Something Hidden (25 page)

Andrew answered the phone with a deadpan ‘hello’, ready for the worst but utterly unprepared for the voice that spoke.

‘I think we should talk.’

It was male, almost understated but demanding at the same time. Andrew felt a too-familiar chill on his back. He thought his former father-in-law was scary in person, but his voice had that
distressing tone too. Andrew crossed to the sink, accidentally rattling a glass against the metal tap as he tried to fill it with water.

‘Why?’ Andrew asked.

‘You know why,’ Keira’s father replied.

Andrew swallowed the water too quickly, making himself cough. His headache was back and he was suddenly feeling hot, even though it wasn’t that long ago he’d been walking through the
cold.

‘I’m at work.’

‘I’m aware. That’s why I’ve come to you.’

Andrew spun around, expecting to see Keira’s father behind him. But there was only Jenny, chewing on a pen as her fingers darted across the computer keyboard.

‘You’re here?’

‘Come outside.’

Andrew had taken a step towards the door before he realised what he was doing, compelled by the other man’s words.

Jenny turned and glanced up at him, mouthing ‘Okay?’

Andrew cupped his hand over the bottom of the phone, nodding. ‘I’ve got to nip out for a bit. I’ll be back.’

She pointed at the video on the screen. ‘Should I do something with this?’

‘Not yet – let me have a think first.’

He grabbed his coat and headed out of the door, skimming down the stairs so quickly that he almost tripped. The rapidly decreasing temperature was matching his mood. He burst through the doors,
expecting to see Mr Chapman standing and glaring, waiting with his hands on his hips in an expensive suit. Instead, the street was as empty as usual. In the building opposite, Tina peered up from
behind the receptionist’s desk and waved, all slender fingers and white-toothed smile. Her other hand didn’t leave the keyboard. Andrew replied with a short nod, putting the phone back
to his ear.

‘How did you get my mobile number? I don’t give it out.’

‘Walk to the end the street, as if you were heading to the train station.’

‘What if I say no?’

His former father-in-law laughed. ‘You’re a fool, Andrew, but you’re not that stupid. Just do it.’

Andrew turned and started to walk, noticing the cold far more than he had earlier. It wasn’t quite the end-of-days prediction he’d heard on the radio, but the wind
had picked up and it felt like it might snow. The air was biting at his face as he hurried along the narrow path.

‘Where am I going?’ he asked.

‘Keep walking until you get to the end.’

His fingers were beginning to stiffen from the cold, his gloves back in the office, along with his hat. He’d been in such a rush, such a panic, that it was lucky he’d remembered his
coat. As Andrew neared the end of the path, the bustle started to increase. His office was barely a minute’s walk from one of the city’s main shopping areas but hidden away in the
warren of age-old streets.

As Andrew reached the corner, a bus spluttered out a cloud of diesel, momentarily making it hard to breathe. There were voices, footsteps on concrete, a car horn, the beeping of a pedestrian
crossing. Noise, noise, noise.

‘Where now?’ Andrew asked.

‘Straight ahead, across the road.’

Andrew felt watched. He turned in a circle, then up towards the windows of the surrounding buildings, looking for Keira’s father, but there was no sign.

‘What am I looking for?’

‘There’s a pub. Come inside.’

Andrew started to reply but the call dropped, leaving him talking to himself. The place he was supposed to go wasn’t a pub in the traditional sense: it had been bought out by a chain,
plastered in identikit branding, and then reopened advertising cheap food and cheaper beer. It opened early enough in the morning that the alcoholics could roll right in, and stayed open late
enough that students could flock around the tables and drink themselves stupid on the way back to halls.

As soon as he stepped inside, Andrew felt his shoes sticking to the floor. Ick. In the corner, the fruit machine was ding-ding-dinging as a skeletal bloke in a baseball cap piled pound coins
into it. His girlfriend sat at the table next to him, cradling a near-full pint of something cloudy. There were three empty glasses on the table in front of her and it wasn’t even
lunchtime.

The usual types were at the bar: four unshaven blokes in long coats with blotched red faces, mumbling nonsense but set for the next eight or nine hours of drinking. They’d be gone whenever
they were judged as too drunk to be served, or they ran out of money. The smell of microwaved fried breakfasts drifted through the high-ceilinged room, making Andrew gag. It might only cost three
quid a meal but he valued his intestines enough not to subject them to that. He tried not to be a snob but had a rule that if a meal cost less than, or equal to, a ream of paper, then he’d
probably be better off eating the paper.

The pub was spread across two levels, with a few steps up to a seated area close to the window, offering a view towards the shops. Edgar Chapman was at a small table in the bay, sitting by
himself, legs crossed at the knees. His crisp, pinstripe black and white suit made him stand out instantly, even before Andrew noticed the pink tie with the giant Windsor knot. He sipped from a
tiny espresso cup, wincing slightly, before putting it back on the table.

For a moment, Andrew thought his clothes were shrinking. It was only as he gasped that he realised his chest felt tight, his nose blocked from the cold. He crossed the room, sliding into the
chair opposite Keira’s father without a word.

The other man was reading a broadsheet and didn’t look up immediately, turning down the corner of the page, folding it, and flipping the newspaper into a leather satchel. He took another
sip of the espresso, grimaced once more, before finally acknowledging Andrew.

‘Don’t order the coffee,’ he said. ‘I hate these bloody places. Cheap shit for cheap people.’ He pointed at the cup, not even having the grace to smile as he took
the piss. ‘Want one?’

‘I’m not staying.’

‘So what does a private investigator do with himself?’

‘Is that what you came to ask me about?’

Andrew’s former father-in-law shook his head. ‘Not particularly, I’m interested in what you’re doing with
my
money.’

‘It’s not your money.’

Finally a smile, albeit one so thin-lipped that it barely counted. ‘We had an arrangement, Andrew.’

‘All arrangements can expire.’

‘Not this one.’ He reached for the cup again, sipping the dregs, scowling, and then standing. ‘Are you sure you don’t want something?’

‘I’m fine.’

Keira’s father walked toward the bar, the light glinting from his shiny black shoes. Heads turned to look, probably in confusion why someone who could afford such clothes was in a place
like this. He’d left his phone on the table, filling Andrew with visions of taking it and . . . he didn’t know what. Perhaps there would be interesting emails from a secret lover?
Something Andrew could use against him. He knew it was ridiculous, that the phone had almost certainly been left there to tempt him, yet he couldn’t rid himself of the thought.

Mr Chapman soon returned, placing two espresso cups and saucers on the table and pushing one towards Andrew. He relaxed his large frame into his seat. ‘I got you one anyway.’

Andrew pushed the saucer away as his former father-in-law sipped from the cup, pulling an anguished face again. ‘Jesus, that’s awful.’

‘Why did you get another one then?’

He smiled properly this time. ‘When you bring yourself down to the level of pigs, Andrew, you can’t complain about wallowing in shit.’

‘Charming. Is that from Nietzsche? Descartes? Aristotle?’

‘Are you interested in philosophy now, Andrew?’

‘Stop calling me that.’

‘Andrew? It’s your name, is it not?’

‘Just
stop.’

Keira’s father seemed delighted at the reaction. Andrew knew he should’ve ignored it but the way the other man said his name grated on him, making him shiver each time. He reached
forward, snatched the coffee cup and downed the espresso in one, instantly realising why Chapman had been wincing. It was
awful
.

‘As I was saying,’ the other man continued, ‘
this
agreement does not expire. You have everything: your flat, your business, your pretty young
“
assistant
”’ – bunny ears – ‘because of the money I gave you.’

‘She works for me, that’s all.’

‘Good for you. Easy on the eye. Nice choice. What’s her name?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Jenny, isn’t it? She has a nice little Volkswagen Beetle. Purple. It’s interesting how she gets to work before you, yet you only live around the corner.’

Andrew was sick of people spying on him. First Braithwaite and Iwan, now Keira’s father. He was supposed to be the one poking his nose into other people’s business but everything was
upside down.

‘Stay away from my life and leave Jenny alone.’

‘Aah, so you’re feeling protective over the women in your life. Finally, that’s a trait I can admire.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Is that your type now? Downmarket, wide-eyed, inner-city types?’

‘Jenny isn’t like that – and, even if she was, so what? We’re all people. What does it matter where you come from?’

The other man stood again, finishing his drink in one and wiping his mouth. ‘My bowels are going to make me pay for this later.’ He picked up Andrew’s cup.
‘Another?’

‘Just sit down and tell me what you want, so I can go.’

‘
This
is what I want, Andrew. I want you sitting at my feet, waiting for me to click my fingers to tell you you’re dismissed. Now sit still like a good little boy and wait for
the grown-up to return.’

Keira’s father ambled across the floor, this time taking his time, knowing Andrew would be watching. Knowing he’d be seething. Each day brought a new indignity, like the old days of
being bullied at school by the bigger kids for being fat or ginger. He’d spent years describing his own hair as ‘sandy’, before finally realising that it was their problem, not
his. He was thirty-five years old and all it took was a few bigger men to make him feel eight again.

His former father-in-law strode back across the floor, two more espressos in hand, before placing them delicately on the table and sitting again. Andrew was silent and didn’t dare reach
for the cup, knowing his hand would be shaking. Keira’s father had no such problems, holding the dainty handle between his thumb and index finger and sipping softly. He even managed to avoid
grimacing from the acid taste.

‘“What does it matter where you come from”.’ He repeated Andrew’s words and then breathed in heavily through his nose. ‘That’s where you and I differ,
Andrew. If you, or anyone else, imagines for one second that I’m leaving my fortune to someone of whom I don’t approve, then you’re going to have another think coming. You already
stole my daughter once, took her away to some casino-ridden hellhole to marry her, and it’s not happening again.’

‘Vegas was her idea.’

‘Like hell it was.’

‘I don’t care if you believe me – it was. We sat in a muddy field surrounded by people covered in filth who were half-naked and carrying toilet rolls. Someone in a tent close
to us was smoking dope, someone else was on his third can of lager and it wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning. She said she wanted to go to Vegas because you wouldn’t be able
to get to us there.’

It got the reaction Andrew had hoped for. The other man’s fingers started to tremble in rage, rattling the cup back onto its saucer.

‘This isn’t a discussion. When I paid you, that was go-away money, yet you’re still around. Do you not understand what going away means?’

‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’

‘Do you want me to tell my daughter that you took the money over her?’

‘If you do that, you’ll have to tell her that it was you who paid me.’

Mr Chapman nodded. ‘I’ll tell her
you
asked. You came to me saying you’d disappear – you’d abandon her – if I paid you off. I cared for her so much
that I agreed to the blackmail to make her happy.’

‘She won’t believe you.’

‘I’m happy to see what she believes. I’ve been in her life for the past nine years. I’m funding the work with those damned street kids that she so dotes upon. What about
you?’

‘You gave me no choice but to take that money. You said you’d break us up anyway, make my life miserable, target my parents, leave me with nothing.’

Keira’s father nodded. ‘Do you still believe that?’

Andrew pursed his lips, breathing in, wondering what his answer should be. He snatched the cup and downed the espresso in one, wincing again as the bitterness scratched at the back of his
throat. ‘I don’t know.’

The other man leant in, close enough that Andrew could smell his aftershave, which reeked of wealth. It was probably called ‘Money’ and cost ten thousand for a tiny bottle.

‘Tell her you’ve made a huge mistake,’ he said. ‘Tell my daughter that
this
is all over for a second time. That you were right back then and you have no future
together. Do that, or I’ll take away everything you’ve got.’

‘What if I don’t?’

Keira’s father leant away again, peering out of the window as a woman with a pushchair struggled past, fighting into the snarling wind.

‘I take it your phone can access the Internet?’

‘Yes.’

‘Search for the name “Tanjir Ahmed”.’ He spelled it out as Andrew did as he was told. The atmosphere had changed from edgy to plain hostile. ‘What’s the top
link?’ he asked.

‘A news report from last month,’ Andrew replied. ‘Father-of-three jailed for child porn offences.’

‘Read it.’