Lost City (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 3)

by Jay Stringer

  Ransford pulled the trigger. Once. Twice. Three times the murder. Three bullets ripped into Branko’s chest, sending him backward, half stepping and half falling. He slid down into a heap on the floor, and I watched the light go out of his eyes as he fixed me with one last bemused expression.

  “I thought he’d never shut up.” Gaines lowered his gun and launched into a body-shaking cough. “Wanker.”

  Ransford turned the gun on me.

  “You were going to let him kill my little girl.”

  “I was trying to keep her alive.”

  He leaned in. “My gun here has been sat in a colostomy bag for hours. It’s cranky and smelly but it says you’re the one who’s full of shite.”

  “Hangng mnn mmmi mmmink I cnnan mmet miis mopthh mmsse.”

  We both turned to stare at Claire and I said, “What?”

  She pulled her hands round from behind the chair and pulled the gag down from her mouth. “I said, ‘Hang on, I think I can get this rope loose.’” She stood up and stretched out like a cat. She rubbed at her arms and wrists, rubbing circulation back into them, before moving to stand between her father and me. She looked down at me. “Daddy has a point. You were going to let him shoot me.”

  “You’d rather I shouted or begged? You saw what he was like. If I’d shown him anything, he would have used it. He’d have shot you in the knee or an arm, something so he could string it out. I was trying to save you.”

  “By letting me die?”

  “You’re just like your old man,” Ransford said. “Fucking cold. But you’re right.”

  He lowered the gun.

  Claire stepped over to Branko and knelt down to rifle through his pockets. She favored one knee slightly as she stooped, and I imagined the things Branko must have done to get her into the chair. After a moment going through his clothes, she pulled out brass knuckles, a butterfly knife, a lollipop, and a box of matches. Eventually she found his phone. She read through the messages and call history before throwing the phone into the pool. I called for her to stop, but it was too late. She turned to look at me.

  “I wanted a look at that. Might have had information on it.”

  “You’re welcome to go in and get it.”

  I looked at the phone, half sinking, half floating. It was already surrounded by blood and matter from Matt’s body. I shook my head. Claire turned back to Branko and tipped him over the edge. He hit the water with a loud slapping sound.

  “You any idea how hard it’s going to be to clean that up now?” Ransford said. “Someone’s going to have to go in and get them. The filter will need changing. The pool will have DNA proof in it for years.”

  Claire didn’t seem to care. And with good reason—she was never the person who had to clean up the mess afterward. The room smelled like a battlefield. The moist heat in the air was heavy with the mixed smells of blood and gunshot residue. I realized I was already making mental notes of how I was going to clean it, already assuming the job would fall to me.

  “He hadn’t called for reinforcements, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Claire said, stooping to fuss over her father’s blankets. “So we have some time before they notice anything is wrong.”

  “But they will be coming,” Ransford said. “They’ll be coming with more guns than we have.”

  “Veronica’s solved that.” They both turned to look at me. “We met with Dodge. They’ve made a deal. We have them onside now, and Veronica wants to make a fight of it.”

  “It’s about time,” said Claire, impatience flaring around the edge of her words. “Time she stopped with the pipe dreams and got her hands dirty again. You too, Daddy. All this crap about business meetings and casino deals. This is who we are. Blood. Crime.”

  Ransford smiled. “That’s my girl.”

  Claire bent down in front of me and made a show of looking down at my groin before setting her jaw and working the ropes that bound me to the chair.

  “Listen.” I lowered my voice, but it was only a token gesture. Ransford would hear every word. “About what Branko said, about you and me and—”

  “Forget it.”

  “Really?”

  She stared at me. “We both know he was right. It’s been obvious since the start, and yet we went and did it anyway. So what else is there to say?”

  I dropped it. I didn’t need telling twice. As soon as the last knot was undone, I stood up and walked to the water’s edge. Two fleshy bundles floated in the middle of the pool. Both were half submerged, the sodden clothes trying to pull them under. Branko still looked like himself, his face now passive and neutral. What was left of Matt was less recognizable. His face was split open and pale fragments of bone stuck out at the exit wound.

  I felt the weakness, the static buzzing coming to take me again. The warning of another breakdown. This one had been coming for a long time. I reached into my coat pocket and found my bag of pills. My hand shook slightly. I watched the blood moving in the water. A line occurred to me but I didn’t know whether it was from a song or a book. That all the lies I’d ever told were coming back to me. An old friend’s words drifted through my head. Rachel, another person I’d let down. She’d tried to help me back from my last breakdown. “All that matters is what you do,” she’d said.

  I threw the bag into the water.

  “Go get Ronny,” said Ransford, intruding on my thoughts. “Bring her back. Dodge, too, if he’s coming. We’ve got work to do. I think we just declared war.”

  In dream, in memory.

  I’m in the beer garden of my parents’ pub. There’s a party, a barbecue. Dad hates the way that Brits barbecue. Says they just get some burgers and sausages and throw them on, hope for the best. He’s prepared. The meat has marinated overnight, in sauces and spices. The smells fill the air as Mum grills the food.

  People mill about. Sometimes I see it as a birthday party. Other times it’s celebrating Dad getting off something at court. Mum tells Noah and me to say hello to everyone, but she wants us to stay away from one person.

  Uncle Ran.

  He’s here to talk to Dad. Mum glares at him, then at Dad, and makes to pull me away. Ran ruffles my hair, and my brother’s. He hands us both packages wrapped in newspaper. Must have been a birthday, but why both of us? I rip mine open, and it’s a football shirt. Wolverhampton Wanderers. A gold shirt that catches the light. I want to wear it straight away, but first Uncle Ran asks a favor.

  Behind his legs I notice a girl. She’s younger than me. Wobbles on her legs and hides behind her father, nervous. Ran takes her small hand in his and leads her around in front of him to meet us.

  “This is Ronny,” he says. “I need to talk to your dad. Will you do me a favor? Play with her while I’m away.” He brushes an imaginary speck of dirt from her cheek to get her to look up. “This is Eoin,” he says. “He’ll look after you.”

  She smiles, and her eyes light up. They’re lighter in that moment, in my dream, in my memory. They shine.

  She puts her hand out for me to take.

  It was dark by the time I got to Hobs Ford, and I had difficulty finding the back entrance that my dad had shown me. I took a couple of wrong turns into muddy fields before I found the right spot. My own car still hadn’t turned up since I’d lost it during the thunderstorm, so I’d borrowed a sporty metallic blue death trap from Claire, and I knew the mud was going to be spraying it a whole new color.

  I waved at the gate, and they let me through. I parked outside the nearest caravan, on a patch of concrete slabs that had been laid out as a driveway. I was greeted by someone I didn’t know, a squat man with a shaved head and dark skin. He mumbled to me that my dad was waiting and waved me in the right direction. I stood and looked around at the two separate worlds of the camp; the settlers were all in their homes, lit up by the flicker of television, or sitting around well-kept garden tables, eating, dri
nking, and laughing by halogen lights. The protestors at the front entrance were squatting around campfires, singing songs and holding hands, playing for the press. The revolution will be televised, but the roles will be played by middle-class students and activists. They’ll claim to be standing up for people perfectly capable of standing up for themselves, but less polished in front of the camera. At any point they’ll be able to call their parents and get bailed out. The tourism of suffering.

  I headed for the tourists.

  The journalist was sitting by the largest fire and had his back to me as I approached. One guy at the fire had an acoustic guitar and was leading the group in singing a cover of a Clash song. I grabbed the journalist’s shoulder and pulled backward. Hard enough to impel him to move, but not so hard that he didn’t have time to stop himself falling over. Once I had his attention, I moved a few feet away from the group, where we could talk in private. He stood up and followed me, squinting without his glasses.

  “Hey, man,” he said, nerves in his voice. “What’s up?”

  “What was that stunt you pulled with the news story?”

  He hesitated, shuffled on the spot for a second like he’d never been confronted with his own actions before. “You didn’t like it?”

  “Didn’t like it? What do you think? You lied about me.”

  “No, I didn’t. I quoted you. What words did I put in your mouth?”

  Unbelievable. “You don’t see a problem with it? Talking to someone off the record and twisting their words, editing them to fit whatever story you want to tell?”

  “You never said we were off the record.”

  He was picking the wrong time to be a dick. I’d watched two people die. One of them had been a friend. I’d watched someone else I cared about have her dreams ripped apart. This brat might not have been the reason for my anger, but he was a damn good way to release it.

  I pushed him. I checked myself just short of following that with a punch.

  “This place is not some fucking ride at Disneyland. You don’t drop in for tourist season, send folks a few postcards, then fuck off back to your mates down south and talk about being a revolutionary. You’re fucking with people’s lives. You don’t care about that?”

  “Look, man, chill.” He backed up a step, putting his arms out to show he was not going to respond to violence. “I get it. I do. Some of the kids here? They are looking for that Disney thing. They’ll go home and get to pretend they did something. But I’m not one of them. I’m a writer, a journalist—”

  “Blogger.”

  “Yes, that too. But my blog won The Orwell Prize—you don’t get that for being a tourist. You see the BBC in here? Sky News? The newspapers? No. They’re all out there.” He pointed beyond the barricaded main gate, where the lights of police and television crews could be seen. “That’s the view they’re giving the world. You don’t like my methods, fine, but I’m the only one in here. And if you want this story told, I’m the one doing it.”

  “You’re making up whatever will get you prizes. You changed the meaning of what I said. You’re telling lies.”

  He shrugged. “Readers don’t want facts, they want a good story. You think people hated that Hunter Thompson embellished things? Did it stop him getting the message out?”

  “Don’t you think you should tell the truth?”

  “Truth? What is truth? You have one version of it. The police and the council out there have another. It changes. I’m trying to find something that doesn’t change, and I have to edit a bit to get there.” He squinted again, looked from me to the campfire. He thought something over, looked back at me. “From what I hear, you’re not usually the champion of truth. How long you been working for the Gaines family now? And how much spin went into the story you told the press about that stabbing, the drug case?”

  He had me there, and I hated that.

  The truth does matter. I’ve always believed that. When did I start telling lies? I turned on my heel and stalked away from him, toward my father’s caravan. I could feel the anger boiling in me, ready to spill over. But who was I really angry at?

  I stepped into my father’s living room and found both him and Ronny sitting in their coats. Dad had a set of car keys in his hand, twirling the key ring around his finger. They both relaxed a little when they saw me, like overinflated tires having some air let out.

  “Going somewhere?” I said.

  “We were coming for you,” Dad said.

  “Laura and Dodge are out looking for you, trying to find out where Branko took you.” Gaines stood up. “Dodge’s people told him when you left the snooker hall.” She hugged me. Was that a first? It felt like a first. Then she stepped back and looked at my face. “What happened?”

  “I look that bad?”

  Dad chuckled. “You look like someone shat in your mouth then cleaned it up with your face.”

  I sat down on the sofa between them and relaxed into the cushions. For a second I thought sleep was going to grab me as all the anger and tension eased enough to give them a free shot.

  “Branko’s dead.” I could hear the tiredness in my own voice. “He took me to Ransford’s house, but your old man killed him.”

  “Daddy?” Gaines sat down next to me. “How?”

  I nodded. “Shot him, about a million times. Or three.”

  “And Claire? Was she there? I’ve not been able to get hold of her.” She held up her phone to illustrate the point. “I’ve tried ringing but couldn’t get a clear line, didn’t know for sure if my texts were getting through.”

  “I’d guess not. She has no idea where you are. She’s looking after your old man, asked me to come bring you back. The people who sent Branko won’t stay away for long. They’ll want to finish what they started.” I tried to lighten the mood. “I don’t suppose I can convince you that when they do come, we should aim to be somewhere else?”

  She had her game face back on. “You don’t need me to answer that.”

  Dad stood up and walked through to the kitchen, coming back with three glasses. He poured large measures of his home brew and handed the glasses out. Gaines knocked hers straight back and held her glass out for a refill, her tongue sticking out just enough to lick the alcohol from her lips.

  “I like this woman,” Dad said as he poured again. “She’s not like her dad. No offense.”

  “None taken.” She smiled and shed her coat, leaving it behind her on the sofa. “You don’t know the half of it, Mr. Miller.”

  “Call me Aaron. And I can imagine. But, then, I hope there’s plenty you don’t know about him, either. Or me. You wouldn’t be sharing a drink with me if you knew even a little of it.”

  I could see Gaines thinking that one over. Should she push? Did it matter? I saw her choose to let it go. I knew things about her dad that I hoped she didn’t. I knew he’d killed his own father, her grandfather. Something like that could ruin a family. I tried to ignore the nagging questions of what my own family’s involvements in that situation might have been.

  “So if I know Ransford,” Dad said, “right now he’s plotting war. Calling in favors and preparing to give the middle finger to his enemy. You heading over to be part of that?”

  Gaines did her eyebrow flick. “I’m the one who’ll be plotting. Daddy knows it’s my show now.”

  Dai turned to me. “And you? You want to be in this?”

  I really didn’t. I wanted to be as far from it as possible. But there were ties binding me to the family that I didn’t want to break free of.

  “Where she goes, I go.” I finished the drink and put my glass out for more. “But I think we should get totally wasted first. We’re both over the alcohol limit anyway. We can drive out first thing.”

  Dad raised his glass in a toast, and I chinked glasses with him. We downed the drinks, and I felt the world shake around me as liquor took hold of my brai
n with both hands. Gaines hadn’t joined in the toast. I turned to see her staring into her glass, swilling the liquid around.

  “What’s up?”

  She didn’t look up at me. “I think we should have that talk.”

  Gaines and I walked down the bank toward the water. We were past the light from the caravans and the halogen outdoor lights. We blended into the shadows, two shapes moving beside each other near the river’s edge. We couldn’t see much beyond varying shades of gray and black, but the rain from the previous night had swelled the river and we could hear it rushing by. There was a nervousness passing between us. It felt like electricity. Dad had given us a bottle of his home brew, and we were swigging from it for warmth. Trading it between us in place of conversation.

  I’d been hiding from the talk for a long time. Pretending there would be a perfect moment, when we could both let our guards down enough to be honest. I’d come close once before, the night we burned down the old nightclub together, but she had eased away from it and changed the subject.

  Now I could feel it coming, and I still wanted to put it off as long as I could. “There’s another way out,” I said. “You could take Laura’s help, give evidence, and get protection.”

  Gaines had her back to me, staring out into the gray that surrounded us, as if she could see details that I couldn’t. From behind I saw her shake her head.

  “Too late for that. Perry has a hard-on for bringing us down. Looks to me like he has ambitions that go beyond being a Commissioner. He wants another term as PCC and then a run as an MP after that. But he doesn’t have any feathers in his cap. His only success since getting voted in has been to manage the budget. He’s a glorified accountant at this point. He needs something big, and we’re it—the midlands’ biggest crime family in bed with his Chief Inspector? Even if I could make a deal, it would be impossible to get you and my family out from under the charges too. He wants a press story too much.” She turned slightly, enough for me to see a half smile on her lips. “And he’s going to get it.”