Lost City (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 3)

by Jay Stringer

  I rapped on the front door for Tony to step back in. We used each other. He could wait for my orders and then carry them out, pretending his conscience was clear, and I could give him the orders and avoid the dirty work, pretending my hands were clean. “Any other witnesses to worry about?”

  He shook his head, said, “No.”

  Something about the whole situation was wrong, and I knew it. I knew Jelly, or I had known him. He’d been shacked up with a man the last time I’d seen him, and he’d never been the type to pay for it no matter what gender he was in the mood for. Maybe he’d drifted as far from the road as I had.

  “Okay, how long do you need to clean it?”

  He began slipping on blue surgical gloves. “Thirty minutes in here, an hour to get rid?”

  “Perfect. Call me when it’s done.”

  I turned to leave but he called me back. “What about her?”

  Maria. A decision I couldn’t walk away from. She’d killed Jelly—slashed him open and watched him bleed to death. But the rest of the story didn’t ring true. Two years of working for the Gaines family had made me even better at sniffing out a lie, and there was one somewhere in this room. I didn’t know where or what it was, and her version of events was the only one we had. She was a risk to the company, and it was my job to tell Tony to get rid of her. He was waiting for the order. She was pressed back against the wall, looking from the surgical gloves to me, the drugs draining from her wide eyes.

  Enough.

  I’d named enough of the dead for one night.

  “Get her a ride home and some food.”

  I turned and left.

  Casa Mia was a Mediterranean restaurant a few minutes out of town on Dudley Road. In a previous life the same building had been the Apna Angel, an Indian restaurant and bar controlled by the Mann brothers, until Veronica Gaines took over their turf two years before. As I walked in through the service entrance, I saw the woman herself locked in icy conversation with the restaurant’s manager. She was the de facto head of the Gaines family now that her father was in poor health. With anyone else the exchange probably would have seemed heated, but Gaines’s temper was cold and mean, and had a way of looking at people like a predator sizing up prey. It was never a good idea to get caught between Veronica Gaines and her temper. The manager stood red-faced, staring at his feet, as she reeled off to him the list of all the ways he was fucking up.

  I caught her eye for a second and then retreated to her office to wait.

  I helped myself to a glass of expensive-looking whiskey from her drinks cabinet and eased into the expensive-looking office chair behind her desk. The desk, yes, looked expensive. I flicked through some of the papers stacked with military precision on the desk. Maps and plans of Birmingham Airport, a proposal from a gay club in Manchester asking for investment. An Ikea catalogue beneath them with pages folded over.

  So the furniture wasn’t that expensive.

  Her dirty secrets exposed.

  The office itself wasn’t that big. Back when the building had been the Apna Angel, the room had been a bare-brick stock room filled with chest freezers. Gaines had taken the Apna after Channy Mann had forced a confrontation with her and lost, leaving the Gaines family as the last game in town. She came from old money; her grandfather had come over from Ireland and started grabbing pieces of the region for himself as soon as he’d arrived, marrying into an established family along the way. By the time his son, Ransford, handed the family business over to Veronica, she had inherited an empire. It had probably only been a matter of time before the Gaines clan took what the Mann brothers had built; they were self-made, the sons of Indian immigrants who had fought up the hard way during the eighties and nineties, no family connections or deep pockets to rely on in hard times. Before Veronica had stepped in, there had been smaller gangs and families who’d owed allegiance to the Manns, but they’d been open to talking with Gaines once the gang war was over. My own family had allegiances, too, and I’d long since given up ideas of escaping the gravitational pull of my history.

  Veronica Gaines had carved up and reorganized the Mann estate, with my help. Points and pay raises were handed out to the people who were willing to switch allegiance, and warnings were slapped on the few who wouldn’t. People got the message. The culture changed. Muscle and guns weren’t needed once you flashed money in front of people.

  Along the way Gaines had managed to get closer to the one thing she’d always wanted—a clean life. Splitting the combined estate down the middle, she ran the public and honest companies while Claire and I managed the ones the taxman wouldn’t get to see.

  Gaines now ran several restaurants, pubs, and small shops that turned a profit without ever seeing laundered money. When I’d started working for her, she was playing the role of scary crime boss, decked out in sharp suits and dark coats. Now she played a different role, one she seemed more comfortable in, with brighter colors and even the occasional dress. The makeover had worked. Increasingly her appearances in newspapers ran with the line “young entrepreneur,” rather than “gangland figure.”

  But all the right people still knew to be scared of her.

  I was one of them.

  I got up out of her chair when she entered the room. I stepped round to the other side of the desk and waited for her to nod that I could sit down. When she did, I noticed this chair wasn’t as comfortable as hers. It creaked a little. She slipped off her jacket and draped it over the back of her chair, then eased down into the seat, leaning back and rocking slightly, something my chair wouldn’t do. She looked at the stack of papers on her desk and then back at me. Her hair was lighter than the last time I’d seen her, moving toward a sunny brown. I thought of all the compliments I could make, then thought of all the reasons to keep quiet and waited for her to speak.

  “All sorted?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something feels wrong. Looks like the client got high and went nuts, tried to cut open one of our imports. She fought back and went a bit Manson on him. But I knew the guy, and he wasn’t the violent type. In fact, he was pretty much a coward.”

  “Drugs do strange things to people.” She scratched behind her ear, something I’d learned she did while thinking. “I take it she’s still with us, you told Tony not to get rid of her?”

  “How did you know?”

  A smile. “I know you. I know your limits. Drugs, though. That’s not good. Claire’s still warning our girls not to go with users, right?”

  I nodded. “Sure. But the hooker looked a bit of a user herself, looks like maybe he went crazy after he took some of hers.”

  “Was she dealing?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

  Our hookers were self-employed, just like our strippers. They paid a rental fee and a split of their profits to our guy, and he ran the bookings and arranged security. A drug dealer had tried to take advantage of that a year ago, sending people in undercover to pay rental fees and use our own network to sell their products. We’d shut it down but never worked out who had been behind it.

  “Have you been keeping an eye on Claire?”

  Claire had a history with drugs. She’d been a user long before she’d been drafted into running things. Her sister had given me strict orders to keep an eye on her. She wasn’t aware just how closely I’d followed those instructions. Or was she?

  Don’t look worried. “What do you mean?”

  A smile, difficult to read. “Is she pulling her weight? Or doing her usual thing of tricking you into doing all the work.”

  Very good question.

  Very difficult answer.

  “She’s doing fine. Truth is there’s not much either of us needs to do these days, now that things are set up and going so smoothly. We just stay visible and make sure people are keeping us up to date.”

&
nbsp; “And drugs? You seen any signs of her using?”

  I sniffed, then felt instantly self-conscious about it. “No, she’s clean.”

  “Good. But look into the drugs thing with the hooker, make sure that’s not something we need to worry about. I’m going to be busy in the city for a few days, and I won’t be able to focus on stuff there if this thing is blowing up.”

  The City. When I said the City, I meant Wolverhampton. I was being parochial and stubborn. When someone like Gaines said the City, she meant Birmingham. The country’s “second city”—eclipsed only by London. If you tipped the midlands on its side, anything that wasn’t bolted down would roll toward it. It had its own gravitational pull, centered on tall buildings and retail hell.

  “What you got going on over there?”

  She raised her eyebrow. It was my favorite trick. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

  Yeah, right. Hey doggy, here’s a bone. Don’t chase it.

  “I’m guessing it’s something to do with all those business proposals you’ve got there.” I pointed to the stack of papers on the desk. “Some kind of casino and restaurant?”

  She leaned back into the chair and smiled. “Every now and then I forget who I’m dealing with. Yes. The airport’s expanding. They’re getting investment from the Middle East—”

  “There’s a joke there, but I’m not going to make it.”

  “Good. They’re looking at retail parks, hotels, and there’s a tender out for a casino license, the decision is due this week, so the press releases could go out around the first of May. I want to get in on it.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea?” The airport was on the other side of Birmingham, about twenty miles outside of our territory. The gangs in the north of Birmingham had been getting organized again in the last year, putting aside smaller rivalries to join together and make grabs for our land and territory. They were being led by a new guy on the scene, a gang member who went by the name of Dodge and was building a legend for himself. They’d been building up their arms and power at the same time we’d been pulling back and focusing on business. One of our people, Letisha, had set up a meeting with Dodge to cut a deal, and only part of her had come back. “Dodge has muscle and guns, Ronny. More than us right now. He probably sings better, too. We’ll need time to build up again.”

  “You’re thinking too small, Eoin.” She replied to the way I’d bastardized her name by punctuating mine into two syllables Owe In. English people never get it quite right. “You’re thinking gangs, and I’m thinking business. You think they read the financial news? Keep an eye on the airport deal? All we need to do is shake the right hands, invest in the right places. Who cares about the gangs when we’re at the top table?”

  This sounded like more than business. It sounded like her chance to finish getting clean, to move all the way over to the daylight. But it also sounded expensive and more than a little risky.

  “Where will the money come from? A site like that has to be hundreds of millions. Even a fraction of that is more than you can free up.”

  She shrugged. “Leave that to me.”

  I knew the conversation had been shut down. She had secrets, just like I did. There was no way I was going to let that one drop, but I’d learned to play the long game when dealing with Gaines. I stood up to leave. “You go audition for The Apprentice. I’ll sort out this thing with Jellyfish.”

  As soon as I mentioned the name, Gaines’s expression changed. Color drained from her face, and she looked down at her hands, drumming her fingers at the air a few inches above her desk. I’d seen her stare down the barrel of a gun without flinching.

  “Not him.” She said. “He was only supposed to be there for a couple of minutes.”

  I felt the bottom of my world threatening to give way. “What?”

  “You better sit back down.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  She didn’t answer straight away. She looked down at her hands as if inspecting a manicure was the most important matter at that exact moment. Then she let out a little air and leaned back again in her chair. “He contacted me a few weeks ago.”

  “Jelly?”

  “Yes. He’d done some private work for me. Good work. He got me some compromising pictures of the new Police Commissioner’s son.” Her hand waved toward a spot on the floor where I knew she kept her safe hidden. I doubted she knew she’d done that. “Anyway, he contacted me a few weeks ago, said he had proof we have a leak.”

  “You’re not talking about water.”

  She did her eyebrow trick, and I knew Gaines was back in control now. “No. He said someone on our team was feeding information to the police. It made sense because we have seen a rise in busts lately. That grow op on Salisbury Street? How’d they find out about that?”

  “Okay.” She was right, the police had seemed to know a lot about our business lately. “So Jelly coughed up?”

  “Of course not. This is Jellyfish we’re talking about. Nothing comes for free. Except his funeral—that one’s on the house.” She allowed herself a half smile at that. “He wanted money up front. Then he said he’d give me the proof.”

  “You agreed to that?”

  “No choice. This Birmingham deal needs to go through. There’s too much riding on it. Can’t have anything rock the boat.”

  “What could one small leak do to stop a legit deal of that size?”

  “Small leaks get big. And gossip travels.”

  “Okay. Why not get me to deal with it? I know—I knew—Jelly. I could’ve found out what he knew. Sorted it for you myself.”

  She looked straight into my eyes. “Until I knew more, I wanted to keep it to myself. All I know is that I’m not the leak. You have more police connections than just about anyone else on my team.”

  She was right. I’d been on the force before I’d come to my senses, and my ex-wife still worked in CID. But Laura and I hadn’t talked in months, and she was already in Gaines’s pocket. The idea that Gaines could think I was the mole hurt me somewhere else, in a place I’d kept buried for two years. A place I’d never had the guts to reveal. My loyalty to Gaines came from more than money.

  “So how was it going to work? Were you meeting him at the hotel or what?”

  “I booked a room using one of my fake names and left the money under the bed. I sent him a message with the room number, and he was supposed to take the money and leave the proof.”

  In all the mess and confusion of the crime scene, it had never occurred to me to look under the bed. I hadn’t been looking for anything other than what I could already see.

  Please don’t ask me if I looked under the bed.

  “Did you look under the bed?”

  “No, why would I?”

  There must have been an edge of schoolboy defensiveness in my voice, because she put up her hand. “I’m not blaming you. I just needed to ask.”

  “Sure, sorry. So, Jellyfish goes to the hotel to pick up a pile of your money, and winds up dead. Best-case scenario, it’s a coincidence. He decided to get laid while he was there, maybe wanted to pay for it with some of your money, but got high and went mental before he got that far.”

  Veronica raised her eyebrows, making it clear that she wasn’t buying that theory either. That kind of coincidence required a level of luck or naivety that we’d both run out of a long time ago. I felt a twist in the bottom of my stomach. After a madman had rearranged my guts with a knife a couple of years before, I’d never really recovered. This was why I’d kept up my habit of taking pills for the pain long after the wounds had healed. As I stared at Gaines, I felt close enough to agony to consider popping one in front of her, even if it made me look pathetic. But I didn’t. Instead, I squirmed in my seat, trying to ease the problem.

  Gaines nodded toward the door. “I want that money, and I want his proof. They would both have be
en in that room.”

  I nodded. I needed to go and look under that bed.

  I took a couple of pills as soon as I left Gaines’s office. The reason I never took them in front of her was because it would lead to a conversation I didn’t want to have. One of the many conversations I didn’t want to have with her.

  By the time I made the short drive back to The Hound, the pill had started working on my stress, but the pain in my gut hadn’t eased. Spider-Man gets his spidey-sense, and I get a bad stomach. I think he gets the better end of the deal. My stomach was telling me one thing loud and clear.

  This is not going to go well.

  I pulled the car round to the staff parking bay at the rear of the building and scanned the windows above me. About a third of them were lit up, some were open, and I could hear the usual mix of television, arguments, and sex.

  In a huge city like Birmingham, legitimate business people stay in legitimate hotels. Wolverhampton is smaller. It used to be a town. Everyone rubbed shoulders. The Hound was actually one of the better places for a visitor on regular business to spend the night. Most of these law-abiding types never even realized that the third floor was kept for the off-the-books visitors. Tony checked the rooms up there every hour. From what I could see now, all the third-floor lights were out, meaning either business was dead or Tony had made the floor off-limits until the mess was sorted out. He was smart like that. The window to the room where I’d found Jellyfish was still open to let fresh air in to clear smells away.

  I let myself in through the staff entrance and found Richy Bishop, the hotel manager. He was a beaten down man in his early forties. Once tall and skinny, he now carried a heavy round belly, and the weight of it pulled his shoulders down into a perpetual sag. He’d been the manager of one of the national chain hotels, a rising name in the company, but he’d slept with one too many maids and been thrown out the door with his dick between his legs.