Something Hidden (3 page)

Below, the lecturer was droning on in a monotonous tone of voice, hypnotic in the sense that it made a person feel sleepy . . .
very
sleepy . . .

A gut-wrenching yawn forced its way up from Ishan’s stomach until it felt as if his head was going to split in two, not that anyone around him noticed he was on the brink of hibernation. A
handful of maths nerds bashed away on their laptops and tablets, with a few others actually using a pen and paper to take notes.

Unbelievable.

Most of the class wallowed in their boredom, leaning back into their seats and strapping themselves in for at least another ninety minutes. Ishan often wondered what might happen if he smuggled
in a small rodent. There were enough of them making a racket by the bins at the back of his flat for him to be able to catch one. He could wrestle it into a rucksack, wait until the lecturer
started sending everyone to sleep, and then set it free. If that didn’t liven up proceedings then nothing would. If not a rodent then how about—

Bang!

Bang!

Everyone turned as the sounds boomed from somewhere behind the theatre. The lecturer stopped speaking, mouth half-open as if he had forgotten what he was talking about. In an instant, Ishan was
awake. He’d heard those noises a few months previously when he and his friend Vikram had been chased home from the city centre after dark. Vikram blamed a backfiring car, saying they
shouldn’t worry about contacting the police, but Ishan knew the truth.

One or two people near the back started to stand but Ishan was ahead of them, sliding along the aisle until he was next to the door. He opened it a sliver, peering out into the empty
corridor.

Bang!

The third shot was louder than the first two, with a loud gasp ricocheting around the theatre. Ishan took a moment to compose himself, waiting to see if there would be a fourth noise, before
pushing his way through the doors into the hallway and slowly approaching the front of the building. Through the wire mesh glass, he could see the path beyond, with long rows of white paving slabs
reflecting the October sun. The jeweller a couple of streets away had been robbed at gunpoint a few days previously and everyone was on edge.

Behind him, one of his classmates’ voices hissed through the silence: ‘Ish, where are you going?’

Ishan ignored him, continuing to edge towards the front door until he had a clear view of the scene beyond. He could reach up and lock the doors to keep out whoever was there but his eyes were
drawn to the pooling patch of red staining the bright white fifty metres ahead.

There was a gurgle in his stomach that was nothing to do with food.

He knew he should stay back, think about himself, yet Ishan found himself opening the doors and stepping outside.

‘
Ish!
’

The paths from the various lecture theatres converged in a courtyard that also served as a cut-through for students trying to get from Oxford Road to the halls of residence and flats beyond.
Thousands of people would stream through at the top of each hour, yet it was almost always empty while lectures were going on. Now, the space was far from clear.

Ishan continued to move ahead, marvelling at how silent it now was. There was no distant chirp of birds, no hum of traffic or honking of car horns. Everything had stopped.

Forty metres. Thirty. Ishan could see all he needed to from where he was but he continued to edge forward a step at a time. To his left, there was a flicker of movement as another figure stepped
out from the corner of the adjacent building, treading slowly, staggering even. It was a man in a dark blazer and trousers. He put his hand over his mouth as he approached the scene, knees
wobbling.

Ishan was close enough to see what had happened, to smell it: the faint odour of burning, the coppery haze.

The other figure glanced up to catch Ishan’s gaze, eyes wide as his arm flailed. ‘He shot them both. I was on my way here and he . . .’

Ishan reached for the phone in his pocket, feeling unnervingly calm. The man was Professor Steyn: Ishan had studied an elective in his class during his first year.

Steyn dabbed at his forehead, eyes still bulging as he took another step. Ishan wanted to tell him to stay away but the professor was the grown-up, after all. Ishan was . . . well, he
didn’t know. The student. Shouldn’t a professor know what to do? As if anyone knew what to do in a situation like this.

The expanding pool of blood seeped along the bright white tiles, nudging the edge of Steyn’s shoe, and it was only then that Ishan saw the complete horror of it. A girl was slumped on the
ground face-down, surrounded by the deep red, her wavy black hair soaking in the liquid that was oozing from the side of her face. Lying on his front next to her was a lad somewhere around
Ishan’s age, wearing a hoody and jeans, both arms trapped unnaturally underneath him. Ishan was sure he had the identical top somewhere in his wardrobe. Another day and he could have been
walking around in the exact same get-up.

The third person was the only one facing upwards: a man in a heavy green jacket with a pistol lying next to his hand and spurts of black and red exploding across the tiles where his head should
have been.

As Ishan dialled 999, the background noise fizzed into focus again. Someone nearby was screaming and there was a hum of voices. The traffic was moving, there were footsteps, a door banging,
windows opening. Chatter-chatter-chatter.

Professor Steyn reached forward to touch the girl’s arm, trying to turn her over.

Ishan wanted to tell him that it was no good, that it was too late, but the voice was already speaking into his ear. ‘Emergency. Which service?’

‘Police.’

Professor Steyn gripped the girl’s arm, turning her onto her back, but the sight was horrendous and he let her flop back into her lifeless state. He turned to face Ishan, skin colourless,
mouth open, before emptying the contents of his stomach half onto his shoes, half onto the pool of blood.

More people drifted towards them, arms outstretched, hands over their mouths. Some screamed, some cried. Others turned and went back the way they’d come. Only a few stood and watched as
Ishan somehow talked the operator through the sight in front of him.

The tremble in her voice matched his and she didn’t even have to look at it. Professor Steyn was on his feet again but he was a mess, blood and vomit covering his lower half.

‘Is there anything else?’ the operator’s voice asked.

Ishan blinked into the present. He’d been on autopilot talking her through the scene, but it suddenly felt real now he could hear the sirens closing in.

‘Sorry?’ he said.

‘Can you see anything else around you?’

Ishan wished he could close his eyes and make it all go away but he knew why the operator was asking – soon, this area would be swarming with police and crime scene experts. No one would
see it as it was now and only himself and Steyn would be able to describe how things looked in the immediate aftermath. He forced himself to run his eyes across the bodies one final time, to search
through the expanding mass of red for anything out of place. As he scanned the taller of the figures, Ishan noticed something he’d previously missed. It wasn’t just a green jacket the
man was wearing, it was an army jacket, or definitely something from the armed forces. There was a patch on the lapel, a name visible even through the dark smear of blood across it.

After a breath, Ishan closed his eyes and turned away, spelling the name out letter by letter.

‘M-E-T-H-O-D-I-S-T,’ he said. ‘I think he shot them, then himself.’

There was a moment of silence in Andrew’s office as he chewed on his bottom lip and wondered what to say. It wasn’t right that she had to, but it was no wonder
Fiona Methodist felt the need to change her name. As soon as she told anyone locally, there would have been a moment of hesitation, a second or two of recognition, and then . . .

‘I get that a lot,’ Fiona said with a humourless smile.

‘Sorry,’ Andrew replied.

She shrugged, reaching for another Jammie Dodger.

‘When did you last eat?’ Andrew asked.

Fiona shrugged again, nibbling away at the edge of the biscuit. ‘It wasn’t my dad.’

Andrew nodded, wanting to ask
how
she knew but knowing there was no point. It wasn’t as if Luke Methodist had survived to tell anyone why he’d shot a young couple in the
middle of the day two Octobers ago.

Fiona continued to eat, the scratching of her teeth the only noise in the room until she spoke again. ‘I read everything they wrote. How he was a war vet scarred by what he saw, how he
came home with post-traumatic stress, or PTSD as they kept saying. He never wanted to talk to me about what went on, so that part is probably true. Maybe he
was
a victim in a roadside
bombing, like they said? Maybe he
did
see one of his friends shot? They had all those experts on the news and the analysts talking about his state of mind but they didn’t know him.
They can say all they want . . . but that doesn’t mean he shot those two kids.’ She paused, closing her eyes. ‘They were only a couple of years older than me . . .’

Andrew glanced across to Jenny, who was sipping her tea in silence. Sometimes she knew exactly what to say but the blank look gave Andrew the answer he needed – she was as lost as he was
but had enough self-awareness to keep quiet.

He had no choice.

‘I’m not sure what you want me to say.’

Fiona shivered again, her bony shoulders jutting through her thin coat as she tried to control herself. She soon finished the biscuit, clucking her tongue to the top of her mouth to clean the
sticky bits away from her teeth. ‘Dad left his sheltered accommodation without telling anyone and moved onto the street, so he was basically homeless. I didn’t know where he was for a
couple of months until he left a message on my phone. I tried to help but he wasn’t interested. I don’t know if it was because of that or because of what they said went on when he was
in the army. They can say my dad approached that couple and shot them – but he wouldn’t have dared to go near them. Apart from a couple of his street friends and me, he didn’t
talk to anyone. He was scared of people.’

‘What about the drugs?’

Fiona met Andrew’s eyes but this time she was angry, her nostrils flaring. ‘They made that up.
If
he bought drugs from that Evans bloke, it was for his friends on the street.
He didn’t do drugs. When they tested his body afterwards, there was nothing like that in his system but no one bothered to report it and everyone had already read the earlier versions. People
assumed he was a junkie but it’s not true.’ She gulped, lowering her voice and looking away again. ‘Sorry . . .’

‘Fiona.’

‘What?’

Andrew waited until she turned to look at him. From what she’d said, she must be nineteen or twenty but could easily have been fifteen or sixteen. She was tiny, so thin that he could see
the shape of her bones through her clothes. When she finally met his eyes, Fiona was blinking rapidly, trying to keep the tears at bay.

‘What would you like me to do?’ Andrew asked.

She picked up the small mound of notes from the radiator and thrust them in his direction. ‘I don’t have much but I can save some more. I want someone to believe me that it
wasn’t him.’

Andrew shook his head as Fiona gulped back another tear, standing and wiping her nose with her sleeve. ‘I thought you were a good guy? If it’s about the money . . .’

‘It’s not the money.’

‘So what is it?’

He opened his mouth to speak, unsure how to break it to her. The police had already looked into things and, from everything he’d seen and heard of the case, it was as open and shut as it
came.

Fiona stepped towards the door, re-pocketing her money. ‘It’s okay, thanks for the tea.’

As another blast of cold air fizzed through the door, Andrew sighed. He’d always been a soft touch.

‘Fiona.’

She turned. ‘What?’

‘We’ve got something else to do this morning but if you leave me a number to contact you on, I’ll see what I can do.’

Jenny shunted a pad towards the edge of the desk and Fiona took a battered mobile phone from her pocket. She began jabbing at the buttons, before copying a number onto the page.

‘I can’t always afford credit but you should be able to call me,’ she said, adding another ‘sorry’.

She peered up to look at Andrew again. He couldn’t figure out if she was playing him or if she really was this fragile. He’d had people take advantage of him before, using him to do
their dirty work. Was there really something going on here? Since the incident with Nicholas Carr, he’d been questioning himself repeatedly.

‘I really will look into it,’ Andrew said.

‘Okay.’

‘You’ll just have to bear with me.’ She reached for the door handle but Andrew continued. ‘You said your father only spoke to you and some of his street friends. Do you
know any of their names?’

She gazed upwards, screwing up her lips, the cold still seeping through the open door behind her. ‘There was this guy named Joe – that’s all I know.’

Fiona stood still for a moment, as if waiting for permission to leave. When she finally closed the door, Andrew breathed out heavily. He’d been seconds away from offering to put her in a
hotel. She was so thin, so scarred, but what then? Would he end up trying to look after every waif who turned up on his doorstep? And was it just because she was female? Andrew wanted to tell
himself that he’d have been equally concerned if an underfed lad had shown up asking for help but he didn’t know if that was true. He always found himself questioning his own
motives.

Jenny broke the silence by ruffling in her bag for life and coming up with a packet of mini rolls, waving them in the air as she tore into the purple wrapper.

‘Want one?’

‘It’s too early for chocolate.’

She grinned, tearing an individual wrapper open with her teeth. ‘Pfft. It’s
never
too early for chocolate.’