Shadow Box (26 page)

“What were the options?”

“He had enough for four life sentences each. And another for circumstantial evidence of killing Christie, the eejit kid. It didn’t look good. It still haunts me. We’d have never seen the light of day again. Or we could do a deal: continue as we were, as fully signed up members of the IRA who’d slipped off the hook, but at his mercy. He could get us shot or pull us in at any moment to do the time unless we fed him information. He guaranteed he’d keep his sources secret; he didn’t want every clerk in intelligence knowing where he got his information. I chose to have a life, if not exactly freedom, and so did Martin, until recently. Our secret was safe with each other.”

“So you became informers?”

“Up to a point. Like I say, you have to play your own game, but we had to be careful or he could have handed us back to the IRA as informers working with him, which would have been worse than the peelers. We were stuffed. Then, a couple of years ago, Martin couldn’t take it any more. He cut ties with Tony and went off the radar.”

“So he went AWOL and Tony put you inside the Kelly organization?”

Dolan nodded. “Same deal, making the Irish link with Tommy through The Harp. And we fucked Kelly over, with a little help from you.”

“You still had to do time after that, though,” I said.

“It was welcome, to be honest. It had to look good. I only got the conspiracy to pervert justice charge, so I took the rap. In fact, I’d never felt more relaxed – fifteen months in an open prison, reading books and playing pool. Most of my prison mates were pretty civilized, City fraudsters and the like. I learned a lot. And Tommy Kelly wasn’t going to get to me in that kind of jail.”

Dolan had finished his food. Mine remained uneaten, my stomach churning with horror and uncertainty.

“So that’s your Tony Morris for you. He’s the hardest, coldest bastard alive, but, I have to say, true to his word. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why Martin’s dead. You don’t need to see me again and I don’t need to see you, but if you do need me, I’m duty bound to help, if you see what I mean.”

He called for the bill and wrote a number on a napkin.

“Don’t put this in your phone, for Jesus’ sake. Keep it safe. I have a few other things to do for Tony, and if any of it affects you, I’ll let you know. But take my advice and change hotels until your case officer arrives. There’s one on the other side of Waverley Place where you can keep a lookout for him, and he can call you when he gets here.”

Dolan wrote the name of the hotel on the napkin and handed it to me.

“Be safe,” he said. “But be your own man, or they’ll yank your bollix in all directions.”

We shook hands as we parted, and I walked back through the East Village, my mind working overtime about what exactly Tony’s game was. Neither Napier nor anyone else knew anything about his off-record dealings, as far as I knew. He always acted the innocent in front of Napier. After all, he had been suspended for letting Dolan give him the slip, but now it looked like he had done so deliberately.

I got back to the Washington Square Hotel and told them I’d be checking out in the morning.

“Welcome to New York, Mr Maloney.”

The information on the screen obviously added up.

“There are some papers here, which you will have to fill in when you get to your hotel.” The official looked at Donnie without a trace of intrigue or suspicion; they spent their days stonewalling immigrants, making even tourists feel paranoid about entering America. Donnie found that the wheels for his entry into New York had clearly been oiled somewhere back down the line.

“Have a good day.”

Donnie nodded and took the brown envelope, stepped outside and hailed a yellow taxi into the city. He wasn’t interested in landscapes or the stunning displays of modernist architecture as Manhattan came into view. Dave was right, it looked pretty much like the Isle of Dogs and Canary Wharf. He studied the contents of the envelope, reading slowly, following with his finger: the address of a hotel; the place on Canal Street where he could pick up a weapon; some dollars in cash. He always admired Dave’s neat ability to organize things from afar. Made him feel secure.

According to Dave’s information from his contacts in immigration, the Washington Square Hotel was where the kid was staying, so Donnie had been booked into one across Waverley Place so he could keep an eye open without being too close for comfort.

I checked in across the road at ten.

The Waverley Hotel wasn’t as good as the Washington Square, but I took Dolan’s advice, for better or worse. Too many people already knew I was at the Washington Square, so better to keep on my toes, even on Dolan’s recommendation. I couldn’t see a reason for him to turn me over. He was, after all, doing a favour for Tony.

I had hardly slept through the night, turning over the new information Dolan had told me about him. Going through it detail by detail. Dolan’s story horrified me, but it stacked up; it began to help me fill in some of the gaps about Tony. I had become more and more aware that he kept plenty of information to himself and let it out as and when it was an advantage to him. I thought back to the cases where he had thrown me in at the deep end, being economical with the truth about what exactly I was up against. It had happened again recently, sending me after Hannah, knowing where it would lead, and now I knew he’d had one – if not two – senior IRA men on his payroll all that time.

Now Tony had been suspended and sacked for not keeping tabs on Dolan, who as it turned out was in his pocket all the time. I tried to work out Tony’s agenda. Maybe someone was on to him? Perhaps his time was up. I wanted to call him, to hear his calm voice gloss things over, but with the image of a broken Irish boy in chains fresh in my mind, the last thing I would do was ring Tony. He was always close to my mum, but I didn’t even know when they’d met – never questioned it. He’d been part of the family, but then had been my brother Steve’s case officer – and look where Steve ended up.

I wanted reassurance and back-up, and I wasn’t going to get it from Tony Morris.

I texted Sharpie.

Are you coming over to NY?

I waited half an hour for a reply, chewing things over again and again. I was in a bit of a deadlock until Sharpie told me what to do. I had seriously disobeyed him once and couldn’t do it again. With my growing doubts about Tony, I knew I should have listened to Sharpie in the first place; he clearly knew more about what was going on with Tony than I did.

Be there tomorrow eve. New intel. Sit tight at Washington Sq until I arrive. SS

His text calmed me a little. I would wait, and change back to the Washington Square Hotel when he got here. I might have a bit of time to look for Sophie.

I decided to take a walk uptown. The Museum of Modern Art was not too far away and would be somewhere to kill a bit of time. I took the lift down to reception and walked across the hall. I didn’t register the big man sitting with a beer at first – he was turned three-quarters away from me – but a sixth sense kicked in and I looked back and clocked Donnie Mulvaney. He glanced up, but I was sure he hadn’t seen me; I looked like just another American college kid. I pushed through the revolving doors as quickly as I could, showing him only the back of my head.

I walked briskly up the street, turned a corner and stopped dead, letting out a breath I realized I had been holding since I left the hotel. My heart was thumping. What on earth was Mulvaney doing in New York? In the same hotel!

First Paul Dolan, now this. No coincidence.

I couldn’t go back while he was sitting there. That gorilla had dogged my life for two years now. Everywhere I turned, Donnie Mulvaney was there, like a massive black shadow looming over me. What if he found my room and broke in? All my stuff was there: laptop, memory sticks, passport. A theft would scupper me.

Only Dolan knew I was there; he could easily have set me up and then sent Donnie Mulvaney round.

I panicked again, thinking that I should just have followed Sharpie’s orders, stayed in the UK till he was ready.

Donnie Mulvaney in my hotel! Help! KK

He texted straight back.

Keep your head down. Keep calm. Will contact on my arrival. SS

I paced about a while longer, my plans for the day taking a back seat, and decided that somehow I had to go back to Waverley Place and get my stuff before anyone else got to it. I walked round the block and approached the hotel from the opposite direction, glancing in through the distortion of the revolving doors to see Donnie Mulvaney still sitting there, reading a paper.

I went round the back and climbed up the fire escape to the floor my room was on. From there I stepped out onto a window sill and, balancing on one foot, one hand holding the fire escape, smashed a window pane with my other heel. It made little noise above the whir of the air conditioning units that stuck out from the rear of the building. I picked out the remaining shards of glass from the window frame and squeezed myself through the gap. Dropping down into a laundry room, I found that a stray sliver of glass had sliced through my shirt into my forearm. Hot drips of bright blood fell onto the pile of dirty sheets at my feet, staining like rotten windfall cherries. I was creating a forensic nightmare for myself. I ripped up a pillowcase and bound my arm as tightly as I could, eager not to leave a bloodstain trail to my room. I pushed open the laundry room door gently and checked the corridor. No one. I slipped out and, holding my arm close to my body, found my room, swiped the room key silently and crept in.

The room was undisturbed, as I’d left it an hour before. I went to the bathroom and pulled off my shirt. The cut was quite deep and the sink filled red as I washed it under the tap. I looked at the cigarette burn scar – combined with my latest injury, I was beginning to look like a self-harmer. I dried my arm and covered it with a wad of toilet roll before binding it tightly again with a strip of pillowcase. I couldn’t hang around. I put on another shirt and a jacket and bundled the bloodstained one into a carrier bag. I didn’t want to leave more DNA around than I already had. I packed my bag and laptop and went to the door.

There was an envelope that must have been pushed into the corner as I’d come in through the door. I opened it and found a message like before:

I folded it and put it in my pocket. No time to think about it now.

I made my exit back through the laundry room and cut around the block away from the hotel, taking the long way round Waverley Place. My arm was beginning to throb; God knows what New York grime and germs had entered the gash. I might morph into a cockroach. I felt pretty much like one of New York’s ever-present roaches, scuttling through back alleys and windows. Even in the smarter places there were always one or two of the indestructible insects scuttling around the toilets.

No wonder I identified with them.

I found a drugstore, bought antiseptic, bandages, Band Aids and superglue, and headed to the Washington Square Hotel.

I went up to the reception desk.

“Mr Kelly,” the receptionist said, surprised. “Good to see you back. Did you forget something?”

“No, I’d like to check back in, please. The new place didn’t suit me.”

He tapped the keyboard, raising his eyebrows and pulling his gilt-buttoned blazer cuffs as if he knew nothing else was going to match up to this hotel.

“Same room?”

“No, a different one, please. Something quiet. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“We have a double on the sixth floor, tucked right away at the end of the corridor, no elevator or doors near by.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll take it.” I was eager to get a room as soon as I could. I could feel my arm pulsing and checked my jacket for seeping blood.

“We still have your credit card on record. OK if we use that?”

I nodded.