Dance of Ghosts

9

My father didn’t have a particularly happy life. He joined the police force when he was sixteen, and despite a lifelong struggle with often debilitating depression, he rose steadily through the ranks until he finally made Detective Inspector in 1989. It was during his time as a Detective Constable with Hey CID that my father first met and befriended Leon Mercer, who was then a DC too. Another officer based at Hey at this time, and already gaining something of a reputation, was PC Mick Bishop. Leon and my father continued working together throughout the late seventies and early eighties, and even when they were both promoted to Detective Sergeant and transferred to different divisions, they still remained close friends. Bishop, meanwhile, was also beginning to rise through the ranks. Although some years younger than Leon and my father, he was the first of the three to reach Detective Inspector. Leon made the grade about twelve months later, and my father was finally promoted two years after that, at the age of forty-four.

Three years later, he took his own life.

It’s a complicated story, and even now I don’t know all the details, but there’s no question that it all began with allegations and counter-allegations of police corruption.

My father was a good policeman. He didn’t possess any outstanding attributes — no stunning intellect or insight, no instinctive flashes of detective genius … in fact, if truth be told, in terms of the skills he had, he was no more than average at best. But he was methodical, committed, determined … and, above all, he believed in what he did. He truly believed that, as a police officer, it was his duty to keep and preserve the peace and to uphold fundamental human rights with fairness, integrity, impartiality, and diligence.

And that, to me, made him a good policeman.

But it also meant that he was unable to keep his mouth shut when his colleagues didn’t act with fairness and integrity, and that, in effect, was the root of his undoing. It wasn’t that he was a high-minded idealist, or in any way naive about the realities of police work. Far from it. He knew, and to a certain extent accepted, that police officers are no different to anyone else. They’re just people, human beings, with the same flaws, the same desires, the same weaknesses as the rest of us. So, inevitably, there will always be police officers who abuse their power and use it to their own advantage. My father knew that. He also knew, as most of his colleagues did, that throughout his career, Mick Bishop was one such officer. Bishop bent the rules, he broke the rules. He broke the law. He hurt people, humiliated people, corrupted people. He acted with neither fairness nor integrity.

But he got results.

And although my father was aware of Bishop’s criminality, he was never actually in a position to prove it until January 1992, when he received a video in the post. The video, captured by a hidden CCTV camera and sent anonymously, showed Bishop and two other men torturing a drug dealer in the bedroom of a house in Chelmsford. The dealer was tied to a chair, and Bishop and the other two took turns beating him with baseball bats and burning him with cigarettes until eventually he told them what they wanted to know. The final shot showed Bishop leaving the house carrying five kilos of cocaine in a black leather holdall.

My father personally passed this video and the accompanying letter — which gave further details of the incident — to his immediate superior, DCI Frank Curtis.

Some days later, having heard nothing back from Curtis, he went to see him. To my father’s utter disbelief, Curtis told him that there was no proof whatsoever that such an incident had ever occurred, that the video was a fake, that Bishop had been nowhere near Chelmsford at the alleged time and date, and that he had a cast-iron alibi to prove it. There was no trace of the supposed drug dealer, and the address given in the letter didn’t exist. Curtis then went on to accuse my father of making false statements about a fellow officer in a deliberate attempt to ruin his career.

My father, understandably, was dumbfounded.

Even more so when he was suspended from duties pending a full investigation.

Three weeks later, while still on suspension, he was summoned to a meeting with the Detective Chief Superintendent and asked to explain the presence in his station locker of two kilos of cocaine and?25,000 in cash. He was also asked if he had any comment to make about an alleged relationship he was having with an eighteen-year-old girl called Serina Mayo, who’d recently been a key witness for the prosecution in the high-profile trial of a serial paedophile.

According to Leon Mercer — from whom I gathered almost all of this information — my father was advised by his union representative to say nothing about these allegations, and that’s what he did. Even when further evidence was produced — including photographs — which proved beyond doubt that he had indeed been having an intimate relationship with Serina Mayo, my father still refused to make any comment.

Two days later, while my mother was visiting her sister for the day, he locked himself in his office at home, drank most of a full bottle of whisky, and shot himself in the head.

In a suicide note addressed to my mother, he categorically denied the allegations of corruption, insisting that the cocaine and cash had been planted in his locker, and that he suspected DI Bishop and possibly DCI Curtis of colluding in a plot to discredit him. But he didn’t deny that he’d been having an affair with Serina Mayo.

‘I’m so sorry, Alice,’ he wrote to my mother. ‘I don’t know how it happened or why. It just happened. It was, quite literally, an act of madness.’

My mother, of course, was devastated.

Five years later, she died of breast cancer.

The corruption charges against my father, and his allegations against DI Bishop, were never investigated.

It was 11.10 when I left my car (unlocked) in a small public car park at the back of the police station at Eastway. I followed a paved pathway round to the front of the building where smooth stone steps led me up to the main entrance doors. A thin grey drizzle had begun to fall, and the yellowing sky was dark and low. I paused on the steps, lit a cigarette, and stood there for a while watching the midweek traffic as it coiled back and forth along the Eastway approach. Headlights flashed dully in the rain, horns beeped, exhaust smoke hazed in the cold damp air. Just in front of the steps was a low-fenced quadrant of town grass, and beyond that a broad pavement with wooden benches and raised stone flower beds. In summer, the stretch of grass attracts school kids and lunching workers who sit around with ice creams and Cokes watching the Eastway traffic as if there’s nowhere else they’d rather be. But now, on this cold October day, the only sign of life was a tramp in a cheap plastic raincoat foraging in bins, and two street youths and a wet dog sitting on a bench in the rain.

I finished my cigarette, headed up the steps, and went through the main doors into a pale and empty reception area of Plexiglas, tile, and pinboards. A uniformed desk sergeant took my name and told me to take a seat. I sat down on a red metal chair that was bolted to the floor, expecting a longish wait, but two minutes later a podgy-faced young man in a thin white shirt came through the security doors and introduced himself to me as DC Wade. As he escorted me back through the security doors and along a grey-carpeted corridor, I could hear muffled sounds coming from behind half-closed doors — the quiet tapping of keyboards, computer beeps, muted voices. It all sounded surprisingly dull, more like a social-security office than a police station.

We took the lift to the third floor, down another grey corridor, and then DC Wade showed me into a room.

‘Take a seat, Mr Craine,’ he said. ‘The DCI will be with you in a minute.’

He went out and shut the door behind him, leaving me alone in the room. I’d never been in a police station interview room before, but I’d seen enough cop shows on TV to recognise one when I saw one: off-white walls, plain table, two hard chairs, a double-decked tape-machine on a shelf. I draped my coat over the back of one of the chairs and sat down.

It was 11.29.

Twenty minutes later, the door swung open and DCI Bishop breezed in, talking the busy-man’s talk as he came. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, John, but something important came up. You don’t mind if I call you John, do you?’ His hurried words stopped when he saw my battered face, and for a moment he just stood there looking at me. Then, after blowing out his cheeks, he gave me what can only be described as a shit-eating grin. ‘Christ,’ he said, sitting down opposite me. ‘I hope we’ve got it on record that you looked like that before you came in.’

I didn’t say anything, I just looked at him. He hadn’t changed all that much since the last time I’d seen him. Same wiry black hair, same hard-set mouth, same cold dark eyes. He had a quarter-inch scar on his clean-shaven jaw, and in the dull light of the room his skin looked hard and white. He was dressed in a dark-blue blazer with silver buttons, a pale-blue shirt, and a burgundy tie pinned with a thin gold chain.

‘Can I get you a coffee or anything?’ he asked me.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

He grinned again. ‘Ice pack? Painkillers?’

‘No, thanks.’

He nodded. ‘OK, well … I think I already mentioned that I don’t have all that much time to spare, so if it’s all right with you …’

He paused for a moment as I glanced at my watch, and the corners of his mouth tightened slightly. I looked at him, waiting for him to go on. He said nothing for a moment, just carried on staring at me, and then, after a time, he eased his chair back from the desk, crossed his legs, and casually cocked his head to one side.

‘You used to work for Leon Mercer, didn’t you?’ he said.

‘Yeah.’

He nodded. ‘I know Leon, he was a good officer. We worked some big cases together over the years … how’s he doing now? I heard his health’s not so good.’

‘He’s doing OK.’

‘Semi-retired, I hear.’

I nodded.

Bishop nodded back. ‘So when did you start working for Mercer Associates?’

‘Sixteen years ago.’

‘Right … so that would have been …?’

‘About a year after my wife was killed.’

He nodded again, trying his best to look sympathetic, but he had neither the face nor the heart for it. Which was fine with me. I just wanted this charade to be over — him asking me questions that he already knew the answers to, me having to answer them because I wanted something from him …

It was all just a nasty little game.

‘It must have been a really hard time for you,’ Bishop said. ‘First your father, then your wife …’

‘Yeah,’ I said, staring into his eyes. ‘It totally fucked me up.’

‘Well, of course … it would.’ He sniffed and cleared his throat. ‘So … you left Mercer in ’97 and set up your own business — is that right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘No particular reason. My mother died, I came into some money … I could afford to set up on my own.’ I shrugged. ‘It was something to do …’

‘Do you enjoy it?’

I looked at him. ‘What?’

‘Owning your own company … being a private investigator — do you enjoy it?’

‘Does it matter?’

He looked at me for a while, his head cocked slightly to one side, as if he was thinking about something … then he took a breath, leaned back in his chair, and sighed. ‘I checked the case file this morning to see if there’s been any progress on the investigation into your wife’s murder,’ he said. ‘We are still looking for him, you know. We haven’t given up.’

I looked back at him, holding his gaze … saying nothing, showing nothing.

‘We’ll find him eventually,’ he said, his eyes never leaving mine. ‘It’s just a matter of time.’

‘Right…’ I said vaguely, ‘well, that’s good to know. But it’s not what I’m here about.’

Bishop didn’t say anything for a few moments, he just carried on staring at me, his dark eyes unreadable … and then, with an unnecessary sniff and a curt nod of his head, he pulled his chair back to the table, glanced at his watch, and got down to business. ‘Right,’ he said briskly, ‘Anna Gerrish. I take it you’ve been talking to her mother?’

‘I can’t — ’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said impatiently. ‘There’s no need to give me all that client confidentiality shit again. Let’s just assume, hypo-fucking-thetically, that you’re working for Helen Gerrish, all right? You haven’t told me anything, you haven’t breached her trust. OK?’

I nodded.

‘Good. So what do you want from me?’

‘Well, I know you can’t give me any details about the case — ’

‘What details do you want?’

I looked at him, slightly taken aback.

He shook his head. ‘There is no fucking case, John. That’s all the detail you need to know. All that’s happened to Anna Gerrish is she’s met some bloke who’s promised her the world and they’ve fucked off together somewhere in his customised Golf GTI. Give it a couple of months and she’ll probably come crawling back home.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, I’m sure. It happens all the time.’ He shrugged one shoulder. ‘All right, so I might be wrong about the specifics — maybe she just fucked off on her own, or with a girlfriend, or maybe she met an older man with a nice sensible Volvo or something — but it’s all the same thing. We get at least two or three of these so-called missing persons every week — my daughter’s gone missing, my son’s disappeared, my husband, my wife … none of them ever come to anything. The trouble is, people simply can’t accept that someone they’ve known for years, perhaps even loved for years, can suddenly just decide that they’ve had enough.’ Bishop looked at me. ‘That’s all there is to it, John. Believe me. Anna Gerrish is safe and well somewhere. And there’s no evidence whatsoever to suggest otherwise.’

‘What about the report in the Hey Gazette?’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, if you’re saying that this kind of thing happens all the time, how come the paper picked up on Anna’s disappearance?’

‘Because her mother kept nagging them, that’s why. And because Anna was reasonably attractive.’ Bishop shrugged. ‘The press don’t give a shit if there’s anything in a story or not … as long as it sells, that’s all they care about. And pretty girls sell.’

‘But if Anna’s safe and well somewhere, why hasn’t she contacted her mother?’

‘Who knows? Maybe she hates her, maybe she wants her to suffer …’ Bishop shrugged again. ‘Whatever the reason, it’s not our concern. Anna’s a grown woman. She can do what she wants. If she doesn’t want anyone to know where she is, that’s entirely up to her.’

‘You searched her flat?’

Bishop sighed. ‘Yes, we searched her flat.’ He was beginning to talk to me as if I was an annoying child.

I said, ‘There didn’t seem to be anything missing. I mean, I got the impression that she hadn’t packed any clothes or toiletries or anything.’

‘How can you tell if there’s anything missing without knowing what was there in the first place? And, besides … well, you were in her flat, you must have seen the kind of stuff she had in there. She’s not going to bother coming back for any of that shit if she’s been whisked off her feet by some knight in shining armour, is she?’ Bishop looked at me, a hint of smugness showing in his face, then he glanced at his watch. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘well, if that’s all — ’

‘You know she used heroin, don’t you?’ I said.

He froze for a moment. ‘What?’

‘Anna … she used heroin.’

‘How do you know that?’

I half-smiled at him. ‘I’m an investigator. I get paid to find things out. It’s what I do.’

Bishop didn’t react to my flippancy, he just stared at me for a second or two, his face quite still, and then he said, ‘Have you told her parents?’

‘No.’

He nodded. ‘They don’t need to know.’

‘OK,’ I agreed. ‘But surely it means — ’

‘It doesn’t mean anything. She used heroin … so fucking what? Do you really think we didn’t already know that?’

I stared at him. ‘You knew?’

‘Fuck, yes.’

‘And I suppose you know — ’

‘That she worked the streets? Yeah, we’re perfectly aware of that too.’

I shook my head in disbelief. ‘And you still think that nothing’s happened to her?’

‘All right, look,’ he said impatiently. ‘Here’s how it is — Anna Gerrish wasn’t the nice young girl that her mother thinks she was, she wasn’t an aspiring model, she wasn’t anything. She was just another junky who sold her cunt to get high. OK? That’s the reality. Girls like that disappear all the time. They meet a new dealer, a new pimp … or maybe they find a punter who thinks he can rescue them from a life of depravity … fucking whatever, you know?’ Bishop looked at me. ‘If we tried to find every girl like Anna who ever disappeared, we’d never have time to do anything else.’

‘So … are you telling me that you’re not actively looking for her?’

‘I’m telling you what’s what,’ he said, his voice getting harder now. ‘I’m telling you that the Gerrishes don’t need to know the truth about their lovely little daughter, because all that’s going to do is make things even worse for them, and what’s the point of that? And I’m telling you that, if I were you, I wouldn’t bother wasting my time, and everybody’s else’s, looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found. That’s all I’m telling you, John. So why don’t you just find yourself something else to do for the next few days, then tell the Gerrishes that you’ve done your best and send them a bill.’ He leaned back in his chair and smiled coldly at me. ‘How does that sound?’

‘It sounds,’ I said, ‘like you’re warning me off.’

Bishop laughed. ‘If I was warning you off, you’d know about it.’

‘Yeah? What would you do? Get someone to beat me up in an alley?’

The smile stayed on his face, but I could tell it was a strain, and after a few moments he gave up the pretence, sniffed hard, and looked at his watch again. ‘Right,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Well, I think we’re about done here, don’t you?’ As he came round to the front of the desk, I stood up to meet him, but he’d had enough of me now, and he didn’t even look at me as he crossed over to the door. I stayed where I was for a few moments — buttoning my jacket, brushing imaginary dust from my trousers — just to annoy him, and then I slowly sauntered over to the door.

Before opening it and ushering me out, Bishop handed me a business card. ‘My mobile and office numbers,’ he said, his voice oddly neutral. ‘Let me know if you find anything. All right?’

As I nodded and put the card in my pocket, he gave me a final look, and just for a moment — a very brief and unguarded moment — I saw in his eyes an intensity of pain and sorrow that burned right down to his core, and as he opened the door and ushered me out, and a waiting DC Wade started to escort me out of the building, I couldn’t help wondering if what I’d just seen was the truth at the heart of Mick Bishop, or just a fleeting reflection of my own broken life.