by Jay Stringer
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2013 Jay Stringer
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Extract from Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (Copyright © George Orwell, 1949) by permission of Bill Hamilton as the Literary Executor of the Estate of the Late Sonia Brownell Orwell.
Published by Thomas & Mercer
PO Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612183398
ISBN-10: 1612183395
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012917234
Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me.
—GEORGE ORWELL
CONTENTS
Flames rise around…
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
The flames are…
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
The flames lick…
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
The flames are…
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
Flames rise around…
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Flames rise around the corners.
Dancing red and yellow. They roar like a lion. It hurts my ears.
I’m four years old. This is the first time I’ve seen my family burned out of our home.
I cling onto my mother’s arm with both hands. I’m scared, but I can’t take my eyes away from the flames.
From inside the caravan comes blackness. A living cloud that follows the flames out and chokes the air around it.
It spreads toward us. I bury my face in my mother’s side, but my father pulls me to stand with my brother. He points us toward the flames.
“Remember this,” he says. “Na bister.”
Other families gather round. Some of their homes are also burning. Those who haven’t been burned out are packing up. Getting ready to move on. Again.
My mother wraps me in a blanket and sings to me. The other women who travel with us sing traditional songs, songs of our people. My mother’s songs are different, and in a few years I’ll understand why.
But right now I’m only four years old.
My home is burning.
It starts here.
ONE
The man driving the car wasn’t much for conversation. That was fine with me. To paraphrase a song lyric, I like awkward silences because I grew up in denial. I eased back into my seat and watched the scenery fly by.
He’d barely waited for me to sit down before he pulled away from the curb. He didn’t say where we were going, but he didn’t need to; when you’ve sold your soul, you’re just along for the ride…And I had a feeling where this ride would end. I was in deep with the Gaines family.
As far as crime in the Black Country went, the Gaines family was old money, connected through Ireland and eastern Scotland, with enough muscle to keep the Birmingham gangs at bay. The head of the family was Ransford Gaines. I didn’t know him well, but he and my father went back to the seventies. I’d never asked too many questions about the family connection, for the same simple reason I was keeping quiet now. The song lyric said it all. The Hold Steady had written the story of my life with that one.
These days, his eldest was running things. Veronica Gaines: tall, good looking, trouble. My mother had always warned me about women like Veronica, but when was the last time anyone listened to their mother?
The thought of seeing Gaines made my stomach hurt, and I rooted in my pockets for my prescription, trying to keep the pain off my face. No need for the driver to know that a madman had rearranged my insides with a knife five months earlier, or that the doctors had spliced me together like a faulty electrical cable. No need for him to know that the same attack had left me with a nice scar down my leg and a knee that hated me. I felt my hand shake slightly as it held the pill bottle and wondered which ones I’d remembered to bring. I was hooked on:
Pills for my digestion.
Pills for the pain.
Pills to sleep.
The booze and the coffee had been replaced with:
Orange juice.
Peppermint tea.
Ginger biscuits.
I could medicate my stomach and ignore my knee, but nothing eased my nightmares. Some nights I dreamed of the attack and the pain. Some nights I dreamed of the blood. Every night I returned to the same dream, the flames. Flames that were as old as I was, flames that had followed my family each time we moved.
Every night the dreams would drive me out into the darkness for a walk. And I guess the walks had become so regular that people had been able to predict them. As I’d rounded the corner near my flat, the black car had slid up to the curb next to me.
“Get in,” said the driver. “The boss wants a word.”
What the hell.
I had something better to do?
TWO
My chauffeur-driven car pulled up outside of Legs, the Wolverhampton nightclub owned by the Gaines family. It was off the books, hidden above and behind a row of shops on Broad Street. There were no licenses to apply for, no tax forms to fill out, and no laws to follow. Both the council and the police knew it was there, but it was the perfect solution for both of them. If they turned a blind eye, then the illegal stuff was kept off the streets, and crime statistics stayed down. Back when I’d been a cop, I’d learned the hard way that stats rule the world.
It was all part of the game.
Bull was waiting by the door as we pulled up at the back of the club. Five times bigger than Jesus and twice as scary, he was Veronica Gaines’s right-hand man. He’d been a small-time pro wrestler on the British circuit when he killed somebody in the ring in Blackpool.
He clamped his bearlike grip on my shoulder and pushed me ahead of him, through the open door and into the heart of the club. Like much of the Gaines operation, Legs looked classy at first glance. Expensive. Like a Vegas club in a Hollywood movie. Look deeper, though, and you would remember where you were. That the dark drapes were covering cracked and crumbling walls, that the music was being pumped in off an iPod, and that the lights were kept dim to hide the girls’ bruises.
At three in the morning, the place was just getting going. Men and a few women reclined on large sofas as they watched the latest imported dancing girls. They also gambled. And they snorted.
At least the sucking and fucking was conducted in private, out of view.
Bull led me to a dark
corner near the bar and pushed me down into one of the sofas. As he walked away, I saw one of the dancers start to approach me with her money smile in place, but a glare from Bull made her stop in her tracks. Then I smelled a familiar perfume.
It was rich and musky, worn by a woman with a type of class none of the dancers could mimic. As Veronica Gaines walked across the room, everyone stopped for a moment to follow her with their eyes. Her suit was dark and sharp, to match her hair. Unlike the club, she didn’t seem to be hiding any bad bits. She slid onto the sofa beside me and handed me an amber drink.
“Orange juice for me,” I said, with a little too much force.
Gaines noted it with a slight smile. She nodded a signal at someone I couldn’t see, and the juice appeared moments later on the table beside me.
“Eoin.” Gaines said my name as though she liked it. “It’s been awhile.”
“You’ve got my number; you could have called. Or were you hoping to impress me by sending a driver?”
“You’d know if I wanted to impress you.” She smiled again. “I mostly did it to annoy you.”
“Well, it worked.”
“How’s your new flat? You moved out to Wednesbury, right?”
Subtext: I’ve still got you on-leash.
I just nodded and sipped my juice.
She looked me up and down. “How are you healing up?”
Subtext: Hope you feel well enough to work.
“It’s fine. A few pills, you know.”
“And how is the football going? Are any of our boys going to make it?”
Gaines, who had set up a youth club in the family name as a publicity stunt, had hired me to coach football to the local kids. It was outreach stuff, using football to bring together the different ethnic groups and to work with children the schools were giving up on. It was community work paid for with blood money, and the only job I’d ever enjoyed.
“I wouldn’t hold out hope. I’ve got Bauser’s kid brother involved now. He’s got some game. But he’s already too old for the scouts.”
In sports, just like everywhere else, the decisions were made young.
Gaines pretended to think about what I’d said before getting to the point.
“There’s somebody I want you to meet. He needs help, and I think you’re just the man to give it.”
“This doesn’t sound like football coaching.”
“I won’t ruin the surprise. I’ve given him your mobile number, and he’ll be in touch when the hours are more civil. It’ll be interesting for you, working for someone who works during daylight. There’s a whole world there, you know?”
“And what am I supposed to do?”
“I’ll leave that for him to explain. It’s perfect for you.”
Darkness danced in her eyes. There was a joke I wasn’t in on.
“No, thanks, I want to stick to the coaching.”
“You’ll be able to fit in both, don’t worry about that.”
“Listen, Ronny.” I tried the nickname for effect, looking for a reaction. I didn’t get one. “Last time I got involved in any of your business, my innards got cut and spliced. I’m out of that game.”
Working for Gaines was the reason I’d been attacked. The situation had left four people dead and had made Gaines a lot of money. It made sense. Behind every hero is someone turning a profit.
She shrugged. “I’m sure we can throw enough of a pay raise at you to make you change your mind.”
I was sure she could, too.
“So why couldn’t this person just approach me himself?”
“He doesn’t know about this meeting. But I want to impress upon you how important this is to us. All of us.”
“All of us?” I said, mimicking her serious tone. “Is this from your old man, or did you just develop a multiple personality?”
“When you need help, we’ll be here,” she said, her face anything but amused. She reached inside her suit jacket and produced a thick bundle of notes that somehow hadn’t ruined the lines of her suit. “Your new client will want to pay you. He’s honest like that. But you’ll shrug it off, okay? Pretend you’re doing it for free.”
I sat there for a minute and tried to think of a moral high horse to climb up on. Then I took the money and stayed quiet. She eyed me up and down for a minute; then she nodded a dismissal.
As she stood up to leave, she paused and looked down at me.
“You will need our help. When the time comes, don’t hesitate. And, Eoin? I mean it. This one needs doing.”
No pressure.
She turned and walked away. The eyes followed her across the room again as she left. I felt the money in my hand, and I hoped, not for the first time, that whatever part of her was kept hidden away was something sad and lonely.
Some of the dancers saw the cash in my hand and began to circle.
THREE
I’ll let you in on a secret.
There’s no such thing as an honest client. Not for me. There’s a whole world set up for honest people. They can go to the police or the newspapers. They can call the Citizens Advice Bureau. They have support groups. People who come to me are people with something to hide.
So it came as a shock to be contacted by a Catholic priest.
I’d made it to bed as the sun started to bleed its way across the morning sky. The light poured through the window and washed over me. It felt good. It had been a long, wet winter, and even the cold March sunlight felt like an improvement.
The phone woke me up shortly before noon.
“Is this Mr. Miller?”
I don’t wake well. My response was half spoken, half grunted. He introduced himself, and over the course of an awkward conversation that was like being asked on a blind date, we arranged to meet at the church after closing. I had to ask what the open hours were.
Why would Gaines be paying me to help a priest? As the meeting time approached, I sat in the pub, clinging to an orange juice. Running the numbers, thinking through the scams. Trying to see in what way this might possibly screw me. If I’d sat there another five minutes, I would have talked myself out of going.
Father David Connolly was waiting for me at the gate. He smiled and took my hand between both of his. They were large and warm, and it felt like he was holding my hand between two fleshy cricket gloves. The rest of him seemed too small in comparison. He looked around sixty, but not tired out; his eyes still seemed to have fire in them. He pointed in the direction of the church, and I walked on ahead of him. I settled into a pew near the front as he followed behind, locking us in. There is something very unsettling about a church at night; generations of ghosts sit at your shoulder.
“I’m not very comfortable with this,” he said as he settled into the pew in front of me.
“If it helps,” I said, “neither am I.”
When he spoke, I caught the vaguest trace of an Irish brogue in his Midlands accent. He spoke quietly and chose his words carefully. It wasn’t hard to picture him standing in front of a congregation, using the same slow cadence while reading passages from the Bible.
“I’ve never been hired by a priest before,” I said. “You’re not going to ask me to find God, are you?”
A smile played at his lips. “I know exactly where he is, don’t worry.”
Priests have a kind of earnestness that makes me nervous. I’m used to lies. I can trust them. Depend on them. Honesty scares the hell out of me. Faith? Even more menacing. It made me want to lash out.
“That’s why you called the Gaines family?”
The comment hit him hard. There was a big bundle of something tender, and I’d hurt it. His flinch was visible.
“She told you?” He shrugged and then came out fighting. “I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s her father’s daughter all right, always messing with people. Does the dirty work bother you?”
Both of us paused. We all write a book in our minds about the people we meet. I wondered for the second time what he was writing in mine. I was drawing o
n an anger I didn’t understand. The story of my life: I never know when to use it and when to run.
“No,” I said. “Honest work bothers me.”
“Dirty or honest, I do need your help,” he said. “I work with a lot of charity groups, as you can imagine. These days most of them are aimed at helping immigrants from the Middle East, or people who have fled war zones, Afghanistan and Libya.”
“All of our greatest hits.”
“Yes.”
“Not that many Christians coming from there, though, surely?”
He bridled for a second, like he wanted to correct me, but then he let it go. “There’s all kinds. But I know what you mean. Truth is, only a small part of the work I do is through the church these days. A lot of it is out of hours, so to speak. I know it’s the cool thing to insult the Catholic Church, but we’re still here to help people.” He shrugged. “Right now, that usually means I take the collar off and talk to people as David, rather than Father David.”
“Hope you get paid overtime.”
He pointed up at the large cross behind the altar. The man stared down at us from beneath his crown of thorns, looking hurt and lonely. “There’s a legend about a gypsy who…” He paused, unsure if he’d said something wrong. I nodded for him to go ahead. It was okay. The word gypsy only bothers me if a moron is using it. “Okay, then. Do you know it? The legend about gypsies making the nails?”
My father loved the old myths. They were part of his religious upbringing, and he came alive when he told them. I thought back to the way I’d first heard it from him.
“A gypsy was hired by a Roman soldier to make twelve nails, to be picked up the next day. That night, his daughter had a vision of what the nails would be used for. She managed to steal back all but three of them, which made the Romans angry. We’ve been on the run ever since.”
He nodded. “With just God’s love to protect you.”
I tried not to laugh out loud.
“What am I here for, Father?”
His mouth opened and closed. His lips framed words, and then he gave up before he spoke. Eventually he stopped looking for the delicate and went straight for the honest.
“Rape.”