Something Wicked (11 page)

‘Exactly. I gather you were one of his better friends?’

A shrug. ‘I s’pose. I only knew him from college.’

‘How long did you know him for?’

Scott began counting on his fingers, muttering under his breath. ‘About a year and half before he . . . went away.’

‘What sort of things were you into?’

Scott glanced nervously towards the window. ‘Mind if I have a fag?’

‘It’s your flat.’

He dug into the pockets of his hoody and pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes, lifting one out and clamping it between his lips as he rooted in his jeans pocket for the lighter. Andrew
spun to face him as Scott crossed to the window, sparking the cigarette and standing next to the fresh air. He took a deep drag, eyeing Andrew with suspicion.

‘I’m not police, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ Andrew said.

‘Why would it worry me?’

‘I don’t know – I was eighteen, nineteen once. Sometimes you get up to things . . .’

The right side of Scott’s lips curled into a smile. ‘Aye, well, it’s only really the usual. Bit of weed, some underage booze. He wasn’t into fags at all. We went to a few
gigs, had a day at Blackpool the other summer, drank cider in the park, played a bit of footy – what do you want to hear?’

An errant remnant of cigarette ash missed the saucer and landed on top of the air-freshener.

‘What sort of thing would you want to keep from his parents?’

‘He wasn’t some crack-head if that’s what you’re thinking, he was just a normal lad.’

‘I know, but there’s lots of things normal lads do that they wouldn’t want their parents to know about. That’s what makes them normal, isn’t it?’

A puff of smoke disappeared into the air and the half-smile returned. ‘Fair point. I s’pose they didn’t know about the weed but it was never a big thing. He wasn’t a
dealer or anything.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Not really. He liked a bit of porn but don’t we all? He was looking forward to turning eighteen.’

‘Why?’

‘So he could drink legally. We always had pubs we could get into but the better places, the cheaper ones, they usually asked for ID. They had this big splurge on testing bars for serving
underagers when we were at college and suddenly you couldn’t get in anywhere.’

‘Did you go out much?’

Scott sucked the cigarette in between his teeth, brushing his hands on his trousers before plucking it out again. A spiral of smoke disappeared towards the window. ‘Not really. Too
expensive, ain’t it? We’d usually get a bottle of something and go to the park if it was sunny, or nick off down the canal and sit under one of the bridges. Either that, or we’d
go round Kingy’s house when his parents were out. That’s when he wasn’t with Lara, of course.’

Andrew made an effort to search through the pages inside the envelope, as if he didn’t know who Lara was.

‘She was his girlfriend, yes?’

‘If you can call it that. They’d argue all the time: break up, get back together, fight, make up. You never knew if they were together or apart. One minute, he’d be saying he
was done with her, the next they were all over each other again. At first we’d take it seriously but then we realised it was just what they did.’

‘Who usually did the breaking up?’

‘Oh, it was always Nicky – she was a right psycho. She’d threaten to cut her wrists if he didn’t get back with her, then she’d dote on him the whole time they were
together.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She’d get him food and booze, stuff like that. Promise him . . .
things
.’

‘Why did he get back together with her if they were always arguing?’

Scott finished the cigarette and mashed the remains into the mound of butts in the saucer. ‘Why d’ya think?’

Aah . . . seventeen-year-old lads only thought with one thing.

Andrew moved on. ‘Were you out with him the night he disappeared?’

Scott took out a second cigarette and lit it. ‘We all were – Kingy, Gibbon, Ricky, Belly, Lara and a couple of other girls. Nicky was the youngest, so we were all eighteen by then.
It was our first proper night out where we couldn’t be turned away for being underage.’

Andrew began writing on the back of the envelope: this was the information he’d actually come for. ‘Where did you go?’

‘Do you know Night And Day in the centre?’

‘On Oldham Street?’

‘Yeah, it’s this smart little place that has bands. They don’t let dickheads in, which makes it better than half the places in town. We’d gone out early because one of
Kingy’s mates plays trumpet in a band. They have this lead singer too, you should see her . . .’ Scott held the cigarette in his mouth, using both hands to signal that she might have
had a second job smuggling melons. ‘. . . anyway, they were on at half seven, so we’d been out since about six.’

‘You’d had a bit to drink then?’

Scott switched the cigarette from one hand to the other, nodding. ‘Aye, sort of. Nicky had been complaining about feeling a bit dodgy since we went out. Something to do with his stomach.
Lara was all over him, fussing around, going on about how he should be drinking water.’

‘What happened?’

A sheepish grin: ‘Well, I was completely wankered. I just remember Nicky coming over and saying he was going to nick off because he was feeling rough. At the time, I thought it was because
he’d been drinking, it was only later I realised it was because of his stomach. He said goodbye to everyone and then he and Lara left. The rest of us stayed out and it was only a couple of
days later when the Old Bill came round that I realised he’d not got home.’

‘What time did he leave?’

‘Nine-ish? I only remember because the second band were about to come on. I couldn’t work out why they’d walked. It was a really weird day – it wasn’t raining but
there were flashes of dry lightning around. You don’t see much like that in February. Everyone kept going on about it when we left later on but I could barely see a thing by then. If someone
had said there were frogs raining down, I would’ve believed them.’

The second cigarette disappeared into the pile and Scott joined Andrew on the sofa again. Andrew was about to ask something else when he noticed Scott’s bottom lip bobbing. The student
squeezed the top of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, speaking his way through a sob. ‘Sorry . . .’

‘It’s okay.’

Scott reached for a box of tissues on the coffee table and turned away, blowing his nose. He spoke without turning back to Andrew. ‘Look, he wasn’t a great mate if I’m honest.
Once he started seeing Lara, he spent most of his time with her. When they broke up, we’d hang around but I was better friends with Kingy. If things hadn’t happened and we’d gone
away to different unis, I doubt we’d be in contact . . .’ He paused to blow his nose again, half-turning back towards Andrew. ‘. . . but it’s still strange when someone you
know just isn’t there any longer. Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I’d left early, or if we’d gone to a different pub – or gone out later, or earlier. Or if
we’d all left together and got a taxi. You run it all through your head and wonder if you could’ve done something differently. I was so sodding pissed, so useless, that I barely even
remember saying goodbye. If I’d known I wasn’t going to see him again, I’d have told him that I thought he was a decent guy.’

Andrew let Scott compose himself for a few moments. He didn’t know him well enough to say anything that wouldn’t sound hollow. Missing people cases were worse than murders in so many
ways, because they didn’t come with answers. People could understand killings, even senseless ones. What was hard to figure out was when somebody walked out of a door and never came back.

Scott blew his nose one more time and then threw the tissue into a bin on the other side of the table. ‘Sorry, man . . .’

‘You don’t have to apologise.’

‘I wish there was something I could tell you. The police talked to us all at the time, took our statements, and then went away. I think we all thought he’d just wander into college
one day wondering what all of the fuss was about.’

‘How did people take it?’

‘They didn’t really. No one talked about it. I think everyone was scared that it could happen to them.’

‘What about Lara?’

‘I didn’t really see her too much after that. We were on different courses and I only knew her through Nicky. I think she was off for a few weeks or a month. I honestly don’t
know.’

Andrew took a breath, judging the moment. ‘What was the Wizard nickname all about?’

Scott turned to face him, blinking rapidly, the corners of his eyes an irritated pink. ‘How’d you hear about that?’

‘I saw it somewhere.’

Scott shook his head softly. ‘It was a sort of wind-up thing.’

‘I don’t get it. Was he into magic?’

‘Sort of. He never used to talk about it but he had this thing on his wrist. It was like a tattoo but not a proper one. The sort of thing you’d draw yourself with a compass. I think
Lara might have done it.’

Andrew dug into the envelope for a blank sheet of paper, handing it across with his pen. ‘Can you draw it?’

Scott was biting his lips, missing the cigarettes as he rested on the table. He drew a wobbly circle with an upside-down triangle in the middle. ‘Sorry, mate, that’s supposed to be
an actual circle,’ he said.

‘Did you ask him why he had it?’

‘At first he said it was something to do with Lara but then he refused to talk about it. Someone said it was a mark of the devil, so we had a bit of a laugh, which is why I called him the
Wizard.’

‘So the magic was Lara’s thing?’

‘I s’pose. He never really talked about it to us but she’d make these little straw dolls, plus she’d always be doodling those pointy star things—’

‘Pentagrams?’

‘Aye, with the five points. She’d talk about how plants could be powerful and all that. We thought she was a bit of a hippie-nutjob but Nicky always had a strop on if we joked about
that in front of him, so we let it go. Girls can get away with that kind of shite, can’t they? You don’t see many lads carrying around straw dolls.’

‘Did you tell the police all of that?’

‘Yeah, but they never came back. As far as I know, she went off to uni. If I’m honest, there was always something not quite right about her.’

Jenny’s voice trickled from the tinny speaker somewhere above Andrew’s head. ‘You could’ve called me before setting off.’

Andrew accidentally hit the hire car’s indicator as he aimed for the windscreen wipers. The drizzle had started moments after he’d left Scott’s flat, blanketing the city in a
smoggy, overcast haze. Somehow he’d hooked up his phone to the vehicle’s Bluetooth, even though he was struggling with almost every other function.

‘I was trying to multi-task,’ he said.

‘How’s that going?’

‘I’m talking and driving, so not too badly. How have you got on with Nicholas’s other friends?’

Andrew could hear Jenny tapping on her keyboard. ‘I left a few messages and sent some emails. A couple have come back to me without much to say: decent guy, relatively quiet, Lara doted on
him but they argued a lot, blah, blah, blah.’

‘That’s more or less what Scott said.’

‘I used the information from his parents and called in a few favours. His mobile number hasn’t been used since the night he went missing. He sent a text message to his mum at a
couple of minutes to nine to say he was on his way home but nothing after that. I got a list of his calls and texts but it’s the usual stuff, mainly to Lara. As for his bank accounts,
they’ve not been touched, though they were pretty much empty anyway.’

Andrew had his own contacts at various phone companies and banks which he’d shared with Jenny but she’d gone beyond that to make her own. Whether it was a flirty giggle on the phone,
or a good way with words, he didn’t know, but she consistently got her hands on the information they needed.

‘What about Lara?’ he asked.

‘Next to nothing. There’s almost no personal information on her Facebook profile, except her name. I’ve cross-referenced a few of her friends’ profiles with hers and got
a little more but not much. She’s a smart girl: all As to Cs in her exams, plus I’ve found out which halls she’s staying in at Salford. I’ve got a phone number for the block
but no mobile number. Somebody should be able to knock on her door though. Shall I try to get hold of her?’

‘Text me the number for her block. I’ll see if she can talk to us tomorrow.’

‘Do you think she’ll be a problem?’

‘I suppose we’ll find out.’

‘If there’s a chance we could find out what happened to her boyfriend nine months ago, wouldn’t she want to help?’

‘Let’s hope so.’

Andrew squelched his way up the back steps of the community housing block of flats. It was only two storeys but the tough granite made his legs ache as if he’d been
running – which he hadn’t done in years. The stairs opened onto a rickety balcony, with a waist-high metal fence stretching to the far end of the row. The once-magnolia walls of the
flats were now a grey mix of grime and filth as the dripping guttering drummed an ear-shattering chorus. Andrew stepped around a puddle, trying not to touch the flaking paint of the fence for fear
of sending the rusting metalwork tumbling to the ground. How this entire block hadn’t been condemned as a health hazard, Andrew didn’t know.

He stared over the balcony towards the identical row of flats stretching away at a right angle from where he was standing. There was a green separating the blocks, with a pile of tyres in the
centre, a leftover burnt-out reminder that Bonfire Night and the associated bell-endery hadn’t long passed. If ever there was a night for dickheads, the fifth of November was it. Still, if
Darwin’s theory of natural selection was true, then the people who launched fireworks into their own faces were probably destined not to procreate anyway.

Andrew weaved his way along the balcony, dodging in between the areas where rain was flooding through the holes in the roof until he reached a flat near the end. He rang the bell and knocked
hard, pulling his coat tighter around himself and cursing the weather under his breath.