Kevin Brooks - Dance of Ghosts

I nodded. ‘Do you remember what kind of car it was?’

‘Yeah, it was a Nissan Almera.’

I smiled at her. ‘A Nissan Almera?’

She smiled back. ‘I’ve got a five-year-old boy who’s mad about cars.’ She laughed quietly. ‘Everywhere we go, he points them out and tells me what they are. That’s a BMW, Mummy. That one’s a Zafira …’ She shook her head, her smile turning sad. ‘So, anyway, yeah … I know my cars. It was a Nissan Almera.’

‘Colour?’

‘Green.’

‘I don’t suppose you got the registration number?’

She nodded. ‘You got a pen?’

I managed to hide my surprise this time as I reached into my pocket and passed her a pen. She wrote the registration number on the back of her cigarette packet, then gave the packet to me. I shook it. It was at least half full.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You can keep them. I’ve got plenty more.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Thanks.’ I looked at her. ‘Can you describe the man in the car?’

‘He was oldish,’ she said. ‘Early fifties, maybe. Dark hair, pale skin. I couldn’t see his eyes too well because he always wore those tinted glasses … you know the ones I mean? Not sunglasses, just ordinary glasses with tinted lenses.’

‘Right.’

‘But I think his eyes were dark.’

‘What was he wearing?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know … just ordinary old-guy kind of clothes — a shirt, some kind of jacket … you know, the kind of stuff that’s hard to remember?’

I smiled. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. Is there anything else you can tell me about him?’

She thought about it, then shook her head. ‘No … I think that’s pretty much it.’

‘OK, well, thanks, Tasha. You’ve been really helpful.’

She shrugged again. ‘Yeah, well …’

I took the remaining notes from my wallet —?65 — and gave them to her. ‘Sorry, ‘I said,’ it’s all I’ve got left.’

She didn’t thank me or count the notes, she just put them in her pocket. ‘What do you think happened to her?’ she asked me.

‘I don’t know. I’ll try and trace the car, see what I can find out …’ I looked at her. ‘Can I ask you something else?’

‘You’re all out of money now. What are you going to pay me with?’

I hesitated, not sure if she was joking or not.

But then she smiled and said, ‘Yeah, go on, then. What do you want to know?’

‘Well, it’s just … I mean, I know you probably don’t like the police that much, but how come you haven’t told them what you’ve just told me? You know … the car, the registration number, what the guy looks like. You could have just made an anonymous phone call.’

Her smile had faded now. ‘What good would it have done?’ she said simply. ‘If this guy’s done something to Anna, it’s already done. Catching him now’s not going to help Anna, is it? So all that would have happened if I’d told the police was they’d have come down here every night scaring all the punters away, and that would have meant finding somewhere else to work for fuck knows how long, maybe even moving to another town. It’s bad enough doing this as it is … none of us need any more shit to deal with. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Yeah …’

She shook her head. ‘I know what you’re thinking — ’

‘I’m not thinking anything — ’

‘Yeah, you fucking are. You’re thinking what a selfish cunt I am. I’m so fucking wrapped up in myself that I don’t give a shit about all the other girls that this guy might pick up and do whatever he does to them … all I care about is me.’ She glared at me. ‘Well, you’re fucking right. That is all I care about — getting enough money to get enough shit to get wasted enough to get me through another fucking day.’

‘That’s not what I was thinking,’ I said quietly.

Neither of us said anything for a while, we just stood there in the shelter of the tunnel, smoking our cigarettes in awkward silence … until eventually I broke the impasse by taking out my wallet again and passing Tasha one of my business cards.

‘If you remember anything else,’ I told her. ‘Just give me a ring. OK?’

She nodded. ‘Will you let me know if you find out what happened?’

‘Yeah, of course …’

I watched, slightly bemused, as she searched through her pockets. Then, with another heart-warming smile, she looked at me and said, ‘I seem to have run out of business cards.’

I laughed.

She laughed too, a real eye-twinkling giggle, and just for a moment she didn’t seem quite so tired and gaunt any more.

I said, ‘How can I get in touch with you again? I mean, if I’ve got anything to tell you about Anna.’

She smiled sadly. ‘I’m down here most nights. Just … you know …’

I nodded. ‘I’ll come and find you.’

‘OK.’

‘And thanks again.’

‘Yeah,’ she said softly, lowering her eyes. ‘Now, fuck off, before I start liking you.’

I wanted to talk to some of the other girls again before I went back to my car, to see if they knew anything about the man in the Nissan Almera, but most of them seemed to have disappeared. The only one I could see was a tall red-headed girl, and she was having an argument with a big Asian guy, who she seemed to know well enough to keep slapping in the chest, and I thought it was probably best to leave them alone. So, with everything that Tasha had told me still buzzing around in my head, I made my way back to my car.

Almost as soon as I’d got in, I saw someone approaching the car from the passenger side. It was a young woman, and as she got closer I recognised her as one of the girls I’d spoken to earlier. She was a little older than the others — in her mid-twenties, I’d guess — and she was dressed in tight jeans, a bra-top, and a black leather coat.

As she came up to the car, smiling seductively, I wound down the window.

She leaned in, showing me what she had to offer, and said, ‘Have you finished your detecting now?’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

She ran her tongue over her lips. ‘Can I offer you anything else before you go?’

I was just about to say, ‘No, thanks,’ when a siren suddenly wailed and the road lit up with a flashing blue light, and before I knew what was happening, the girl had run off, and two uniformed policemen were getting out of their patrol car and striding purposefully towards me.

The initial offence I was charged with was kerb crawling, but while they were taking down my details, one of the officers noticed the smell of alcohol on my breath, and I was subsequently breathalysed and arrested for drink-driving too. As I was being driven away in the back of the patrol car, I caught a glimpse of the girl in the black leather coat talking to one of the other girls. She obviously hadn’t been arrested, and she didn’t even seem bothered by the presence of the police, which pretty much convinced me that my arrest had been set up.

There was no doubt in my mind that Bishop was behind it, but as to why …? I wondered if he could have been the man in the Nissan. An oldish guy , Tasha had said. Early fifties, dark hair, pale skin, dark eyes … it could be Bishop, give or take a few years. And if Bishop had done something to Anna, or even if he was just one of her customers, it would explain why he didn’t want me investigating her disappearance. But Tasha’s description was pretty vague, and Mick Bishop was by no means the only dark-haired, pale-skinned, middle-aged man in the country. In fact, the description could be stretched to fit Graham Gerrish. Maybe he knew that Anna worked the streets at night, and maybe he’d just driven out there and picked her up with the fatherly intention of helping her sort her life out … but then something had gone wrong. They’d argued, had a fight …