Dance of Ghosts (8 page)

It’s a reasonably spacious pub, and when I went in that night it was already fairly busy. Most of the clubbers drink in the newer pubs around Quayside, but some of the more adventurous are attracted by both the seedy atmosphere of The Wyvern and its plentiful supply of drugs, and I reckoned that about half of the people in there that night were regulars, and the other half were just looking to score. The regulars were a mixture of dealers and users, old punks
and even older hippies, and an assortment of low-level criminals and out-and-out nasty bastards. I could see some of them checking me out as I crossed over to the bar, trying to work out who and what I was – potential customer, rival, threat, police – but dressed as I was in a plain black suit and dark shirt, and with my face still cut up and bruised from this morning, I was kind of hoping that I didn’t look like anything much at all, just a slightly beaten up forty-year-old man in a slightly downtrodden plain black suit. The kind of man who’s not even worth the bother of looking at.

There was a video jukebox at one end of the bar – currently playing something by Slipknot – and on the wall at the other end of the bar there was a widescreen TV showing an Ultimate Fighting bout. The customers were making a fair bit of noise too, so when I got to the bar and finally caught the attention of the barman – a psychobilly guy with greased black hair, lip rings, and a teardrop tattooed under his eye – I had to lean over the bar and shout to be heard.

‘
Pint of Stella and a large Scotch!
’

‘
What?
’

‘
PINT OF STELLA AND A LARGE SCOTCH!
’

As he nodded his barman nod and set about getting my drinks, I turned round and casually scanned the room. I was still getting a few sly looks, but no one was paying me any serious attention. Everyone was just getting on with their business – drinking, laughing, talking, dealing …

‘
That’s £5.95, mate
.’

I turned back to the bar and gave Psycho Billy a £10 note. As he went over to the till to ring it up and get my change, I
drank the Scotch in one go and washed it down with a mouthful of Stella.

‘
There you go
,’ Psycho Billy shouted, handing me my change.

I passed him my empty Scotch glass. ‘
Sorry
,’ I yelled. ‘
Could you put another double in there?
’

He gave me a quick nasty look –
why the fuck didn’t you ask for two in the first place?
– then took the glass, refilled it, and brought it back. This time, instead of handing me my change, he just dropped the coins on the bar.

‘
Thanks
,’ I shouted. ‘
Is Genna working tonight?
’

‘
What?
’

Just then the Slipknot track finished and something a bit quieter came on.

‘Genna Raven,’ I repeated, not quite so loudly. ‘Is she working tonight?’

Psycho Billy’s face hardened. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘Me.’

‘Yeah? And who are you?’

‘John Craine.’

‘What do you want with Genna?’

‘Not much … just a quick chat.’

‘Does she know you?’

‘No.’

‘Are you a reporter?’

‘No.’

‘Police?’

I sipped my beer. ‘Do I look like police?’

‘What do you want with Genna?’

‘Look,’ I sighed. ‘Just tell her I’m here, will you? John
Craine. I’ll be around for the next hour or so.’

And, with that, I left him standing there and walked away, looking for somewhere to sit.

About twenty minutes later, just after I’d been up to the bar for another Stella and Scotch, a dark-haired young woman wearing jeans and a white vest came out from a door behind the bar and started collecting empty glasses. I’d already been watching another barmaid for a while – who was also dressed in jeans and a white vest, which I guessed had to be The Wyvern’s idea of a uniform, although it only seemed to apply to the female bar staff – but this first barmaid hadn’t looked over at me once, so I didn’t think she was Genna Raven. The second one though, the dark-haired girl, I was pretty sure that she was Genna, because she started glancing over at me as soon as she came through the door, so I assumed Psycho Billy had already had a word with her, telling her what I looked like and where I was sitting.

I kept my eye on her, waiting for her to look over at me again, and when she did, I just gave her a faint nod and what I hoped was a reassuring smile, and left it at that. If she wanted to talk to me, she knew where I was. And if she didn’t …? Well, if she didn’t, she didn’t.

For the next fifteen minutes or so, I just sat there, with my head down, soaking up the heat of the noise, the heat of people, the heat of the whisky and beer … occasionally glancing up at the video jukebox or the TV screen, but not really seeing anything …

I never really see anything any more.

Only Stacy.

I don’t
want
to keep thinking about her all the time.

I don’t
want
to keep remembering that day …

But it never leaves me. It’s always there … always. In my blood, my flesh, my bones, my heart …

It is me.

And now I’m running up the stairs as fast as I can, and my heart is pounding, and I’m shouting at the top of my voice, ‘Stacy! STACY! STACY!
’

There’s still no reply
.

At the top of the stairs, the bedroom door is closed … we never close the bedroom door … and now I can sense it, smell it … I can already feel it killing me. The whole world hums in my head as I open the door … and there she is – my essence, my love, my purity, my bride
…

Ripped open on the bed
.

Naked
.

Butchered
.

Bled white
.

Dead
.

‘You wanted to see me?’

I looked up to see the dark-haired barmaid standing in front of me with a tray full of empty glasses in her hands.

‘Genna Raven?’ I said.

‘Yeah …’

‘I’m John Craine –’

‘I know who you are. What do you want?’

Up close, she had a stunningly pretty face, and there was something about the almost-perfect symmetry of it that reminded me a little of Stacy. But whereas Stacy’s complexion had been as perfect as her face, Genna’s skin was terrible – scarred with pockmarks, peppered with blackheads and acne …

‘I haven’t got all fucking night,’ Genna said. ‘Are you going to tell me what you want or not?’

‘Yeah, sorry,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Anna Gerrish –’

‘Nuh-uh,’ she said firmly, shaking her head. ‘No way.’

‘Just a few questions, that’s all.’

‘Are you from the newspapers?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m a private investigator.’

‘Yeah, well … I’m already in enough shit for talking to the papers about Anna.’

‘Why?’

She stared at me. ‘You don’t do that round here, do you? You don’t talk to the press, you don’t talk to the cops, no matter what. You just keep your fucking mouth shut.’

‘So why did you talk to the press in the first place?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know … it just seemed …’

‘Were you and Anna friends?’

‘Fuck, no. Anna didn’t have any friends …’

‘So why –?’

‘Look,’ she said, glancing over her shoulder towards the bar. ‘I can’t talk now, OK? But I’ve got a cigarette break in fifteen minutes. I’ll be in the smoking area out the back.’

Smoking area?
I thought to myself as she turned away
and headed back to the bar.
There’s a smoking area? Shit. Why don’t they put up a fucking sign or something?

I went up to the bar and got myself another beer, and after wandering around the pub for a while I eventually found the smoking area. It wasn’t much, just a brick-walled yard at the back of the pub with a few plastic tables and chairs. The ashtrays on the tables were brimming with rainwater and cigarette ends, and one end of the yard backed on to the toilets, so the whole place stank of piss and sodden cigarettes and smoke. And it was still raining too. But I suppose if you’re stupid enough to smoke in the first place, you’re not going to be too concerned about standing outside in the cold and rain in a brick-walled yard that smells of shit …

There were only three other people out there: a straggly-haired man in a combat jacket, a younger man who looked like Mark Kermode on steroids, and a teenage girl with street-worn skin. They were all standing together at the far end of the yard, and I guessed from their body language and a few overheard words that the girl was trying to buy drugs from the two men, but that she didn’t have enough money, so she was trying to persuade them to let her pay tomorrow … and the two men in turn were trying to persuade her that all she had to do was take a quick walk down the street with them to their car, and she could pay them in kind right now. Her answer to that was, ‘You must be fucking
joking
… I’m not
that
desperate, you hairy cunt.’ And the straggly-haired man said something else to her, which I couldn’t quite hear, and she punched him playfully on the arm, and they all started laughing …

Strangely enough, it felt all right.

It
wasn’t
all right, of course … there was nothing
all right
about it. But it was nowhere near as shitty as it could have been, and despite everything – the cold and the rain and the underlying ugliness of it all – I actually felt pretty good. It was a relatively quiet place to be. It wasn’t too hot or too crowded. And even the rain was beginning to ease off a little, fading to a thin misty drizzle, and I found that if I stood against the wall at the side of the yard, I barely noticed it at all. And that’s where I was, sipping my beer and smoking a second cigarette, when the teenage girl walked past me with a satisfied grin on her face and her hands stuffed deep into her coat pockets, followed a few moments later by the two men. The pumped-up Mark Kermode look-alike carried on past me, following the girl back into the bar, but the straggly-haired man stopped beside me.

‘You need anything?’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘No, I’m all right, thanks.’

‘You sure?’ He smiled, showing a gap in his front teeth. ‘I got Es, H, crack, weed … whatever you want.’

‘Have you got anything that’ll take me back in time?’ I heard myself say.

He frowned. ‘You what?’

‘It’s all right,’ I said, smiling. ‘I was just –’

His eyes went cold and he stepped towards me. ‘Are you taking the fucking piss?’

I didn’t move or say anything, I just stared at him, and for a weird little moment I wondered what he’d do if I spat in his face. How far would he go? Would he just hit me?
Beat me up? Break a few bones? Stab me? Shoot me? Kill me?

‘What are you fucking smiling at?’ I heard him say.

And then another voice. ‘Fitch? For fuck’s sake, leave him alone …’ And I looked round to see Genna Raven standing there, smoking her much-needed cigarette. The tone of her voice and the look on her face was that of a weary headmistress having to deal with a harmless bully for the third time in a week.

‘Hey, Genna,’ Fitch said, suddenly all smiles again. ‘You know this guy?’

‘Why don’t you go and get yourself a drink, Fitch?’ she suggested.

‘You buying?’ he grinned.

She stared at him.

He turned to me, still grinning, and said, ‘I’ll see you later, OK?’

And then he went back into the bar.

‘Sorry about that,’ Genna said. ‘But he wouldn’t have done anything anyway. He’s all mouth. Most of them are.’

I smiled at her.

She dropped her cigarette to the ground and lit another. ‘So … you’re a private investigator?’

I reached into my pocket and passed her one of my business cards. She glanced briefly at it, then slipped it in her back pocket.

‘Who are you working for?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ I said. ‘You know, client confidentiality –’

‘It’s Anna’s mum, isn’t it?’

I smiled, but said nothing.

Genna puffed on her cigarette. ‘Well, it’s either her mum or her dad, and that dirty old bastard’s not going to want anyone poking around in his business, so it’s got to be her mum.’

I lit a cigarette. ‘Do you know Anna’s father then?’

‘Not personally, no. But I know his type.’

‘What do you mean?’

She hesitated. ‘I’m not sure if I should be telling you this …’

‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to,’ I assured her. ‘It’s entirely up to you what you tell me. But if you think it might help me to find Anna …’

She sighed. ‘I don’t even know if it’s the truth or not. For all I know she was just making it up …’

‘Making what up?’

‘This stuff about her old man … how he used to fuck her and everything, you know …’

‘He abused her?’

‘Yeah … it went on for fucking years, according to Anna. Started when she was just a little kid, and the dirty fucker carried on doing it until she was … well, I don’t know, until she left home, I suppose.’

I took a long drink of beer. ‘When did Anna tell you about this?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know, quite a while ago. It was after work one night. It was someone’s birthday and we all stayed on for a few drinks and stuff … Anna didn’t usually join in with that kind of thing, but I think she was pretty out of it that night. I found her crying her eyes out in
the toilets … this would have been about two or three in the morning, and when I asked her what was the matter, she started pouring her fucking heart out to me about her bastard fucking father. She told me everything … and I mean
every
thing. Poor bitch.’ Genna pulled on her cigarette and blew out a long stream of smoke. ‘It’s no wonder she was so fucked up.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, her whole life, you know … everything. She was a total fucking mess.’

‘How long had she been using heroin?’

Genna looked at me. ‘You know about that?’

I nodded.

‘Not all that long,’ Genna said. ‘A few years, maybe.’

‘How much did she use?’

Genna shrugged. ‘She was always trying to quit, so sometimes she got it right down to hardly anything, but then she’d get back on it again and start using more.’