by Jay Stringer
When she finally turned to me I was treated to the full beam of her bright smile, which probably worked a treat on anyone other than me.
“What can I get you?”
I asked for a Coke, and as casually as I could make it sound, said, “Is Craig in?”
She frowned while pouring my drink, “No.”
Her tone said there was something there, bubbling beneath the surface. I just had to find the right way in.
“Shite.” I made it sound like I was mad at myself. “I must have got the time wrong. Know what time he’ll be back?”
She handed me my Coke and took my money, running it through the till before returning with my change. “No, and I’m not sure I want to know.”
Almost there. I played it easy. “Oh, what’s he done this time?”
She peered at me for a second, and I could see the cogs spinning. Was I really an old friend of Craig’s? I sounded like it. Why would someone come in and pretend like that? She shrugged. “I’m meant to be off today. Only had to come on for an hour to do some cleaning and get the sandwiches made. But when I get here? No sign. He’s not in to open the pub, and the regulars are outside waiting. They say he closed up early last night, too. Just kicked everyone out without a reason.”
“He didn’t call you?”
“Nope. No texts, nothing. I bet him and her ladyship have jetted off somewhere again. He never bothers to tell us lowly workers.”
I jumped on the reference to Craig’s wife. “She’s really done a number on him, right under the thumb.”
“I know, right?” She was on my side now, and I got a different kind of smile as she leaned in closer. “But fuck ’em. I’m going to charge overtime for this. I had plans today, going shopping with my sister. We were going to get a train down to London, really blow off steam.”
“That’s a long way to go to blow off steam.”
She smiled again. “We have a lot to blow off.”
One of the regulars approached the bar and mumbled something in the thickest accent I’d ever heard, and she turned to him. It was his turn to get the full force of the smile. There was a time when I worshipped barmaids. They had the power of the beer, and that was enough for me. I wondered if feeling drawn to them was something you grew out of and then back into, if so, were these old men at the bar my future?
I had the cure for maudlin thoughts and dead-end leads in my pocket, so I pretended to have forgotten where the toilets were and followed the barmaid’s directions round to the other room, a larger bar with a flat-screen television and a schedule of televised football matches stuck to the wall beside it. At the end of the bar was a single door with a sign saying TOILETS. I pushed through into a narrow corridor. Both the male and female toilets were to the left, side by side, but to the right I saw the corridor led to the bar I’d been sitting at, and the blonde was facing away from me, talking to the customers. Just behind her, a few feet between us, was a staircase leading up.
I stepped quietly along the passageway, my feet sliding across the vinyl floor, and then put my weight on the bottom step, testing to see if it would creak. When it didn’t, I stepped up onto it and climbed the stairs, bracing myself against the walls on either side to take as much of my weight off the steps as I could. The stairs led straight up to the living area and opened out onto a landing with five doors. I slipped off my shoes and left them at the top of the stairs. I tried the door straight ahead of me, but it opened onto the bathroom. Sleek and modern with shiny white fittings. It smelled strongly of bleach and air freshener. It felt like a bathroom that would look down on you for being dirty. I don’t like judgemental rooms.
To the left was a small bedroom, with a single bed pushed up against the wall beneath a window on one side and three overstuffed wardrobes along the opposite wall. Next up was the kitchen, modern and fitted, with a silver double-door fridge bigger than my car. In the sink, a few dirty dishes sat in cold water. I remembered why I’d left the bar in the first place and rummaged in my pockets, laying out two small plastic bags on the counter. I pulled a small round pill out of one and popped it into my mouth. Out of the other I took a small capsule that was divided into two sections. I broke it open on the counter and tipped out the powder, then lined it up and snorted it. My head shook with a brief aftershock; then my neck grew cold and distant. I stood and waited while the numbness settled. Then I pocketed the bags and went on exploring.
On the other side of the landing the first door opened onto a large living room, with windows looking out onto the road. There was a dining table in the corner and a full Ikea living room set in the middle, all arranged around a flat-screen television that was almost as big as the one downstairs. There was the same smell of bleach in here. On the floor by the sofa was a deep stain, and the smell of bleach was strongest there, like something had been scrubbed out of the carpet. I knelt down and touched it, rubbing my fingers in before smelling them, but the only odor that was sticking was the bleach. I pushed the cream-colored sofa back a couple of inches, but the damp patch didn’t go any further.
I went back into the bathroom and looked more closely at its insane cleanliness. Was the room judgemental, or was it screaming out for help? I smelled the sink and the bath, and both carried the thick scent of bleach poured down the drain.
I tried the next door and found the master bedroom. More overstuffed wardrobes lined the wall. These were a varnished pine, and a queen-sized bed stuck out into the room from the far wall. There was a chest of draws beneath the window, lined with trinkets, jewelry, and framed photographs—Craig and his wife in many of the same pictures I’d seen on Pepsi’s Facebook page. There was a small pile of mail on the floor beside the bed, and I bent down to flick through it. Bills, circulars, and a few catalogues. All were in the name of Maria Cartwright. One of the bills had a different surname: Maria Boruc. I guessed it was her maiden name. That meant she’d given me her real name at the hotel, and her accent had been genuine too. No faking, no covers.
That was a bad sign.
I’d been assuming she was experienced, that she was a pro at lying and probably killing. But if she’d given me her real name it suggested she was all in, she’d had nothing to lose and no escape plan. Maybe the drugs weren’t an act, either. Every time I thought I had a grip on what was going on, I turned out to be pulling on another loose thread.
I read through some of the letters, hoping to find something I could use, something that would leave a trail to where they might be, but there was nothing. I went back into the living room and picked up one of the cream cushions, dropped it onto the stain and then stood on it. After a moment I picked it up and turned it over. The bleach had seeped into it, bringing along with it the charming smell. But there was something else, something that no amount of scrubbing had gotten out completely. A smell I’d become familiar with the night before, and the faint traces of a stain, a watered-down dark reddish-brown. Back in the bathroom again I opened the cupboard beneath the sink and found the plumbing. I wrestled with the plastic piping that attached to the plug hole for a few minutes until it started to loosen; then I unscrewed it and pulled it loose. I held the tube upside down over the toilet as its content dribbled out, and it confirmed what I already knew.
Blood.
Blood can be misleading. A tiny cut in the right place can fill a bucket. A large gash somewhere important can be ignored until it’s too late. But blood that someone had worked this hard to cover up?
Definitely more than a paper cut.
I made my way back down the stairs, then slipped out without speaking to the barmaid again. Back out in the car I checked my phone and saw missed calls from both Laura and Gaines. I wasn’t ready yet for the conversation with Laura, so I called the boss.
“Hey—”
“There are two bodies.”
“What?”
“On the radio, it said fire crews have found two dead bodie
s in the hotel.”
“What the fuck?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.” She paused. “Look, Eoin, I need to know— fuck it, did you actually get rid of the bodies last night?”
“Ronny, I promise, I’m not lying to you.”
“So the two they’ve found aren’t the two we knew about?”
“No.”
“Fuck.”
She hung up.
She was right—
Fuck.
Two dead bodies. My gut usually tells the truth, and when it twisted on me I knew what it was saying. I was looking for two people who were nowhere to be found—and two dead bodies had turned up in the burned-down wreckage of The Hound. I don’t believe in coincidence. The blood in the pub opened up more questions, but I re-focused my blurry mind back on the hotel. What the hell had I missed? I’d taken Maria at her word and believed that she’d killed Jelly. She’d then vanished and Tony had turned up dead. She’d given me her real name, so she hadn’t been planning on anything beyond that moment. She hadn’t seen a future in which protecting her identity mattered.
Shit.
There was something—or someone—else at play here. And I’d let the trail go cold. Maybe I’d been wrong to dismiss Dodge as the threat. I needed to know for sure who the two dead bodies at the hotel were, but all I could do was wonder whether it might be the pub owners. Knowing for sure was out of my hands for now. Leave that one to the police. It did change the game, though, because the police investigation would overlap with mine, putting me in their sights, and a clock was ticking. I had to focus on something I could control. Change track, back to—
Jellyfish.
What did he have?
How did he get it?
How was Jelly linked to Craig and Maria?
I checked the address on the business card Pepsi had given me and drove out to Wednesbury. I’d lived there a couple of years before. It was a small market town and almost nothing exciting had happened there in a thousand years. Hardly the location for a booming film studio, but then again, this was porn we were dealing with. From other investigations over the years, I’d realized that the business address of a porn company usually lead to nothing more than a cheaply furnished suburban home with a camera in the bedroom and a computer in the spare room for editing footage. That’s why I was slightly surprised when the address belonged to a storefront photography business on the high street. My former flat had been on the same block as this store, just a few doors up. If there had been a pornography studio on my street when I’d lived there and I hadn’t known, I clearly wasn’t making the cut as a man.
It was a sleek and shiny storefront. The window was decorated in the same style as the website, with lots of black and silver, and across the top a sign written in large letters, saying, STUDIO 31 PICTURES. The message was very different than the implied sleaze of the website, though. There was an old-fashioned camera in the center of the window surrounded by photographs of families, young women, and pets. Through the glass I could see a reception area decorated in the same style as the window, looking like a budget version of an Art Deco film studio.
There was nobody in the reception area, but the lights were on and the door was unlocked. I stepped in and stood by the low black desk, waiting to be noticed. At the back of the room was an open door, but the space beyond was dark. I tried to imagine Humphrey Bogart or Lauren Bacall stepping out and asking me what I wanted, full of moxie and spunk, but what I got was an elderly man in a suit. He was a few inches shorter than me, probably topping out around five eight, and his hair was silky, a silver crown pushed back from his face. His frame was slight, almost skeletal, and his movements were small and considered. His suit was more an architectural masterpiece than an item of clothing, with sleek dark lines that looked expensive. Something in me turned over at the sight of him, and my skin crawled as I fought the urge to back out the door. The same sense that tells you to step away from certain people in public places was now telling me to find a machine gun and take aim.
“Hello.” Did his voice carry an accent? It was hard to tell with one word.
“Hi. I was looking for,” I took a second, trying to think of Jellyfish’s name, “Jeremy?”
He nodded, small and gentle. “Aren’t we all.”
There was an accent to his words, but I couldn’t place it as anything other than “not English.” Whatever it was, it carried a cold and sterile edge. His features didn’t give a clue either. His skin was a few shades darker than white, but nothing that couldn’t be earned by relaxing weekends in the sun.
“He’s not around?”
“I’m afraid not. We’ve been waiting for him to come back.”
We? That set off a twist of spidey-sense panic in my stomach. The doorway behind him seemed to grow a little larger, and the dark shadow beyond it took on a more solid, menacing form.
“Are you a friend of Mr. Fish?” He took a step forward. “Perhaps you can help us?”
“Oh no.” I noticed nerves touching the edges of my own voice. “I wouldn’t say we were friends.”
“Business partners perhaps?”
He stepped forward, and his face sparked a little as he mentioned business, something igniting briefly in his eyes. For the first time I noticed his hands. They’d been behind his back when he’d first stepped into the room, but now they were at his sides. His left hand was turned away, trying to conceal what it held—
A handkerchief.
Stained red.
I recalled the name Matt had given me. “Is Simon available?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid he’s not. He will be tied up for the foreseeable future.” The hand holding the handkerchief twitched slightly. “We’ve been unable to contact his girlfriend, I don’t suppose you have her number?”
“Uh, no, Sorry.”
I kept arriving at a scene to find blood waiting. My stomach was in a full-blown twist now, screaming at me to get out. I smiled at the old guy and mumbled something that I hoped sounded like a witty kiss-off. Then I turned and stepped out of the shop.
I walked back up the road toward where I’d left my car. I turned back briefly and the old man was standing in the doorway of the shop, watching me. His head was cocked slightly to one side. I thought for a second, with his hair pushed back and his head cocked, that he looked like a gecko in a suit.
I pulled my car keys from my pocket.
I got the hell out of dodge.
I calmed down as I drove, slipping my go-to CD into the slot and letting the voice of Paul Westerberg make me feel safe again. I’d gotten good at spotting dangerous people. I’d met gang members who had been ready to shoot me over territory, and I’d looked into the eyes of a psychopath who had cut me open with a knife. Once you’ve seen those eyes, you never forget them. The old man had those eyes, and they’d set off a flight-or-fight response in me. My father had always told me, “If there’s trouble, be far away from it.”
But what kind of trouble was he? I’d never met him before, and I knew most of the local players, at least by sight. None of them scared me the way he had. Why was he in town? Who had hired him? There was something out there that connected him to Jelly and the Cartwrights, and all four of them to the fire at the hotel. Something or someone.
I hate mysteries.
I needed to slow down and think. And, as the nervous tug of my gut gave way to a rumble, I remembered I do all my best thinking in the kitchen. Or, if I’m lazy, over someone else’s cooking. Maybe eating a good meal was the best way to stop bouncing from mistake to mistake.
I followed my stomach and drove back into the city.
There were any number of places I could eat for free, but I headed to one where I usually had to pay, a spot called Cheapside Spice. It took its name from the street it was on, but there was nothing cheap about it. The kitchen did the best karahi in town,
and lots of it. The Roma had originated in northern India, somewhere around modern Pakistan, and so the joke with Laura had always been that this was my spiritual food. I knew the restaurant’s owner; she had been a local radio celebrity who had been dragged through the press when a charity she worked with got mixed up with Gaines. She kept a lower profile these days, running a few restaurants and doing “consulting” work, whatever that was. She hated Gaines, but seemed to like me, so it was a place I could go and think, and avoid people who wanted to talk business.
It usually was, anyway.
I sat there after ordering, watching trays of food come out from the kitchen for other customers. My mouth watered at the sight of the heaping plates of balti, karahi, and curry, stacks of naan breads, and pints of Cobra Beer or mango lassi with beads of moisture down the side. The more I saw, the more my stomach told me how hungry I was. Finally my food arrived, but before I picked up my roti to dig in, Claire Gaines sat down at my table.
She was dressed in a sharp black business suit, of the kind her sister used to wear before she stopped trying too hard. Her hair was pulled back into some fancy style that I couldn’t name. I hadn’t stopped to notice how much she had grown up in the last two years. She looked every bit as scary as her sister used to, and everyone in the room noticed it. I saw them all look at her and then very quickly set about not noticing her, in the way you wouldn’t want to attract Joe Pesci’s attention in Goodfellas.
“You never texted me back.”
I said, “What?” But through my second mouthful of karahi it came out as, “Mwhaft?”
She pulled out her phone and read out the text messages as she flicked past them, like a court reporter reading back minutes, “Claire Gaines to Eoin Miller, ten thirty-two a.m., ‘You Are In The Shit, kiss kiss kiss.’ Eoin Miller to Claire Gaines, ‘Fuck you, I’m eating curry.’”