Shadow Box

by Peter Cocks

  Donnie wasn’t bothered by the idea of a rough pub; he had spent plenty of time in them over the years, and his presence usually added to their reputation. However, he took the cabbie’s advice and was dropped off outside The Greyhound. It wasn’t bad at all, a good old-fashioned boozer with areas divided by wooden panelling.

  It was busy, and Donnie waited patiently while several locals were served before him. He found himself a seat in a corner booth and sipped his first pint. He didn’t spot the kid at first. An older, nondescript bloke was buying the beer. It might have been his dad, and as they chatted and joshed while their drinks were being poured, Donnie envied their easy father-son bond.

  For a second he was sorry that he was going to have to kill the kid.

  They were on the other side of the pub, a good distance away, the other side of a wooden divide, but Donnie couldn’t afford to be seen. He couldn’t spend an hour with a copy of the local paper in front of his face, they’d spot that a mile off, but to leave he would have to walk past them. The only available door on his side of the pub was the gents’. With his back to the bar, as subtly as he could manage, Donnie slipped across to the toilets – on second thoughts, stopping to take his beer with him – and locked himself in the cubicle.

  As custom dictated, Tony and I had a pint in The Greyhound before picking up the takeaway. The pub was pretty full, so we stood at the bar. Tony was affable off-duty.

  “How long you been up here, Tony?”

  “Just a few days. Your mum’s been very good to me. We’ve had a nice time. Went out yesterday for a spot of lunch and a walk round Trentham Gardens. It’s relaxing. I feel safe up here, out of the way.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “But lying low gets a bit boring after a few days. That’s why I ran off to Spain last time I was stuck up here.”

  Tony laughed.

  “And look where that got you.”

  “Told you I get bored easily,” I joked.

  “You’re a young bloke, though, plenty of energy. I’m tired of it, mate. Years of stress have worn me down. A quiet life up here looks quite appealing sometimes.”

  “You’re not retiring, are you?”

  Tony shrugged.

  “Might have to. Sharpie and Anna would look after you if I did.”

  The idea unsettled me. They hadn’t done a great job since Tony had been out of commission. Tony wasn’t without his faults, but I trusted him.

  “Don’t abandon me, Tony!”

  “Never, old son. I know I haven’t been much help recently, but we’ll see what happens when I’ve done my purdah.”

  “If you’re not on the firm, neither am I,” I said.

  “Not sure you have a choice, mate,” he said. “Now let’s stop talking shop and go and get the curry in.”

  Donnie realized he was trapped. He had finished his beer accompanied by the stench of bleach and urine. The door to the cubicle had been tried twice; someone desperate for a tom-tit would be getting very impatient.

  He would have to make a break for it. He flicked the bolt.

  A man was washing his hands. Looked at Donnie.

  “I’d give it ten minutes,” Donnie said, gesturing at the cubicle.

  The door opened straight back into the bar, so he nudged it open a sliver and peeked out. Someone yanked the handle from the other side and pulled the door wide open, exposing Donnie to the bar. He glanced around rapidly. He couldn’t see the kid and the older bloke any more. The other side had emptied out. They had gone. Donnie left the pub; it was getting dark outside. He looked up and down the street, then made his way back towards the terraces.

  He found the number again, walked straight past, then ducked into an alley that led behind the houses.

  “Sag Prawn, Rogan Josh, Aloo Gobi, Chicken Balti, Tandoori Chicken, Keema Naan…” Tony reeled off the usual selection of Indian dishes as he undid the foil takeaway containers and the steamy, spicy smells filled the kitchen.

  My stomach gurgled and I munched a poppadom with lime pickle, my appetite sharpened by a pint in the pub. I was starving.

  “You two look like you haven’t eaten for a month,” Mum said.

  Tony and I looked up from our plates. We had wolfed down a tub of onion bhajis and were well into a pile of assorted curries and rice and had not exchanged a word.

  “Sorry, very antisocial,” Tony said. “What shall we talk about?”

  “Don’t let me get between a man and his stomach,” Mum laughed, picking at a tandoori chicken leg, and we carried on in silence until we heard a crash outside the back door.

  Tony’s head bobbed up like a chubby meerkat. He was never off-duty.

  “Those cats again,” Mum said.

  “Bloody big cat,” Tony said, standing.

  He went out through the kitchen, picking up the torch that hung by the back door. I followed him into the garden. The steel dustbin that stood by the back window had been knocked over, its contents strewn across the path. Tony shone the torch around, and then up the short garden path to where the back gate swung open. He traced the torch to the unplanted bed that ran across the back of the garden by the gate.

  “Bloody big cat,” he repeated, pointing the torch at the bed.

  It took me a moment to focus, and then I saw, clearly outlined, the print of a very large foot.

  Donnie limped along the alley, his ankle burning where he’d twisted it slipping off the wet dustbin on leather soles. He turned left, then right, checking behind to make sure he hadn’t been followed, then turned on to the next street in search of the Balti house near the pub.

  That curry had looked good, and he was starving.

  Tony was bothered by the idea that someone was spying on us.

  Stoke-on-Trent had been chosen as a safe place for my mum to be once I’d first got into trouble in London. In case someone came for me. She’d lived there as a kid and liked it, and we all felt secure hidden away there, but this intrusion had rattled Tony’s bars.

  “You never told anyone about being up here, did you?” he asked me the next morning.

  “No way,” I said. “It’s the last thing I’d do. It would be mad. Only Anna knew I was coming up here.”

  “And Sharpie?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But couldn’t it have just been some random intruder…?”

  “No such thing,” Tony said. “There’s always a reason. You should know that better than anyone.”

  Tony tapped away at his laptop all morning.

  “We might have to move you again, love,” he said to my mum later, putting a protective arm around her.

  “Oh, Tony, I’ve just about got used to it here,” Mum sighed. “I’ve made a few friends. Got settled.”

  “I’m worried about your safety,” Tony said. “Leave it with me. I’ll make a few calls and see what’s best.”

  “You’re not doing very well at being off-duty, Tony,” I said. I was kind of glad he was here and on the case. If I’d been here by myself, I think it would have made me very jumpy.

  “You know me, mate.” Tony picked up his laptop and headed upstairs to the spare room. “I’m going to shut myself away for a couple of hours, try and sort things out.”

  I felt agitated and couldn’t settle. I tried reading for a bit, then sat and watched an old film on the TV with Mum. As keen as I was to lie low and relax, my body still seemed to crave adrenaline and excitement. It didn’t take long for things to change again.

  Tony came back downstairs. He looked pale and shell-shocked.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “I’ve just had a call from Sandy Napier,” he said. “I got the tin-tack. I’ve been sacked.”

  “What?”

  “Immediate effect.” Tony dumped himself on the sofa and put his head in his hands.

  “They can’t just sack you like that, Tony,” I said. “What about the inquiry?”

  “Found against. Someone’s got it in for me, dobbed me in with a load of confidential stuff about IRA lin
ks.”

  “But there’s nothing on you, is there?”

  “Everyone’s got something on them,” he said. “Grey areas, areas of doubt, things done not quite by the rulebook. You know what it’s like, mistakes are made.”

  “Like Paul Dolan giving us the slip?”

  “Sure. The Met wouldn’t let it drop. It was on my watch. Napier told me I’d have to fall on my sword.” He shook his head in disbelief. “After twenty-five years.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My first thoughts, I’m ashamed to admit, were for myself.

  “What am I going to do?”

  He looked up me, surprised.

  “You? You’re going to dig in, mate; pick up the pieces and carry on. The first thing you’re going to do is copy all my stuff onto an external hard drive – sharpish, before they cut me loose and take everything away. If they want to find me, it won’t take long. I’ll give you what I can, what I know, stuff that even Anna and Sharpie don’t know.”

  I plugged three terabytes of external hard drive into Tony’s computer and he dragged and dropped files marked “secret”, “confidential” and “high security”. Names I’d heard, or half-heard, appeared on the files that were now transferred to me. There were dossiers of information on individuals and surveillance photos that went back a few years.

  “Guard this stuff with your life, Eddie,” Tony said. “It’s taken years to accumulate, and as soon as I pass it back to the firm it will disappear. My life is on there, and some of yours. You have to stay a step ahead of the game. Put it in a safe deposit box at Manchester Airport. Somewhere only you know. Even I mustn’t know where it is.”

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t seen you and you haven’t seen me. Got it?”

  I nodded. “Safer that way. So where are you going?”

  “Well, I’m going to get your mum fixed up elsewhere for a while, then I’ll have to go to London, hand in my badge and face the music.”

  “Can you appeal?” I asked.

  “Sure. Could take a year, though.”

  “What do you want me to do next?”

  “I thought that was obvious,” he said. He fished in his briefcase and pulled out a printout of an airline booking. “Go to New York and finish the job.”

  I checked into Bewley’s Hotel: modern, slick, a shuttle ride from the airport. My flight was in the early hours, so I wanted to be on the spot and somewhere nobody knew about.

  “Do you have safe deposit boxes?”

  “We do,” the head receptionist said. Crisp, camp, courteous.

  “Can I see them? I’m going to the States for a couple of weeks…”

  “It’s not usual, sir. I can assure you that we are a hundred per cent secure.”

  “I know,” I pleaded. “I’m just a bit OCD about this stuff, all my work’s in there.” I patted the leather laptop case I wanted to deposit.

  The head receptionist raised an eyebrow and lifted the hatch in the front desk, allowing me through. I followed him down a strip-lit corridor, past staff changing rooms, distinctly scruffier than front of house. He unlocked the door to a bare, concrete-walled room. A row of silver-fronted boxes faced me.

  “Our vault is Grade 8, tested in accordance with European Standard EN11-43. The strong room has passed the demanding explosives and core drill tests and therefore certified EX and CD. You see, you’re not the only one who’s OCD,” he said.

  “That’ll do nicely,” I said. “Thank you.”

  He unlocked and slid out a deposit box and I laid the laptop bag inside. It contained a few things that might have given me problems at airport security: some bugs, a knife, a small pistol. And an external hard drive that contained Tony Morris’s whole life and career.

  “That will be secure with us, Mr Kelly. Enjoy your stay and we look forward to your safe return. Have a good trip.”

  I had bad memories of Manchester Airport. The last time I was there, I had been stung at customs with half a kilo of cocaine, planted on me by a so-called mate. The memory made me sweat, but once the plane climbed and banked over the Irish Sea I felt better, and glad I was in the air rather than on the ground.

  I woke up from a nap somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic, feeling a weird mixture of excitement and foreboding. I had always wanted to go to New York, and the idea that I might find Sophie there filled me with optimism. I started fantasizing about her running into my open arms, finding somewhere to live together; romantic visions of us walking along a beach. I conveniently ignored the idea that there might be a few obstacles in the way before I found her.

  Seeing Tony had made me realize the truth of what I had suspected – that the organization always knew more than I did.

  I half watched one of the Bourne films for the rest of the flight. Ridiculous, I thought, but the chase sequences were fantastic.

  When I arrived at JFK, my excitement diminished as I stood in a queue waiting for a yellow cab. My phone buzzed with incoming texts from Sharpie.

  Where are you? SS

  Report in ASAP. SS

  Call me. Now. SS

  Can’t get fix on yr phone. Where U? Are u OK?? SS

  I decided to ignore them.

  I was acting against everything I’d ever been trained to do, but Tony had been in no doubt that I was to go. Then again, Tony was not now officially on the firm, nor was he my case officer. I really should have checked in with Sharpie, and now, thousands of miles away, I began to panic that I’d done entirely the wrong thing.

  Tony had not always been right in the past.

  I sweated the problem as the cab I’d hired dodged along the expressway towards Manhattan.

  I texted Tony.

  Arr NY. SS mad & worried. Pls advise. KK

  I sat back in the cab and waited for an answer as the towers and skyscrapers of New York City came closer and closer. I had never been to America, but the panorama was as familiar to me as the title sequence of Friends, as if I’d known it all my life.

  During the flight, Tony had emailed me the address of a hotel, tucked away in Greenwich Village, which I was to make my temporary base until I found my feet. As we drove into the city, I felt dwarfed by the wide avenues, four lanes of cars flanked by towering blocks of buildings on either side. The idea of finding Sophie in all this began to feel even more remote.

  We stopped in Waverley Place outside the Washington Square Hotel, a large brownstone built like a fortress, and I paid the cab. I felt relieved: it looked safe, and the reception staff were super-friendly and welcoming in the way only Americans can muster. Once I shut the heavy door of my second-floor room, I felt I could breathe again.

  I sat on the bed and breathed deeply, then my phone buzzed with Tony’s text.

  Sit tight. Don’t panic. Will talk to SS. Await instructions.

  I read the text a few times and realized that once again I had bitten off more than I could chew, and once again my fate was in the lap of the gods. Or, at least, the lap of the people who controlled my life. I tried to overcome the feeling that the best thing I could do was get a cab back to JFK, get on a plane somewhere – anywhere – and disappear without a trace.

  “New York, Dave,” Donnie said. “New Bleeding York.”

  “What?”

  “’Merica.”

  “I know it’s in America, Don.”

  “I got up at the crack of a sparrow’s fart to follow him to Manchester.”

  “Well done, Don, but if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t know where he was, would you? So you got a ticket?”

  “Ticket for what?”

  “New York, Don. New York.”

  “No, Dave. You’re having a laugh. I never been to America.”

  “First time for everything, Don. It’s only a few hours away. It’s a bit like the Isle of Dogs, but bigger. Get a ticket and I’ll dig about and ask a few questions. We know he’s travelling as Kieran Kelly. I’ve got a bent official at Gatwick who does some bits for us. Shouldn’t t
ake long to find out where he is. They get the full SP at US immigration: where they’re staying, how long, name of their mum’s cat, the lot.”

  “No, Dave.”

  “Here’s the deal, Don. You go, and I’ll have a word with the guvnor and make sure you get a long holiday after. He’s got a bit of evidence that Her Ladyship is alive and over there. You pull this off and it’s early retirement for Donovan Mulvaney.”

  “I’ve heard that before, Dave,” Donnie whined. But he chewed it over; the kid would do the work, he’d just have to follow. Once he’d found Sophie: bang. Job done. Deliver the girl into the safe hands of her father. A wave of chivalry rose in Donnie’s chest as he thought about Sophie Kelly. The girl could do no wrong in his eyes. He remembered her beautiful face and old-fashioned, curvy figure. Nothing improper in his interest, he reminded himself, he just felt protective. Loved her, in his way.

  “OK, Dave,” he said finally.

  “OK what, Don?”

  “I’ll do it, but here’s the deal…”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “100 k and off the firm.”

  Dave laughed.

  “I’ll ask, Don. I’ll put some money on your card. Just get that ’effing ticket and get out there.”

  Donnie had everything he needed with him: a platinum credit card and a fake passport. He was the type of bloke who could get tooled up anywhere in the world. People would just look at him and offer him weapons or nose candy. He realized that Dave had organized him with a bag so that he could hop on a plane anywhere. He had been manipulated, as before: nothing but a killer puppet for the firm, kept alive on booze and empty promises. He didn’t feel at home in London any more; it had changed. He couldn’t go back to Spain – every villain on the Costa had him marked – and he certainly wasn’t happy here, “up north”. He looked at the fake passport, the false name, fully stamped up US visa, valid for three years. He envisioned a bank account with 500 k stashed. One more job, and a picture of a life by the pool began to materialize. Donnie had heard Florida was nice…

  He went to the American Airlines desk, where he had seen the kid check in.