Dance of Ghosts

6

It was getting on for nine o’clock when we left the block of flats and walked back to my car. The rain was still falling, thin and cold in the night, and the streets of Quayside were beginning to stir with a few early clubbers and drinkers. As I opened the passenger door, and Helen got into the car, I could hear the shrieks and machine-gun heels of a gaggle of good-time girls making their way into the night. I wondered briefly what the next four or five hours would hold for them — love, sex, happiness … a drunken slap in the face?

I looked down at Helen. ‘Would it be all right if I found a taxi to take you home?’

‘A taxi? Yes … yes, of course …’

‘It’s just that The Wyvern’s not far from here,’ I explained. ‘So I might as well pop in there while I’m down this way, you know … see if anyone knows anything.’

‘Yes,’ Helen repeated. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’

She shook her head.

I looked at her sitting there — forlorn and lost, old before her time — and I thought about changing my mind. But she wasn’t paying me to look after her, was she? She wasn’t paying me to comfort her soul. She was paying me to find her daughter.

And, besides, I needed to be on my own for a while.

I needed time to think.

And I really needed a drink.

There was a taxi rank just along from the nightclubs, and I managed to get Helen in the cab with the least unsavoury-looking driver. She didn’t look all that happy as the taxi pulled away, and I couldn’t help feeling a tiny pang of guilt, but it wasn’t that hard to ignore it.

As I got back in my car and started heading down towards the old part of Quayside, trying to remember exactly where The Wyvern was, I noticed a silver-grey Renault about thirty metres behind me. It was too far back to see the driver, but I was pretty sure that I’d seen the same Renault parked in the street outside the block of flats.

It was probably nothing, but I made a note of the registration number anyway, and when I eventually found the street where The Wyvern was — a narrow little lane called Miller’s Row — and I saw that the Renault was still behind me, I momentarily slowed down, as if I was turning into Miller’s Row, then at the very last second I changed gear and kept going straight on. I didn’t speed up at all, I just drove quite steadily away from Quayside, up into town, and then I took a series of right turns that gradually brought me back down to Quayside, and by the time I’d reached Miller’s Row again, there was no sign of the Renault. I parked the car halfway along the street, turned off the engine, and waited.

Two cigarettes later, there was still no sign of the Renault.

I got out, locked the car, and headed up the street to The Wyvern.

When I was a teenager, The Wyvern was almost exclusively a bikers’ pub. Unless you were a biker, or a drug dealer, or you wanted to get beaten up, you didn’t go in there. Most of the clientele were members of a motorcycle gang called Satans Slaves (who, just like their more illustrious rivals, the Hells Angels, don’t bother with apostrophes — a grammatical error that probably doesn’t get pointed out to them all that often … at least, not to their faces anyway). There was always something going on at The Wyvern back then — fights, drug deals, stabbings, shootings — and over the years the pub has been raided countless times. It’s been closed down, re-opened and refurbished under new management, closed down again, re-opened again … and gradually it’s become a place that isn’t quite so intimidating as it used to be. Most of the bikers have gone now — gone to wherever old bikers go — but there’s still usually a few hanging around whenever you go in, a vestigial presence of scabbed leather, studs, patchouli oil, and spunk-stained jeans.

It’s a reasonably spacious pub, and when I went in that night it was already fairly busy. Most of the clubbers drink in the newer pubs around Quayside, but some of the more adventurous are attracted by both the seedy atmosphere of The Wyvern and its plentiful supply of drugs, and I reckoned that about half of the people in there that night were regulars, and the other half were just looking to score. The regulars were a mixture of dealers and users, old punks and even older hippies, and an assortment of low-level criminals and out-and-out nasty bastards. I could see some of them checking me out as I crossed over to the bar, trying to work out who and what I was — potential customer, rival, threat, police — but dressed as I was in a plain black suit and dark shirt, and with my face still cut up and bruised from this morning, I was kind of hoping that I didn’t look like anything much at all, just a slightly beaten up forty-year-old man in a slightly downtrodden plain black suit. The kind of man who’s not even worth the bother of looking at.

There was a video jukebox at one end of the bar — currently playing something by Slipknot — and on the wall at the other end of the bar there was a widescreen TV showing an Ultimate Fighting bout. The customers were making a fair bit of noise too, so when I got to the bar and finally caught the attention of the barman — a psychobilly guy with greased black hair, lip rings, and a teardrop tattooed under his eye — I had to lean over the bar and shout to be heard.

‘Pint of Stella and a large Scotch!’

‘What?’

‘PINT OF STELLA AND A LARGE SCOTCH!’

As he nodded his barman nod and set about getting my drinks, I turned round and casually scanned the room. I was still getting a few sly looks, but no one was paying me any serious attention. Everyone was just getting on with their business — drinking, laughing, talking, dealing …

‘That’s?5.95, mate.’

I turned back to the bar and gave Psycho Billy a?10 note. As he went over to the till to ring it up and get my change, I drank the Scotch in one go and washed it down with a mouthful of Stella.

‘There you go,’ Psycho Billy shouted, handing me my change.

I passed him my empty Scotch glass. ‘Sorry,’ I yelled. ‘Could you put another double in there?’

He gave me a quick nasty look — why the fuck didn’t you ask for two in the first place? — then took the glass, refilled it, and brought it back. This time, instead of handing me my change, he just dropped the coins on the bar.

‘Thanks,’ I shouted. ‘Is Genna working tonight?’

‘What?’

Just then the Slipknot track finished and something a bit quieter came on.

‘Genna Raven,’ I repeated, not quite so loudly. ‘Is she working tonight?’

Psycho Billy’s face hardened. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘Me.’

‘Yeah? And who are you?’

‘John Craine.’

‘What do you want with Genna?’

‘Not much … just a quick chat.’

‘Does she know you?’

‘No.’

‘Are you a reporter?’

‘No.’

‘Police?’

I sipped my beer. ‘Do I look like police?’

‘What do you want with Genna?’

‘Look,’ I sighed. ‘Just tell her I’m here, will you? John Craine. I’ll be around for the next hour or so.’

And, with that, I left him standing there and walked away, looking for somewhere to sit.

About twenty minutes later, just after I’d been up to the bar for another Stella and Scotch, a dark-haired young woman wearing jeans and a white vest came out from a door behind the bar and started collecting empty glasses. I’d already been watching another barmaid for a while — who was also dressed in jeans and a white vest, which I guessed had to be The Wyvern’s idea of a uniform, although it only seemed to apply to the female bar staff — but this first barmaid hadn’t looked over at me once, so I didn’t think she was Genna Raven. The second one though, the dark-haired girl, I was pretty sure that she was Genna, because she started glancing over at me as soon as she came through the door, so I assumed Psycho Billy had already had a word with her, telling her what I looked like and where I was sitting.

I kept my eye on her, waiting for her to look over at me again, and when she did, I just gave her a faint nod and what I hoped was a reassuring smile, and left it at that. If she wanted to talk to me, she knew where I was. And if she didn’t …? Well, if she didn’t, she didn’t.

For the next fifteen minutes or so, I just sat there, with my head down, soaking up the heat of the noise, the heat of people, the heat of the whisky and beer … occasionally glancing up at the video jukebox or the TV screen, but not really seeing anything …

I never really see anything any more.

Only Stacy.

I don’t want to keep thinking about her all the time.

I don’t want to keep remembering that day …

But it never leaves me. It’s always there … always. In my blood, my flesh, my bones, my heart …

It is me.

And now I’m running up the stairs as fast as I can, and my heart is pounding, and I’m shouting at the top of my voice, ‘Stacy! STACY! STACY!’

There’s still no reply.

At the top of the stairs, the bedroom door is closed … we never close the bedroom door … and now I can sense it, smell it … I can already feel it killing me. The whole world hums in my head as I open the door … and there she is — my essence, my love, my purity, my bride …

Ripped open on the bed.

Naked.

Butchered.

Bled white.

Dead.

‘You wanted to see me?’

I looked up to see the dark-haired barmaid standing in front of me with a tray full of empty glasses in her hands.

‘Genna Raven?’ I said.

‘Yeah …’

‘I’m John Craine — ’

‘I know who you are. What do you want?’

Up close, she had a stunningly pretty face, and there was something about the almost-perfect symmetry of it that reminded me a little of Stacy. But whereas Stacy’s complexion had been as perfect as her face, Genna’s skin was terrible — scarred with pockmarks, peppered with blackheads and acne …

‘I haven’t got all fucking night,’ Genna said. ‘Are you going to tell me what you want or not?’

‘Yeah, sorry,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Anna Gerrish — ’

‘Nuh-uh,’ she said firmly, shaking her head. ‘No way.’

‘Just a few questions, that’s all.’

‘Are you from the newspapers?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m a private investigator.’

‘Yeah, well … I’m already in enough shit for talking to the papers about Anna.’

‘Why?’

She stared at me. ‘You don’t do that round here, do you? You don’t talk to the press, you don’t talk to the cops, no matter what. You just keep your fucking mouth shut.’

‘So why did you talk to the press in the first place?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know … it just seemed …’

‘Were you and Anna friends?’

‘Fuck, no. Anna didn’t have any friends …’

‘So why — ?’

‘Look,’ she said, glancing over her shoulder towards the bar. ‘I can’t talk now, OK? But I’ve got a cigarette break in fifteen minutes. I’ll be in the smoking area out the back.’

Smoking area? I thought to myself as she turned away and headed back to the bar. There’s a smoking area? Shit. Why don’t they put up a fucking sign or something?

I went up to the bar and got myself another beer, and after wandering around the pub for a while I eventually found the smoking area. It wasn’t much, just a brick-walled yard at the back of the pub with a few plastic tables and chairs. The ashtrays on the tables were brimming with rainwater and cigarette ends, and one end of the yard backed on to the toilets, so the whole place stank of piss and sodden cigarettes and smoke. And it was still raining too. But I suppose if you’re stupid enough to smoke in the first place, you’re not going to be too concerned about standing outside in the cold and rain in a brick-walled yard that smells of shit …

There were only three other people out there: a straggly-haired man in a combat jacket, a younger man who looked like Mark Kermode on steroids, and a teenage girl with street-worn skin. They were all standing together at the far end of the yard, and I guessed from their body language and a few overheard words that the girl was trying to buy drugs from the two men, but that she didn’t have enough money, so she was trying to persuade them to let her pay tomorrow … and the two men in turn were trying to persuade her that all she had to do was take a quick walk down the street with them to their car, and she could pay them in kind right now. Her answer to that was, ‘You must be fucking joking … I’m not that desperate, you hairy cunt.’ And the straggly-haired man said something else to her, which I couldn’t quite hear, and she punched him playfully on the arm, and they all started laughing …

Strangely enough, it felt all right.

It wasn’t all right, of course … there was nothing all right about it. But it was nowhere near as shitty as it could have been, and despite everything — the cold and the rain and the underlying ugliness of it all — I actually felt pretty good. It was a relatively quiet place to be. It wasn’t too hot or too crowded. And even the rain was beginning to ease off a little, fading to a thin misty drizzle, and I found that if I stood against the wall at the side of the yard, I barely noticed it at all. And that’s where I was, sipping my beer and smoking a second cigarette, when the teenage girl walked past me with a satisfied grin on her face and her hands stuffed deep into her coat pockets, followed a few moments later by the two men. The pumped-up Mark Kermode look-alike carried on past me, following the girl back into the bar, but the straggly-haired man stopped beside me.

‘You need anything?’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘No, I’m all right, thanks.’

‘You sure?’ He smiled, showing a gap in his front teeth. ‘I got Es, H, crack, weed … whatever you want.’

‘Have you got anything that’ll take me back in time?’ I heard myself say.

He frowned. ‘You what?’

‘It’s all right,’ I said, smiling. ‘I was just — ’

His eyes went cold and he stepped towards me. ‘Are you taking the fucking piss?’

I didn’t move or say anything, I just stared at him, and for a weird little moment I wondered what he’d do if I spat in his face. How far would he go? Would he just hit me? Beat me up? Break a few bones? Stab me? Shoot me? Kill me?

‘What are you fucking smiling at?’ I heard him say.

And then another voice. ‘Fitch? For fuck’s sake, leave him alone …’ And I looked round to see Genna Raven standing there, smoking her much-needed cigarette. The tone of her voice and the look on her face was that of a weary headmistress having to deal with a harmless bully for the third time in a week.

‘Hey, Genna,’ Fitch said, suddenly all smiles again. ‘You know this guy?’

‘Why don’t you go and get yourself a drink, Fitch?’ she suggested.

‘You buying?’ he grinned.

She stared at him.

He turned to me, still grinning, and said, ‘I’ll see you later, OK?’

And then he went back into the bar.

‘Sorry about that,’ Genna said. ‘But he wouldn’t have done anything anyway. He’s all mouth. Most of them are.’

I smiled at her.

She dropped her cigarette to the ground and lit another. ‘So … you’re a private investigator?’

I reached into my pocket and passed her one of my business cards. She glanced briefly at it, then slipped it in her back pocket.

‘Who are you working for?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ I said. ‘You know, client confidentiality — ’

‘It’s Anna’s mum, isn’t it?’

I smiled, but said nothing.

Genna puffed on her cigarette. ‘Well, it’s either her mum or her dad, and that dirty old bastard’s not going to want anyone poking around in his business, so it’s got to be her mum.’

I lit a cigarette. ‘Do you know Anna’s father then?’

‘Not personally, no. But I know his type.’

‘What do you mean?’

She hesitated. ‘I’m not sure if I should be telling you this …’

‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to,’ I assured her. ‘It’s entirely up to you what you tell me. But if you think it might help me to find Anna …’

She sighed. ‘I don’t even know if it’s the truth or not. For all I know she was just making it up …’

‘Making what up?’

‘This stuff about her old man … how he used to fuck her and everything, you know …’

‘He abused her?’

‘Yeah … it went on for fucking years, according to Anna. Started when she was just a little kid, and the dirty fucker carried on doing it until she was … well, I don’t know, until she left home, I suppose.’

I took a long drink of beer. ‘When did Anna tell you about this?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know, quite a while ago. It was after work one night. It was someone’s birthday and we all stayed on for a few drinks and stuff … Anna didn’t usually join in with that kind of thing, but I think she was pretty out of it that night. I found her crying her eyes out in the toilets … this would have been about two or three in the morning, and when I asked her what was the matter, she started pouring her fucking heart out to me about her bastard fucking father. She told me everything … and I mean everything. Poor bitch.’ Genna pulled on her cigarette and blew out a long stream of smoke. ‘It’s no wonder she was so fucked up.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, her whole life, you know … everything. She was a total fucking mess.’

‘How long had she been using heroin?’

Genna looked at me. ‘You know about that?’

I nodded.

‘Not all that long,’ Genna said. ‘A few years, maybe.’

‘How much did she use?’

Genna shrugged. ‘She was always trying to quit, so sometimes she got it right down to hardly anything, but then she’d get back on it again and start using more.’

‘Do you know where she got it from?’

‘Could be anyone. It’s not hard to buy stuff round here.’

‘What about money? I imagine it’d be hard to maintain a habit on just a barmaid’s wages.’

‘Fucking right.’

‘So where did Anna get the extra money from?’

Genna shrugged. ‘No idea …’

‘Did she earn anything from modelling?’

Genna just laughed.

‘How about prostitution then?’ I said.

She stopped laughing. ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that …’

‘About what?’

She shrugged.

‘Come on, Genna,’ I said gently. ‘I just need to know, that’s all.’

She looked at me. ‘Anna wasn’t a whore, OK? I mean, she didn’t do it all the time or anything. She just … well, she just needed the money sometimes. A lot of them do it, you know …’

‘Addicts?’

‘Yeah … it’s the only way they can get enough cash.’

I nodded. ‘Would Anna have worked through an escort agency or anything?’

‘Christ, no. She’d just … well, sometimes she might pick up someone in here, but most of the time I think she just worked the streets.’

‘Would she do that after work?’

‘Yeah …’

‘Do you think that’s where she was going the night she disappeared?’

‘Probably. I mean, we all knew, you know … she’d finish work, get herself all tarted up in the toilets, probably shoot up at the same time, then she’d put on her coat and fuck off.’

The door to the smoking area swung open then, and Psycho Billy leaned through and called out, ‘Fuck’s sake, Genna, how much longer are you going to be?’

‘Yeah, all right,’ she called back. ‘I’m just coming.’ As Billy went back inside, she dropped her cigarette on the ground and said to me, ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Did you see anyone following Anna that night?’ I asked her.

‘No.’

‘Did she have a boyfriend?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Pimp?’

Genna shook her head. ‘Anna didn’t have anybody. She knew plenty of people — work colleagues, customers, dealers — and it wasn’t as if she didn’t get on with them, or that they didn’t like her … I mean, she wasn’t lonely or anti-social or anything. She was just … I don’t know …’

‘Solitary?’ I suggested.

Genna nodded. ‘Yeah … it was like she lived in her own little world, her own little bubble … do you know what I mean? You could be with her, talk to her, spend a night working with her, and it’d all seem fine … but then afterwards, later on, there’d just be this empty space in your head where your memories of her should be.’ Genna looked at me. ‘Does that make any sense?’

‘Yeah,’ I said slowly. ‘Yeah, it does.’

She sniffed and sighed. ‘Look, I really have to go — ’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘And thanks, you know … thanks for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it.’

‘OK,’ she said hurriedly, turning to go.

‘Did you tell any of this to the police?’ I asked her.

She paused. ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘They never asked me anything.’

‘Right … well, thanks again, Genna. And if you think of anything else, my number’s on the card I gave you — office and mobile. Call me any time.’

‘Yeah …’

‘And good luck with it,’ I said.

‘With what?’

‘Staying clean.’

She looked at me for a moment, instinctively rubbing at the faded old needle tracks on her arm, and then, without another word, she turned round and left.

I didn’t stay there much longer. Another quick drink and a cigarette while I mulled over what Genna had told me, and then I was on my way. The rain had stopped altogether now, and although the night was still cold, the air felt fresh and clear. As I headed back down the street, I could hear the heavy bass thump of music in the distance — doomp-doomp, doomp-doomp, doomp-doomp, doomp-doomp — and I guessed the nightclubs were beginning to come alive.

I looked at my watch. It was 10.45.

Later than I’d thought.

And now that I was out in the fresh air, I was also beginning to realise that I was a little bit drunker than I’d thought. I started thinking about a taxi then. I knew it was the sensible thing to do, but it would mean leaving my car here overnight, and that would mean having to come back and get it in the morning. But if I didn’t get a taxi, if I drove home in this condition and got stopped by the police …

That’s what I was thinking about, not really paying attention to anything else, when three things happened almost at once. The first thing was, I spotted the silver-grey Renault parked halfway down the street, and although there was undoubtedly a gap of about half a second or so between seeing it and realising that I’d seen it, I really don’t think that half-second delay made any difference. The second thing was, as I paused to think about the Renault, a voice called out to me from the shadows of an alley on my left.

‘Got a light, mate?’

And the third thing was, as I turned instinctively to the sound of the voice, a heavily-ringed fist hammered into the side of my head.

After that, it’s all a bit vague. I half-remember staggering back against a brick wall, almost knocked out by the blow, and then I think someone hit me again, this time low in the belly, and as I doubled over in pain, someone else grabbed me by the arm and kind of half-swung, half-dragged me into the alley, and then I think I must have lost my balance and fallen over — or maybe they hit me again — because the next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground getting the shit kicked out of me.

It was too dark, and it happened too quickly, for me to get a look at them, and I didn’t get to hear their voices either, because they never said a word. They just piled into me — kicking, punching, stomping … all in furious silence, and all I could do was lie there and take it. After a while my body didn’t seem to belong to me any more. It was just a thing, a lump of meat, and whatever was happening to it was happening a long way away.

I don’t know how long the beating lasted — probably no more than thirty seconds or so — and I have no recollection whatsoever of the kick to the head that finally knocked me out … all I know is that some time later I woke up in the alley, slumped against the wall, covered in blood and hurting like hell.

I was cold and wet.

It was raining again.

I checked all my pockets, but nothing was missing. Wallet, phone, keys, money … it was all still there. As I took a deep breath, sucking down the ice-cold air, I felt something bubbling in the back of my throat.

I coughed, bringing up blood.

It hurt.

I spat it out.

‘Fuck,’ I said.

Then I leaned over and threw up.