Shadow Box (17 page)

The bedside phone rang.

“This is reception, is everything OK there?” The voice was sing-song and corporate, but wary.

“Fine,” I said.

“We just had a complaint from 415.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll turn the TV down.”

I replaced the handset and felt under my pillow for the gun. I wondered what to do next. Locked in the bathroom, I had a semi-conscious eastern European who for whatever reason wanted to kill me, and I couldn’t leave the room.

Whoever he was, he’d got on my case pretty quickly. The eastern European link started to raise questions well beyond the reach of the IRA. I tried to put building blocks together in my mind but found no easy answers. Why would the IRA have planted me here simply for someone else to kill me? Had my mentioning Bashmakov simply made me a trade-off, and for what?

I delved into the bag for the phone, then picked up my battered and muddy trainers from the floor. I levered out the insole with the dinner knife and dug in the heel until I found the compartment that concealed a SIM card. I had not contacted anyone, and that had resulted in attempted murder. It was time to change tack, so I put the SIM in the phone and texted a couple of numbers.

Help.

Donnie had a headache, but he gratefully accepted the full English that Pam put in front of him and Dave. He hadn’t had black pudding in ages, and with two eggs, bacon, sausage, tomatoes, mushrooms and beans, it was what he called a proper breakfast.

“Thanks, Pam.”

Pam was about to take the fluffy white dog that yapped at Donnie’s ankles for a walk. She gathered up leads and poo bags.

“What kind of dog is he again, Dave?”

“She
is a Bichon Frise,” Dave emphasized.

“More like a Bichon heat,” Donnie joked.

“Nice one, Don. Better mood today? Sleep all right?”

“Like a log, Dave.”

In fact, Donnie hadn’t slept well at all. He’d nearly fallen out of the narrow bed twice during the night, and later lost the duvet on the floor. Then, when he’d woken up at four, the smell of apricot and vanilla from the air freshener had made him feel gippy. It was only the medicinal qualities of half a bottle of whisky that had allowed him any sleep. Once he was awake, all he could think about was his possible conviction and jail or, failing that, skulking around continuing the firm’s dirty work.

After breakfast, Donnie took a cup of tea out into the garden and smoked a fag, looked at the sky while Dave pruned his roses. A plane squealed overhead, beginning its descent into London.

“Good of you and Pam to put me up,” Donnie said.

“No worries, Don. Like I said, can’t be for long. We need to get you somewhere safe.”

“Where?”

“I’m going to visit Tommy later, get an update.”

Donnie felt safer in the back garden in Plumstead than he did in most places. He would happily have hidden in Dave’s shed rather than get back to the firm or, worse, a stretch.

In Donnie’s view, nowhere in London was safe any more.

Hold tight. Not far away.

Simon Sharp. I’d texted Anna, too, but Sharpie was quick on my case.

He was there within an hour. He rang the room from reception but I still let him in cautiously, checking the peephole. I wasn’t going to be caught out again.

He was flustered. Wide-eyed and wet from the rain.

“Shit,” he said. “This has been quite a couple of days.”

“Tell me about it.”

He grasped my shoulder and looked at me. “What a mess.”

“My face or the situation?”

“Fucking all of it,” Sharp said. He looked tired and drained. “I’m really sorry. I’ll get us a drink.”

“There’s the small problem of a waiter tied up in the bathroom to be dealt with first.” Sharpie looked confused. “He tried to kill me.”

“
What?
But only me and our Irish connection knew you were here,” he said.

“
Our
Irish connection?”

“You don’t think you got free without a bit of horse trading, do you? We had to work fast.”

“Well
this
bloke found me pretty quickly.” I nodded towards the bathroom. “
Someone
must have tipped him off.”

Sharp took the gun and went into the bathroom. I followed and watched from the door. He clicked the safety catch on the gun and held it to the man’s head. “No, please!”

Sharp barked a couple of questions in a foreign language. The waiter nodded and began to gabble in his native tongue. Sharpie replied, asking questions in short, sharp sentences. I didn’t understand a word. The waiter seemed to agree with most of what Sharp said, but he was battered, tied and had a gun at his head, why wouldn’t he? Eventually, Sharp clicked the safety back on and shut the man back in the bathroom.

“Russian,” Sharp said. “Someone told him you were doing a drugs deal and that you were holding plenty of cash that had been delivered for you in a black suitcase.”

“Who?”

Sharp shrugged. “Anyone’s guess. This lot had me tied in knots, trying to get you out. I’ll tell you about it. But let’s deal with Trotsky first.”

Sharp made a phone call.

Forty-five minutes later, a knock at the door made me jump. Sharp opened it and two utility men in boiler suits pushed what looked like a large laundry trolley into the room. Sharp led them into the bathroom and they wrangled the trolley inside. There were voices and I heard muffled shouts of protest followed by silence as they pulled the trolley from the bathroom, heavier now.

Sharp opened two bottles of beer and some crisps from the mini bar.

“So how did you get me out?” I asked.

“We’d have found you quicker, but I had to get hold of our London guy on the inside of the IRA. We only make contact in the most extreme circumstances. You have to understand, letting you go is very high risk for him.”

“So how did you persuade him to get me out?”

“We had a bargaining chip.”

“What?”

Intel about Paul Dolan,” he said. “The London IRA and Martin Connolly are very interested in his whereabouts for one reason or another. ”

“Do you have much?” I asked. I knew I wouldn’t get a straight answer.

“Probably more than you know,” Sharp said. “But less than you think.”

“But that way, all sorts get to know what we … you know?”

“Collateral damage,” Sharp said. “Of course we’re selective, but we have to balance it out.”

“I didn’t know I was worth that much.”

“You’re important to us,” Sharp said without irony. “So we offered Martin Connolly what little we have. He took the bait, and he has quite a bit of clout.”

“What is he? A drug dealer?”

“Martin’s old-school IRA. He’s more political, tries to keep himself respectable. As far as we know, he’s separated himself from the Real IRA, who are manufacturing masses of synthetic drugs, turning over millions, rearming and still bombing when the mood takes them. But we’re under no illusion that the political branch is still sympathetic to the gangsters; it’s all about stockpiling funds and gaining power and control. The Real IRA boys have forged big international contacts, particularly in the States, where there’s a lot of sympathy for them. Meanwhile, the old guard are lining up to shake hands with the Queen to look kosher. Thirty years ago they were blowing up her family.”

We sat silently for a moment. Sharpie swigged the last of his beer. I sipped mine. I was beginning to feel sleepy again.

“Well, thanks for getting me out, I guess.” Inside I blamed them for getting me in. “Wish you’d been a little earlier.”

I pulled my sleeve back and showed Sharp the angry cigarette burn. He winced, wrinkling his nose in sympathy.

“Your captors must have realized you were a bigger fish than they’d originally thought. Whatever you told them saved you as much as our man on the inside.”

“I kept my cover straight,” I said, proud of holding up under torture. “I just gave them names.”

“Names?” He looked worried.

“Only ones that fit with my cover,” I said. “Tommy, obviously. Patsy Kelly, Gadd. Paul Dolan, Bashmakov.”

“Bashmakov?” Sharp raised an eyebrow. Looked at his watch. “We can talk further in the morning,” he said. “But I want to get you out, away from here, asap.”

I had no objection.

“I’m going to bunk down in here,” Sharp said. “Just in case.”

“Sure,” I said.

I went to the bathroom and brushed the taste of beer from my teeth. When I got back into the room, Sharpie was curled up on the sofa wrapped in a blanket. I could see the handle of a pistol sticking out from the cushion under his head.

“We’ll leave early,” he said. “Alarm six fifteen, breakfast starts about seven.”

“OK.”

“G’night,” he said, and just before I switched out the light I saw an expression cross Sharpie’s face that told me he was as frightened as I was.

Breakfast was a silent affair.

We both hunched over grapefruit juice and scrambled eggs: our nervous stomachs would struggle to digest anything else. Sharpie leafed through a complimentary
Times.

“Not much good news,” he said.

“Is there ever?”

We were the only customers in the dining room at 6.50, and the tired foreign girls who waited on us couldn’t conceal their huffiness at having to start a little early. I regarded them all with suspicion, expecting any of them to pull a gun or stab me in the neck with a fork at any moment.

At reception I stood by with the bags while Sharpie checked us out. My original receptionist did the business with Sharp and cast me a glance.

“You look better than when you arrived, Mr Kelly,” she said.

I did. Clean shirt, jacket and chinos. Bruises fading a little.

“You must have found your stay with us relaxing. Would you like to fill out one of our customer satisfaction forms?”

I remembered the bloodstains we had cleaned from the bathroom door an hour before.

“Very relaxing,” I said. “No, thanks, I’m afraid I haven’t got time.”

It was a short drive through the West End to Vauxhall, but we sat in nose-to-tail London rush hour traffic. Some talk radio rattled off useless traffic updates. Sharp switched it off.

“We’ll do a full debrief back at base,” he said, looking at the screen, “but run me through the bullet points of what happened.” I didn’t answer. He looked sideways at me. “What?”

“I’d like to know what the point was first, before I have to relive it all again.”

“I know you think it was all a wild goose chase putting you on to Hannah Connolly, but, believe me, there was good reason behind it.”

“Yeah? Right.”

“You know Tony spent a long time in Northern Ireland?”

“Yes, he’s told me.”

“Well, he has a strong feeling that he knows Martin Connolly, but not by that name. They are about the same age. Tony would have been there when Connolly was in his twenties too, when he would have been at the sharp end of the IRA; the bombers and the killers. So when we get a lead that an IRA suspect’s daughter is in London and there are a few drugs involved, Tony’s mind starts to work overtime. One of his hunches. More than a hunch: you found real evidence.”