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.
‘You want another?’ I asked him.
He nodded. ‘Might as well.’
I went up to the bar and ordered another large Teacher’s for Cliff and half a Stella for myself, then I took the drinks back to the table.
‘Thanks,’ Cliff said, taking the glass from me. ‘Cheers …’
I touched glasses with his and took a drink of lager. ‘So,’ I said. ‘How’s it going, Cliff?’
He shrugged. ‘Same as … you know.’
‘How’s your wife?’
‘She left me last year.’
‘Oh, right … sorry. I didn’t know.’
He shrugged again and took another drink.
I said, ‘And what about Richey? How’s he doing now?’
‘Fuck knows … I haven’t seen him for two years. He could be dead for all I know.’
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just sipped my lager and said nothing.
Cliff looked at me, a sad smile bringing a touch of light to his face. ‘It’s all right, John,’ he said kindly. ‘You don’t have to go through all this small-talk shit with me … neither of us really need it, do we?’
‘I suppose not.’
He nodded. ‘OK, so let me get some more drinks in and then you can tell me what you want.’
‘No, you’re all right,’ I said, taking his empty glass from him. ‘I’ll get them.’
He started to protest, but his heart wasn’t in it, and I could tell that he didn’t have enough pride left to care about pride any more.
It didn’t take long to tell Cliff what I was working on. He was a good listener, and he didn’t need everything explaining to him. And, of course, he already knew who Anna Gerrish was. But in terms of any inside knowledge, that was about as far as it went.
‘Sorry, John,’ he told me. ‘But I didn’t have anything to do with the case. In fact, I didn’t even hear about it until the Gazette ran the story.’
‘Did Mick Bishop take charge of the investigation straight away?’
Cliff thought about that for a moment, his drunk-steady eyes roaming blindly around the room, and then eventually he said, ‘I don’t know … I mean, I suppose so, but …’
‘But what?’
He looked at me. ‘Is that what this is about? Mick Bishop?’
‘I just want to know why he took the case, that’s all.’
‘Why shouldn’t he?’
‘Come on, Cliff … you know what I mean. He’s a DCI, for Christ’s sake. He’s Mick fucking Bishop. What the hell is he doing taking charge of a shitty little missing-persons case?’
Cliff shrugged. ‘Well, maybe he only took it on after the press got hold of it. You know what he’s like …’
‘No, you see, that’s the thing, Cliff,’ I said, staring intently at him. ‘I don’t really know what he’s like.’
Cliff stared back at me for a moment, digesting what I’d just said, and then suddenly he became quite animated — holding up his hands, vigorously shaking his head. ‘No … no way,’ he said, as firmly as his drunkenness would allow. ‘Absolutely not … I’m sorry, but I’m not getting into that.’
‘Into what?’
‘Mick Bishop. No fucking way …’
‘Look,’ I said softly, trying to calm him down. ‘I’m not asking you to grass him up or anything. I don’t want to know any details of what he’s done in the past, or what he gets up to now … I just want to know what kind of man he is.’
‘What kind of man he is?’ Cliff said with a bitter snort of laughter. ‘I’ll tell you what kind of man he is — he’s the kind of man who can fuck up my already fucked-up career just like that …’ Cliff tried to click his fingers, but failed. ‘He’s the kind of man,’ he went on undaunted, ‘who, if he knew I was in here talking to you about him, wouldn’t think twice about squashing me into the ground. That’s the kind of fucking man he is.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But he’s not going to know, is he?’
Cliff shook his head. ‘I’ve got eighteen months left, John. Eighteen months, and then I’m out on a thirty-year pension. And I’ve already got a cushy little security job lined up.’ He looked at me. ‘I’m not risking that … I just can’t. I’m sorry …’
‘OK,’ I said, smiling at him. ‘I understand …’
‘You know that I would if I could — ’
‘It’s all right, Cliff,’ I assured him. ‘Honestly, it’s not a problem.’
He nodded at me, then busied himself draining his drink for a few moments, and before he had a chance to tell me that he had to get back to the station, I asked him if he’d like another quick one before he went. He made a show of glancing at his watch, but that’s all it was, and I was already on my feet with his glass in my hand when he looked back at me and slurred, ‘All right, go on then. Just one more.’
It took another couple of rounds before Cliff forgot his reticence and started opening up to me about Bishop, and after he’d rambled on about the old days for a while, I gently brought him back to the present.
‘Can you think of anything about Anna Gerrish that Bishop might want to keep quiet?’ I asked.
Cliff, quite drunk now, gave me a one-eyed frown. ‘Keep what quiet?’
‘The Anna Gerrish case,’ I said slowly. ‘Is there anything about it that Bishop might want to keep quiet? I mean, why would he not want her disappearance investigated?’
‘Right … right, yeah … I see what you mean. You think he’s trying to bury it?’
‘Maybe …’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘I don’t know … what do you think?’
Cliff took a drink and thought about it. After a while, he looked at me, his head wavering slightly, and said, ‘It was the same with your father … with Bishop, I mean. It’s always been the same with him.’