Something Wicked (20 page)

‘Malvado or something like that.’

Jenny turned the book around, her thumb pointing to a soggy lined piece of paper and one word written in neat block capital letters: ‘MALVADO’.

Andrew pulled into his parking space underneath Beetham Tower, took Jenny’s backpack from the boot, and headed for the lifts. Floor minus two was a mass of parked
vehicles, varying in wealth from the not too bad to the really sodding expensive. His footsteps reverberated around the space, echoing from the low ceiling. Andrew stopped by the pillar closest to
the lifts, turning in a circle and hoisting the bag onto his back. There was no one there, yet the stain of what he’d done on the past two evenings was weighing upon him. He couldn’t
really blame Jenny; she was young, excitable and sometimes reckless. He was supposed to know better and yet tonight he’d rooted through items that weren’t his and last night . . . well,
he shouldn’t have done that either.

The lift dinged into place and Andrew stepped inside, thumbing the button for his floor and leaning against the wall. The compartment chuntered upwards, metal grinding against metal, sounding as
if it could drop at any moment. If it did, whoever found him would have a fun time going through Jenny’s bag, wondering what the Miss Piggy zipper pull was all about, along with the circle
and triangle symbol made from twigs.

Ping!

His lift journey the previous night had definitely been more fun.

And expensive.

The corridor leading to Andrew’s floor was as quiet as usual. In the distance, one of the overhead lights was flickering. Andrew stepped out, looking both ways. Something didn’t feel
quite right but he wasn’t sure what. He checked the number on the wall: definitely his floor. In the opposite direction from his flat, there were the faint sounds of someone’s
television on a little too loudly. You had to have money to get a place this high up, so people were used to doing what they wanted. Well, as long as they abided by the rules in the
residents’ agreement. No noise after eleven, no slamming doors, tie your bin bags before dropping them in the rubbish chute, avoid outdoor shoes on wooden floors, respect your neighbours, no
farting in the lifts: the usual sort of thing.

As Andrew continued peering from side to side, he realised it wasn’t as quiet as he first thought. Behind one of the other doors, someone was playing the Stone Roses, with a woman’s
giggling voice as the backing vocals.

Aside from the odd nod in the lift – the universal signal that you didn’t care who the other person was – Andrew didn’t talk to any of his neighbours, not that they went
out of their way to talk to him either. It was just the way things were. Jenny would love it here.

Andrew moved along the corridor towards his flat, convincing himself he was just uneasy from what he’d been up to. He dug into the pockets of the jacket, trying to remember which one his
keys were in. If it was a genuine army coat from Afghanistan, they sure had a lot of pouches in which to keep their stuff. He finally found them in one of the inside pockets, pushing the key into
the lock before he heard a scrabbling from his right. Andrew turned too late, glancing up as the fist flew towards his face. He tried to duck but the blow caught him on the side of the cheek,
sending him careering back through the now-open door as the shape of a familiar man loomed over him.

Andrew skidded backwards, trying to get his balance on the hard floor. He managed to shrug off the backpack but the coat was cumbersome and heavy, leaving him struggling to stand.

In front of him, the man closed the door with a quiet click. He was dressed entirely in black, with bollock-crunching steel-capped boots, waterproof trousers, a leather jacket and thin, dark
gloves. Andrew tried to scramble away but the figure was on him, a fist thumping into his ear, once, twice. Andrew’s head began spinning from the blows, his balance thrown as he finally
managed to roll himself away.

Stewart Deacon stood tall in the space between Andrew’s leather sofa and the wall, fists clenched. It was Andrew’s first proper look at him in person. On the trails to the Huyton
brothel, the tinted windows of Deacon’s car had prevented him seeing much of the actual man. He might have been in his fifties but he had the toned, athletic body of someone twenty years
younger, the leather of his jacket straining from the bulge of his upper-arm muscles. He was shaped like a wedge: wide, heavy shoulders with a narrow, trim stomach and greying short dark hair with
no hint of stubble.

Very deliberately, he slipped a knuckle-duster from his pocket and slid it across the fingers of his right hand.

‘Good evening, Mr Hunter.’

Shite.

‘You do know there’s CCTV downstairs and throughout the building,’ Andrew said.

‘Is there indeed?’

‘If you leave now, we’ll let it lie here.’

Deacon’s face cracked into a boyish smile. ‘
We’ll?
’

‘What’s the best you think can happen?’

The intruder polished the bridge of the knuckle-duster with his gloved thumb. ‘Oh, I know what the best I think can happen is. I wonder how thick that window is.’

Andrew glanced backwards towards the huge expanse of glass behind him. Manchester was brighter than the previous night, a pulsing mass of northern partygoers enjoying a Saturday night on the
lash. Andrew managed to throw off the coat, which at least gave him a degree of mobility, although Deacon looked the stronger and fitter. Andrew patted his trouser pocket for where he usually kept
his mobile phone before realising it was in the coat he’d just tossed to the floor. The apartment’s phone was next to Deacon’s shoulder on the wall.

‘Whose life have you been out poking your nose into this evening?’

Andrew didn’t answer, edging sideways into the open-plan living room, hoping that if Deacon followed him, he might be able to double back around and get to the front door. His ear was
pounding from the blows to the side of his head.

‘I asked you a question, Mr Hunter.’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘I’m a self-made man. I built my companies from the ground up. I employ lots of people, I’ve made people money, I’ve paid taxes. Who are you to say that I’m doing
anything wrong?’

‘I don’t judge people.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘What sort of life must you have? Spying on people, following them, sticking your nose in?’

‘I try my best not to do that.’

‘That’s not what I hear.’

Andrew slipped in between the coffee table and sofa, the seat between him and Deacon, who still hadn’t moved from the door. It was the only way in or out and he knew it. Andrew carried on
moving, sitting in the armchair and spinning to face the intruder. Deacon was running his finger along the knuckle-duster again.

‘I think you should go,’ Andrew said.

He was hoping for a reaction, any reaction, but Deacon was calm. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘I really would.’

‘How many people’s lives have you ruined?’

‘That’s not what I do. I go out of my way to avoid cases like that.’

Deacon held his hands up to indicate the apartment. ‘This is pretty smart for someone who avoids doing work.’

‘This place wasn’t paid for by the business.’ For a few moments neither of them said anything. Andrew stood and stepped across to the kitchen. ‘Drink?’

No reply.

He poured himself some water and leant against the sink, sipping slowly as he eyed Deacon across the room. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t scared but he could feel the acceleration of
his heart, his instinct telling him to find a way out, even though there was only one. He knew the window was thick and fully reinforced. A person was never going to go through that but the
intruder and his knuckle-duster could do a lot of damage.

The liquid was cool and refreshing, sharpening his mind. There was little chance of fighting his way out of here and apparently no opportunity to escape, so he had to talk the other man down
instead.

He turned to rinse the glass out, eyes skimming across the rack of knives. The tallest one was serrated and used for cutting bread but the next one down was razor-sharp and four inches long. It
would certainly be a leveller in a fight and he’d no doubt get in a swipe or two, but did he really want to go down that route?

He waited for a few moments, allowing Deacon to see the knives, and then turned, not reaching for one.

‘Are you going to leave?’ Andrew asked.

For the first time, Deacon hesitated. ‘If you say you don’t really do this type of job, then what about me?’

‘What about you?’

‘Why are you following me around? Taking pictures, writing reports . . . ?’

‘That’s what I was asked to do. If I’d known straight away it was because you were having an affair, I would have turned the job down. It was because you were disappearing and
no one knew where.’ Andrew stepped back towards the living-room area, away from the knives. ‘It’s just a job. Believe it or not, I try to help people.’

‘That’s how you justify it? “It’s just a job”?’

‘It is.’

Deacon was shuffling on the spot now, heavy shoes clattering on the wood underneath. ‘I’ve heard some interesting stories about you from my son. About the things you were telling my
wife.’

‘I didn’t realise he was there.’

‘That’s not the point. You think you’re smart, do you?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘I know where you live, where you work.’

He finally took a step towards Andrew, away from the door. The sofa was still between them, not quite a knuckle-duster-proof barrier but marginally better than nothing. Andrew wondered if he
should have taken a knife after all. If he moved now, he could still get there first – but what would he do then? He’d not been in a fight since school and he’d got his arse
kicked then. Fish Lips Nixon had attacked him from behind and then climbed on top of him, punching him in the back of the head until other students pulled him off. That was all because one of
Andrew’s friends had coined the nickname ‘Fish Lips’. Before and since, he’d somehow managed to avoid physical conflict.

‘I know where
you
live and work,’ Andrew replied.

Deacon was resting on the back of the sofa, one dramatic lunge away from grabbing Andrew. His eyebrows were dark, unlike his grey hair, almost meeting in the middle as they sloped downwards into
a V. His eyes were unblinking.

‘Is that a threat?’

‘No. Was yours?’

‘Yes.’

Andrew started to shift sideways, back to his original plan of rounding Deacon and getting to the door first. The problem was that Deacon was moving sideways too. Andrew stopped shuffling, using
the armchair as a shield.

‘Everything that’s happened is really an issue for you and your family,’ Andrew said.

Deacon nodded, lips pursed. ‘Is that right?’

Andrew’s eyes darted to the knuckle-duster and back again. ‘What are you going to do? If you beat me up, I’ll be able to tell the police your name, so you’d have to kill
me. If you do that, there’ll be a huge police investigation. I’d be shouting and screaming, so people upstairs, downstairs, left, right, and across the hall would hear. They might raise
the alarm – even if it’s just to complain about the noise. There are security cameras downstairs, so you’d have to find a different way out. Even if you did, there are cameras on
the streets around here, then more traffic cameras nearby. It’s a Saturday night, so there are loads of people out there and somebody will see your face. If you somehow escape all of that,
the first thing the police will do is go through my records. They’ll look at cases involving people who’ve had unhappy outcomes and you’re the most recent. Even if there’s
no evidence to say you were here, you’ll still be the first person they visit. They’ll want to know where you were tonight. They’ll check your number plate against the recognition
cameras they have around the city to see if you might have driven here. They’ll look at CCTV on the buses, check with taxi firms, all that stuff. One way or another, they’ll find out.
None of that even touches on any DNA evidence. You’ve got gloves on, so no fingerprints – but if you’re going to beat me to death, that’s going to be messy. There’ll
be blood all over you, not just your clothes, the parts of your skin that are showing and in your hair. Are you confident you could wash all of that away before they come? Or how about if a hair
from your head somehow comes loose and they find it? Perhaps it already has?’

Andrew stared at him defiantly, hoping his list of reasons not to kill him were enough.

Deacon held his gaze, not wilting but not stepping forward either. Perhaps he’d already thought all of those things through? He could punch Andrew in the larynx with the knuckle-duster
first of all to prevent the noise and then beat him to death. If he had a cap to cover his hair, the cameras wouldn’t pick up much and, as for the chances of somebody outside spotting him,
they wouldn’t even remember how many drinks they’d had, let alone the bloke in the cap hurrying past.

In a flash, Deacon lunged for his jacket pocket. Andrew stumbled backwards, expecting to see a knife or a gun, but instead there was a bundle of money. Deacon tossed it onto the chair between
them, rolls of crumpled twenty-pound notes unfurling and tumbling to the floor.

His voice was low and growling. ‘There’s your dirty money. It’s nothing to me and you’re just a posh rent boy. Take it and stay away from me and my family.’ He
slipped off the knuckle-duster and put it in his pocket, turning to leave. ‘If you get in my business again, Mr Hunter, next time you won’t see me coming.’

Andrew’s head was pounding as he jolted awake in the morning. He’d been sleeping on the opposite side to usual, avoiding putting any pressure on his well-thumped
ear. He stood in front of the wardrobe mirror tilting his head to the side, trying to force his eyes to rotate at an impossible angle to see if there was any bruising. It wasn’t working, but
from the little he could see, apart from a bit of reddening, there wasn’t a mark on him. It was typical; if you were going to get the crap kicked out of you, the assailant should at least
have the decency to leave you looking like you deserved a bit of sympathy.