Runaway Town (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 2)

by Jay Stringer

  Salma said she’d make us all some tea while he went and dressed. I heard him running up the stairs. The house was laid out like any number of other terraced houses I’d been inside before; I knew there would be two bedrooms upstairs, one at the front and one at the rear. On the ground floor was the living room, where I stood, with a kitchen just behind. Salma headed off to find clean cups and get the kettle on. I followed on and took a look round the small kitchen, which didn’t look like it had any kind of spice rack.

  “Does the boy know about all of this?”

  “You mean the attacks? No, nobody else has been told.”

  “It sounds like he’s close to Ruth. Would she have told him about it?”

  “I don’t think so, no. If it was me, this isn’t really something I’d want to tell my male friends about.”

  As Salma poured the boiled water into the three mugs, Robin stepped into the kitchen. He was wearing combat pants and a rock T-shirt. I guessed it was rock, anyway, because it bore the name of a Japanese movie monster.

  “Sorry we didn’t get introduced properly before. I’m Eoin Miller. Salma’s asked me to help out with the charity.”

  I offered my hand for a shake, and he took it in a confident grip.

  “Really? Oh right, cool.”

  “You’re from up north, I take it?”

  “Yeah, Durham. My brother’s a fireman, and when he transferred down a couple of years ago I came with him, like. Fresh start, you know?”

  “Not quite picked up the accent yet.”

  He laughed and said, “I’m getting there.” I asked him how he got involved with the group, and he shrugged. “Don’t really remember. It just sort of happened.” He looked to Salma for support, and she nodded as he talked. “I mean, I knew a couple of the girls through school, and somehow I started coming to the meetings. It was like a youth club, you know? Gave me something to do.”

  I nodded.

  “Robin helps out, walks some of the younger children home after meetings, things like that.” Salma chipped in. “He’s been trying to put together a football team.”

  “Really? I coach a team. How close are you to a starting lineup?”

  “Just missing a couple. Should be ready to go soon.”

  I handed him a business card for the sports center and told him we’d arrange a game. Then I changed gears before he could notice what was happening. “You walk all the girls home?”

  “Not all of them. Just the ones who haven’t got a ride home or live close by. Better than letting them go on their own.”

  “Totally. Ever have any trouble?”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “Well, walking these immigrants home. I mean, I’ve seen a fair few Union Jacks hanging from windows.”

  “Oh, there’s idiots all right. But I’m used to them. My granddad came over from Poland after the war; my dad was first generation. We’re used to the stick. But I’ve never had any problems walking them home.”

  “Is it just girls?”

  He paused for a second. He was starting to notice a theme.

  “No, no, guys too.”

  He sounded confused but not defensive. He didn’t sound like he was hiding anything or trying to think of a way out of giving the wrong answer. I shared a look with Salma, and she read it right, changing the mood by asking him how his job was going.

  “Great.” He beamed. “I get paid to work out.”

  “You work at a gym?”

  “Yeah, just started. Part-time, like. Cleaning up mostly, but the boss likes me to use the machines when it’s quiet. He says it encourages the shy people to go on if they see somebody else having a go. Had to quit smoking, though. It was making it hell to run on the treadmill, always out of breath.”

  I changed up again, wanting to see if there was anything else to shake loose.

  “Listen, I’ll be honest. Salma’s asked me to help out because some of the girls have told us they’re scared. You see anything suspicious, anything at all, you give me a call, yeah?”

  I watched his eyes as he said he would.

  I wasn’t sure whether I was seeing the truth.

  SIXTEEN

  I dropped Salma back at her car. She hadn’t said a word to me after we’d left Robin, and she got into her shiny ex-husband-mobile and drove off without saying good-bye. I felt ready to move on as well. Making the promise to Ruth had reminded me of other obligations. And as I’d said to Salma, no more games.

  The Apna Angel is one of the many pubs in and around Wolverhampton with a shady reputation, and yet it’s one of the safer places to drink. This is because the pub is owned by Channy Mann, and he’s usually holding court. If you make it past the front door, it’s because he’s allowing you in, and that means that nobody will mess with you while you’re drinking. The pub was set back from the road, with a large car park in front. The interior was split into two sections; the left-hand side was the bar, and the right-hand side was a restaurant. And the food was amazing; the great tragedy of betraying the brothers was that I didn’t get to eat there anymore.

  All talk stopped as I walked in the front door. To the right I saw that the restaurant was in darkness. The pub itself was full of customers. Some were sitting at the bar, some at the tables, and a small crowd was gathered around the pool table. A couple guys even appeared to be halfway through an argument. But they all stopped to stare at me. In the dim light I could see their eyes burning into me, waiting for a false move. There was the usual Apna mix, first- and second-generation Asians with a few white faces thrown in, but there were more black faces, too. They wore gang colors, T-shirts or bandannas in red or purple. I hid my surprise. These were the colors of the Birmingham gangs. Traditionally, the reputations of Gaines and the Mann brothers had kept the gangs out of the Black Country, but Channy had lost a lot of staff and business since his brother’s death, and I wondered if he was outsourcing for muscle, giving the Brummies a cut of the pie. That would change the game completely. The music was low and could only be described as gangsta bhangra, with a pissed-off-sounding rapper laying down rhymes over a heavy beat. I had a passing familiarity with groups like Swami and B21, but this sounded different. This was angry.

  The barman was lighter skinned, with an Indian look. He had thinning hair that was cropped closely to his scalp and wire-rim glasses. His moustache matched his sparse hair.

  “Help you?”

  They all knew who I was. I wondered whether to bolt for the door or do the manly thing and drop to my knees and beg.

  “He around?”

  He stared at me for a second, just long enough to let me know who was in charge, and then he looked toward the far end of the bar and the back office. I couldn’t see who he was looking at. He nodded, and after a second nodded again, this time in my direction. Letisha stepped out of the doorway and made her way down the bar. She looked to be in her midtwenties, but I knew she was younger than that. She was dressed in a shiny tracksuit, the front zipped down just far enough to show her bust, getting clear help from a push-up bra. Her dark skin was offset by simple gold jewelry.

  “What you want?”

  I didn’t answer; I just tilted my head and smiled. I hoped it looked confident and enigmatic. She shrugged and said, “Don’t move.”

  Yes, really. She was a comedian.

  She also seemed to be taking on more responsibility than she used to. There used to be any number of lieutenants I had to go through to get to one of the Mann brothers. I used to joke about it, about how they had more people in middle management than the police. Times had changed. Letisha ducked back into the office and left me alone with the roomful of scary people watching me out of the corners of their eyes. They slowly returned to normal, the game of pool being played at a muted volume, the argument seeming to resolve itself.

  “Go ahead.” The barman pointed toward the restaurant door. As I pushed open the door and stepped in, trying to make out shapes in the darkness, I felt the cold bite of metal on the base of my neck. I don
’t care how tough you think you are; when someone puts a gun to you, it’s hard work holding on to your breakfast. I smelled Letisha’s strong perfume, and she pressed in close behind me.

  “I’m just waiting for an excuse, fuckface,” she whispered.

  She pushed me forward, and I heard the door shut behind us. Something moved in front of me, and a pair of rough hands started patting me down. As the person stepped in closer, I made out his face. Marv, another one of Mann’s remaining crew. After the death of Gav Mann, he’d probably become second-in-command. He should have loved me—I’d gotten him a promotion.

  After he finished his search, he motioned for me to follow and walked back into the darkness. I followed, and the gun stayed pressed into my neck as I walked. They led me out back into the kitchen, sterile and gleaming white, and then down a flight of stairs into the old wine cellar. When I reached the foot of the stairs, my stomach turned over. The old brickwork and wood had been covered over with carpet, cardboard, and egg boxes, effectively soundproofing the walls and ceiling. The stone floor had been freshly mopped, but it still had a reddish tint where the water hadn’t dried. The room was lit by a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and the walls were lined with workbenches holding power tools. In the middle of the room were two hard wooden chairs that faced each other. Channy Mann sat in one, and I was pushed down into the other.

  He leaned forward and beamed at me with his gap-toothed grin.

  “Eoin, my man, how are you?”

  He took my hand in his and squeezed.

  “Quite a little concentration camp you have down here. I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  “This? Nah. This was Gav’s room. He liked to come down here and think. He liked playing with tools when he was stressed. Do you get like that? I always preferred a little whiskey and a cigar, maybe a blowjob. But Gaurav? He liked to tinker and take things apart. Sometimes he’d break them.”

  What did I say? What could I say?

  “I see,” I managed to get out.

  He smiled. “Yes, I think you do. You know the first time I saw my brother? He was this strange little fleshy thing wrapped in a blanket. I told my parents I’d always be his big brother. The last time I saw him? He was broken, had bits missing. He was wrapped in plastic, and the cops were asking me to identify him. Gaines’s people must have worked on him until he gave up our business contacts; then they must have hurt him some more. This is the woman you’re choosing to work with, eh? She doesn’t even do her own dirty work.”

  I didn’t like coming face-to-face with what had happened to Gav Mann because it was my fault. I could have reminded Channy that his brother had been doing exactly the same thing to a rival drug dealer—but now didn’t seem like the right time.

  “We built all of this. We worked, every single fucking day. A market stall, a van, a corner shop. We worked up to this. It’s us that got our hands bloody in Smethwick every fucking night, keeping the Meatpackers in Handsworth. Veronica Gaines? She’s had everything handed to her. Those Irish fucks are on the way out; they’d be nothing without their old man. You see this one?” He picked up what I took to be a router, something clearly meant to be used on wood instead of the human body. “This one is for Veronica. See, it has a lot of different settings. Here’s an even bigger one,” he said, picking up another heavy tool. “This one I’m saving for when she gives up her old man.”

  The gun at the base of my neck eased off, and I sensed Letisha had stepped back. Channy looked up at her and tipped his head, and then I heard both her and Marv make their way back up the stairs and shut the door after them. I wondered if they knew their boss had gone insane.

  “Right after it happened, you know, I was going to bring you down here. Marv and Letisha, they talked me out of it. They said you were going to die in the hospital.”

  In my head, I responded with a number of tough-guy quips. In reality I kept my mouth shut.

  “But you know, time goes by, eh? And I know you’re part of the family, really. One of us.” He sat back down in the chair and patted my shoulder. “So, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m here about the boy.”

  He shook his head and shrugged. “Don’t know what you’re on about.”

  “Boz. Bauser’s kid brother. He’s been working for you.”

  “Oh, yeah, I know the boy. Angry like his brother. Bauser, now there was a good kid. They don’t make them like that now, you know. This new generation? Pfft. No work ethic.”

  He spoke like Bauser was a long-lost veteran instead of a messed-up kid who’d died five months ago.

  “I want you to leave Boz alone, leave him out.”

  He fingered the handle of his power tool and pulled its trigger so the tip twirled with a menacing buzz. “Leave him alone? Please. If he wants to be involved, there’s not much I can do other than put him to work.”

  “Freeze him out. Send him back to his family. He can be better than us if he gets a chance.”

  He laughed. It was loud and full, and I wondered how effective the soundproofing was. “Better than me? Gyp, I’m rich. I own restaurants and fancy cars. I want something done? I can pick up the phone and call the mayor personally. Better than me? Shit, that boy dreams of being me.”

  I lost my sense of fear and leaned forward, face-to-face with him.

  “This? This life? Drugs, guns, even that market stall you’re so nostalgic for. That’s what you think he wants? He just wants his family back together, and you’re making him think this is the best thing in the world. You’re using him, like you used your brother.”

  He moved as fast as he had in my flat, and something hard crashed into my temple. I felt the white heat of shock followed by something warm trickling down into my eye. I reached up and felt blood pooling around the tip of my eyebrow. He wiped down the power tool and set it on one of the workbenches.

  “Here you choose to insult me?” He spoke in a low mumble that was more frightening than any shout. He slipped something small into his hand that glinted metallic, and for a second, I thought it was brass knuckles. But then he grabbed my hand, and I felt something sharp enclosing my little finger. He was holding the tip of it between the business end of a pair of pliers. “After I show you all this, after I explain what I will do to Gaines, you still talk shit about me?”

  I turned to meet his eyes. I couldn’t work out if what I saw in there was insanity or grief.

  “I’m here for the boy. It’s not about us.”

  He squeezed on the pliers, and they sliced into my skin, sending bright red blood dripping down my finger. I winced but held his gaze. He eased off and smiled, giving me my hand back. I wiped the blood on my jeans. I was going to need a plaster.

  “I respect that, you know? I like the way you stand up for those kids. It took you a long time, Gyp, but you’re starting to understand family. You still don’t get the game, though, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t stop just because I tell him to go away. If the kid wants to work, he’ll find work. A no from me means he’ll just run over to Brum and find someone to say yes.”

  “He’s a good kid.”

  “Who isn’t?” He shook his head. “You need to decide which side you’re on, and you need to do it now. I tell you what, I’ll throw the kid into the deal.”

  “What deal?”

  “The deal where I let you live. The deal where you give me what I want, whom I want. You do that, and I’ll send him running to his mum with a care package. You bring me Veronica Gaines, I let Boz go.”

  SEVENTEEN

  It’s a strange thing visiting your family. You might have grown up in the house and have a key, but you still feel like a visitor. I stood at my mother’s front door and rang the bell.

  Laura answered.

  Great.

  My mother’s idea of “family” was clearly different from my own. Mine didn’t include my ex-wife. Sorta-wife. Whatever she was. She looked great, dressed in a halter top
and jeans. Her hair had streaks in it that hadn’t been there in the hospital, a mix of blond and light brown. She cleaned up well, that woman. She stepped out onto the path with me and pulled the door almost shut behind her.

  “Are you okay with this?” she asked. “It was Erica’s idea.”

  “No problem. Let’s go.”

  We stepped inside, and I shut the door behind us. I could hear Noah’s loud voice coming from the living room, holding court midway through some joke that he found too funny to tell.

  I stepped into the room and got forced against the wall as my sister ran at me for a hug. Rosie was five years younger than me and, I’d always guessed, the result of the very last time that my parents had had sex. They say the third time is a charm, and that’s how it was with Rosie. She was bright, funny, and far more ambitious and put together than Noah or me. She’d worked her way through a law degree and somehow made a living from moving around the country, finding things to campaign for.

  “Smudge, you’re late.” She buried her face in my shoulder as she hugged me. She always had a way of making me feel wanted. She was shorter than Noah and me and looked more like our mother.

  “Sorry. You know me, things to do.”

  “Yeah, right, probably some wall that needed staring down.”

  She pulled back and finally let me breathe, which was good because my mother followed in almost straightaway. She was still sore from the attack, which was an unexpected mercy since it meant her grip wasn’t as tight as usual. She’d covered up the worst of the bruising with makeup, and she was dressed in long sleeves and a loose flowing skirt, which helped to disguise her limp.

  “How you feeling, Mai?”

  She smiled and shrugged. “Me? Fine.”

  Behind her I saw Noah manage to keep a flash of anger in check. Laura stepped into the room behind me, and Noah came up and slapped me on the back. Then he tried to regain his role as the center of attention and started telling his joke all over again. You didn’t want to stand too close to Noah when he was in full performance mode. He was a very physical talker, and he would make his points with wild arms waves that could end up becoming a surprise blow if you weren’t steering clear of his stage. He got that from our father, I suppose. Not from Mum—she’s much calmer, always seems composed. Rosie, always the truth teller, put up a hand to stop him and told Noah the joke had fallen flat three times already.