Something Wicked (16 page)

‘How often does he come in?’

‘Once or twice a year for ages, since he was a teenager.’

‘How old is he now?’

‘Mid-thirties? Forties? I dunno. He always pays cash so I haven’t got anything else for you.’

Andrew stood to leave but Scrumpy wasn’t finished.

‘Oi! You didn’t get his name from me –
comprendez
?’

Andrew held back a smile at Scrumpy’s raw accent. ‘Gotcha.’

Andrew tugged up the collar on his jacket and checked his watch. Somehow, it was already after five. The day had disappeared in a silvery gloom, punctuated by goth girls. He
called the office, knowing Jenny would still be there.

Her answer was upbeat and chirpy. ‘Hello.’

‘Why haven’t you gone home yet?’

‘I’m busy.’

‘So be busy on Monday . . .’ He paused for a moment, walking and thinking. That’s what you call multi-tasking. ‘Have you got anything on tomorrow?’

‘Dunno. I’ll probably get roped into going out and doing something.’

‘Do you want some extra money?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’ve got a name I could do with you looking into. If I text it over, can you do your thing?’

‘Definitely. It’ll save me pretending to be interested in what other people want to do.’

‘You’d rather be at work?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

Andrew wasn’t sure. There were a lot of things he’d rather be doing than working but none of them popped into his mind. ‘Okay, well, it’s up to you. I’ll probably
be in too.’

‘Great.’

‘But go home now. I’m walking back – I’ll be ten minutes.’

‘Fine.’

Jenny’s apparent relationship was something he never pushed to know about. Andrew wasn’t sure she’d ever told him her boyfriend’s name, only making vague references to
‘him’ or, occasionally, ‘my boyfriend’. He didn’t bother to ask if this was the same lad she’d mentioned a couple of days before. What was clear was that,
whoever he was, she didn’t seem that into him, always complaining about the time she had to spend with him, rather than wanting to hurry off to enjoy something. He also didn’t know
anything that she actually liked doing. Some people would talk about bands they liked, gigs they’d been to, what they’d seen at the cinema, television programmes they watched, pubs and
restaurants they’d visited, hobbies they had. Never Jenny.

The teenagers had disappeared from the front of Affleck’s by the time Andrew passed by again, replaced by an enormous man squeezed into leather-studded lederhosen, with a matching cap. He
nodded politely at Andrew and grunted a ‘y’all right?’ for good measure. It really was quite the area.

Late-running office workers skirted around the already packed tram stops, spilling onto the pavements and causing a bottleneck of annoyed shoppers laden with bags trying to squeeze their way
through. It was depressingly dark, an all too familiar chilled wind blasting its way through the streets.

At the bottom of Piccadilly Gardens, there was an L-shape of outdoor food stalls that looked as if they might take off at any moment. People were queuing for Caribbean food, fivers in hand,
oblivious that the only similarity between here and the West Indies was when a hurricane blew in from the tropics, wiping out all of the power and dumping an ocean-load of water on the islands.

The jerk chicken still smelled good though.

Andrew kept his head down, walking until the crowds thinned and he was close to the office. He turned the corner to see the lights were out, with Jenny either sitting in the dark, or heading
home. Hopefully the latter, although he wouldn’t be surprised by the former. He walked along the street, keeping tight to the wall before spotting a silhouette of a man leaning against the
doorframe of the office. The nearby orange street light was close to useless, casting a pathetic tangerine hue directly underneath but nothing that could pierce the shadows.

The figure checked his watch and then looked both ways as Andrew slowed his pace, trying to figure out who it was before he got too close. It was the white glow from the man’s watch that
finally revealed his features: the hair thinning at the front and a little long at the back.

Andrew upped his pace again, taking the man by surprise as he thrust out a right hand. ‘Mr Carr, you’re lucky to have caught me.’

The man stepped back slightly, before shaking hands. ‘It’s Richard. I was in the city and wondered if you might be in. I was only going to give it another five minutes.’

The dark didn’t suit Richard Carr. He looked like a lumbering cinema version of Frankenstein’s Monster, wide white eyes catching what little light there was.

‘Can I help you?’ Andrew asked.

‘I was wondering how things were going . . .’

Andrew was used to this. With the police, people would give them time – they knew what they were doing after all. If you worked privately, you were somehow expected to get faster results
with fewer resources. Tactfully telling someone he’d discovered sod-all was something Andrew was good at.

‘Well, it’s only been a few days, plus, as I said at the time, we do have a few things on. I prefer to start a case from scratch where I can, rather than rely on old reports and the
like, so that takes time.’

He rocked back on his heels, waiting for the awkward question about the bill, but it never came. Instead, Richard exhaled loudly, using a finger and thumb to dab at his eyes. ‘It’s
Elaine. I think she thought things might happen quickly now you were on the scene.’

‘I’m sorry. It doesn’t really work like that.’

‘I know, I did say – but it’s so hard to move on.’

Andrew rested a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘All I can tell you is that I’m doing my best.’

A sorry-sounding sniff: ‘I know you are.’

After retrieving his laptop from the office, Andrew walked back across the city towards his apartment. Beetham Tower was the tallest building in the north of England: a
cathedral of glass and steel soaring into the night sky, red and green lights blinking high above as a warning to the jumbo jets that they were dangerously off course.

The wind was wrapping around the tower, tooting like a steam train. The reception area was quiet, with the security officer allegedly there at all times nowhere to be seen. Andrew caught the
lift up to his floor near the top and let himself into his apartment, stopping momentarily inside the door to gaze through the floor-to-ceiling window across the marvel of the city.

Far below, streetlights and cars were alight, jagged collections of roads and queuing traffic, coupled with the barely visible ant-like dots of people. It might not be London or New York but
there was a certain beauty to the mismatched assortment of buildings stretching into the distance. London had its architecture, history and towers; New York had its straight lines, bright lights
and soaring skyscrapers. Manchester had a bit of everything: shades of industry long gone, waterways upon which locals claimed the western world was built, and people from every social class
imaginable.

Andrew closed the door and moved into the apartment without turning on the lights, his heavy shoes rattling on the wooden floor. The view was extraordinary during the daytime, sweeping vistas of
green far beyond the city lights, but there was something special about it at night. He’d never told anyone how much he’d paid for the flat but the estate agent’s eyes had almost
popped out when Andrew said he would pay the full amount outright.

He put the laptop down on the coffee table, thought about working, and then quickly discounted it. Whoever Kristian Verity was, he could wait until morning, and Jenny would do a better job of
finding out who he was anyway. Andrew thought about watching television but wasn’t in the mood. The mini gym in the corner sat in his eye line, unused, but he didn’t fancy that either,
nor the actual residents’ gym on the lower floor.

What did people usually do when they weren’t working?

Acting instinctively, he moved through to the bedroom, which he’d left exactly as it had been when he bought it. A double bed was pushed against the wall furthest from the window, with a
built-in wardrobe that ran the length of the room. Aside from a lamp, the rest of the floor was clear of clutter, moonlight glinting from the varnished wood finish.

Andrew slid open the mirrored wardrobe doors, pulled out the first shirt he found, grabbed a jacket and then headed back towards the lift.

A couple of hours later and Manchester’s nightlife had warmed up from non-existent to something that wasn’t quite lukewarm. Andrew almost always went to the same
place, a cross between a pub and a wine bar on a street parallel to Deansgate in the centre of the city. The high ceiling was held up by huge rounded pillars, providing spots for patrons to lean
against, or alternatively walk into if they’d had too much to drink. Placed at intervals around the walls were crescents of seats, with ‘reserved’ cards planted around. Either the
rich and famous of Manchester were about to take a wrong turn, or a hen party would be in later. Andrew knew where his money lay.

The bar was bent into a dogleg, flutes and glasses hanging around the entire length, just waiting for someone to send one flying and set off a chain reaction. Andrew was sitting on a stool at
the far end with a view of the entire room. Somewhere in the centre, a man with a porn-star moustache was flashing his crooked yellow teeth at a girl half his age. She was wearing a sprayed-on
white mini-skirt, cradling a matching handbag, with heels on which only a skilled stilt-walker would attempt to get around. She flicked her viciously blow-dried black hair backwards, offered
two short words in response and then tottered towards the bar with her mate. In the background, strains of Michael Bolton gurgled through the speakers.

It wasn’t usually this bad.

Andrew turned back to his drink, Jack Daniel’s and Coke – actual Coke, none of this Zero or Diet nonsense. He held the glass to his mouth, struggling to smell the alcohol but taking
a swig anyway.

In the centre of the bar, the barman instantly had the two women laughing, much to the annoyance of the man with the dodgy moustache, who was angrily supping his pint of cloudy ale while staring
at them.

From nowhere, there was an unexpected shuffling and somebody was sitting next to Andrew, appearing from either thin air, or the women’s toilets.

Andrew turned to see a flash of blonde hair and pale skin. A woman, a little younger than him, had slipped herself onto the adjacent stool and was staring towards the barman serving the other
girls. Andrew rarely saw women like her in this place and there was no one else within five metres of them.

‘Wanna buy me a drink?’

Her voice was low and husky, like a 1930s movie star but with a slight northern twang that dispelled the image.

Andrew had a second, more careful glance sideways but definitely didn’t know her. As well as the slightly wavy blonde hair and pale skin, she had intense blue eyes and a cute rounded chin
that perfectly fitted her face. She wasn’t stunning but she was certainly attractive – out of his league before he even got to the clingy red dress.

‘What do you want?’

‘Apple martini.’

The barman was leaning on one of the pump handles, trying his best smile on the girls: all white teeth, designer stubble and sparkly earring. He glanced sideways, catching Andrew’s raised
finger and whispering an apology to the girls, which drew a fluttering of giggles. He swaggered across, undoing a button on his shirt to allow more dark chest hair to spurt from the top. Behind
him, the girl with the white skirt heaved her breasts up until they were almost popping out of her top. Wasn’t this how chickens mated? All puffed-out chests and posturing?

The barman twirled a glass around in his hand, eyeing the blonde woman but talking to Andrew. ‘What can I get you, squire?’

Squire?
Andrew hated him already.

‘Another Jack and Coke, plus an apple martini.’

The man flipped the glass from one hand to the other and caught it in mid-air, before pointing a finger in Andrew’s direction and making a double clicking noise with his tongue.
‘Good choice.’

If anyone deserved the nickname ‘dickface’ . . .

The barman sauntered back towards the centre of the bar with a mixture of sidesteps and spins, as if someone had set him on fire but without all the screaming.

The blonde woman tutted in annoyance. ‘There are not enough words in the English language to describe the contempt I have for that man.’

Andrew sniggered. ‘It’s normally better in here.’

‘Do you come in often?’

‘Every now and then.’

She held out her hand, long slender fingers with perfectly manicured nails. ‘Courtney.’

He shook it, forcing himself not to shiver as her cool fingers brushed his. ‘Andrew.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’

Andrew had just enough time to mutter a ‘you too’ before the barman returned with their drinks. Getting change from a tenner was going to be unlikely. The barman moved back to the
girls in the centre of the bar, gurning like he’d just been electrocuted.

Courtney had a sip of her drink, leaving a pinkish-red lipstick mark on the glass. ‘And what do you do, Andrew?’

‘I watch people for a living.’ Stupid answer. ‘Not like that,’ he added hastily.

She giggled, cradling the stem of the glass between her thumb and forefinger, twiddling it gently until the liquid began to ripple. ‘Is that why you come to bars by yourself?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Go on then, tell me something about the people here.’

Andrew sipped his drink. The alcohol was stronger this time, drifting through his nostrils and giving him an ever-so-slightly dizzy feeling before he’d even tasted it. He scanned the
largely empty room. Porn-star man was still in the middle, leaning against a pillar, empty pint glass in hand. In the corner, close to the door, a young woman had her knees draped across her
boyfriend’s lap and her tongue down his throat, while a bouncer watched on from the doorway. Three student-types were eating piled-high burgers in one of the booths; drained, frothy pint
glasses massed in the centre, with at least four for each of them. One dropped a pickle on his lap without realising.