by Kevin Brooks
The business of life.
The business of death. 23 August 1993. Monday morning, nine o’clock. Ten days after Stacy was killed. It’s another sweltering hot day, and I’m sitting in an office at Eastway police station with Detective Inspector Mark Delaney. I’m hungover, sick, my sweated skin soured with the stink of stale alcohol. DI Delaney is updating me on the investigation into Stacy’s murder.
‘I’m afraid there’s no easy way of doing this, John,’ he says, leafing through some papers in a file. ‘I can skip over the specifics if you’d prefer — ’
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘I need to know what happened.’
He looks up from the file. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
He holds my gaze for a moment, genuine concern showing in his warm brown eyes, then he nods his head and looks down at the file again. ‘All right. Well, as you know, the post-mortem was carried out last week, and we now have some further preliminary forensic results.’ He pauses for a moment, taking a quiet steadying breath, then continues. ‘The pathologist’s report concludes that while the primary cause of death was manual strangulation, Stacy also suffered numerous stab wounds, several of which would have been fatal.’
‘How many?’
Delaney looks up at me. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘How many stab wounds?’
He looks down again. ‘Seventeen … all of them inflicted with the same weapon — a long, broad-bladed knife.’
‘Have you found it yet?’
‘Fingertip searches are still being — ’
‘Have you found it yet?’
He looks at me. ‘No.’
‘Did he rape her before stabbing her?’
‘We believe the wounds were inflicted during the rape.’
‘And then he strangled her?’
‘Yes.’
‘John?’
I rubbed my eyes and turned to Bishop. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’
‘Business or pleasure?’
‘What?’
He sighed. ‘London Road … last night. Were you down there for business or pleasure?’
‘Just asking a few questions,’ I said.
‘About Anna Gerrish?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you get any answers?’
‘Not really.’
‘What does that mean — not really? Either you got some answers or you didn’t.’
I couldn’t be bothered to say anything, so I just shrugged.
Bishop didn’t like that. ‘Do you remember me telling you to keep me informed about what you’re doing?’ he said, a snide edge to his voice.
‘Yeah, I remember.’
‘Well, which part of that don’t you understand? It’s not that fucking difficult — ’
‘I’ve been locked in a cell all night. How was I supposed to — ?’
‘That was after you talked to them,’ he spat. ‘I want to know what you’re doing before you fucking do it, not afterwards.’
‘I didn’t know I was going to talk to them,’ I protested. ‘I just happened to be down here last night …’ As I said it, I realised that we were on London Road now. ‘I mean, I didn’t come down here on purpose. I was just — ’
‘Passing through?’ Bishop sneered.
I watched him as he slowed the car and pulled up at the side of the road, and I wondered what he’d say if I asked him why he hadn’t been down here talking to the girls about Anna. What are you trying to hide, Mick? I imagined myself saying. What do you know about Anna? What do you know that you don’t want anyone else to know? What the fuck are you doing?
‘All right, listen,’ he said sternly to me. ‘From now on, you don’t do anything without telling me first, OK? I want to know who you’re talking to, why you’re talking to them, and what they tell you. Do you hear what I’m saying?’
I shook my head. ‘You don’t have the right — ’
‘Listen, cunt,’ he hissed, leaning towards me and staring into my eyes. ‘This is about me and you, that’s all. Understand? Just me and you. And what you’ve got to understand is that I can do whatever the fuck I want.’ He raised his hand and pointed his finger at me. ‘And you,’ he said, jabbing the rigid finger into my chest. ‘You can’t do fuck all about it.’ He smiled coldly at me. ‘You think last night was bad? Well, if you ever fuck me about again, I’ll make sure you spend the rest of your fucking life locked up in a cell with the nastiest bunch of cunts you can imagine. They’ll rip open your face and piss in the hole. They’ll fuck you senseless, one after the other. And then they’ll do it again, and again, and again. And in the end you’ll be begging someone to cut your fucking throat.’ He smiled again. ‘Do you get the picture?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I get the picture.’
‘Good.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘Now get the fuck out of my car.’
14
The girl who let me into Cal’s house this time was tall and willowy, with waist-length red hair and eyes like a Roswell alien. She was wearing black lipstick and a long black cardigan, and as she led me down to Cal’s basement flat, she didn’t say a single word. Didn’t even smile. She just waited for Cal to open the door, looked briefly at him, then floated off back up the stairs.
‘Is she from the circus too?’ I asked Cal as he showed me inside.
‘No, she’s from Birmingham.’
He was barefoot, dressed only in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and I guessed he’d only just got out of bed.
‘Do you want me to come back later?’ I asked him.
‘What for?’ he said, lighting a cigarette.
I heard the cistern flushing then, and as I looked over towards the bathroom I saw the diminutive figure of Barbarella Barboni, the sacked acrobat, coming out. She was naked, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
‘Hey,’ she said, raising a hand and smiling at me. She looked at Cal. ‘Is there any coffee?’
Cal nodded. ‘This is John, my uncle … you met him before, remember?’
She smiled at me again. ‘Yeah.’
‘Listen, Barb, we’ve got some stuff to do …’
‘No problem,’ she said breezily. ‘Just let me get dressed and I’ll leave you to it.’
Cal watched her as she went into his bedroom, then he turned to me. ‘You want some coffee?’
‘Please.’
He peered at me for a moment. ‘You look like shit, John.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You want something to eat?’
I don’t really like eating. To me, it’s nothing more than a refuelling process, something you have to do to stay alive. And I particularly don’t like eating when it has any kind of social connection. So my natural response when I’m asked if I want anything to eat is to say no. And I almost said no to Cal. But the mention of food made me realise that I hadn’t eaten anything for a long time, and that I was, in fact, desperately hungry.
So I said, ‘Yeah, something to eat would be good, thanks.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Got any eggs?’
‘What kind of eggs?’
‘Chicken?’
He smiled. ‘How about eggs Benedict? I make a very mean eggs Benedict.’
I didn’t even know what eggs Benedict was. And twenty minutes later, after Barbarella had left us alone, and I’d shared a big plateful of food with Cal, I still didn’t know what it was. But it did the job. It filled a hole. And, with the help of three cups of coffee, it gave my energy levels a much-needed boost.
But it still wasn’t enough.
‘Listen, Cal,’ I said. ‘I really need your help with something — ’
‘You’ve got it.’
‘No, just listen to me, OK? I’ll explain everything in a minute, and I’ll tell you what I want you to do, but first of all … well, the thing is, I’m totally fucked at the moment. I’ve been working this case non-stop, and I haven’t slept for God knows how long, and I’ve got a feeling that today’s going to be another long slog.’ I lo
oked at him. ‘So, I was wondering … you know … well, I was just wondering if you’ve got anything that’ll keep me going for a while.’
‘Well, yeah …’ Cal said hesitantly. ‘But I thought … I mean, I thought you’d given up all that?’
‘I just need something for today, that’s all.’
‘Well, OK … if you’re sure …’
I didn’t say anything, I just looked at him.
He gazed back at me for a while — and I could see the concern in his eyes — but then he just nodded his head, got up, and went into his bedroom. When he came back out, fully dressed now, he was carrying a brown plastic prescription bottle.
‘They’re black bombers,’ he said, passing me the bottle. ‘You don’t often come across them these days, but there’s this Portuguese guy I know … anyway, they’re slow-release amphetamines. You only need to take one at a time.’
I looked at the bottle. It contained about half a dozen plain black capsules.
‘Thanks, Cal,’ I said, taking one out and swallowing it with a mouthful of coffee.
‘Yeah, well …’ he said guardedly. ‘Just don’t go crazy with them, all right? I mean, shit, if Stacy was here …’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘She’d kill me.’
Cal smiled. ‘And me.’
We looked at each other in silence for a while, and I knew that we were both feeling the same unfillable emptiness — the despair of knowing that Stacy wasn’t here, and that she’d never be here again …
‘All right,’ I said to Cal, lighting a cigarette. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
After I’d told him everything I knew about the case, and everything that had happened to me in the last few days, Cal just sat there for a while, not saying anything, just quietly thinking things through. As for me, the amphetamine had kicked in now — with an uncharacteristically unedgy kind of rush — and my mind was beginning to buzz with all kinds of new ideas and fresh possibilities about everything: Anna Gerrish, Mick Bishop, the guy in the Nissan …
‘So,’ Cal said eventually, ‘you think that Bishop went through your stuff when you were locked up, but you don’t know for sure?’
‘Well, no … not for sure. But — ’
‘Give me your phone.’
‘What?’
‘Your mobile, let me see it.’
I took out my phone and passed it over. He glanced at the connection sockets, then got up from the settee — we were sitting in the small recreation area in the corner of his flat — and he went over to one of his work desks and started searching through a tangle of cables.
‘What time did you get to the police station?’ he asked me.
‘I’m not sure … about eleven, I think.’
He’d found the cable he was looking for, and I watched as he plugged one end into my phone and the other end into a hand-held device that looked a little bit like a credit-card reader. He connected the device to a laptop, hit some buttons on my phone, waited a while, then pressed some keys on the device and watched as a stream of data appeared on the laptop screen. He lit a cigarette and studied the screen for a while, scrolling up and down through the information, then he nodded to himself and turned back to me.
‘Your phone was accessed at 02.17 this morning,’ he said. ‘I take it that couldn’t have been you?’
‘No, I was definitely locked up by then.’
‘OK, well, whoever it was, they had a good look through your address book, your texts, your call logs … pretty much everything, really.’ He came back over to the settee and gave me back the phone. ‘It’s clean, by the way. No bugs or tracking devices.’
‘Thanks.’
He sat down. ‘So, basically, if it was Bishop who went through your stuff, he’s now got all the information on your phone — who you’ve been calling, who’s called you, who’s in your address book — ’
‘You’re in my address book,’ I said, suddenly realising. ‘All your numbers … and I called you recently — ’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Cal said. ‘He won’t get anywhere if he tries to trace my numbers. But if there’s anything else … you know, anyone in your address book, or anyone you’ve been in touch with … anything that Bishop could use …?’
‘I don’t think so … I mean, I’ll have to check, but I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.’
‘All right,’ Cal said, lighting a cigarette. ‘So let’s assume that it was Bishop, and that he took the cigarette packet because it had the registration number of the Nissan that this girl told you about — ’
‘Tasha.’
‘Right, Tasha.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you think Bishop knows it was her? He obviously knows that you were down there talking to the girls, but would he know which one gave you the number?’
‘I don’t know … probably. I didn’t see anyone watching me when I was talking to her, but the cops who arrested me must have been hanging around somewhere nearby, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they saw us together, and they would have told Bishop.’ I looked at Cal. ‘Do you think I should warn her? If Bishop’s linked with this Nissan somehow, and he knows that Tasha’s a possible witness …’
‘You really think Bishop might do something to her?’
I thought about it, wondering if I was just being paranoid about Bishop, but then I remembered the story about him torturing the drug dealer in Chelmsford, and I recalled the look of venom in his eyes when he’d jabbed me in the chest a few hours earlier, and I knew that I wasn’t being paranoid. Bishop was a violent man. If he wanted something badly enough, he wouldn’t care what he had to do to get it.
‘I’ll go down there tonight and tell Tasha to be careful,’ I said to Cal.
‘Maybe I should do it,’ he said. ‘Bishop might have someone watching the girls, and if he finds out that you’ve been down there again …’
‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right.’
After I’d told him what Tasha looked like, and where he could find her, we got back to talking about the Nissan.
‘She could be lying about it, you know,’ Cal said. ‘Just making it all up … you know what junkies are like.’
‘Yeah, but why would Bishop keep the cigarette packet with the registration number on it if it didn’t mean anything?’
Cal shook his head. ‘I don’t really understand why he kept it anyway.’
‘Because he knew that I’d had a few drinks last night, and he was guessing that without the packet I wouldn’t remember the number. And if I didn’t remember the number, then I couldn’t try to track it … shit.’
‘What?’
‘Well, if I didn’t have the number, what would I do?’
‘You’d go back to Tasha … fuck, yeah, I see what you mean. If Bishop thinks you don’t have the number, he’s going to try to get to Tasha before you do.’
‘And she’s probably got a record, so he’ll know where she lives.’
‘Fuck,’ Cal said. ‘We need to find her as soon as possible. Tonight might be too late.’
‘I don’t see how we can. She won’t be on the streets now, and even if we could find some of the other girls, they’re not going to tell us where she lives.’
‘Do you know her surname?’
I shook my head. ‘And Tasha’s probably her street name anyway.’
‘So we don’t know her surname, or her real first name, and we don’t know where she lives — ’
‘We need to look at this differently,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We can’t get to Tasha before Bishop, can we?’
‘No.’
‘So we have to stop Bishop getting to Tasha.’
‘Right. And how the fuck do we do that?’
‘By letting Bishop know that I have got the registration number she gave me.’
‘Have you?’
I rolled up my sleeve and showed him the number I’d written on my arm when I was in the back of the patrol car last night. ‘It’s something I learned from my
drunk days,’ I told Cal. ‘You can’t trust yourself not to forget anything, or not to lose anything, when you’re drinking. So if you really need to remember something, write it down where it can’t get lost.’
It was Cal’s idea to check out the registration number first.
‘It won’t take long,’ he told me. ‘Once we’ve found out whatever we find out, we can decide how to let Bishop know.’ He went over to his work desk and started tapping away on a laptop. ‘I’m still working on that other registration number you gave me, by the way,’ he said. ‘The Renault.’
‘Any luck?’
‘Not yet. I’ve still got a few more things to try, but it’s not looking too hopeful at the moment.’
‘OK. Well, let me know if you find anything.’
While Cal set about entering the vehicle details I’d given him, I gave Ada a quick call at the office.
‘I’m at Cal’s,’ I told her. ‘He’s helping me out with the Anna Gerrish case.’
‘How’s it going? Are you getting anywhere with it?’
‘Well, kind of …’
‘Kind of?’
‘It’s complicated. There’s a chance that Bishop might have something to do with it. Personally, I mean.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, I haven’t got any proof yet, but I’m pretty sure that he’s got something to do with it. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t want me looking into it, and I’m fairly sure that he’s having me followed.’
‘Did he have anything to do with you getting beaten up the other night?’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘George Salvini. He said it looked like you’d been through a meat grinder — ’
‘It wasn’t that bad, Ada.’
‘You should have told me.’
‘Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. I was going to — ’
‘Was it Bishop?’
‘I don’t know … I’m fairly sure that he wasn’t one of the men who attacked me, but it’s possible he was behind it.’
Ada sighed. ‘Is there anything else you haven’t told me?’
I thought about lying to her for a moment, but I knew she’d find out about the drink-driving charge eventually, so I decided I might as well tell her. ‘I was arrested last night — ’