Eoin Miller 02 - Old Gold (6 page)

“I’ve been trying to get hold of you. You ignoring my messages?”

“Yes.”

I had never got round to telling him that I’d thrown my mobile away. Too many missed calls from friends and family, too many voice messages from Dr. Guthrie.

He sipped from his drink, and I stared at mine.

“How you doing, Eoin?”

That was always the first question he asked me these days, and I had no idea why. I felt a little anger rise, the same burning sensation I got whenever someone used that bland phrase to hide that they were asking about my health. As if it was their business. I shrugged and sipped at my drink.

“Fair enough.” He tried again. “I hear you were just round at my place, trying to file a missing persons?”

“You must have heard wrong.”

“No, I don’t think so. I watched you leave the building.”

“I could’ve sworn I was in bed all morning.”

“I swung by your place earlier. You weren’t there.”

“I didn’t say it was
my
bed.”

I didn’t really want to push this. Becker was my best friend, yes, but he was a cop, and I didn’t want him involved in anything that might test our limits.

“So who’s the missing person?”

Shit
.

“Nobody, really. Your desk officer pointed out to me how silly I was being, the error of my ways. There’s a reason I was a lousy pig.”

“Now we both know that’s not true.” He chewed on a forkful of carrot cake, his lips making smacking noises as he ate. “I could help you, you know?”

“No, really, it’s nothing.”

“Now I’m even more intrigued. A missing person that you don’t want me looking into?”

“Leave it, Beck.”

I pushed out of my seat and fetched another slice of cake from the counter. I sat back opposite Becker and took half of the slice with one bite. Seeing his empty glass, I slid my Coke across to him.

“Thanks.” Becker lifted the drink in a salute.

“What for? You’re paying.”

“So, OK, anyway. The reason I’ve been trying to get you is to do you a favor, to throw some work your way.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got a full plate.”

“Is it a paying plate?”

I had to concede that one.

“Well, it’s funny you should be on a missing person hunt. See, that’s why I was so pushy about who you’re looking for. The job I’ve got is the same deal. It’s about a missing person, a student.”

“Why should I get involved in a case you guys can’t even be bothered to carry?”

“It’s not that,” he said.

“Oh, come on, I know how it works. Let me know when I’m close. A student has gone missing partway through a semester. I’m guessing maybe just before a round of exams?”

“Pretty close.”

“So it’s
no deal
for you boys. Unless there’s any proof of a crime, you’re not going to look into it beyond maybe a few token efforts for the family and the local paper. Not when there are all those sexy terrorists to look for.”

He laughed. “If only it were that simple, mate. I long for the days when London was shitting itself over everybody
with dark skin and a beard. I don’t need to tell you how many people round here have dark skin and beards, how much overtime that led to. Glory days, glory days.”

“So what is it now?”

“Now it’s seeing how much work they can get out of us for almost no pay. No overtime. Pensions cut, hours cut, bonuses frozen. They just don’t want to give us any bloody money. Unless there’s a riot. Then we have to chase down every kid in a hoodie.”

“They get you chasing all that?”

“Biggest police action I’ve seen since we went on alert after the London bombings, and you know how that was. We kicked in every bloody door in the Midlands, it felt like. Got some actual police work done, arrested people, it felt surreal. You’d have been in on it too if you hadn’t dropped out.”

“If it was so great, then why not get some more actual police work done and find this kid?”

“Well, see, that’s where you come in. The case isn’t open. It’s not been reported, officially.”

Now I was interested. I leaned forward. “What’s going on?”

“You remember Michael Perry?”

I did. He’d been a generation ahead of us in the force, working his way up by playing the game the right way. “Chubby guy, glasses? Ambitious, never said anything to offend anybody?”

“That’s him. Though he’s not so chubby now; he’s lost most of it again. His son has gone missing, and he wants it looked into off the books, so to speak.”

“Why? He’s brass, he can just send the full weight of the force into it; get the kid found in about five minutes.”

Becker shook his head and leaned in a bit closer. He gave me that look of his that said, this is top secret. I’d always
wondered if he thought that look meant the rest of the world would actually stop listening.

“Perry wants to move into politics. The force is bringing in those new commissioner posts, elected like in America. Looks like Perry wants a run at that and maybe the Labour party after that. So he needs—”

“So he needs this to be kept secret, so that Daddy’s big career doesn’t get hurt? So if you do it quietly, you guys can still look into it off the books.”

“Yes. We have been. I have been, I mean. But it’s not going well because people still know I’m a badge. Pretty soon word will get out. You can ask questions we can’t. It might only take you a couple of conversations to find him.”

“What a tempting offer, I must say. You really sold me on that one.”

“OK, don’t look at it as a favor to me. Truth be told, I couldn’t give a shit. If the kid’s gone runaway, good for him. If he’s dead, then I don’t care, as long as it’s not in my driveway. Listen, I’ve got an old woman in intensive care, which could become a murder trial at any minute. I don’t have the time or the patience.”

He picked up his drink in a very dramatic way, like a moving exclamation mark, and drank it down in one go. It might have been impressive if it hadn’t been half a pint of Coke.

“Besides,” he said, “you get paid for this shit all the time. I just thought you could do with a push.”

“A push?”

“Yes. Get you working for the right side again.”

“Give me something, Beck. Why are you asking me to look into this?”

Becker sighed again. “I talked to his family, a few people at his university, classmates, lecturers. It just feels wrong.
Somebody is lying, and you were always better at smelling those than I was.”

I asked for Perry’s number. “Beck, tell me, what have you been hearing about drugs?”

He leaned back in the booth and eyed me for a minute. “So we get down to it. This about your brother?”

“Like I would give a shit about him.”

“OK, what then? What have you got going on?”

“Just curious.”

“Like you’re ever ‘just curious.’ Look, I defend you all I can. I give you what information I can. But you work for the Mann brothers. I can’t give you anything that gets back to those—” He paused. Becker had occasionally used racist terms when talking about the brothers, but he looked like he caught himself. He wasn’t racist so much as white and middle class, but racism was a fluid thing in the Midlands. He settled for finishing the sentence with a milder insult, “Fucks.”

“Give me more credit than that. I’m asking for me, just for me. I hear that the pieces are moving on the board.”

“Well, that’s more than I’ve heard.”

“Seriously? You’ve heard nothing about a new seller? A Polish guy?”

He laughed. “Them Poles. They come over here, they steal our jobs, they steal our crime. Do they have no morals?”

“Just do me a favor and ask around for me, will you?”

He nodded.

If I took Becker’s case, I could use it as cover, make it work for me. I’d have a reason to be walking around asking questions. It would protect me from attention while I looked for this Polish guy, and I could use it as an excuse to get information from Becker.

I left with a head full of missing students and dead women.

Next up, I decided to rattle another cage.

I’d already shaken the tree of the Mann brothers and had a gun pointed at me for my troubles. It was time to annoy someone on the other side and see what the response would be. I headed to Broad Street, the vice strip of the city. Fast food and smut. A dead body had recently been discovered in the kitchen of one of the street’s restaurants, and nobody had been surprised. Above one of the kebab shops was a tattoo studio called Skin Art.

The reception area was a small room with a counter, like a hotel reception, and three doors opening off it. One of the doors was labeled “toilet,” one wasn’t labeled at all, and the other was ajar, the buzz of a tattoo gun coming from inside. The unmarked door opened and a lean teenage boy peered out, looked me up and down, and disappeared again. I stood there alone for a moment, listening to the tattoo underway inside and feeling awkward. The teenager appeared again, shutting the door behind him and taking up his best official-looking pose behind the counter.

“Sorry about your wait there.”

“No problem.”

“How can I help?”

It was my turn to look him up and down.

“Are you the artist?”

He laughed, taking my question as a joke. Of course he wasn’t the artist—I doubt anyone would even trust him to write a name—but it had seemed polite to ask.

“I’d like to use your toilet,” I said.

He looked me up and down again.

“Our toilet? Do you have an appointment?”

“I didn’t realize I needed one. Last time I just turned up.”

“You’ve been before?”

I was getting impatient with the whole game.

“Of course I have.”

The buzzing in the studio stopped. A moment later a bald head peeped out from behind the door. Dave, the owner of the studio, was small and quiet. We’d met once before.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said. He nodded to the kid. “He’s OK. Let him through.”

He disappeared into the studio, and soon the buzzing resumed.

The kid moved out of my way, and I walked through the door that claimed to be the toilet. It opened onto a small corridor. The real toilet was little more than a closet that opened off this corridor. At the other end of the hall was an unmarked wooden door. It led to the building behind the tattoo studio, a private club known as Legs. It was a club owned by Ransford Gaines, the other big name in crime around here. Gambling, stripping, sex. You could get it all in here, and the prices were cheap because the club was off the books. There were no audits, no taxes, nothing declared.

You got frisked on the way in by two guys who looked like Russian wrestlers.

Once they gave you the OK and took your ten pounds, you were good to go. The first room you came to was a small casino, the top floor of an old building that had all but its supporting walls knocked through, making space for a bar
that ran the length of the wall and tables for card games and roulette.

Down the stairs, on the ground floor of the building, was the strip club and the private rooms, the music rising up through the floor I was standing on.

This was the quiet time of day, as people were still at work out in the daylight. But many of the types who came in here didn’t hold down your average nine-to-five job, so there was still a small crowd. I headed to the bar and ordered a straight whiskey. The size of a double for half the price. I celebrated with a second one.

“Hey, mate,” I said to the barman. “Is Gaines in today?”

He gave me the fish eye.

“I don’t know who you’re on about.”

I smiled and nodded and began to wander between the card tables.

“Hey,” I said to a few of the people who made eye contact with me. “Seen Gaines around?”

I was being very subtle.

I walked down the steps into the strip club.

Down here it was very much a club, dark with flashing lights. Seedy and warm. As long as you didn’t look too close at how cheap the drapes were or at the stains on the floor, you would buy the illusion. There is something silly about strip clubs. You can’t take them seriously; you just have to switch off the rational part of your mind and go with it.

There’s also a very male thing that goes on. Even if you go in full of moral outrage that women have to do this for a living, it all dies down the second you see a dancer walking toward you.

A cute but very made-up brunette walked up to me. “Hi, want some company?”

“Sure, your boss would do fine.”

She shook her head as though I was a wasted opportunity, then walked away to find someone else. I continued to walk round. The club had an open floor plan: a small bar, leather sofas, and a small catwalk in the center. To the sides were curtained-off areas for private dances and doors for even more private things.

A few minutes and a few circles of the club and another woman stepped out in front of me. She was done up far more tastefully, subtle makeup and a dress that covered quite a lot of flesh. I figured she must be more senior than the other women, maybe not a dancer at all. I could smell the money in her perfume, as though it was the smell of molten gold.

“I’m Veronica.”

“Hello.”

“You’ve been making a lot of noise.”