Shadow Box (32 page)

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.

Her phone rang, vibrating on the glass coffee table. She waved the gun at us and reached down for the phone with her other hand.

“Yes? Hi, Mum,” she said. She seemed cool – maybe the coke had placed her in a different version of the reality that Donnie Mulvaney and I were sitting in.

But her calm seemed to dissolve as she listened to Cheryl. “Where? … Why? Of course I didn’t.” Her voice raised in pitch. “No…” She looked at me. “No, I’m alone… OK, OK.”

She finished the call, the gun lowered by her side.

“Alexei’s gone mad,” she said. “He thinks
I
had something to do with Petrina being taken. Did
you
?”

“No,” I said.

“No?” Donnie looked confused.

“He thinks Dad’s behind it. He’s sending someone round to pick me up.”

“That levels the playing field a little,” I said. “If we don’t shoot each other, then pretty soon someone else is going to do the job for us. Like it or not, we’re in this together.”

“What do you mean?” Sophie shouted.

“If an angry Russian turns up and finds you here with me and Donnie, it’s not going to look very good for you, or any of us. To all intents, I’m working for your dad, looking for you. Bashmakov’s seen me and he’ll soon find out what Donnie’s job is … it would all add up to a bit of a Kelly conspiracy.”

“We need to go,” Donnie said.

“Fast,” I added.

We made an unlikely group. A smartly dressed, preppy nineteen-year-old with a bruised face and his pretty, wired girlfriend, plus a sweating hulk – their minder? At least we were trying to get
out
of the country, because sure as hell, they wouldn’t have let us in.

I texted Anna again and cc-ed Tony: belt and braces. Surely Sharp’s death would bring him back into the fold?

I’m bringing them in. SK & DM. BA JFK>GTW asap. Any help gratefully rec’d. ES

I checked in at the British Airways desk. The earlier flight was only half full. I changed my ticket and bought extras for Donnie and Sophie. I looked around, paranoid that every luggage attendant, every other traveller was a potential assassin.

“Donnie, we need to use the restroom before we go through security,” I said.

“I’m all right,” he said. I patted my pocket and he twigged. I made sure Sophie stayed close, told her to lock herself into the ladies’ and ditch any blow she might have while Donnie and I sorted ourselves out.

We crammed into a cubicle together and I told Donnie to give me his gun. He took it out of his waistband, looked at it longingly for a moment as if he was losing a friend, and handed it over. I lifted the top off the cistern and dropped both pistols into the water.

“We need to come to some kind of truce, Donnie,” I said. “We’ve done the job and got Sophie, but we’re going to have to work together.”

“I’m meant to kill you,” Donnie said matter-of-factly.

“I just bought you an airline ticket home, you ungrateful git,” I said. “We have a couple of choices. We can fly back and, once we’re through immigration, we’ll walk in opposite directions and not look back. Or I can speak to my people and get you away and set you up with a false identity – but you know there’ll be a pay-off. Conditions … information.”

“Who gets Sophie?”

“I do,” I said firmly.

“No, you don’t, kid,” he said. “She’s the only leverage I’ve got.”

“She’s the only leverage for me, too. I can’t let you take her.”

“So what do we do?”

“What is it you most want, Donnie?”

“I want out, I’m tired of this. I want a fucking pension. You?”

“I’d like you to stop trying to kill me, for starters.”

“It’s not personal, mate. It’s just business.”

“So if I could get you out, you’d be off my back?”

“Like I said, it’s a job.”

Another scenario started to form in my mind, one that might work for both of us. I held out my hand and he shook it in his bear-like paw, crunching my knuckles as he did so, and for a moment I forgot I was shaking hands with my brother’s murderer.

“We need to go,” I said. We left the cubicle and went back onto the concourse to wait for Sophie.

Donnie’s eyes darted around the airport. He looked edgy as the echoing calls for our flight reverberated around the hall.

“I need your help,” he said finally.

Sophie emerged from the ladies and walked across to us, smiling at me.

“What?” I asked. Donnie leant in to me.

“I’m terrified of flying,” he said.

Belmarsh was as grim as ever – dull red brick against a grey south London sky – but after New York the scale looked more human, the route familiar.

After the usual procedure, I was taken into the interview room and I sat down at a table. A few minutes later, Tommy Kelly was brought in through another door. He looked wary, uncharacteristically nervous. He shook hands nonetheless and sat down opposite me.

“You OK?” he asked.

“I’ve had a bit of a bumpy ride,” I said. “But I’m still alive.”

“So I see.”

“You surprised?”

He shrugged. “Nothing surprises me any more, especially about you. I’ve had a bit of a rough time myself. So what’s new?”

“I’ve found Sophie,” I said. He perked up.

“Is she OK? Where is she?”

“She’s fine,” I said. “She picked up a few bad habits on her travels, but nothing too serious. She’s somewhere safe.”

“In the country?”

“In London.”

“With Cheryl?”

“No, Cheryl’s in New York.”

“New York? What the fuck is she doing there?”

“They were both there courtesy of Mr Bashmakov.”

Tommy’s face knitted in anger and he muttered a few choice expletives.

“I got Sophie away.”

“Is he holding Cheryl hostage?” Tommy looked concerned.

“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m not sure what the deal is, but she seems to be at liberty. Out for dinner with him and stuff; friendly.”

“How friendly?”

I paused. “She appears to be with him,” I said.

Tommy’s face looked as if he’d been slapped. Hard.

“
With
him? What do you mean?”

“Well, I can’t be certain, but I saw them together a couple of times. I had a drink with them and it was all pretty cosy. Sophie was flat-sharing with his daughter.”

Tommy shook his head, uttered a few more curses under his breath.

“Someone abducted his daughter a couple of days ago,” I said.

“Hope they cut her throat and send him the pictures,” he smiled grimly.

“I think Sophie would have been next,” I added, and the smile vanished.

“Who?”

“The Irish lot, I suspect.”

He shook his head again. “There’s going to be a major effing war when I get out of here. No prisoners.”

“When,” I said. “But I think you’ll have a hard job working out whose side anyone’s on.”

“All I know is, they’re all trying to destroy me. I’ll wipe out the lot of them.”

I began to feel, like some of the others, that perhaps Tommy had finally lost his grip. His threat suddenly sounded empty from inside a high-security prison.

“What about Soph?” he asked. “When do I get to see her?”

“That depends. I have her in a safe house. Donnie was with me when I found her.”

“Mulvaney?”

“Yes, Donnie brought her back with me. I needed protection.”

“Donnie brought her back with
you
?”

He looked at me, mystified. I tried to stop myself grinning.

“So, here’s the deal. My lot can spirit Sophie away, give her a new identity and a new life and you’re unlikely to see her, or me, again…”

“Or?”

“Or you take the price off my head, get Donnie off my back and put him out to pasture with a pay-off. He’s a spent force.”

“How much?”

“100 k.”

He nodded. “And Sophie’s at liberty?”

“I have to square things with my firm, but she’s committed no crime. I’ll keep an eye on her, of course.”