Shadow Box (33 page)

“Can I trust you?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? I found Sophie like you asked. Do you have a choice?”

He held out his hand across the table.

“Done,” he said. “You’re a right slippery little snake, Eddie Savage, but I can’t help but admire you.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I pressed the buzzer on the desk. Seconds later a screw opened the door and Sophie walked in.

“Hello, Dad,” she said.

“Hello, baby.” He stood up. She walked across and hugged him tight and Tommy Kelly burst into tears.

“Here comes trouble,” Tony said.

He looked as pleased as punch sitting back behind his desk. He was back in the Vauxhall office with Anna, who gave me a smile as I came through the door.

“Good to see you back, Tony,” I said.

“I never went away, really, mate.” He chuckled. “Sure, I got a disciplinary, but the shit don’t stick to Teflon Tony. My stepping aside was a good move because it allowed Sharpie his head.”

“Look where that got him,” I commented.

Tony nodded sagely. “Out of his depth. I gave him enough rope to hang himself, so to speak.”

“Who got to him?” I asked.

Anna looked at Tony. “He did it himself,” she said.

“Right,” I said. “Bollocks.”

“That’s the party line,” Anna said. “We’re not going to argue with it or open any other line of enquiry.” She handed me a newspaper.

I scanned the headline, a photo of Sharpie and the opening paragraph – the usual stuff:
British intelligence agent found hanged … spy Simon Sharp found dead in New York Hotel … Russian-speaker, linguistic genius…
I handed the paper back.

Didn’t believe a word of it.

I went to the pub for lunch with Tony.

I felt deflated now I was back. At least I’d done what I’d promised myself, and found Sophie Kelly. I’d done what Tommy Kelly had asked, even though our reunion hadn’t been quite as romantic as maybe I’d have liked. I wondered if I’d have much more to do with her now. Things had changed.

Tony ordered us pints of London Pride and pie and mash. He sensed my disappointment. There was always a natural slump after the adrenaline of any mission. He did his best to fluff me up.

“You done good, mate.” He took a gulp of beer and wiped froth from his lips. You drew the Irish out and you handled Sharpie well.”

As far as I could remember I’d been manipulated into both situations by Tony, who’d then left me to sink or swim.

“You never wrote, you never phoned…” I said in mock Jewish mother tones. Really, I meant it. Tony looked me squarely in the eye.

“I was in a tight spot, juggling some dangerous intel. I had to keep on the down low, mate. Contact with you might just have exposed a chink in the armour.”

“Your armour?”

Tony rolled his shoulders huffily.

“You might recall that I pulled out all the stops when you were up shit creek with the Irish? I had to call in some big favours there.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Tony.” I’d got out alive, I guess.

The things that Paul Dolan had told me about Tony stuck in my mind. Of course, he might have been making them up, but I knew enough about Tony’s manoeuvres for them to have a ring of truth about them.

“Did you kill Sharpie?” I asked bluntly.

He looked surprised. “I wasn’t there, was I?”

“Did you order his killing, then? Did Dolan kill him for you?”

Tony shrugged, face inscrutable.

“Suicide,” he said. “He got himself in a pickle. Sharpie was a double agent. Could have been Bashmakov, couldn’t it?”

“Bashmakov liked him,” I said.

“So did I, until he turned me over,” Tony said. “Remember the car crash, the blow-out? I had a dig around. That was no accident. I knew it wasn’t. Sharpie had been seen sniffing about by one of the car-pool boys. The car was rigged. Sharpie wanted you and me out of the way. He even leaked snippets about you back to Tommy Kelly’s boys. It would have been very useful for him if they’d got to you. The Russian who tried to do you in the hotel?”

“That was Sharp too? You sure?”

“Almost a hundred per cent,” Tony said. “He was a busy boy. Dobbed me in over the Paul Dolan release when
I
was on the right track letting Dolan go. Napier took a view.”

“Dolan did me a favour in New York,” I said.

“Sure.” Tony nodded. “He gave you a good steer, although you can never be completely sure with Paul. He’s his own man, but he owes me a big one. Meanwhile, you turning up when Sharpie was meeting Bashmakov and Mrs Kelly rattled their bars so much they didn’t suspect anything about Dolan. They were reassured by his presence: it was Sharp who suddenly looked like the rat in the kitchen.”

“So did you order his killing?” I asked again.

“Makes no difference whether we did or the Russian did or he topped himself. He was going to get it one way or another.”

“What about a simple kid in Northern Ireland, Christie something? Beaten to death.”

Tony looked up from his pie, which had just arrived at the table.

“Don’t believe everything you hear, kid. Like I told you, there are plenty of grey areas in this business, and everyone has their version of the truth.”

He looked at me, impassive, and I knew deep down that Tony was capable of doing all the things I’d heard about.

I watched him tuck into his pie and mash as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

My temporary safe house was Sharpie’s flat in Pimlico.

It was comfortable and smart, with nondescript art on the walls. Any trace of Simon Sharp had been forensically cleared as if he’d never existed. And in some ways, he hadn’t. Once a spy has gone, especially a double agent, all records are swept away and hidden somewhere dark in a vault in Beaconsfield. All that was indelible about Simon Sharp, aka Peter Pasternak, was the image of his bizarre death scarred on my mind. I would have to move somewhere else. Soon.

I turned on the lights. The flat was quiet. The bedroom door was open a chink; I went to look in. A little daylight poked through the gap in the curtains.

“You OK?” I asked.

“Still a bit jet-lagged,” Sophie answered wearily. “I wondered when you were coming back.”

“I’m here now,” I said.

“Thanks for bringing me home, Eddie,” she said.

“Wherever home is,” I commented.

“Here will do for the moment.” She turned back the duvet a quarter.

In the half light I saw the girl I remembered, warm and soft from sleep.

I padded across the carpet and climbed into bed.

Donnie locked up the flat in Brockley.

It was damp and smelled of mildew and loneliness.

He hadn’t taken much in his bag; he was used to being light on his toes. He felt a new sense of freedom as he drove through Deptford, up and over Blackheath and out onto the A2, leaving the sprawl of south London behind him.

Driving the old Beemer at a steady 80 mph, he arrived in Dover an hour or so later. The Channel opened up in front of him, greeny-blue, and the sun shone on the four or five ferries that manoeuvred around the harbour like toys in a bath.

At the bottom of the hill, white cliffs behind him, he drove into the ferry terminal and waited in a queue.

He checked his phone. Dave, missed call. Dave, text.

Call me. D.

Donnie ignored them, but a few minutes later, Dave rang again. Donnie thought he’d answer this time. He was nearly away. He walked over to the quayside, where gulls squealed over the call.

“Wayne Drops,” Donnie answered.

“Don? Dave.”

“Dave?”

“What’s going on, Don? Where are you? Southend?”

“I’m taking a break, Dave.”

“A break from what, Don?”

“I done the job.”

“You didn’t finish it, did you?”

“I done a deal.”

“Not with me, you didn’t. When the guvnor’s inside and gone soft, the only person you do a deal with is me.” Dave’s voice hardened.

“Whatever,” Donnie said, confident of the wads of banknotes he had with him. “But I ain’t going to kill him, Dave.”

“I don’t like your tone, Don, after all the stuff I did for you.”

“You got me in the shit in the first place, mate. I’m not taking orders no more. I’ve had it.”

“Listen, Don, you disobey orders and I’ll shoot Eddie Savage my bleeding self, or find someone who will cut his throat for a monkey … and yours, an’ all. And you, mate, will be
personal non gratis.”

“Sorry, Dave. Don’t speak French. Ta-ta.”

Donnie dropped his mobile phone in the Channel and drove the BMW onto the ferry bound for Calais.

Eddie Savage makes two shocking discoveries in quick succession.

One: his brother, Steve, has been working undercover. Two: Steve is dead.

Eddie refuses to believe that his hero elder brother killed himself, and there’s only one way to find out the truth: follow in his footsteps.

A gritty, glamorous thriller with a heart-stopping, brutal conclusion.

Eddie Savage is back.

While his physical scars are fading, the emotional scars are taking longer to heal.

Eddie heads for Spain on the promise of sun, sea and beautiful women – but is drawn, irrevocably, back into the criminal underworld. It appears that greater forces are at work.

A gripping, fast-paced thriller that pulls no punches.

Peter Cocks
has had a long and varied career in the creative arts. He has been an interior designer, a living painting, a television performer and writer (writing, among other things, Basil Brush’s gags), a hypnotist and a novelist. Along with bestselling crime author Mark Billingham he wrote
Triskellion
, a trilogy of novels for young adults, under the pseudonym Will Peterson.

Peter divides his time between writing, making pictures and producing cabaret shows on the south coast – and recently one in China.
Shadow Box
is the third in his series of Eddie Savage thrillers.