Kevin Brooks - Dance of Ghosts

‘This is Anna’s old room?’ I said, trying to keep the disbelief from my voice.

‘Yes … she liked to keep it neat.’

‘And she slept in here until she was seventeen?’

‘That’s right,’ Helen said, crossing the room towards a rack of plastic shelves standing against the wall. ‘Yes, here they are … Anna’s photographs.’ She started looking through a collection of framed photographs positioned neatly on the shelves. All of the pictures were of Anna: Anna when she was a child, Anna when she was six or seven, Anna when she was twelve, thirteen, fourteen. I could hear Helen muttering to herself as she searched through the photos. ‘I think we’ve got some recent ones here … I’m sure Graham framed some and brought them up …’

I wandered slowly towards her, looking around as I went, still unable to believe my eyes. ‘Did she decorate the room herself?’ I asked.

‘Who, Anna? Goodness me, no. Graham would never have allowed that. He does all the DIY in this house. He’s very good with his hands, is Graham.’

I bet he fucking is , I thought.

‘I thought you said he was working this evening?’ I said casually.

‘Oh, yes … well, he thought he was, but there was some kind of mix up with the shifts or something.’

‘Right … so what does he actually do, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘He used to work for the Inland Revenue, but he was made redundant a few years ago. He has a security position now.’

‘Security?’

‘Yes, he works mostly in the big shopping precinct in town.’

I nodded. It wasn’t hard to imagine Graham Gerrish patrolling the shopping mall, proudly wearing his security guard uniform … bullying children, ordering kids to get off their skateboards, telling people to put out their cigarettes …

‘Is that Anna’s laptop over there?’ I asked Mrs Gerrish.

‘No … that’s Graham’s. He keeps it in here because apparently it’s the only place in the house where he can get a decent Internet connection.’

‘Really?’ I gazed round the room, looking for a router, but I couldn’t see one anywhere. ‘I would have thought with a wi-fi connection he’d have access all over the house.’

‘I’m sorry … I don’t know anything about computers … ah, here we are.’ She turned from the shelves with a framed picture in her hand. ‘I think this should do the job.’ She passed me the picture with a satisfied smile. ‘It was taken the year before last when Anna was on holiday.’

The photograph was mounted in a cheap white plastic frame. It showed Anna sitting on a wooden bench against an old stone wall, dressed in cut-off jeans and a bikini top. She was smiling dopily, and her eyes looked like tiny black marbles. There were grubby thumb marks around the edge of the frame.

‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘Was this a holiday with friends? Work colleagues?’

Helen shook her head. ‘Anna didn’t say.’

‘Do you know where she went?’

‘I think it was Ibiza … or maybe Greece. Somewhere like that. Is it important? I could probably find out — ’

‘No, don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter. Is it OK if I keep the picture for a while?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Thanks. Well, I’d better get going now, if that’s all right.’

As Helen led me out and shut the door, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d left part of myself behind in that strangely chilling room. I could sense the darkness, the silence. The dull black shine of the toy animals’ eyes. I could feel the air, empty and still. And although it was too dark to see anything, I could still see those pictures of Anna. Her face, her eyes, her years, her life …

And, just for a moment, I thought I could hear her crying.

In the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, I surprised myself by turning to Helen and saying, ‘You’re more than welcome to come with me to Anna’s flat … if you’d like to, that is.’

She hesitated for a moment, glancing instinctively at the door to the front room, as if she couldn’t make any decision without asking her husband first. ‘Well, yes …’ she said, ‘I think I would like to … I haven’t been there since Anna disappeared. I’ll just have to check with Graham — ’

‘Why don’t you just go and get ready, get your coat and whatever else you need? I’ll let Graham know that you’re coming with me.’

‘Well … he’d probably prefer it — ’

‘Go on ,’ I said, giving her a friendly nudge. ‘Live dangerously for once.’

She smiled anxiously at me, still not sure about it, but I was blocking her way to the front room now, and she didn’t want to offend me by pushing past, so in the end she didn’t have a choice.

‘I’ll just be a moment, then,’ she said, shuffling back up the stairs, where I assumed she kept her coat.

I waited until she’d gone, then I opened the door and went into the front room. The TV was still on, and Graham Gerrish was still slumped in his armchair in front of it, with the remote control still glued to his hand and his eyes still glued to the screen.

‘Do you want to turn that off for a minute?’ I said to him.

He looked at me with studied contempt. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘The TV … turn it off.’

‘I don’t see why — ’

‘I know what you do in your daughter’s bedroom,’ I said bluntly. ‘I know that you sit up there watching porn on your laptop.’

I was half-expecting him to start ranting and raving at me then — how dare you, that’s dis gusting … that kind of thing. But he didn’t say anything at all, he just sat there, perfectly still, staring dumbly at me. And I knew then that I’d guessed right about the laptop.

‘Look,’ I sighed, ‘I really don’t care what you do, but I imagine your wife wouldn’t be too pleased if she knew what you get up to. So unless you want me to tell her, I suggest you turn off the TV and just listen to me for a minute, OK?’

He nodded, and turned off the TV.

‘Right,’ I said, sitting down. ‘So tell me … what’s the matter with you?’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Your daughter’s missing, Mr Gerrish. Now I don’t know if you love her or not, but your wife obviously does, and although this whole thing is totally fucking her up, she’s still doing everything she possibly can to find Anna. But you …? All you seem to be doing is acting like a fucking arsehole and treating your wife like she’s a piece of shit. That’s what I mean.’

‘I love Anna very much, Mr Craine,’ he said matter of factly. ‘I always have, and I always will. She means everything to me. She’s my little girl.’

‘So what’s your problem? What have you got against me trying to find her? Is it the money?’

‘Of course it’s not the money ,’ he said, disgusted that I’d even consider such an idea.

‘So what is it then?’

He closed his mouth tightly for a moment and made a strange little grinding motion with his teeth. Then, as if he’d finally made a decision to tell me the truth, he raised his eyes and looked at me. ‘It’s just … well, it’s just …’ He sighed. ‘I don’t want Helen getting her hopes up, that’s all. I don’t think it’s good for her, you know … the way she is. It’ll just make things all that much harder for her in the end.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Well, you see it all the time on the television, don’t you? On the news. These girls … the ones who go missing … it always ends up badly, doesn’t it?’

‘On the news it does, yes,’ I said. ‘But that’s only because if it ends up badly it is news. There are thousands who go missing who don’t end up on the news, simply because nothing happens to them.’