Eoin Miller 02 - Old Gold

by Stringer, Jay

  I thought back to how they’d each handled my question at the house. Stephanie hadn’t shown much emotion. She remained composed through it all, almost cold. She must have done all her crying on this subject a long time ago. It was Michael who’d cried, the water welling without fuss in his eyes as he talked.

  “It was hard,” he said. “Even in twelve years, you can’t understand how much things have changed. Maybe if it was now, if I was Chris’s age, maybe it would be easier.”

  “I think Chris would say different,” I said.

  “Yes, you’re right. But you can’t know, Mr. Miller, how hard it is to live a lie, to be trying to live as something you aren’t.”

  I knew too well. Chris and I weren’t that far apart, living in denial and liking awkward silences, except that he seemed to be happy.

  “I knew all along, of course. I think so. It’s hard to explain or to put a moment to when you realize your sexuality isn’t the same as everyone else’s around you. When you’re a boy—I’m sure you’ll remember—when you’re a little boy, you really aren’t aware of your sexuality in one way or another. You know that there are men and women and that they’re meant to fall in love at some point. You get to high school, and you know that you’re supposed to fancy the girls, and you think maybe you do. I did. I really did fancy them. But I also thought the boys were cute as well. You don’t understand any of this, do you?”

  I’d looked him straight in the eyes. He’d looked desperate for approval.

  “I think I can. Go on.”

  “I fancied the girls, hard not to, and Steph was so cute.” His smile seemed to come from a lost age, and Stephanie joined him. In that moment, they looked like a real couple for the first time since I’d met them.

  “She could have gone out with any of the boys, but she liked me, and I liked her, we got on so well. But after we, uh, well, you know. Afterward, as we were going out and things were getting serious, I knew something was wrong. It was like I realized I’d always known it. I wasn’t brave enough to just come out, and I really liked Steph, so I carried on. We got jobs, a house. I tried.”

  Steph left the room. I thought perhaps to cry, but she returned with fresh coffee. I needed to start giving her more credit.

  “When I walked out, Chris was old enough to know what was going on. I hated that part.”

  “You didn’t hate leaving your wife?”

  “Well, see, I’d lived with that for so long. Knowing I needed to do it. I was upset, but I’d been upset about it for a long time, so I was prepared. But nothing”—he paused and wiped tears away—“prepares you for walking away from your child. Nothing.”

  “But you did anyway.”

  “I was going insane. And I wasn’t making Steph happy. The town, I don’t mean to say it’s a backwards town, but to leave your family for another man? That’s something I doubt people will ever forgive. It would have made my life hell. It would have made Chris’s life hell. It was really good of Steph to agree to keep it secret.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” Stephanie said without emotion. “I did it for Chris.”

  She turned to me. “Mike’s right, Mr. Miller. At school. Growing up. Chris would have been the butt of every joke going. I didn’t want him going through that.”

  “So on paper, we’ve always been together,” Michael said. “Always stayed married. Our families know the truth, and a few of our friends, but that’s it. And I still think we were right.”

  “And you almost seem to believe yourself when you say all of that. The secrecy has nothing to do with your job, right? Wasn’t it just a little bit easier to climb the ladder by leaving it out? I’m sure your political ambitions were never a factor in your bullshit either,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my voice.

  “That’s not how it was—”

  “No? And the affair you had with Ash Coley. He’ll say he’s just as trapped as you, I bet. He can’t tell the truth about who he is without losing his power; he’s terrified of the people he controls. Why did you throw him away? Was it because you were embarrassed to be gay or embarrassed to be with scum like him?”

  The truth stung him, and I pressed on. “It certainly got to Chris, when you walked out. A child that age can’t understand. I don’t think a child twice that age can understand. He must have resented you. He hated you for leaving his mom, for leaving him, and you did it because you were gay, so he hated that as well. Then at some point, maybe the same way it happened for you, he realized he was gay too. The very thing he hated about you. That’s a hell of a thing for a teenager to carry around.”

  Stephanie and Michael moved to hold hands. The emotion seemed genuine.

  “Until he came to terms with who he was,” I said, standing up and nodding for them to follow me.

  I snapped back to focus in the car. Neither of the Perrys had noticed me zoning out. The rain had stepped up from a mist to a drizzle.

  We’d had to rub off the car windows a few times as we sat there waiting.

  “What are we doing here?” Stephanie asked.

  “Just wait,” I said.

  Across the car park from us, one of the flats in the block came to life. A light came on in the hallway, framed by a pane of glass in the door. Through the glass we could see movement.

  “OK,” I said.

  Jellyfish stepped out, put his hand out palm upward to check the rain, and flipped up the collar of his coat. His blonde girlfriend stepped out after him, in jeans and a three-quarter-length coat.

  “There.” I nodded.

  Michael laughed. “That’s not Chris.”

  “Oh god,” Stephanie whispered.

  “You remember telling me that Chris always liked to dress up, always liked to paint his face?”

  Stephanie nodded and smiled. Michael just looked puzzled.

  “Look at him, Mike. Just look.” She pointed at the blonde. “Look past the hair and the coat, the makeup.”

  Michael squinted for a moment, then straightened up, and I knew the penny had dropped.

  “Oh god.”

  “Doesn’t he look happy, though,” said Stephanie.

  “Yes,” said Michael. “He does.”

  I leaned back into the seat and watched as Jellyfish and Chris walked down the hill, headed for the town.

  “Do you know the boy he’s with?” Michael turned in his seat to look at me.

  “I do, yes,” I said.

  “Is he good?”

  “Honestly?”

  Lie? Omit? Tell the truth?

  “He’s good enough.”

  They exchanged looks.

  “What do you think we should do?” Michael said.

  They both turned to look at me. I shook my head and reached for the door handle.

  “You didn’t pay me for that,” I said.

  I opened the door and stepped out into the rain. I banged a good-bye on the roof and walked down the hill toward town. Somewhere there was a drink with my name on it.

  I woke up with a violent hangover.

  I remembered drinking in Walsall and snatches of a bus ride and some ill-advised driving of my car. Then I’d somehow ended up back at Posada for last call. No lock in. I’d had enough of those. I didn’t remember my dreams, and that was a good sign. Perhaps I’d had an easy night’s sleep for the first time in a while. I felt a little lighter, having put one thing to bed.

  I just had one more thing left to do.

  The dead have a far greater hold on us than we admit. Sometimes I think the dead have a greater hold on us than the living.

  My mobile rang, and I recognized the number.

  “Eoin.” Becker greeted me as soon as I pressed the button. “Perry called me just now. I guess you didn’t do what I asked, huh?”

  “Sure I did. I found the kid.”

  “You know what I mean. Anyway, he’s happy with whatever you did, and they say they’ve decided to leave Chris where he is for now. Asked me to thank you and said that he won’t forget that Laura or me were so su
pportive. Don’t know what Laura had to do with anything, but never mind. Listen, I’ve got some stuff for you. Can we meet up? Where are you now?”

  “I’m at my house.”

  “I’ll come round there, then?”

  “No, no, it’s not somewhere I like to be at the moment. How about West Park? It’s just across the road from me.”

  “OK. On the bridge like in the spy films?”

  What was it with him and spy films?

  “Sounds good. Fifteen minutes?”

  “Twenty.”

  Fifteen minutes later I was leaning on the side of the bridge, watching the ducks when Becker approached from the far side of the park.

  “Just like in the spy films,” I said.

  “I suppose we should have brought bread for the ducks,” Becker said.

  “So what have you got for me?”

  “I really don’t know, exactly, but I think you can tell me. But Eoin, whatever it is, it’s trouble.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You said you wanted to know about a Polish drug dealer, name of Thomas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that sort of matched with something I’d seen. It jogged something, and I needed to look into it before I could give you anything.”

  He pointed off to our left, and we walked to a bench.

  “I remembered, a while ago, hearing about this case. But it wasn’t me who picked it up.”

  He stopped talking while a young couple walked past, really playing up the man-of-mystery role. He had me hooked.

  “A few weeks back, this guy was pulled in for questioning.” Becker reached inside his jacket and pulled out a photocopied sheet of paper that he passed to me. “He was arrested in the Apna pub for possession with intent. The arresting uniform found class-A narcotics on his person and reported finding a lot more in the suspect’s car.”

  “How much?”

  “Difficult to say.”

  “Why? It would be in the report.”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute.”

  I looked at the paper he’d handed me. It was a copy of a passport identifying one Thomasz Janas, a Polish national who had entered the United Kingdom eight months previous. Now I had a face to put to the name. He looked cold and mean but youthful, like a young man who was learning the trade the hard way.

  “I know why he was arrested because I remember talking to the uniform in the canteen around that time. ’Course, this was back when we still had a canteen. Did I tell you they closed them down to make way for prayer rooms?”

  “Beck—”

  “Yeah, OK, anyway. He was bragging to me about his case, kidding himself into thinking he’d get any of the credit. Anyway, he told me there was enough heroin and cocaine in the guy’s car to buy a brand-new Mercedes.”

  “Simple case, then?”

  “It would seem. But then the guy, this Janas, he was released after two days in custody. All charges dropped.”

  “Have you guys made it legal now to carry coke and H?”

  “No way, not this side of an election,” he deadpanned. “It’s strange. The official report shows no mention of either. It states that after the arrest, he was searched and found to be in possession of an eighth of marijuana. He was told off for smoking, warned of the health and legal risks, and sent on his way. I checked the intranet and the EFB. There’s no record of anything else.”

  “So the uniform lied about the arrest?”

  Becker stared at the lake for a while. “I don’t believe he did, no. I tracked him down yesterday and asked him about it again. Subtle, like. He has no idea that Janas walked. He told me he’d been asked to keep the case quiet. Promised a part in court once the trial went ahead.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Joe Murray. I don’t think you’ll know him.”

  “No, name doesn’t ring any bells.”

  “Trust me, this guy’s no bright spark. By the time he wakes up enough to start asking questions, he’ll have lost out on any leverage he ever had. He’s never getting out of that uniform. What do you know about Janas?”

  “He’s a dealer, a big one. He’s been getting drugs into town and selling them cheap. Taking business from both Gaines and the Mann brothers.”

  Becker shook his head. “Jesus,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  “How do you see it?”

  “Someone at your place set this guy loose and managed to lose the evidence. That means one of two things.”

  He nodded. “Either he’s been set up as a grass or it’s, well…” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Another fucking cover-up.”

  Becker shuffled in his seat. “There is a third option, you know. It could be that someone is building this as a big case. Something to build a career on, you know?”

  And right there, I knew why he was uncomfortable. I knew why he was trying to convince me of a third option even before we’d discussed the first two. I turned and looked straight at him.

  “Laura,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “She was the case officer. It’s her report that writes him off as a pot smoker. The real story did a runner between the arrest and her report.”

  “Have you listened to the interview tape?”

  “Yes. It matches everything in the written report. Janas is questioned about his usage and given a telling off. The usual script.”

  “So somewhere between Murray making an arrest for possession and Laura pressing record on the interview tape, Janas managed to lose a stash of class-A drugs and become an idiot stoner.”

  Fuck.

  My wife was in this. She’d covered up Janas’s trail and let him go. What was she getting herself into?

  “Look, you and I both know that she wants that DCI office permanently and that she’s not got enough pull to get it yet. But if she managed to bring together a major drug bust under everyone’s noses, she’d be set for her entire career.”

  “You think she’s just sandbagging?” I asked.

  “Playing it slow, yes. Maybe sitting on the real report so that nobody steals the case or turning this guy loose to grass for her. Either way, she’s sitting on a hell of a case here.”

  I could practically hear the cogs spinning in his head.

  “No,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’re not going to find a way to muscle in and share it. You’re not going to mention it to her. And you’re not getting any more involved than you already are.”

  “So what do I get out of all this?”

  “You got a beaten pensioner and a gay student. You should be happy.”

  “Gay?”

  “Long story.”

  I stood up and left him alone with his questions. I had too many questions of my own bubbling around in my head and not enough answers to go around. I had a sinking feeling that I couldn’t shake—the feeling that I was in way over my head.

  Traffic was going from bad to worse.

  The Wolves were playing at home in a few hours, it was an important game and the roads were getting crowded. I almost felt the match-day buzz. It would have been the first time in a long time.

  Laura had moved into a brand-new two-bedroom apartment on the corner of Key Gardens and Jeremiah Road. The estate had been called Saint Peter’s Walk back when we first looked at it. It was part of the very same urban renewal program that was driving the problems to new ground in Heath Town. A collection of three- and four-story houses along with apartment buildings, Saint Peter’s Walk wanted to feel like a gated community but without the gates. With the snarling traffic, it took me twenty minutes to do a half-lap of the ring road and find her apartment complex. As I drove I tried to think of tactful ways of addressing the subject of Thomasz Janas. I couldn’t think of a single way that didn’t either implicate me in murder or accuse her of covering up a crime. I decided to give up planning ahead and just wing it. Why change the habit of a lifetime?

  I parked around the corner from t
he apartment building and walked round.

  I’d never been inside, but from the outside it looked like everything she was and I wasn’t. Clean, modern, and well appointed. I imagined the usual pastel colors and simple white furniture. A pile of magazines on a coffee table. Maybe a photograph of us somewhere, hidden away in a shoebox. The kitchen would be the sparest room; I was always a better cook than she was. She wouldn’t have a cupboard full of spices or a fridge full of food.

  As I rounded the corner, I caught sight of a familiar car. It was the same car that Bull had forced me into on the way to visit the sports club, and Bull was leaned against it, smoking a cigarette. He hadn’t noticed me, and I hung back out of sight.

  I tried not to look at him, to turn my attention to the passing traffic, for fear of him feeling my stare. He shifted his weight on the car, and for a moment I thought he was going to turn and look my way, but he merely turned toward the car and opened the rear door nearest the curb. No sooner had he done so than the front door of one of the ground-floor apartments opened and Veronica Gaines walked out.

  In the doorway I saw Laura, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. In fact, the bottom dropped out of my world completely.

  Veronica turned and said something to Laura, who extended her hand with a thin smile. Gaines took it in a quick shake before nodding a good-bye and ducking into the car.

  Bull walked round to the other side and let himself into the back of the car. After a moment the car pulled away from the curb and vanished around the far corner, back into traffic. Laura looked around as if she felt me watching, then shut the front door.

  I was numb.

  Laura had let Janas go.

  Janas was in hiding.

  Veronica Gaines had warned me off the case.

  Laura had warned me off the case.