Dance of Ghosts (2 page)

I still don’t know what it was.

I definitely wasn’t angry. Or aggrieved. And I wasn’t even that bothered about the camcorder. It was just a thing … a piece of equipment. It didn’t
mean
anything to me. And besides, I knew I’d probably claim the cost of it back from StayBright’s insurers anyway. But there was just something about the way Elliot was smashing it up that galled me … it
offended
me. The sheer stupidity of it, the pointlessness, the unnecessary level of violence …

Whatever it was, I found myself getting out of the car and approaching Elliot as he leaned down again and gave what was left of the camcorder another hefty thump with his hammer, and before I really knew what I was doing, I heard myself saying to him, ‘Hey, come on, Preston … there’s no need for that …’

He froze in mid-hammer swing, stayed perfectly still for a moment, then slowly turned to face me. His staring eyes reminded me, oddly, of the eyes of a porcelain donkey that my mother used to keep on the mantelpiece.

I gave Elliot my best placatory smile, holding up my hands to let him know that I wasn’t a threat, and I was just about to say something else to try to calm him down, when all of a sudden he stepped towards me and said, ‘I’ll give
you
“there’s no fucking need for that.”’ And then he swung the hammer at me.

I moved quickly enough to avoid the worst of the impact, and thankfully Elliot had gone for me with the handle of the hammer instead of the business end, but it still caught me a glancing blow on the side of my face, and although it didn’t really hurt that much, it was enough to send me staggering back against the car.

And that was enough for me. Holding the side of my face, I just stood there in the rain, leaning against the car, and watched in resigned silence as Elliot went back to the remains of the smashed-up camcorder and began stomping the broken pieces into the ground.

Over at the house, his two colleagues were watching him as well, both of them standing in the doorway, smoking cigarettes, neither of them showing much interest. I could see other spectators as well – residents watching from their windows, little kids on bikes pointing and laughing … an old man with an old dog, the old man disdainfully shaking his head – this kind of thing never happened on the street in
his
day – while the old dog impassively lifted its leg against the back wheel of a parked car. They were all just watching. No one wanted to get involved. It was just something to look at, that was all: a small-headed man angrily smashing a camcorder to pieces in the rain.

It was something to talk about later on.

Eventually, after about a minute or so, Elliot either ran out of energy or decided that he’d done enough damage, and after a final cursory kick at the shattered mess on the ground, he straightened up, took a couple of deep breaths, and turned to me.

‘All right …’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Now you can
fuck off. And if I ever catch you following me again, if I ever see your fucking face
anywhere
, it won’t be bits of your camcorder in the gutter, it’ll be bits of your fucking brain. D’you understand me?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I understand.’

‘You’d fucking better.’

I smiled at him.

I thought for a moment he was going to hit me again, but all he did was stare at me for a couple of seconds, the hammer swinging gently in his hands, then he spat on the ground, wiped his mouth, and began walking back to the house.

I watched him all the way.

I watched his colleagues grinning at him and patting him on the shoulder, I watched him light a cigarette, and then I watched them all get into the Transit van and drive off slowly down the street. I waited until they’d turned the corner at the end of the road, waited a little more, and only then did I fetch an empty carrier bag from the back of my car, get down on my knees, and start gathering up all the bits of smashed-up camcorder from the ground.

I found the memory card in a shallow brown puddle. It was soaking wet, of course, and there was a bit of hammer damage to the top left corner, but apart from that it didn’t look too bad. There was a chance it might still work. And if it did, Preston Elliot was fucked.

And if it didn’t …?

Well, I could always get more evidence against him. Or someone else could. Or maybe no one would, and he’d get away with conning some money out of his employers. But
in the end … well, it didn’t really matter, did it? It didn’t
mean
anything.

Not to me, anyway.

Nothing means anything to me.

Not any more.

Back in the car, I put the carrier bag full of camcorder bits on the back seat, lit a cigarette, and checked myself out in the rear-view mirror. There was a small cut above my right eye where a bit of broken safety glass had nicked me, and the side of my face was marked with a raised red welt from the hammer handle. Blood was running from the cut, mingling with the sheen of rain on my face, and there were pale pink spots on my shirt collar. As I took a tissue from the glove compartment and started cleaning myself up, my mobile rang again. I gave my face another wipe, rested the cigarette in the ashtray, and put the call on speaker.

‘Hi, Ada.’

‘John?’

‘Yeah, sorry about that, I got a bit –’

‘What the hell’s going on?’ she interrupted. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. It was nothing –’

‘It didn’t
sound
like nothing.’

I picked up my cigarette and took a long drag. ‘Really,’ I said. ‘Everything’s fine. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.’

‘Are you coming back now?’

‘Yeah … is the client still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK. Tell her I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. And Ada?’

‘What?’

‘Be nice to her, all right? Talk to her. Make her a cup of tea or something … are you listening?’

‘Yeah,’ she drawled. ‘I’m listening. Be nice, talk to her, cup of tea … anything else?’

‘Try not to fart too much.’

She laughed.

I ended the call, dropped my cigarette out of the window, and drove off into the rain.

The town of Hey is pretty much the same as any other medium-sized town in the south-east of England. It’s got a town centre, housing estates, supermarkets, a bypass, outlying villages, a river, a park, pubs, clubs, fights, drugs … it’s got 200,000 people living 200,000 lives, and it’s got no more goodness and no less shit than any other place I’ve ever been to.

It’s Any Town, Anywhere.

It’s Hey, Essex, England.

It’s where I live.

It’s where I come from.

My office is situated on the second floor of a three-storey building at the lower end of Wyre Street in the middle of the town centre. Wyre Street is a narrow pedestrianised lane that runs parallel to the High Street. It’s mainly populated with small businesses, like mine, and independent shops that can’t afford to be located in the High Street: hippy shops, comic-books shops, skateboard shops, candle shops … the kind of shops that don’t make much money and never last more than a year or two.

It’s OK.

It’s a street.

It’s where I work from.

It was getting on for midday by the time I got back to town. I left my car in the usual place – a council car park in the old market square – and walked up the steep stone steps that link the car park to Wyre Street. The streets were as quiet as you’d expect on a rainy Wednesday lunchtime, and most of the people I passed were too busy keeping themselves out of the rain to pay any attention to me, but I still got a few wary looks as I made my way back to the office. It was only to be expected. I’d been driving in the rain with no side window, so I was soaking wet and dishevelled. My face was still bleeding, the welt from the hammer blow had swollen up and was starting to turn blue, and I was carrying a manky old carrier bag filled with smashed-up bits of camcorder.

If I’d seen myself in the street, I probably would have been a bit wary too.

When I reached the office building, the front door was open and George Salvini was lounging against the porch wall smoking a cigarette. A middle-aged man, and always impeccably dressed, George runs an accountancy business from an office on the ground floor.

‘Hello, John,’ he said, grinning at my appearance. ‘You’re looking very gorgeous today.’

‘Thanks, George,’ I said, nodding at him as I went past into the corridor and started climbing the stairs.

The second floor of the building is all mine. It has a corridor with a cinnamon-coloured carpet, a toilet with a sink and hot water, and a window that looks out onto the alley at the back of the building. The door to the office has a
pebbled glass panel lettered in faded black paint –
John Craine Investigations
– and I can still remember the childish kick of pride and excitement I used to get whenever I saw those three simple words:
John Craine Investigations
. But that’s all it is now – a memory, as faded as the paintwork on the glass. And as I opened the door and went in that day, I didn’t feel anything at all. No kick, no pride, no excitement. I was a private investigator. It was a job, that’s all. It paid the bills.

I shut the door behind me and looked over at Ada. She was sitting at her desk across the room, almost hidden behind a wall of papers and box files and computer stuff – monitor, printer, scanner. Ada was over sixty now, but she still looked the same as she’d always looked: overweight, tired, dressed like a bag lady. Today she was wearing a scratty old cardigan over an XXL Nirvana T-shirt, and although I couldn’t see her feet, I knew that she’d be wearing her foul-smelling old furry slippers.

I smiled at her.

‘Jesus
Christ
, John!’ she said, getting up from her desk. ‘What the fuck happened to you?’

‘It’s all right,’ I told her. ‘Honestly, it looks a lot worse than it is …’

‘I
knew
something had happened,’ she said, coming over to me and peering closely at my face. ‘I just knew it.’ She took out a tissue, spat on it, and started dabbing at my wounds.

‘Please, Ada,’ I said, gently easing her away. ‘It’s OK … really.’

‘Who did it?’ she asked.

‘Preston Elliot. You know, the StayBright insurance case?’

She frowned. ‘I thought that was just routine surveillance.’

‘Yeah, it was. It just got a bit out of hand, that’s all.’

She stared at me. ‘A bit out of hand?’

I held up the carrier bag and shook it. ‘We need a new camcorder.’

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Do you know how much that cost?’

I took the damaged memory card from my pocket and passed it to her. ‘Can you see if this still works?’

‘I doubt if it will,’ she said, taking it from me and studying it. ‘But I’ll give it a go.’ She looked at me again. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? That lump on your face doesn’t look too good.’

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I said, gazing round the office. It looked the same as ever: Ada’s desk, a window, a couple of easy chairs against the wall, a fridge, filing cabinet, stationery cupboard. And over to the right, the connecting door to my private office.

‘Is she in there?’ I said to Ada.

‘Who?’

‘The client,’ I sighed. ‘The woman who’s been waiting to see me. Remember? The one I asked you to be nice to?’

‘Oh, right,’ Ada said. ‘Yeah, I thought she’d be more comfortable in there.’

‘What’s her name?’

Ada shook her head. ‘She didn’t say.’

‘Did you ask her?’

‘I’m not your receptionist.’

‘Yes, you are.’

She frowned at me again. ‘I thought we agreed that my job title was administration manager?’

‘Yeah, and the administration manager’s responsibilities include secretarial work and receptionist duties.’

She grinned. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, really,’ I said, smiling back at her. ‘It’s a good job we don’t get many face-to-face clients, isn’t it?’

She shrugged. ‘Well, you’re not exactly in the ideal state for face-to-face meetings yourself at the moment, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘I’m a private investigator,’ I said. ‘I’m
supposed
to look rough and mean.’

She snorted. ‘You don’t look rough and mean. You just look as if you’ve been beaten up, that’s all. There’s nothing remotely rough or mean about that. In fact, if anything –’

‘Yeah, all right,’ I said, looking at my watch. ‘Do you want to go and tell our nameless client that I’ll be with her in a minute, please?’

‘OK.’

‘I’m just going to clean up a bit first. Would you mind making us some coffee?’

‘Coffee?’

‘Yeah.’ I gave her a look. ‘Is that all right?’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

‘And could you call the garage too? My side window got smashed. I need someone to come round and fix it. The car’s in the car park.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Anything else?’

I smiled at her again, glancing down at the furry slippers
on her feet. They were purple. And today she was wearing a matching purple crushed velvet miniskirt that was equally as old and threadbare as her slippers.

‘Very nice,’ I told her.

She smiled. ‘You’re too kind.’

‘I know.’

I cleaned myself up as well as I could in the toilet along the corridor, then I towel-dried my hair, slicked it back with my fingers, and took a final look in the mirror. I wasn’t exactly presentable, but I didn’t look quite so much like a beaten-up wino in a cheap black suit any more.

The face in the mirror looked back at me for a moment, asking me why I was bothering with my appearance.
What’s the point?
it said.
What do you care what you look like, or what anyone thinks of you? You don’t really care if this woman in your office gives you a job or not, do you? So why are you even bothering?

I didn’t have an answer to that.

I sniffed, slicked back my hair again, and went back to the office.

She was sitting in the chair across from my desk, staring vacantly at a mobile phone in her lap. She had a thin and angular face, no make-up, and shortish silvery-grey hair. Her clothes were prim and cheap – a brown tweed coat over a pale blouse and a long shapeless skirt – and she wore the kind of glasses that teachers and librarians usually favour – unnecessarily large, with a coloured plastic frame. I guessed she was about forty-five.