Dance of Ghosts

8

At some point during the night I must have got up out of the armchair, turned off the television, and got into bed. I have no recollection of doing it, but when I woke up in the morning, the television wasn’t turned on any more, and I was definitely in my bed, and — as far as I knew — no one else had been in my flat. So it must have been me.

It was still quite early, not quite seven o’clock, and the grey light of day was only just beginning to creep through the windows. The rain had stopped, but the air was damp and cold. A blustery autumn wind was rattling the glass in the kitchen window.

My body had stiffened up during the night, and it took me a while to get out of bed and start getting ready for the day, but after I’d been through the usual routine — bathroom, coffee, painkillers, cigarette, toast, eggs, coffee, cigarette, bathroom — well, I didn’t actually feel any better, but I certainly didn’t feel any worse.

For the next half-hour or so, I busied myself doing not very much, then at eight o’clock I called Ada at home.

‘What?’ she answered bluntly.

‘And a very good morning to you, too,’ I said.

‘What’s good about it? And why are you calling me so early?’

‘I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be coming in this morning, that’s all. Is it OK if I leave everything to you?’

‘You always leave everything to me.’

‘Yeah, I know. I just meant — ’

‘I know what you meant, John,’ she said gently. ‘Of course it’s all right. Where are you going to be if I need to get in touch?’

‘I’ve got a meeting with Bishop at 11.30, and I want to try and see Cal before I go.’

‘Bishop called you then?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He’s a nasty fucker, isn’t he?’

‘Yep.’

I heard her lighting a cigarette. ‘So how did it go last night? Did you find anything at Anna’s flat?’

I gave Ada a brief rundown of what I’d found out about Anna — the heroin, the prostitution, the possibility that her father might have abused her — but I didn’t mention anything about the Renault or the beating.

‘So,’ Ada said when I’d finished. ‘What do you think it all means?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Apart from the fact that her life was a fucking mess.’

‘Yeah, I suppose …’

‘Why are you talking like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘All lispy and puffy.’

‘Puffy?’

‘You said thuppothe. It sounds like you’ve got a mouth full of cotton wool.’

I ran my tongue over my split lip. ‘Uh, yeah … it’s just a … it’s nothing. Just a cut lip. I’ll tell you about it later on.’

‘Ooh,’ she mocked. ‘I can’t wait.’

‘Yeah … well, I’ll probably get back to the office some time this afternoon, OK?’

‘All right.’

At about half past eight, just as I was about to leave, I heard the sound of raised voices upstairs. Bridget and Dave, arguing. I couldn’t make out most of the words, but I could hear the tone of the emotions: anger, frustration, placation, pleas — You don’t understand … I do … No, you don’t …

After a while, the argument subsided and a low sobbing began. Bridget, crying. A few minutes later, angry footsteps came thudding down the stairs, the front door opened, then slammed shut. Dave Dave, storming out.

I waited until I’d heard his car start up and pull away, with the inevitable screech of tyres, then I opened my door and went out into the hallway. I could still hear Bridget crying quietly, and just for a moment — a very brief moment — I found myself gazing up the stairs, wondering if maybe I should go up there and …

And what? I asked myself.

Comfort her?

Hold her?

Tell her she’s better off without him?

I shook my head, locked my door, and left.

Cal Franks had at least four mobile phones, maybe more. There were his two ‘regular’ phones, which he used for straightforward, everyday calls. There was another which he’d fitted with some kind of signal booster, in case of poor reception. And then there was his ‘special’ phone, which — according to Cal — was totally anonymous, impossible to listen in to, and completely untraceable.

I didn’t know what he used this special phone for, and I didn’t want to know.

I’d already called him on one of his regular numbers before I left that morning to see if he was awake and available, and surprisingly — since he usually stayed up most of the night and only went to sleep when everyone else was getting up — he not only answered his phone and told me to come on over, he actually sounded relatively sane. Which, for Cal, was also quite surprising.

It was around nine o’clock when I pulled up outside his house. The rain was still holding off, and there was even a hint of autumn sunlight glowing palely behind the clouds. It was still pretty cold though, and the wind seemed to be picking up.

A wheelie bin had been blown over at the side of the road, and the bin bags inside had fallen out and split open on the pavement. Bits of rubbish had been picked up by the wind and were flapping around in the air — empty crisp packets, polythene bags, plastic food containers — like confetti at a wino’s wedding.

As I got out of the car and locked it, I wondered why I was bothering. Not only did the car not have a side window, but it was a cheap old pile of shit anyway. I mean, who the hell was going to steal a twelve-year-old Ford Fiesta that was held together with body filler and carrier bags?

I pulled up my coat collar and headed along the street towards Cal’s house. It was a tall old place with black railings and steep concrete steps leading up to the door. The walls of the steps were cracked and topped with birdshit-encrusted slabs, and the front door was daubed with years of graffiti. The shiny black CCTV camera mounted on the wall over the door didn’t seem to fit with the overall shabbiness of the place, but it was an incongruity that fitted Cal to a T.

Cal had lived here since he was seventeen, by which time he’d already been thrown out by his parents and excluded from every school he’d ever been to. It wasn’t so much that he was a bad kid — although he could be kind of wild at times — nor did his alienation have anything to do with a lack of intelligence or understanding. If anything, Cal was just too smart for school. He got bored very easily, and when he got bored, he started looking for something exciting to do. And, for Cal, something exciting usually meant something illegal. Like credit-card fraud, or hacking, or phishing, or mobile phone scams …

He was very good at what he did.

He’d never been caught, never been arrested.

And he made a lot of money.

There were rumours that a few years after he’d moved into this house, which at the time had been a squat, he’d very quietly become the owner. I didn’t know if that was true or not. And, if it was true, I didn’t know if he’d bought it legally or not. But, again, I didn’t care. I liked Cal. And Stacy had liked him too — she was the only member of her family who did — and that meant a lot to me. And it meant a lot to Cal too.

He was twenty-eight now, and he’d been helping me out with things since he was fourteen, and in all that time he’d never, ever, let me down. So, as far as I was concerned, Cal was all right.

I rang the doorbell and waited, pulling up my collar against the wind. The feeling of the house hadn’t changed from its days as a squat — although I imagined that Cal now charged some kind of rent — and as I stood there on the doorstep, I could hear various kinds of music playing in different parts of the house: some rap stuff on the ground floor, a guitar band on the second floor, an operatic voice sailing out from an open window on the third floor. It sounded good.

The girl who opened the door was no more than four-and-a-half feet tall. She was dressed in a pale-blue vest with a tiger’s head on the front, a very short threadbare skirt, black tights, and monkey boots. Plastic bangles rattled on her wrists, silver studs glimmered in her ear, and strings of coloured beads were wound around her neck, together with a knotted thong of black leather and a small plastic doll on a chain. The king-size cigarette hanging from her lip-glossed mouth was far too big for her.

‘Yeah?’ she said, looking at me with glassy eyes.

‘I’m here to see Cal.’

She took the cigarette from her mouth and looked over my shoulder. ‘Who are you?’

‘John Craine. Cal’s expecting me.’

She stared at me for a moment, then shrugged and opened the door. I stepped through into a corridor cluttered with bicycles, bin bags, and damp clothes drying on racks. A high staircase led upwards on the right, and at the far end of the corridor was a large communal kitchen. The house smelled of wet clothes, soup, and marijuana.

The girl took the cigarette from her mouth and scratched her arm. ‘Cal’s down the hall,’ she said. ‘The basement flat.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

She wandered off up the stairs, and I headed down the hallway. At the end, a narrow stairwell with steep spiral steps led down into the basement. More CCTV cameras were mounted on the wall, and I knew that Cal was probably watching me as I moved stiffly down the steps. My legs were really aching now, and my knees didn’t seem to want to bend — a condition not especially conducive to walking down stairs — so it took me a while to reach the bottom. When I finally got there, the door to Cal’s flat — a solid chunk of reinforced steel — was already open, and Cal was waiting for me in the doorway. He looked as good as he always looked: a handsomely wasted face, an uncombed mess of jet-black hair, rings in his ears, eyebrow studs, a touch of eyeliner. He was wearing a plain black T-shirt, skinny black jeans, and black leather boots with red laces.

‘Shit, Uncle Johnny,’ he said, grinning wildly at the state of my face. ‘What the fuck have you been up to?’

By the time Cal had shown me inside and made me some coffee, and I’d sat down at one of his work desks and briefly told him what had happened to me outside The Wyvern, I’d already realised that he was wired out of his head on something. His eyes were huge, he was twitching like a lunatic and licking his lips all the time, and he couldn’t keep still for more than a second.

‘How long have you been up for?’ I asked him as he passed me a mug of coffee.

‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Day or two … I’m working on something …’

‘What sort of something?’

He jerked his head, indicating a worktop across the room. It was strewn with all kinds of technical stuff: several laptops in various stages of disassembly, mobile phones, wires, cables, routers, tools … bits of equipment that I couldn’t even put a name to. I looked back at Cal, waiting for him to tell me what it was he was working on, but he’d already turned away from me and was walking back across the room towards his cramped little kitchen area. I’d always wondered why the kitchen area was so poky when the rest of his flat was comparatively huge. It had originally been two basement flats, but Cal had converted it into one large living area, with a small bedroom and bathroom at the far end. It was a low-ceilinged room, painted white all over, and most of it was taken up with the tools of Cal’s trade: computers, monitors, printers, scanners, work desks, phones, cameras, TVs, recording equipment. There was a small recreation area in one corner, with a black leather settee and a huge widescreen TV, but in all the time that Cal had lived here, I’d never seen him use it.

‘So these guys who beat you up,’ he said, taking a can of Red Bull from the fridge. ‘Are they connected with something you’re working on?’

‘Well, that’s the thing — ’

‘You didn’t see their faces?’

‘I didn’t see anything. I’m not even certain that there were two of them.’

He popped the Red Bull and drank it down in one go. ‘They didn’t rob you?’

‘No.’

‘Made any enemies recently?’

I thought about Fitch, the straggly-haired dealer from The Wyvern, but Genna had said that he was all mouth, and I got the feeling that she was probably right. And then there was Preston Elliot … but somehow I couldn’t see him going to all the trouble of following me around and lying in wait for me in an alley. It just wasn’t his style.

‘There was a car — ’ I started to say.

‘Have you got a cigarette?’ he interrupted.

I took out my packet. ‘Listen, Cal,’ I said, passing him a cigarette and lighting one for myself. ‘When I went to The Wyvern last night — ’

‘You know the landlord there’s a meth addict, don’t you?’

‘Really?’

‘Apparently they cook it up in the kitchen — ’

‘Cal,’ I said firmly.

He grinned at me. ‘What?’

‘Will you just shut up and fucking listen to me for a minute?’

He didn’t stop grinning. ‘Yeah, no trouble … go ahead, I’m all ears.’

‘Right,’ I sighed.

‘All ears and no mouth.’

I glared at him.

He made a zipping motion over his mouth.

I waited a moment, staring into his endearingly lunatic eyes, and then I spoke slowly and calmly. ‘Last night … before I was attacked … I think someone was following me in a silver-grey Renault.’

Cal said nothing, just raised his eyebrows.

‘I thought I’d lost them,’ I went on. ‘But just before the first guy hit me, I saw the Renault parked down the street. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I was beaten up by whoever was following me in the Renault, but I’d say it’s a pretty good bet. Wouldn’t you?’

Cal just looked at me, his mouth clamped shut.

‘You can talk now,’ I sighed.

He smiled. ‘Did you get the number?’

‘Yep.’

‘Shit. Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?’

‘I would have if you hadn’t kept — ’

‘Interrupting you?’

I looked at him. ‘Have you got a pen?’

‘Just give me the number,’ he said, grabbing the nearest laptop.

I gave it to him, and watched as his fingers skipped across the keyboard, his eyes fixed manically on the screen.

‘How long is this going to take?’ I asked, glancing at my watch.

‘That’s odd,’ he said, frowning at the screen. ‘Are you sure you gave me the right number?’

‘Yeah.’

He nodded. ‘You couldn’t have misread it, or maybe just remembered it wrong?’

‘I don’t think so. Why, what’s the matter?’

He tapped a few more keys, then shook his head. ‘It’s a blocked number. The database won’t give me any details.’

‘What does that mean?’

He carried on staring at the screen for a few moments, then he took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. ‘It means,’ he said, blowing out smoke, ‘well … it could mean that you’re in a lot of trouble.’

‘Why?’

He looked at me. ‘A blocked registration number usually means the vehicle’s registered with the military, the police, or secret services.’

‘Secret services?’

‘Yeah, you know, MI6, MI5, GCHQ …’ He smiled at me. ‘You haven’t been fucking around with spooks, have you?’

I shook my head. ‘Not as far as I know.’

‘If it’s a police vehicle,’ Cal went on, turning back to the screen, ‘I can probably work out a way to access the details. But if it’s military or intelligence … well, that’s a bit more tricky. More risky too.’ He looked back at me, and I could tell that he was intrigued now, desperate to know more about the case. But despite his tendency to jabber away all the time, especially when he was speeding, Cal would never just come out and ask me what I was working on. He’d always wait for me to tell him. And if — for whatever reason — I didn’t want to discuss the case with him, he’d simply accept my decision without question.

‘Do you remember that local girl who went missing about a month ago?’ I said to him.

He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yeah … Anne Mellish or something? She was a model — ’

‘Anna Gerrish.’

‘That’s it.’

‘And she wasn’t a model. She was just …’ I paused for a moment, annoyed with myself for thinking of Anna as just anything — just a barmaid, just a junky, just a part-time whore. She was just a person. ‘Well, anyway,’ I went on. ‘Anna’s mother has hired me to look into her disappearance. That’s what I was doing at The Wyvern last night. Anna was a barmaid there.’

Cal nodded. ‘And what about the Renault and the guys who beat you up? What’s their connection?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What’s the situation with the police? Are they still looking for her … have they got any leads or anything?’

‘I’ll find out in an hour or so,’ I said, glancing at my watch. ‘I’ve got a meeting at 11.30 with the DCI in charge of the case.’ I looked at Cal. ‘Do you know Mick Bishop?’

He scowled. ‘Yeah … I know him. He’s a cunt.’

‘Yeah.’

Cal frowned. ‘Didn’t he have something to do with the charges against your dad?’

I nodded. ‘You could say that.’

Cal looked at me, waiting for me to go on. When I didn’t, he took the hint and changed the subject. ‘Well, anyway, I’ll see what more I can do with the registration number if you want … it might take a while, though.’

‘Yeah, thanks, Cal.’

‘And if there’s anything else I can do …’

I shook my head. ‘Not just yet … I want to try and find out if there’s anything more to all this first.’

‘Yeah, OK,’ Cal said, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice.

‘But I’ll let you know as soon as I need you,’ I told him. ‘All right?’

The smile he gave me then wasn’t the grin of a street-wise hustler, it was the smile of the child he used to be. The smile of Stacy’s little nephew.

‘You know I really like working with you, Nunc,’ he said almost shyly.

‘Don’t call me Nunc,’ I said, smiling at him.

‘How about just Nuncle?’ he grinned.

‘How about I kick your arse?’

He laughed.

I looked at my watch. ‘I’d better go,’ I said. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot …’ I took the damaged memory card out of my pocket and passed it to him. ‘Can you see if you can do anything with this?’

‘What happened to it?’ he said, examining the card.

‘It got hit with a hammer.’

He looked at me, his eyebrows raised.

I shook my head. ‘You don’t want to know.’

He glanced back at the card again. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Don’t spend too much time on it, it’s not that important.’

‘Whatever you say.’

I stood up and took out my wallet. ‘What do I owe you?’

‘For what?’

‘The registration number, the card …’

He waved me away. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah, just … well, just remember what I said, all right? I like working with you. I miss it when you don’t come round.’

I looked at him, trying to think of something to say, something that would tell him how much he meant to me … but in the end I just kind of nodded, and he nodded back, and that was about it. I think we both would have liked to have held each other then … but, for whatever reason, it just didn’t happen.

We didn’t speak for a while as Cal showed me out of the flat, and I could tell that he was beginning to come down from whatever it was he’d been taking. But after he’d waited patiently for me to hobble up the stairs, and we were heading along the hallway towards the front door, he suddenly seemed to perk up again.

‘What did you think of Barbarella?’ he asked me, grinning once again.

‘Barbarella?’

‘Yeah, the girl who answered the door … her name’s Barbarella Barboni.’ He looked at me. ‘She used to be an acrobat … well, she still is I suppose. The circus sacked her.’

‘What?’

‘She was with that circus that came to Hey in the summer. You know the one I mean? She did all the acrobat stuff, you know … tumbling, juggling, that human pyramid thing. She was really good, apparently.’

‘So why did she get sacked?’ I asked, slightly bemused.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know … she’s never really talked about it.’

I looked at Cal. ‘Has this actually got anything to do with anything?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I was just telling you, that’s all.’ He grinned again. ‘She’s very bendy.’

‘I bet she is.’

‘She’s also a very fine pickpocket. So, you know, if you ever need a pocket picking …’

‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

We were at the front door now.

Cal said, ‘I’ll let you know if I find out any more about the Renault, and I’ll get back to you about the memory card as soon as I can.’

‘Thanks.’

He opened the door.

I said, ‘Get some sleep, Cal. All right? I’ll see you later.’

He nodded, and I left him standing there in the doorway.

As I headed back to my car, I heard him call out, ‘See you later, Nunc.’

I was still smiling as I got into the car.