Something Wicked (14 page)

Lara’s room was cramped with a desk running the length of one wall and a single bed built into the space opposite. A window was across from the door, with a crack in the centre of the
curtain allowing a trickle of light into the room, seeping into the dark shadows. Jenny stopped in front of Andrew, with barely enough room for the three of them to stand as Lara pulled a chair out
from under the desk and sat on it.

Her tone was short. ‘Who are you?’

Jenny held out her hand. ‘I’m Andrew’s assistant, Jenny.’

Lara didn’t shake it. ‘What do you both want?’

Jenny sat softly on the bed, leaving Andrew standing awkwardly. ‘Can I turn a light on? Or open the curtains?’

Through the gloom, he could just about make out Lara’s panda eyes glaring at him. She reached backwards and tugged the curtains aside, allowing the outside light to flare into the room.
Andrew squinted around the space as he perched on the edge of the desk, the sharp corner digging into his thigh. At the end of the bed, a wardrobe was built into the wall, stray arms of clothing
poking out from the sides as a black curtain hung limply across the front. Instead of posters or pictures around the walls, there was a violet rainbow of drapes and throws pinned to the corners and
allowed to hang, like an Arabian brothel.

Or at least the ones Andrew had seen in the movies.

Lara had shrunk into a collection of bony arms and legs, her elbows pointing out, knees angled in.

‘Well?’ she demanded.

‘It’s pretty much as I said on the phone last night,’ Andrew replied. ‘Nicholas’s parents have asked me to see if I can find out what happened to their
son.’

‘What can you do that the police can’t?’

‘I won’t know that until I’ve started talking to people and looking into things.’

‘Why did he hire you?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘There must be a reason he came to you instead of someone else?’

‘You’d have to ask him.’

‘How much are you getting paid?’

‘I don’t think that’s the type of thing I should discuss.’

Lara flicked her long hair behind her shoulder, showing off a row of shiny black fingernails. ‘Who have you spoken to so far?’

‘A few people.’

‘What are you hoping to find out?’

‘Exactly what I said. I’m trying to figure out what happened to Nicholas.’

‘You know he’s dead, don’t you?’ Lara peered from Andrew to Jenny, face stony and serious. ‘They found his fingers in the woods. The rest of him will be there
somewhere too.’

Andrew bit his lip, waiting to see if she’d add anything. Instead, Lara stared at her feet.

‘How do you know he’s dead?’ Andrew asked.

‘Everyone
knows
he’s dead.’

‘Who’s “everyone”?’

‘It was in the papers, on the news. We held a service at college. Everyone’s moved on.’

‘His parents haven’t.’

Lara sucked in her cheeks, making herself seem even thinner. For a few moments she was quiet and it felt colder, as if she was pulling the air from the room. When she replied, her voice was
slightly softer and quieter. ‘Everyone thinks I’m a suicide waiting to happen.’

Andrew was thinking of something sensible to say but Jenny got in first. ‘Are you?’

She didn’t sound provocative, more interested. Lara turned to stare at her, face creased into a frown. ‘Of course I’m bloody not. Why would you even ask?’

On some occasions, Jenny was the perfect person for Andrew to have by his side. She’d most likely got something useful from the male Alex to share later but she seemed lost here.

Andrew cut in before the young women antagonised each other too much. ‘How long had you been seeing Nicholas for?’

Lara dragged her eyes across Jenny before turning back to Andrew. ‘It would’ve been two years this month.’

That meant she’d been seeing him for a year and three months when Nicholas went missing, but the fact she knew it was two years was of more interest. He clearly wasn’t a lost memory,
whatever she was trying to make them think.

‘Can you tell us about the night he went missing?’

Lara drew her knees into her chest, sitting on the chair with her feet off the floor. ‘Don’t you already know?’

‘It’d be better to hear your version.’

‘
Version?
’

‘Sorry, a poor choice of words. I just meant that you were there, the last person to see him. You know what happened better than anyone.’

Lara half-turned to stare out of the window. The overcast light danced across her face, making her skin seem even paler, hair even blacker. The eye-shadow had cracked around the top of her
eyelids, with natural creamy skin eating into the darkness.

‘I’ve told so many people so many times . . . we were at the Night And Day for Nicholas’s eighteenth. He’d been saying his stomach hurt, so we left at about nine. We
walked to the bottom of the road for a taxi but there were none around. I said we should wait but Nicholas thought he could walk off whatever was wrong with him so we kept on going to my house. We
walked that way all the time.’

‘Where did you live at the time?’

‘Cheetham Hill way, straight up the main road.’

‘But now you live in halls?’

Lara shrugged. ‘So what?’

It was a question too far. Andrew was supposed to be talking about Nicholas, not sticking his nose into her living arrangements. It was a bit odd, though, given that commuting to university from
a few miles away wouldn’t have been that awkward. Perhaps she wanted the student ‘experience’ of halls?

He moved on as if it hadn’t happened. ‘So Nicholas said goodnight to you at Cheetham Hill, then set off to continue on towards Prestwich. That’s, what, two or three
miles?’

‘If you already know, why ask?’

‘What was the weather like?’

Lara finally let her knees go, putting her feet flat on the floor again. ‘What?’

Andrew repeated his question, knowing she didn’t understand why he was asking. The truth was people
always
remembered the weather. If something happened in their lives, good or bad,
they’d associate it with how hot or cold it was, whether they were wet or dry, and so on. She should have been able to answer immediately and, once she’d pouted her way through trying
to figure out why he was asking, she did.

‘It was a bit strange – thunder and lightning but no rain.’

At least that matched what Scott had said.

‘After he left you, did you ever get any emails, text messages, calls, anything like that?’

‘Nothing.’

‘And when did you find out he was missing?’

‘I was the one who reported him. When I realised he wasn’t answering my calls and none of his friends had seen him, I called the police. They said it had to be twenty-four hours and
all that.’

Jenny was shuffling restlessly on the bed, probably feeling left out.

Andrew spoke quickly, just in case she was thinking about saying anything. ‘I’ve heard you and Nicky used to argue . . .’

If the daggers Lara glared were real, Andrew would have been pinned to the wall. ‘His name was Nicholas.’

‘But the two of you used to argue . . . ?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘A few people.’

Lara slapped her hand on the desk, top lip flaring. ‘It’s that Scott, isn’t it? Or Kingy? So what if we fell out once or twice? All couples do. What’s wrong with
that?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Did anything ever get further out of hand?’

Lara hunched forward aggressively, flicking a finger at Andrew. People seemed to like doing that. ‘Are you asking if he ever hit me? Because he didn’t and if anyone’s told you
that, then they’re lying.’

Andrew was also wondering if
she’d
ever hit Nicholas but there was little point in antagonising her further. Not that it took much to annoy her.

Lara started tugging at her hair, pulling it straighter. ‘What do you think happened?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you must have some thoughts?’

‘I think Nicholas disappeared and somehow lost three fingers. I think the police believe he’s dead but don’t have the time or resources to find out for sure. I think his mum
and dad would like some closure about what happened so they can carry on with their lives.’

Andrew saw the hostility drain out of her as her shoulders slumped. Her voice was a whisper. ‘I really did love him.’

‘I heard that too.’

Lara glanced up, teary blobs in the corners of her eyes. She huffed in a breath, seemingly relieved to know that people had said that about her.

Andrew pushed himself up from the desk, ready to leave. He sensed that if he was going to get anything more from her, then it would have to be another time. A jagged pain rippled through his
legs from the desk corner that had been pressing into him.

‘What did the police say to you?’ he asked.

‘Not much. They spoke to me a few times, usually asking the same questions, then they went away.’

Lara and Jenny stood in unison, each trying to occupy the same space of floor. Jenny flopped back onto the bed with a giggle, reaching up towards Lara’s sleeve in one seamless
movement.

‘Oh, this is lovely material.’

Before Lara could pull away, Jenny slipped the other woman’s sleeve up. Lara slapped her away, angrily yanking her top back down but the damage had already been done. Etched onto her wrist
was a raw-looking red circle with a triangle inside.

Andrew drummed his fingers on the top of the steering wheel, a bad habit that annoyed even him. The traffic was backing up from the city centre towards Salford, with the
lunchtime crowd hurrying into various sandwich shops and fast-food places for a middle-of-the-day spot of indigestion. It wasn’t raining but the sullen wash of grey above had that
thinking-about-it look.

‘You really shouldn’t have done that,’ Andrew said.

Jenny was biting her nails in the passenger seat. ‘You can’t say you weren’t interested.’

‘I
was
interested but that doesn’t mean you should just yank her sleeve up.’

‘Pfft.’

They were going to have to have a conversation about Jenny’s use of that exhalation to end conversations. Not today though.

She buzzed the window down and launched a chewed nail out into the ether. ‘It looked like one of those ones you do with a compass at school,’ Jenny continued. ‘There was no ink
in it, but her skin had been scraped away. It didn’t look recent.’

‘Scott said the one on Nicholas’s wrist looked like that. Why would you do that to yourself?’

‘Someone I used to go to school with used a pair of scissors to scratch the name “Keith” into her arm. He dumped her three weeks later.’

‘I guess nothing says “I love you” quite like slicing your own flesh open.’

‘I prefer chocolate – or biscuits. But you’re probably right, matching homemade tattoos could be romantic. Not
those
tattoos but something else.’

Andrew fiddled with the heaters of the rented car, trying to figure out how to make warm air come out. It was colder than usual today, with the city cowering under the onslaught. Jenny batted
his hands away, pressing a sequence of buttons until a hushed surge of warm air began spilling from the vents.

Cars edged forward as pedestrians scuttled between, arms thrust out with cardboard-wrapped hot drinks. Somewhere behind, there were raised voices and honked horns.

Andrew continued drumming his fingers. ‘Did you catch that Lara said she was the one who reported Nicholas missing, not the parents?’

‘I thought that was a bit weird. Wouldn’t they have noticed he didn’t go home?’

‘Probably – but he might have stopped out a lot. I was just surprised they didn’t tell us that.’

‘Her story about the night he went missing was the same as everyone else’s, wasn’t it?’

Andrew squished his lips together, thinking. ‘Did it sound rehearsed to you?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just that they all say exactly the same. There are nearly always inconsistencies. Someone says they left at nine, someone else at half nine. Someone thinks
it’s warm, someone else that it’s cold. People’s memories aren’t perfect but here, they all back each other up.’

‘Perhaps it’s because they’ve been asked about it so much? In some ways it
is
rehearsed.’

‘You’re probably right. But why not get a taxi if the weather was so strange? I think I remember the night myself – I was watching the storm rumble around the city, thinking I
wouldn’t want to be out in it.’

Jenny was biting her nails again but stopped to reply. ‘You’re forgetting what it’s like to be eighteen. If they’d been out since late afternoon, chances are they were
either running out of money, or already out. Plus she said there were no taxis at the end of the road.’

‘They could have called for a lift.’

‘You don’t want to do that when you’re young. You want to explore, to walk. They might’ve sneaked off to some park somewhere for a bit of fun. What were you like at
eighteen?’

Still a virgin.

Andrew moved on quickly. ‘She’s been through a lot, too. I keep forgetting that. Because his parents came to us, it feels easier to see things from their side, but she’ll be
hurting too.’

‘Of course, if it
was
anything to do with her, reporting him missing would be the thing to do to get attention away from yourself. Except for Lara, no one saw him after he left the
pub.’

The traffic surged ahead all at once as whatever had been holding them up apparently disappeared. Jenny was fiddling with the radio, settling on something that sounded like a cat being
strangled.

Andrew glanced sideways at her as the window fizzed down and another fingernail disappeared.

‘Do you remember the first thing I told you when I hired you?’

‘That the toilet was the first door on the left?’

‘Okay, the second thing: that you didn’t have to do those stupid honeytrap things. I was never going to ask you to go out and trap cheating blokes.’

‘I remember.’

‘I’d never expect you to have to do the flirty, girly thing, like with Alex at the flat.’