by Ian Rankin
‘It makes us look bad.’
‘It makes me look bad.’ She wet two fingers with the tip of her tongue and turned a page.
‘What’s the Witch file?’ Barclay asked.
But she was busy reading, too busy to answer. She seemed to be suppressing an occasional smile, as though reminiscing. Eventually she glanced up at him again.
‘The Witch file doesn’t exist. It was an idea of Mr Elder’s.’
‘So what is Witch?’
She closed the file carefully, and thought for a moment before speaking. ‘I think it would be best if you asked Dominic Elder that, don’t you?’
Once a year, the fairground came to Cliftonville. Cliftonville liked to think itself the genteel equivalent to next-door neighbour Margate. It attracted coach tours, retired people. The younger holidaymakers usually made for Margate. So did the weekenders, down from London for a spot of seaside mayhem. But Cliftonville was struggling with a different problem, a crisis of identity. Afternoon bingo and a deckchair in front of the promenade organist just weren’t enough. Candy floss and an arcade of one-armed bandits weren’t enough. Too much of the town lingered in the 1950s. Few wanted the squeal and glitter of the 90s, yet without them the town would surely die, just as its clientele was dying.
If the town council had wanted to ask about survival, they might have consulted someone at the travelling fairground. It had changed too. The rides had become a little more ‘daring’ and more expensive. Barnaby’s Gun Stall was a good example. The original Barnaby (whose real name had been Eric) had used rifles which fired air-propelled corks at painted tins. But Barnaby had died in 1978. His brother Randolph had replaced the cork-guns with proper pellet-firing rifles, using circular targets attached to silhouette human figures. But then Randolph had succumbed to alcohol and the charms of a woman who hated the fair, so his son Keith - the present Barnaby - had taken over. Nowadays the Gun Stall boasted serious entertainment in the form of an automatic-firing airgun rigged up to a compression pump. This machine gun could fire one hundred large-bore pellets every minute. You just had to keep your finger on the trigger. The young men paid their money gladly, just to feel the sheer exhilaration of that minute’s lethal action. Afterwards, the target would be brought forward. Keith still used cardboard circles marked off from the outer to the small black bullseye, and attached to the heart of a human silhouette. The thing about the automatic was, it couldn’t be said to be accurate. If enough pellets hit the target, the cardboard was reduced to tatters. But more often than not the kids missed, dazed by the recoil and the noise and the speed.
The more dazed they were, the more likely they were to come back for more. It was a living. And yet in other ways the fair was very much an old-fashioned place. It had its ghost train and its waltzers, though this evening the ghost train was closed. There were smells of spun sugar and diesel, and the scratchy sounds of the next-to-latest pop records. Onions, the roar of machinery, and three-balls-for-fifty-pee at the kiddie stalls.
Gypsy Rose Pellengro’s small caravan was still attached to its Volvo estate car, as though she was thinking of heading off. On a board outside the caravan door were letters of thanks from grateful clients. These letters were looking rather frail, and none of them seemed to include the date on which it had been written. Beside them was a scrawled note announcing ‘Gypsy Rose back in an hour’.
The two windows of the caravan were tightly closed, and covered with thick net curtains. Inside, it was much like any holiday caravan. The small sink still held two unwashed plates, and on the table sat not a crystal ball but a portable black and white television, hooked up to the battery of the Volvo estate. The interior was lit by calor gas, the wall-mounted lamps roaring away. A woman was watching TV.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Come in, sir, please,’ she called, rising to switch off the set. The door was pulled open and a man climbed into the caravan. He was so tall that he had to stoop to avoid the ceiling. He was quite young, very thin, and dark-skinned.
‘How did you know it was a man?’ he asked, taking in the scene around him.
‘I saw you peering in through the window.’
The man smiled at this, and Gypsy Rose Pellengro laughed, showing the four gold teeth in her mouth. ‘What can I do for you, sir? Didn’t you see the notice outside?’
‘Yes. But I really would like my fortune told.’ He paused, stroking a thick black moustache, before adding meaningfully: ‘I think I have a lucky future ahead of me.’
Gypsy Rose nodded, not that she’d been in any doubt. ‘Then you’ve come to the right place,’ she said. ‘I’m in the futures market myself. Would you like to sit down?’
‘No, thank you. I’ll just leave this ...’ He reached inside his jacket and brought out a large brown envelope. As he made to place it on the table in front of the woman, she snatched at his wrist and turned his hand palm upwards.
‘Yes,’ she said, releasing it after a moment. ‘I can see you’ve been disappointed in love, but don’t worry. The right woman isn’t so very far away.’
He seemed scandalised that she had dared to touch him. He rubbed at his wrist, standing over her, his black pupils shadowed by his eyebrows. For a moment, violence was very close. But the woman just sat there with her old, stubborn look. Weary, too. There was nothing he could do to her that hadn’t already been done. So instead he turned and, muttering foreign sounds, pushed open the caravan door, slamming it shut behind him so hard that it bounced back open again. Now Gypsy Rose could see out onto the slow procession of fairground visitors, some of whom stared back.
Slowly, she rose from the table, closed and locked the door, and returned to her seat, switching on the television. From time to time she fingered the large brown envelope. Eventually, when enough time had passed, she got up and pulled her shawl around her. She left the lamps burning in the caravan, but locked the door behind her when she left. The air was hot, the night sticky. She moved quickly, expertly, through the crowds, occasionally slipping between two stalls and behind the vans and the lorries, picking her way over cables, looking behind her to see if anyone was following. Then back between two more stalls and into the crowd again. Her path seemed to lack coordination, so that at one point she’d almost doubled back to her starting point before striking off in another direction. In all, she walked for nearly fifteen tiring minutes. Fifteen minutes for a journey of less than four hundred yards.
Darkness had fallen, and the atmosphere of the fair had grown darker and more restless, too. The children were home in bed, still excited and not asleep, but safe. Tough-speaking teenagers had taken over the fair now, swilling cheap beer from tins, stopping now and then for passionate kisses or to let off some shots at an unmoving target. Yells broke the night-time air. No longer the sounds of fun but feral sounds, the sounds of trouble. Gypsy Rose remembered one leather-jacketed boy, cradled in a friend’s arms.
Jesus, missus, he’s been stabbed. He didn’t die, but it was touch and go.
Less than four hundred yards from her caravan was the ghost train. On the narrow set of tracks between the two double-doors sat the parked carriages. The sign on the kiosk said simply CLOSED. Well, there wouldn’t have been many people using it at this time of night anyway. A chain prevented anyone gaining access to the woodenslatted running boards in front of the ride. She lifted her skirt and stepped over the chain, winning a cheer and a wolf whistle from somewhere behind her. With a final glance over her shoulder, she pushed open one of the double-doors, on which was painted the grinning face of the devil himself, and stepped inside.
She stood for a moment, her eyes adjusting to the newer darkness. The doors muffled much of the sound from outside. Eventually, she felt confident enough to walk on, moving past the spindly mechanisms of ghost and goblin, the wires and pulleys which lowered shreds of raffia onto young heads, the skeleton, at rest now, which would spring to its feet at the approach of a carriage.
It was all so cheap, so obvious. She couldn’t recall ever ha
ving been scared of the ghost train, even as a tot. Now she was moving further into the cramped construction, off the rails, away from the papier mâché Frankenstein and the strings that were supposed to be cobwebs, until she saw a glimmer of light behind a piece of black cloth. She made for the cloth and pulled it aside, stepping into the soft light of the tiny makeshift room.
The young woman who sat there, sucking her thumb and humming to herself, looked up. She sat crosslegged on the floor, rocking slightly, in her lap a small armless teddy bear, and spread out on the floor a tarot pack.
‘He’s been,’ Gypsy Rose said. She fished the envelope out from under her skirt. It was slightly creased from where she had climbed over the chain. ‘I didn’t open it,’ she said.
The thumb slipped wetly out of the mouth. The young woman nodded, then arched back her neck and twisted it to one side slowly, mouth open wide, until a loud sound like breaking twigs was heard. She ran her fingers through her long black hair. There were two streaks of dyed white above her temples. She wasn’t sure about them. She thought they made her look mysterious but old. She didn’t want to look old.
‘Sit down,’ she said. She nodded towards a low stool, the only seat in the room. Gypsy Rose sat down. The young woman gathered the tarot cards together carefully, edging them off the tarpaulin floor with long nails. She was wearing a long black skirt, tasselled at the hem, and a white open-necked blouse beneath a black waistcoat. She knew she looked mysterious. That was why she was playing with the tarot. She had rolled her sleeping bag into the shape of a log against the far wall. Having gathered up the cards and slipped them back into their box, she tossed the box over towards the sleeping bag and took the envelope from the older woman, slitting it open with one of her fingernails.
‘Work,’ she said, spilling the contents out onto the ground. There were sheets of typed paper, black and white five-by-eight photographs with notes written in pencil on their backs, and the money. The banknotes were held together with two paper rings. She slit them open and fanned the money in front of her. ‘I’ve got to go away again,’ she said.
Gypsy Rose Pellengro, who had seemed mesmerised by the money, now began to protest.
‘But I won’t be gone for long this time. A day or two. Will you still be here?’
‘We pack up Sunday afternoon.’
‘Headed where?’
‘Brighton.’ A pause. ‘You’ll take care, won’t you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the young woman. ‘I’ll take care. I always take care.’ She turned one of the photographs towards the woman. ‘What do you think?’
‘He’s nice-looking,’ said Gypsy Rose. ‘An Asian gentleman.’
‘Asian, yes.’
‘The man who made the delivery was Asian, too.’
Witch nodded then read through the notes, taking her time. Gypsy Rose sat quite still, not wanting to disturb her, happy just to be here. She looked at the money again. Eventually, the young woman placed everything back in the envelope. She got up and lifted the tarot from where it lay, tossing it into Gypsy Rose Pellengro’s lap.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘take the cards.’ There was a scream from outside. A girl’s scream. Maybe a fight was starting. It might be the first tonight; it wouldn’t be the last. ‘Now, Rosa, tell me. Tell me what you see. Tell me about my mother.’
Gypsy Rose stared at the tarot pack, unwilling to lift it. The young woman slipped her thumb into her mouth again and began to hum, rocking backwards and forwards with the teddy bear on her lap. Outside, someone was still screaming. Gypsy Rose touched the box, pushed its flap open with her thumb. Slowly, she eased out the cards.
Friday 5 June
Greenleaf was in the office early. He’d spent the previous late-afternoon and evening in Folkestone, getting in the way, bothering people, not making any friends, but finally gathering all the information he needed, information he just couldn’t get by telephone alone. He’d spoken to George Crane’s widow, Brian Perch’s parents, Crane’s accountants, to people who knew the men, to other boatmen. He’d asked questions of the coastguard, the local police, forensics, and the pathologist. He’d been busy - so busy that he hadn’t left Folkestone until ten o’clock, arriving home in Edmonton at close on midnight, thanks to a jam on the M20 and the Blackwall Tunnel being closed. Shirley was pretending to be asleep with the bedside lamp off but still hot to the touch, and her book pushed under her pillow. ‘What time is it?’ she’d muttered.
‘Ten past ten.’
‘Bloody liar.’
‘Then stop trying to make me feel guilty.’
The hour was too late for an argument, really. The neighbours had complained in the past. So they kept it jokey and low-key. Just.
He’d taken her toast and tea in bed this morning as penance, despite feeling dead on his feet. And the drive into work hadn’t helped. A car smash at Finsbury Park and a defunct bus holding everybody up between Oxford Street and Warren Street. There was nothing he could do about it except consult the A-Z for useless shortcuts and swear that he’d start travelling to work by tube. Good old public transport: a brisk morning walk to the bus stop, bus straight to Seven Sisters, and hop onto a Victoria Line tube which would rush him to Victoria and the short final walk to his office. Good old public transport.
Only he’d tried the trip a few times and it didn’t work like that. From the half dozen crammed buses that glided past his stop without slowing, right to the crushed and sweaty tube compartment and the feeling that he would kill the next person who jammed their elbow into him ... Good old public transport. London transportation. He’d stick to the car. At least in the car you had a choice. Stuck in a jam, you could park and wait it out in a café, or try another route. But stuck in a tunnel in a tube train ... well, that was a tiny rehearsal for hell.
He thought of Doyle, dawdling over croissants and coffee at some French bar, making ready to stock up on cheap beer and duty free. Bastard. But Doyle was useful. Or rather, Greenleaf’s dislike of Doyle was useful: it goaded him. It made him want his work to be efficient, and that included his reports. Which was why he was here so early. He wanted to get his notes typed up into presentable shape, so he could hand them to Trilling before lunchtime.
Basically Doyle had been right. The pathologist noted burns, scorch marks, on both men. A razor-sharp section of plastic had almost taken off Crane’s head. And there were splinters and shards - of wood, glass, metal, perspex - embedded in both bodies. Definite signs of an explosion.
‘Somewhere beneath them,’ the pathologist added. ‘Below decks. The two men were probably on deck at the time. The various angles of penetration are all consistent with a blast from below, sending the shrapnel upwards. For example, one splinter enters above the left knee and makes its way up the leg towards the groin, the exit wound appearing on the inside upper-thigh.’
There were photographs to go with the doctor’s various graphic descriptions. What couldn’t be shown, and might possibly never be shown, was what had caused the explosion in the first place. That was all down to deduction and supposition. Greenleaf guessed that a bomb wouldn’t be too far out. One of those simple IRA jobs with timer attached. Messy though, blowing the whole caboodle up like that. Why not shoot the men and dump the bodies with weights attached? That way the bodies disappeared, and the boat remained: a mystery, but without the certainty that murder had been done. Yes, a loud and messy way to enter the country. In trying to cover their tracks they’d left a calling-card: no forwarding address, but a sure sign they’d been there.
And could now be anywhere, planning or doing anything, with a cache of drugs or of arms. It had to be a sizeable haul to merit killing two men. Six if you included the French ...
Well, so much for the doctor. The local police were on the ball, too. Inside George Crane’s jacket they’d discovered a wad of bank notes, £2,000 or thereabouts. The wad had been pierced by a chunk of metal, but the notes were still recognisable. More important, some of the serial numbers remained intact. Steeped
in blood, but intact.
There were ways of checking these things, and Greenleaf knew all of them. He’d faxed details that evening to the Bank of England, and to the Counterfeit Currency Department inside New Scotland Yard, supplying photocopies of several of the cleaner notes. The photocopies weren’t great, but the serial numbers were the crucial thing anyway. The notes themselves he was careful not to handle, except with the use of polythene gloves and tweezers. After all, it was unlikely that Crane carried so much money around with him on every boating trip (unless he was planning to bribe some customs officials). It was much more likely that the money had been a payment made to him by whomever he’d transported from mid-Channel to the English coast. As such, the notes might well boast the odd fingerprint. The corpse of George Crane had already been fingerprinted - on Greenleaf’s orders - so that the dead man’s prints could be eliminated. Somehow, Greenleaf didn’t think George Crane would have let Brian Perch near the money, but his body was being fingerprinted too. Best to be rigorous.
Perch was an employee, a no-questions-asked hired-hand who would, as a fellow worker had put it, ‘go to the end of the earth’ for Crane, so long as there was overtime in it. Why had Crane taken him along? For protection? Because he didn’t trust whomever he was carrying? Maybe just for company on the voyage out to mid-Channel ? Whatever, Brian Perch didn’t really interest Greenleaf, while George Crane did.
The accountant to the building business wasn’t about to say that Crane’s company was in terminal trouble, but he agreed that times were hard and that the company was ‘overstretched financially’. Which meant there were bigger loan repayments than there were cheques from satisfied and solvent customers. For example, a larger than usual contract had gone unfinished and unpaid when the company employing Crane’s firm had themselves gone broke. Crane just managed to hold his head above water. Well, in the financial sense anyway. He still had the big house outside Folkestone with the swimming pool and sauna. He still had a Porsche. He still had his boat. But Greenleaf knew that often the more prosperous a man tried to look, the deeper he was sinking.
