City of Death: A Galway gangland crime thriller (Ben Miller Investigations Book 4) by Seán Gibbons

Author:Seán Gibbons [Gibbons, Seán]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2022-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

The next morning, Sandra surprised Miller while he was in the kitchen making coffee and smoking his first illicit cigarette of the day.

‘Can I have one of those?’ she said.

Miller, not sure what she meant, hesitated. She picked up his pack of Marlboro Lights, popped one out and held it for him to spark up. ‘And I’ll have one of those when it’s ready,’ she said, pointing to the coffee pot. ‘You were going to say you didn’t think I smoked, weren’t you? Well, there are lots of things I do that you probably think I don’t do. Like telling tales where I oughtn’t to.’

Miller waited for her to add to that, but since she didn’t do so, he poured out two mugs of coffee: black and sugarless in both cases. Sandra went over to the dining table and Miller followed her. For a while they sat in silent contemplation of the bay, visible through the window. It had a restless air about it that morning, with the waves shouldering each other aside, as if some great prize awaited the first of them to make it ashore.

Sandra looked tired. Miller only dared look at her normally impassive blue eyes when her attention was elsewhere. There was something legible there, something he recognised as concern if not quite fear. Something had happened to undermine her usually impenetrable exterior. He could only hope that her earlier allusion to “telling tales” hadn’t been just a slip of the tongue.

She smoked two cigarettes in quick succession before looking at Miller as one about to unburden their soul might do. ‘I can trust you.’ The firmness of her tone left no doubt as to the veracity of her statement. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it if I can’t.’ This wore a mantle of sadness. Miller hardly dared draw on his cigarette. ‘You care about them, don’t you?’ There was an unmistakeably challenging edge to that.

‘I do,’ he replied simply.

‘All right. I don’t want you to go thinking badly of anyone … Goodies, I mean…’ This didn’t surprise Miller. ‘He’s a good man, Miller… All right, a good man who does bad things sometimes and maybe this was one of those times, but I think he’s trying to turn it to the good.’ She gave Miller a look that dared him to disagree. ‘All he’s doing is protecting them girls when they arrive in the country and then making sure they get to where they’re going safely. He doesn’t do anything to harm them. If he wasn’t looking after them, God alone knows what would happen to them. He’s just keeping them safe.’

‘Where does he keep them “safe”?’ Miller said.

‘The place changes all the time — he picks them up in Rosslare and brings them to where he’s told to bring them.’

‘And who tells him where to bring them?’

‘I don’t know — somebody else.’

‘Superintendent Folan? Columbanus Chin?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is he keeping any girls “safe” now?’

Her left eye twitched furiously.

‘Where?’ he tried again. More twitching — he’d get it out of her later.

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