Shadow Box (31 page)

“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.”