by Peter Cocks
“Our other guest has arrived,” Cheryl said, relieved.
“I must get going,” I said. “Lovely to bump into you. Give my love to Sophie when you see her.” I nodded to Bashmakov, thanked him for the drink. “Good to meet you, Peter,” I said to Sharp. I stood up and offered my seat to Dolan. “Kept it warm for you,” I said, and he winked at me.
I turned on my heel and walked straight out of Le Bernardin. It was only once I was outside that I felt my legs shaking and the sweat cold on my back. I had put on a good show, but now I was a jibbering bag of frayed nerves.
I scrolled through the numbers on Cheryl’s phone, texting them to mine, then picked up my own phone and speed dialled.
“Anna? You still in the office?”
“No,” she said wearily. “I’m in bed. Sharpie arrive OK? Is he with you?”
“No,” I said. “That’s why I’m calling. He came here a day earlier than he told you. When you thought he was in Beaconsfield he was already here.”
“What?”
I took a deep breath.
“Having dinner with Alexei Bashmakov … and Cheryl Kelly.”
She was silent for a minute.
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“I saw them last night – I’ll text you a picture. I’ve just come back from having a glass of champagne with them.”
“Now I’m really confused.”
“He said he was meeting a CIA contact. I followed him, and he was with Bashmakov and Cheryl. I crashed the party.”
“Oh, fuck,” I heard Anna curse under her breath.
“Have I done the wrong thing?”
“Yes … no. I’m not sure.”
“What?”
“It’s just that … I really don’t know if I should tell you.”
“Come on, Anna, something’s going on here.”
“OK. It’s just I think I’ve found out that Sharpie planted some evidence that stitched Tony up.”
“Does the name Peter Pasternak mean anything to you?” I asked her.
“No,” she said.
I finished the call. I decided I wasn’t going to do as I was told and leave tonight.
“Be very careful,” Anna had said when she rang off.
A text came in minutes later.
Be there when I get back 11.45. Meet my room. Urgent. SS
I went down to the bar and sat in a dark corner with a drink, awaiting Sharpie’s return. He came in at 11.45 on the dot, rushed straight past, not seeing me, and got into the lift.
I gave him a minute, then took the elevator to the fourth. I knocked lightly on the door, ready to face the music.
The door opened and I was greeted by a punch on the nose. I reeled and he pulled me into the room, kicking me in the back towards an armchair. I didn’t defend myself.
“You stupid fucking idiot,” he hissed. “You complete and utter twat.” He examined his hand and shook his knuckles out. He’d hurt himself on my nose. I could feel it, too. “What do you think you were doing? You were under strict instructions. You were to leave tonight. You have disobeyed every single order I have given you. What’s your game? I will have you drummed right out – you’ll never work again.”
“Like you did to Tony?” I snuffled, holding my nose. This angered him and he aimed another kick, catching me hard on the shin.
“What do you mean, you…” More violent expletives followed. “Tony’s over. He fucked up. I have been working on this for two years,” he hissed. “I have tiptoed around, grooming Cheryl and Sophie in Spain, softly, softly, creating a cover as an interior designer, half-Russian. I’ve even managed to get the contract to refurbish Bashmakov’s yacht, getting right into the belly of the beast. I can fly anywhere in the world and be put up by Bashmakov in hotels, dachas, boats. I have inside access to the way he works and the way he has levered Cheryl away from Kelly. She likes the high life, she wasn’t ever going to be a villain’s ex in bloody Kent. She follows the money.”
“What about the arms deal?” I sniffed.
“Of course there’s an arms deal, a big one, and plenty more, and where I’m positioned I can keep tabs on all of it. I am on the verge of bringing down one of the world’s biggest crime syndicates and then Eddie effing Size Tens comes in like he thinks he’s James Bond, and puts us on the spot.”
“What about the other guy?”
“Who? Bashmakov?”
“No, the IRA man.”
“Lynch?”
“He might have been called that once,” I said. “But that was Paul Dolan.”
The anger drained from Sharpie. And the colour from his face.
“Paul Dolan? How d’you know?”
“He was on the Kelly firm, remember?”
“So Cheryl would know him?”
“He was an outsider, but possibly, yes.”
“Fuck,” Sharpie said. He thought for a moment. “Does he know who I am?”
“Not sure,” I said. “Don’t think so.”
“Did he recognize you?”
“Maybe,” I lied. “If he did, he didn’t show it.”
Sharp was mollified. He sat down. He chewed a nail, eyes darting around the room.
“Sorry I hit you,” he said. “That’s a useful bit of information, really useful, but I just have to keep a watertight grip on all of this. I can’t afford a slip-up. I still want you to go, but you’ve missed your flight now. We’ll book another and get you gone in the morning. I’m coming too, we’ve sat still for too long.”
I thought that was rich coming from Sharpie – he always wanted to keep me in one place where he could keep an eye on me. Now he looked edgy, thinking things over.
“What about Sophie?” I asked. He turned on me.
“You still don’t get it, do you? Sophie doesn’t matter. Sophie was only ever Tommy-bait. She is no longer important to us.”
“She’s important to me,” I said.
“And that’s where you’ve always fucked up, you idiot. You get involved, you let your emotions rule you. Why do you think so many poofs have made the best spies? I’ll tell you – because we don’t get involved. We keep our eye on the bigger game, keep relationships light and don’t get bogged down in personal details. You, boy, are led by your dick.”
“Bit harsh,” I said. “Of course I get involved with people. I have emotions, I do get involved; these are lives we are dealing with.”
“Harsh, maybe, but true. You’re a slave to your feelings. You’re too young. Immature. You’re over. I think you should turn in. I’ll book the 10 a.m. Check out of here early, at six.”
“OK,” I said, slapped down. “Sorry if I put my foot in it tonight. I won’t be in your hair much longer.”
He looked at me, about to say something, stopped himself, but then couldn’t resist. He was scared.
“You sure that was Dolan?”
“Sure as I can be,” I said.
I left Sharpie thinking in his room and went up to the sixth. I had no intention of sleeping in my bed that night.
I was right to be suspicious.
I went to my room and padded the bed with pillows and blankets as if I was asleep in there. Then I packed a light bag with the essentials and found myself a large broom cupboard on the corridor, where, propped up by a cushion from a corridor sofa, I sat and waited. I kept a chink of the door open. It was past midnight and the lift was no longer busy. Nearer 1 a.m. I must have dozed a little, then I woke up as I heard the rumble of the lift coming up to the sixth floor. I shook myself awake and watched as the door chimed open and clanked shut.
A man stepped out, suited, someone who would look perfectly in place walking across reception. He checked numbers, then knocked lightly on my door. Waited. I held my breath. Through the gap by the hinges I could see a sliver of him and my room door as he pulled a balaclava from his pocket. He put it on, then gently worked the passkey on my locked door. I saw the silenced pistol at his side as he entered my darkened room. I stayed still and waited, keeping my breath
ing light and even as I heard the dull report of four silenced shots going in, I imagined, to my dummy body.
I watched him leave and close the door silently.
I was “dead” again.
Twice I had been approached by an assassin in a hotel room in which Simon Sharp had told me to stay put.
I decided to wait it out till six o’clock to test my theory. To see how surprised Sharpie would be that I was still alive at breakfast.
I was in reception by 5 a.m., dozing on a sofa as the new day’s staff arrived. At 5.40 a.m. I was able to get some coffee, the weak American stuff that only gets you going after five cups. I was wary, having been “assassinated” during the night, but people were still thin on the ground and I was safer in a public place.
At 6 a.m. I started to get twitchy. Sharpie was always on the dot. At 6.15 a.m. a new anxiety came over me; he’d fled, or done a runner, thinking me dead. By 6.45 a.m. I was asking the desk if Mr Sharp had checked out. They had no one of that name.
“Try Mr Pasternak?”
“No, Mr Pasternak hasn’t checked out.”
I waited five more minutes, then decided to walk up to the fourth floor. I listened outside Sharpie’s room. Quiet. I knocked gently. Nothing.
Louder. Nothing.
I waited.
An old cleaner trundled along the corridor pushing a trolley of towels. She looked Mexican or Puerto Rican.
“Buenos diás,” I said.
She stopped and looked at me.
With a mixture of signs and rusty Spanish, I told her I’d left my key inside. She looked impassive, but a ten-dollar bill released her passkey.
“Muchas gracias, señora,” I said as she pushed Sharpie’s door open for me.
It was dark. I crossed the room and opened the curtains. The bed had not been slept in. I started to feel like a fool. I switched on the lights and opened the closet, but Sharpie’s bags were still there. Hanging up were a couple of shirts, and inside a Gucci bag was a new pair of shoes. Expensive taste, Sharpie had.
I went to the bathroom and switched on the light. The door was heavy as I opened it. The bath was full, so I dipped my fingers in the water, which was cold. I felt the door move behind me and turned to see the weight of Sharpie’s body swinging it shut.
I shouted something out loud. I don’t know what.
He was hanging by the dressing-gown hook attached to the back of the door. His leather belt was tight around his neck, the skin red and blue where the rough edge cut in. His mouth was open in a wide “O” that seemed to shape a silent scream, fat tongue lolling out obscenely. His eyes bulged, ready to pop from his purple face, staring down at me accusingly.
I felt paralysed, but forced myself to take out my iPhone and take a picture. I closed my eyes and pressed the button.
Then I grabbed the door handle to exit, trying to avoid the corpse, but made it no further than the toilet bowl, where I vomited out my shock and horror convulsively. I went back into the room, wiping my mouth, tears streaming from my eyes, and searched frantically through his bags for anything incriminating or confidential. There was nothing, not even a phone or passport. Either Sharpie was super-cautious about where he kept his things or someone else had been in. Shaking, I went through the drawers: nothing there, either.
I could hear the sounds of the hotel coming to life in the corridor; doors being slammed, papers being delivered. I realized I needed to get out. Being found in here with Sharpie’s body would have taken some explaining. Only the little Mexican woman had seen me come in. I put a tag on the door and, checking the corridor, closed it behind me. “Do Not Disturb.”
I checked out.
The hotel staff would have seen me with Sharpie in the bar, so I would probably be number one on the list of people they would want to talk to when he was found.
I swerved my favourite diner and walked a few blocks away to another, where I ordered food that I couldn’t eat and sipped weak, sweet coffee while I considered my next move. I had my exit plan: I could change my air ticket to that evening.
I texted Anna.
SS dead. For real. I’m coming back. Dets to follow.
It was still early. I was terrified and traumatized. I had a day to look for Sophie Kelly. And I had Cheryl Kelly’s phone.
I looked through the names, many of them Russian-sounding, ending in -ov and -ev. I was sure there would be a number for Sophie somewhere on there.
I tried Sofia.
It rang. New York ring tone.
“Hi.”
“Hi, is Sophie there?”
“This is Sofia, who’s this?” The accent was American, the voice unfamiliar.
“I was looking for Sophie Kelly?”
“No, I’m Sofia Greenberg, you have a wrong number.”
“Sorry. I’m looking for Sophie Kelly, Cheryl Kelly’s daughter?”
The phone went down.
I tried several others, Ss and anything that might be cryptically linked to Sophie or Kelly. I got a series of wrong numbers and voicemails. Dead ends. I stared at the phone’s contact list.
Petrina. It rang a bell, so I called it.
“Hi, is Sophie there?”
The voice on the other end was weary, foreign-accented. Tired and vulnerable.
“No, this is Petrina. Sophie’s asleep.”
My pulse began to race.
“I have a message from her mother, Cheryl.”
“We had a party last night. What time is it?”
“Sorry, eight-thirty, a bit early … it’s just Cheryl asked me to deliver some flowers. She’s sorry she didn’t make the party.”
“Oh, sure, who is this?”
I was thinking fast.
“Kieran, I’m a colleague of Peter Pasternak.”
“Well, I have to go out at ten o’clock. I’ll leave Sophie a note that you’re swinging by.”
“Thanks. Oh, Petrina, can you just remind me of the address? I can’t read Cheryl’s writing…”
She paused momentarily, then reeled off an address uptown: 3F, The Ormonde, West 70th and Broadway.
“Thanks,” I said. “Her writing makes it look like 8E – I would never have found it.”
“No problem,” she said.
It had only taken an off-guard, sleepy and hungover Russian princess to lead me straight to Sophie Kelly.
I gulped my coffee and took a cab to the Upper West Side, where I could disappear into well-heeled Manhattan, trying to shake off the nightmarish vision of Simon Sharp’s dead body.
I bought flowers that cost me an arm and a leg and walked up Broadway to kill a little time.
I found the block on the corner of West 70th. It looked French, turn of the century, old by New York standards, but the balconies and red blinds that decorated the frontage looked more attractive and welcoming than most New York brownstones.
I waited on the street, and at ten-fifteen, a fashionable fifteen minutes late, I saw a dyed-blonde, leggy girl in Lady Gaga heels teeter out and allow the doorman to hail her a cab. Petrina, I was sure.
I was still well dressed and, waving the flowers, slipped by the concierge with a nod and a wink. I fitted in, as I had at Le Bernardin. I went up to the third floor. I rehearsed over and over again what I was going to say once I saw her. I imagined the door opening, imagined the passionate embrace that would surely follow.
I pressed the buzzer and waited.
“Hello?” London voice.
“Flowers for Sophie Kelly,” I said. American.
“OK,” she said. “Coming.”
Stupidly, I held the flowers in front of my face as I waited outside the door.
I heard double locks being opened. The door opened and Sophie Kelly stood there, looking at the flowers. I dropped them away from my face.
“Hi, Soph,” I said. “Surprise.”
She was wearing a dressing gown, still towelling showerwet hair. She’d lost a lot of weight. Too thin, I thought. I waited while she stared at me for a couple of beats, then she drop
ped the towel and screamed.
I held my hands up trying to silence her; dropped the flowers, grabbed her forearms and edged her back into the room. I closed the door for fear of other residents hearing her screams and coming to her aid.
“Please, Sophie,” I said, soothing, “I know it’s a bit of shock.”
“You’re dead! You’re dead, you bastard,” she screamed, shaking my hands off her. “How could you do this to me?”
I realized that my approach might have been wrong.
I should have tried to contact her first, but I was running out of time. If I was honest with myself, for months, despite telling Sharpie otherwise, I had secretly felt like a knight in armour on a quest to find and rescue the princess. It had kept me going.
As Sophie slapped me in the face, I realized it had never occurred to me for a millisecond that the princess might not actually want rescuing. That she might never want to see the knight in shining armour again.
“How are you here? Why? You ruined my life, you complete arsehole!” She reached for a cigarette from the glass table. There were empty bottles all over it and a mirror and a razor blade that betrayed evidence of dusty white lines of cocaine. Her hand shook as she lit and inhaled deeply on a Marlboro. She had never smoked much when I knew her.
“I survived being shot,” I said. “Your dad asked me to come and find you.”
“Dad asked you?”
“He knew I was the only one he could trust.”
“After what you did to him?”
“It wasn’t just me,” I said. “It was an inside job. The Irish and the Russians are closing in on him. Since he’s been inside, they’ve all been eating away at his businesses in the UK and Spain. I’ve been over there as well. I’ve been looking for you for months.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have bothered,” she said. She was calming a little but still shaking, glancing at me warily as if making sure that I was really me and not someone from a dream – or a nightmare. “I have a new life here.” She waved her arms at the vast, high-ceilinged apartment flooded with morning light. An impressive collection of modern American art hung on its white walls.