by Kevin Brooks
Or maybe it was just me? Maybe these clothes weren’t outrageous at all, and I was just jumping to the conclusions of an out-of-touch, out-of-style, out-of-date forty-year-old man.
I was crouched down on the floor, staring into this drawer full of confusion, trying to work out what, if anything, it meant, when I heard a quiet shuffle in the doorway behind me, followed almost immediately by Helen Gerrish’s frail little voice.
‘Have you found anything yet?’
I quickly closed the drawer and stood up. ‘No … no, nothing yet, I’m afraid …’
‘Is there anything I can do to help you?’
Yeah, I thought, don’t ever creep up on me again.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, glancing around the room. ‘I’m just about done in here, anyway.’ Which I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to keep poking around in Anna’s things with her mother looking over my shoulder, and it didn’t seem quite right to ask Helen to leave me alone either. So, noticing a few items of jewellery beside a little box on the bedside table, I said to Helen, ‘Actually, you could have a quick look through Anna’s jewellery for me while I check the bathroom … if you don’t mind.’
‘Her jewellery?’
‘Over there,’ I said, indicating the bedside table. ‘Just see if there’s anything missing …’
‘But I don’t know –’
‘It’s all right, just have a look. You might remember something.’ I smiled at her. ‘OK?’
‘Well, if you think it might help.’
I watched her as she moved hesitantly over to the bedside table, sat down on the edge of the bed, and started picking reluctantly at the pieces of jewellery. She handled the necklaces and bracelets as if she could hardly bear to touch them, and the look on her face – a pained and sickened expression – was a look that verged on disgust. It was like watching someone retrieving their lost contact lenses from a steaming pile of dog shit.
I stood there watching her for a moment or two, briefly transfixed by her oddness, then – with a baffled shake of my head – I left the room and went into the bathroom.
There wasn’t a lot to look at in there – toilet, bath, sink, cupboard. There was a toothbrush and toothpaste in a glass on the sink, and in a cupboard over the sink there were several more items which I would have expected Anna to take with her if she’d been planning to go away – Tampax, talcum powder, make-up remover, nail files … stuff like that. There was a fair amount of over-the-counter medication in there too – paracetamol, Gaviscon, Benylin, Night Nurse. In fact, the cupboard was so packed full that I doubted if anything had been removed from it. Which, again, suggested that maybe Anna hadn’t just packed a suitcase and left.
The cupboard wasn’t all that sturdy, and as I closed the door and pushed it shut I heard a load of stuff inside falling over. I thought about just leaving it, but that didn’t seem right, so I carefully inched open the door again … and half a dozen bottles and tubs fell out, scattering pills and God-knows-what all over the floor.
‘Shit,’ I muttered.
Helen called out from the bedroom. ‘Is everything all right in there?’
‘Yeah,’ I called back. ‘I just dropped something, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.’
It was quite a poky little bathroom, with not much room for manoeuvring, and as I kneeled down on the floor to start clearing up the mess, my foot bashed into the bath panel and knocked it loose.
‘Fucking hell,’ I whispered, turning round to inspect the damage.
Nothing was broken. The plastic panel had just come away, as if it hadn’t been fixed on properly in the first place. And when I looked closer, pushing the loose panel back and peering into the space under the bath, I realised that the panel was supposed to be loose, because Anna had been using the space behind it as a hiding place. And what she’d been hiding in there, and what was still in there now, was heroin. Four wraps of heroin, a syringe, a box of needles, a packet of alcohol swabs, and a spoon.
And that changed things. It changed Anna’s life and the world she inhabited. It made her more vulnerable, more desperate, more liable to risk. It made her more likely to associate with the kind of people who might want to hurt her. And if she was an addict, which was by no means definite, as it wasn’t impossible that she just used the stuff now and then … but if she was an addict, she’d never have willingly gone away and left all her gear behind.
And that changed the way I was thinking.
The way I was thinking now was that although Helen Gerrish’s reasons for worrying about her daughter were wrong, it was beginning to look like she was probably right to be worried.
When I went back into the bedroom, Helen was still perched on the edge of the bed, but she’d given up on the jewellery now and was just sitting there staring at nothing.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked quietly.
She turned slowly and looked at me. ‘Yes … yes, I’m fine, thank you.’
‘Any luck with the jewellery?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry … the only thing of Anna’s that I’m familiar with is a necklace she wore all the time, and that’s not here.’
‘What kind of necklace? Can you describe it?’
‘It’s a silver half-moon on a silver chain … she’s had it for years.’ Helen looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘You know, I don’t even know where she got it from …’
‘A silver half-moon?’ I said.
Helen nodded. ‘She should be wearing it in the photograph I gave you.’
I took the photo out of my pocket and saw that she was right. Sunlight was glinting from a small silver crescent on a necklace around Anna’s neck.
‘OK,’ I said, ‘well, that’s something.’
‘Are we finished here now?’
I nodded. ‘If that’s OK with you.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes, I’d like to go home now.’
6
It was getting on for nine o’clock when we left the block of flats and walked back to my car. The rain was still falling, thin and cold in the night, and the streets of Quayside were beginning to stir with a few early clubbers and drinkers. As I opened the passenger door, and Helen got into the car, I could hear the shrieks and machine-gun heels of a gaggle of good-time girls making their way into the night. I wondered briefly what the next four or five hours would hold for them – love, sex, happiness … a drunken slap in the face?
I looked down at Helen. ‘Would it be all right if I found a taxi to take you home?’
‘A taxi? Yes … yes, of course …’
‘It’s just that The Wyvern’s not far from here,’ I explained. ‘So I might as well pop in there while I’m down this way, you know … see if anyone knows anything.’
‘Yes,’ Helen repeated. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’
She shook her head.
I looked at her sitting there – forlorn and lost, old before her time – and I thought about changing my mind. But she wasn’t paying me to look after her, was she? She wasn’t paying me to comfort her soul. She was paying me to find her daughter.
And, besides, I needed to be on my own for a while.
I needed time to think.
And I really needed a drink.
There was a taxi rank just along from the nightclubs, and I managed to get Helen in the cab with the least unsavoury-looking driver. She didn’t look all that happy as the taxi pulled away, and I couldn’t help feeling a tiny pang of guilt, but it wasn’t that hard to ignore it.
As I got back in my car and started heading down towards the old part of Quayside, trying to remember exactly where The Wyvern was, I noticed a silver-grey Renault about thirty metres behind me. It was too far back to see the driver, but I was pretty sure that I’d seen the same Renault parked in the street outside the block of flats.
It was probably nothing, but I made a note of the registration number anyway, and when I eventually found the street where The Wyvern was �
�� a narrow little lane called Miller’s Row – and I saw that the Renault was still behind me, I momentarily slowed down, as if I was turning into Miller’s Row, then at the very last second I changed gear and kept going straight on. I didn’t speed up at all, I just drove quite steadily away from Quayside, up into town, and then I took a series of right turns that gradually brought me back down to Quayside, and by the time I’d reached Miller’s Row again, there was no sign of the Renault. I parked the car halfway along the street, turned off the engine, and waited.
Two cigarettes later, there was still no sign of the Renault.
I got out, locked the car, and headed up the street to The Wyvern.
When I was a teenager, The Wyvern was almost exclusively a bikers’ pub. Unless you were a biker, or a drug dealer, or you wanted to get beaten up, you didn’t go in there. Most of the clientele were members of a motorcycle gang called Satans Slaves (who, just like their more illustrious rivals, the Hells Angels, don’t bother with apostrophes – a grammatical error that probably doesn’t get pointed out to them all that often … at least, not to their faces anyway). There was always something going on at The Wyvern back then – fights, drug deals, stabbings, shootings – and over the years the pub has been raided countless times. It’s been closed down, re-opened and refurbished under new management, closed down again, re-opened again … and gradually it’s become a place that isn’t quite so intimidating as it used to be. Most of the bikers have gone now – gone to wherever old bikers go – but there’s still usually a few hanging around whenever you go in, a vestigial presence of scabbed leather, studs, patchouli oil, and spunk-stained jeans.
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 ni
ght,’ 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 …
