Kevin Brooks - Dance of Ghosts

Anna Gerrish was dead.

I had no doubt about that.

And I knew that I wasn’t going to find her by simply driving around, following the possible route of what was possibly her last journey, but I also knew that she could be out there somewhere — buried in a shallow grave, left to rot in a lonely copse, or just discarded at the side of the road somewhere, thrown away like an unwanted toy — and if she was out there, she would have been out there for a whole month by now … and no one had made any effort to find her.

No one had gone looking for her.

No one had cared.

And I can’t say for sure that I cared either. I cared about some thing, but whether it was the ghost of Anna Gerrish that was willing me on, or the haunting echoes of Stacy’s death, or just the amphetamine-fuelled yearning of my own self-pity … I simply didn’t know. I was just doing what I was doing — driving through the late-afternoon streets, looking for something, anything …

The daylight was beginning to fade as I passed along London Road, the pale purple skies edged with the dying redness of the sun. There was no sign of Tasha or any of the other girls. The streets were quiet and empty. I drove on. Through the tunnel, under the bridge … and then I slowed down and pulled in at the lay-by. It was just a lay-by: a dull grey crescent of gravelled concrete and weeds, an overflowing litter bin, cigarette ends strewn on the ground … a small and desolate place. In a verge at the back of the lay-by, clumps of wild grass swayed stiffly in a roadside breeze. I could feel the emptiness in the air.

It was no place for anyone to spend the last half-hour of their life.

I pulled away and drove off.

The hedge-lined greyness of Great Hey Road led me out of town, past the turning back to Hey, out into a semi-rural world of ploughed fields, out-of-town pubs, and small housing estates with rundown mini-markets where kids in tracksuits hung around benches waiting for things to happen. The further I got from Hey though, the more rural the landscape became, and as the farmlands passed by in a blur of abandonment — ramshackle buildings, polythene greenhouses, wasteland nurseries selling cheap pots and poorly-made bird tables — I realised just how many places there were where a dead body could be left with little fear of it being found: ditches, woods, overgrown streams, hedgerows, old quarries, deserted farm buildings. And I knew, as I approached the Ranges — a large expanse of wooded moorland that was used by the Army for military exercises — I knew that if Anna was out there somewhere, it was quite possible that she’d never be found.

I was trying to think logically, telling myself that if her abductor was a local man, he might well know about the Ranges, but if he wasn’t — if he was a man from Leicester called Charles Raymond Kemper — then he probably wouldn’t know the area that well, and if he had a dead body in his car that he was desperate to get rid of, he’d most likely just pick the first suitable spot he came across … probably somewhere much closer to town.

Which was logical enough reasoning … at least, it would have been if I’d known for sure whether Anna’s abductor was local or not. But I didn’t.

I didn’t even know if he existed.

I slowed the car and turned off into a deserted picnic area at the edge of the Ranges. It wasn’t much of a place, just a concreted square with a wooden table in the middle, surrounded by acres of litter-strewn scrubland, and as I parked the Fiesta and turned off the engine, I wondered if it was worth getting out of the car for a quick look round. It was an ideal spot for getting rid of a body — remote, but easily accessible; out of sight of the road, but not suspiciously so; and bordered on all sides by tangled hedgerows, drainage ditches, brambles, nettles, fallen trees …

As I lit a cigarette and gazed out over it all — wondering once again what the hell I was doing — my mobile rang. It was Cal, and he sounded quite excited.

‘I think I’ve got something, John,’ he said, the words spilling out rapidly. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at the Ranges … what do you mean you’ve got something?’

‘You need to turn round and head back towards town. Have you got a map? There’s a camera — ’

‘Hold on a second,’ I said, trying to slow him down. ‘Just tell me what you’ve got first.’

‘OK, well … I’ve been doing what you asked me to do, looking for more footage of the Nissan, and I found a couple of CCTV cameras on Great Hey Road … there’s one at the junction with the road back to town, and another about a mile further on at a railway crossing on the branchline … you know, one of those barrier crossings?’

‘Yeah, I know the one you mean.’

‘All right, so I worked out roughly how long it would have taken the guy to drive from the lay-by to the junction, and then on to the crossing, and I hacked into the stored footage at the times I estimated he’d be there … and guess what? I only fucking found him, didn’t I?’

‘Where? At the junction?’

‘At the junction and the crossing.’

‘And you’re sure it’s the same car?’

‘Yeah, but — ’

‘The same driver?’

‘It’s the same guy — ’

‘What about Anna? Is she — ?’

‘Fuck’s sake , John,’ he said angrily. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Just listen to me, all right? Are you listening?’

‘Yeah, sorry — ’

‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘Right, well … when the Nissan passes the junction, there’s definitely someone in the passenger seat. The footage is still too blurred to tell if it’s Anna Gerrish or not, but whoever it is, she’s in the car when it passes the junction. But then … well, if he’d carried on at the same speed, he should have got to the railway crossing about a minute later, but he didn’t. I double-checked the footage, going back a minute, then forward a minute, but there was still no sign of the Nissan. So then I fast-forwarded the tape — ’

‘Did you find him or not, Cal?’ I said impatiently.

‘He passed the crossing half an hour later.’

‘What?’

‘The Nissan passed the junction at 01.55, and it didn’t get to the crossing until 02.26.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah, and the thing is, when it got to the crossing there was no one in the passenger seat.’

‘Are you sure ?’

‘Fucking positive. I’ve watched it over and over again. I’ve paused the video as the car crosses the tracks … in fact, I’m looking at it on my laptop right now. It’s definitely the same car, with the same guy in the driver’s seat, and there’s definitely no one in the passenger seat. No one in the back seats either. Unless they’re hidden away somewhere, there’s no one else in that car but the driver.’

‘Shit,’ I said again.

‘Exactly.’

‘So that must mean — ’

‘He’s stopped off for half an hour somewhere between the junction and the crossing, and during that time he’s got rid of Anna.’

‘If it is Anna.’

‘We know it’s her, John.’

‘Yeah …’

‘And now we know where to find her. I mean, it’s half a mile at the most between the junction and the crossing … there can’t be that many places on that stretch of road where you can park a car without it being seen. You need to get going, John, before it gets too dark — ’

‘I’m on my way,’ I said, starting the car and reversing across the picnic area. ‘I’ll call you when I get there. In the meantime, if you can get hold of a detailed map of the area — ’

‘I’m looking at it on Google Earth right now. I can try sending it to your mobile if you want.’