by Jay Stringer
I noticed the hospital sign nailed to a door that must have been the bathroom. She bent down to open a cabinet next to her large flat-screen TV and pulled out two bottles: one of Four Roses and one of gin. She handed me the bourbon. Then she thought about it for a minute and put the gin back in the cabinet, motioning at the Four Roses with her empty glass. I poured large measures for both of us, and we eased into the sofa. It felt so good that I wanted to stay put forever. The promise of sleeping on it felt like redemption.
Laura drained half her glass, then pursed her lips together and blew out a long, tense breath. “Let’s never do any of that again, okay?” She looked at me and her eyebrow did the Gaines flick again. And then we both laughed, long and hard. The joke hadn’t been that good, but we’d both needed to let something out.
“Really?” I said between breaths. “I thought we made a good team.”
“Oh, we did. But you know there are easier ways to spend time with me.”
“Like how?”
“I would have thought a mob boss could arrange something more exciting. Aren’t you guys meant to be able to click your fingers in any restaurant and get the best seat in the house?”
I pulled a face and reached for the bottle to top us up. “I’m no mob boss.”
“You’re still playing that game, huh? Get off it, Eoin. It’s never suited you.”
“Not like this very fetching cheap shirt.”
A smirk, and the Gaines look again. “Black shirts always suited you.”
“Not as much as they did you.”
Tension built in the room like the air pressure drop before a storm, and we both felt it. I stared into my glass, swilling the amber liquid around and letting the smell hit me, waiting for the warm glow of whiskey to break through the fading fog of the pills.
Laura shrugged, downed her fresh drink in one go, and put her tongue down my throat. I didn’t have time to do much else than accept before she was leaning across and running one hand through my hair, and the other down my front to my groin, rubbing for a response.
I came to my senses and joined in, pulling her in closer to run my hands over her ass and then up her back, feeling her shiver slightly as I did and her breath intensify in my mouth.
I pushed her away far enough so that I could squeeze her breasts and feel for her nipples with my thumbs, finding them hard already. I started to unbutton her shirt, but it was tricky because she was already moving, heading down to my crotch, where she’d found the exact response she’d been looking for.
She got my jeans and boxers off around the same time I ripped the shirt from her back, but she won the race because I was in her mouth before I could do anything to her.
I melted back into the leather of the sofa as she rolled me around in her mouth and saw how deep she could take me, then pulled off before it went too far. She climbed back up onto the sofa and I made a grab, slipping my hand down into her trousers, finding her wetter than I ever had when we were supposed to do this, and pressed deeper in.
I was used to my mind drifting during sex. For the last few years, when I was with one person my mind was with another. Usually the same person. But by the time I was inside Laura, or whoever this person was, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. My mind stayed in the room the whole time.
And the time after that.
I woke up as Laura was showering for work, but I pretended to be asleep until she’d left. I didn’t want to have the awkward conversation until I was sure what side of it I would be on. I checked my mobile but the battery had run down overnight, leaving me with a useless piece of plastic.
Good.
I shuffled round the flat in my underwear, pretending I wasn’t searching for traces of another man, someone who had taken my place in the years since the divorce. I even checked the toiletries in the bathroom. Nothing. I took that with a swell of pride and then cursed myself for being a dick. I showered and grinned a little when I was forced to use Laura’s deodorant.
I slipped back into the cheap clothes Laura had picked out for me and drove back into town smelling like a summer meadow.
Before Gaines had promoted me, I’d been renting a flat out in Wednesbury, a fifteen-minute drive outside of the city. I’d been working as a soccer coach at the new local sports facility Gaines had built, and handling whatever odd jobs she’d thrown my way—usually finding people who didn’t want to be found. The promotion had tipped my world upside down. I had a cut of the illegal side of things, and my name was on enough official paperwork that the taxman now thought nothing of me owning a renovated loft apartment on Princess Street, overlooking the city center.
It was all white paint and wood paneling, with glossy laminate flooring. I tried not to think of what the younger version of me would have thought of it. It suited the adult me just fine. Gaines owned the rest of the building and I handled the renting of the flats, which meant I got to pick and choose my neighbors. I had an attractive young lawyer living in the flat below mine, and on the same floor as me was a young footballer who hadn’t yet earned enough to run away to Sutton or Birmingham. It had been the perfect arrangement, right up until Claire Gaines somehow got a key and came and went as she pleased.
She’d started selling drugs to the lawyer and was stringing the footballer along with innuendo and half-promises. The second didn’t bother me, but I wanted the lawyer off the drugs or out of the building. I just hadn’t figured out which. I climbed the stairs and opened my door, bracing myself for a rush of questions from Claire, but she wasn’t there.
I plugged in my phone to charge, and changed into my own clothes before setting about making breakfast in the open kitchen. Both my parents loved cooking, and they had never seemed to relax as well together as when they worked with each other on a meal. It had rubbed off. I found something soothing about pulling down spice jars, throwing random flavors together. Most of my best thinking was done over the soup pot or balti pan. I threw some chopped tomatoes and onions into hot oil and let them start to sizzle before throwing in a large slice of pork.
I could hear my phone buzzing every few seconds to tell me of another missed call or text, but I ignored it until I’d poured my food out onto a flour tortilla and set it on a plate beside the strongest cup of coffee known to mankind. I flicked through the messages as I ate. There were three voice mails from Gaines and four texts:
WTF? Call me.
Where are u?
Fuck Sake. Call.
I’ll try Claire’s number.
That last one sent a wave of ice through my guts. Did Gaines know what had been going on between me and her sister? The voice mails sounded increasingly urgent. Whatever was eating at her was going to be eating at me as soon as I called her back.
There was also a text from Laura:
We’ll talk.
We sure would.
My phone buzzed one more time as a final message was delivered, and it was short and simple from Claire. I read it a couple of times without understanding what it meant.
You Are In The Shit. XXX
I took a deep breath and called Gaines.
She picked up straight away and didn’t bother with pleasantries. “What the fuck?”
I tried to find something to hold on to. “What?”
“What did you do?”
When? What? Was she talking about me and Claire or me and Laura? “What do you—”
“The hotel,” she snapped at me, her voice sounding frayed, even nervous. “I trusted you to deal with it, not put it on the local news.”
“What are you talking about?”
Tightness grabbed me around the throat. I somehow knew what she was going to say a few seconds before she said it, but the words still stung me.
“It burned down last night. You telling me that wasn’t you?”
“No, I got rid of the problem, not the building. What time d
id this happen?”
“Somewhere in the early hours. You not listened to the news?”
“No, I was, uh—”
She read my tone and cut in. “I don’t want to know who you were with, okay? Listen, if it wasn’t you, then who?”
We both sat in silence for a moment and then said at the same time. “Them.”
“They’re sending you a message,” I said. “Calling you out. They’ve got the stuff and now you’re on their clock, waiting for whatever they want.”
The nerves dropped away from her voice, and it was cold and mean. “Find them, Eoin. No messing. We won’t be fucked with like this.”
I’d gone to bed with two leads: Jellyfish and Maria. I’d woken up with a third: the fire. That was more information than I was used to starting out with. I decided to start with Jellyfish, for old times sake. Back when I’d first gotten into the business, I’d started practically every investigation by finding Jelly and asking him what he knew. Now I was looking into his death, and this time above all others his knowledge would have been incredibly useful. I had to smile at the irony. There were two places to start looking into Jelly’s life.
The sex he was having.
The money he was making.
I picked the former.
A couple of years before, I’d been hired to find a missing university student. A young man named Chris Perry. His parents had been worried when he’d dropped off the face of the earth, but they’d come to me rather than the cops because the father was high up in the force and already had too many enemies in uniform.
Chris hadn’t dropped far. I’d found him shacked up with Jelly, living a more-or-less happy life in a flat in Walsall. I’d talked the parents into leaving them to it. Chris seemed to know what he was doing, and Jelly—for all his flaws—was a good boyfriend. Or so I’d thought. There were a great many things I was being proven wrong about. Although I’d lost touch with Jellyfish since the job with Gaines had taken me up in the world, I’d kept tabs on Chris. In my line of work it pays to have information on the family members of the local Police Commissioner.
I walked over to the library. It was only a few streets away from the flat. Chris had been working there for the past year, after I’d arranged for a good word to be put in for him. He’d never finished university and spent most of his spare time writing plays and/or novels he planned to self-publish. Cutbacks had kept him from claiming benefits, and he’d struggled to hold down work. His father didn’t want to be seen as having hooked his son up with a job, and Chris didn’t want any favors anyway. Father and son had a rocky relationship. They were too alike and too far apart. So I’d made a show of helping out by having a word with some of our contacts at the local council. Enough of a show that his father knew he owed me. Soon afterwards, Chris had found himself with a job that he’d been totally underqualified for.
The library was a large red brick building on the corner of a junction on the edge of the city center, in a part of town that was slowly fading away. Libraries had become an endangered species, and this one was already out of both sight and mind. Being out of pocket couldn’t be far behind.
I found Chris on the first floor, leaning over a young blond guy and teaching him how to fill in an application form with an expression that said he was loving every minute of it. When he looked up and saw me, the smile dropped from his eyes. He said something quietly to the guy and then made his way over to me.
“What’s up?” He said.
It was almost nice to be reminded that not everybody in town was scared of me. Some just flat out hated me. In Chris’s case, even though I’d been the one who talked his parents into leaving him alone, he only ever saw me as the rat who’d told them where he was in the first place. And the fact that I’d gotten him this job only made things worse. Pride can burn a lot of bridges.
Play it nice.
“Hiya. I’m looking for Jellyfish.”
“Fuck off.”
His eyes were sullen. Just a couple of years ago they’d been bright and hopeful, but real life has a way of taking that edge off. His hair was darker now, and his nose looked different, too. I wondered how much that had cost him. Too much for a librarian, surely.
Play it nice.
“New nose, huh?”
That took his edge off. Hit a person where they’re least confident and they soon take a step back. He smiled, his way of showing that he wanted to play it nice after all. He looked back at the blond guy, then over at his desk, where a cup of coffee was slowly going cold.
“Honestly? I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Sorry to hear that.” I almost sounded like I meant it. “Falling out?”
“You could say that. Or pulling out, more like it. I got the sense he wasn’t fucking me so much as trying to fuck my dad.”
“You don’t mean—”
He laughed. The sound bounced around the room. I waited for the ghost from Ghostbusters to come and shush us, but it didn’t happen. “No,” he said. “You’ve got a filthy mind, you know that?”
“Comes with the job.”
“I’m sure. No. I just mean that he started showing a lot of interest in my dad, in his career. I figured he was only staying with me as a way of getting dirt on the old man. You know how he liked to hold information on people.”
“I may have heard that, in passing.”
“Uh huh. He got weird, basically. Like, we were together for a year and he was all sweet and nice and totally wanted to go at my pace. I didn’t ask who else’s pace he was keeping up with, didn’t care, I was okay as long as we were having fun. But then my dad wins the elections and all of a sudden it’s all, ‘oh, we should film ourselves having sex, that would be fun,’ and, ‘hey, we should invite your dad and his partner round for dinner, get to know them better.’ It wasn’t long before I wised up.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” This time I did mean it. “I really thought he was on the level with you.”
“Yeah, well, I thought so too. Not all bad though, he helped me come out, get over all that angsty stuff. I guess you helped, too. Forced me into talking to my parents about it, that was the hardest part.” He almost offered me a smile. “You’re still a wanker, though.”
“Totally. How are things with your parents, by the way? Your dad?”
His eyes tightened slightly at the sides. I could feel his defenses go up. There was no way to pretend the question was purely innocent. It never was. In so many ways me and Jellyfish were wired the same way. We’d just been swimming in different circles for the past couple of years. I’d graduated to the big pool, swam with the sharks. Jelly had tried that and been eaten.
Had he always been using Chris to get to his dad? Michael Perry hadn’t been the Commissioner when the relationship had started. He’d been just another high ranking cop, someone with potential. Maybe Jelly had started out with his heart in the right place. Maybe plotting to use Chris was just another compromise that had been made on the fly along the way.
I left the library with the same unanswered questions I’d arrived with, but it had forced me to ask some new ones. Michael Perry had accepted that his son was gay. He’d had to, because Chris took after his father in that regard. But Perry was a politician, and whether or not he had accepted his son for who he was, the rules changed when politics was involved. It didn’t matter how out Chris was, he could still be used to create a media scandal that would hurt his father’s career.
My mind slipped so easily into the shadows now. Understanding the ways powerful people schemed and manipulated had become so effortless. Had it always been that way, or was it something I’d learned along the way?
Had I learned to swim with the sharks, or had I become a shark?
I’d learned to spend as little time in my own head as possible to avoid these very questions. I knew I wouldn’t like the answers.
Lo
oking into Jelly’s sex life hadn’t turned anything up, so I went for his wallet instead. I knew just the man.
Matt Doncaster.
Back in the day, when I was working at the bottom of the food chain, Matt had been another of the people I leaned on for information. And he’d been close with Jelly. Mostly because Jelly leaned on him even more than I did.
Matt was easy to find these days. He worked for me.
I drove out to Whitmore Reans, a neighborhood northwest of the city center, on the other side of the ring road. This part of the city was heavy on immigrants, students, and irony. The terraced houses that lined the streets had gone unchanged for decades, but urban regeneration projects had filled in the unsightly gaps with new galleries, university buildings, and car showrooms. Little had been done to bring any wealth to the families who lived there, but plenty had been done to put shiny things in front of them.
In the heart of the area was the Community Center. Gaines had financed the square structure of metal and breeze block a few years before. Inside it had space for indoor football, plenty of seating for people who wanted to watch a game, and changing rooms. Making it a sports facility had been Veronica’s idea, but once it had been built, she’d given me free reign to run it on my own terms, coaching local kids at football and keeping them off the streets.
Since its opening, the place had expanded. Community grants and more of Gaines’s money had added extensions and upgrades to the building. She’d invested good money in quality equipment. There was a small gym, an Internet café, and a large common room with a television and sofas. Wolves, the local football club, sent their coaches and players to work with the kids a couple times a month, and adults from around the neighborhood came to volunteer their time.
The place had outgrown me. My name was still on all the paperwork as the manager, but my other work for Gaines took up too much of my time for me to stay involved with the Community Center. The grants and the media exposure generated plenty of paperwork; we needed qualified social workers in senior roles. At first, we’d gotten around this by offering internships to social work students from the local university, but we’d eventually been forced to hire two full-time staff members. One of them, Becky, had around a million qualifications in guidance counseling, social work, and healthcare. She was a middle-class bleeding heart, and somehow seemed oblivious to where the funding came from. She never even asked what her boss did with his time. Which worked for me.
