Lost City (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 3) (28 page)

I stared at the bundle. Then I pulled something of my own from my pocket and laid it on the bundle between us. It was my wedding ring. I’d never had the heart to get rid of it. Laura lifted up her hand to show me what I’d already seen, that she was wearing hers.

“I never filed the papers,” she said.

“Is that so I can’t testify against you?”

She looked genuinely hurt. “I’ve been protecting you. I thought, hoped, we could do this next bit together.”

Did I want to sit on that particular throne? I looked across at the woman sitting opposite me. The woman I thought had changed massively since we’d split up, but whom I now realized I’d never really known at all. How long would it last? How long could it last? Before one of us decided the other was a liability, or told a lie, or wanted to expand into something else. Gaines had the right idea.

I stood up and stepped round the table, bending down to place a tender and long kiss on her lips. I muttered something as I walked away, and even I couldn’t tell if it was “I love you” or “good-bye.”

Out in the car park Becker was sitting on the front of his car, smoking. He looked to have aged a decade in the short time since we’d sat in Simon’s apartment.

I handed him the digital recorder that I’d had in my pocket.

“It’s all on there,” I said. “And some extra things you might not want to know.”

He nodded and stayed silent, rolling the recorder over in his free hand.

“You going to use it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Everything’s changing, and the brass are embarrassed as it is. They want me to stay silent, let them do the talking. If I play along, I’ll have a golden ticket for life.”

“Sounds good.”

“Good?” He smiled, looked tired. “What’s that? I’m losing track. This is not the kind of thing I expected when I signed up, you know?”

I nodded. I leaned against the car, and we stayed there until he’d finished his smoke. “If I
do
use this,” he said. “You’d go down with her.”

“Yes.”

He slipped down from his perch and stubbed the cigarette out on the ground. “I should never have introduced the two of you.” He handed the recorder back to me. “Give you a ride somewhere?”

Becker escorted me right up to the front gate of the camp. Other police officers stepped in to try and stop me, but each time Becker got between us and pulled rank. Even when he was outranked.

They all knew who he was and, it seemed, they’d all heard the rumors.

Golden Ticket.

The settlers and protesters saw us coming and started to cheer, a few of them busying themselves with making a space for me to climb through. At the gate we stopped, and Becker put his hand out for a firm shake.

“See you on the other side?”

I waved at the gate. “You could join us instead.”

He grinned. “Not a chance.”

I laughed and climbed through the gap that had been made for me. I turned back to see Becker disappearing among the ranks of officers as he made his way back to the car.

I was mobbed by protesters and settlers, all of whom seemed to know who I was. A squat man I recognized from an earlier visit shouted for people to let me through, and they cleared a path for me to head farther into the camp. I looked around, and noticed the real settlers intermingling with the young middle-class tourist types; they were all working together.

As I headed toward my father’s caravan, I saw the journalist. He was wary, paused when he saw me, probably weighing whether to disappear. “You want stories?” I shouted. “If you’re still here when it’s all over, I’ll have a few to tell.”

“What kind?”

I smiled. “Maybe a comeback story. Ask me when it’s finished.”

The door to my father’s caravan opened before I reached for the handle. My sister, Rosie, jumped down the step and gave me a hug. My father was framed in the doorway behind her. He put his hand out, and I took it. He nodded back toward the gate, where the police were being joined by another breed: burly men in high-vis coats and padding, looking like bouncers from hell. Bailiffs. TV cameras were starting to light up and gather round. All of them on the outside, none of them inside the camp.

“They’re getting ready to come in,” he said.

I shrugged. “Let them come.”

“Every traveller has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.”

—Charles Dickens

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks always to my wife, Lisa-Marie. To my parents, to my brother of 25 years, and my sister of three years, and all my family in the midlands and Glasgow. Thanks also for the trust, faith, and support of my agent Stacia Decker. 

Thanks also go to: 

Al Guthrie. Steve Weddle. Ray Banks. Frank Turner. Dave White. Russel McLean. John McFetridge. Joelle Charbonneau. Scott Parker. Tony Black. Chuck Wendig. Charlie Williams. Reed Coleman. Sean Chercover. Brian Lindenmuth. Sandra Ruttan. Eva Dolan. Neil Martin. Kristin Centorcelli. Nigel Bird. Paul Brazill. James Murray. Rozza. Maxim Jakubowski. James Oswald. Paul Montgomery. Dave Accampo. Sarah Carter. Lola Smith-Welsh. Andy Bartlett. Jacque Ben-Zekry. Reema Al-Zaben. Alan Turkus. Anh Schluep. Paul Morrissey. Scott Calamar. Claire Edwards. Andy Cowley. Aidan Skinner. Ross Nicol. Gary Turnbull. Joe Murray. Neil and John Green. Dave Lockhart. Dave Stewart. Kenny Gilmore. Gilbert Neil. Rab Anderson. Will Smith. Gail McColm. Ryan Lindsay. Dom Pettorelli. Steff and Sandy.

And thanks to all of you, for sticking with Miller through three books.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PHOTO BY JOHN KEATLEY

Jay Stringer was born in Walsall, in the West Midlands of England. He would like everyone to know he’s not dead yet. He is dyslexic; hence he approaches the written word like a grudge match. His work is a mixture of urban crime, mystery, and social fiction, for which he coined the term “social pulp.” In another life he may have been a journalist, but he enjoys fiction too much to go back. He is the author of
Old Gold
and
Runaway Town
—the first two novels in the Eoin Miller crime series—and
Faithless Street
. He lives in Scotland.