Kevin Brooks - Dance of Ghosts

‘And there’s nothing else at all that links Viner with Anna Gerrish?’

‘Not as far as I know. I haven’t been able to get a copy of the autopsy report, and no one that I’ve spoken to has actually seen it, but the prevailing opinion seems to be that there are very few similarities between Anna’s murder and Stacy’s.’ Leon hesitated for a moment. ‘Are you OK talking about this, John?’

‘Yeah, go on.’

‘Well, the knife wounds don’t match, for a start. Anna was stabbed with a different kind of knife than the one used on Stacy. Also, Anna wasn’t strangled … and she wasn’t raped either.’

I took a breath, steadying myself. ‘So, if it wasn’t for the DNA, there’d be no reason to suspect Viner?’

‘None at all.’

I paused for a moment, trying to piece things together — Bishop, Viner … Anna, me … Viner, Stacy … Viner, me — but I still didn’t get it. I could just about see how I could make everything fit together, but only in the way that you can make all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fit together if you keep hitting them hard enough with a hammer.

‘We’re nearly there, John,’ Cal said.

I nodded, wiping condensation from the car window and gazing out at Saturday morning shoppers scuttling along the pavement, their heads bowed down to the wind, their cold hands stuffed in their coat pockets. We were on North Street, just the other side of the Eastway roundabout.

‘John,’ I heard Leon saying. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yeah … sorry, Leon,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking …’

‘Listen, John, I have to go now — ’

‘Yeah, me too.’

‘I’ll let you know if I find out anything else.’

‘Thanks, Leon.’

‘No problem.’

As I ended the call and put the mobile back in my pocket, Cal said to me, ‘Is it OK if I drop you off here?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ I replied.

He pulled in at the side of the road about fifty yards from the police station. ‘Just call me when you’ve finished,’ he said. ‘And I’ll come and pick you up.’

‘OK.’

‘Use the number I’ve just called you from.’

‘What?’

He held up his iPhone. ‘I just called you, so this number will be in your call log. It’s a new one. Just dial the number, let it ring twice, then hang up. I’ll know it’s you. All right?’

I smiled at him. ‘Yeah …’

‘What’s so funny?’

I shook my head. ‘Nothing …’

‘You think I’m being paranoid?’

I shrugged. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being paranoid.’

‘Fucking right,’ he said.

As I got out of the car and watched Cal drive away, I thought I saw a silver-grey Renault approaching the Eastway roundabout from North Street, but when I wiped the rain from my face and looked again, trying to catch a glimpse of the registration number, it had already turned left, heading away from me towards town, and all I saw was a rain-blurred flash of silver-grey disappearing behind a bus. I couldn’t even be sure that it was a Renault, let alone the Renault.

‘Who’s being paranoid now?’ I muttered to myself as I turned round and headed for the police station.

When I informed the reception officer who I was and what I was doing there, he just stared at me for a moment or two, his mouth half open, and I could almost hear the cogs whirring dimly inside his head as he digested the information, registered it, processed it, and finally came up with an answer.

‘Just a minute,’ he told me, reaching for a phone.

Ten minutes later I was sitting in Bishop’s office, looking around at his bare white walls, his bare black desk, his bare beige carpet … it was one of the emptiest rooms I’d ever been in. Apart from Bishop himself, sitting across from me at his desk, there was nothing of him in that room at all. No photographs, no mementoes, no certificates … nothing. In fact, the only way of telling that it was Bishop’s office was the sign on the door saying DCI M Bishop .

‘Do you want coffee or anything?’ he asked me.

‘No, thanks.’

He sniffed. ‘Anyway, it’s all sorted out. There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The assault charge, the photographer … I’ve had a word with him. He’s withdrawn his complaint and he’s not pressing charges.’

‘Oh … OK, so that’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

I almost said Thanks , but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t thank this man, not in a million years. And, besides, I doubted very much that he’d done whatever he’d done for my benefit anyway.

‘Did you watch the press conference?’ he asked me.

‘Yeah.’

‘What do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘Have you still got doubts about Viner?’

I shrugged. ‘What can I say?’

‘You could answer my question.’

‘Why are you asking me about it? I don’t know anything, do I? You’re the one with all the answers.’

He smiled. ‘That’s not how you felt yesterday.’

‘Yeah, well — ’

‘You said it was impossible, didn’t you? When I told you that Viner’s DNA had been found on Anna Gerrish, you said that was impossible.’

‘So?’

‘So how come you’ve changed your mind?’

‘I haven’t changed my mind — ’

‘You still think it’s impossible?’

‘Look,’ I said, trying to stay calm. ‘You turn up out of the blue, and you tell me that the man who raped and killed my wife is suspected of killing not just another woman, but the woman I was hired to find, the woman whose body I did find … I mean, Christ … how do you expect me to react?’

Bishop studied me for a moment, his eyes fixed on mine, and then — with a self-satisfied nod — he said, ‘All right, that’s fair enough.’ And then he tried to give me the kind of smile that says, OK, the formalities are over, let’s get the platitudes done and then we can say goodbye , but it just didn’t work on him. His smiles were all the same: cold, tight, empty of emotion and meaning.

‘So,’ he said casually. ‘What are your plans now? Back to work, I suppose?’

‘Probably not. It’s not that easy investigating privately when you’ve got a pack of reporters following you around all the time. They kind of get in the way.’

‘Right,’ he nodded, feigning interest. ‘Of course … it must be very difficult.’

‘Yeah, it is.’

‘Maybe it’d be a good time to take a break? Get away from it all somewhere.’

‘You think so?’

He gave me a cold look. ‘I’m only trying to fucking help.’

‘Yeah …’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Well, I’ll think it over. Do you need me to let you know if I’m planning on leaving town?’

‘Not particularly.’

I couldn’t think of anything else to say then, so I just turned round and started to leave.

‘John?’ I heard him say.

I stopped. ‘What?’

‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’

I turned to face him. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘There’s nothing you want to ask me about?’

‘Like what?’

‘Viner, maybe?’

‘What about him?’

‘Don’t you want to know if we’ve found him yet?’

Shit , I thought.

‘Have you?’ I said.

‘No, not yet.’ He stared at me. ‘You’ll be the first to know, though … when we do. I’ll see to it personally.’

DC Wade was waiting for me outside Bishop’s office, and as I followed him along the corridor towards the lift I was trying to work out if Bishop knew anything about what I’d done to Viner, or if he was just guessing, or just fishing … or just fucking me around. There was no doubt I’d made a mistake in not asking him about Viner, but it was hard to see how Bishop could deduce anything definite from that alone. Unless, of course, he already suspected something … but then, if he had any inkling at all that I’d killed Viner, why the hell would he put Viner in the frame for the murder of Anna Gerrish? If, indeed, that’s what he’d done … and I was only guessing at that.