This is grieving gangland widow Tracey Brady as she tries to rebuild her life following the murder of drug dealing husband Gerard ‘Hatchet’ Kavanagh.
Tracey has thrown herself into trying to earn an honest living for herself and her daughter, who likes to keep horses and attends an expensive private school.
Since the brutal murder of Hatchet on the Costa del Sol, she has returned to her base in Benalmadena and is running a beauty salon to try and make ends meet.
The family have been in chaos for months and shortly before her husband’s murder were moving from house to house as Hatchet remained in fear of his life.
Following the murder, they returned to Ireland where they stayed with relatives in the run-up and aftermath of the funeral.
But Tracey decided to move back to her base in the sun where she is attempting to make a new life for herself without the millions her husband once pocketed from his lucrative drug industry.
For the mum-of-two, there will be no life insurance policy and no pension plan to tide her over for the tough times ahead. Instead, she has to tried to keep herself in the life she has become accustomed to on the spoils of her husband’s drug money.
But last week Tracey put her troubles behind her and hosted a Christmas knees-up for beauticians and stylists from her Divas salon in Benalmadena.
As our exclusive pictures show, the newly-widowed blonde partied with pals during a lavish dinner for staff and managed to put on a brave face despite her grief.
Tracey’s world was torn apart last August when husband Gerard was gunned down at Harmon’s bar in Marbella.
Spanish police have, to date, made no progress on the murder investigation and have yet to identify the mystery man who joined Hatchet on an outdoor terrace of the bar just shortly before he was shot.
Hatchet had arranged to go to the bar to meet a distraught Dublin couple on behalf of Daniel Kinahan. It is understood that he met with the couple, whose life was under threat and who had gone to the Kinahans to see if would they intervene.
The couple left the bar before the shooting and are completely innocent of any involvement in the incident. However, shortly after the meeting ended Kavanagh was joined by another man who fled following the murder.
Two masked gunmen pumped nine bullets into Hatchet as he tried to run for his life through the bar. After blasting him in the back, the killers turned him over and shot him in the head to make sure there was no prospect of him surviving the attack.
The getaway vehicle and murder weapons were then torched in what is recognised as a classic ‘Irish’ modus operandi, similar to several other assassinations of organised criminals.
Gardai have speculated that the murder was an inside job or an elaborate double cross from within the Spanish based Kinahan mob.
Hatchet, who had built up his own drug dealing business in Benalmadena over the past ten years, had in recent times started working as an enforcer for the Kinahan gang along with his sidekick Paul Rice.
Rice has been lying low since the murder and refused to go to Spain to meet with ‘Dapper Don’ Christy Kinahan in recent weeks. Associates say he is terrified he will be the next to be killed in a bitter fight with the criminals.
Rumours are rife on the Costa that Hatchet had trousered up to e800,000 that the mob claimed belonged to them.
Sources say that Hatchet and Tracey’s relationship had run into difficulties in recent years. The pair had been young sweethearts while Kavangh was dealing drugs around Drimnagh and Crumlin.
The couple bought a house at Mayberry Park in Tallght and she had their first child, Jamie, who would go on to become the famed boxer.
In 1996, when Hatchet was 25, he was jailed for four years for dealing heroin. However, gardai quickly realised that he was a major player and had up to 10 dealers working for him pedalling the drug around Dolphin’s Barn, Drimnagh and Crumlin.
After his release he teamed up with Paul Rice and the pair became a force to be reckoned with, making their way up the drugs ladder until they relocated to the Costa in 2005.
There they started to live a life that Tracey had only ever dreamed of. They embedded themselves with the well-heeled show jumping world and sent their children to private schools. They bought a house with a pool and lavished cash on their children and themselves.
Hatchet was known as a ‘flash’ dresser and liked expensive Rolex watches and fast cars. Tracey spent tens of thousands on her looks – booking in for botox and liposuction – and had her wardrobes stuffed with designer clothes.
But in the past two years things had started to go wrong for the couple when the Kinahans took over the business and forced Hatchet back on to the streets of Tallaght kicking in doors to collect drug debts.
Sources say the couple split and that he was spending increasing amounts of time back in Dublin with old pal Rice.
In the run-up to his death, Hatchet was living in fear for his life and moved his family out of the home they had been living in for almost a decade.
Now sources say that Tracey is desperate to save face under the Spanish sun where she was once the envy of many.
“The fact of the matter is that she is going to have to work damn hard to try and keep up the lifestyle she has become so use to. There is no more drugs money so she has to go out now and earn for herself. Tracey is a tough nut but she will have a hard time ahead to keep the show on the road,” a source said.
“But she is putting on a brave face and determined that she doesn’t lose her status.”
