Dance of Ghosts

13

After a long and sleepless night, I was finally released from the cell at nine o’clock the next morning. The custody officer who let me out wasn’t the same one who’d locked me up, and I got the impression that — unlike his predecessor — this one wasn’t in on the set-up.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ he asked me, looking over as Big Bastard started coughing his guts up again. He’d been doing it most of the night — coughing, choking, spitting up gobs of God knows what. But apart from that — and the two occasions when I’d had to put up with him crawling out of bed for a long, loud, and foul-smelling piss — he hadn’t been any trouble at all.

‘I don’t know what’s the matter with him,’ I said, glancing over at the still-coughing Big Bastard. I think he’s got asthma or something.’

I was let off with a caution for the kerb-crawling offence and bailed to attend court for the drink-driving charge.

‘Where’s my car?’ I asked the custody officer as he passed me a large manila envelope containing my belongings.

He shrugged. ‘Where you left it, I suppose.’

‘Any chance of a lift?’

He laughed.

As I emptied out the envelope and started putting all my stuff back in my pockets, the custody officer passed me a form.

‘Make sure everything’s there,’ he said, ‘then sign at the bottom.’

It was all there — phone, keys, photograph, lighter … everything except the packet of cigarettes that Tasha had given me.

I looked at the custody officer. ‘There should be a packet of Marlboro.’

He checked the form. ‘There’s no cigarettes listed here.’

‘Are you sure?’

He looked at the form again. ‘Sorry, mate … there’s a cigarette lighter down here, but no cigarettes.’ He looked at me. ‘Are you sure you didn’t finish them?’

I shook my head. ‘I had them when I got here last night, and I clearly remember the custody officer taking them off me.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, smiling, ‘but you were pissed last night, weren’t you? We all forget things that happened and remember things that didn’t happen when we’re pissed, don’t we?’

I looked at him — a harmless, passionless man — and I knew that he didn’t have anything to do with whatever was going on here. As far as he was concerned, it was simply a matter of a missing packet of cigarettes. To Mick Bishop though … well, I had to assume that at some point last night, after I’d been locked up, he’d gone through my belongings, looking for anything that might interest him, and he must have spotted the registration number of the Nissan Almera that Tasha had jotted down on the back of the cigarette packet … and the number must have meant something to him. And that had to mean that there was a link between Bishop and the Nissan, which in turn had to mean there was a link between him and Anna Gerrish. It had to. Why else would Bishop take the gamble of keeping the cigarette packet, in the hope that I wouldn’t remember the registration number without it, when he must have known that once I’d realised what he’d done, I’d realise why he’d done it.

‘Are you all right, son?’ the custody officer asked me.

‘Uh, yeah …’ I told him. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

‘If you want me to check about the cigarettes, I could probably get in touch with one of the officers who dealt with you — ’

‘No, that’s all right, thanks. Don’t worry about it.’

When I left the police station, the rain had stopped and a pale-purple October sky hung low over the morning streets. There was a strange light to the air, an unreal haze that seemed to both clarify and deaden everything at the same time. It reminded me of the feeling you get when you come out of the cinema into the late afternoon daylight and you’re suddenly faced with the humdrum brilliance of the real world again. The sights, the smells, the sounds …

It was all too real.

It was Friday morning. I was dirty and tired, my breath stank, my skin itched, my head was aching. And I didn’t even have any cigarettes.

I headed off towards town.

I was coming out of a newsagent’s on Eastgate Hill, tearing the cellophane off a packet of Marlboro, when I heard someone calling out to me. ‘John! Over here!’ And when I looked up, I saw Mick Bishop leaning across the passenger seat of a blue Vectra stopped at the side of the road. He pushed open the door and waved at me to get in. I thought about it for a second, realised that I didn’t have much choice, and went over and got in the car.

‘All right?’ Bishop said as I closed the door.

‘Yeah …’

He smiled at me. ‘I thought you might need a lift back to your car.’

‘Thanks.’

‘London Road?’

I nodded.

He looked at me for a moment, slyly amused, then he pulled out into the traffic and drove away.

‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ I asked him.

‘Do you have to?’

‘Yeah.’

‘All right, but open the window.’

I cracked the window and lit a cigarette, sighing audibly as I breathed out the smoke.

‘Rough night?’ Bishop said.

I looked at him.

‘I just heard about it,’ he said, smiling again. ‘You really should know better, John. I mean, how are you going to carry on working if you’re disqualified for a year? It’s not as if you can chase after the bad guys on a bus, is it?’

‘You just heard?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Twenty minutes ago … I always check through the custody log at the start of the day shift, just to see what’s been happening, you know? So, there I am, looking through it this morning, and what do I see?’ He glanced at me. ‘John Craine, detained overnight on kerb-crawling and drink-driving charges.’

I’d already noticed that he was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing yesterday — the dark-blue blazer, the pale-blue shirt, the burgundy tie pinned with a thin gold chain — and he didn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d wear the same clothes two days running. And when I added that to the fact that he hadn’t shaved since I last saw him either, I knew that he was lying. He hadn’t just come into work. He’d been at the station all night.

‘You look tired,’ I said to him.

He sniffed. ‘It’s a tiring job.’

He didn’t say anything else for a while, he just kept quiet and concentrated on manoeuvring his way through the town-centre traffic. It was a good opportunity for me to mull things over — what was Bishop up to? what did he want with me? what was I going to do next? — but I was simply too drained to find any answers. So, instead, I just smoked my cigarette and gazed out of the window, watching the world pass by — the boiling chatter of the High Street, early-morning shoppers scuttling around in insect lines … taxi drivers, office workers, old husbands and wives … people, humans … all going somewhere, following their desires … a faithful motion of blood, flesh, and bones …

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.’