by Jay Stringer
We had him. I could see it. He paused before answering, and I saw the exact moment he decided to give up on what he was holding back. “I already have a case against him,” he said. “I’ve been building it all along. These videos? They just add a nice little narrative to it. And that’s the thing, man—you’ve wrapped it up too nice. You’re trying to play me by telling me I’m being played?”
“That so wrong?”
Becker turned the chair back to the screen and clicked on more files, idly going through them one by one. “Yes. Look, I know you’re both crooked as they come. I know you’re lying to me about this, as much as I want it to all be true, and I know Gaines has set up the financial trail. You want me to ignore all of that?”
“So, maybe the truth has been massaged a bit, but it’s still the truth. You know he’s crooked, and you know working with us will bring him down. I’m giving you a bad guy, a good old-fashioned bad guy, and asking you to do the right thing. How often does that chance come along?”
Laura stepped back into the conversation. “Terry, you were the best man at our wedding. You know us. Whatever’s happened, and whatever ways we’ve fucked you over, we’re sorry, but you know us. Just trust us, work with us, and we all get something here. We’re not even asking you to lie.”
He stared at one of the videos. I saw his jaw clench a number of times. Then he closed his eyes, rubbed his temples with his fingers. “It can’t come through me. You’ll need to place an anonymous call, something that’s not obvious. Call the station and report that you know the whereabouts of Tony Keane. That would get handed over to my team because he’s on a watch list. Say he’s been lying low here. Then Murray and Henry can come in, call me once they’ve sussed what’s going on here. Working Keane in will make it messy, confusing, but that’s better. A messy case is easier to accept that a clean one.” He turned to Laura. “No promises about your job, though. That’s above my pay grade and, to be honest, you don’t deserve it back.”
There was still enough juice in that tank for one last favor. I felt like cheering, but I held it back. I didn’t want to make him change his mind.
Becker was still idly clicking through video clips. None had drawn my attention until the sound from the speakers was Branko’s silky voice.
I turned to look down at the video on the screen, one I’d missed earlier. I leaned in and turned up the volume.
The picture was clear and large, either taken from up close or with a very high-quality zoom. Branko was sitting in a café, one I recognized as being at Birmingham Airport, from the table and the wall behind him. He was sipping at a glass of milk and talking to someone off camera, out of shot. The directional microphone bought up their conversation above the background chatter, but some words were still easy to miss.
“This girl, Letisha, you made a mistake trusting her, yes?”
The response from the person he was talking to was muffled by background noise. The words came in and out, and I recognized a Scottish accent. Ross. Chuckles. The bastard who’d been waiting to do me over. He said, “We took care of that.”
Someone else murmured an agreement, but they were too far out of earshot for the microphone to pick them up properly. Branko spoke again, but the start of his response was lost as cups were set down closer to the mic. His words came up as the sounds faded. “You’re willing to get your hands dirty. My employers like that. And it causes a nice distraction. Something we can use at the moment. But there are other details that we need to discuss.”
The third person spoke. I still couldn’t make it out as the camera shook and moved. Someone had walked into it. We heard someone very near the microphone apologize, and then the picture moved again, coming back into a different position and catching the backs of the two people Branko was talking to.
A man and a woman.
“Your sister still insists we can’t touch the Boyash, the Gypsy.” Branko’s voice sounded calm but chilly. “He cost my associates a great deal of money and inconvenience, and we see no reason to let that go. Stupid loyalty is a weakness that we cannot allow. We would start thinking that weakness runs in the family if you also choose to protect him.”
Claire Gaines turned for a second, the camera framing her profile clearly. “My sister has a strange thing going on with him, but once she’s out of the way, the business will have no use for Miller either.”
Branko sipped his milk and watched as a waitress walked by holding a tray, filling the screen for a second. He set his glass down and shifted it on the table several times, as if placing it in an exactly marked spot. “And you have no qualms about setting her up for the fall?”
Claire shook her head.
Branko placed his hand out, and Claire took it. “Then we will be happy to assist your takeover. You keep the territory. My employers get more points on the products. And the casino is theirs, of course, as is any business done inside it.”
“Of course.”
The video cut to black. Laura leaned in to replay it. Becker turned to me. “Was that what I think?”
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
This was the third rail. This was what had killed everybody, the secret that had been too big to handle. I wanted to shout it out, but I needed Becker to keep his mind on the version of events we’d spun for him. But this was it. Claire Gaines and Chuckles.
Veronica had driven back hours ago. I’d not heard from her at all in that time.
She’d walked straight into a trap.
I pulled over at the gate that sat in front of the Gaines house. Two young men in hoods were standing either side of the entrance, and a car was parked across the street. They didn’t tell me to stop the car, but they didn’t have to; their intent was clear.
I rolled down the window and the one on the driver’s side leaned in. I didn’t recognize him, but he seemed to know me.
“Dodge’ll wanna see you,” he said.
He looked across at Laura, sitting beside me, and stared at her for a cool moment.
“She’s with me,” I said.
He stood up and walked away, making a small hand gesture to the car parked across the road. A moment later another car pulled up and Dodge climbed out of the passenger side. He strolled over to our car with the shoulder-heavy gait that I’d seen in American films and television but rarely on British streets. People my age had all mimicked the gangsters of Scorcese and Tarantino movies. Sharp suits and controlled movements, elegant. Now the kids were playing different roles, something more masculine, primal. Things were changing.
He leaned down and nodded at me, not quite smiling. “Good to see you, Gyp. Heard bad things about what that weirdo does to people.”
“All true, but he’s dead.” I saw him nod again, and saw a look of satisfaction on his face. If he wanted to believe I was the one who killed Branko, I wasn’t inclined to tell him otherwise. “What’s going on?”
He pointed at his two men on the gate. “Guarding. Got others round the back. We’m keeping that bad ’uns out.”
I shook my head slowly. “You’re keeping them in. We’ve been had. The cartel aren’t invading. It was Claire Gaines all along, and now we’ve locked her family in there with her.”
Dodge stepped to the rear of the car and opened the back door, sliding into the seat. “You people are strange,” he said. “Want us to charge?”
“No. If Gai—if Veronica is still alive, we don’t want to tip them off early. They’re expecting me to turn up at some point, so we’ll just go in and play the game.”
I had no better plan. Or even an idea of what we would do to Claire once we were inside. Whatever happened here was what we’d earned. The guards opened the gate, and we drove along the gravel path. This time I looked at the trees and let my imagination fill it with Dodge’s people, trigger-happy scared teenagers hiding beneath hoods with pistols and baseball bats. G
aines’s people—my people—with blades and shotguns, staring out at us beneath the shadows of the trees.
I told Dodge to keep close behind me. He was the only one of us armed, and there were at least two guns that I knew of inside the house. We climbed the steps with Laura bringing up the rear. At the top a man stepped out of the growing shadows.
Chuckles. He put his left hand up as a sign to halt; his right hand stayed down at his side, touching something at his waist.
“Ross,” I said.
He nodded at me, but his eyes stayed on Laura. “Eoin.”
Somewhere in our eyes he read the truth. It didn’t need to be said. Years reading people on the doors at pubs and clubs will do that. He knew we were on to him.
His right hand came up and he let me see his nice chunky-looking gun.
“I’m a cop.” Laura stepped forward, putting every ounce of her threat into the words. “And you’re pointing a gun at me. Do you think that’s a safe place to be in?”
“You think that’ll stop me?” he said.
“Is that what you said to Letisha, before you killed her?”
His eyes were on Laura, and on her words. His gun was in her face, and he was making the decision to pull the trigger. That meant he wasn’t paying attention to Dodge. To the teenage boy with the gun who had been friends with Letisha.
Dodge barreled past me and into Ross. The Glaswegian had been caught by surprise, and didn’t get the chance to pull off a shot. I was glad, because moving targets at close quarters mean all bets are off; once the bullet leaves the gun, it can go anywhere. Dodge smacked into Ross with all his weight, but he was fighting someone bigger and more experienced, and Ross rolled with the charge and then used Dodge’s own momentum to throw a punch.
Dodge grunted. His eyes were hot with anger. I doubted he really felt the punch but it did create a gap between them, and Ross tried to raise the gun. Dodge stepped in first with a head-butt, then followed in with his own gun and clubbed Ross, once, twice, three times. The Scot staggered back and he went down to one knee, his left hand reaching down to the path to stop himself going to the floor. I kicked the hand out from under him, and he fell to the path like a sack of potatoes.
He tried to push up but Dodge kicked him in the head, then leaned in and pistol-whipped him, one of the blows cracking Ross’s nose. Laura bent down and pulled the gun from his hand. Between heaves he spat at her, blood flowing with saliva, but he let the gun go.
Dodge put the gun to the beaten Scot’s forehead but paused and looked over at Laura, waiting for the cop to tell him to stop. I stepped in first. We needed Ross alive.
“Not yet,” I said. “But he’ll be all yours.”
I looked at Laura as I said the second part, but she didn’t meet my eyes. What happened next was going to test how much she still wanted to be on the force, and how far she was willing to go to see things through, and we both knew it.
It took both Dodge and me to pull Ross up onto his knees. Then he waved us away saying, “Okay.” His breath showed in bubbles in the blood around his nose as he climbed to his feet. I nodded at the front door. With two guns trained on him, Ross turned and opened it. The door swung inward with nobody to greet us.
We stepped along the hallway, Ross limping ahead of us. He was hurt but not finished, and his pride guaranteed he’d make another move as soon as he had his second wind. It was safer to take him with us and keep him in sight.
I remembered the state of shock and pain I’d been in the day before when I’d been here under such different circumstances. Matt’s broken face and dead body floating in the thick and bloody soup of the pool flashed through my mind. My stomach started to crawl, begging to be fed a pill, and I swallowed the urge down. It sat there in my gut and called to me.
I looked into doorways as we passed, but the rooms were all dark and empty. I kept an eye on Ross, waiting for the sign that he was about to do something stupid. In the kitchen I noticed a mug of coffee on the counter. I slipped on something and looked down at my feet, taking a step back when I realized I was standing in more coffee, and the remains of a smashed mug were scattered across the floor. As we walked toward the glass doors of the conservatory, more dribbled coffee slicked the floor.
I pulled open the glass door and the smell of pool chlorine mixed with decomposing flesh hit us straight away, hanging in the moist air. Dodge led the way through with his gun outstretched, like in every film he’d ever seen. Laura waved her gun at Ross and he followed. We went after him, and I covered my mouth to stop the wet death climbing down my throat. Halfway into the room I noticed a chair covered with a black plastic sheet next to a pool of vomit. There were no other signs of life, but plenty of death. Two forms still floated on the surface of the water at the far end of the pool. Branko and Matt. Their pallid skin was wet and bloated, their features distorted.
I stepped to the edge of the water and saw a third body in the water.
Ransford Gaines.
He was wrapped in a bundle made of the wheelchair and his blankets. His dead eyes stared up at me, and his arm was raised, his limp hand just beneath the surface, inches from the air. He’d died trying to break free of his wrappings and reach the surface, but I guessed he didn’t have the strength. How long had he taken to drown, and had he known who betrayed him?
“Daddy was right. It’s going to take a lot of cleaning up.” Claire’s voice came from behind us. “I’d wanted to wait until you were here to get rid of him, but he figured it all out too soon.” We turned to see Claire stepping through the glass doors we’d just used, pointing Branko’s gun at us. She was dressed in a suit that looked like one her sister might have worn, with leather gloves covering her hands and her hair tied back away from her pale face. She looked like the office angel of death. “I’m sorry about the mess.” She waved at the vomit rather than the bodies. “But Ronny just can’t seem to hold down her drinks.”
“Where is she?”
She pulled back the plastic sheet to reveal Veronica Gaines slumped in a chair. She was pale, with more vomit around her mouth, but her chest moved slightly, showing shallow breaths. Her eyes fluttered briefly and closed again. She wasn’t tied down but looked way too out of it to move.
“Wanted her alive when you got here. Wanted you to see it happen,” said Claire. “But you took too long to get here and she figured it out, just like Daddy. I had to dose her up a few times while we waited. You took forever.”
“Why? Why all of this?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes flicked from me to Ross, and it tipped me to his movement. He made a grab for Laura’s gun and they tussled on the edge of the pool, both having their hands on the weapon. Even after the beating, Ross was too much for Laura. His large shoulders flexed, putting all his strength into it, and he turned Laura’s hands back toward her, aiming the gun at her face. My heart jumped and I made a grab for their locked hands, but Dodge got there first and slugged Ross at the base of the skull. The big man teetered on the edge with cloudy, unfocused eyes and grabbed for Laura, then Dodge.
I saw Dodge fight for control, his breath coming in angry bursts. Then I saw him give into the feeling as he shot Ross in the head, and the air around them was filled with a brief shower of white, red, and pink. Ross’s body fell into the pool with less of a splash than I would have expected for someone so huge. Fresh clouds of blood and brain matter began to spread through the water. I definitely had no plans to clean the mess up this time.
Claire had stepped toward us during the few seconds the fight had lasted, but Dodge was quicker again. He turned his gun on her.
“Fuck’s going on?” he said.
Claire tilted her head to one side like a patient schoolteacher and smiled at me. “Going to explain this little family drama for him?”
I shrugged. “Not really.”
She shot Dodge. Her aim wasn’t great and she hit the outside of his t
high, a large chunky flesh wound, but he fell backward into the water with the scream of a child. It echoed around the hall. Laura turned to grab for him, pulling him to the side of the pool. I didn’t know if he could swim—and he’d be going into shock, which would make it harder—but I had other things to think about in that moment.
“I should get on with it,” Claire said. She walked closer to where her sister was tied in the chair and pointed the gun at her head. “My aim is crap, but I can’t miss from this close, right?”
From the front of the house I could hear banging at the door. Claire must have locked the door after we’d come through it, and that chunk of wood made this place more fortified than a castle. We had a few seconds before whoever was outside thought to try the windows or come round on the side of the house to the conservatory.
“The whole time, you just wanted to be boss. Why not just ask?”
She laughed. “Ask? Beg? No. We’re criminals. We take. Ronny never got it. She wanted to have meetings and talk about real estate. We don’t need dreams. We take what we want and we take it now. I tried to do it the easy way, set up the Polish deal. New suppliers that could cut out the cartel, show Daddy who would be best. But you fucked that up. You just keep changing the plan.” She pressed the gun closer to her sister’s head. “So I’m thinking on my feet here.”
“Bitch.” Veronica stirred as quickly as her father had done the previous day, and lashed out a punch at Claire. It connected with her gut and pushed her backward, sending her off balance and falling backward into the vomit. Veronica started to climb to her feet, unsteady through the haze of drugs. Claire fired off another shot, hitting Veronica in the gut. Veronica buckled to her knees, then fell onto all fours.
I stepped forward and grabbed for Veronica but her weight pulled me down, into the path of Claire’s aim as she raised the gun again. I tried pulling the two of us clear, toward the pool, where Laura was trying to lift Dodge out of the water, but I just fell backward. Claire made an angry guttural noise like an animal, and pointed the gun at me. The shot echoed around the chamber, the sound exploding in my left ear. Claire’s face was split by something red in slow motion. Then a second shot went off and her chest flashed with the same color, even slower. She fell backward into the doorway and didn’t move.
