by Jay Stringer
I hadn’t been in Wolverhampton’s main police station lately, and the layout had changed. From the outside it looked like the same large red brick building in the city center overlooking the tram station. Inside, it wasn’t the old fashioned setup I remembered. The break rooms had been replaced by conference rooms and even one just for prayers. They’d replaced most of the offices with cubicles, and my old CID space had been taken over by the HR department.
The interrogation rooms back in my day had been different, too. Cold and gray, with flimsy tables and plastic chairs. Designed to make people uncomfortable, to make them edgy and nervous. But the simple truth turned out to be that edgy people get defensive. They clam up and hold things back. When they eventually break, they blow apart, releasing a torrent of anger or violence, and throwing information in every direction, much of it useless.
No, it’s comfortable people who talk. People who are relaxed and have been tricked into trusting their environment, with a cup of coffee in their hand and a warm voice talking to them. Now the game was to tease out the information that was needed, and avoid asking for anything extra that CPS might use to throw out the case.
It was perfect in theory.
But I was not comfortable.
The clock was ticking. I had to get Matt to safety, I had to get the hard drive to Gaines, and we had to satisfy the cartel—without anyone ending up a corpse in the process. I needed this interview to be fast.
“Changed since your day, yeah?” Murray was sitting across the table from me, his hands drumming playfully on the desk, occasionally turning over to show empty palms. Look at me; I’m open and friendly. “The room used to be a shitehole.”
I nodded. “Different paint, same shitehole.”
He laughed and eased down in his chair, looking at me for a long time. Getting a fix on where to go next. I wondered who had mentored him in the fine art of interrogation. If it were Becker he would come at me directly, use facts and half-truths to get what he wanted. If it were Laura I was in trouble; he’d sneak up on me, crack my brain open with a barrage of seemingly innocuous questions.
“I’m told you used to be good at this bit,” he said. “This was your home turf.”
“I was good, yeah. Got people to talk. For some reason criminals trusted me, and would talk more to me than anyone else.”
“I think we both know why they trusted you.”
Boom. This was a new game. He was switching between the two, playing it coy then throwing a hard punch. It was as if he’d learned from me. Fortunately, he hadn’t. He was playing me at a game I knew better than he did. I sat in silence, staring at my own upturned palms with a slight smile. Look at me; this palm trick means fuck all.
I hadn’t been searched. I still had everything in my pockets, and I’d been signed in at the desk as a visitor. Whatever they had on me wasn’t enough for an arrest. I was here to trip myself up, to give them something. Their problem was that I knew this.
The door opened and DS Henry stepped in, carrying a file. She shut the door behind her with a soft click. That had changed too; those doors used to close with the sound of a casket slamming shut. She sat down, nodded at Murray, and clicked the record button on the digital recorder that lay between us.
“Mr. Miller, thank you for joining us. Just to explain what’s happening, this is a recorded and documented meeting. I will be chairing the meeting.” She looked briefly at the tape recorder. “The meeting will be chaired by me, Detective Sergeant Sarah Henry. Detective Sergeant Joseph Murray will be taking notes but will not be taking part. You are not under arrest and are free to leave at any time, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. And for the recording, could you please confirm your full name?”
“Eoin Aaron Miller.”
I couldn’t read her expression. Her smooth, young face didn’t give anything away, a cold mask facing me across the desk. “Thank you. Now, Mr. Miller, do you understand why you’re here?”
“I don’t believe I do.”
“Mr. Miller, when we picked you up an hour ago, we advised you it was in connection with Mr. Tony Keane. Would you agree that’s true?”
I paused, nodded. “Yes.”
“So when you say you don’t believe that you know why you’re here, that is not a correct statement, is it, Mr. Miller?”
“Okay, I guess that’s right.”
“I would ask that you be honest and truthful with us at all times during this conversation, as it will make things more complicated if you keep things from us, and this is already a complicated matter. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Shit. She’d rattled me straight off the bat. She’d learned from Laura.
I tried to find my bearings, to raise my game before she could see that she’d rattled me. But then her glacial composure gave way a little to a hint of a smile, and I knew she’d already seen it. Murray, who was looking down at his notepad as he scribbled away, grinned. This was fun for them. I could feel the interview stretching out, the door getting farther away. Matt was in trouble. The ticking clock at the back of my mind was getting louder.
“Mr. Miller.” She leaned back now, comfortable that she was in control. “How would you characterize your relationship with Mr. Tony Keane?”
Answers flashed through my head. Any number of lies that I could tell. Straight up denials or half-truths, engage with her in the game and see if she could take me. Then I took the sensible route and decided to tell as much of the truth as I could.
“We’ve worked together on a few things over the last couple of years, business ventures. Is there anything specific you’d like to know?”
She nodded an acknowledgment of my approach there, a slight gesture that said, well played. “We would like to talk about your involvement with Mr. Keane at The Hound Hotel, which was located on School Street. Can you confirm you had dealings with Mr. Keane at that location?”
“Yes.”
“How would you describe the nature of those dealings?”
I would prefer to do it in the form of interpretive dance.
“Mr. Keane was employed by the hotel as on-site caretaker and security guard. I’m employed by a holding company with a stake in the hotel, so I met with him often to discuss the security and general running of the hotel.”
“What do you mean by general running?”
I brushed that one off. Didn’t bite. “In a small business, everyone is involved in all aspects of running it, and my conversations with employees such as Tony reflected that.”
“So you would say you were involved in all aspects of the hotel’s operations?”
I could feel the ice cracking beneath me. I took a step back. “I would say I believed that to be the case, yes, but I would have no way of knowing if things were kept from me. I was, after all, probably seen as the enemy.”
“What makes you say that?”
“When you work for the holding company, staff sometimes sees you as a spy or as someone who might take away a job.” I shrugged. “Hazards of middle management. Staff probably only told me what they thought I wanted to hear.”
She eyed me. “That’s a strange thing to say, don’t you think? Do you have reason to think they were keeping things from you?”
I smiled and leaned back. Teflon-coated. “Well, the hotel burned down and now I’m being questioned about it in a police cell. I doubt you’d have me in here if everything there was above board. So, yes, I suspect they kept things from me.”
“I see.” She was thinking as she spoke, seeing which direction she could push me in. “So you admit there may have been illegal activities there?”
“There may have been. I’d be lying if I denied that.”
“But you say you had no awareness of these activities?”
“That’s correct.”
There was a
long pause. Murray and Henry nodded at each other, and Murray pointed at something he’d written in his notes. Henry leaned over and read it. She stayed silent a moment longer, letting me see her eyes run across my features before settling and meeting my gaze.
“Mr. Miller, when was the last time you spoke to Mr. Tony Keane?”
Lie.
Lie.
Truth.
“The night of the fire.”
She continued staring into me. “And what did you discuss?”
Now to get creative. “He’d heard there was drug dealing going on in some of the rooms, kids paying in as customers and using the rooms to sell from, before moving on to another hotel. He wanted my advice.”
“Why yours?”
“Like I said, overseeing everything was my job. Since I used to work for the police, I get asked to give advice on legal problems like that.”
“To make the problems go away?”
I shook my head once. “No, to prevent them in the first place.”
“This holding company you refer to. That would be Mann Holdings, is that correct?”
The ice cracked wide open. I felt a wobble. “Yes.”
“I’ve looked them up at Companies House. They were set up ten years ago by Gaurav and Charnjit Mann. Gaurav passed away three years ago, I believe. Have you spoken to Charnjit Mann recently?”
They both knew he was dead. Everyone knew. His businesses being taken over by Gaines had been a far bigger show of force to any upstarts than any physical threats would have been.
“Channy prefers to be a silent partner these days.” I laid my palms open again, trying to get a pleasant reaction, claw some ground back. “I believe he’s in India with his family.”
“I see that Mann Holdings, as of their last published accounts, still makes large payments to Charnjit’s wife, and also to savings accounts in his children’s names, but nothing is listed as going to Mr. Mann himself, nor to India. Is that not odd?”
“Not really. Channy has his fingers in a lot of pies. To be honest, I don’t think he ever paid a wage directly to himself as long as I knew him. Probably a tax thing, but you’d have to ask him.”
“You said as long as you knew him, meaning you don’t know him anymore?”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Like I said, I’ve not spoken to him in a while.”
“Uh hmm.” She read another document in her file then looked up at me, feigning an idle question. “You say you work for Mann Holdings, yes? Because the documents I have here say you’re listed as the director, and have been for two years. Why did you fail to mention that earlier?”
“I don’t like to brag.”
Both Murray and Henry smiled at that one before she started again. “So it would be more accurate to say that you run the holding company that has a share in the Hound Hotel?”
“Yes.”
Again the documents, and again she looked like she’d just thought of something, like Columbo in the TV show. Just one more thing. “In fact, the document I have here shows that Mann Holdings is the major stakeholder in the hotel. In fact, your company owns eighty percent of the business. I’m wondering, if I look into these names that own the other twenty percent, if I won’t find your name buried away in the paperwork somewhere. Or maybe another name, one that you haven’t given us so far. Would you like to give us anyone else’s name, Mr. Miller?”
“I think Spartacus is a good name.”
“Sorry to butt in.” Murray looked up from his notes. “But we are straying off the reason for inviting Mr. Miller in today.”
He smiled at me before looking back down at his notes. I tried to read his posture. Was he doing me a favor or playing to a script? Henry bit at the inside of her cheek for a second, either biting back anger or playing to the same script. With such a visible reaction on both their parts, I guessed it was a set up. I could feel something big coming.
“Mr. Miller, are you aware that two bodies were found in the fire?”
“I’ve heard it on the radio, yes.”
“But not through your holding company?”
“I’ll get right on that.”
She slid two photographs across at me. One a holiday snap, the other taken in a bar on a night out, the alcohol obvious in their slack smiles. I’d seen both photographs before. It was the confirmation I’d been looking for.
Craig and Maria Cartwright.
I kept my face neutral; hoped that no recognition had crossed my face that Henry or Murray might have seen.
“We haven’t released their names to the media yet, but this is Craig Cartwright and his wife, Maria. They live locally and we have not yet determined why they were staying at the hotel, or whether they signed in under their real names. It’s a strange one, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I’d agree that the whole thing is strange.”
“I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Miller. We have witnesses who describe Tony Keane having meetings with you on the night of the fire, so I’m glad you volunteered that information. Mr. Keane himself has not been seen since. His wife has reported him missing. She’s convinced he died in the fire, but he’s not there.”
Wait, were they pinning this on me or on Tony? Rattle my cage to show me I need to cooperate, maybe, as they find a way to blame everything on Tony and close the case?
Worked for me.
“Mr. Miller,” Henry said. “Do you have any knowledge of the whereabouts of Mr. Tony Keane?”
“I haven’t seen or heard from him since that night.”
Murray tapped at his watch with his pen. Henry nodded and leaned back, gave me an open and easy smile before stretching her arms out ahead of her and then leaning forward to hover her finger over the tape recorder.
“Okay, Mr. Miller, we’ve not got much more to ask you but I suggest a short coffee break. I’m suspending the meeting at four forty-two.”
She turned the tape off and stood up, followed by Murray. They both smiled at me, all nice and friendly, and that was when I knew: the trap had been set but was only now about to spring. Henry headed out of the room rather than for the coffee machine, and Murray started to follow.
He paused in the doorway and turned back. “You know we have witnesses saying that DCI Laura Miller was at the hotel on the night of the fire, right?”
Crack. The ice beneath me gave out, and I fell through.
I was still searching for an edge to hold on to when the door opened again and Becker stepped into the room. He smiled at me, and it was one of the scariest things I’d ever seen.
Matt was on his own.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Becker sat opposite me. He had a folder of his own sitting closed on the desk to his left. He had a pen in his right hand that he tapped on the desk. It was matching the sound of the cartel’s ticking clock in my head. Becker didn’t buy into all the new thinking about making people comfortable during interrogation; he wanted people on edge when he grilled them. He didn’t start the digital recorder or speak. He just sat there.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I saw him cast a second glance to the wall, where a video camera was mounted above the door.
“It’s been switched off, right?”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I tried something else, gave him a bit of what he wanted. “Is it me or Laura?”
“I’ll ask the questions. Let’s start with this—are you still telling people you were clean when you were on the force?”
He leaned to his left and lifted the folder open just enough for him to see what was inside. He slipped three sheets of paper off the top and slid them over to me. They were financial statements, with a number of transactions circled in pencil. I knew what they were without looking because I recognized the letterhead of the mortgage company
. Becker went back to tapping his pen on the desk.
“These are statements from the house you used to own on Park Road East. The transactions I’ve circled are ones we can prove came from the Mann brothers. Those dates? You were still on the force for some of those.”
I shrugged and slid the papers back across the desk.
I realized the game plan. It had been going on under my nose the whole time. Becker had been transferred to an intelligence unit shortly after we’d both seen evidence that Laura was corrupt, around the same time I had started working for Gaines. I’d burned the bridges on our friendship by lying to him about Gaines, and I’d assumed he’d transferred to the Hobs Ford assignment to fuck with me. Now I knew that was exactly why he’d done it, but not for the obvious reasons that I’d assumed.
“It’s all a cover, isn’t it? You’re not really on Hobs Ford. You’re writing Perry’s re-election ticket. You bring in this case, he gets to claim it as his pet project. He’ll claim credit for cleaning house, then give a press conference that guarantees him another term. You’ll go with him, too. Top brass. How many people are you willing to step over on your way up?”
He let the pen fall to the table to punctuate my question, the sound ringing out before being absorbed into the comfortable carpet. Then he leaned back in his chair. “There you go with your high horse again. One of us in this room has always been clean, and it’s not you.”
“Who are you after?”
“After your little stunt with the immigrants, I was set on Gaines. Which means I was also set on you. And, let’s be honest, going all the way back to that Polish thing, you know that means I was also set on someone else, too.”
Laura.
“And which of us have you got on the block today?”
“Well, that depends. I’ve already got more than enough to build a case against you, and those mortgage statements are just the start. But this is all small potatoes. Headline would be, ‘Local gangland figure, ex-cop, and Gypsy, tied to the drug trade.’ You think anyone cares? No, that doesn’t really excite us. But Veronica Gaines? Local businesswoman? Patron of charities? Now we’re talking. And Laura Miller? Detective Chief Inspector Laura Miller? I’m on the edge of my seat.”