Kevin Brooks - Dance of Ghosts

‘Mr Craine?’ Bishop said.

‘What?’

‘Do you understand what I’ve just told you?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Good. OK … let’s get on with it.’ He looked at me. ‘At 18.37 this evening you called the police to report the discovery of a body in a lay-by on Great Hey Road. Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like you to tell me what you were doing there.’

‘I’m a private investigator. I was recently hired to look into the disappearance of a young woman called Anna Gerrish. After making some enquiries, I came to the conclusion that she’d been abducted from London Road in the early hours of the morning and that her abductor had driven off along Great Hey Road in the direction of Hale Island. So I followed that route, keeping my eyes open for places where a body might possibly be dumped, and the lay-by was just one of those places.’

Bishop just stared at me. ‘Did you search anywhere else?’

‘Not really …’

‘Did you search anywhere else?’ he repeated. ‘Yes or no?’

‘I stopped at a few other places, but I didn’t actually get out of the car — ’

‘So,’ he said. ‘Let me get this straight — you were driving along Great Hey Road, looking for Ms Gerrish’s body, and the first place you stopped at … or rather, the first place you stopped at and got out of the car , was the lay-by. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how did you know exactly where to find the body?’

‘I didn’t … I just looked around — ’

‘You just looked around?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you found it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘He didn’t say anything for a moment, just carried on looking at me, then he said, ‘All right, let me ask you something else. How did you know that Anna Gerrish was dead?’

‘I didn’t — ’

‘But you went looking for her body anyway?’

‘She was missing,’ I said. ‘No one had heard from her for a month. I thought there was a fairly good chance that she was dead.’

‘But you didn’t know for sure?’

‘No.’

He paused again for a moment, slowly nodding his head, as if he was digesting what I’d just told him and carefully considering what to ask me next — but I knew it was all a show. He knew exactly what he was doing. And I was pretty sure that I knew exactly what he was doing too: not asking me anything about Tasha, or what she’d told me; not asking me anything about the Nissan, or the driver; not mentioning anything about the registration number I’d texted him. He didn’t want any of that on tape.

He looked down, sniffed, ‘then looked up at me again. ‘Where were you on the night that Anna Gerrish disappeared, Mr Craine?’

‘Where was I?’

He nodded. ‘On the night of Monday 6 September, the early hours of Tuesday morning — where were you?’

I shook my head. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Think about it.’

I thought about it, then shook my head again. ‘It was over a month ago, I can’t remember. I was probably in bed — ’

‘Probably?’

‘Yeah, probably.’

‘But you can’t remember?’

‘No …’ I looked at him. ‘Can you remember where you were that night?’

He stared back at me. ‘I was here, in this very room, from midnight until three in the morning. I was interviewing a witness about an alleged assault.’

I smiled at him. ‘You’ve got a good memory.’

‘You think this is amusing , Mr Craine? A young woman, stabbed to death … her body dumped in a lay-by … you think that’s funny ?’

There was no point answering that, so I didn’t.

Bishop just looked at me for a few moments, then he turned to DS Coleman beside him and said, ‘All right?’

Coleman nodded.

Bishop glanced at his watch. ‘Interview terminated at 22.41.’

Coleman turned off the tape-recorder.

‘Is that it?’ I said.

Bishop nodded.

‘What about — ?’

‘The interview’s over,’ he said, turning to DS Coleman. ‘Give us a few minutes, will you, Alan?’

With another silent nod of his head, Coleman got to his feet, removed the two tapes from the recorder, and left the room.

Bishop waited for him to close the door, then he sat back in his chair, crossed his legs, and smiled at me. You look tired, John.’

‘You too.’

He sniffed. ‘All right, listen to me … this is over for you now, OK? You’re going to go home, go to bed, get some sleep, and then tomorrow morning you’re going to go back to your shitty little office and get back to doing your shitty little job. Do you understand me?’

I said nothing.

‘This is now an official murder investigation,’ he went on. ‘If you get in touch with anyone — and I mean any one — who has any thing to do with this case, and that includes the Gerrishes, I’ll have you arrested for obstruction, wasting police time, perverting the course of justice … whatever the fuck I can think of. Have you got that?’

I nodded. ‘Do they know yet?’

‘Who?’

‘Mr and Mrs Gerrish … have you told them?’

He sighed. ‘They’ve been informed that a woman’s body has been found, that’s all. We can’t tell them anything else until the identity’s been confirmed.’

‘But you know it’s her, don’t you? You know it’s Anna?’

‘What did I just tell you?’ he said, beginning to lose his temper. ‘This has got nothing to do with you any more. This is a police investigation. You are not police, you are not involved in any way, shape, or fucking form.’ He leaned forward and spoke slowly, looking me in the eye. ‘Now … do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ I said calmly. ‘I understand.’

‘You’d fucking better.’

I looked at him. ‘Can I go now?’

He sniffed again, pausing for a moment just to make me wait, then he jerked his head at the door. ‘Yeah, go on, fuck off.’

Two weeks later, on a cold and misty Friday morning, I was sitting on an old wooden bench in my backyard, drinking coffee and listening to Bridget Moran as she told me about a fat little boy and a mouse.

I’d been seeing quite a lot of Bridget over the last ten days or so, mainly because she’d finally split up with Dave and didn’t like being on her own too much, and although I often heard her talking to her dog, Walter, I knew that she needed a bit of human company every now and again. Of course, I liked to think that there was a little bit more to it than that, but I didn’t really mind if there wasn’t. If all I was to Bridget was a convenient pair of human ears, and if all we ever did was share the occasional cup of coffee together … well, that was perfectly all right with me.

After my interview at the police station — and after three or four days of stultifying depression, when all I could do was lie in bed and wait for the black place to leave me — I’d done what Mick Bishop had told me to do: I’d gone back to my shitty little office and got back to doing my shitty little job. Apart from one phone call to Cal, I hadn’t got in touch with anyone who had anything to do with the Anna Gerrish case, including Helen and Graham Gerrish. I hadn’t even sent them a bill. I’d just got back to living my life, doing my job … working insurance cases, tracing bad debts, tracking down the makers of pirate DVDs …

The Anna Gerrish case was over for me: I’d done what I’d been hired to do; I’d found her. It wasn’t my job to find out who’d killed her. It wasn’t my business to ask any more questions. Who was driving the Nissan that night? Who was Charles Raymond Kemper? Did Kemper kill Anna? Did Bishop kill Anna? If he didn’t, what was he trying to hide? And if he did …?