Lost City (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 3)

by Jay Stringer

  “It’s funny.” I tapped my leg, saying my thoughts out loud. “I spent so long holding the same things against you. Working to be someone else, and thinking you hated me because of it. You wanted me to read books, so I hated them. You hated Gorjer music, so I listened to it loud. You hated the police, so I became one. So long trying to be the exact opposite of you. But I look around at the life you’ve got now, and at who you seem to be, and I can’t think of a single reason I’d not want the same.”

  He laughed. It was loud and long and so forceful it turned into a cough. He slapped his chest to shake it out. Then he eased back in his chair, catching his breath.

  “We’ve led each other on a long dance, haven’t we?” he said between gasps.

  I leaned forward and put my hand out. “My name’s Eoin Aaron Miller, pleased to meet you.”

  He took my grip in a strong shake. “Aaron Joseph Miller. Pleased to meet you, son.”

  The dam broke. All of the walls that had been built between us over more than three and a half decades vanished. We sat talking about novels and plays, about music and politics, and about my family history.

  Somewhere along the way, night turned into sunrise, then into early morning.

  I woke up on the sofa with sunlight streaming in through the thin curtains. Outside were the sounds of shouting and chatter, hammering and banging. I climbed up off the sofa and got shakily to my feet. Straight away I felt a great weight in my stomach heave up to my throat, and found the bathroom just in time to throw up.

  I stayed with my head resting on the toilet bowl for a few moments. Every time I opened my eyes the world tipped around and my head buzzed. When I closed my eyes again those feelings faded, but nothing reduced the constant gagging sensation I had at the back of my throat.

  I felt someone step in behind me, and then the sound of the shower being turned on. Water splashed on to me as it hit the tiled wall. My father pulled at my shoulder, moving me aside so that he could shut the shower curtain. “Get in there, get clean. There’s a toothbrush on the sink. I’ll get some food ready.”

  I stripped out of my clothes on the floor and crawled into the shower to sit back down. I tipped my head back and let the water hit my face, driving back the worst edge of the hangover. I closed my eyes again and lost track of time. After a while I climbed to my feet—less shaky after a soaking—and washed up. I climbed back into yesterday’s clothes, then brushed my teeth, but the punch of the toothpaste made me throw up again. Still, it got rid of the remaining weight in my stomach. I brushed my teeth again and then stepped out into the hallway feeling halfway from the grave.

  I heard the sounds of frying coming from the kitchen and the smell of oil and spices greeted me. Dad was working over the hob, fat spitting back up at him as he flipped large slices of bacon in the frying pan. He handed me a plate that had two slices nestled between two large wedges of toast slathered with butter and garlic. I took a seat at the kitchen table.

  “She’s gone,” he said, his back to me as he cooked his own. “Took off first thing in that car you turned up in. Said you’d know where to find her if you wanted to.” He sat opposite me with his own food. “You going to follow her?”

  I nodded as I chewed. “Have to.”

  “You don’t, you know. You can stay here. Either here or there you’re fixing for a fight, but you get to choose which one.”

  I looked out the window. The sounds of hammering had grown, and I could see people building new fences at the main gate, barbed wire and gas canisters fastened around them. “They’re definitely coming in, then?”

  “Yes.” He ploughed into the food, taking an age to chew between words. “And let them come.”

  I leaned back after clearing the plate and felt the temptation to close my eyes and drift back to sleep, to wake up when everything was over and pretend it was an accident. I was wondering if I could pull that off when he spoke again.

  “Not that I’m kicking you out, but if you are going, you need to do it now. We’ll be sealing up the back entrance soon to stop them coming in that way. Once you’re out, you’re out.”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  He smiled. “Take mine. I won’t need it.” He leaned to one side as he rummaged in the pocket of his jeans and then threw a set of keys at me. “It’s not fancy but it will get you there.”

  I climbed to my feet. The shakes had retreated, or had lifted just enough that I could stand without worrying about falling off the edge of the world. I put my hand out to him and he took it, clasping his other hand around my wrist in a vice grip.

  “It was good last night. I enjoyed it. Maybe we can do it again, once the dust settles.” He shifted to the edge of the seat but didn’t stand up. “Hope you don’t mind me not walking you out, but I seem to have a hangover.”

  I laughed and said it was fine. Then I paused, hesitated before reaching for a moment of unguarded honesty. “Your mai would be proud,” I said. “You’ve done what she wanted. You’re the Miller that’s escaped the bad drop.”

  I turned and left before either of us had to figure out the next thing to say.

  I found his car parked round the back of his caravan. It was a rusted old VW bug. I climbed in and started her up, and had to fight with the gears and the steering to get it across the uneven field to the back entrance. I wasn’t sure it would get me back to the city, but I had no other option. The settlers waved at me as I drove out through the open gate. I saw them slide it back in place in my rear view and start hammering as I drove off. Locking themselves in. I felt a pull for the first time, like I was dragging an anchor along behind me, but the remaining hangover made it easy to pretend I didn’t feel it.

  I steered the bug out of the dirt lane and onto the main road, and found the handling improved on the smooth road. I picked up speed and the metal frame rattled, air hitting me through little cracks around the edges of the windows. I imagined this was how World War II fighter pilots felt in their tin-can planes. Then I had to change gears and the illusion of flying was shattered by noisy mechanical crunching.

  There was no CD player or tape deck, and it turned out to be a welcome silence. I sat with my thoughts as I took the scenic route back to Wolverhampton, passing farms and villages before heading into the more built-up areas at the outskirts of the city. The air hitting me as I drove chased away the layer of wool that had been wrapped around my brain, and brought with it a lucidity I couldn’t remember having for a long time. My clearest moment in years had come while hung over.

  When had I taken my last pill?

  The world had turned around a lot since then.

  At the thought of drugs I felt my gut tighten, the familiar feeling that reminded me of a snake crawling around inside me deep down. I closed my eyes for a second and fought the sensation. No more pills. I pictured Matt’s corpse, and the feeling in my gut felt less intense. It didn’t go away, but I felt strong enough to ignore it.

  Everything came into focus and thoughts burned my brain. Was this how everyone else’s brain worked? If thinking was always going to be this good, then I had found my new addiction.

  Get.

  Into.

  Your.

  Own.

  Head.

  My thoughts ran through the last few days. All the connections I’d already made. The avenues I’d exhausted. And behind them, marching toward me, a whole army of Statues of Liberty. All of the obvious things I’d completely ignored.

  There was still somebody else out there.

  After Branko had taken Matt, I’d given up on the murders. Then I’d found out Gaines was the leak, and all the events that had started with finding Jelly’s body had fallen to the back of my brain. But there was still a killer out there. Someone who had taken out the Cartwrights, and maybe even Jelly and Tony before that. Someone else who knew Gaines was the leak, and probably had possession of whatever proof
Jelly had promised to give Veronica. Not to mention the pile of money that had been under the bed.

  There was also Letisha to think about. I’d never truly suspected Dodge—and now I had his word that he hadn’t done it. And we didn’t order it. Someone out there had wanted us distracted. Someone had wanted to pit us against each other. There was still another plate in the air, and if that was the case, then maybe there was still another way out of this mess. A way to avoid the bloodshed that Gaines was preparing for.

  If she wanted a big brother, fine. But big brothers don’t always do what you want them to. Gaines would have to wait a little longer for me to turn up.

  I read Laura’s reactions as she opened the door.

  I’d gambled on her still being in bed. What would she have to get up for while suspended from her job? She was dressed in a plain T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Her expression went from shocked to happy to nervous.

  “I was worried about you,” she said. “I was out all night trying to figure out where you’d been taken to, until Gaines called.”

  “She say anything else?”

  “Just that you were okay.”

  I stepped inside the doorway, and she moved over to make room but didn’t step back into the house. I leaned in and kissed her slowly, playfully kneading her lips between mine. “It was my fault we split up,” I said. “A lot of things were my fault.”

  She pulled back and her face aimed for surprised again. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “I’m awake.”

  I left it at that. I walked through into the living room. It was still as it had been the other night. She wasn’t joking about the sofa; it was leaning at an angle, one of the legs collapsed inward.

  “Not, uh, that I mind.” She followed on, running her hand through her bedhead hair. “But if you’re planning on kissing me again, I think we should both have showers. Your clothes smell like you slept in them.”

  “Funny, that.”

  She smiled like she used to, when we first met. I flashed back to drinking with her after a sergeant exam, both of us trying to earn a promotion out of uniform and into higher-up jobs. Twenty-somethings playing at being teenagers, shooting each other glances and pretending to be indifferent. Good times. Laura went into the bathroom and shut the door. Soon I heard the shower running. While I waited I sat on the chair—the sofa looked like too much of a risk—and thought through the rest of the day. If everything lined up the way I was thinking it would, then there would be plenty of time later for Laura and me to sit down and have our own version of the talk. I hoped there would be that parade now that I had an idea of what I wanted.

  She came out of the bathroom wrapped in a bundle of towels and shuffled into the bedroom. I stepped into the bathroom, the room filled with steam and heat, and ran cold water over my face. I felt alert and normal. After I showered, I changed back into the same clothes for the second time that day. They still smelled, but they would have to do.

  Out in the living room Laura was dressed as she had been when she’d turned up at that hotel that first night. She was leaning against the window, looking into the room, and she did her own version of the Gaines eyebrow flick. “What’re you brooding about now?”

  “You. Us.” I sat for a while trying and failing to read her face. “You were right, you know. When you got me that shrink, Guthrie. After the riots and the old man in the street. I went away.” I tapped my temple. “And I took our happiness with it.”

  “You’re so sweet when you overthink things.”

  “I think it’s about time I start overthinking the right things. When Gaines told me you’d turned her, that you were building a big case off it, I don’t know—I think it suited me better to think you were crooked. It was easier, you know? I could pretend everything was your fault. By the way, this whole undercover thing with her, was it official?” She shook her head. “So that’s why Becker doesn’t know?”

  She shook her head again, but this time it was a confirmation. “I saw the chance when that Polish dealer came in, and with everything that was going on at work I knew there was no way I’d get permission, certainly not quick enough to pull it off. I thought it would be quick. Hook him, get to Gaines, find the suppliers, make the case and get out. Get my promotion.” She smiled at that, the part of the plan that had worked. “But then I saw I could go deeper, and Gaines was opening up to me, so things got blurry. I went too deep.”

  I hoped that wasn’t true. I needed to. Not for the first time, I was pinning my own hopes of salvation on being able to pull someone else clear. She’d broken so many rules and told so many lies that, even if we handed the police the perfect case, she would still have to be investigated. She might never wash away the stain. She’d been carrying this around for years, and rather than help, I’d come along and forced her into covering up multiple murders. I owed it to her to fix things.

  “We’re almost done,” I said. “And you might get that big case. But we’ll need to cross a few more lines first.”

  She leaned forward, and her eyes lit up. “Trouble?”

  “Probably.”

  “Pepsi, get your ass out of bed.”

  I was standing at his door again. This time with Laura at my side. It turned out she didn’t have a gun. Undercover cops are never quite as useful as you’d think. She did have a much better car than my father’s bug, though, so we’d driven over to Pepsi’s house in air-conditioned comfort.

  Pepsi opened the door looking to be in much the same state as he had the last time. He was wearing a different T-shirt, and jogging pants rather than boxers, but the look of scruffy tiredness was just the same. I stepped forward but he didn’t give way. He looked from me to Laura.

  “But she’s—”

  “A cop, deal with it.”

  I stepped in, and this time he moved. Laura followed me, and I heard her suppress a laugh at the mess the place was in. The sleeping people had gone, but the room was in the same state of curtain-drawn dusk, with a large pizza box on the floor. The DVD case for American Beauty lay open and empty on the floor beside a half-eaten box of chocolates. Not what I would have thought was a Pepsi film. Any conversation we’d had about movies had always drifted to explosions or Scorcese. I turned at the sound of someone coming down the stairs, and saw a woman wearing nothing but a bathrobe. She looked to be in her early twenties, and her hair looked like it had been very expensively styled the night before. When she saw us she smiled with embarrassment and stepped back up out of sight.

  “We catch you at a bad time?” Laura was straight into cop mode, putting Pepsi on the defensive. “She know what you do for a living?”

  “No, it’s—she’s—I mean—” His voice rose to a squeak. “What do you want?”

  “I need to see your client list again,” I said. “And relax, she’s with me.”

  He stood on the spot and fidgeted. His hand went to scratch his crotch but then he thought better of it. His shoulders sagged, and he waved us toward the stairs. I led the way with Laura following and Pepsi bringing up the rear. At the top of the stairs I turned into the room we’d been in the other day. I heard Pepsi turn into another room and hold a hushed conversation; the chatter got faster and I could tell that whatever was being said, the woman was winning.

  He stepped back through to join us in the small office, looking like a scolded child. He waved at the laptop. “Help yourself.”

  I lifted the lid of the laptop and it came to life. The client list screen was already opened and showing a head shot of an attractive young Indian woman, with slim lines and a pretty face. Laura suppressed another laugh, and I recognized the woman from the other room.

  “What do you want this time?” Pepsi’s voice was almost a whine.

  “You said Jelly used your talent for some of his videos, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to see which addresses the talent was s
ent to.”

  He nodded. I stepped aside so he could get into the computer files. A second later, he opened up a spreadsheet. He scrolled down, and on the left-hand side I saw names of film companies move by. He stopped at Jelly’s company, Studio Noir, and double-clicked. That loaded up a second page with a list of six addresses. Three of them were in industrial units, places that had probably been rented out temporarily for the duration of a shoot. One of them was the office in Wednesbury. One was Jelly’s flat on the Moat Farm estate. The other had the same postcode as the Moat Farm estate, but with a different final digit. Something about it was familiar, but my memory had to fight through the drugs I’d been on.

  “What’s that one?”

  Pepsi leaned in to follow my finger. “I think that’s Simon’s address. Jelly’s partner in the company. They live right by each other.”

  Bingo.

  And then my memory found what I was asking for. I pulled my notebook out of my jacket pocket and found what I’d written down the last time I’d been here. I read an address on my page and then compared it to the screen. It was the same address.

  “Show me that woman again—Joanne.”

  Pepsi typed in a name, and the entry from the other day loaded. Joanne Rhys. The hooker who had vanished into thin air after a booking with the Cartwrights. The possible source of the blood I’d found at their place. I looked again at the name and the calm, proud features. And then at her address at the Moat Farm estate.

  The same address where Pepsi had sent talent to do filming.

  The same address as Jelly’s business partner, Simon.

  Click.

  Matt had said Simon’s girlfriend worked with them, even that she’d starred in a few videos. Branko, too, had asked me about her when I’d visited the studio, although I hadn’t known who he’d been talking about at the time.