Runaway Town (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 2)

by Jay Stringer

  “Whoever you are,” I said as I stepped into the hallway, “you better have a damn good reason.”

  “Do I need a reason?”

  Veronica Gaines was sitting on my sofa.

  With my brother.

  ELEVEN

  This was a different Veronica Gaines from the one I was used to. She was dressed casually in jeans and a black shirt. She was drinking a glass of wine, and the smell of cooking was coming from the kitchen. My kitchen.

  “Sorry,” said Veronica, not looking sorry at all. “I always forget that it’s not polite to let myself in to other people’s homes. Bad habit, but let’s be fair—it’s not the worst one I’ve got.”

  The next thing I noticed was that my living room was clean. The stains from Channy’s visit were gone, leaving just a slightly dark damp patch on the carpet and wall where someone had scrubbed.

  “You know,” she started again, “this place was a real tip. It’s a nice flat. But really, Eoin, you should clean up after you have guests. I had to get someone in here to straighten the place out before we could even start dinner.”

  That hung in the air.

  Guests?

  “Hey, Smudge.”

  I knew it would take a few minutes for me to respond my older brother’s greeting. I hadn’t seen Noah in years. The last time was at my wedding, where he’d threatened to kill me. The time before that had been the other way around, and my hands had been on his throat. He was lounging on the sofa next to Veronica, his face leathery and hard-worn in comparison to her softer features. His dark hair was longish and sloppy, and his goatee showed a few patches of gray. He was dressed in flared jeans that looked like they’d been teleported from the seventies and a bright red shirt beneath a waistcoat. He had a crucifix hanging from his neck and wore too many bracelets for me to count. He couldn’t have looked more like one of the Rolling Stones if he’d tried.

  “Smudge?” Gaines turned to me with her eyebrow shooting for the heavens.

  “It was the name our dai came up with for him when he was young,” said Noah. “Eoin could find a patch of dirt wherever we went. He always found a way to get smudged.”

  Gaines laughed. I tried to get my feet under me and shake off the surprise that was making me feel so off-kilter. I tried to ask Noah what he was doing here, how he got in, and where he had been for four years. It all came out as a shake of my head.

  “It’s nice to see family, but it’s not right to visit without looking up old friends, right?”

  He sat up a little, nudged Gaines. Then he smiled at me, all innocent, as though what he’d said had no implications.

  “Old friends? You two know each other?”

  Gaines ignored my question. “He’s been telling me stories about your history. Your people, I mean.”

  Noah could talk for hours about the past. Slavery. The Holocaust. India. Misery’s greatest hits in the gypsy playbook. I hoped he’d stopped short of trying to convince her we were the lost tribe from the Bible. He stood up, and for a worrying moment I thought he was going to hug me. Instead he just slapped my arm. “Chara. Sar-Shen?”

  We’d learned bits and pieces of the language when we were children, a secret code between us and our father that nobody else was in on.

  “I’m doing okay.”

  “Pandj besha, caco?”

  “Chatchi.”

  He looked at Gaines and then at me, his grin still in place. “Kur Gawdji?”

  “Na. Singorus.” I watched Gaines squirm, trying to hide her paranoia. It felt good. “Otchi da drav.”

  Noah laughed. “Perras, auli?”

  I decided it was time to stop acting like children. “Rokker English, chara?”

  “Sorry.” Noah directed his best smile toward Gaines. “I just haven’t had the chance to talk to him like that in a long time.”

  “No problem,” she lied.

  Something in the kitchen started to hiss, and Noah pushed past me. Before he disappeared to tend to the food, he pointed for me to sit down. I slid in beside Gaines. I looked out the window; the neon light from the Chinese takeaway across the road cast strange shadows across the buildings, and the rumble of music came from the pub next to it. Gaines moved the bottle of wine on the floor next to her to the coffee table in front of me, watching me the whole time.

  “Well, you really are being good, aren’t you?” she said when I shook my head. “I’ll leave it here for when you change your mind.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Laura told me about your mum. I’m sorry about that.”

  I nodded, trying to hide my curiosity. I had a million questions about the odd friendship that existed between my sorta-wife and Gaines, but I seemed to lack the guts to ask them. I couldn’t help but wonder what brought them together: top brass in the force and the leader of a local criminal gang. One thing I did know. It was more than just a book club.

  Of course, I had also told Laura about Channy’s visit. And now Gaines was here on her own, no sign of Bull or any of her usual guards—having hired a cleaner, for God’s sake, to fix up Channy’s mess. She had to be making a point?

  “I understand she’s not reporting it,” said Gaines. “Well, that ties Laura’s hands, doesn’t it? I tell you, Eoin, if you find out who’s responsible, let me know. I’m sure he can have an accident.”

  Noah came back into the room carrying a tray burdened with food and plates. There were flour tortillas, a bowl of beans, a dish of sautéed fajita-style chicken, and some grated cheese. He set the tray down on the coffee table, sat down cross-legged on the rug, and began piling his plate with food.

  “What’s all this for?” I asked.

  “I can’t cook some scran for my little brother and his friend? Veronica was telling me you’re working for her now.”

  “No, no. She likes to tell crazy stories like that. I’m just a football coach, and not a very good one. The only dirty work I do is cleaning the sports hall afterward.”

  “You still think I’m an idiot? Look, I think it’s a good thing that you’ve come to your senses. This is better than pretending to be a cop. That was not a fun phase.”

  “I wasn’t pretending.” That was exactly what I’d been doing. But I wasn’t going to let Noah know that. “Besides, it beats pretending to be a gypsy, right?”

  “Pretending? Boshtad. It’s not my fault if you’ve forgotten who you are.”

  We both eyed Gaines in that moment, wondering how carefully she was listening. Noah smiled at me, and we both shrugged it off, the anger passing in a second.

  “I saw Laura earlier,” Noah said, changing the topic. “She’s looking good, Smudge. Don’t you ever think about having another try?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “Kushti, mind if I have a go, then?”

  He cocked his eyebrow above his dirty schoolboy smile.

  “I thought you hated her.”

  “Well, she is a copper, true. But as far as they go, she’s a good one, I suppose. Plus, you know, she looks much better without you on her arm.”

  Gaines laughed. The look in her dark eyes told me she was taking notes. She could order someone killed with the flick of an eyebrow. She was manipulating me in some way I was too dumb to figure. Noah finished wolfing down his first fajita wrap and then stood up and stretched theatrically.

  “Well, I need to get some air. Either of you kids want anything while I’m gone? No? Suit yourselves.”

  He grabbed another wrap, filled it with chicken, and took it to go. Gaines watched him leave, and her eyes stayed on the front door as his footsteps sounded on the stairs outside.

  “He hasn’t changed,” she said.

  I was bothered again that they knew each other. What was I missing? I felt the urge to compete for her affection, and that scared me. I didn’t want to give her any more power. She sipped at her wine and watched me for a moment.

  “You really don’t remember, do you? I’ve always wondered about that.”

  “Remember what?
”

  “Nothing.” Something else in her eyes. Irritation? Had I met her when I was younger and forgotten? Had I just found a raw nerve? “I know you’ll want to fix this thing with your mother. But we really do need you to deliver on Father Connolly’s problem, you know that?”

  “Of course, I’m not ignoring it.”

  “He’s a sweetie. Troubled, but sweet.”

  “Why are you doing this? Why are you paying me to help him?”

  “It’s a good cause.”

  “Bollocks. You wouldn’t know a good cause if it stole your coke money. What’s your angle?”

  She fixed me with those dark eyes. My guts ran screaming for the hills; my legs wished they’d been taken along for the ride. “Whatever else we may be, Eoin, our family is part of a community. My daddy and David go back a long way. You never stop being a good little Catholic boy.”

  “You were a boy?”

  I knew it wasn’t funny. She knew it wasn’t funny. We let it slide.

  “The church is important to the family. Always has been, always will be. This is something that needs doing, and we are in a position to provide the backing.”

  “I can see paying to fix a leaking roof, maybe. Or donating a new stained-glass window. Leave it to the Gaines family to find an illegal way to make a contribution.”

  “We’re not criminals.” She looked insulted. “We’re a business. We make money. Sometimes we bend the laws to do it, but even we can see that some things are just wrong.”

  I shrugged. I’d given up trying to separate the good guys from the bad guys a long time ago. Especially since I seemed to be related to so many of the latter.

  “I just don’t get it. These immigrants. Why?”

  “Politics and religion have nothing to do with our business. They’re the first things to be forgotten when the lights go out, or when a man wants to stare at some tits. We know that better than anyone.”

  She leaned back into the sofa and watched me.

  “I took in what you said at the club,” she said. “Dragging you out there that way—I get it. You do good work for us. It’s time we started treating you right.”

  “So you broke into my flat?”

  Her smile again. “No, that was just a fun way to mess with you. But this—” She handed me a business card. “This is me treating you better.”

  I turned it over and looked at it. It was just a plain white card imprinted with a mobile telephone number.

  “What—”

  “My private mobile. No more stunts. Come work for me. For real, I mean, same as Bull. We’ll cut you in. No more secrets, no more games. Gaines and Miller, just like old times.”

  She nodded and her mouth twitched, like she’d bitten back a comment. Then she stood to leave and told me to think about it. I could smell the wine and imagine its taste; I eyed Gaines’s curves as she walked across the room to leave. I sensed temptation all around. She got as far as the front door before turning back.

  “And this time, tidy up after your visitor leaves.”

  On the stairs I heard her talking, and then a laugh. A second later, I heard a loud and annoying knocking on the door that could only be coming from Noah. He kept it up in an unbroken rhythm until I’d crossed the living room and hallway to open the door. He was leaning against the doorframe with his wolfish smile.

  “Smudge, I love that woman. I love her mind and her ass and that way she has of scaring me shitless. If you’re not going to get round to making a move, would you mind if I did?”

  Again with his dirty schoolboy look.

  “How do you two know each other?”

  He frowned, “Same way you do.” He rolled his eyes in a way that said, You’re an idiot. “When her old man would come see Dai? Or when he came to the barbecue at the pub? You remember?”

  His words started to evoke a memory. A party, a celebration of something that had happened, my dad setting up a barbecue out back of the pub, my mum trying to keep me and Noah away from certain people, men who kept slipping us pocket money and winking.

  “My first Wolves top,” I said, the memory becoming clear.

  Noah nodded. That top had come from Ransford Gaines, strong and scary, back then just Uncle Ran, who’d turned up at the party with football tops for me and Noah. That night had been the first time I wore the old gold. He brought a girl with him, a few years younger than me, and asked us to play with her while he spent an age talking to my dad.

  Holy shit.

  Noah smiled. “There it is. You know, for someone so clever, you’ve always had a knack for missing the obvious. Your old man says hello, by the way. He’s staying at the camp out at Hobbs Ford. You remember where that is, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Go visit. Patch things up. He’s not the ogre that you think he is, you know. He’s just us, but older.”

  “I’ve checked the calendar, but hell isn’t due to freeze over anytime soon, so I’ll have to wait.”

  He smiled and then dipped his head to one side to cede the point. “Veronica says she’ll find me work if I’m looking. Maybe it’s time I settled down here again for a while.”

  No. No. No.

  “How many times have we been through this now? Four? Five? I don’t think you know what settled is.”

  He laughed, a cracked sound that seemed haunted by too many hard drinks and cigarettes. He looked around the flat for a second and then back at me. Up close I noticed a few small scars on his face, a small chip taken out of his top tooth, a white scratch down his left cheek. My big brother looked like he’d picked up a few stories out on the road.

  “For real this time.”

  I let that one go. He’d had more second chances than I could count, but I guess that’s how family works. He sat back down on the sofa and scratched behind his ear, almost like a dog. He told me that Mum had checked herself out of the hospital.

  “They let her go? When I saw her she was out of it.”

  “Still is, but you know Mum. Stubborn. She refused to have any further X-rays, and says she doesn’t want to know if she has a concussion because there’s nothing they could do about it anyway.”

  “Has she said anything about what happened?”

  His jaw tensed up. I noticed a flush of red in his face, the same anger I’d been holding back since yesterday. He shook his head.

  “Has she spoken to you about money problems at all?”

  “Money?” He blinked. “Nobody talks to me about money.”

  Money, drugs, booze. You didn’t talk to Noah about these things. It was an unwritten rule, like never spit into the wind or go swimming with sharks.

  “She borrowed money from some loan shark,” I said. “But she’s not behind on the mortgage, and she hasn’t suddenly bought a widescreen telly or a new car. That money has to have gone somewhere. Once I figure it out, maybe I’ll know who the hell to kill.”

  His face went pale, and I laughed.

  “I’m joking, man. Who do you think I am? I do football coaching, that’s all. I talked to Mrs. Daniels—she said she saw somebody coming round the house just before the attack.”

  “She say who?”

  “Not exactly. She said it was a man, and that he had a look about him. But for Mrs. Daniels that covers everything from Bin Laden to Mel Gibson.”

  He waved it away. “Ignore her. She’s always been insane.”

  “Where’s Rosie? Laura said she’d called both of you.”

  “Yeah, she’s with Mum now. Fussing over her, making cups of tea. You know how she is. She’ll be preaching about something, probably.”

  He looked around my flat again, and this time the penny dropped. He was sizing the place up as a crash pad.

  “You don’t want to stay with Mum?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just—it’s weird, you know? I sat in our old room last night, and it doesn’t feel like home anymore. It would just feel strange sleeping there. You got a spare room?”

  “Yes, but no spare bed
.”

  I watched his face fall. I pictured him the last time I’d seen him, red with rage and threatening to kill me. And now here was this new version, older and calmer. Looking for all the world like he meant it when he said he’d changed.

  “Fuck it, I’ve got a sofa. I’m an insomniac, so you may even get the bed.”

  His boyish grin returned.

  “Great. Now, what’s for dessert?”

  TWELVE

  I was woken the next morning by the sounds and smells of breakfast being made. Both Noah and I had the cooking gene. We used to try and outdo each other, before we started trying to kill each other. I stretched and yawned, swinging my legs off the end of the sofa and instantly feeling the stiffness in my back. Getting old is hard to do. Noah stuck his head round the living room door.

  “Hey. You better shower before I come in there and serve food. You stink, man.”

  “Cheers.”

  “And what kind of a spice collection do you call this? There’s no turmeric. Your cayenne jar is empty. How am I supposed to work with this?”

  I shuffled past him and climbed the stairs for a shower. Under the blast of the water my mind drifted. Connolly. Salma. Boz. Channy. Gaines. Laura. Salma again. I was pulled back into the real world by the sound of the smoke alarm, and I ran downstairs with a towel around my waist. Noah was laughing and churning his arms and legs as he fought to pull the battery out of the smoke alarm and extinguish the flames coming off of the grill.

  “I might have had a little accident.” He winked at me. Then he noticed the wet towel around my waist and grabbed it off me. “Perfect.” He threw the towel over it the grill pan, killing the flames.

  Waving away the smoke, he handed me the black and smelly towel. Then he looked me up and down.

  “Cold shower, was it?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Hey, is that your scar? Fuckin’ hell, Smudge, that looks painful.”

  “Yeah, it was.”

  It still is.

  Back upstairs, I found some clean clothes and tried calling Salma. I called three times, and it went to voice mail each time. I didn’t leave a message. I plugged my phone in to charge while I waited for her to call back. Noah called up to say the food was ready. He’d covered the coffee table with plates of French toast made with garlic, which was something my father had always cooked for us, and something that looked like it may have once been sausage and eggs.