Lost City (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 3)

by Jay Stringer

  I waved the notebook at Pepsi, and pointed at the two different entries of the same address on the laptop’s screen. “Do you never cross-reference any of these things?”

  He didn’t hold back from scratching his crotch this time. I guess we all have nervous tics. “Never saw the need.”

  I pushed past him and headed for the stairs.

  Laura followed. “Where next?”

  I held up the notebook over my shoulder as I walked.

  “The Lost City.”

  “You going to fill me in?”

  Laura drove as we headed back to the Moat Farm estate. I was in the passenger seat, thinking through our next move, trying to connect all the dots in a way that might save all of our asses.

  “It was the obvious answer the whole time,” I said. I thought back to my Dad’s story about the first time I’d watched Planet of the Apes and missed the fundamental point. “It was always going to be. Gaines helps get Jelly set up with his video company. In return he films people she wants to lean on. But he’s not stopping there, because he’s Jelly. He’s filming anyone he can, looking for something good. But he’s not a technical guy. He’s the idea, the blag. The guy who figures out who to film and how to profit from it. So someone else was involved. He needed them to set up the equipment. Especially since Jelly was in one of the videos, it has to be true.” I cursed myself under my breath. “That ‘someone else’ must have been his business partner, Simon. Then there’s this third, Joanne Rhys, who seems to be Simon’s missing girlfriend. They all worked on this together then they get something really juicy—”

  “Me and Veronica.”

  “Exactly. Although, maybe not. I mean, that would have been Jelly’s plan from the start, he’s a schemer, so as soon as he got something on you and Gaines he would have set his blackmail plan in motion. But one of them also contacted the cartel, which means they found out about the higher-ups somehow. Maybe they found a fresh angle to work while they were setting you up but it turned out to be too big for them, and they got burned.”

  “Okay. I can follow all of that. But we’re taking a massive leap from that to everybody being dead and to us all being at the hotel. What are you pulling it all together with?”

  I gave her what I hoped was a rakish smile. “With chewing gum and guesses. I know Jelly. I don’t know Joanne or Simon, but I know three people in a blackmail scam is about two people too many. Maybe they fell out over what to do with whatever they found? Maybe this was never the epic conspiracy we thought it was. The stuff with the cartel? Their plan to double-cross Gaines just got exposed quicker because of it, since they felt forced to move on the casino just in case the reported leak had the potential to scuttle their master plan. Maybe this was always about a few blackmailers who fell out with each other.”

  “What’s the world coming to when you can no longer trust blackmailers and extortionists?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You have nothing to support all of that, though.”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

  We pulled onto the estate and followed the maze of roads as they wound between council flats and semi-detached houses. The car’s navigation system issued instructions in a polite nasal voice from the dashboard, but I waved for Laura to keep moving when it directed us to pull up in front of a house on a crowded street. We parked a few hundred yards past Simon’s address on a side street and walked back, keeping an eye out for the twitching curtains of nosy neighbors. Things seemed pretty dead so I wasn’t too worried about potential witnesses. Before we’d left Laura’s place I’d told her to bring kitchen gloves, and we slipped them on as we walked up the driveway. Both matching in our bright pink rubber gloves.

  “I’ll follow your lead,” she said, falling back a step. “I’m new to this.”

  “And I break into houses all the time?”

  “Probably more than me, yes.”

  This was true.

  The front door was on the side of the house. I pressed the doorbell and waited. There were no sounds from inside, and my spidey-sense stomach was tingling.

  “You have your warrant card?”

  Laura said, “No. They took it when they suspended me.”

  “You have anything that looks like a warrant card?”

  “No. I have a photo ID driver’s license and a gym membership card. Aside from that, it’s all credit cards.”

  “If anyone answers the door, wave your gym card at them fast and blag, keep them talking. They won’t invite you in, but it’ll buy me some time.”

  “What for?”

  “That thing I do all the time.”

  I continued on around the side of the house into the backyard. The yard was split into two, and I guessed the house must be two flats, upstairs and downstairs. I hoped there was nobody upstairs to hear me breaking in. The windows at the back were all double-glazed, and too firm to be pulled open. They were recent, too, and the glass would be strong. It would make too much noise to try to break one. The back door looked to have been fitted around the same time, and was the same tough white plastic. I tried the handle but it wouldn’t budge; the door had a double lock.

  I felt a flash of irritation, and realized I wanted to show off to Laura, play the bad boy, let her see how expert I was at breaking into houses. It’s amazing the way men can twist themselves in knots. I saw movement in the window too late to duck. I stood frozen as someone stepped into view inside the room, where they wouldn’t be able to miss me.

  It was Laura.

  She waved.

  I walked back round to the door, which was ajar, waiting for me. I stepped inside, and Laura leaned round the door from the room she was standing in.

  “They keep a key under the mat,” she said, holding up a silver house key.

  “Nobody really does that,” I said.

  “And yet.” She wiggled the key in the air.

  I waved it away, pushing down the fact that I felt upset about not getting to show off my skills. Laura was in the living room. It was sparse but clean, with laminate flooring, bookshelves, and a few hundred DVDs stacked in an alcove in the far wall. The furniture was the same as in Jelly’s flat. Someone had gotten a bulk discount. There were nicer touches to this flat though, potted plants, drapes over the furniture, one of those dishes full of pebbles that people seem to like. There was a framed photograph on the table of Joanne and a man I had to assume was Simon, with a shaven head and round face, both of them wearing big smiles. Without a word we started going door to door.

  The first door we opened showed a bad situation of a sort—a hideous lime green bathroom that hadn’t been updated since the seventies. “This should be a crime scene, right here,” I said.

  Laura shook her head. “And with the living room looking so nice. Maybe she never came in here?”

  We went room to room, finding a messy kitchen, and empty living room, and then the jackpot. It was a bedroom-cum-office. At one end of the room was a modern-looking double bed resting on a laminate floor, with mirrors on the wall on either side. The other half of the room, where we were stood, was carpeted and had a work desk piled high with a mess of cables and a desktop computer on snooze.

  I sat in a leather chair before the desk and pressed a few keys on the computer, waiting for the screen to wake up. It showed editing software loaded with the latest footage, some schoolgirl fantasy piece that I had no interest in watching. Nobody would be finishing the editing, that was for sure. I clicked the software program closed, getting a kick out of choosing not to save the work.

  I started looking in the desktop folders, opening the files one by one. Laura squatted down beside me, pointing at ones and suggesting other searches I could do. In a folder marked “Soylent Green” we hit pay dirt.

  I scrolled through the files, saved as small video clips, and noticed each one h
ad a corresponding folder full of the raw footage. Some had names and descriptions; some just had dates or initials. I clicked the one marked “Perry,” and a clip started to play of two men on a sofa. One was Jelly, and he had his hand down Chris Perry’s trousers. Jelly started to pull Chris’s clothes off and I closed the file. It was exactly what Chris had talked to me about at the library. I kept clicking and found lots of business meetings in offices and some in restaurants, with the zoom microphone picking up the chatter. I also saw town planners taking bribes, councillors talking about giving preference on planning permission to people in return for holidays or cars. There were videos of Joanne talking to drunken public officials, coaxing them into giving up secrets and making taped confessions. There was one with my name, and Laura grabbed the mouse, clicking the file and loading footage of me sitting in my car. It looked like I was asleep, until Claire’s head bobbed up briefly into view between me and the steering wheel.

  “Interesting,” Laura said.

  I closed the file and dragged it to the trash folder before opening more videos. The dates and initials opened up files, some of people I recognized, some I didn’t. Some in acts that were legal, others in acts that would get them arrested.

  When I clicked one labeled “VGLM” I found a clip of Gaines and Laura. They were sitting in Casa Mia after hours, and the camera appeared to be inside with them. Jelly clearly had ways and means of getting anywhere. Laura passed a file across the table to Gaines, who smiled, took the file, and opened it. Something was then passed back, a small package. It could have been anything, but anybody looking at it would instantly assume it was cash. Then they both drank wine and the conversation went on.

  I closed the file. It was pretty damning but without audio it only told so much. Alone, it didn’t seem like enough to start the whole ball rolling and prompt Jelly to blackmail Veronica. I clicked another file, marked “VG2.” It was poor-quality footage, filmed through a window into a living room. Gaines was on a sofa, sharing her lips and hands with a woman whose face was blocked by the angle of the furniture. As Gaines sat up and leaned back, inviting the other woman forward, the camera moved, as whoever was filming must have stepped to the side, trying to get a better angle.

  Laura leaned in and closed the file.

  “Let’s give her some privacy,” she said.

  I nodded and dragged the clip to the trash. I was feeling dirty after skimming these videos. I didn’t know how someone could make a living from selling people’s privacy. Suddenly drug dealing and murder didn’t seem so bad. I deleted the one of Laura too.

  “Empty the trash,” Laura reminded me.

  I clicked to empty it, and we waited while the progress bar crawled along the screen. There was a file that was labeled “MP1.” I clicked it and the video clip opened. The camera was aimed at the waists of two people deep in conversation. Laura turned up the volume, and we could make out an argument.

  “Listen,” the first voice said, rattled. It sounded like Jelly. “All we’re saying is—”

  “I don’t care what you’re saying. You listen.” The hand of the second man jabbed at the belly of the first. “You give me that video or I’ll have you fucking killed, got it?”

  Jelly stepped back, almost out of frame, and his hands went out in a calming gesture. “Listen, Mr. Perry—” Laura looked at me and mouthed the name. “There’s no need for violence.”

  “Veronica put you up to this, didn’t she? Try and force me into a corner? You thought you could come to me with this alone? I’ll fucking kill you, and I’ll get her, too.”

  The clip went black.

  Laura and I sat in stunned silence. We looked at each other, smiles spreading across our faces. She shook her head. “Was that—”

  “Police and Crime Commissioner Perry making threats to two people’s lives? I think it was, yes.”

  “You don’t think—”

  “That he did all this? No. Jelly and his crew were more dangerous to themselves then Perry could ever be. We have three people involved in making these, it looks like: Jelly, Simon, and Joanne. Five if the Cartwrights were in it before they went to the hotel. We know for sure three of them are dead, and when I went to Studio Noir after Jelly’s death to look around, Branko was there trying to mop up blood and Simon was nowhere in sight. So if we’re lucky Branko took out number four in our little group, and now we just need to find the fifth. But Perry here has given us a way to wrap all of this up nice and neat. This is your way out.”

  We high-fived. I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. This video, coupled with the financial trail Gaines had planted, was our golden ticket. Laura could use it to get her job back. I could use it to get the charges against me dropped, and maybe use it as leverage to get the police to back off Gaines. I still needed to figure out how to stop the cartel coming in, but that would surely be child’s play after bringing down the whole West Midlands Police establishment.

  I dialed a number into my phone. A harassed-sounding voice answered on the fourth ring.

  “Hello?” Becker said.

  I let the silence stretch, and he followed up with, “Who is this?”

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s me. Want to help me tear everything down?”

  “This better be good.”

  Becker stood in the doorway. He was wearing rubber crime-scene gloves as I’d told him to. Calling him had been a gamble, but it was one I’d needed to work. If the videos were going to be used to get us all out we needed someone on the inside to do the legwork. A cop who could discover the videos and crime scene and piece everything together. Becker and I went back many years. I’d known him longer than I’d known Laura. Despite the resentments that had built up in the last couple years, I hoped there might still be enough juice in the tank of our friendship to take this one last step.

  “Be careful what you touch, even with gloves.”

  I stepped aside, letting him into the flat. On the way down the hallway I opened the bathroom door and pointed inside. “I wanted to report this crime scene. Just look at the color.”

  “You brought me here to be a smart arse?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  He grimaced in place of a smile and followed me through to the back room. Already I could see his wall going up. I was going to have to work hard to break it down. He stopped when he saw Laura and took a step back. “Wait, what is this?”

  Laura didn’t move to offer any explanations. Becker hadn’t known she was undercover, but still, I knew she was burning inside at his investigation of her. I was angry at him too, but reminded myself that he was on the right side of morality and the law, as usual.

  “She’s with me,” I said. “Just hear us out.”

  I waved for him to sit in the office chair. He sat down but swiveled round so he could keep an eye on both of us. I began to give him a highly edited version of events. I started back a couple of years and talked about Laura working to bring Gaines over as a witness, turning her into an informant she’d had to keep off the books. Laura backed that up, saying she’d been keeping recordings and logs of their meetings and would be able to produce them to prove she was on the level. I gave him an embellished version of the truth about Jelly’s blackmail scam, incriminating as few people as possible, and playing him both the video of Jelly fucking Chris Perry and the video of Michael Perry threatening Jelly’s life. I didn’t actually state that Jelly had been meeting Perry at the hotel on the night of the fire, but I made it easier for Becker to assume that than anything else. I said Jelly had been missing since the night of the fire, not going any further than I needed to. I found a way to mention the Cartwrights, too, saying they were an unlucky couple who’d picked the wrong night to book into a local hotel for a dirty evening.

  I knew Becker well enough to read him. I could see him buying half of what I said—the half that was true. But what he wasn’t buying was the need to work with
us. I could see him taking the facts in and fitting them to what he already knew, and trying to work out where I really fit in all of it.

  Once I ran out of words and steam he smiled. “You done?” I nodded, and he leaned forward. “Utter bullshit. You want me to swallow all of this and, what, magically get you off the hook and Laura her job back?”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  He laughed. “Of course not. I know you.”

  “Come on. This added to what you’ve probably found by now about Perry’s finances—”

  He pulled back in his seat. “How do you know about that?”

  Shit. I’d shown too many cards. There was no way for me to know about Perry’s financial trail without either being involved in his corruption or helping to set it up. I saw Becker’s brain spinning again, working out how to reel me in.

  Lie.

  Lie.

  Truth.

  “Gaines told me,” I said. “She knows all about it.”

  He nodded. “And it becomes clear. Has Gaines put you up to this?”

  “No, the reason Gaines knows Perry is crooked is because he is. You’ve known it as long as me. Hell, you helped me find out, back when this all started.” It had been Becker who had asked me to find Chris when he’d gone missing, and we’d both skirted around the truths that we’d found. “You told me yourself that he was on the take, but now he has ambitions beyond being your boss, and he’s using you to get rid of all his problems. He’s got you playing the bad guy; you’re taking all the risks of going after Laura and Gaines. You like being used like that?”

  I saw a flash in his eyes and knew I’d found something I could use.

  “I’m not being used,” he said, but his tone belied his words.

  “Sure you are. You want a promotion, and he thinks that means he can treat you like a fool. What hints has he been dropping? Shepherding you to Chief Constable farther down the road? Adding you to his staff, maybe?”

  Laura sugarcoated the pill. “I know how convincing he can be. He whispered in my ear once, back when I got the promotion, he promised me all those things, until I stopped being convenient for him.”