Kevin Brooks - Dance of Ghosts

They were still right behind me when I drove round the market square and turned left at a No Entry sign into Wyre Street. It was strictly pedestrianised here — no cars, no parking — and I got a lot of nasty looks and angry shouts as I drove slowly up the street, crawling through the crowds of Saturday shoppers, which wasn’t all that pleasant … but it was a lot better than having to park somewhere and walk to the office with a pack of reporters dogging my every step.

I parked the Fiesta on the pavement outside the office. I knew that it’d be gone within the hour, clamped and towed away, and I’d have to pay God-knows-how-much to get it back, probably more than it was worth … but I didn’t really care. It was only a car. And it was about time I got a new one anyway.

A reporter and a cameraman were waiting at the door to the office, and when they saw me coming they immediately started hustling towards me — the reporter fiddling with his earpiece, the cameraman adjusting something on his camera …

‘Sky News, Mr Craine,’ the reporter called out as he approached me, somehow making the statement sound like a question. Sky News, Mr Craine? I didn’t look at him, didn’t say anything, just kept on going towards the office door.

‘We’re live on Sky News, Mr Craine,’ I heard him saying. ‘Could you tell us how you feel about your wife being the victim of a serial killer?’

I stopped and looked at him. His face was vaguely familiar from countless TV news reports, but I couldn’t put a name to it. He was holding a microphone towards me, his head tilted slightly to one side and his mouth turned down, showing me how serious and sympathetic he was.

‘This is live?’ I said quietly.

‘Yes, Mr Craine. You’re live on Sky News.’

I smiled at him. ‘Why don’t you fuck off, you annoying cunt?’

And as he stepped back, momentarily stunned, I walked past him, unlocked the office door, and went inside.

I don’t often go into the office at the weekend, but on the odd occasion that I do, George Salvini is always there, quietly getting on with some work in his office. He’s usually on his own, but when I knocked on his door that morning and he let me in, he was with a neatly groomed young man called Fabian who worked part-time for him. Fabian was perched on the edge of a desk, staring at a small TV on a table in the corner.

‘Sorry about all this, George,’ I said, glancing at the TV. It was tuned to Sky News, and the studio presenter was in the middle of apologising for the inappropriate language that had just been heard during an interview with John Craine.

‘Not at all, John,’ George beamed at me. ‘It’s all rather exciting, really. We were just watching your interview outside.’

‘Yeah, good one,’ Fabian added, grinning at me.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ George asked.

‘No, thanks. I’m not stopping … I just wanted to use your back door, if that’s OK?’

‘Of course, of course …’

‘There’s no one out there, is there? No reporters?’

George looked at Fabian. ‘Would you mind?’

Fabian nodded, smiling intimately at George, then he padded across the office towards a door in the far wall.

‘He’s a good boy,’ George said, watching him go through the door.

I smiled.

George turned back to me. ‘You look tired.’

‘I am.’

He patted my shoulder. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know. OK?’

‘Thanks, I will.’

We both looked over as Fabian came back in.

‘It’s clear,’ he said. ‘No one’s out there.’

‘Thanks,’ I told him, heading for the door.

‘Mind how you go, John,’ George called out.

‘Yeah, you too,’ I called back.

The door led me out into a carpeted corridor, at the far end of which was a cluttered storage area with a barred window and a fire door. I went over to the door, pushed down on the bar, gave it a shove, and stepped out into a narrow alley at the back of the building. The alley was enclosed behind a high brick wall crowned with shards of broken glass. Piles of retail debris were stacked against the wall: flattened cardboard boxes, bin bags, pallets, rolls of plastic sheeting. A sparse rain was falling, and I could hear the drops tocking loudly on clamp-shaped blocks of polystyrene. Someone had taken the trouble to paint ALWAYS ON MY MIND on the wall, and beneath that, FUCK YOUR NOB .

I pulled up my collar and headed off into the rain.

When I got to Cal’s place, the first thing I learned was that the photographer whose nose I’d broken had reported me to the police and that I was now wanted for questioning on suspicion of assault and criminal damage.

‘It was on Sky News just a minute ago,’ Cal told me. ‘And I heard it on the police scanner too.’ He smiled at me. ‘I think they might want to talk to you about calling someone a cunt on live TV as well.’

‘Is there a law against that?’

‘Fuck knows. Do you want some coffee?’

While Cal made coffee, I went over and sat down on the settee, lit a cigarette, and stared at the mute TV. A picture of me was being shown, with a BREAKING NEWS banner scrolling underneath that said HUSBAND OF SERIAL KILLER VICTIM IN INTERVIEW OUTRAGE ACCUSED OF “ASSAULT” BY DAILY EXPRESS PHOTOGRAPHER . After a few moments, my picture was replaced by a photo of Stacy, and then a blurred mugshot of Anton Viner appeared on the screen …

I picked up the remote and turned off the TV.

‘So what’s going on, John?’ said Cal, sitting down next to me and passing me a cup of coffee. ‘All this stuff about Anton Viner … is it true?’

I looked at him. ‘Do you trust me?’

‘Yeah, of course.’

‘So if I were to tell you that I knew, without doubt, that Anton Viner didn’t kill Anna Gerrish, but that I couldn’t tell you how or why I knew … could you accept that?’

He hesitated for a moment, thinking about it, then simply nodded. ‘Viner didn’t kill Anna?’

‘No.’

‘And you know that for a fact?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘That’s good enough for me.’ He smiled. ‘So does that mean we’re back on the case?’

I looked at him. ‘I’ve got a funny feeling that you’ve never been off it.’

Although I’d told Cal two weeks ago to leave the case alone, I’d known all along that he wouldn’t — he simply wasn’t capable of it. I knew he’d just have to keep digging, keep poking around, keep lifting up stones to see what was under them … and I was right, that was what he’d been doing.

‘The Charles Raymond Kemper that we’re looking for doesn’t exist,’ he told me. ‘I’ve run him through my automated search program and I’ve manually been through every possible database, using every possible combination of names and initials, and I haven’t come up with anything that makes sense. The address in Leicester doesn’t exist. There’s no birth certificate for anyone called Kemper that matches the date of birth in the DVLA’s records.’ Cal looked at me. ‘There’s simply no trace of our Charlie Kemper anywhere.’

‘So it’s a fake driving licence?’

‘Yeah, but there’s more to it than that. Fake ID’s not difficult, and driving licences are a piece of piss, but even with the really good fakes I can usually get behind the false information and find little traces of the real stuff, but with this one …’ He shrugged. ‘There’s just nothing there. Nothing at all.’

‘OK, so it’s a false name and a false address … but the guy in the Nissan was real, wasn’t he?’

‘Well, yeah …’

‘We saw him on CCTV.’