Something Wicked (30 page)

Andrew wasn’t sure he approved of the relish in her voice when she said ‘exciting’ but it was true to a degree.

‘What do you think’s going on?’ she added.

They were stuck in traffic again, so Andrew had no chance to be alone with his thoughts. ‘Keira told me that Malvado could be translated as a devilish figure. There was a sort of occult
group that built up around him in Portugal at one point. All sorts of cults live on in various forms, some far bigger than others.’

‘Like the church?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t put it like that but maybe. Kristian had “Malvado” written in his contacts book, which might have referred to Lara or her father – but could have
been the name of the devil-figure too.’

‘Lara wasn’t even born when her uncle went missing.’

‘I know.’

‘If the Malvado thing was her dad’s project, she could be continuing it after he died. But that’s a lot for someone who’s not even twenty.’

‘I know.’

‘And why are other people from Kristian’s contacts book going missing, or getting killed?’

‘That’s one I don’t know.’

Andrew continued edging the car towards the city centre. Jenny was checking the pockets of her coat, saying she was hungry. He’d never known anyone eat as much as her, let alone as much
junk food. When there was nothing to be found, she started biting her fingernails again.

‘Should we call the police?’ Jenny asked.

Andrew had been thinking that himself. ‘It’s complicated because I’m not sure what we actually have. We found a book in a garage we shouldn’t have been in, so we can
hardly hand that over. Most of the words are smudged anyway and then there’s an assumed surname of a teenager. My ex-wife helped us connect that to people interested in the occult but all of
that is only second-hand information. Also, we were hired to find Nicholas and we’re nowhere near doing that – we just have a couple more missing people and poor old James Wicker, who
was carved to pieces in his own house.’

‘Hmm . . .’ Jenny didn’t sound so sure. ‘What did you think of that rat?’

‘I don’t know how you were so calm. It was all I could do not to jump up and run off screaming.’

‘Yeah, but you’re scared of cats.’

‘I don’t know how you can call that thing on the windowsill a cat, it was practically demonic.’

Jenny wasn’t listening, but still talking about the rat: ‘It was so tame, I can’t believe that was the only one. Mad Sheila must have got used to having them around.’

‘Ugh.’

Andrew wondered what the female Alex would make of the far more obvious rat problem at Sheila’s house. As he did, he suddenly felt cold, a tingle fizzing from his fingertips up and down
both arms as if someone had flicked a switch, and suddenly he knew at least some of the answers.

‘Jenny, can you do me a favour?’

‘That depends on what it is, but probably.’

‘If I drop you back at the office, can you call Richard Carr and ask him to meet me there in a couple of hours? Once you’ve done that, go home – you shouldn’t spend all
night working.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘That’s not the point. Go and have fun.’

‘Fine, but why do you want me to call Richard?’

‘I’ve got to visit Lara again. I think I’ve got something.’

‘What?’

‘I might know what happened to Nicholas Carr after all.’

Getting into the block of flats in which Lara lived was even easier than usual. A tearful girl was holding the door open with her foot while having a blazing row with someone
apparently named ‘Gary’ on her mobile phone. With the device wedged between her shoulder and cheek, she had both hands free, one of which was cradling a cigarette, the other making
elaborate unhappy arm movements, as if she was at a particularly downmarket ballet recital.

‘. . . I don’t care if she’s the bloody Queen, Gary. If it wasn’t for Michelle seeing you down that alley, I wouldn’t have known . . . Yeah right – as if!
There’s no way you were going to text me afterwards . . . Bollocks were you. What were you going to tell me? “Sorry I fingered that girl out the back of Wetherspoons?” What did
you think I was going to say? . . .’

She offered Andrew a weak smile, flicking cigarette ash into the gutter and stepping aside to let him inside as he wondered which Wetherspoons.

The hallway was quiet but cold. There had been a purge of the voting posters, which had been replaced by various adverts for end of term parties and the sci-fi/fantasy club calling for new
members. Alex’s ‘has anyone seen a rat’ poster had been defaced by someone replacing the ‘r’ with a ‘tw’, with all of the pull-off tabs at the bottom
ripped away.

By the main door, the girl’s cigarette was almost finished, as was the conversation and relationship. By now, his name had been altered from Gary to something else with four letters.
Upstairs, Andrew knocked softly on the door of Lara’s flat. There were no raised voices this time as male Alex opened the door, still topless, his ribs poking through his pasty skin. In
damning evidence, he was halfway through a HobNob, which might or might not belong to the Sophie that Andrew had never met.

The prosecution rests, your honour.

‘Y’all right, man?’

‘Is Lara in?’

Alex stood to the side, holding the door open. ‘Dunno, mate. Loads of people have gone out.’

Andrew strode to the third door on his left and waited until Alex had closed the front door and disappeared into his own room. When it was quiet again, Andrew knocked on Lara’s door.

He heard shuffling from inside and then Lara’s voice: ‘Who is it?’

‘Andrew Hunter, I—’

‘For God’s sake, what do you want now?’

‘A few minutes of your time. It’s about Nicholas.’

At first, he didn’t think she was going to answer but then she uttered a quieter, ‘What about him?’

‘I’d rather not do this through a door . . .’

More scrambling. ‘Wait there.’

There were muffled sounds of complaining, a wooden thump, the sound of the latch being pulled down and, for a few moments, nothing. As a breeze blustered through from the kitchen, Andrew felt
very self-conscious: he was a bloke in his mid-thirties and for the third time in a week, he’d arrived in a student hall of residence. It really wasn’t right – especially as
he’d turned up unannounced the last two times. Hopefully this time would be the last. It would be if he was right . . .

‘It’s open.’

Andrew pushed the door, waiting as it swung slowly inwards. Lara was sitting on her bed in the back corner of the room, wedged in between the two walls. She was fully made-up, all pale skin and
dark eyes, wearing a black sweatshirt which covered her skirt, with tights and scuffed Doc Martens. Andrew waited close to the door, feeling even more uncomfortable at being in her room. At least
he’d had Jenny with him the last time he’d been in here. The blind was closed, with the overhead bulb showering a pathetic amount of light into the too-dark room. The walls were still
splashed with drapes and throws, as the built-in wardrobe at the bottom of the bed overflowed with clothes that bulged against the black curtain.

Lara really was fearsome when she scowled, for which Andrew didn’t really blame her.

‘What do you want this time?’ she asked, not attempting to hide her annoyance.

‘I can’t stop thinking about the Malvado thing with your name.’

‘I told you it was just a word I liked.’

‘I know, but you also said it came from your father, Franklin Loveless.’

Her eyebrows twitched slightly but the rest of her features didn’t move. ‘So?’

‘I understand that your parents were interested in magic and related things – the tarot and mind-reading – but that’s relatively harmless compared to the occult
associations of the name Malvado and the symbol you have tattooed.’

‘I told you that Malvado was just a word.’

‘You also told me to be careful of digging too deep and we both know it’s not true about what that name means.’

‘Who says?’

‘I do.’

Lara gritted her teeth but kept her tone calm. ‘I think you should leave.’

‘Is it a coincidence that your uncle Mark disappeared when he was eighteen too?’

For a few seconds they stared at each other and then Lara screwed her feet underneath herself, the bedcovers scrunching around her boots.

She spoke slowly and deliberately, not breaking eye contact. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘That there’s something going on. Every eighteen years, an eighteen-year-old goes missing. Thirty-six years ago, it was your uncle. Eighteen years ago, it was someone named Emil
Verity.’ Her eyes widened slightly in recognition. ‘This year, it was Nicholas. There might be more people in between – maybe it’s every three years that someone goes
missing? Every year? I don’t know.’

Lara’s lips were pressed together. Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘I thought I told you to be careful.’

Silence.

Andrew took a step further into the room, feeling cold. Lara squirmed as far into the corner as she could, all elbows and knees. Tiny.

‘At first I thought it was something to do with you,’ Andrew said. ‘The name Malvado kept coming up and I thought it was your real name. Then the symbol that’s tattooed
on your wrist kept appearing everywhere. Nicholas has it; it’s on a book I found that belongs to Kristian Verity; someone drew it on my office door.’ Lara opened her mouth to protest
but Andrew didn’t give her the chance. ‘That’s not it at all, though, is it?’

‘No.’

‘Can you answer something honestly for me?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Is Malvado
really
just a word that you liked?’

She nodded slowly. ‘It was my father’s thing. After he died, I wanted to do something for him. Loveless isn’t a very good name. It makes people think strangely of
you.’

Which was the first thing that Jenny had said. Andrew knew he should have listened then.

‘What about the tattoo?’

‘That was my dad’s too.’

‘Why did Nicholas get it?’

‘I asked him to.’

Andrew nodded, believing her. He sat on the corner of the desk and turned to face the wall behind the bed. ‘Nicholas, you can come out now.’

Nothing happened.

Lara’s mouth dropped into an O, eyes darting from Andrew to the wall to the wardrobe and back again.

‘If it’s any consolation,’ Andrew said, ‘it was nothing you did. I saw a rat today. A real one: teeth, claws, hungry eyes. When I first met Alex – the female one
– she said she heard the scuttling of rats in the walls. She also said you’d argued to get this room. When I was here the first time, I spotted there was a wider gap between your room
and the bathroom than between the other rooms. The rest is a bit of guesswork.’

A rat started scraping the wall next to the bed. Andrew and Lara stared at the built-in wardrobe, where there was a ruffle of clothes, a swish of curtain, and then the rodent revealed himself as
a ghost that was distinctly un-rat-like.

Nicholas Carr had lost weight compared to the photo his father had given Andrew in the first place. His dark blond hair was still messy, as if he’d just got out of bed, but there were
flakes of plaster in it too. He stared at Andrew, seemingly unsure what to make of the situation. He was wearing jeans and a dark hoody with a sandy rash of stubble across his face. Without
speaking, he crossed until he was in front of the door, sandwiching Andrew in the middle of the room. The only concession he made was a shrug in his girlfriend’s direction. His right hand was
covered in a black glove, the middle finger spaces flat and limp.

Andrew looked from Nicholas to Lara and back again. ‘It sounds like the pair of you owe Alex some food.’

Nobody spoke until Lara giggled, which was utterly out of character considering how she’d been the rest of the time. Nicholas smiled tightly but said nothing.

To satisfy his own curiosity, Andrew brushed aside the curtain at the front of the wardrobe. A thin wooden board was resting to the side, with a hole in the wall leading into the space between
the bedroom and the bathroom. It was no wonder people had complained to Lara about her loud music in the first few days of moving in – that had been to conceal the sound and effort it took to
saw out the patch of wall.

Andrew sat on the desk chair, turning to face Nicholas. ‘How long have you been living here?’

His voice was a low murmur. ‘Since Lara moved in.’

‘Presumably, you only disappear into the walls if someone needs to come in here?’

A shrug.

‘Do you ever go out?’

Lara and Nicholas exchanged a quick glance before he replied. ‘Who do you think drew that symbol on your door?’

‘Oh.’

‘So you don’t know everything,’ Nicholas added.

‘Clearly not.’

‘Have you told my dad yet?’

‘No.’

Another swift peep at each other. ‘I get out more than you think. With the hood up, nobody thinks any differently of you around campus. The downstairs door is always open
anyway.’

‘Were you here the first time I came around?’

Nicholas shook his head. ‘We knew you were coming because you phoned ahead.’

That made sense. It was no wonder Lara had asked him question after question about what he’d found out. She had to feed it all back.

‘How did you know you wouldn’t be spotted coming and going?’ Andrew asked.

Lara shrugged. ‘It’s easier than you think. There are so many students here, going in and out at all hours, that no one gives you a second look most of the time. There are always
people around who don’t live here.’

The female Alex had told Andrew something similar in the kitchen. It was the same when he was a student – flats and blocks filled with people who didn’t live there: friends,
classmates, boyfriends, girlfriends. No one had paid him any attention on the occasions he’d visited the halls. Strangers were expected.

He glanced between the two of them, unsure how to phrase things. In the end, he took Jenny’s advice and went for it. ‘So what’s going on?’

Lara and Nicholas were staring at each other, perhaps waiting for the other to take the lead. Nicholas replied. ‘How about you tell us what you know?’