Eoin Miller 02 - Old Gold

by Stringer, Jay

  “Chris was fun,” she told me. “He loved to go out. We went clubbing a few times in the first semester, us and a few other people who were on the course at that point, and Chris stood out.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, to talk to him, like normally, as if he was sat here with us now, he was shy. But get him in a club, and he was different. Life and soul, y’know?”

  “So he liked to party?”

  “Oh, yes. He was better at that than anything else. He wasn’t an actor, not really.”

  “He liked drink, did he, at these parties?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “That’s funny,” cut in someone else at the table, a young-looking male. “I never saw Chris drink.”

  I turned my attention to him. His name was Ryan, and he was a year below the others.

  “What did you think of Chris?”

  “He was a laugh. He was very quiet, not loud or noticeable, but he had a great sense of humor. He was one of the few people you’d meet here who seemed sure of themselves. He had a grip on who he was.”

  There was a heaviness to his words. I wondered if he was making a point to someone else at the table.

  “I don’t know,” said Kelly. “Maybe he just paid attention when we were taught about acting. He definitely had a broody streak in him.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  They all exchanged looks, trying to figure it out, or trying to get their answers straight.

  “Last Tuesday,” Kelly said. “I’m sure it was last Tuesday.”

  “A couple of weeks ago,” Ryan said after much thought. “I haven’t seen him lately. I’ve been behind on my work so I haven’t been seeing anyone.”

  I looked at the redheaded boy named Mark, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring off into the middle distance, ignoring the whole conversation.

  I leaned forward.

  “Mark?”

  “Thursday,” he said after a long pause. “I saw him on Thursday.”

  “That’s the last day anyone saw him.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. You and Paul Lucas are the two people I’ve found who saw him last.”

  He just looked at me while I stared back, trying to read his thoughts. I noticed that Kelly and Ryan were staring at him as well. I knew Kelly and Ryan were being straight. It was written on their faces that they were telling the truth. I’d never met a drama student good enough to hide that. But Mark knew something. Was it the same secret Paul Lucas was holding back?

  I took my thoughts up to Lucas’s office.

  I looked in through the thin vertical window set into the doorframe and saw that he was with a student. I moved away from the door so he wouldn’t notice me and leaned against the opposite wall.

  I waited for fifteen minutes before the door opened and the student shuffled past me with a ring binder full of paperwork. I knocked once and then walked in without waiting for an answer. Lucas didn’t smile when he saw me.

  “You should have made an appointment,” he said.

  “I can see that you’re very busy,” I said. I smiled and sat down. “I’ve found that two people saw Chris last Thursday. For all intents and purposes, we’ll call that the day he disappeared, shall we?”

  He gave the smallest shuffle of his head, a gesture that was neither a nod nor a shrug.

  “Two people, that’s all. One of them was you.”

  I leaned back, making myself comfortable. I’d noticed that the more liberties I took, the more pissed off he got. I liked that.

  “You saw him on the day he disappeared. So what was your meeting about?”

  “Nothing important. I’m tutoring him through his third-year project. I was checking his progress.”

  “What is his project?”

  “It’s a script. He’s writing a script. Then he was going to produce a one-off performance of it and write an essay evaluating it all.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “What?”

  “His script. I presume he was getting close to finishing it by now?”

  “Pretty much, all but the final scene.”

  “So can I?”

  “No, of course not. It’s private. I can’t, and won’t, show you his project any more than I would show you anyone else’s.”

  “Mr. Lucas, I’m not interested in anyone else. I’m interested in Chris.”

  “Look, I understand, but I absolutely can’t let you read a student’s work. It would be against the rules, and frankly, it would be just wrong.”

  “You’re either holding out on something or you’re lying. I just don’t know which. But I will.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “What was his script about?”

  He blinked, caught off guard.

  “Alcohol,” he said. “A young man and alcohol.”

  “Mr. Lucas, was Chris an alcoholic?”

  “No.”

  He said it firmly, meeting my eyes dead-on.

  I left without saying anything further. I didn’t need anything more from him. I was back out in the courtyard, walking toward the main entrance, when I heard someone call me.

  I turned to see Mark, the red-haired student from the canteen, walking fast to catch up with me.

  “Was Chris an alcoholic?” I called out, probably too loud.

  It was a hell of a greeting, but it was the best I was going to give.

  “Yes.” He said it quietly. No fuss.

  “Let’s talk,” I said.

  We crossed the road to Jay’s Café.

  It was a small greasy spoon. It only survived during weekdays on students and police officers. On weekends it bustled with football fans.

  We sat down at a table at the back. I had a glass of Coke, and Mark had a black coffee.

  “Tell me about him” was all it took.

  “Chris was great,” Mark said with a smile. “First year, get a drink in him, he really was the life and soul of the party. Well, that’s how it looked. You had to get to know him. Even at the parties there was a sadness in him. He really beat himself up about something, but none of us ever found out what it was.”

  “So he was prone to depression.”

  “Oh, yes. Lots of it.”

  I guess I wasn’t too surprised to hear that. Chris’s mother had told me that he definitely wasn’t depressed, but then, mothers aren’t the most reliable reporters.

  “He just had a way of melting into the background,” Mark said. “Like he didn’t want to be seen. You could sit at a crowded table for half an hour before realizing Chris was there.”

  “Total opposite of his other face.”

  “Yes, the drink did that, does that.”

  I noticed that he changed from past tense to present, and his tone of voice changed too, turned lower, more serious.

  “But what everybody’s been telling me is that he’s changed this year?”

  “Yes. He realized what his problems were, the ones we know about and the ones we don’t. He just seemed to face up to them.”

  “The alcohol.”

  “You want the truth? I’m not even sure he’s really an alcoholic. I mean, yes, he drank to solve problems. But deep down, I don’t think he’s an alcoholic in the same way the other people you meet are. I think he just found that idea as a good way to, I don’t know—”

  “To give a name to his problems.”

  “Does that make sense?”

  “Yes, I guess it does,” I said.

  “Well, whatever, it helped. He was full of confidence this year. Like he’d figured out who he was and what he wanted to do, and quitting drinking was a big part of that.”

  “You quit with him?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, a few minutes ago, you said something that made me think you were talking about yourself as well as Chris, and then when you said—”

  “When I said ‘the other people you meet.’”

  “Yes.” He
paused and took a long sip of his coffee.

  I’ve met a couple of recovering alcoholics over the years, and there’s something in their stare, something in its frank honesty, that unsettles me.

  “Well, you’re right. I am. Alcoholic, I mean. And I really am. I just love the drink. Some people don’t understand how you can drink so much, but they don’t get it. I just don’t understand, I can’t understand, how people can stop at one.”

  I nodded.

  I’ve never known what to say to confessions like this. I just nod.

  “And Chris got me into the program.”

  “Program?”

  “AA. Alcoholics Anonymous.”

  “There’s one around here?”

  “Of course. They’re everywhere if you look. There’s one at the university. That’s more like an overblown support group than proper AA. And there’s a place just down the road where there are three, sometimes four AA meetings a week.”

  “How many do you go to?”

  “As many as I can. Sometimes all of them.”

  “Chris?”

  “He went to a couple a week. It seemed to get him by.”

  “Anybody there get to really know him?”

  “Listen, I can’t do this. We don’t share our secrets, other people’s secrets, to those outside the group.”

  “But you’ve already told me—”

  “Too much. I’ve already told you too much. I feel like I’ve already cheated everyone in the group, but the trade-off is I’ve given you some information about Chris that you wouldn’t get from his friends or family. I can’t give you any more. But usually, if someone stops turning up to AA, if an alcoholic goes missing, it means one of two things.”

  “Which are?”

  “He’s either dead or he’s propped up in a pub somewhere. And neither one of those is good. That’s why Paul Lucas is covering for Chris.”

  “What’s Lucas got to do with any of this?”

  “He’s Chris’s sponsor.”

  Boom.

  Of course Chris was an alcoholic. That had been obvious from the start. I just hadn’t seen it until today.

  And now I knew why Lucas was covering it up. Not just to protect Chris—that was a best-case scenario for his motives. No, he was protecting himself. Addiction was part of modern life. Even on the force, there had been programs in place to offer help to employees who came forward. I bet every HR department in the country would go to lengths to claim there was no stigma involved. But the media deals in witch hunts and moral panics, not reason and modernity. If a senior and respected tutor at the city’s only university was shown to be sponsoring students into AA, his career wouldn’t survive the explosion.

  I thanked Mark, paid for the drinks, and left him to his sobriety.

  My next impulse, naturally, was to head to the pub.

  I didn’t want a drink. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t. But I wanted to sit in the pub, on my usual stool, and stop thinking for a while.

  One of the windows at Posada was covered with a large piece of cardboard, the glass smashed to a jagged edge. Brown parcel tape held the cardboard in place. There’d been a break-in and the pub was full of outraged drunks no longer feeling that their bar was their castle.

  “Anything taken?” I asked the landlord.

  “Just two bottles of leap frog. The till was empty.”

  I ordered a Coke and sat staring into it.

  Chris was an alcoholic. I needed to attend a meeting. He might be there. Or someone there might know where he was. I pushed off the stool and headed back out.

  As I stood outside the pub trying to decide which direction to turn, a car pulled up by the curb beside me. Then there was a strong grip on my arm, and I found myself being pushed down into the car by Bull. He slid in beside me without a word, and we pulled back out into traffic. I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I just sat in a sulk, staring out the window.

  We crossed the ring road and headed past the football ground into Whitmore Reans. It was an area with an identity crisis. Long tagged as one of the problem spots of the city, it had seen a lot of cash pumped in over the past twenty years. Some of the problems moved away to other areas. Others just took firmer hold.

  After a couple of minutes, we pulled onto the car park of a new sports hall. It was the size of a school gym, and from inside came the sounds of a football match: Shouting. Swearing. Squeaking trainers.

  Bull got out of the car and pulled me after him. He led me through a small reception area and into the hall. The game was in full flow, teenagers running back and forth, sweating and sliding. A coach was running around with them, shouting out encouragement and refereeing.

  At the top of a small flight of stairs was the spectators’ area, plastic chairs lined up for an imaginary crowd and a solitary vending machine in the corner. Veronica Gaines was waiting there, wrapped up in a dark coat. I rubbed my arm when Bull released his grip. There was going to be a bruise to match my growing collection.

  “You couldn’t just ask politely? You had to try and make me cry?”

  The brute almost smiled.

  “All part of his dry wit,” Veronica said.

  “You like that line,” I said.

  She looked me up and down. I probably looked tired and beat up.

  “How far have you gotten on our little project?”

  “I’m close,” I said. “I just need to know the right questions to ask to the right people.”

  “That doesn’t sound any closer than the last time we spoke.”

  “You’d be surprised. I know I usually am.”

  “Well, I’m glad you haven’t wasted too much time on it.”

  “No, I’m serious. I’m almost there.”

  “I’m serious too. I want you to stop.”

  I was lost for words. I wasn’t very proud of it. I stood there for a moment, rubbing my arm and probably looking puzzled.

  “You want me to stop?”

  “Yes. I want you to leave the whole thing alone.”

  “What’s changed since last time?”

  She smiled. She tilted her head to one side and watched the game for a moment. It was almost as though she’d been told not to look me in the eye when lying to me.

  “Things have changed. That’s all.”

  “But you’ve paid me.”

  “Keep it. Think of it as a retainer.”

  “A retainer for what?”

  “Look at them, running around. Working harder than at any job they’ve tried to hold down.”

  “What is this place?”

  “One of my projects. Well, my father’s really, but I’ve taken to it myself.”

  “You built this place?”

  “Built it, opened it, paid for the coach. Those kids haven’t had to pay a penny. They just have to keep turning up.”

  “And what, you get them hooked young?”

  She shot me a hard glance. “We have rules here. Any of them found high, even once, they’re out. No drugs in here.”

  “How noble,” I said.

  How confusing, I thought.

  “Recognize any of them?”

  I took a look, focusing on the faces, the body language, the way they spoke.

  “The one in goal? I think I arrested his big brother a few years back.”

  “You did. Auto theft and possession. He’s still inside.”

  “And the kid on the ball now, with the lousy left foot? I caught him stealing from the Mann brothers last year, gave him a cuff and sent him running.”

  “So you didn’t tell the brothers?”

  “God no, they’d break his legs.”

  She smiled to herself and nodded. Then she turned and shared the smile with me.

  “I was right about you. This is what you should be doing. You like giving kids a second chance, not locking them up. Come and work here instead. We could do with another coach.”

  “And what, be part of your noble second chance program? Social work funded by drugs?”

  �
��Do you see the government down here? The council? All they do is sell off the land to housing companies and car showrooms. Good teams like the Wolves and Albion have sent scouts, though, and Villa too. Wolves players even volunteer, come and give talks. These kids can get noticed in here. But take a look at them, what don’t you see?”

  I looked again. There were white kids and black kids, working up a sweat and sharing jokes.

  “No Asians.”

  She nodded. “But you walk outside, onto the estates, and they’re all over. It’s like Little India out there. So what’s going on?”

  “Actually most of them are from—”

  She killed my sentence with a look, so I changed tack. “Well, it’s not as though there’re many Asian footballers to inspire them over here.”

  “Come on. You know we could get them in here. If the Mann brothers weren’t trying to sew things up so tight, we could get Asians in here just like any others. You could do that. You could break the cliques.”

  Right. So that’s what it was. Turf warfare through charity work.

  “You just want into that market. You just want me to bring more business into your hands.”

  “I’m sorry you think so badly of me. Trust me, Eoin, if I wanted you to bring us more Asian business, I would ask you. I’m just trying to give you a job that fits. One that uses you better than the police ever did, better than the brothers do. Away from the drugs and gangs. Working with people. Think it over. And one more thing? I’m serious about the case. Drop it. Stay away from the Polish guy, and stay away from the Mann wankers.”

  I was getting warned away a lot. Laura wanted me to stay away from the Mann brothers. Gaines wanted me to stay away from the Mann brothers and the Polish guy.

  Only days ago, Veronica had been throwing me money to look into it for her. She had found something in the meantime that she wanted me away from. I filed that away to use later. Right now I was thinking of my conversation with Coley, of a subject that Gaines would know about.