Something Wicked (9 page)

He really wished he hadn’t given her his card.

Just as he was losing hope, Gloria took a step back, sounding earnest again. ‘. . . still no one deserves to just disappear, do they? Those poor parents. It’s awful the things that
happen nowadays.’

For a moment, she angled forward as if she was going to hug him but then Gloria turned and headed up her driveway, head down in defeat. Andrew suddenly felt sorry for thinking badly of her.

He turned back towards the car but a flicker of movement further along the street caught his eye first. Andrew stood staring for a few moments before ducking back behind Gloria’s hedge. He
took his phone out and sent Jenny a text message.

‘Drive away now – wait around corner. Explain soon’

He pressed send and, for a moment, nothing happened. Then he heard the flare of the Beetle’s engine and the chuntering exhaust disappearing into the distance.

Andrew leant into the sharp evergreen boundary, listening and rerunning the flutter of movement through his mind. He counted to ten and then spun around the corner of the hedge, turning straight
into the stooped teenage figure of Jack Deacon.

Jack slumped to the side, back still hunched as if he needed spinal surgery.

‘Are you following me?’ Andrew asked, trying to sound calm.

Jack’s hair was as stiff, angled and sharp as it had been that morning. His jeans were still low and he was wearing a different black sweatshirt with a band’s logo. At first he
stepped backwards in alarm at being caught out but then his lips twisted into a snarl.

‘I’m allowed to be here. It’s a free country.’

‘Bit of a coincidence that you happen to be here at the same time as I am.’

Jack’s eyes narrowed, his sneer becoming a smile. ‘How’s the car?’

‘The only reason I didn’t give your name to the police was because of your mother.’

‘Who says I did anything to it? I hope you’ve got proof if you’re going to go around accusing people.’

‘That fire could have caught on the wind and latched onto anything else. Or there could have been passersby . . .’

Jack leant forward, shoulders down, spiky hair angled as if he’d glued a porcupine to the side of his head. ‘Why are you telling me?’

‘Did you set fire to my car, or didn’t you?’

A small laugh. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know? Perhaps if you weren’t trying to stitch my dad up, your things wouldn’t spontaneously combust.’

‘What do you think’s going to happen when the police and fire report comes back to say – officially – that someone tipped lighter fluid over my bonnet and then tossed a
match on it?’

‘Seems like you know a lot about it. Maybe you did it yourself?’

Andrew thought about replying but there was little point. He’d already made his decision not to mention Jack to the police and getting into a public argument with the boy wasn’t
going to help anyone. Jack continued to stare at him, wanting an argument, but Andrew shook his head and walked past, reaching for his phone to find out where Jenny was.

‘Oi!’

Andrew turned to see Jack pointing a finger at him in the same aggressive manner he had shown that morning. ‘Do you reckon that Beetle needs a paint job? Perhaps a burnt brown
colour?’

In a step, Andrew was back in front of the teenager, batting his finger away. ‘If anything happens to my staff, their property, or anything else to do with me or my business, then
I’ll be straight onto the police about what you did to my car.’

‘Yeah, right, mate. You keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, I’m going to make sure my dad knows he’s being spied on by a right bunch of nosy bastards. Some slutty girl and
her sugar daddy. Is that what gets you off? Breaking up other people’s families and then going home with someone half your age? You’re just a filthy old man and you’ve picked on
the wrong people.’

Andrew stood, staring at Jack for a few seconds.
This
was exactly why he tried not to get involved in family disputes. Money or no money, it wasn’t worth it.

‘Just leave me alone,’ he replied, pathetically – the best he could do. What were the other options: threatening a fifteen-year-old? There was no proof, not yet anyway, about
who had set fire to his car.

Andrew turned and walked away, the heckles of the teenager echoing along the street behind him.

At the office, Andrew was still brooding. He’d allowed Violet Deacon’s doe-eyed defence of her son to influence him when he should have told the police that he
suspected Jack was responsible for setting his vehicle on fire. It might not have done much good considering the lack of witnesses but it would have meant the police would have had a word, making
Jack far less likely to be following him around.

Jenny sensed the mood, not saying too much on the journey back, other than to ask what the neighbour had to say.

As Andrew searched the Internet trying to find a suitable hire car, Jenny got to work. Within half an hour of them arriving back, the printer was buzzing with activity and then she perched
herself on the edge of his desk, sheaf of papers in her hand.

‘I’ve found Nicholas’s old Facebook page, a tribute site set up by his college friends, and then various accounts on websites linked either to his apparent friends, or
Lara.’ She leafed through the front few pages, drawing red felt-tip circles around names. ‘It’s difficult to know for certain but there seem to be five lads he knew fairly well
from college. “Kingy” is at Bristol University, Ricky’s in Lincoln, the poor sod. I’ve been having problems tracking down someone named “Gibbon” and
“Belly” is working on the Isle of Wight. The only one that seems to still be living in the area is this lad.’

Jenny pointed towards a grainy black-and-white acne-scarred face on one of the print-outs. ‘This is Scott and he’s an identity thief’s dream. His profile is accessible by
anyone, plus his phone number, email address, workplace and pretty much everything else is on there. If you’re looking at talking to one of Nicholas’s friends, he’s your
guy.’

She passed across more print-outs, which Andrew started to skip through. The first was Nicholas’s own page, confirming he was ‘in a relationship’ with ‘Lara
Malvado’. It was the first time he’d seen her surname. Nicholas didn’t seem to be particularly active but he’d been tagged in various photos, and friends had posted various
jokes, pictures and articles in the way people did when they had nothing better to do.

Among the pictures was an old photo from primary school, with Nicholas standing bolt upright, hands behind his back in a black and navy uniform. Someone had typed ‘U look like a write
nob’ underneath, which had a certain poetry to it, if grammatical-anatomical mash-ups were a person’s thing.

The other photos appeared to have been taken in the year or so leading up to his disappearance: at a theme park, at the beach, with his friends at the park – and then many selfies,
apparently taken by Lara with her phone at arm’s length. Their faces were smooshed together, Nicholas’s lips pursed into a half-smile, half-grimace in the way only grumpy teenagers
could pull off properly. Start pulling faces like that as an adult and it’d look like you had something jammed up your arse.

Jenny was right about Lara: she was pretty underneath the eye-liner, dyed hair and beanie caps. Even with all of that, there was clearly an appeal to her. From the pictures, one other thing was
very clear: she was definitely into Nicholas, perhaps more than he was into her. Nicholas had that stony-faced, give-nothing-away expression in all of the photos but she was constantly peering away
from the camera towards him, or staring glassy-eyed towards the lens in a ‘this-is-true-love’ way that was also exclusive to teenagers. By the time you were thirty, true love was
spending fifteen minutes with someone and not wanting to throttle them. Or not arguing over whose turn it was to put the bins out.

The final few papers were printed from the tribute page set up by Nicholas’s friends. At first, the posts were along the lines of: ‘Where u at? Why don’t u come home?’
but a few days later, they had degenerated into various rest-in-peace notices.

Jenny took the rest of the pages from him but handed back the bottom one. ‘There’s something interesting at the end.’

Andrew scanned down, frowning as he read the tribute: ‘“Rest in piece, bruv. Your wiv da angles in heavin now”?’

Jenny smiled. ‘Below that.’

Scott’s name was next to a slightly more legible remark: ‘Rest in peace, Wizard man.’

Andrew peered up to Jenny. ‘Wizard?’

‘I know. I’ve gone through the other pages but no one else seems to have called him that. It can’t be a widely used nickname, but it’s not going to be an accident
either.’

‘What about Lara?’

‘She just calls him “babe” or something like that. Aside from the pictures, they don’t really interact with each other on there. I suppose they preferred actually
spending time together. He didn’t really use it. The only thing she’s updated since Nicholas went missing is where she’s living: at Salford University. I don’t know what
course she’s on, though.’

‘Anything else interesting?’

‘Not really. Before that, everything she wrote for months on end was about her and Nicholas. Always “Nicholas” too – never “Nicky”. Some of his friends called
him Nicky, but never her. There was never anything too extraordinary, just things like, “Had a great day out with Nicholas today”, “Just watched a movie with
Nicholas”.’

‘Anything about magic?’

‘Not a peep. Aside from a bit of teenage angst, they’re exactly what you’d expect. In fact, it’d be stranger if there wasn’t that anxiety. I looked around for the
surname Malvado. It seems Portuguese but it’s hard to trace anything definitive.’

‘The next-door neighbour said they used to argue on the doorstep.’

‘That’s not really the type of thing you’d tell all your friends about, though it’s strange that Nicholas’s parents never mentioned it.’

‘Perhaps they didn’t know? Gloria didn’t say how late it was when they were arguing. If you were a heavy sleeper, you might not realise. Either that or the neighbour was
exaggerating?’ Andrew checked his watch: time for Jenny to finish for the day. ‘When you get in tomorrow, see if you can discover anything else from our usual sources about Lara.
I’ll see if I can get hold of Scott to find out what he thinks of Nicholas and his girlfriend.’

Jenny took back the final page and passed them across to her desk. ‘Do you need a lift home?’

‘No, I’ll sort it. Thanks for your help.’

Jenny turned back to her desk before stopping on the spot, spinning round. ‘Oh, it’s Wednesday, isn’t it?’

Andrew wouldn’t meet her eye. He wished he’d never told her weeks ago what Wednesday night was. ‘Is it?’

‘Have you got your weekly
thing
tonight?’

‘You can say what it is.’

Without peering up, Andrew could tell Jenny was grinning. ‘It’s all right. Have fun!’

Andrew scanned up and down the menu, knowing it off by heart but hoping something new had somehow slipped in between the usual items. There was that too runny, allegedly
tomato, soup he’d tried once that tasted like the gloop found in the bottom of bins; or the floppy, oil-soaked garlic bread that had the consistency of slippers that had been through the
washing machine. Perhaps love wasn’t about spending fifteen minutes with someone and not wanting to throttle them, it was actually about allowing yourself to be taken to hellhole restaurants
like this and not complaining about it.

Across the table, Sara gazed over the top of her menu towards him. She’d made an effort tonight: straightened blonde hair combed to the side and clamped in place, hanging provocatively
around her shoulder. Then she’d done that eye make-up thing with the curly bits in the corner that made it look as if she was paying attention, even when she wasn’t. Not to mention a
low-cut dress that helped Andrew remember why he’d started seeing her. Physically, she was ridiculously out of his league.

Around the restaurant, couples chatted to each other; knives, forks and spoons scratched plates and bowls; waiters fussed in and out, sashaying and do-si-doing around each other while balancing
a gravity-defying amount of items.

‘. . . so I said to Cheryl that if Geoff keeps talking to her like that, then she’s going to have to put an official complaint in. You should see him, hovering over that photocopier
like he owns the place. He’s not even the assistant manager. He’s the stand-in assistant and there’s no way he’s going to get that job permanently . . .’

Back to the menu. If he somehow digested the garlic bread as a starter, that ruled out anything bready for a main. Mentally, Andrew crossed all the pizzas from the menu, focusing on the pasta.
What was the name of that one with the tubes? He was pretty sure they did that with some fish concoction. What was the name of it?

‘. . . I was like, “It’s only you who can deal with it, Chez”, but she was like, “He’s always going on at me.” Then I remembered that I’d ended up
talking to the regional manager at last year’s Christmas party. Jeremy-something. He was lashed off his face that night, too pissed to stand up. Someone reckoned he ended up sleeping in the
toilets of the hotel reception . . .’

Penne, that was it. Andrew scanned along the menu: Penne con Pesce. That’d do. He glanced up, trying to catch a waiter’s eye. The quicker they could order, the quicker they could
eat, the quicker his bowels could start trying to evacuate. How this place was anyone’s favourite restaurant, he had no idea. He’d had better meals at school.

‘. . . I mean, you can’t go around behaving like that when you’re a regional manager. But anyway, somehow I ended up with his phone number. I don’t know where it came
from, or when he gave it to me, but there it was in my bag the next day: Jeremy Somethingoranother and his phone number. Course, I didn’t think anything of it, Christ knows I had enough wine
to drink that night but what do they expect when it’s a free bar? . . .’

Where was a sodding waiter when you needed one? The restaurant was laid out in a circle, the bar in the centre, the kitchen next to the entrance, and tables rippling outwards in a tidy
concentric pattern. In the centre, the barman tossed a metal cocktail shaker in the air, spinning and catching it in one neat movement as a group of women who looked suspiciously like they were on
a midweek hen party gathered around, whooping and cheering.