by Peter Cocks
“I thought you had CIA links,” I said, getting smart.
“We do,” Sharp snapped. “And that information is a bit above your pay grade.”
It was a phrase I’d heard from Ian Baylis, Sharpie’s and my former superior. It stung to hear Sharpie use it – I considered him a mate. He could see I was hurt, and softened a little.
“Listen, Eddie, as your case officer I do also have your safety in mind. You’ve done great work digging up links here, stuff that has already had repercussions. We have to digest some of that before we even think of making a transatlantic link. My feeling is that it does join up, but we don’t know how, exactly; Anna’s still working on it. You’ve just been roughed up pretty thoroughly and I think you could do with a rest. When we’re exhausted we make rash decisions, our focus isn’t as clear and neither are our judgements. That’s why we all need someone above us making sure we’re taking the right steps.”
I began to concede defeat. Maybe he was right. After my ordeal, my adrenaline was running on reserve, but it had also given me a manic energy to continue. My meeting with Tommy Kelly had geed me up too. I had left Belmarsh fired up to go looking for Sophie. Maybe Tommy had cranked me up a bit.
“OK,” I said. “But don’t treat me like some wet-behind-the-ears kid.”
“That’s the last thing I’d do, Eddie. For your age, you are one of the most experienced operatives we have. I’ve been doing this a few years longer than you, with some good results, but I have never been in some of the tight spots that you have. I respect that.”
I was surprisingly buoyed up by the compliment.
“It’s just that I have a broad overview of this situation that’s taken me months, or longer, to assemble. I don’t want to wreck things by jumping the gun.”
“OK, Sharpie,” I said. “I’ll hang fire.”
“Don’t take it personally,” he said.
“I won’t,” I said. But I did.
I had a drink in the bar with Anna after work.
We stood on the balcony overlooking the Thames so she could smoke while she drank a large glass of white. I watched a couple of Thames luggers making their slow progress up the river. I was a bit moody.
“He might be right,” Anna said. “You could be wallowing around in New York looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s a big place.”
“So’s London,” I argued, sulkily waving at the cityscape. “But you lot still managed to wheedle Hannah Connolly out and involve me in that mess.”
“But we’re on the ground here, Eddie. Our intel is instant. Over there we’re relying on second-hand information. There’s no one more secretive than American intelligence agencies. We’re lucky to get a man on the ground over there at all. We often don’t let the Yanks know what we’re up to, because if we asked permission they’d say no. We’re stupidly grateful if they pass on a phone number, let alone surveillance pictures.”
“So how did you get the pics of Sophie?”
“I have a friend in the NYPD.”
“There you go,” I said. “You could put me in touch with your friend.”
Anna took a sip of wine and gave me a sideways glance.
“I don’t think it’s the kind of friendship you would be able to maintain,” she said. Unconsciously, she smoothed her skirt and I got the message.
“Do you sleep with everyone to get them to do what you want?” I asked. My voice sounded cold and dry in my mouth, and my tone was petulant.
“Harsh,” she said, cool. “And I think you’ve overstepped the mark.”
“Sorry.”
“I know what you think,” she said. “But I’m also fucking good at my job – and whatever else, I’ve looked after you and got you out of quite a few difficult situations.”
It was true. She’d come and found me when I was out of my depth with Tommy Kelly and Bashmakov in Croatia. She’d got to me first when I’d been shot by Donnie Mulvaney, and saved my life. She’d flown me out of Spain when my cock was on the block.
“Look, I’m sorry…”
She hadn’t finished. “So don’t give me your petty moralizing, Eddie. Of course I have associates, colleagues, people I get close to; people I have to get close to. You know the score. It goes with the territory.”
I was beginning to feel ashamed of myself. I remembered staying in her flat when I was down and insecure, how she had looked after me.
“I’m sorry, Anna, I’m out of line.”
“Bang out of order.” She stared out across the river, avoiding my eyes. I felt awful now. She was as tired of it all as I was.
“Anna, can I get you another drink, and then maybe we can go and eat?”
“Sure,” she said, finally. As I left for the bar I thought I saw her wipe a tear from her eye before lighting another cigarette.
I woke up to sun streaming through the window. I could smell freshly laundered sheets, and my head sank deep into a feathery pillow. I turned to see Anna’s chestnut hair spread across the next pillow. I looked at her face, beautiful, thick-lashed and relaxed in sleep, as the night before came back to me.
It had been a release of tension for both of us, and Anna wasn’t one to hold a grudge. We’d drunk some more wine and eaten in an intimate Japanese restaurant near Hyde Park, then piled into a cab, laughing and tipsy, recounting old times. I’d felt the pressure of Anna’s leg against mine in the cab and remembered what I’d been missing, then we’d kissed until the cabbie muttered something about getting a room.
We’d tumbled out into the square in Stockwell. There was no question of my taking the cab back to my flat.
There were more drinks, and some music. I had the feeling that Anna hadn’t let her hair down like this for a long time. Neither had I, and I barely remembered jumping into bed in the early hours with a night’s booze on our breath and Anna’s smooth, warm body against mine.
Well, I remembered a bit.
“Morning.” She opened an eye as I brought her tea and put it by the bed. “What time is it?”
“Seven-fifteen,” I said.
Anna picked up her phone.
“Working from home this morning. In after lunch,” she dictated to herself.
I slipped back into bed beside her, sipping my tea, then felt Anna’s arm stray across the bed, lazily stroking my stomach. I put down my tea and rolled towards her again, inhaling a baby powder and slightly sweaty bed smell as I put my face into her neck.
We sat drinking coffee at eleven, a couple more hours’ sleep making us feel more human.
“I’m sorry, Anna,” I said suddenly.
“What for? Never explain, never complain.”
“I just feel…”
“What?”
“That maybe we use each other.”
“Hmm,” she considered. “Nice, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes.”
“So what’s there to be sorry for? We’re not cheating on anyone, are we? We’re grown-ups. Sometimes we need simple human contact with someone familiar.”
“I guess so,” I said. “We always have a good time.”
“And we’re a long time dead.”
We kissed again, but within the hour Anna was back into work mode, firing off emails and texts, checking her phone, showering and drying her hair with brisk efficiency. Fun over.
“I’d better be going,” I said.
“No hurry.” But it was clear from Anna’s tone that our respite was finished and she had to be back on the case.
“I was thinking,” she said, looking up for a moment. “Instead of knocking around here, why don’t you go back to your mum’s for a couple of days?”
“You think?” A few days of R&R, kip and square meals wasn’t a bad idea. “Just until you and Sharpie decide on the next move?”
In truth, I felt secure up at my mum’s. In the depths of the Midlands, I felt like no one could get at me.
“Do it,” she said. “You’re only a phone call away, and a couple of hours on the train. I think it’s a good id
ea.”
“When will I see you again?” I found myself asking.
“Don’t be a sap, Eddie,” Anna said. “You know where I am. You know what we have. You know the score. Don’t go applying terms and conditions.”
I considered myself told and got dressed.
Anna went off to the office and kissed me on the mouth as we left.
“Keep it cool, Eddie,” she said. “I’ll let you know if there are any developments. I’ll tell Sharpie where you are. I think he’ll be glad that you’ve decided to take a few days off. He’s very uptight at the moment, but you’ve got to let him have his head. This is a big case for him, and these things tend to drive their own pace.”
“Understood,” I said and kissed her again.
I got the tube back to the flat, threw a few things into a bag and left. Euston was a short walk away; if I got an afternoon train, I’d be in Stoke by early evening.
“Dave?”
“Don?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“What is it, Don?”
“He’s gone on the train.”
“Who?”
“The kid, Savage, Kelly, whatever.”
“Where?”
“Euston.”
“No, I mean to where?”
“Dunno. Manchester train.”
“Why didn’t you get on it and follow him, Don?”
“I was tired, Dave. You know I’m tired. I’d only just woken up when I got the nod from Jimmy Gallagher about where he was. It was all I could do to catch up with him, and he was on the train by three.”
Donnie was exasperated. He’d subcontracted Jimmy Gallagher to do some of the watching and waiting. He’d thought he’d be off-duty after the hit, and then the kid turned up at Belmarsh again. What was going on?
“I don’t want to go up ’effing north, Dave. You don’t know who you’re going to bump into. All them Scouse gits, Manchester Tony and Billy Whizz. I don’t want to get mixed up in all that toffee. It’s complicated enough already.”
“Don’t be a wanker all your life, Don,” Dave said crossly. “Take a day off. He’s gone to Stoke-on-Trent, where his old tit lives. I’ll text you her address. Get on the train and keep an eye. Treat it as a holiday. Plenty of old boozers and curry houses up there to keep you happy for a day or two. TK said five grand bonus. On top of what you’re owed.”
The money clicked a synapse in Donnie’s brain.
“Someone said they do a naan bread the size of a table up there in the Balti houses?”
“Land of milk and honey, Don,” Dave assured him.
“Do I need tools? I might just take a shiv and a five mil?”
“No action, mate, it’s easy. Just watching and waiting. Take a flat cap and a whippet and you’ll fit right in, you plum.”
“When, Dave?”
“Toot dee sweet,” Dave said. “That’s French for yesterday.”
“I’m tired, Dave. That time in hospital took—”
“Have a kip on the train, Don. Plenty of time for sleep when you’re dead.”
As the train pulled in to Stoke I began to regret my decision.
I had left London in sunshine, and as soon as I stepped onto the platform I felt the drizzle of a dull Midlands day on the back of my neck. It brought it all back to me like a conditioned reflex: the months I had spent here, recovering from the bullet wound and post-traumatic stress after I was shot.
I got into a cab and gave the driver my mum’s address. We headed out around endless ring roads before turning off and crawling in among the red brick terraces.
I had decided to arrive unannounced: a nice surprise, I thought. I knocked on the door and waited. No answer. Knocked again.
She was probably out. Stupid not to have just sent a text to say I was coming. Still no answer, and I didn’t have keys. I walked across to the other side of the street to check the house for signs of life. An upstairs curtain twitched, so I knew someone was in.
Being in this line of work, I always suspect the worst. I walked back across the road and banged harder on the door. Footsteps on the stairs followed, and my mum opened the door.
“I didn’t hear you,” she said, flustered. “I had the radio on. What a surprise.” She hugged and kissed me, held my face between her hands and cried a bit, then we went in.
“Cuppa?”
I looked around as she put the kettle on. An unfamiliar laptop was open on the kitchen table.
“Got yourself a laptop?” I asked. That was unlike Mum. She managed to order stuff online, but beyond that, computers were not really of any interest to her.
“No,” she said. “I’ve got a guest staying.”
“Kath?” I asked. Her sister often stayed when she was not travelling around India or Thailand.
“No,” she said, offering no further information.
“Hello, mate,” a voice came from behind me.
I spun round to see Tony Morris standing in the doorway.
“Tony! What are you doing here?”
“Probably same as you,” he said, shaking my hand vigorously and clasping me in a bear hug. “Keeping my gourd out of the firing line. Getting a bit of P&Q.”
I returned the hug. I was really pleased to see him.
“Cuppa, Tony?” Mum asked.
Tony had always been a regular visitor when I was growing up, but there was something else here, an ease between him and Mum in this domestic situation that made them seem like an old married couple.
“Ta, yes,” Tony said. “Coming outside?”
He winked at me and we went out through the kitchen into the small patch of garden. Tony began to make himself a roll-up.
“Smoking?”
“Just the odd twister. I gave it up for five years,” he said. “But, as you probably know, I’ve been having a bit of a stressy time. Stupid, really, fags aren’t going to solve it.”
“So what’s new, apart from taking up smoking again?”
“Bit of a deadlock, really. Napier’s working to get me off the hook. I don’t know how much you’ve been told – they know it’s a load of bollocks, but they have to follow the necessary protocols to keep the Met and the Awkward Squad happy until I’m cleared. Of course, they all know I’m working away in the background, they can’t stop me … but I can’t be seen to be making contact with you or anyone else on our firm. But what about you, more to the point. You OK?”
Whatever had happened to me, he knew. He always did.
“I’m over it, but I’ve been having a bit of a prickly time since with Sharpie,” I said. “Without you there, he seems to have taken it upon himself to run things.”
Tony nodded. “Sharpie’s ambitious. Likes to know the ins and outs of the cat’s arsehole. I sometimes limit what I tell him.”
“And then he limits the information he gives me.”
“Nature of it,” Tony said. “Too much information can be more dangerous than too little. It’s all on a need-to-know basis. So is he getting in your way?”
“I went to see Tommy Kelly.”
“Good move.” He didn’t seem surprised.
“Anna thought so, Sharpie didn’t. He thought it was too soon.” Tony shook his head. “Anna supported me, so he got outvoted.”
“Good girl,” Tony said approvingly. “She thinks the world of you. So how was Uncle Tommy?”
“Not bad,” I said. “He more or less admitted responsibility for the Martin Connolly hit.”
Tony agreed. “Sure he did. He’s pleased with himself. From our point of view it would have been good to have Connolly alive a bit longer. Once you’d drawn him out, he was a good lead.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because he is – was – Paul Dolan’s brother. Michael Dolan was his real name. He was a player.”
“Shit.” Suddenly the familiarity of Martin Connolly’s face and build made sense. The reason I had been sent to spy on Hannah suddenly joined up. “Shit.”
“We’re sure it was Connolly – Mich
ael Dolan – who spirited Paul Dolan away on that video we saw. He made sure he disappeared before Tommy could get to him. So Tommy got to the brother instead, and Bashmakov’s bitch into the bargain.”
“Deliberately?” I asked. Tony shrugged.
“Seems too good to be a coincidence. Whichever way, it’ll have put a smile on Tommy’s face.”
“I managed to sneak in a picture we got of Sophie,” I said. “That really cheered him up.”
“Good,” Tony said. “He’s still showing his soft underbelly. If we can bring Sophie in, we have a strong bargaining tool. What did Tommy think?”
“He wanted me to go straight to New York and try to track her down. I was all enthusiastic and geed myself up, ready to go.”
“And?”
“Sharpie blocked it. Said it was too early again – but he really dug in this time. So I said I’d wait for his instructions and came up here.”
Tony flicked out the roll-up. Thought for a moment.
“What’s he waiting for?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’m generally of the strike-while-the-iron’s-hot school. Maybe Sharpie’s playing a longer game. I’ll have a think about it.”
“This tea’s going cold,” Mum called from the kitchen.
“Sorry,” Tony called back. “We’ve been chatting.”
We went inside.
“What do you boys fancy for your tea tonight?” Mum asked.
Tony and I looked at each other.
“Curry,” we grinned.
Donnie checked into the Stoke Travelodge.
He didn’t like “up north” and he didn’t like Travelodges, either.
They never had a proper bar. Or nosh.
As soon as he’d dumped his grip, containing socks, pants and a worn toothbrush, he went back to reception and ordered a cab.
He gave the driver an address and they drove a mile or so through the rows of terraced streets in an area that Donnie couldn’t pronounce. He asked the driver to drive past the address he had given, clocked the house, then asked to be taken to the nearest pub.
“You sure, pal?” the cabbie asked. “The nearest one’s a bit rough. You’re better off going to The Greyhound.”