Dance of Ghosts (12 page)

‘Do you enjoy it?’

I looked at him. ‘What?’

‘Owning your own company … being a private investigator – do you enjoy it?’

‘Does it matter?’

He looked at me for a while, his head cocked slightly to one side, as if he was thinking about something … then he took a breath, leaned back in his chair, and sighed. ‘I checked the case file this morning to see if there’s been any progress on the investigation into your wife’s murder,’ he said. ‘We
are
still looking for him, you know. We haven’t given up.’

I looked back at him, holding his gaze … saying nothing, showing nothing.

‘We’ll find him eventually,’ he said, his eyes never leaving mine. ‘It’s just a matter of time.’

‘Right…’ I said vaguely, ‘well, that’s good to know. But it’s not what I’m here about.’

Bishop didn’t say anything for a few moments, he just carried on staring at me, his dark eyes unreadable … and then, with an unnecessary sniff and a curt nod of his head, he pulled his chair back to the table, glanced at his watch, and got down to business. ‘Right,’ he said briskly, ‘Anna Gerrish. I take it you’ve been talking to her mother?’

‘I can’t –’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said impatiently. ‘There’s no need to give me all that client confidentiality shit again. Let’s just assume, hypo-fucking-thetically, that you’re working for Helen Gerrish, all right? You haven’t told me anything, you haven’t breached her trust. OK?’

I nodded.

‘Good. So what do you want from me?’

‘Well, I know you can’t give me any details about the case –’

‘What details do you want?’

I looked at him, slightly taken aback.

He shook his head. ‘There
is
no fucking case, John. That’s all the detail you need to know. All that’s happened to Anna Gerrish is she’s met some bloke who’s promised her the world and they’ve fucked off together somewhere in his customised Golf GTI. Give it a couple of months and she’ll probably come crawling back home.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, I’m sure. It happens all the time.’ He shrugged one shoulder. ‘All right, so I might be wrong about the specifics – maybe she just fucked off on her own, or with a
girlfriend, or maybe she met an older man with a nice sensible Volvo or something – but it’s all the same thing. We get at least two or three of these so-called missing persons every week – my daughter’s gone missing, my son’s disappeared, my husband, my wife … none of them ever come to anything. The trouble is, people simply can’t accept that someone they’ve known for years, perhaps even
loved
for years, can suddenly just decide that they’ve had enough.’ Bishop looked at me. ‘That’s all there is to it, John. Believe me. Anna Gerrish is safe and well somewhere. And there’s no evidence whatsoever to suggest otherwise.’

‘What about the report in the
Hey Gazette?
’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, if you’re saying that this kind of thing happens all the time, how come the paper picked up on Anna’s disappearance?’

‘Because her mother kept nagging them, that’s why. And because Anna was reasonably attractive.’ Bishop shrugged. ‘The press don’t give a shit if there’s anything
in
a story or not … as long as it sells, that’s all they care about. And pretty girls sell.’

‘But if Anna’s safe and well somewhere, why hasn’t she contacted her mother?’

‘Who knows? Maybe she hates her, maybe she
wants
her to suffer …’ Bishop shrugged again. ‘Whatever the reason, it’s not our concern. Anna’s a grown woman. She can do what she wants. If she doesn’t want anyone to know where she is, that’s entirely up to her.’

‘You searched her flat?’

Bishop sighed. ‘Yes, we searched her flat.’ He was beginning to talk to me as if I was an annoying child.

I said, ‘There didn’t seem to be anything missing. I mean, I got the impression that she hadn’t packed any clothes or toiletries or anything.’

‘How can you tell if there’s anything missing without knowing what was there in the first place? And, besides … well, you were in her flat, you must have seen the kind of stuff she had in there. She’s not going to bother coming back for any of that shit if she’s been whisked off her feet by some knight in shining armour, is she?’ Bishop looked at me, a hint of smugness showing in his face, then he glanced at his watch. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘well, if that’s all –’

‘You know she used heroin, don’t you?’ I said.

He froze for a moment. ‘What?’

‘Anna … she used heroin.’

‘How do you know that?’

I half-smiled at him. ‘I’m an investigator. I get paid to find things out. It’s what I do.’

Bishop didn’t react to my flippancy, he just stared at me for a second or two, his face quite still, and then he said, ‘Have you told her parents?’

‘No.’

He nodded. ‘They don’t need to know.’

‘OK,’ I agreed. ‘But surely it means –’

‘It doesn’t
mean
anything. She used heroin … so fucking what? Do you really think we didn’t already know that?’

I stared at him. ‘You knew?’

‘Fuck, yes.’

‘And I suppose you know –’

‘That she worked the streets? Yeah, we’re perfectly aware of that too.’

I shook my head in disbelief. ‘And you
still
think that nothing’s happened to her?’

‘All right, look,’ he said impatiently. ‘Here’s how it is – Anna Gerrish
wasn’t
the nice young girl that her mother thinks she was, she
wasn’t
an aspiring model, she wasn’t anything. She was just another junky who sold her cunt to get high. OK? That’s the reality. Girls like that disappear all the time. They meet a new dealer, a new pimp … or maybe they find a punter who thinks he can rescue them from a life of depravity … fucking whatever, you know?’ Bishop looked at me. ‘If we tried to find every girl like Anna who ever disappeared, we’d never have time to do anything else.’

‘So … are you telling me that you’re
not
actively looking for her?’

‘I’m
telling
you what’s what,’ he said, his voice getting harder now. ‘I’m
telling
you that the Gerrishes don’t need to know the truth about their lovely little daughter, because all that’s going to do is make things even worse for them, and what’s the point of that? And I’m
telling
you that, if I were you, I wouldn’t bother wasting my time,
and
everybody’s else’s, looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found. That’s all I’m telling you, John. So why don’t you just find yourself something else to do for the next few days, then tell the Gerrishes that you’ve done your best and send them a bill.’ He leaned back in his chair and smiled coldly at me. ‘How does that sound?’

‘It sounds,’ I said, ‘like you’re warning me off.’

Bishop laughed. ‘If I was warning you off, you’d know about it.’

‘Yeah? What would you do? Get someone to beat me up in an alley?’

The smile stayed on his face, but I could tell it was a strain, and after a few moments he gave up the pretence, sniffed hard, and looked at his watch again. ‘Right,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Well, I think we’re about done here, don’t you?’ As he came round to the front of the desk, I stood up to meet him, but he’d had enough of me now, and he didn’t even look at me as he crossed over to the door. I stayed where I was for a few moments – buttoning my jacket, brushing imaginary dust from my trousers – just to annoy him, and then I slowly sauntered over to the door.

Before opening it and ushering me out, Bishop handed me a business card. ‘My mobile and office numbers,’ he said, his voice oddly neutral. ‘Let me know if you find anything. All right?’

As I nodded and put the card in my pocket, he gave me a final look, and just for a moment – a very brief and unguarded moment – I saw in his eyes an intensity of pain and sorrow that burned right down to his core, and as he opened the door and ushered me out, and a waiting DC Wade started to escort me out of the building, I couldn’t help wondering if what I’d just seen was the truth at the heart of Mick Bishop, or just a fleeting reflection of my own broken life.

As I followed DC Wade along the corridor back to the lift, I was half thinking about Mick Bishop – the things he’d said, the things he hadn’t said – and at the same time I was half looking out for anyone with a skull ring on their finger. I still wasn’t totally convinced that Bishop had anything to do with me getting beaten up, but his reaction when I’d hinted at it, together with the fact that he hadn’t asked me how I’d received the injuries to my face, had given me a lot to think about. But, even so, I wasn’t really expecting to see the hand that formed the fist that had smashed into my head last night …

And I didn’t.

What I did see, though, as the lift door opened and I stepped aside to let some people out, was a face I hadn’t seen for a long time. His name was Cliff Duffy. He’d been a DC when my father had died, and he was still a DC now. Our eyes met as he passed me by, but we didn’t openly acknowledge one another.

I kept my eye on him as I followed DC Wade into the lift, watching which way he went, and just as the lift doors were closing, I reached out and held them open, said ‘Hold on a minute’ to Wade, and before he could stop me I walked quickly along the corridor and caught up with Cliff
Duffy just as he was entering a room. He stopped and turned round as I touched his arm, and as I made a show of shaking his hand and smiling broadly at him, I whispered under my breath,’ Blue Boar, half an hour … it’s important, OK?’

He didn’t answer me, just carried on shaking my hand, but the almost imperceptible nod of his head told me that he’d heard me. I gave him a parting pat on the arm and went back to the lift, where DC Wade was waiting impatiently for me.

‘Sorry,’ I told him. ‘Cliff’s an old friend of my father’s …’

Wade said nothing, just pressed the button for the ground floor.

About ten years ago, Cliff Duffy had got in touch with me about a problem he was having with his eighteen-year-old son. The problem, Cliff had explained to me, was that he’d been working on a small-time fraud case that had unexpectedly developed into a much bigger operation which involved several high-profile politicians, including the MP for Hey West, Meredith Chase, who at the time was a member of the Shadow Cabinet. Cliff’s role in the operation was relatively minor, but he’d been part of a surveillance team that had managed to obtain a number of photographs showing Meredith Chase in a series of intimate situations with a seventeen-year-old boy. Unfortunately for Cliff, he’d made the mistake of taking some of these photographs home with him one night, and even more unfortunately, it just happened to be the night when his estranged son, Richey, had let himself into his parents’
home in the early hours of the morning, looking for anything he could steal and sell in order to fund his drug habit. This wasn’t the first time Richey had made such a visit, and although Cliff and his wife were devastated every time it happened, they’d learned to simply swallow their despair, keep quiet about it, and accept it. And they would have been quite happy to do the same this time if it wasn’t for the fact that Richey, it seemed, had stolen the surveillance photographs of Meredith Chase.

‘So,’ Cliff had said to me, ‘you can see the situation I’m in. Once Richey realises who the man in the photographs is, the first thing he’s going to think of is blackmail. Or he might just sell the pictures to the tabloids if the price is right. Either way, my career would be over.’

He didn’t say it, but I think Cliff knew that if the worst came to the worst, it wouldn’t only be his career that was over, but his marriage too. The shame and embarrassment of their son’s criminal lifestyle coming to light would have been too much for Mrs Duffy to bear, and although I’d never met her, I got the impression that she blamed Cliff for all their son’s problems.

The reason Cliff had brought his problem to me was that, firstly, he knew me fairly well having worked with, and respected, my father over the years, and he believed that he could rely on me to be discreet. And secondly, his son Richey was always on the move – living in squats here and there, staying with friends, sometimes sleeping rough – and Cliff simply didn’t have time to go looking for him because he was still involved in the Meredith Chase investigation. Also, while Cliff didn’t actually admit it, he’d
never been particularly good at detective work, which was why he’d remained a DC for most of his career.

So, anyway, I told Cliff that I’d see what I could do, and within a couple of days I’d traced Richey to a squat in North London, and after making sure that he hadn’t made any copies of the photographs, I simply stole them back and returned them to Cliff.

He was so incredibly relieved and grateful that not only did he give me a very generous cash bonus, he also promised me, hand on heart, that if he could ever do anything for me, anything at all, all I had to do was ask. And although I think he probably regretted this offer when I asked him, there and then, if he could find out what had happened to the gun that my father had used to shoot himself, and if possible return it to me, he didn’t renege on his promise. It took him a while, and I’m still not exactly sure where he got it from, or how, but he did.

To this day, Cliff has never asked me why I wanted the gun. And I wouldn’t have known how to answer him if he had.

It was close to two o’clock when Cliff finally showed up at the Blue Boar, and by then most of the lunchtime trade had finished and the pub was beginning to empty out. It was a smallish place in a quiet side street in the Dutch Quarter, an old part of town that’s known for its steep cobbled lanes and narrow houses.

I was sitting at a table near the far end of the bar when Cliff came in. I raised my hand to let him know where I was, and watched him as he made his way over. He was a
beaten-down man, a man who’d long since given up caring about anything. He had a mournful face, with a down-turned mouth and sagging cheeks, and he walked with a slouching air of resignation. He looked pretty much like what he was: a just-about-functional drunk.

I had a large Scotch waiting for him on the table, and as soon as he’d shaken my hand and sat down, he picked up the glass, took a drink, put the glass back down, then immediately picked it up again and took another drink, this time finishing it off.