Lost City (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 3) (10 page)

Ransford Gaines lived in a large house in Solihull. I’d seen it in photographs and on television news reports, but I’d never been there. It was a flex of his muscles in more ways than one; not only had he bought a big flashy house, but it was on the other side of Birmingham, on the other side of half a dozen rival gangs. The house was out of his comfort zone, but he’d never had any troubles. He took his comfort zone with him.

I wanted to sit in silence as we drove but Claire was having none of it.

“You’re scared, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Liar. Bless, you’re cute when you’re scared.”

Of all the times to flirt. “Wait, does he know about—”

She laughed. “I hope not. I’ve spent my whole life learning to keep things from him. I’d hate to slip up on this one.”

“What would he do?”

“Has Ronny ever told you about the time Stumpy Smith waved his dick at her when they were at school?”

“No.”

“Well, he wasn’t called ‘Stumpy’ before that.”

She sank back into the seat and watched me, seeing if I’d call her bluff and say she was lying. I didn’t really care for the game, so I sat in silence. There were any number of things Ransford Gaines could want to see me about, and almost none that I could think of ended with me getting a new nickname.

“Relax.” She squeezed my thigh a little too high up, and I cast a nervous eye at the driver’s reflection in the rearview. “It’s about work.”

The drive took just over half an hour, mostly on the motorway. The M6 took us past the industrial buildings of Wolverhampton and Walsall to the huge concrete sprawl of Birmingham, the outlines of its tall buildings sharp in the fading light. South of the city, we turned onto the M42, and the scenery began to change. There was far more greenery and less concrete. The houses started to double or triple in size, and the cars seemed in less of a hurry.

Once you’re into this part of the midlands, you start to see how the other half live. Houses with acres of land, quiet private roads, and more golf courses than shops. The driver was obviously in no hurry since the route he took was along narrow country lanes.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Claire nudged me as the driver turned down a narrow lane and we passed a large house with tacky mock Tudor paneling fronted by an elaborate water fountain. I checked myself and realized there was nothing
mock
about that Tudor. But despite its authenticity, it still turned my stomach.

Any number of normal roads can be taken to reach Solihull that border train lines, bus routes, or working class housing estates. We were taking the scenic route for a reason; they wanted to put me in my place.

We pulled up to a large black gate set into a high brick wall. The driver leaned out and waved an electronic pass against a card reader set onto a pole beside his door, and the gates opened inward. We drove onto a gravel road lined with stately trees. I saw dark shapes moving, guard dogs watching us from the shadows. Ahead was the house. It was also a Tudor, with white paneling between dark old beams. It wasn’t exactly Wayne Manor, but it was too big to be a house. It sat atop a small hill decorated with shrubs and flowering plants, raised up twenty feet from the driveway. The car stopped in front of a stone staircase leading up to the house, and Claire started to climb, leading the way up to the front door.

“He bought it off a football manager,” she said, as her bum moved ahead of me, level with my eyes. “It was all tacky inside—white fireplaces, leopard-print vases—but we fixed it up nice.”

She pushed open the front door, and it was no surprise that there was no guard blocking the way. You only got to the front door in a house like this if you were allowed to. The other major players that I’d worked for, the Mann brothers, had been aware of money laundering laws and didn’t like attracting attention. They’d lived in modest houses on the edge of the city, on quiet streets that they shared with teachers and doctors. Ransford Gaines was from a time before
money laundering
had become a buzz phrase. His house was a public display of black market money, and it had proved what everyone had already known:

Ransford Gaines was untouchable.

Claire led me along a hallway decorated with vintage photographs of rural Ireland and Wolverhampton before the ring road was built. There were framed newspaper clippings about Wolves and Celtic, and a photo of a young Ransford Gaines shaking hands with Jock Stein in front of Celtic Park. His local ties and his family roots.

At the back of the hallway the building seemed to drop down a level, and we had to descend a few steps to get into the next room, a large kitchen that seemed to run the full width of the back of the house. I could have lost myself in there, exploring the pantry and the spices, seeing what I could come up with using the huge expensive-looking stove in the center of the room. My stomach rumbled at the thought, but right then I had other things to deal with.

Beyond the kitchen were large French doors that led out to a conservatory. If the structure had been visible from the driveway it would have ruined the stately curb appeal of the house. It was a large modern structure which enclosed a swimming pool, a large fishpond, and landscaping with tropical-looking plants. As we walked inside, I noticed the pond was alive with koi and other fish I didn’t recognize, and in places it ran up against the edge of the swimming pool, with a glass partition between them.

At the far end of the room, on a circular platform that sat between the two pools and was surrounded by plants, sat Ransford Gaines. He looked up from a newspaper as we approached, and I saw what the family had been keeping hidden.

A dying old man.

I had first met Gaines when I was a child. He had been lean and strong, with light hair and Paul Newman’s smile. Now he was thin and pale, with dark spots on his skin. He was sitting in a wheelchair wearing several layers of clothes, a blanket covering his legs. He waved for us to come closer with a fragile bony hand. Claire pulled two chairs over from another table, and I sat down in front of the old man. Claire fussed over him for a second, rearranging his blanket and asking if he needed his oxygen, but he looked irritated and waved for her to sit down. In that moment of irritation I saw the fire that had made him so feared, a strength and menace in his eyes that made me believe that even in his current state he could still stand up and kill me.

He looked at me and smiled, a lackluster version of the handsome grin I remembered. “You’ve no changed.” His accent was an oddball mix of Irish and Black Country. “You were always lost in your own head. You still have the Wolves shirt?”

Gaines was the reason I was a Wolves fan. He’d bought me a Wolves shirt over the objections of both my parents when I was a child, indulging my burgeoning interests in football. On another occasion he’d given me a match-day program signed by the players. These were all memories I’d managed to gloss over until a couple of years ago when I finally realized that he and my father went way back. I would never know the half of the things they’d done together back in the day, and I was happy with that.

“It’s too small for me now.”

He chuckled. “Aye, I imagine it would be. The young footballer, all grown up. You used to look like your mam, but now it’s your old man. Dead spit of him at your age. How is he?”

“We don’t talk.”

“Shame. Family is the only thing, son.”

I looked around the conservatory and then back at him. “And money too, right?”

“Aye.” His laugh again. “A little of that, too.”

“Why am I here?”

“That fire last night, the hotel, that anything to do with us?”

I held his stare and tried not to react. What did he know? More important, what didn’t he know? Had Veronica filled him in on the problems? If this was a test, I planned to pass it.

“Coincidence,” I said, still meeting his stare.

“I’ve never believed in it.” Then he cocked his head to one side, a sudden movement from someone so frail. “What is the fire coincidental to?”

Shit.

I felt his gaze again, and experienced a reaction similar to the one I’d had to the old man in the photography studio. I felt my skin crawl and my stomach flip over. I just shrugged and decided it was my turn to wait him out.

“Let me tell you what I think you’re too scared to say.” He leaned forward and gestured at Claire, and she handed me a series of photographs, face down. “There is a leak. Someone is feeding information to the police. Now, Veronica is a smart girl. I like the way she’s separated out the business into different cells. Nobody lower down has enough information to sell out anyone in another part of the business. Clever stuff. You know what it means?”

I shook my head and turned over the photographs. They were of Laura and me. There were a couple outside the hotel, us loading two dead bodies into the car, and then a couple more of us outside Laura’s flat as we stepped inside.

Gaines waited until I looked up and then fixed me with his cold stare. “How long have you been feeding information to the cops?”

Think.

Think.

Think.

Did he not know Laura was one of ours? Claire knew, why didn’t she say?

I looked over to her for support but didn’t get any. She was watching me with a look on her face that I couldn’t place. I knew exactly what her father’s face was saying, and I felt the threat of it hanging over me, ready to fall.

“No, you don’t—that’s Laura. She’s my ex-wife.”

“Aye, I know who she is, and she’s a cop, too.”

“She’s one of ours. One of Veronica’s, anyway. She was the one who handed over that Polish connection a few years ago, helped us take out the Mann brothers.”

At mention of the Polish incident my gut tensed, a physical reaction to go along with the memory. Of a knife slicing me open, and doctors splicing me shut. I wanted a pill, and it took everything I had not to start squirming in my seat. That would give the wrong impression.

“And Claire tells me that guy,” he pointed at the picture of us bundling Tony into the car, “was also one of ours and, unless I’m mistaken, that was the hotel that burned down last night.”

I’d been waiting for last night to catch up with me, but not like this. Veronica hadn’t told him about Laura. Okay, I could buy that one. She liked to keep things close to her chest and maybe pretending she’d done the whole Polish thing herself had been a way to impress her father. But had she told him nothing about last night? Nothing about Jellyfish? I looked again at Claire, and thought I placed the emotion—it looked like jealousy. She was mad at me over Laura. I was on my own here.

“You’re right, there is a leak. Those pictures? That’s me trying to sort it out.”

“By killing two people and burning down our hotel?” He leaned in closer, jabbing a bony finger in my direction. “Aye, right.”

“No, that’s the coincidence. We didn’t torch the hotel. That happened after we’d gone.” Think, think, think. “I was contacted—a guy I used to know named Jellyfish said he had proof there was a leak, and he was trying to extort it out of us. I set up a meeting with him, but when I got there those two guys were dead, and the killer had the proof.”

Ransford nodded, and I could hear his breath rattling as he thought things over before he said, “Did you tell Veronica?”

Think, think, think.

“No.” I didn’t really know why I was protecting Veronica’s lies and half-truths. Maybe it was just automatic; I’d spent so long doing it. “I kept it to myself, wanted to see what was going on before I brought anyone else in on it.”

“Why?”

I felt confidence coming back. “It’s my job.”

“Aye, it is.” He smiled, eyed me like a proud father for a second. Then he waved for me to go on.

“So I called Laura, and we cleaned up the mess.”

“Why Laura?” Claire sounded hurt, and I hoped her father didn’t pick up on the tone.

“Well, if there’s a leak she’s in as much trouble as the rest of us. It could get back to her bosses that she’s one of ours. Plus, I was trying to keep you guys out of it.”

“I like that.” The old man nodded and leaned forward for a moment as if he were struggling to cough, but then he straightened up and waved Claire’s concern away. “You’re old school, like your dad.”

There was an obvious question I’d already missed a couple times, but it hit me on the third pass through my brain. “Wait, how do you know about the leak?”

He covered his mouth in anticipation of the cough that just wouldn’t come. He finally belted it with a loud wet sound, and wrapped it up in a paper handkerchief, dropping it in a bin at his feet.

“We’re getting out,” he said.

I knew straight away what he meant, but I played dumb. “What?”

“We’re getting out of the business. It’s over. What’s the point in being criminal when all the good stuff has already been taken? And by men in suits, who took it all legally. ’Course, you tell anyone of this and I’ll be having your balls. Men like me and your da? We got into all this so that our kids didn’t have to. This new kid in Birmingham? Dodger, Dodgem, whatever his stupid name is. He’s killed one of ours already, he’s ready for a fight, and staying in the game means giving him one. Neither of my girls should have this life. Ronny’s only in it to keep me happy. Claire here? What’s she want with all that work?”

I looked across at Claire but her poker face was back in place. She’d always seemed to me to love the criminal aspect of her family. She was the one who got off on being seen as dangerous, who seemed to love the glamour and the money. She took to crime in a way that her sister didn’t. Veronica had the brains for it, but Claire had the instincts. I’d been guilty of underestimating her in the past, and as I sat and watched her react to her father’s words, I saw that I wasn’t the only one.

The old man carried on. “Ronny showed me the way, the things she’s been doing since she took over. We’re making more clean money than dirty, and we could make even more if we got out—that’s where all the real criminals are anyway, in the city in their offices. Fuck it, aye? Can’t beat
’
em, so—”

He shrugged and fell silent, waiting for my response.

“How? We’ve spent two years getting everything perfect. Claire’s got the drugs and the hookers running fine, Veronica got the fronts turning profits, we replaced soldiers with businessmen. The whole lot has never been run so well. How do you want to pull out of that?”

“What you’ve done is spent two years making us ready for a buyout. Ronny’s spent two years getting our legitimate businesses set up to take their place. All the guys who are running their own bits, they’ll get offers. We’ll be giving them a buy-out price, and then it’s theirs.”

“And if they don’t want it?”

“Why wouldn’t they? Chance to be their own bosses for real? They’ll take it.”

“But what about the rest? The territory, the drugs?”

He nodded, and waited for another cough that didn’t come. “This is what you’ve not seen yet. There’s a group we have a deal with, a cartel from the Middle East. Once I crossed over into drugs, it was inevitable. We’ve had a deal for thirty years: they supply, we sell, they leave us alone. When they branched out into moving illegals, they wanted to change the deal. They came to me five or six years ago, somewhere around there, and said they wanted my territory. Offered to buy me out rather than come in and get messy. We were all just a couple of businessmen having a sit down, aye?”

“Veronica told me about them. You said no.”

“Aye, I did. Then Ronny took over and did that Polish thing, and nobody wanted to mess with us after that.”

“Taking out the Mann brothers would do that.”

He beamed with pride. “Aye, she’s a good girl, isn’t she? Chip off the block.”

I felt, rather than saw, Claire take offense at that. She had worked hard over the last two years. She’d gotten her hands dirtier than most in bringing the streets in line, while Veronica had handed out the orders.

“But then
you
happened.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You messed up the deal with the illegals.”

I flinched a little. Two years before, I’d been looking into something for Veronica that had led to me accidentally exposing an illegal immigration operation she was running. It brought cheap labor into the midlands, people who would work well below minimum wage. I’d never asked how she’d gotten in contact with the immigrants she brought in, because there were some mysteries I’d learned to live with, and many pills helped that happen. The police operation that had cleaned up the mess with the illegals after I’d exposed it had taken a lot of Gaines’s muscle off the streets, and cleared the way for my promotion.

Gaines smiled when he saw me flinch. “Aye, they were at the other end of that deal. We shut that down for a long time once the police started sniffing, and our friends lost a lot of money. They didn’t take kindly to it, you could say.”

“They wanted someone to blame.”

“They did. And I was all set to give it to them. Give them your name and address, lay the whole bloody thing on you like we should have. But Ronny, she liked you, said we needed you.”

“Who got the blame?”

“Never you mind. The point is, they came back with another offer, still just a bunch of businessmen having a sit down, but now there were two options on the table. Take the money, or take a war.”

“I’d say money wins.” The penny dropped. “This is where she’s getting the money for the Birmingham deal?”

“Aye. We’ll be getting enough money to buy into that development clean, no more hiding, and they’ll get the illegal businesses that you’ve spent a couple years perfecting for them.”

“How the hell would we launder that kind of money?”

“Like I said, let the men in offices deal with that. Ronny’s working on that end of things. Once we have the money she can get it clean, then get it gone.”

Claire’s mood turned to impatience. “Daddy, tell him about the leak.”

“All right, all right.” He folded a piece of paper from beneath his blanket and passed it to me.

I glanced it over and quickly realized it was a message from the cartel, even though it wasn’t signed.

“Looks like someone’s whispered in their ear about our leak problem,” the old man said. “The immigration deal was strike one. This is strike two.”

Had Jelly been in contact with the cartel? How would he know to contact them? Another question to add to the list.

“If this is two, what’s strike three?” I said.

“Read the end of the letter.”

I scanned down to the bottom. The last few lines said that failure to identify the threat to the deal within seventy-two hours would lead to the negotiator being terminated.

“I assume they didn’t misspell
negotiation
?”

The old man shook his head.

“And I assume that the negotiator in this deal is Veronica?”

This time the old man nodded.

“And when was this delivered?”

“Last night.”

Great. Seventy-two hours just became forty-eight.

I waved the letter. “Does she know the men she’s negotiating with are planning to kill her?”

Back to his head shaking again. “And she can’t know. I want her protected from this, so she can do her job.”

“All that stuff earlier about the pictures of me and Laura, that was all crap, wasn’t it?”

He gave me a slow handclap. “I was fucking with you. Claire had already vouched for you. She likes you. That’s not always been the test of a good man, but Ronny likes you too, and they can’t both be wrong. I needed to see how loyal you were to her.”

The knot in my stomach vanished. I’d passed a test by lying to him. If only they taught shit like that at school. I looked over at Claire, but she was still tense, still pissed at me deep down.

“You said this was delivered yesterday? Was it by hand?”

When Gaines nodded I described the man I’d met in the photography studio, and he dropped down a few inches and a great fatigue seemed to pull his body inward. “No, but I know who you mean. His name’s Branko. He’s from Montenegro, but they won’t have him back there. I once saw him make an IRA triggerman cry like a baby. If he’s working for the cartel, we can’t let him find the leak first.”

I nodded and said I was already on it. I hoped he trusted me at my word because I didn’t want to go into detail. All that would do was show how many more questions I had than answers. All I could think was that Jelly had somehow gotten word to the cartel about the leak, and had ended up dead. The Cartwrights had looked to be involved, but now they were either on the run or in the morgue, and I had a feeling I knew which. And Branko seemed to be one step ahead of me in the investigation, so maybe he was behind what had happened at the hotel. If that was the case, we were already on borrowed time.

The old man had one more message for me before I left. He pointed from me to Claire and said, “If you put your dick anywhere near her again, I’ll mail it to your old man.”