Kevin Brooks - Dance of Ghosts

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.