Lost City (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 3) (14 page)

“Mr. Miller, please sit down.”

I inched into the kitchen, step by step, keeping my hands down, out of sight, to keep the backup hard drive out of view. I reached to the small of my back with my free hand and pulled out the gun. I hoped it was loaded. Branko was sitting across from me, facing the door as I walked in. He was dressed as sharply as the day before. Both of his hands were in view and he wasn’t carrying a weapon, but his presence still conveyed the same quiet threat that had put me on edge the last time. Matt was sitting with his back to me, his shoulders hunched with nerves. The kittens were eating at another plate full of food; the little fuckers were oblivious to the danger.

Branko had set three glasses on the table beside a large carton of milk. He smiled at me, and waved to the empty seat on the other side of the table. Then he began to pour. The noise cut through the silence which set my skin crawling for the door again. I stayed where I was.

“A simple pleasure. At my age there are few things that can make you feel young again. A girl’s smile. A fight. Milk. I would prefer a milkshake,” he said as he poured. “Such a wonderful variety of flavors in this country. But—” He shrugged. “Normal milk will do on this occasion.”

He held his glass up to the light in his left hand, turning it round a couple times before taking a long sip and following it with a sigh of satisfaction. As he lowered the glass, I raised the gun. There was no shake in my hand. I’d used one before, and the novelty had worn off. A smug smile rippled out from the center of his lips, and he leaned back in the chair. With his right arm draped over the backrest, he gestured at the gun with a trailing hand.

“Do you expect this is the first time I’ve had a gun pointed at my face?”

He sipped again at the milk and set the glass on the table. He pushed the two others across the wooden top, one toward Matt and one to the vacant seat. After another moment of his smile I started to feel foolish holding the gun, and now I fought to keep a tremor out of the grip.

“Let me tell you about the first time,” he said. “I was fifteen years old, in the Socialist Republic Of Montenegro. It seems some people date a memory by what they were wearing or how their hair was cut. I judge it by what my country was named or who controlled it.” He smiled at his own joke as neither Matt or I were going to give him anything. “My father was a dairy farmer. He raised me to work with him out in the fields, tending the cattle. I was tending the cattle alone that morning, because my father was ill, when three young Boyash walked into the field with rifles pointed at me, and demanded that I leave. They said their parents had fled the Nazis and it had taken them until now to find the farm again.” He sat and stared at me for a second, meeting my eyes and ignoring the gun. “They pointed their rifles at me and called for my father to come out and discuss our leaving. So you see, Mr. Miller, you are not the first Gypsy to point a gun at me and, whether that one is loaded or
not, you will not be the last. So join me for a drink instead.”

I lowered the gun and hated myself for doing it. “What did you do?”

“I killed them.” He laughed. “Wolves were a common problem in Montenegro. A particularly vicious kind, ones that could live in
the black mountain in conditions no other creature would survive. My father taught me to shoot when I was six, and he gave me a gun when I was nine, the day I started tending to the cattle alone.”

“And what did your father do after you killed them?”

“He gave me wages. And a better gun.”

I took a few steps further in so I could look down at Matt. His head was bowed, his eyes staring into the glass of milk in front of him. Whatever place he’d gone to in his mind, it didn’t seem to be helping him think clearly. I thought of the bags of pills upstairs and knew I needed to get him away from this bad situation as soon as I could. The kittens had finished eating and were now deciding which of us to come to for attention, sniffing the air and purring. Branko put his hand down and called out to them, and they sauntered over to rub themselves against his fingers.

Fucking traitors.

“Useful thing, cats.” He voice never rose. It was always at the same calm level, his accent adding a singsong lilt. “We had them on the farm. Good for catching rodents and keeping the area clean.”

He picked one of them up and held it in his lap, stroking it with one hand while holding it firmly with another. Matt raised his eyes to stare at the kitten. I saw his jaw clench.

“But one more thing to protect from the wolves, also,” said Branko. “I found one when I was ten. He’d been mauled but the wolf had decided he wasn’t a meal, and had left him to bleed. He had a leg missing, and his side was ripped, but he was alive. Poor thing, really. But on a farm, if you have no use, you have no life.” He placed his hand around the kitten’s neck and applied pressure. “So I had to put him out of his pain.”

I pulled out the vacant seat but didn’t sit down. I wanted to stall, to make it look like I was going along with him. “What is it you want?”

“I believe you know already. That’s why you’ve been trying to keep your other hand below the table, is it not? Bring it up.”

I wasn’t a killer, and we both knew he was. I placed the hard drive on the table between us and sat down.

Matt’s eyes flicked to the device, then to me, then back to the kitten, which was struggling as it started to notice the pressure on its neck. It tried to pull free and open its mouth to meow, but it couldn’t.

“I believe that’s what we’re both here for, yes?”

I nodded and gave a smile of my own. Waited to see if he would react to it.

He took the bait. “What am I missing?”

“You’re just doing the same job as me, aren’t you? Trying to find out what Jellyfish knew when he was killed. Thing is, I’ve been scared of you. There were four people killed at the hotel, and I’d been thinking maybe it was you who did them. But whoever did it has the information already.”

His own ease still unnerved me. “It’s only now that you realize this? Mr. Miller, I’d been led to believe you would be a threat, but if you’re so slow—”

I hooked the empty chair with my foot and kicked it toward him, making him move for the first time as he leaned away from it, dropping the kitten as he went. I picked the hard drive up off the table and raised the gun again.

“Let me tell you of the first time I pointed a gun at someone.” I paused for effect. “I shot the fucker. Matt, come on, we’re leaving.”

Matt didn’t move. Then he seemed to wake up, slowly rising from the chair. But he shook his head. “Not without them.”

He meant the kittens.

For fuck’s sake.

I nodded, fine, and kept the gun trained on Branko while Matt stooped down to pick up both kittens, wrapping them in the folds of one of his several layers of clothes. I stepped aside to let him past me as he walked out into the hallway.

“I should tell you something else.” Branko pulled one of the other glasses of milk back across the table and sipped at it. “It wasn’t the first time I’d met those Boyash. They’d stopped us at the market the week before, explained to us then and asked for us to leave the land, even offered a small sum of money. My father thanked them for their offer but said no. He told them not to offer again. I take that with me. People always get a first meeting, a chance to do the right thing.” He set the empty glass down. “Now, I won’t count our meeting in the shop yesterday, that was too brief. But this? This is your chance to do the right thing.” He raised his voice enough to carry. “That goes for you too, Matthew.”

I waggled the gun at him to remind him who was in charge here.

“Mr. Miller.” He sighed, like a patient old teacher. “If you had the will to shoot me, you would have done so already. Put it away. My offer is simple—the people I work for will pay handsomely for the information our departed colleague was attempting to sell to us. We’ll pay higher than the original price, in fact, because we understand the market has changed. If you leave that hard drive on the table with me, then I will finish my milk and make a phone call, and bring to you a suitcase full of more money than you’ve ever seen. If you leave with what we want, then I shall give you the time it takes for me to finish this third glass. And then I will make a phone call and announce that you, like the kitten on the farm, are no longer useful.”

I backed out of the room and left.

“Who was that?”

Matt didn’t wait until the car door was shut before he shouted out his question at me. All of the tension and fear he’d bottled up in the flat came out.

“That’s a good question.”

I hoped he’d give me a few quiet moments to think things through. I’d played for bravado in the kitchen, but in truth I was clutching for hard facts to hold on to. Something was missing. I’d spent the whole investigation too doped up to think straight. If Branko was working for the cartel, and the cartel was looking for the same information as me, then who the hell had stolen the information from the hotel? I needed to know who the two dead people in the hotel fire were. Was I wrong in assuming those bodies had been Craig and Maria Cartwright? I’d had good reason to assume Dodge wasn’t involved, reasons that I couldn’t tell Gaines, but was I being blind to the obvious? There was a third rail on this line, and it would fuck me up if I touched it.

Matt had said something to me but I’d missed it. I turned and grunted for him to say it again.

“How did he know my name?”

“You didn’t give it to him?”

“’Course not.”

“Shit.”

I dropped the gun into the glove box and put the hard drive at Matt’s feet before keying the ignition. I eased down on the pedal and got off the estate as quickly as possible. “Are you going to be able to get me the information off that thing?”

He nudged the device with his foot. “Sure. He’ll probably have some encryption software that’ll slow me down, but not by much.”

I heard the edge of pride in his voice and decided to play up the idea to distract him from his worry. “You sure you can crack it?”

“Do I look like an amateur?”

I nodded at the two kittens curled in his lap. “No, you look like a charity case.”

The kittens jumped as a fire engine screamed past us, its sirens blasting at the afternoon traffic. It was followed quickly by another. School hadn’t let out for the day yet and the roads were still clear enough for me to get back to Wolverhampton without any stops. My phone buzzed a couple of times but I ignored it until I’d pulled up outside the sports hall. I checked the phone while Matt climbed out of the car and struggled toward the building with both the kittens and the hard drive. I had two text messages. Both from Laura.

Don’t Panic.

Play Dumb.

I didn’t have long to wonder what this meant because as soon as I looked up, I saw two people climb out of a car parked on the other side of the road and walk toward me. A man and a woman, both in their twenties, both looking ridiculously young to be wearing suits. They had the look of undercover cops. I debated driving away, but Matt wasn’t inside the building yet and I wanted to keep attention away from him and the hard drive. And the gun in the glove box.

I stepped out of the car and smiled at them, playing it casual.

“Mr. Miller,” the man said. “Could you come with us, please?”

“DS Murray,” I said, recognizing him from a previous case. “Always a pleasure. What can I do for you?”

“This is DS Henry.” He nodded toward the woman. She had a boyish face with clean lines, nothing touched by the stresses of the job. “We just need you to help us with a few things.”

I made a show of stepping back toward my car, enough for me to turn and see that Matt was inside the building now. “I’d love to, guys, but I’ve got a lot on my plate.”

Henry stepped forward. “I’d hate it if we gave the wrong impression, Mr. Miller. I’d also hate it if we had to formalize this and spend a few hours filling in paperwork. I believe you know how much of an issue that can be?”

“If you’re saying you could arrest me—”

She stared me down. The clean lines of her face took on the cold strength of a glacier. She was good. “If that was what I were saying, I would advise you to listen.”

Murray smiled, playing the good cop. “All we want is to talk. We have some questions for you about Tony Keane.”

Shit.

I still had Tony’s wallet in my pocket. I hoped they didn’t search me. Between a gun from one dead man’s apartment in my car and another dead man’s wallet in my coat, I was looking good for whatever they wanted to throw at me. Old instincts kicked in, telling me to run, to get the hell away from whatever they were about to drop on me. Luckily I’d learned to fight down those instincts, since they had gotten me into trouble every time I’d given in to them. I looked again at the sports hall, and thought of Matt inside with the hard drive. Branko had known his name—which meant he might know how to get to him. He certainly knew how to get to me. I’d be safe with the police, but Matt was a sitting duck. I wanted to warn him, tell him to get to Gaines and deliver the hard drive, but there was no way to get a message to him without alerting Murray and Henry. I counted to five and thought of the text Laura had sent me.

Don’t panic.

I nodded to each of them and shrugged. “Sure, my place or yours?”

Henry stepped back and nodded toward their car. When she spoke, there wasn’t a hint of a request. “I think you should come with us.”