I looked at him.
‘I just heard about it,’ he said, smiling again. ‘You really should know better, John. I mean, how are you going to carry on working if you’re disqualified for a year? It’s not as if you can chase after the bad guys on a bus, is it?’
‘You just heard?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Twenty minutes ago … I always check through the custody log at the start of the day shift, just to see what’s been happening, you know? So, there I am, looking through it this morning, and what do I see?’ He glanced at me. ‘John Craine, detained overnight on kerb-crawling and drink-driving charges.’
I’d already noticed that he was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing yesterday — the dark-blue blazer, the pale-blue shirt, the burgundy tie pinned with a thin gold chain — and he didn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d wear the same clothes two days running. And when I added that to the fact that he hadn’t shaved since I last saw him either, I knew that he was lying. He hadn’t just come into work. He’d been at the station all night.
‘You look tired,’ I said to him.
He sniffed. ‘It’s a tiring job.’
He didn’t say anything else for a while, he just kept quiet and concentrated on manoeuvring his way through the town-centre traffic. It was a good opportunity for me to mull things over — what was Bishop up to? what did he want with me? what was I going to do next? — but I was simply too drained to find any answers. So, instead, I just smoked my cigarette and gazed out of the window, watching the world pass by — the boiling chatter of the High Street, early-morning shoppers scuttling around in insect lines … taxi drivers, office workers, old husbands and wives … people, humans … all going somewhere, following their desires … a faithful motion of blood, flesh, and bones …
The business of life.
The business of death. 23 August 1993. Monday morning, nine o’clock. Ten days after Stacy was killed. It’s another sweltering hot day, and I’m sitting in an office at Eastway police station with Detective Inspector Mark Delaney. I’m hungover, sick, my sweated skin soured with the stink of stale alcohol. DI Delaney is updating me on the investigation into Stacy’s murder.
‘I’m afraid there’s no easy way of doing this, John,’ he says, leafing through some papers in a file. ‘I can skip over the specifics if you’d prefer — ’
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘I need to know what happened.’
He looks up from the file. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
He holds my gaze for a moment, genuine concern showing in his warm brown eyes, then he nods his head and looks down at the file again. ‘All right. Well, as you know, the post-mortem was carried out last week, and we now have some further preliminary forensic results.’ He pauses for a moment, taking a quiet steadying breath, then continues. ‘The pathologist’s report concludes that while the primary cause of death was manual strangulation, Stacy also suffered numerous stab wounds, several of which would have been fatal.’
‘How many?’
Delaney looks up at me. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘How many stab wounds?’
He looks down again. ‘Seventeen … all of them inflicted with the same weapon — a long, broad-bladed knife.’
‘Have you found it yet?’
‘Fingertip searches are still being — ’
‘Have you found it yet?’
He looks at me. ‘No.’
‘Did he rape her before stabbing her?’
‘We believe the wounds were inflicted during the rape.’
‘And then he strangled her?’
‘Yes.’
‘John?’
I rubbed my eyes and turned to Bishop. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’
‘Business or pleasure?’
‘What?’
He sighed. ‘London Road … last night. Were you down there for business or pleasure?’
‘Just asking a few questions,’ I said.
‘About Anna Gerrish?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you get any answers?’
‘Not really.’
‘What does that mean — not really? Either you got some answers or you didn’t.’
I couldn’t be bothered to say anything, so I just shrugged.
Bishop didn’t like that. ‘Do you remember me telling you to keep me informed about what you’re doing?’ he said, a snide edge to his voice.
‘Yeah, I remember.’
‘Well, which part of that don’t you understand? It’s not that fucking difficult — ’
‘I’ve been locked in a cell all night. How was I supposed to — ?’
‘That was after you talked to them,’ he spat. ‘I want to know what you’re doing before you fucking do it, not afterwards.’
‘I didn’t know I was going to talk to them,’ I protested. ‘I just happened to be down here last night …’ As I said it, I realised that we were on London Road now. ‘I mean, I didn’t come down here on purpose. I was just — ’
‘Passing through?’ Bishop sneered.
I watched him as he slowed the car and pulled up at the side of the road, and I wondered what he’d say if I asked him why he hadn’t been down here talking to the girls about Anna. What are you trying to hide, Mick? I imagined myself saying. What do you know about Anna? What do you know that you don’t want anyone else to know? What the fuck are you doing?
‘All right, listen,’ he said sternly to me. ‘From now on, you don’t do anything without telling me first, OK? I want to know who you’re talking to, why you’re talking to them, and what they tell you. Do you hear what I’m saying?’
I shook my head. ‘You don’t have the right — ’
‘Listen, cunt,’ he hissed, leaning towards me and staring into my eyes. ‘This is about me and you, that’s all. Understand? Just me and you. And what you’ve got to understand is that I can do whatever the fuck I want.’ He raised his hand and pointed his finger at me. ‘And you,’ he said, jabbing the rigid finger into my chest. ‘You can’t do fuck all about it.’ He smiled coldly at me. ‘You think last night was bad? Well, if you ever fuck me about again, I’ll make sure you spend the rest of your fucking life locked up in a cell with the nastiest bunch of cunts you can imagine. They’ll rip open your face and piss in the hole. They’ll fuck you senseless, one after the other. And then they’ll do it again, and again, and again. And in the end you’ll be begging someone to cut your fucking throat.’ He smiled again. ‘Do you get the picture?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I get the picture.’
‘Good.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘Now get the fuck out of my car.’
14
The girl who let me into Cal’s house this time was tall and willowy, with waist-length red hair and eyes like a Roswell alien. She was wearing black lipstick and a long black cardigan, and as she led me down to Cal’s basement flat, she didn’t say a single word. Didn’t even smile. She just waited for Cal to open the door, looked briefly at him, then floated off back up the stairs.
‘Is she from the circus too?’ I asked Cal as he showed me inside.
‘No, she’s from Birmingham.’
He was barefoot, dressed only in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and I guessed he’d only just got out of bed.
‘Do you want me to come back later?’ I asked him.
‘What for?’ he said, lighting a cigarette.
I heard the cistern flushing then, and as I looked over towards the bathroom I saw the diminutive figure of Barbarella Barboni, the sacked acrobat, coming out. She was naked, but it didn’t seem to bother her.