Eoin Miller 02 - Old Gold

by Stringer, Jay

  “Sorry, by the way,” she said, giving the look a voice. “I hate it when I see that on TV too.”

  “I deserved it.”

  “Why did you leave the force?” Rachel looked straight at me, over the top of her glass of Coke.

  I opened my mouth, beginning to go into one of my standard speeches, one of the many variations I’d used in the last few years: Paperwork. Lifestyle. Tiredness. Family. I raised the wine to my lips and drank while John Martyn sang. For some reason, I just didn’t have the heart to give Rachel one of my bullshit stories.

  “I didn’t leave the force,” I said. “I left everything. Everything I cared about. I just didn’t need any of it anymore. A friend was saying the other day that I’ve drifted out to the edge, and I guess he’s right. You know that phrase, ‘The straw that broke the camel’s back’?”

  Rachel just nodded. I thought of all the confessions she must have heard in five years of AA meetings.

  “I joined the force to fuck with my dad. I mean, why else would a Gypsy become a gavver, right? Sorry, that means cop. But then I went from hating my dad to hating everything, everything except Laura and music.”

  “Football?”

  “Oh, no, I hate the Wolves all the time, but that’s different, that’s how it works when it’s your team.”

  She smiled and nodded for me to continue. Again she brushed the hair away and again I felt a slight kick in my chest.

  “When the riots kicked off in London, well, we knew something would happen up here, but nobody knew where or how. When it started, we all went out, tried to stop it just by being there, by talking to people. Later on, the brass wised up, sent people out to actually deal with it as a riot, but not at first. But it seemed like the more I was shouted at, the more I saw anger and violence. I don’t know, I just switched off, like I started tuning out on a radio. That make sense?”

  “Like static?”

  “Yeah, like background noise would get more interesting than whatever was going on, and the angrier the kids on the street got, the more I tuned out. Then I was off duty, and it was raining, really heavy August rain. I was driving home.” I emptied the dregs of the bottle into my wineglass. “There was this old man in the road. He was just walking around, in the rain. He had pajamas on and a robe, but he didn’t have a coat or anything on his feet. I got out of the car and asked him where he was going, and he just looked at me.”

  I looked into Rachel’s eyes, looking for something.

  “Have you ever looked into the eyes of someone who’s not there anymore?”

  “You mean, not there in the head?”

  “Yeah. He didn’t know who he was or where he was. The best way I can describe the look is confused. He mumbled a few things, but he didn’t know what he was saying, there was something missing up there. And he was soaked to the skin.”

  “Maybe he lived in a house in that street?”

  “No. We checked. See, I took him to the hospital, and they dried him off and put him in clean robes, but the doctors said he had real bad pneumonia. They didn’t give him long.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, we checked every house in the street. Nothing. The hospital couldn’t find records on him, and he didn’t know his own name. Imagine that. No name. We tried everything.”

  “Where was his family?”

  “By the end, I’d realized that whoever they were, they didn’t want to be found. Nobody ever came looking for him. Maybe it was the riots, or maybe someone just couldn’t cope with looking after him anymore. I mean, it must be hard, looking after that. You can’t expect everyone to do it.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “And the DCI couldn’t give me any time or manpower. The whole world was watching the riots build up and break loose, and it was all hands to the pump, chasing kids who wanted to steal TVs and boil-in-the bag rice.”

  “What happened to the old man?”

  “I stayed with him as he faded, sat beside him and watched buildings burning on TV. He never remembered who he was. He died with nobody. He died with no name. Can you believe that? A week he hung on, in that damned bed, with nobody.”

  I realized I was crying. Rachel put her hand on my arm.

  “That’s awful.”

  “And when he went, I guess he took me with him. I just couldn’t stay in the world, and listening to that static was better than actually caring about something, you know? The force got me a doctor, a shrink. I think Laura pulled some strings to keep me on his list even after I left, because he won’t stop pestering me.”

  “You ever spoken to him?”

  “Once, the same day I quit. We sat in a quiet room and he asked me a lot of quiet questions. I kept wishing he would shout over the clock, its ticking was louder to me than his voice. But I told him the same thing I told Laura. Nothing is important. Nothing we do matters.”

  She opened her mouth as if to protest, but I kept going.

  “Don’t. You know it. As an adult, you know it. We live in a world where nothing we do matters.”

  “So what does that mean?” she said. “What does that mean we should do?”

  “Nothing. We may as well do nothing. That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

  She shook her head slightly, and I knew she wanted to argue. She wanted to come up with a better philosophy, but she couldn’t find the words.

  “So that’s why you left your wife?”

  “I left her or she left me, I don’t know. It’s all part of the same fog. I didn’t really pay attention.”

  I thought again of the photographs on my mum’s wall. Of how I hadn’t felt connected to any of them. Another time, another person, another me.

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “You’re wrong about all of that. I’ve gone too long sober to think there’s no point to it all.”

  “What else makes sense? Give me a better answer.”

  “I’ll think of one. You keep doing whatever it is you need to, and I’ll think of something.”

  I smiled weakly. “Deal.”

  After a few more minutes she said she was tired. She fetched me a blanket and folded out the futon. She kissed me on the forehead, like a mother kissing her son, and then she went to bed.

  I lay down on the futon, staring at the ceiling, and didn’t sleep. There was no sound but the occasional noise of an early-morning drunk walking past outside, and soon I heard the slow, rhythmic breathing of Rachel as she slept. After a couple of hours I dressed and quietly left.

  I needed to finish the thing with Chris, get it off my back. Becker wouldn’t give me the information I’d asked for until I cleared this case, and my conscience wasn’t going to let me sleep until I’d cleared both. I tossed and turned until dawn, then fought with the bedsheets longer until I heard the world come to life outside. I shaved and showered and ate breakfast in my shiny new kitchen. Bobby had done a great job, but he’d also made the place feel like a hotel.

  I called Becker’s number, and he sounded distracted when he answered. He must have had something important on, because he didn’t give me a hard time.

  “Listen, have you heard any rumors about Perry?”

  The silence on the line was loud and clear.

  “Beck, what is it?”

  “It’s…ahhh...” He exhaled. “Fuck it. I think he’s dirty.”

  “Go on.”

  “After you asked me about enemies? Well, I asked around a bit. Trying to be subtle about it, but you know, these things always get out. So I got pulled into a meeting—it was like, you know the spy movies? Some guy talks to you in a car park and tells you to forget everything you know?”

  “You met a guy in a car park?”

  “Well, no, it was the superintendent’s office. But I mean it was that kind of feeling, right? I got told to stop asking questions about Michael Perry and Veronica Gaines. But see, the thing was, I hadn’t been asking about Gaines.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Then a little later, Laura took me
for a coffee and gave me the polite version. She must have caught it in the neck, so it’s not doing her job chances any good.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That ties into something Ash Coley said—”

  “You’re taking advice from Ash Coley now? Fuck’s sake.”

  “But I think he had a point. He said that Perry would need some funding to get into politics. That’s where Gaines will come in. And someone on your side knows he’s at it.”

  “Listen, I think you should drop the case.”

  “What? You’re the one who’s been pushing me to get it done.”

  “Yeah, but listen. If this blows up, then I’m linked to you and you’re linked to the Mann brothers, and I’m fucked. Or, the other way around, I did this as a favor to Perry, and Perry is linked to Gaines, and I’m fucked.”

  “Beck, there’s still the issue of a missing kid—”

  “No, forget it. I’ll do what you asked and look into that Polish guy, but I want you to drop this. For me, OK?”

  “Sure.”

  Like hell.

  So Perry had kept company with Coley until a bigger fish came along, and now he was on a political trail funded by Gaines. She’d have no motivation for hurting Chris if she was looking to get Perry into office, but both Perry and Gaines had enemies.

  Enemies much bigger and scarier than me. That doubled the threat. I had two options. Follow the money and get in over my head or follow the lies and bully Paul Lucas. Being a coward, I went with the easy route. I phoned the university to ask for an appointment with Lucas, but they told me he was about to leave the campus for a meeting.

  I waited by the exit to his building and followed him when he left. The great thing about people with a secret is that they are paranoid. It shows in their walks and gives them away.

  I followed him to one of the big, brand-name coffee stores. He ordered something tall and weak looking and set it down at a table with a matronly looking woman. Maybe she was his wife, maybe she was a total stranger. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. I ordered a simple coffee and sat at a table in the corner, flicking through a sport supplement that had been left there. It was from one of the national papers and didn’t cover any football teams I was interested in.

  When Lucas got up for the bathroom, I followed. I moved quickly to make up the ground between us.

  As soon as he was through the door, I put my hands on his shoulders and forced him against the sink.

  I’d have loved to have been able to try some Chinese water torture, get a slow dripping tap on the go. But taps in these places have two settings: full and off. And they only give you a brief burst of full before stopping.

  So I settled for second best and shoved the back of his head into the mirror. Not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough for him to know I was serious.

  He started crying. “What the hell do you want?”

  I let him rub the back of his head.

  “I want Chris.”

  Lucas sniffed a couple times, hamming it up. “I don’t know where he is. And it was wrong what you did the other night.”

  “The meeting? Maybe I need help.”

  “You were there to make a cheap point, and it was wrong.”

  “I didn’t realize it was members only at these things.”

  “Bollocks. Privacy is sacred there. You violated it.”

  “I’ll do more than barge into a meeting if you don’t tell me where he is.”

  “What?”

  “Do your employers know? How about the parents of the students?”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Watch me.”

  His eyes told me he knew I was serious. Which was good, because I wasn’t so sure.

  “What is this, the Salem witch trials? You have any idea what AA is about? How much good we do?”

  “Oh, I know, fine. I know the good people there. I also know how easy it is to stir university people into a moral panic.”

  “And you’ll do that to make a point?”

  “No. I’ll do that to find Chris.”

  He glared at me for as long as he could manage. Then he relaxed and gave in.

  “I don’t know where he is.” He was telling the truth. Finally. “But I know who he’s with.”

  He told me the name. It was short and simple. A little explosion went off in my head. Like a Magic Eye puzzle slowly coming into focus at the back of my mind, everything made sense. I knew what secret Coley had been talking about and why he’d sounded so bitter.

  I knew where Chris was.

  I knew what he was running from.

  Stephanie Perry looked surprised as she opened the door to me.

  I’d drifted around in my car, killing time until she would be in, and at half past five in the evening, she had bags under her eyes. The tracksuit she was wearing had seen better days.

  “Oh, come in.” She opened the door wider for me to walk through. “Michael’s not back yet.”

  “I know,” I said. “I didn’t expect he would be. Why don’t you give him a call and get him to come round?”

  The surprise showed on her face again. I sat down in the living room while she picked up the phone in the hallway. She had a very brief and hushed conversation, then came through to join me.

  “He’ll be here in a minute,” she said. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “A black coffee would be great.”

  She left me alone while she fetched the drinks. I was sitting in the living room that bore no signs of a husband’s touch, and now I knew why. I needed to know why I’d been lied to.

  The doorbell rang. After another hushed conversation in the hallway, Michael Perry joined me in the living room. Stephanie followed with three mugs.

  “Mr. Miller.” Michael held out his hand, and I shook it. “What can we do for you?”

  I took a sip from the coffee, which was very hot, very strong. “I know where your son is, Mr. Perry, and he’s alive and well.”

  Both parents looked relieved. It almost made me let them off the hook. Almost.

  “But you’ve been lying to me, and I need to know why.”

  They exchanged looks.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Michael said.

  “OK. Tell me. When did you leave your wife, Mr. Perry?”

  “What—” He sat down, his composure collapsing as I continued.

  “Well, I knew something was up when we met. Sat in the pub, your local pub, with your wife, and something wasn’t right. It took me until today to place it.”

  He just sat there. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

  “See, what got me was when you fetched another round of drinks for you and your wife. The drink you brought back had ice in it.” I turned to Stephanie. “You were hoping he’d remember how you like your vodka orange. But he didn’t.”

  She nodded.

  “See, if my wife and I have a drink together, I have to ask these things. We’ve been separated for a while now, and I can never remember how she takes her drinks.”

  Perry looked surprised. “Well, I hardly think—”

  “And then, later on, you put your hand on hers and she just about jumped out of her skin. That’s something you can’t fake, emotion like that, a shared intimacy. You either have it or you don’t. You didn’t. It looked fake.”

  “Oh please, Mr. Miller. Is this what we paid you for?” He began to stand, as if he was going to show me to the door.

  “For god’s sake,” Stephanie said. “Michael, enough is enough. He’s found Chris. Let’s hear him out.”

  “So you haven’t been a couple for a long time,” I said. “Though you are still married—I checked that. How long has it been?”

  Michael gave up. “I don’t know,” he said. “Eleven years?”

  “Twelve,” said Stephanie in a very quiet voice. “Twelve years last month.”

  “You still live nearby, don’t you?”

  “Just round the corner,”
Michael said. “I’m never far away.”

  “See, there’s a lot about your boy you don’t know. He was hiding from something. And I couldn’t figure it out. Of course, for a while I thought it was because of you.” I was looking at Michael again. “But it’s not that simple.”

  I stopped talking and drank more of my coffee, seeing how long it would take for Michael to snap. It took half the cup.

  “Fuck’s sake, Miller, what are you getting at?”

  “You lied to me. Both of you. Holding important things back. What, exactly, did you hire me for?”

  Michael looked straight into my eyes. “Whatever else you may think of us, Mr. Miller, we are parents, and our boy is missing.”

  I could see the parent shining through in him there, and it was about time.

  “If it was so important, why hide it away by hiring me? That’s what threw me. I kept looking for some big conspiracy, for the corruption that you wanted to keep hidden.” He met my eyes, and a look passed between us. “How are your campaign funds doing, by the way?”

  He opened his mouth and formed a few practiced rebuttals that he couldn’t bring himself to throw at me before settling on a shrug.

  “Relax, I don’t really care.” I noted the look on Stephanie’s face; she didn’t know about Gaines. I decided to give him a small mercy and leave it alone. It wasn’t the biggest lie Perry had told. “I talked to your old friend, Ash Coley. You betrayed him too, in your own way, didn’t you?”

  “Ash?”

  “Save it. Back to your son. I was right, Mr. Perry, there was something about you that he hated. When he realized he was the same, he started to hate himself. It must have been very hard for him to deal with.”

  They both stared at me.

  “So tell me, Mr. Perry. Why do you hide the fact that you’re gay?”

  We were in Michael’s car, parked outside the place where Chris had holed up.

  It was shiny and new; it still smelled of the showroom. The only signs of life were a couple of cigarette butts in the ashtray and an empty sandwich carton at my feet. I’d never seen Michael light up, and he never smelled of firsthand smoke, so I guessed the smoker must be his partner. Michael was in the driver’s seat with Stephanie next to him. I sat in the back, perched forward so that my head was almost between theirs. The windows were steamed, condensation running down the inside.