Eoin Miller 01 - Faithless Street (2 page)

“Fuck you.” He said into the old mans ear.

He got to his feet and walked over to stand
with his boss.

“Why didn’t you shoot him?” Marvin said.

“Like you said, bullets are expensive.”

The Gypsy drums his
hands on the steering wheel, nervous energy playing out as the traffic slows to
a stop. We’re stuck in a tailback, and I guess that should mean more time for
small talk, but he doesn’t seem to like that sort of thing.

     
The Gypsy
.

     
I know I
shouldn’t think of him like that, but I can’t help it. It’s what everyone calls
him behind his back. Well, that’s the polite version of what everyone calls him
behind his back.

     
I think back to
how my friends laughed when I told them I was going for dinner with Eoin
Miller, asking if I was an equal opportunities dater now, or just after a bit
of rough.
 
And I sit here thinking,
why did I laugh along?

     
The silence
stretches out. I look across at him, but he doesn’t look at me. His eyes are
fixed ahead, peering into the traffic, trying to see what’s causing the hold
up. He’s not comfortable with the silence, but in some strange way that is
comforting in itself. I don’t know, I guess I like that he’s not trying to
impress me. There’s no bravado, no mask. It’s just him and me in a car, and
neither one of us is pretending this bit of the date is going well.

     
We inch forward
a few feet, and as we turn the corner heading to the traffic lights we can see
the problem now. In the churchyard, blue lights, uniforms, and people in white
overalls. That means there’s a dead body. Miller pulls the wheel hard to the
right, mounting the curb to pull out of the line of traffic then parking the
car there. As we climb out, a WPC is coming over to tell us to move, when she
spots me. It’s Sarah Barford, a friend of mine. Never quite slim but never
quite fat, she maintains that gray area in between, and likes to live
vicariously through tales of my sex life while flirting with men that she never
follows through on. She looks me up and down, clocking my dress and then
locking eyes with me to avoid acknowledging Miller.

     
“What you got?”
I ask.

     
She shrugs,
“Just a homeless guy dropped dead, nobody.”

  
   
“Who’s in charge?” Miller asks, forcing Sarah to
look at him.

     
She shrugs
again, knowing her answer won’t be popular, “Leek.”

     
“Seriously?”

***

“Seriously?” Sarah
looked over her Starbucks coffee cup at me and raised her eyebrow, but her
voice was more interested than shocked, “The gyppo?”

     
It was three
weeks before, we’d caught the same shift and managed to steal away thirty
minutes for a lunch break. Sarah had a Panini and coffee, I had half a Panini
and a latte. Neither of us would be writing rave reviews.

     
“Don’t call him
that, it’s racist.”

     
“How is that
racist?”

     
“I was talking
to him about it the other day, after the sergeants exam, and he was saying it’s
an ethnic slur.”

     
“Ooh, look at
you, at the exam. Were you passing each other love notes?”

     
I shrugged. I’d
known it would be a mistake bringing this up with her. She had a heart of gold,
but shit for brains, and she couldn’t break free of her parents programming.

     
“I think he’s
interesting,” I said, “And a little cute. Plus, he’s the only guy who doesn’t
look at me like a leg of lamb.”

     
“Nice image.”

     
I stuck my
tongue out, “You know what I mean.”

     
She tipped the
cup back to get at the dregs, making a slight slurping noise as the coffee went
down. Then she caught herself and stopped, and wiped away liquid from the
corner of her mouth, smiling at me while checking if I’d noticed.

     
“So when’s you
date?”

     
It was not a
date.

                 
It was not a date.

                    
         
Okay, a
little bit of a date.

     
“Few weeks,
probably. He’s pulled a load of backshifts for football duty, and I’ve got this
court case I need to prepare for. You know, that robbery thing? Looks like I’m
going to be called as a witness.”

     
She stayed
silent for a minute, then smiled again, “The gyppo, huh? I never. I thought for
sure that you and Terry Becker were going to-”

     
“Sarah, he’s
married.”

     
“So?”

***

“So? What you got?”

Miller steps over to DS
Terry Becker, a member of CID stood by the police tape. Becker’s one of the
good guys. He doesn’t treat Miller like shit, and he only occasionally looks at
my tits when he talks to me. There was a brief moment, around the last
Christmas party, when if I’d been any more drunk and he’d been any less of a
man we might have made a mistake under the blinking fairy lights, but he’d
fingered his wedding band and backed off.

     
He points down
at a bush cordoned off by police tape. The lights from the police cars reflect
off the tape and cast dark neon patches onto the wall of the church. There’s a
soundtrack of radio speak and sirens in the air. Down beneath the bush, half in
the churchyard and half on the pavement, are a pair of legs. Cold and pale, the
skin already has the marbled effect of death. The rest of the body is out of
sight beneath the leaves.

     
"Oi
Gyp."

     
If Eoin Miller
is insulted, he doesn’t show it. He just straightens up and turns to face the
person calling out. The voice belongs to DI Leek. He’s sweaty and round, and
stuffed into a cheap Asda suit. His accent is full on Black Country, the
beginning and ends of his words are heavy enough to sink a boat. He hates
Miller, but then, it seems like everyone on the force does.

     
Except me.

     
Well, maybe me.

    
Miller reaches to the
other great divide for his revenge, football rivalry, “What’s wrong, you stripy
cunt?”

     
In the great
rule book of how not to address a senior officer, I’m fairly sure Miller’s
words would be on the first page, with a big red circle around them. We’re not
needed here, but that didn’t stop Miller from pulling up and sticking his nose
in. I’m hanging back, I don’t want to get involved. It’s been hard enough
building credibility, without people spreading rumors about this. Leek sees me though
and his posture changes. He’s instantly sucking in about ten pounds of gut and
tightening his jaw into some sort of tough guy smile.

     
“Hey Laura,” He says, “What brings you-“

     
That’s the time
it takes for him to do the calculations and for me to drop down a peg. He turns
again to glare at Miller, to blame him for being with me.

     
“I see.” Leek
says, “right. Well I’m sure the two of you have things to be getting on with.”

     
He turns back
to kneel over the body, dismissing us, but Miller steps in closer, and I reach
out to try and stop him.

     
“What you got
there?” He asks.

     
Leek turns
back, his face flushed. Terry Becker steps between Miller and Leek, easing
things without making a fuss about it, “Nothing Eoin. Just a dead homeless guy.
You two carry on,” he smiles at me and checks out my dress, “we’ve got this.”

     
But Miller
steps closer in again and I follow.

     
The corpse is looking cold and
dirty. His clothes, ripped and covered in mud, are sodden from rain. His feet
are bare, and his face, when one of the SOCO team in white overalls pulls back
the bush, hasn’t had a shave in a couple of days. There’s a strong smell of
alcohol and urine coming off him.

     
“What’s the hold up?” I ask,
“There’s a crowd here that don’t need to be seeing you standing round a dead
body.”

     
Leek turns on me now. I’ve
officially gone from hot stuff to whore.

     
“Oh, so the WPC is going to give the
okay for us to move the body, eh? It’s okay with you if we just go ahead and
search his pockets, maybe put him in the boot and drive away?”

     
I step back and I must look hurt,
because Miller’s blood is up now.

     
“You fat gavver fuck. Just because
you’re CID doesn’t mean I won’t wipe the floor with your gorjer arse.”

     
Becker is smiling, off to the side,
like he’s enjoying this too much to break it up, so now I’m stepping between
Leek and Miller. Again I seem to be the only one thinking about the spectators.

     
“Come on guys, no need to do this in
front of
them.
Lets just leave, Eoin,
eh?”

     
“DI Leek is happy that this is open
and shut, but we’re the first on the scene.” Becker calms everyone down with
his friendly tone. “We’re waiting for the coroner to call it, and then the
undertakers can take him away.”

     
“Just a bum.” Leek shrugs as he says
it. “Maybe you’re related to him, eh?”

     
Miller either doesn’t hear what Leek
says, or ignores it. He kneels in closer to the body. I look it over again,
trying to spot what’s was nagging at me and shouting at Miller. There’s nothing
out of place; he has no possessions to have been stolen. His clothes are
worthless. He doesn’t even have shoes to steal.

     
Radio squawk, bursts of static.

     
Another siren approaching, this one
an ambulance.

     
Way too late to do any good.

     
Miller keeps making to touch the
corpse, and a uniform keeps coughing and stepping in the way. It takes me a
minute to realise that he’s doing it on purpose, having fun at the expense of
those throwing themselves in the way. Sacrificing themselves for red tape.

     
Miller then stands and starts
looking at the gathered crowd, mainly old women from the bingo hall across the
road and a few drunks from the pub, wanting a piece of whatever’s going on. He
turns to me and winks.

      
“Right, DI Leek, we’ll get out
of your hair.” He salutes Leek in a way that gets the fat mans blood boiling
even more, “Leave you to your dead guy.”

     
He puts his hand gently on my back
and leads us toward the car, and I realise that I like the feeling. I like
being round this guy, even if he is a bit of a dick. Before he gets in, he
calls Becker over and whispers something in his ear, then they smile at each
other and Miller gets back into the drivers seat.

     
“What did you say?”

     
“Mmmm?” He pretends to be distracted,
not to hear, but really I think he’s stalling for thinking time and hopes I’ll
play along.

     
“To Becker there. What did you say?”

***

“What did you say?”

     
“There wasn’t really anything I
could,” Miller shrugged, then reached for his drink, “I mean, what could I do,
offer him some butter?”

     
After the exam every one of us had
headed across the road to the bar, working through our nerves and fears in the
form of ale and cheap mixers. The group had been evenly divided between those
who pretended to have the right answers and those who pretended not to care. By
early evening the crowd had split off into groups, leading missions to
takeaways, restaurants or strip clubs. Only two of us stayed behind, Eoin
Miller and myself. I was feeing the drink, and I thought he was too, but it was
hard to tell what went on behind his eyes.

     
“You’re making it up.”

     
“I wish I were. Then I wouldn’t have
the scene stuck in my head. Leek ball deep when I walked in on them, hanging on
for dear life, wheezing away like a pig with asthma.”

     
“And that’s why he hates you?”

     
“Yup.”

     
“Did he ask you to keep it quiet?”

     
“Yup.”

     
“And did you?”

     
“Hell no.”

     
I laughed and accidentally snorted
some alcohol up my nose. Miller saw me do it, but pretended not to have
noticed. I saw him giving me the sideways look, the one I’d seen a hundred
times since high school.