Dance of Ghosts Read Online Free

today getting some shopping, and when I passed your office …’ She shrugged. ‘Well, I just thought I’d call in.’ She looked up at me. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’
    I smiled. ‘I don’t.’
    ‘So will you help me?’
    I don’t know why I didn’t say no. I didn’t
need
the work, for a start. And even if I did, the prospect of working for this strangely unappetising woman didn’t exactly fill me with joy. There wasn’t even anything particularly interesting about the case. It would probably involve a lot of fairly tedious work without much hope of success. And if, as Helen Gerrish had claimed, the police really hadn’t made any progress, that either meant that there wasn’t anything to find, or that they were fairly sure Anna had simply gone away of her own accord.
    But, despite all that, I didn’t say no.
    And, even now, I still don’t know why.
    I just opened my mouth and found myself saying, ‘If I do decide to help you, Mrs Gerrish, you’d have to understand that there’s very little I can do that the police haven’t already done. No matter what you think of them, I can assure you that the police have far greater resources for finding people than I have.’
    ‘Yes, I understand that.’
    ‘And, unlike the police, my services aren’t free.’
    ‘Money isn’t a problem, Mr Craine. My husband and I have sufficient funds.’
    ‘Does your husband feel the same way as you? About hiring a private investigator, I mean?’
    ‘Yes, of
course
,’ she said, just a little too forcefully. ‘He’s as desperate to find Anna as I am.’
    Yeah?
I thought.
So how come he’s not here?
    ‘All right,’ I said, removing a writing pad from the deskdrawer. ‘Let me take a few basic details first, and then we’ll see about getting a contract drawn up. Is that OK?’
    She smiled, the first genuine smile I’d seen from her, and reached into her handbag. ‘This is the most recent photograph I have of Anna,’ she said, passing me a 6
"
x 4
"
colour print. ‘It was taken about a year ago. You probably remember it from the newspaper reports.’
    I thought it slightly odd that she just happened to have a photo of Anna in her handbag, even though she claimed that she was only in town to do some shopping … but I let that pass and concentrated on studying the photograph.
    Helen was right, I did remember it from the newspaper reports. It was a posed picture, a head-and-shoulders shot, and it looked as if it’d been taken in a studio. Anna was trying to look sultry and mysterious – her head turned demurely over her shoulder, all pouting lips and come-to-bed eyes – and she seemed to be reclining on a red leather divan. There was nothing unprofessional or overly tacky about the photograph, it was simply that the intended effect just didn’t work. Anna was trying too hard, for a start, and although she was reasonably attractive – almond eyes, long black hair, a nice face, pretty mouth – there was something about her, something indefinable, that robbed her of any allure.
    She looked hollow to me.
    Haunted.
    Used up.
    ‘She was a model,’ Mrs Gerrish said proudly. ‘Well … she was
hoping
to be a model. It’s what she always dreamed of.’
    I nodded. ‘She didn’t make her living from it, then?’
    ‘No … it’s a very hard business to break into. And, of course, you have to make certain sacrifices if you’re really determined to make it.’
    ‘What kind of sacrifices?’
    ‘Modelling is the kind of work that requires you to be available all the time, just in case something suddenly turns up. So Anna was forever turning down excellent job opportunities because she didn’t want to tie herself down.’
    ‘I see … so where was she working when she disappeared?’
    Mrs Gerrish hesitated. ‘Well, it was only a temporary post, a part-time catering position …’
    I looked at her, my pen hovering over the pad. ‘I need the details, Mrs Gerrish.’
    ‘The Wyvern,’ she said quietly.