Dance of Ghosts

by Kevin Brooks

  *

  Ten minutes later we were both in the back of a taxi – Cliff fast asleep, snoring drunkenly, while I just sat there gazing out of the window, almost too drunk to despise myself.

  But not quite.

  It didn’t take long to get to Cliff’s house. I asked the driver to wait while I helped Cliff inside and got him settled down on the settee in his sitting room. He didn’t say very much as I loosened his tie and helped him off with his shoes – at least, he didn’t say much that I understood – but then, just as I was going, I heard him call my name, and when I turned back to him, he said, ‘Don’t worry about it, all right? This … you know … all this, everything … don’t worry about it … it’s OK.’ He smiled crookedly at me. ‘Life’s too shitty to worry about.’

  I got the taxi driver to drop me back at my office. When I got there, George Salvini was taking another of his many cigarette breaks, leaning against the wall in another of his many expensive three-piece suits, and as I walked up to the door, and I saw him taking in my appearance, I wondered what he must think of me – half drunk, bruised and battered, dressed as ever in a dull black suit …

  ‘Ada’s just left,’ George said to me, smiling.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your secretary, Ada, she left some minutes ago. She asked me, if I see you, to tell you that everything is up to date, there’s a note for you on her desk.’

  ‘Right …’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  He smiled again. ‘You’re very welcome.’

  I left him to his cigarette and went up to my office.

  Ada’s hours of work are pretty much up to her. She basically works for as long as she needs to, and then she goes home. Some days that might mean being in the office from nine till five, or later, other days she doesn’t even bother coming in at all. It suits her, and it’s fine with me. And it’s what we agreed on when I poached her from Mercer Associates shortly after setting up my own business.

  Today, clearly, there hadn’t been all that much to do.

  There were some cheques for me to sign on my desk, a list reminding me of the phone calls I had to make, and – in the note that George had mentioned – a summary of the calls that Ada had taken that morning.

  All of it could wait.

  I went into my office, closed the blinds, and poured myself a drink. I looked at the clock on the wall. Tick, tock …

  It was 15.45.

  I sat down on the settee and closed my eyes.

  Ripped open on the bed.

  Naked.

  Butchered.

  Bled white.

  Dead.

  I cradle Stacy’s ruined body in my arms, howling and sobbing … holding her for ever, for ever, it’s all I can do. I can’t let go. I can’t ever hold her enough …

  I can’t.

  There’s nothing left.

  After a timeless time – a thousand years, a minute, a day – I wipe a smear of blood from her mouth, kiss her cold lips, and whisper goodbye. I have to let go now, Stacy. Just for a while. I have to call the police. I don’t want to. I want to stay here with you, holding you in my arms … I don’t want to let you go. But I know if I stay here, I’ll stay here for ever, and if I stay here for ever I might as well be dead. And dead’s no good to me now. Not yet. I have to attend to the business of death.

  I opened my eyes, wiped the tears from my face, and took a long shuddering drink from the whisky bottle. A flood of wretchedness welled up inside me, a feeling so awesome and desperate that it defied all logic and reasoning. Stacy was dead … for ever. The child she was carrying, our child, was dead …

  For ever.

  The tears filled my eyes again as I went over to the wall safe, opened it up, and took out my father’s pistol. I went back to the settee, and sat there for a while with the gun in my hand, wondering – as I’d wondered so many times before – where my father had got it from. Did he buy it? Was it police issue? Had he owned it for years, or had he got hold of it specifically to end his own life?

  I slipped off the safety catch and wondered how it would feel to rest the barrel against my head and gently pull the trigger.

  It wouldn’t feel like anything, I told myself.

  It wouldn’t feel like anything at all.

  Twenty minutes later, I reset the safety catch, put the pistol back in the wall safe, and lit a cigarette instead.

  11

  The office was dark and quiet when I woke up, the whole building hushed with the edgy silence of a time and place that isn’t meant to be heard. I could hear the light spit of rain on the window, the unconcerned hum of a water pipe, a low groaning creak from somewhere downstairs …

  There is no silence, not anywhere. If you listen hard enough, you can hear the sound of the machine beneath your skin.

  I reached for my whisky glass and took a long, slow drink, savouring the sedate heat of the alcohol.

  My head hurt.

  My legs ached.

  It was 8.55 p.m.

  Time to get going.

  I lit a cigarette and set about trying to remember where I’d left my car.

  An hour or so later, after I’d walked back to the Blue Boar to pick up my car – stopping only at a cashpoint in town and for a couple of quick drinks in the pub – I was driving slowly along a street of terraced houses at the back of Hey Town’s football ground. London Road looked much the same as any other residential street on the south side of town – parked cars, satellite dishes, pavements glistening dully in the street-lit rain – and during the day there was no way of telling that this street, together with a handful of others, was at the heart of Hey’s red-light district. At night though, especially late at night, when the skinny young girls appear on the streets, and the men in cars come creeping around … well, it’s not hard to guess what’s going on then.

  I hadn’t seen any working girls yet, but I guessed that as the rain was still coming down quite heavily, I’d probably find most of them up by the railway bridge at the far end of London Road.

  I drove on, constantly checking in the rear-view mirror for any sign of the Renault. I was keeping my eyes open for it all the time now, and although I hadn’t seen it since getting beaten up, I wasn’t going to take any chances.

  Halfway along London Road, I caught sight of several girls hanging around in the arches next to the railway bridge up ahead, and a few more taking shelter in the tunnel itself. I checked in the mirror again, seeing nothing but rain and an empty street, and I slowed down and pulled in at the side of the road. I turned off the engine, lit a cigarette, and waited.

  A number of cars went by me during the next few minutes. Most of them just drove past the girls and carried on under the bridge, but some of them momentarily slowed down – window-shopping, I guessed – and a few of them actually stopped. The one girl I saw getting into a car couldn’t have been more than sixteen.

  With a final look over my shoulder, and satisfied that there wasn’t a silver-grey Renault in sight, I got out of the car and headed for the bridge.

  I’m not sure what kind of reaction I was expecting from the girls, but once they realised that I wasn’t a punter or a cop, and that all I wanted was information about Anna – and that I was prepared to pay pretty well for it – most of them were friendly enough. The only trouble was, most of them, if not all of them, were addicts of some kind or other – heroin, crack, meth – and they were usually pretty out of it when they were working, which didn’t make for the best witnesses in the world. Most of the girls knew who Anna was, even before I’d shown them the photograph. And they knew about her reported disappearance too. But that was about it. As one girl put it, ‘She wasn’t a regular. She’d come down every other night for a while, then we wouldn’t see her at all for a couple weeks, then she’d start showing up again.’

  When I asked this girl, whose name was Lizzie, what kind of person Anna was, she just shrugged and said, ‘Fuck knows … I don’t think she ever said a single word to me. She kept herself to herself, if you
know what I mean.’

  ‘Do you remember anything about the night she disappeared? It was 6 September, a Monday.’

  Lizzie laughed. ‘You must be fucking joking … I can’t even remember what happened this morning.’

  It was much the same story when I asked the other girls about Anna – she wasn’t here all the time, she didn’t mix with us when she was here … and, no, I don’t remember the night she disappeared – and I’d almost given up hope of finding out anything useful when Lizzie came up to me and suggested I talk to a girl called Tasha.

  ‘I don’t know if she’ll know any more than the rest of us,’ Lizzie said. ‘But I remember her talking to Anna a couple of times … so, you know …’ She smiled at me. ‘You got a cigarette?’

  I took out an almost full packet, slipped a £20 note inside, and gave it to her.

  ‘Where do I find this Tasha?’ I said.

  Lizzie nodded in the direction of the tunnel. ‘Her on the left, the blonde.’

  From a distance, Tasha looked like a perfectly ordinary – if slightly underdressed – fifteen-year-old girl, and I suppose that was the intention. But up close, she didn’t look quite so young. She was heavily made-up – pink lipstick, black eyeliner – and her blonde hair was dyed, the roots showing through. She was wearing a faded denim jacket over a sheer black miniskirt and a low-cut top, with black stockings and knee-length high-heeled boots. Beneath the make-up, her once-pretty face was tired and gaunt. She was chewing gum and chain-smoking cigarettes.

  She didn’t say anything when I went up to her, she just looked at me – like she couldn’t give a fuck – and took a hard drag on her cigarette. I told her who I was and what I was doing, and I asked her if she remembered Anna Gerrish.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I remember Anna.’

  ‘Was she a friend of yours?’

  ‘No.’

  I nodded. ‘Lizzie told me that you talked to her sometimes.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  A car cruised past, a Vauxhall Astra, the driver checking out Tasha. Tasha stared back, her eyes a mixture of expectation and contempt, but the car didn’t stop. She turned back to me. ‘Why should I tell you anything?’

  I shrugged. ‘For money?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘That depends on what you know.’

  She snapped her gum. ‘I already lost thirty quid from the guy in the Astra. He would have stopped if you weren’t here.’

  ‘Thirty quid?’ I said, surprised it was so low.

  ‘Twenty-five then,’ said Tasha, misreading my reaction. ‘Whatever … I can’t spend all night talking to you, I’ve got a living to make.’

  I took out my wallet and passed her three £10 notes. ‘There’s more,’ I said as she took them from me, ‘if you tell me what you remember about Anna.’

  Tasha tucked the notes away in the top pocket of her denim jacket. ‘We didn’t talk about anything really,’ she said. ‘I mean, I don’t even know why she spoke to me. She never talked to any of the others. She was kind of cold, you know … like she was always a million miles away.’ I waited while Tasha dropped her cigarette to the ground and lit another. ‘I only spoke to her twice, as far as I can remember,’ she went on. ‘The first time she told me all this crap about being a model, which I don’t think even she believed, and the second time …’ Tasha paused, trying to remember. ‘I don’t know … I think it might have been something about her old man, but this was about five or six weeks ago when there was a lot of really good gear around and I think we were both pretty wasted at the time …’

  ‘Do you remember what she said about her father?’

  Tasha shrugged. Just the usual shit, probably … you know, the same old Daddy-used-to-fuck-me story. I’ve heard it so many times now that I just kind of blank out whenever I hear it …’ She looked at me. ‘Have you lost something?’

  I was patting my pockets, looking for my cigarettes, but then I remembered that I’d given them to Lizzie. ‘You couldn’t spare a cigarette, could you?’ I said to Tasha.

  She smiled as she offered me her packet. ‘You’re supposed to be paying me.’

  It was a nice smile.

  I lit up and said, ‘Can you remember anything about the night Anna disappeared? It was about a month ago, a Monday –’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tasha said. ‘I know what day it was.’

  I looked at her, unable to keep the surprise from my eyes.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘You think I’m lying?’

  ‘No, of course not. It’s just … well, none of the other girls could remember that far back.’

  ‘I’m not one of the other girls, am I?’

  I nodded. ‘Do you mind me asking why you remember that night in particular? I mean, no offence, but I’d imagine that one night down here is pretty much the same as any other night.’

  ‘It was the guy in the car,’ Tasha said. ‘That’s why I remember that night. This guy … I don’t know, there was just something about him. At first I just thought he was one of those punters who want to pick up a girl, but when they get down here they can’t go through with it, like they’re too scared to actually do it, you know? So they just end up driving round looking at us, then they probably go home and have a wank. But this guy … well, he kept coming down, almost every night for about two weeks, and as far as I know he never actually stopped for any of us, he just drove around having a good look … but I didn’t get the feeling that he was scared of anything. In fact, if anything, it was the opposite … there was something really fucking scary about him.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, he just had that look, you know … like the whole world meant absolutely nothing to him. Do you know what I mean? He was one of those ice-cold fuckers who don’t give a shit about anything or anyone.’

  ‘And you saw him that night?’

  ‘Yeah, he picked up Anna.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tasha nodded. ‘Hundred per cent. I saw her getting in his car. I mean, it was the first time this guy had ever stopped … that’s why I remember it.’ She waved her cigarette hand towards the far end of the tunnel. ‘Anna usually worked down there … there’s a little lay-by just past the tunnel. I suppose she thought it was a handy place for the punters to stop. Anyway, that night, I saw this guy’s car coming up London Road, and he did his usual thing – slowing down and giving us all the eye – and then he just drove past, as usual. But then, when he got to the lay-by, I saw him pull in.’

  ‘And Anna was there that night?’

  ‘Yeah … she hadn’t been there all that long, maybe half an hour or so …’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Pretty late, about two-ish, something like that. Anna worked at The Wyvern … she didn’t finish there until one.’

  ‘Did you see her getting into the car?’

  ‘Sort of …’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look,’ Tasha said, taking my arm and positioning me so that I was looking down towards the end of the tunnel. ‘The lay-by’s half hidden by the end of the bridge … see what I mean? If a car’s parked close to the pavement, all you can see from here is the driver’s side.’

  I nodded. ‘So if someone gets into the passenger seat, you can’t actually see them doing it?’

  ‘Right … but Anna was definitely there, and I saw this guy leaning across to open the passenger door, and when he drove off, there was definitely someone in the passenger seat.’

  ‘But you couldn’t say for certain that it was Anna?’

  ‘No. But when I checked the lay-by a few minutes later, she wasn’t there.’

  She lit another cigarette, and offered one to me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, accepting a light from her too. ‘This man … he drove off away from the bridge, not back this way?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s why I couldn’t see who was in the passenger seat.’

  I looked down th
e tunnel, trying to remember where the road led to. ‘Have you told anyone else about this?’ I asked Tasha. ‘The police, newspapers …’

  She shook her head. ‘No one’s asked me.’

  ‘The police haven’t talked to you at all?’

  ‘Not to me, no. I don’t know about the other girls …’

  ‘Why would the police talk to the other girls but not you?’

  ‘I don’t know … I mean, they probably wouldn’t. I was just saying, that’s all.’

  I nodded. ‘Do you remember what kind of car it was?’

  ‘Yeah, it was a Nissan Almera.’

  I smiled at her. ‘A Nissan Almera?’

  She smiled back. ‘I’ve got a five-year-old boy who’s mad about cars.’ She laughed quietly. ‘Everywhere we go, he points them out and tells me what they are. That’s a BMW, Mummy. That one’s a Zafira …’ She shook her head, her smile turning sad. ‘So, anyway, yeah … I know my cars. It was a Nissan Almera.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Green.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you got the registration number?’

  She nodded. ‘You got a pen?’

  I managed to hide my surprise this time as I reached into my pocket and passed her a pen. She wrote the registration number on the back of her cigarette packet, then gave the packet to me. I shook it. It was at least half full.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You can keep them. I’ve got plenty more.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I looked at her. ‘Can you describe the man in the car?’

  ‘He was oldish,’ she said. ‘Early fifties, maybe. Dark hair, pale skin. I couldn’t see his eyes too well because he always wore those tinted glasses … you know the ones I mean? Not sunglasses, just ordinary glasses with tinted lenses.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But I think his eyes were dark.’

  ‘What was he wearing?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know … just ordinary old-guy kind of clothes – a shirt, some kind of jacket … you know, the kind of stuff that’s hard to remember?’