotted a couple of times, hanging around Sophie and Cheryl in Spain. We’re not sure which side he’s batting for. Watch out for him, and all.”

  “How do you know this stuff?”

  Dave tapped his nose. “A bit of ‘insider trading’.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to put someone on it who don’t stick out so much?”

  “It’s your job, Don. You’re pretty low-profile when you need to be. Besides, I forgot to mention, you keep track of Eddie Savage until he finds Sophie…” Dave stabbed the last piece of meat on his plate, used it to wipe up the rest of the bloody juice and shoved it into his mouth. “Then, when he does find her,” he said, chewing, “You grab Sophie, put her somewhere safe and finish what you started: you blow Eddie Savage’s fucking brains up the wall.”

  “That’s her,” Tony said.

  I watched a dark-haired indie chick dressed in scruffy denims, lumberjack shirt and a leather biker jacket cross the road. Pretty, in a hipster girl way, but serious-looking.

  I held the Nikon up to my eye and squeezed the shutter button, firing off several shots in quick succession before ducking back into the depths of the transit van where we had been holed up for the past two hours. I checked the shots. I had managed to get a clear profile of the girl as she turned to cross the road.

  “Any good?” Tony asked. I showed him. “Not bad for a beginner.”

  “Worth waiting all that time for?” I asked. My buttocks had gone numb from sitting in the back of the surveillance van.

  “That’s nothing,” Tony said. “Sometimes you can be staked out all day and night and still not get a shot.”

  We watched the girl continue up the Kilburn High Road and then turn left. Sharp started up the van and followed her, turning into the same side street. I fired off a few more shots from the rear window as we drove past, then Sharp put his foot down and we headed back to base.

  I uploaded the images onto my laptop, zoomed in and cropped them, then sharpened them up.

  “You’ve got a knack for it,” Sharp said, admiring my work. I had only recently picked up a camera and had been shown which buttons to press by one of the spods. I was also given a crash course in Photoshop, enabling me to manipulate the images and clarify them. I printed out a few on A4 and pinned them to the wall.

  “Hannah Connolly,” Sharp said.

  I typed the name into Facebook and, several down the list, there she was.

  “Before social networking it would have taken months to gather the amount of information you’ve got here,” Sharp said. “It’s good to know how a real camera works, you need a long lens for surveillance, but your iPhone’s just as good most of the time. Ten years ago, it would have taken a day in the darkroom to do what your phone can do in a few minutes. It’s got more memory on it than it took to put a man on the moon. We’re lucky.”

  I took it on board. I’d watched plenty of spy films: Bond, Bourne and all that. With voice recording, video and SIM cards, I guessed we didn’t need a tape recorder hidden in a suitcase any more. Steve Jobs had sorted it all out for us.

  I scrolled through photos of Hannah Connolly. Even those that were available without friending her gave a fairly clear impression. She looked quite bohemian: thick fringe, dark eyeliner, nose ring, tattoos on her wrists. Her clothes were art-studenty, and most of the pictures were taken in pubs and bars and at gigs. I scrolled through her likes, at a glance a mix of bands that I hadn’t heard of, clubs that looked like the kind I hated and political groups I didn’t give a stuff about.

  “Shall I send a friend request?” I asked.

  “Not so fast,” Sharp said. “We don’t know if she’s friendly yet.”

  “What’s our interest in her?”

  “That’s for you to find out,” Sharp said. “Tony’s passed down a bit of intel that’s flagged this girl up, among others. She’s someone you can get at, right age. Might need to find a few new interests…”

  “This anything to do with Sophie Kelly?”

  “Don’t think so.” Sharp shrugged. “Tony thinks it’s too early to go after Sophie. He doesn’t want to appear to jump when Tommy says jump. So this will keep you busy for a bit, help you to get into character.”

  I felt the first pang of frustration; I hated it when even the people I was working with, or for, didn’t give you the complete picture. Or didn’t want to. It was a feeling that aroused another familiar, anxious sensation in my stomach.

  “So how am I supposed to find out about this girl?” I asked, cautiously.

  “First things first,” Sharp said. “We’re going to send you on a course to polish up your photography. It’s something you have in common.”

  I hadn’t realized why they were so keen for me to learn photography until I turned up at the art school in central London a week later.

  I had been registered on a part-time c
ourse under the name Kieran Kelly.

  It was good to be back in the centre of town, and it was bustling on a Tuesday afternoon. I’d eaten pizza in a cheap Italian in Soho where lots of students hung out: a boho place on Bateman Street with a big painting of a mermaid on the wall. The customers were a young, trendy lot in narrow trousers and vintage clothes that they had clearly spent some time thinking about. Each tried to look a bit more arty than the last. There were plenty of tats, and some had bushy beards. The guys, I mean.

  I felt a bit square in rolled-up chinos and sailing shoes, so I made a quick detour into a vintage shop in Covent Garden, where I bought a retro tweed jacket with some of the money that Tony had lined me up with.

  The class was on the third floor of the art school. I lugged my camera bag and portfolio up the stairs to the studio.

  A dozen or so students milled around looking at each other’s pictures. Some painfully cool students were looking at some fashion shots. One of the girls gave me a quick up and down before turning back to look at another print.

  Perched on a stool in the corner by herself and checking the back of her camera was Hannah Connolly.

  I didn’t want to be caught looking at her, so I plonked my folio down on a desk, unzipped it and made a show of organizing my own photos.

  I had spent a week with Sharp putting a credible set of images together. My interest was documentary photography and photojournalism, we had decided. We had driven off to a seaside town on the south coast, where I took shots of broken-down buildings, empty amusement arcades and lonely looking people protecting themselves from the wind in seaside shelters.

  Technically they weren’t too bad, and everyone agreed that I had a pretty good eye. Subject-wise I thought they looked a bit corny, but Sharp decided that Kieran Kelly is quite serious-minded, and he helped me write a mission statement about my photos.

  I set out to record some of the more desolate areas of “Broken Britain”: areas of high unemployment, high immigration and closed down high streets. Places where people feel isolated…