Shadow Box Read Online Free Page B

discomfort, Tony left it there. He adjusted the volume on the car stereo and caught me wincing as the electric crackle of Lady Gaga singing “Telephone” with Beyoncé started.
    “Gotta keep up to date, mate,” he said, grinning.
    “These are well past their sell-by.
Lady Gaga
, Tony?”
    “I probably
would
, given half a chance.” He leered, his chunky hands tightening on the steering wheel. “You seen the video? Starts off with a load of half-dressed birds in a prison…”
    “Pervert,” I said.
    I didn’t really mean it, I was just falling in with Tony’s laddish banter, his attempt to jolly me along. The conversation lulled and my mind slipped a gear.
    “What thoughts do you have on Sophie Kelly’s whereabouts, Tony? Are you sending me after her?”
    Tony stared straight ahead along the motorway for a moment. He indicated, overtook a heavy lorry then pulled back into the middle lane.
    “We’re following several lines of enquiry,” he said, cautiously.
    “I know,” I said. “Simon Sharp told me that much.”
    “We haven’t got much at the moment, mate, so I don’t want to give you false hopes, or send you out thinking we’re heading in a definite direction.”
    “Give me
false hopes
?” I was taken aback. “I haven’t got any hopes, Tony. I hate to remind you, but since you recruited me I’ve been shot twice, beaten up more times than I can remember, stitched up on a drugs sting. I’ve also killed a man barely older than me, lost one girlfriend and watched while another was blown up in a car bomb meant for me.” I began to warm to my theme. “Ever since then, I’ve been stranded here in London like Johnny No-mates, hanging around in shit clubs doing my best to avoid drugs that might, just
might
, make me feel better about it all for a while. So instead, I get beered up, end up in fights and wake up alone, trying to remember what happened before I do it all over again the next night. It’s shit. So, no, I don’t really have many hopes, as such.”
    Tony was quiet, keeping his eyes on the road.
    “You’ve had a tough time, Eddie,” he said finally. He didn’t usually “Eddie” me. I was more often “kid”, or “mate”. “You’ve been dropped in at the deep end. I just don’t want to throw you straight back in again when we’re not entirely sure where this one’s leading. I don’t want you to think that going off after Miss Kelly like a knight in shining armour will be all hearts and flowers.”
    “When did anything to do with the Kelly family end up all hearts and flowers?” I laughed. “The hearts usually have bullets through them and the flowers end up on their graves.”
    “Nice,” Tony said. “Poetic.”
    “And one thing I want to know, Tony, is why are you doing what Tommy Kelly wants? Is it usual to put someone like me on a mission under instruction from someone like him?”
    “It’s not strictly kosher, I’ll give you that, but we tend to operate outside the normal boundaries, as you know. For us, I’m sorry, but Sophie herself isn’t all that important.”
    I smarted. I had assumed it was a missing persons case – one person being every bit as important as another.
    I guess it depends on who your dad is.
    “We’re not doing this for Tommy Kelly or his daughter; we are doing it
in
spite
of Tommy and
because
it’s his daughter. We’re an intelligence agency: it’s the route that leads us to her that’s the interesting bit, what the investigation might bring us on the way. Sometimes you have to dance with the devil, and on this one, he’s calling the shots.”
    As ever, Tony muddled the phrase.
    “So, what if I call the shots? What if I say I’m not going to do it?”
    Tony sounded like he was trying to convince me, but he knew he had me by the nuts.
    “One, we think that Sophie Kelly, wherever she is, will not be there of her own free will. Anyone who knows Tommy knows that the girl is his weak spot, it’s the only thing that makes him