Dance of Ghosts

by Kevin Brooks

  Could either of them have sent it?

  Does it matter?

  I read the message again …

  And again.

  And, drunk as I am, I know what I have. I have an anonymous message giving me the name and address of the man who killed Stacy. A man called Anton Viner. A convicted rapist. I have his address … I know where he is. And in roughly ten hours’ time, I know that he’ll be arrested and taken into custody.

  But until then …

  Until then …

  He’s mine.

  It was almost 10.30 when the door to the interview room opened and Mick Bishop came in. He was accompanied by a haggard-looking man in a shitty brown suit, who he didn’t bother introducing. The two of them just sat down opposite me, and the man in the brown suit unwrapped two cassette tapes, loaded them into a tape-recorder, and turned it on.

  ‘Right,’ Bishop said wearily, his voice on automatic. ‘This interview is being tape-recorded. My name is DCI Michael Bishop, Hey CID. Also present is …’

  ‘DS Alan Coleman, Hey CID.’

  ‘And …’ Bishop looked at me. ‘State your full name, please.’

  ‘John Craine.’

  ‘The date is 8 October 2010, 10.31pm. This interview is being conducted at Eastway police station in Hey …’

  As he carried on going through the procedure, advising me of my rights, explaining this and explaining that, I very nearly fell asleep. It was too hot in there. Stuffy. The air felt used up, as if it had been breathed too many times. I wanted a cigarette. I wanted a drink. I wanted to go home and go to bed and close my eyes and forget about everything.

  ‘Mr Craine?’ Bishop said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you understand what I’ve just told you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Good. OK … let’s get on with it.’ He looked at me. ‘At 18.37 this evening you called the police to report the discovery of a body in a lay-by on Great Hey Road. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d like you to tell me what you were doing there.’

  ‘I’m a private investigator. I was recently hired to look into the disappearance of a young woman called Anna Gerrish. After making some enquiries, I came to the conclusion that she’d been abducted from London Road in the early hours of the morning and that her abductor had driven off along Great Hey Road in the direction of Hale Island. So I followed that route, keeping my eyes open for places where a body might possibly be dumped, and the lay-by was just one of those places.’

  Bishop just stared at me. ‘Did you search anywhere else?’

  ‘Not really …’

  ‘Did you search anywhere else?’ he repeated. ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘I stopped at a few other places, but I didn’t actually get out of the car –’

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Let me get this straight – you were driving along Great Hey Road, looking for Ms Gerrish’s body, and the first place you stopped at … or rather, the first place you stopped at and got out of the car, was the lay-by. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how did you know exactly where to find the body?’

  ‘I didn’t … I just looked around –’

  ‘You just looked around?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you found it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He didn’t say anything for a moment, just carried on looking at me, then he said, ‘All right, let me ask you something else. How did you know that Anna Gerrish was dead?’

  ‘I didn’t –’

  ‘But you went looking for her body anyway?’

  ‘She was missing,’ I said. ‘No one had heard from her for a month. I thought there was a fairly good chance that she was dead.’

  ‘But you didn’t know for sure?’

  ‘No.’

  He paused again for a moment, slowly nodding his head, as if he was digesting what I’d just told him and carefully considering what to ask me next – but I knew it was all a show. He knew exactly what he was doing. And I was pretty sure that I knew exactly what he was doing too: not asking me anything about Tasha, or what she’d told me; not asking me anything about the Nissan, or the driver; not mentioning anything about the registration number I’d texted him. He didn’t want any of that on tape.

  He looked down, sniffed, ‘then looked up at me again. ‘Where were you on the night that Anna Gerrish disappeared, Mr Craine?’

  ‘Where was I?’

  He nodded. ‘On the night of Monday 6 September, the early hours of Tuesday morning – where were you?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Think about it.’

  I thought about it, then shook my head again. ‘It was over a month ago, I can’t remember. I was probably in bed –’

  ‘Probably?’

  ‘Yeah, probably.’

  ‘But you can’t remember?’

  ‘No …’ I looked at him. ‘Can you remember where you were that night?’

  He stared back at me. ‘I was here, in this very room, from midnight until three in the morning. I was interviewing a witness about an alleged assault.’

  I smiled at him. ‘You’ve got a good memory.’

  ‘You think this is amusing, Mr Craine? A young woman, stabbed to death … her body dumped in a lay-by … you think that’s funny?’

  There was no point answering that, so I didn’t.

  Bishop just looked at me for a few moments, then he turned to DS Coleman beside him and said, ‘All right?’

  Coleman nodded.

  Bishop glanced at his watch. ‘Interview terminated at 22.41.’

  Coleman turned off the tape-recorder.

  ‘Is that it?’ I said.

  Bishop nodded.

  ‘What about –?’

  ‘The interview’s over,’ he said, turning to DS Coleman. ‘Give us a few minutes, will you, Alan?’

  With another silent nod of his head, Coleman got to his feet, removed the two tapes from the recorder, and left the room.

  Bishop waited for him to close the door, then he sat back in his chair, crossed his legs, and smiled at me. You look tired, John.’

  ‘You too.’

  He sniffed. ‘All right, listen to me … this is over for you now, OK? You’re going to go home, go to bed, get some sleep, and then tomorrow morning you’re going to go back to your shitty little office and get back to doing your shitty little job. Do you understand me?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘This is now an official murder investigation,’ he went on. ‘If you get in touch with anyone – and I mean anyone – who has anything to do with this case, and that includes the Gerrishes, I’ll have you arrested for obstruction, wasting police time, perverting the course of justice … whatever the fuck I can think of. Have you got that?’

  I nodded. ‘Do they know yet?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Gerrish … have you told them?’

  He sighed. ‘They’ve been informed that a woman’s body has been found, that’s all. We can’t tell them anything else until the identity’s been confirmed.’

  ‘But you know it’s her, don’t you? You know it’s Anna?’

  ‘What did I just tell you?’ he said, beginning to lose his temper. ‘This has got nothing to do with you any more. This is a police investigation. You are not police, you are not involved in any way, shape, or fucking form.’ He leaned forward and spoke slowly, looking me in the eye. ‘Now … do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said calmly. ‘I understand.’

  ‘You’d fucking better.’

  I looked at him. ‘Can I go now?’

  He sniffed again, pausing for a moment just to make me wait, then he jerked his head at the door. ‘Yeah, go on, fuck off.’

  PART TWO

  ∞

  FRIDAY 22 OCTOBER – SATURDAY 23 OCTOBER 2010

  17

  Two weeks later, on a cold and misty Friday morning, I was sitting on
an old wooden bench in my backyard, drinking coffee and listening to Bridget Moran as she told me about a fat little boy and a mouse.

  I’d been seeing quite a lot of Bridget over the last ten days or so, mainly because she’d finally split up with Dave and didn’t like being on her own too much, and although I often heard her talking to her dog, Walter, I knew that she needed a bit of human company every now and again. Of course, I liked to think that there was a little bit more to it than that, but I didn’t really mind if there wasn’t. If all I was to Bridget was a convenient pair of human ears, and if all we ever did was share the occasional cup of coffee together … well, that was perfectly all right with me.

  After my interview at the police station – and after three or four days of stultifying depression, when all I could do was lie in bed and wait for the black place to leave me – I’d done what Mick Bishop had told me to do: I’d gone back to my shitty little office and got back to doing my shitty little job. Apart from one phone call to Cal, I hadn’t got in touch with anyone who had anything to do with the Anna Gerrish case, including Helen and Graham Gerrish. I hadn’t even sent them a bill. I’d just got back to living my life, doing my job … working insurance cases, tracing bad debts, tracking down the makers of pirate DVDs …

  The Anna Gerrish case was over for me: I’d done what I’d been hired to do; I’d found her. It wasn’t my job to find out who’d killed her. It wasn’t my business to ask any more questions. Who was driving the Nissan that night? Who was Charles Raymond Kemper? Did Kemper kill Anna? Did Bishop kill Anna? If he didn’t, what was he trying to hide? And if he did …?

  No … it wasn’t my business.

  Right now, my business was investigating the alleged whiplash injuries suffered by a 48-year-old woman in a minor road-traffic accident. That’s what I was being paid to do. And once Bridget had finished telling me about the fat little boy and the mouse, and after I’d had another cigarette, or maybe two, and perhaps another cup of coffee or two … that’s exactly what I was going to do.

  ‘You know the kind of fat kid I mean, don’t you?’ Bridget said.

  She was dressed up warmly in a baggy old jumper and fleece-lined boots, her short blonde hair hidden beneath a red woollen hat, and she was sipping her coffee with both hands wrapped round the cup, like a small child drinking orange juice from a beaker.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I was miles away for a minute there. Who was this fat kid again?’

  Just then, Walter wandered out through the back door. He paused on the step for a moment, sniffing the air, then he shook his head and lolloped across the yard. Bridget watched him with quiet affection as he found a bush, cocked his leg, scratted the ground, then went back in again.

  ‘It’s too cold for him,’ she said.

  ‘You should get him a coat.’

  ‘He’s got a coat.’

  A veil of mist hung in the air, suffused with the sour tang of nettles. Small birds were flitting from wall to wall, and somewhere in the distance I could hear the unseasonal chimes of an ice-cream van.

  I felt OK.

  ‘Right,’ Bridget said. ‘Are you listening now?’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘OK, so … Wednesday morning, this fat kid came into the shop looking to buy a mouse …’

  Bridget was the joint owner of a pet shop in town. It was only a small place, nothing fancy – no chinchillas or snakes or lizards, just fish, birds, mice, rabbits …

  ‘… and I refused to sell him one.’

  ‘You refused to sell him a mouse?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘I didn’t like the look of him. He was one of those nasty fat kids with piggy little eyes, you know, the ones who always get what they want. If I’d sold him a mouse it would have been dead within a week. So I told him he couldn’t have one.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘The little shit went and got his dad. The two of them came back in the afternoon – fat kid, fat dad.’ She smiled. ‘Fat dad said that if I didn’t sell his boy a mouse, he’d take me to court.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Told him to contact my lawyer.’

  I lit a cigarette. ‘There’s probably a joke in there somewhere.’

  ‘Probably.’

  She raised the coffee cup to her mouth and gently blew at the steam.

  I said, ‘Why aren’t you at the shop today anyway?’

  She smiled. ‘I’m skiving, the same as you.’

  ‘I’m not skiving … I’m just taking a break. I’ll have to get back to it soon.’

  ‘Yeah, well … it’s my afternoon off. Sarah’s in charge today.’

  ‘Who’s Sarah again?’

  ‘My partner.’

  ‘Oh yeah … I remember you telling me about her.’

  Bridget looked at me. ‘Yeah, I did, didn’t I?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told you about Sarah.’

  ‘That’s what I just said.’

  ‘I know …’

  She was still looking at me, and there seemed to be a question in her eyes. And I got the feeling that I was supposed to know what it was, but I didn’t.

  ‘What?’ I asked her. ‘What is it?’

  She smiled. ‘How long have we known each other, John?’

  ‘I don’t know … about ten years?’

  ‘Closer to thirteen, actually. Thirteen years. And in all that time … well, I know we’re not really close or anything, but we’ve talked to each other quite a lot, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yeah …’

  ‘And I’ve told you quite a bit about myself – how I met Sarah, how we got the shop together, what I like doing, what I did when I was a kid … things like that. I mean, you know stuff about me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah …’

  ‘But I still don’t really know anything about you. I know that your mother used to own this house, and that your wife was killed … and I know what you do for a living, but that’s about all.’ She sipped from her coffee cup, looking at me over the rim. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Mind what?’

  She shrugged. ‘Me … you know …’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She smiled. ‘You can tell me to shut up if you want.’

  I looked at her, my heart beating hard with an expectation that I wasn’t sure I wanted. ‘What do you want to know about me?’ I asked her.

  ‘Anything, really … whatever you want to tell me.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Tell me about your wife.’

  ‘Stacy?’

  ‘Yeah … Stacy.’ Bridget smiled. ‘Tell me how you met her.’

  It was the smile that did it, I think. Bridget’s smile. If she’d been at all hesitant in asking me about Stacy, or if there’d been any trace of sadness or pity in her voice, I probably would have made an excuse and tried to change the subject. But the way she asked, as if the memory of Stacy was something to be celebrated, not mourned or avoided or tiptoed around … somehow that made all the difference. And as I began telling Bridget about the summer of 1990, I realised that this was the first time I’d talked to anyone but myself about Stacy since the day she was killed.

  ‘I’d just finished my first year at university,’ I told Bridget, ‘and I’d come back home for the summer –’

  ‘What were you studying?’ she said.

  ‘Philosophy.’

  ‘Why?’

  I looked at her. ‘I don’t know … I thought it’d be interesting, I suppose.’

  ‘Was it?’

  I shrugged. ‘It was OK. I mean, to be honest, I didn’t really know what I was doing back then. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, what I wanted to do with my life … my father was hoping that I’d join the police force after I’d taken my degree –’

  ‘The police?’

  ‘Yeah, well, he was a poli
ce officer –’

  ‘Really?’

  I nodded. ‘And so was his father … so, you know, it was kind of a family tradition.’

  ‘So what does your dad think of you being a private detective?’

  ‘He’s dead now.’

  ‘Oh … I’m sorry.’

  I nodded again. ‘Well, anyway … it was the summer of 1990, a Friday night, and I was having a drink in the Double Locks … you know the place I mean?’

  ‘Yeah, down by the river … it’s a nice pub.’

  ‘Yeah, so I was just sitting there, a little bit drunk –’

  ‘Were you on your own?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why? I mean, didn’t you have any friends or a girlfriend or anything?’

  I shrugged. ‘I didn’t have a girlfriend at the time, no. I had friends … I mean, I knew people. I just … I don’t know. I just liked being on my own, that’s all.’

  Bridget smiled. ‘Fair enough. So you were on your own, a little bit drunk, and you were having a drink … then what?’

  ‘I saw Stacy. She was with a group of people who I found out later were teachers from the school where she’d just started working … I suppose it must have been a teachers’ Friday night out or something –’

  ‘Or an end-of-term celebration?’

  ‘Yeah … something like that. There were about a dozen of them – men and women, young and old – and they all seemed to be having a pretty good time. Stacy was at the bar with an older man when I first saw her. He was in his late twenties, early thirties, and I thought he was with her, you know …? The way he was standing really close to her, touching her arm, her shoulder, whispering in her ear … I thought they were a couple. But I still couldn’t take my eyes off Stacy.’

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘Stunning … I mean, just really, really beautiful. Not in a fancy, glamorous kind of way, she was just … I don’t know. There was just something about her. Her eyes, her face … everything. She was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen.’