Lost City (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 3) (16 page)

She slid two photographs across at me. One a holiday snap, the other taken in a bar on a night out, the alcohol obvious in their slack smiles. I’d seen both photographs before. It was the confirmation I’d been looking for.

Craig and Maria Cartwright.

I kept my face neutral; hoped that no recognition had crossed my face that Henry or Murray might have seen.

“We haven’t released their names to the media yet, but this is Craig Cartwright and his wife, Maria. They live locally and we have not yet determined why they were staying at the hotel, or whether they signed in under their real names. It’s a strange one, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I’d agree that the whole thing is strange.”

“I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Miller. We have witnesses who describe Tony Keane having meetings with you on the night of the fire, so I’m glad you volunteered that information. Mr. Keane himself has not been seen since. His wife has reported him missing. She’s convinced he died in the fire, but he’s not there.”

Wait, were they pinning this on me or on Tony? Rattle my cage to show me I need to cooperate, maybe, as they find a way to blame everything on Tony and close the case?

Worked for me.

“Mr. Miller,” Henry said. “Do you have any knowledge of the whereabouts of Mr. Tony Keane?”

“I haven’t seen or heard from him since that night.”

Murray tapped at his watch with his pen. Henry nodded and leaned back, gave me an open and easy smile before stretching her arms out ahead of her and then leaning forward to hover her finger over the tape recorder.

“Okay, Mr. Miller, we’ve not got much more to ask you but I suggest a short coffee break. I’m suspending the meeting at four forty-two.”

She turned the tape off and stood up, followed by Murray. They both smiled at me, all nice and friendly, and that was when I knew: the trap had been set but was only now about to spring. Henry headed out of the room rather than for the coffee machine, and Murray started to follow.

He paused in the doorway and turned back. “You know we have witnesses saying that DCI Laura Miller was at the hotel on the night of the fire, right?”

Crack. The ice beneath me gave out, and I fell through.

I was still searching for an edge to hold on to when the door opened again and Becker stepped into the room. He smiled at me, and it was one of the scariest things I’d ever seen.

Matt was on his own.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Becker sat opposite me. He had a folder of his own sitting closed on the desk to his left. He had a pen in his right hand that he tapped on the desk. It was matching the sound of the cartel’s ticking clock in my head. Becker didn’t buy into all the new thinking about making people comfortable during interrogation; he wanted people on edge when he grilled them. He didn’t start the digital recorder or speak. He just sat there.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I saw him cast a second glance to the wall, where a video camera was mounted above the door.

“It’s been switched off, right?”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I tried something else, gave him a bit of what he wanted. “Is it me or Laura?”

“I’ll ask the questions. Let’s start with this—are you still telling people you were clean when you were on the force?”

He leaned to his left and lifted the folder open just enough for him to see what was inside. He slipped three sheets of paper off the top and slid them over to me. They were financial statements, with a number of transactions circled in pencil. I knew what they were without looking because I recognized the letterhead of the mortgage company. Becker went back to tapping his pen on the desk.

“These are statements from the house you used to own on Park Road East. The transactions I’ve circled are ones we can prove came from the Mann brothers. Those dates? You were still on the force for some of those.”

I shrugged and slid the papers back across the desk.

I realized the game plan. It had been going on under my nose the whole time. Becker had been transferred to an intelligence unit shortly after we’d both seen evidence that Laura was corrupt, around the same time I had started working for Gaines. I’d burned the bridges on our friendship by lying to him about Gaines, and I’d assumed he’d transferred to the Hobs Ford assignment to fuck with me. Now I knew that was exactly why he’d done it, but not for the obvious reasons that I’d assumed.

“It’s all a cover, isn’t it? You’re not really on Hobs Ford. You’re writing Perry’s re-election ticket. You bring in this case, he gets to claim it as his pet project. He’ll claim credit for cleaning house, then give a press conference that guarantees him another term. You’ll go with him, too. Top brass. How many people are you willing to step over on your way up?”

He let the pen fall to the table to punctuate my question, the sound ringing out before being absorbed into the comfortable carpet. Then he leaned back in his chair. “There you go with your high horse again. One of us in this room has always been clean, and it’s not you.”

“Who are you after?”

“After your little stunt with the immigrants, I was set on Gaines. Which means I was also set on you. And, let’s be honest, going all the way back to that Polish thing, you know that means I was also set on someone else, too.”

Laura.

“And which of us have you got on the block today?”

“Well, that depends. I’ve already got more than enough to build a case against you, and those mortgage statements are just the start. But this is all small potatoes. Headline would be, ‘Local gangland figure, ex-cop, and Gypsy, tied to the drug trade.’ You think anyone cares? No, that doesn’t really excite us. But Veronica Gaines? Local businesswoman? Patron of charities? Now we’re talking. And Laura Miller? Detective Chief Inspector Laura Miller? I’m on the edge of my seat.”

“You said it depends.”

“Yes. You can give us option A or B, and we’ll make you a deal. You can sit there with your thumb up your ass and say nothing, and then we’ll have to look at making the case against you, small potatoes or not, and you become just another statistic in the prison system.”

He cocked his head to one side and watched me for a long time. I hoped I was looking resilient, because I wasn’t feeling it.

“Eoin, we go back how many years? A lot, anyway. Best man at your wedding. You’re the only man I’ve ever let puke on my shoes.” His voice went to a softer place at that memory, before it came back stronger. “Am I still being an idiot in thinking I can bring you back?”

“I think maybe we should be taping this.”

“The information Henry’s been giving you? That’s just the start. We’ve been going over every document you or Gaines put your names on during the last two years. She’s been good, that I’ll say. Right now? You’re the best case we have. But if I lean on Laura, that might change, and all I need is Veronica Gaines’s name in the wrong place on one form, just one, and she’ll be in here, too.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re on about.”

He slipped another piece of paper from the folder and passed it to me. I recognized the layout as a record from The Hound’s database. A booking on the night of the fire, under the name Linda Haines.

“Take this, for example. Someone booked into the hotel on the night of the fire. Wouldn’t mean much, just a normal person at a normal hotel, who ended up dealing with the hassle of a hotel fire.”

I shrugged.

“But the name sticks out to me. You know why?”

I had an idea. But I wasn’t going to let him know that.

He folded the paper and slipped it back in his pocket. “Because Ms. Haines also comes up on the database from my friends at Companies House as a director, owner, or shareholder in a number of small businesses in the area. Nail salons, tanning booths, some media company set up by our old friend Jellyfish and some radio station in Walsall that has turned a profit for three years now despite there not being a radio station in Walsall. Not one with a broadcast license, anyway.” He leaned in close. “Forensic accounting, they call it. Some piece of paper somewhere that can be used to show a pattern or a link between Linda Haines and Veronica Gaines. And now that I have my whole department looking for it, how long will it take?”

“No idea what you’re on about,” I said.

“You still think you have a chance with her, don’t you? You think this whole schoolboy thing you’ve got going on for your boss will have a happy ending? You think she’ll protect you the same way you’re protecting her?”

I stared at him and didn’t bite.

“I think we’d be doing her a favor, too,” he said. “Word from my colleagues in Birmingham is that this new kid, Dodge, has put a price on her head. Yours as well. He’s not going to sit still and behave like the old gang leaders did. He wants to come over here. I think we’re looking at the next Ransford Gaines or Channy Mann. You’ll all be much safer with us standing between you and Dodge, don’t you think?”

“Maybe you should build a wall, keep out all the people you don’t like. That always goes well.”

“Last chance, Eoin. After this you’re on your own.” He picked up the pen and rolled it around the palm of his hand for a moment before touching the tip back on to the desk.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He then made a show of straightening his arm to pull his watch above his sleeve, looking at the time. “Four fifty-three. Remember that, mate. There’s not a lot of people can pinpoint the exact moment they blew it. You’ll be back in here in a day, maybe two. However long my forensic bean counters take. We’re going to tear everything down, and I’ll have the two of you back in here begging for a deal.”

He stood up, leaving the pen on the table. The absence of the tapping sound reverberated in the room and my head. Branko and the killer who’d murdered Tony and Jelly—and probably the Cartwrights—were both outside somewhere likely looking for me, and the cops in here were closing in just as fast.

As he opened the door I thought back on what he’d just said.

“Two?”

“Yes.” He gave me a Columbo smile of his very own. “You and Gaines. Laura’s already in the next room.”

Murray and Henry reconvened the meeting a few moments later. They were all smiles and politeness, maintaining the game that I was there to help pin the fire on Tony Keane in absentia. But both of their smiles were showing me the wider picture; they wanted me to know my place.

The three of us finished up the game for the digital recorder and I left. I paused in the hallway to look at Conference Room 2. The door was shut, and I couldn’t see if anyone was inside. Henry stepped in close behind to keep me moving. I signed out at the front desk, and they thanked me for my help.

Yeah, right.

The air was cold as I walked outside but the air pressure felt high, like a storm was waiting to break. A real April shower. A bunch of uniformed coppers were huddled at the bottom of the ramp, smoking. Some of them looked too young to have gone through puberty; some were older and I recognized them from my time in the force. As I walked past I heard the older ones call out,
Gyppo.

Some things never change.

I walked to the taxi line and got a ride out to where I’d left my car. My blood raced. I had to get to Matt. I had to get to Gaines. At the sports hall I could hear a group of kids playing football, one of our part-time coaches putting them through their paces. I headed into the office to find Matt, but he wasn’t there. His computer was on and it was still humming away on whatever he’d left it doing. There was a half-empty cup of coffee gone cold on his desk. There was no sign of the hard drive. I remembered that I’d switched my phone off at the police station. I switched it back on and waited for it to find its network, then started getting hit with messages. Two texts from Matt, both saying he needed to speak to me. Then voicemails started landing.

I clicked on the first one. “Eoin, you need to see what’s on this drive. Call me back.”

The second one: “Shit, man, he’s here. He’s outside. Fuck.”

The third one: “Mr. Miller, I think you know who this is. I shall be seeing you soon. Unfortunately, young Matthew won’t.”

I stared at the phone as Branko’s words bounced around my head and cold apprehension ran down my spine. I slumped down into Matt’s chair and noticed for the first time an empty bottle of strawberry milk on the other side of the computer. Laid out in a row next to it were three adult teeth. There was no blood; they’d been wiped clean.

I headed out to my car in a daze. The clock was no longer ticking in my head. It was replaced by a static noise that started between my ears and seemed to invade my whole body. I’d heard it before. Some people will go their whole lives without ever finding out what their own limits are, but I’m not one of them. A few years before I’d had a nervous breakdown. Things had gotten too much for me one day, and the static had started, and I had drifted away from the world. It had been the easiest option. I realized I’d never made it all the way back. I’d simply filled in the gaps with pills and denial.

I shuffled in my seat so that I could reach into my jeans pocket, and pulled out Tony’s wallet. I felt things fade for a second; a familiar old feeling of the world going away, but this time it came without any pills. I flicked on the radio and looked for something to distract my brain. Anything would have done. Pop music, football talk, world news.

A news announcer spoke of a traffic diversion in Tipton after a large fire had taken hold of an apartment block on the Moat Farm estate. This segued into a reminder about the blaze at a Wolverhampton hotel two nights before. The announcer said police were still withholding the names of the two hotel victims, but the fire was being treated as suspicious.

Everything was going wrong.

Branko had Matt, and the information on the hard drive that would probably identify the leak. There was someone else out there with the same information, and they had killed Jelly and Tony. They’d killed Maria and her husband. Four deaths. I couldn’t run to the police because they were closing in on us for everything else.

Somewhere out there, Dodge was circling.

Dodge, yet another secret. Another lie that was catching up with me.

I reached into the glove box and pulled out a small leather bag. I pulled out two pink pills, slipped them onto my tongue, and swallowed. Impatient for an escape, I pulled out a different bag that had white powder, pinched a little between my thumb and forefinger, and snorted. This one hit instantly with a flash, and a warm embrace that took hold of my spine, and the sensations combined to gently lift my worries. I keyed the ignition and was only half aware of putting the car into gear as I pulled away from the curb.

I watched the white lines in the center of the road move.