Shadow Box

by Peter Cocks

  “Courtesy of Mr Bashmakov, I imagine?”

  She nodded.

  “Alexei’s looked after me,” she said defensively.

  “Of course he has. He’s been keeping you safe and out of the way while he muscles in on your old man’s business.”

  “He hasn’t! He looks after Dad’s stuff while he’s … away.”

  “You sure?” I asked.

  Sophie had always been very good at turning a blind eye to Tommy’s business affairs, seeing only what she wanted to, but I could see doubt creeping over her – or perhaps what knowledge she did have was becoming crystal clear.

  “All I know is that he’s been very good to us.”

  “Us?”

  “Mum’s here too,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “I’ve seen her.”

  “Did she see you?”

  “Yes, I had a drink with her last night. And a man called Peter Pasternak. Do you know him?”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “Peter’s our interior designer. He did this flat. He works for Alexei. He’s a friend.”

  “You met him in Spain, right?”

  “How did you know?” she asked, surprised.

  “He told me.”

  “Peter told you?”

  I nodded.

  “So, how come you know Peter?” she asked.

  I took a deep breath, the memory of Sharp’s strangled body fresh in my mind.

  “I’ve worked with him for a while.”

  Now she looked really confused.

  “Worked? What? Interior design, art?”

  “No,” I said. “Peter Pasternak is actually a British intelligence agent called Simon Sharp.”

  “You’re mad!” she said. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. And I’m also not joking when I tell you that he’s dead.”

  “No, he’s not. I only saw him…”

  “Last night.”

  “How do you know?” Her face was white; she reached for another cigarette with a shaky hand.

  “I saw his body this morning. Someone tried to kill me, too.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. But I guess your sugar daddy might have had something to do with it.”

  “Alexei? No. He loved Peter. I need a drink.”

  “Bashmakov doesn’t love anyone he suspects is double-crossing him,” I said.

  She went to the fridge. I watched her go. She returned with a bottle of cold vodka and poured some into a used wine glass. She didn’t offer me anything, but I didn’t mind. Then she picked up a small ivory box from the table and took out a plastic sachet of white powder, tipped a little onto the mirror on the table and began to chop at it with the razor blade. Her hands were trembling.

  “Cocaine? You, Sophie? Smoking and drinking neat vodka in the morning?”

  She shrugged. “It’s been a stressful time. I’ve changed, Eddie, and so have you. You should go. Forget about me. Go, and carry on doing whatever it is you do.”

  “This is what I do.”

  She ordered the powder into two neat lines and took a twenty-dollar bill from the box and rolled it into a tube. She leant over and sniffed one of the lines into her nostril, then pushed the mirror over to me.

  “No, thanks. I don’t.” She snorted the other line and began to relax.

  “Listen,” I said. “I promised Tommy I would find you and bring you back, and I intend to do exactly that.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Eddie. Especially with you. I live here now. I’ll see Dad when he gets out. He’ll sort it. It won’t be long.”

  “His appeal’s been turned down. He won’t be out for a long time. Tommy got Bashmakov’s main man in London shot and I don’t think Alexei’s very happy about it. He has ways of making things difficult.”

  She looked at me.

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know, Sophie. I’ll try to explain if you come with me. You’re not safe here now that people know where you are. With Peter Pasternak dead, others will follow. Maybe even you.”

  “How do I even know he’s dead? You’re a liar. You were dead too, as far as I knew.” Her confidence seemed to be returning as the cocaine entered her bloodstream.

  “I can prove it.”

  “How?”

  I took the phone from my pocket and scrolled through my photos, the only proof I had. Handed her the iPhone. She looked at the image, horrified.

  “Oh. My. God.”

  “I think you’re in real danger here.”

  “I’m protected,” she said. She sat back in the sofa and lit another cigarette. She looked at me with her blue eyes and I could see the Sophie Kelly I remembered. I wanted to kiss her – but suspected she’d hit me again if I tried.

  I can’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed. After all this time I expected to be welcomed with open arms, but she continued to stare at me as if she was trying to work out what exactly I was.

  Her phone rang and she checked the number.

  “Hi, Pet.” Her face scrunched up. She listened for a moment. “Who is this? Where is she?” She looked at me. “Why? No. Where … hello? Hello?” She put the phone down and looked at me as if whatever had happened was my fault.

  “It’s Petrina,” she said. “She’s been taken.”

  It did not take me much longer to convince Sophie that she was now high-risk. But she was still reluctant to go. Stuck in her ivory tower, she had become confident that no one could get to her, protected as she was by Bashmakov – who, in my view, was keeping her as some kind of five-star hostage anyway.

  Now I’d found my way here and someone else had found Petrina.

  “How can I trust you, Eddie? You fucked up my family. Fucked me up.”

  “Your family fucked itself up,” I said. “Thought it was untouchable. Then Tommy slipped up. You’re like your dad, you can’t trust anyone. But like he said, of all the people you can’t trust, maybe I’m the best of a bad lot.”

  “Why?”

  “Try and remember what we had, Soph. We loved each other. You know it’s true. I looked after you.”

  “You used me,” she said.

  “Whatever’s changed, I won’t stand by and see you used as a pawn to get to your old man. You could be held hostage too, or worse. If I can get you back to London, I can make sure you’re safe. But we need to go today.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  Her phone rang. Petrina Bashmakov’s number again. I urged her to answer it. She took the call.

  “Hello? Yes. Who…?” She held the phone out to me.

  “He wants to talk to you.”

  I took it from her.

  “Who’s this?” A man’s voice. Irish. Dolan?

  “Kieran,” I said.

  “You’re with the Kelly girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve got the other one. Get her out of there, double quick. It’s not safe.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Michael,” he said, and hung up.

  “The IRA have got her,” I said, only partly bluffing. “We need to go. Now.”

  I frisked the apartment while Sophie, now panicked, packed a bag. I found a few bugs and a surveillance camera, planted, I suspected, by Bashmakov to keep an eye on the comings and goings of his charges. I disabled whatever I could. Above all, I didn’t want there to be evidence of me having been there. But I couldn’t be certain that I had everything.

  Minutes later, Sophie emerged from her bedroom with two large bags stuffed with clothing. She wore a tight T-shirt and pale jeans. I couldn’t help but notice she still looked pretty good.

  “You’re going to have to travel lighter than that, Soph,” I said. She stood smoking, chewing her lip, wired, as I emptied her bag and repacked what could be managed in one hand. She reached for the box on the table.

  “No, Soph. We’ve got to stay alert. Leave that stuff behind.”

  A shift had taken place; the news
of Petrina had shaken her and she seemed willing to follow my instructions.

  “Passport?” I asked. She went and fetched it from a drawer.

  Five minutes later we were ready.

  “Where are we going?” she asked blankly.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. The flight I had booked wasn’t till later that night. I would have to call and try to book another ticket. Get in touch with Anna, tell her I had Sophie. Put the wheels in motion. “We should probably get on the subway and go somewhere obscure where we can hole up for a few hours while I sort things out.”

  “I’ve never been on the subway,” she said.

  “You’ll have to slum it,” I grinned. “We can be followed too easily in a taxi.”

  I grabbed her bag and opened the apartment door. And found myself shoved back into the room.

  Standing in the doorway, sweating and holding a gun at waist level, was Donnie Mulvaney.

  Donnie felt terrible.

  He’d had a rough couple of days. He seemed to have hung around outside a posh restaurant for half a lifetime, unable to see in, being made unwelcome by high-tone doormen who clearly viewed him as a thug.

  Couldn’t blame them.

  He was a thug.

  He felt subhuman, and now his initial impressions of New York had worn off, he felt diminished by the scale of the city. The antlike feeling that he had experienced in the plane became greater. A big fish on his old manor, he was nothing here, and once he’d trailed the kid back to his hotel for yet another night in yet another yellow cab, he felt even smaller and more isolated.

  The kid looked at home to Donnie, confident and in control. Made Donnie feel way out of his depth.

  He’d taken to trawling the bars late at night, a big, lonely man who downed drink after drink with little or no conversation for the barmen or the night owls who would sit near him hoping for another free shot.

  Old habits dying hard, he’d scored a couple of grams of nose candy and used them over the course of a day and a night, trying to blot out this feeling overwhelming him. Instead of filling him with false energy and bravado, the drug had the opposite effect, making him jumpy and paranoid out in the street, and he had taken to his room, emerging only to watch the kid’s movements from the hotel opposite.

  One afternoon he’d even found himself wandering into the Catholic church a few blocks away. It was cool and smelled of incense in contrast to the hot, dusty street. He found himself staring at the stained glass crucifix that glowed at one end. It brought back childhood memories and feelings long since buried.

  The words of his travelling companion, Marcie, echoed through his head, as they had during his sleepless nights.

  A white-haired priest had touched his arm and asked if he was here for confession. Donnie hadn’t choked to anything since he was six, and felt there was just too much to confess to now to know where to start.

  The priest had blessed him and Donnie had gone back outside for a fag, wondering what was wrong with him. He didn’t feel right. He went back in, put fifty dollars in the collection box and lit a candle.

  Perhaps he had come to fear for his mortal soul, or perhaps he was simply lonely, tired and depressed.

  He had gone back to his room and snorted the rest of the cocaine with a bottle of vodka and had a couple of hours’ restless sleep before returning to his post outside the Washington Square Hotel.

  His timing had been good. The kid had emerged and got straight into a cab. Donnie had tailed him to the Upper West Side and shadowed him as he went into a florist. When he emerged with the flowers, Donnie thought that – at last – he might be on to something.

  “Sit down,” Donnie ordered. I did.

  “Hello, Sophie,” he said. “Sorry ’bout this.”

  Sophie looked bewildered. She would. Her father’s nemesis and his hitman had turned up at her New York apartment within an hour of each other.

  “What are you doing here, Donnie?” she asked.

  “I’ve come to take you home, princess. Dad wants you back. You’re not safe here.”

  “So it seems,” Sophie said. “Especially with you waving that gun around.”

  “Just protection, Sophie.” He swung the gun round to point at me.

  “You’re not safe here either, Donnie,” I said.

  “Stow it. You’ve given me the run-around long enough.”

  “No, I mean it. The IRA have just taken Sophie’s flatmate hostage. They’ll be back.”

  “Don’t try it on.”

  “Suit yourself. I’m just warning you.”

  Donnie was sweating heavily. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped perspiration from the top of his head. The pistol was shaky in his hand. “Looks like you’re getting your bits together already, Sophie. When you’re ready, we’ll get going.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you, you stupid lump,” Sophie hissed. She seemed to have rediscovered a little of the famous Kelly temper. Donnie looked as if he had been slapped. “You come in here, waving a gun and expect me to go God knows where with you? I don’t even know who you’re working for. You might strangle me when you get me in a cab. At least Eddie brought flowers.”

  “You trust him?” Donnie protested weakly.

  “Not much more than I trust you, but, given the choice…”

  “I’m working for your dad. You know I am. I’ve always been trusted.”

  “You couldn’t be trusted to finish him off properly, though, could you?” She pointed at me.

  “I won’t make that mistake again,” he said.

  “No, you won’t. You’re useless. You’ll leave here now and fuck off out of my life. I’ve had enough of this, of all of you.”

  Donnie continued to point the gun at me. It was a big 9 mm Glock with no safety catch, large enough to take my head off with the twitch of a finger.

  “Didn’t you hear me, Donnie?” Sophie shouted. “I said fuck right off – now.”

  Perhaps it was the slug of vodka and the couple of lines that had given Sophie the nuts for this, but her temper was up and she was taking no prisoners. Donnie seemed perplexed. Maybe, like me, he’d seen himself as an avenging angel and hadn’t bargained on Sophie’s reluctance to be rescued.

  “I’m going to my room,” she told us. She picked up the ivory box from the table. “I’m going to lock myself in, and when I come out I want both of you gone.”

  “You can’t,” Donnie said feebly.

  “Watch me,” she said.

  “I’m going to kill him,” Donnie threatened.

  “Not in here, you’re not. You’ll make a mess on my lovely furniture and spoil some very expensive paintings. And if you do, one phone call will have you picked up outside and murdered by some very angry Russians. They will take you to a disused warehouse and cut you open so you can watch your own guts spill on the floor, before they pull your tongue out with pliers and cut your head off with a chainsaw.”

  Donnie looked as if he had been hit in the face with a baseball bat. Sophie had clearly inherited more of the family genes than either of us had realized.

  “But, Sophie…” he bleated.

  “You touch a hair on his head and you are dead, Donnie.”

  Some preconditioning appeared to work on Donnie: he could shoot men in cold blood, but the boss’s daughter had a strong effect on him. She was to be obeyed. Sophie went into her room and slammed the door.

  Donnie slumped into the armchair opposite me, still pointing the gun. He reached for the vodka bottle on the table and took a pull. He looked beaten; I tried my luck.

  “So here we are again,” I said.

  “Fuck off,” he replied, but the anger was gone from his voice.

  “Let’s talk about Spain,” I ventured. “About Valerie … and Juana.”

  He looked up, eyes like a wounded bull.

  “What?”

  “About Benalmádena, Bodega Jubarry; about Pedro Garcia, who worked there and saved your life when you were left for dead.” />
  Donnie put the gun down on the glass table between us.

  “What you on about?” he said.

  It was as if the kid knew everything about his life.

  He told Donnie things that he could have only known if he’d been there. He talked about Valerie, the girlfriend Donnie had hooked up with in Spain. For a month or so, Donnie had been happy in Benalmádena, feeling his life returning to some stability with a good woman.

  A life that had once again become unhinged by his connection with the Kelly firm.

  Eddie Savage had spoken about Valerie’s beautiful daughter, Juana, with tears in his eyes. Donnie was shaken as he heard how her perfect body had been blown to pieces by a car bomb intended for Eddie, probably planted by Donnie’s colleague, Terry Gadd.

  There was detail upon detail about the time in Spain, about the bullfight where Donnie himself had been ordered to deliver the coup de grâce and kill Patsy Kelly, opening the way for Tommy, and whoever else, to try and get control of the business.

  The kid had enough to get Donnie several life stretches, but Donnie found himself increasingly weakened and perturbed by what he was being told. He thought he had been watching the boy, but the boy seemed to have been watching him, all-seeing, wise beyond his years. He remembered how Pedro Garcia and the girl had pulled him from the gutter and got him to hospital like guardian angels. Donnie felt the choke rise again in his throat and realized that he wouldn’t be able to blow Eddie Savage’s brains out any more than he could have shot Sophie Kelly. The kid was in charge, and Donnie almost felt a wave of comfort come over him as he allowed himself to relinquish control of the situation.

  If he had any hope, it was here.

  His travelling companion’s words echoed again in his tired and troubled mind: “… a young man, lonely, like you. Look after the girl, Donnie. Look after them both … do the right thing, Donnie. Put your faith in the Lord.” When Sophie came back into the room Donnie felt a huge sob rise in his chest, and feared that he was about to cry again.

  “You still here?” she asked.

  Sophie levelled the gun at both of us.

  “’Fraid so,” I answered.

  “Well, if you’re not leaving, I am.” She grabbed her bag. Donnie left his gun on the table. My words seemed to have had an effect on him.