Down here it was very much a club, dark with flashing lights. Seedy and warm. As long as you didn’t look too close at how cheap the drapes were or at the stains on the floor, you would buy the illusion. There is something silly about strip clubs. You can’t take them seriously; you just have to switch off the rational part of your mind and go with it.
There’s also a very male thing that goes on. Even if you go in full of moral outrage that women have to do this for a living, it all dies down the second you see a dancer walking toward you.
A cute but very made-up brunette walked up to me. “Hi, want some company?”
“Sure, your boss would do fine.”
She shook her head as though I was a wasted opportunity, then walked away to find someone else. I continued to walk round. The club had an open floor plan: a small bar, leather sofas, and a small catwalk in the center. To the sides were curtained-off areas for private dances and doors for even more private things.
A few minutes and a few circles of the club and another woman stepped out in front of me. She was done up far more tastefully, subtle makeup and a dress that covered quite a lot of flesh. I figured she must be more senior than the other women, maybe not a dancer at all. I could smell the money in her perfume, as though it was the smell of molten gold.
“I’m Veronica.”
“Hello.”
“You’ve been making a lot of noise.”
“I get that a lot, sorry.”
“The boss will see you shortly. Why don’t you let me get you a little more comfortable.” She smiled a very nice smile, and somewhere deep inside I devolved into a schoolboy. “On the house.”
I did my best Sean Connery smile, but I’m not Sean Connery, so I probably just looked nervous.
“Sure,” I said.
She walked away ahead of me, doing that hip-swaying thing that I’m sure they practice. She led me into a private room and moved round behind me to shut the door. There was a glass of whiskey on a table, a larger measure than I had gotten upstairs, and a comfortable black chaise that was halfway between a bed and a sofa.
Veronica breathed in my ear and pushed me toward the sofa. I sat on the edge of it and helped myself to the whiskey.
“I don’t suppose you’re Polish, are you?” I asked.
She began to move to the rhythm of the music, very slow and slinky. She leaned in and kissed my forehead.
“I was just wondering, that’s all,” I said.
She was on her knees, and I had no idea how she’d got there without me noticing, dancing in front of me along the floor, crawling toward me.
“I mean, I’m not saying it’s a deal breaker or anything.”
I was surprised by how nervous I sounded.
Veronica’s dancing was getting closer and more fluid. If you could make a cat into a human and name her Veronica, it would be much like this.
I’d given up the idea of being here on business, and I gave up any pretense of being a decent guy the second her mouth brushed past my crotch. As she rose up toward me, her hand brushed over my erection, and she flicked her eyebrow at me in just about the hottest way I had ever seen.
I was just thinking about being in her mouth and letting go when I was hit in the head from behind. The huge frame of a man stepped around in front of me as Veronica moved aside, smiling. He noticed my erection and punched it. Hard.
The spots dancing in front of my eyes prevented me from blacking out.
I hit the floor and rolled into a ball.
“Boss’s ready to see you now,” the man said.
The man dragging me along the hall was named Bull.
He was huge, which I assumed was where the nickname came from. He made your standard nightclub bouncer look like a midget. His size had led him to a number of jobs, from a seaside-resort wrestler in Blackpool to a doorman in London. These days he worked for Ransford Gaines, collecting money, delivering messages, and breaking legs. We knew each other professionally but didn’t mix; Gaines and the Mann brothers had a long-established hatred of one another.
My breathing was returning to normal in small, rattled gasps. I’d managed to fight off the urge to be sick. I wanted to make it look like I was making an effort.
He shoved me shoulder-first through a door and down into a chair.
The office I was in was depressingly normal. It could have been the back office at any shop in the city.
“Hey, Bull.” I nodded a greeting.
“Hey, Eoin.” He nodded back.
“Did you really need to punch my cock?”
“Thought it would be funny,” he said, without a trace of a smile.
“Hilarious,” I said. The pain was still bad enough that I thought I might vomit.
A moment passed in silence before the door opened and Veronica stepped in.
She’d gone from stripper to office manager with one well-placed suit coat. She sat at the desk and smiled at me. Another moment passed before I realized what was going on.
“You’re kidding me,” I said.
“No, kidding you was what we did back there.”
“You’re in charge here?”
“Right now, yes.”
“I need to speak to Gaines.”
She leaned back in the chair and laughed. “I’d heard you were an idiot. I didn’t realize how true that was.”
The penny dropped. Everybody in the room probably heard it or saw the light go on above my head. I really am the slowest man in the world sometimes.
“Veronica Gaines?”
She nodded and did that flick of the eyebrow again. This time it didn’t seem cute or sexy, this time I wanted to run for the hills. Veronica was Ransford Gaines’s eldest daughter. She was regarded as the clever one. Her little sister, Claire, was the wild child. There had been rumors of the old man stepping back, spending more time at his big house in Solihull. Seemed it was more than rumors.
“So what was all that back there? The dance?”
“We thought it would be funny.”
“That’s just what Bull said.”
“His is a dry wit.”
We stared for a minute. I was resisting the urge to rub my crotch. I’d succeeded in rattling their cage, and it had got me a meeting with one of the Gaines family’s senior members. I still wanted to play it cool, though. As cool as I could, considering I’d just been the butt of a very painful joke.
“I want to speak to your dad.”
“Nobody gets to speak to him. You get me. Now what’s this all about?”
“Drugs.”
Veronica nodded to Bull, who gave me a rough patting down and checked under my clothes for a wire. I’d never known a cop actually to use one, but these guys watched TV, I guessed. I felt maybe I should start explaining to criminals in town that it would be the things they took for granted, like phones or computers, that police would tap.
After the search, I smiled my calmest smile and plowed ahead.
“I want to know about the new guy.”
“The Polish guy? What do you know about him?”
“That he’s Polish. And a guy.”
“Then you know as much as we do.”
“I find that hard to believe. He’s taking your business. You’ll have been looking for the dirt on him the minute he took a pound out of your pockets.”
“Looking, yes. We’ve had a vig on his head for weeks. Got nowhere.”
I wondered what reward they were offering. “You never asked me,” I said.
“Eoin, if we could we would. But we both know we would never come to you, unless you fancy switching sides.”
She knew I liked the eyebrow flick, she must have. That would be why she did it again. A firm offer to take dirty money from the Gaines family rather than the Mann brothers. I didn’t really see a difference between the two that should concern me.
“I want to find this guy as much as you,” I said. “If you’re willing to pay me for that, I think I could smooth out my conscience.”
“What’
s your stake in it? You’ve never taken an interest in drugs. Even the Mann brothers keep you out of it.”
I avoided the question. It was still just as likely that Veronica or her dad had ordered Mary killed. I had to be careful.
“I hear your sister is using the product. Is it yours or his?”
Her face changed, the way daylight changes with the rolling in of a thunderstorm. “What that dumb chav does is not important to any of us.”
Chav. It was one of the many words that the English language had stolen from Romani. To us, it just meant a young person, anyone under a certain age. In English, it was an insult, someone with no class or charm. Everything you need to know about the treatment of my people is right there.
Still, I’d hit a nerve. Good. I stored it away, filed under “fun.”
“I only ask because it seems to be our new guy’s approach to poach from you and the Mann brothers. I know he’s been approaching your staff. Getting them working for both of you.”
She nodded. “That matches what we’ve heard. You got any names?”
“Wouldn’t give them to you if I had.”
She digested this and seemed to make peace with it. The room was quiet again for a minute. Then she reached in a drawer behind the desk and threw a small wad of bills at me. I didn’t count them, but they were twenties.
“You’ll find this guy. You’ll find who he is, where he is, and you’ll lead us to him. After that, you’ll walk away and leave us to it.”
Like hell I will.
“Sure,” I said. “I can do that.”
If she didn’t believe me, she kept it to herself. People that high on the food chain suffer from a strange form of vanity; they assume that if they throw money at people, then people will do what they’re told.
And to be honest, I’d done little to disprove that theory.
The meeting was clearly over. I stood up to leave, only wincing slightly as I did.
“Eoin?” She gave me her nicest smile. “If you ever behave like that in our club again, we’ll tear it off.”
The pain dropped away as I shot a similar smile back. “Do I get another dance first?”
I left before she answered.
There was a much quicker way out of the club on the ground floor. But I felt the need to go out the way I’d come in. Smiling smugly at everybody I passed.
I was still in a lot of pain and had a nasty bruise spreading across a really unfortunate area. As a treat, using the money Veronica had given me, I bought an expensive bottle of whiskey and headed back to the flat.
After a long bath and some gentle rubbing, I sat with my brain in neutral through a few hours of very bad television. Then I cracked open the bottle but only took a few drinks to mellow myself out. I stared at the ceiling and aimed for a peaceful sleep. I was now working for both sides in the local drug war. How hard could it be?
I called the Perry family from the flat that morning.
Becker had given me their home number, but they were both at work. The recording gave me the mother’s work number and the father’s mobile number.
The mother was my next call. Her name was Stephanie, and I found when I called that she worked at a school. She sounded more nervous than I’d expected. She asked if I’d be free to meet them in the early evening, to give them both a chance to get back from work.
She mentioned a few pubs. They lived in the area I had grown up in, so I knew them all. We settled on the Myvod in Wednesbury. It tended to have bouncers in the evenings and was away from the town center. It was the one least likely to have trouble or people I knew.
We agreed on five thirty.
I spent the morning looking for Jellyfish.
There was still no trace of him. A few people confirmed what Bobby had said, that Jelly was chasing tail and was probably holed up in whatever hideaway he’d managed to arrange. Well, he would have to come up for air at some point.
I had more luck finding Bauser. The Asian kid who’d led me to him before was standing around outside the bookie’s. I told him I wanted to see his boss, and half an hour later he came and accidentally bumped into me as I was eating a cheeseburger on the street.
I followed him as before. This time Bauser walked up behind me, and we walked together through West Park, across the road from my house.
“Do you know where the new guy is?” I asked him after the usual handshaking.
He wasn’t carrying a gun this time. Not that I could see, though his hoodie could have hidden a bazooka.
“Why the hell would I know?”
“Look, Baus. You know me. You know I’ve always been willing to keep your name out of things. I don’t care what you have or haven’t done. I don’t care who you’re taking your orders from. I just want to meet this new guy. I want to know his name and where I can find him.”
Bauser was quiet as we walked along the lake. Lost in thought—or in ignorance.
“His name’s Tommy. That’s all I know. I don’t know where he lives. He just shows up sometimes, and he calls me on my mobile.”
“When was the last time?”
“Shit, I’m your secretary now? I don’t know. Last week maybe. We haven’t set anything up yet. He said he’d talk to me more next time he saw me.”
“For you to switch gangs?”
“No. He wants people to work for both at the same time. Says it makes him money and makes his enemies lose money.”
“So he doesn’t want to get in a fight over territory?”
“Nah, man. He says taking territory is not as important as taking the people who stand on it.”
Smart man, this Tommy. Somebody should introduce him to the gun-happy gangs over in Birmingham. There would be a lot less blood.
“Next time you talk to him, I want you to set up a meeting for me.”
“How am I meant to do that?”
“Just tell the truth. Tell him Eoin Miller has been using his name all around town, and he’s been asking for a meeting.”
“Aren’t you worried he’ll kill you?”
“If he kills me, I’ll have nothing to worry about.”
I walked out of the park and crossed the road to my house and got into the car. I didn’t need directions to my next destination. Fifteen minutes outside the city, it was the closest thing I’d had to a hometown when I was growing up. I listened to Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind as I drove. The streets were deserted, and almost all of the shops were closed. Once the coal mines and factories had been taken away, suburbs like these had kept going through the life support of the service industry, but now that had gone too.
I drove past my old school, past places where I used to play football. It gave me a strange feeling that I hadn’t expected. My childhood had been anything but normal, but then, we all fictionalize our childhood, get nostalgic for happiness we never had. I’d done a lot of my growing up in a pub. My mum wasn’t Romani, and my dad drew a lot of heat for marrying a Gorjer. It wasn’t an easy culture to marry into, and Mum wasn’t accepted by many of the elders. She knew the problems her kids would face if they didn’t play the game, so she talked my father into settling the family. Their solution was to buy a pub—one with a car park big enough for caravans if family wanted to visit—and we made a go at a normal life. They sent us to a local school, let us make friends and become part of the community.
It was always fake for my father, though, and he never settled into it. There were people in the town who never took to it either. The pub was set alight so often the firemen used to joke that we had them on speed dial. I still had nightmares sometimes about being woken up by thick black smoke and the sound of laughing kids.
The arsonists may have succeeded at some point, because as I drove past where my old home should have been, all I saw was a new housing estate. My memories felt as rootless as my blood.
I drove on through the familiar streets.
When I walked into the Myvod to meet the Perrys, it was nothing like I remembered. It had been full of brown wood p
aneling, with two separate bars, the way pubs used to be. The place I was in now seemed much bigger and brighter. The walls had been knocked through so that it was an open plan with the bar in the middle, and the remaining walls were painted in a neutral light beige. It looked like a large version of a very boring person’s apartment.
The parents were easy to spot, they being the only couple sitting without alcohol in front of them. I sized them up as I bought a Coke at the bar.
Michael Perry looked a very different man than the overweight figure I’d seen on the job. He looked taller, probably because he was thinner. His face was still round, though, carrying traces of puppy fat that had never left. It lent him a youthful appearance. He was wearing glasses, thin-framed ones that were probably meant to make his face look narrower, and his clothes were expensive looking and smart. He looked like a casually dressed politician.
The mother had a faded beauty. I placed her as someone whose looks had probably peaked in school and gone downhill afterward. Her blonde hair was straight and worn to her shoulders around a face that didn’t carry worry well. Her shoulders and waist showed more signs of age, with traces of extra weight that she wasn’t comfortable with, her hands in her lap subconsciously covering her belly. She wasn’t really overweight or unattractive; in better circumstances she would have been cute.
I tried to picture them as a couple twenty years ago, around the time they would have finished school or perhaps a year or two after that. She would have been very attractive for her age and probably considered above him, with his bookish, chubby looks.
He stood to greet me as I walked over to them.
“Mr. Miller,” he said, waiting for a nod from me before he put out his hand. “I’m Michael Perry. This is Steph.” I shook his hand and nodded to Stephanie.
“DS Becker spoke very highly of you, Mr. Miller,” Stephanie joined in once we were seated. “He said you’re the best person he’s ever worked with at, well, this sort of—” She shrugged, avoiding the issue. “By the way, your first name is an unusual spelling, and you never said it on the phone. How is it pronounced?”
“Like Owen, but less E.”
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