Something Wicked (27 page)

Jenny was wearing her glasses again. Andrew had never managed to figure out if she really needed them, or if it was a fashion statement.

She peered over the top across the office towards him. ‘It’s a really sad-sounding name. I feel a bit sorry for her.’

‘Do you?’

Jenny shrugged, not so sure. ‘Sort of. It’s an expression, isn’t it?’

Lara Loveless did have something of a forlorn-sounding name. In many ways, it was no surprise she wanted to change it, but that didn’t mean she had to opt for Malvado.

‘Anyway,’ Jenny continued, ‘it’s been a lot easier trying to find things since you phoned in with her real name. I found her dad almost straight away – he’s
called Franklin and died a year and a bit ago. There’s a two-line obituary on the
Manchester Morning Herald
’s website about him, saying that he left behind a daughter named
Lara.’

‘How did he die?’

‘Lung cancer.’

‘How old was he?’

‘Fifty-six.’

‘Did you find out much else about him?’

Jenny’s collection of Bourbon biscuits was still going strong – unless she’d brought in more, which was definitely possible. There was a scattering on a plate next to a
folded-over half-full packet.

She held a biscuit in front of her face, looking puzzled – something incredibly rare for her. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

Andrew was slightly confused himself; she didn’t usually ask permission, she just went for it. ‘Sure.’

‘We both think there’s something not quite right about Lara. I don’t know if that means she was responsible for Nicholas disappearing, or if she killed him or anything like
that, but why don’t you just ask her?’

‘Ask her what?’

‘Ask if she was responsible. Instead of tiptoeing around it, say it outright: “Did you kill Nicholas?” or “Did you do something to make him go missing?”’

There was no hint of mischief on Jenny’s face. She popped half the biscuit in her mouth, staring at him.

‘I can’t do that because we’re not the police. We might need her to cooperate with us again later today, or tomorrow, or the next day. I could go storming in and accuse her of
all sorts, but if she tells me to get lost and won’t engage again, then I’ve achieved nothing. You’ve got to walk a really fine line.’

‘But isn’t that the nature of the job?’

‘It depends how you choose to do it. I could stick to following cheating husbands and wives and never have to talk to anyone. By choosing to go for other kinds of cases, I’m setting
myself up – ourselves up – for a lot of complicated situations where you can’t talk to people in the way you’d like. You have to be tactful around them and understand they
might be using you as much as you’re hoping to use them.’

The second half of the biscuit was devoured as Jenny nodded shortly, before turning back to her screen, apparently satisfied. ‘There’s a lot of information about Franklin Loveless.
He sounds like quite the character.’ She beckoned Andrew over so he could see the computer screen over her shoulder. She flicked through a selection of webpages, showing a collection of
colourful posters. ‘He was a bit of a local celebrity when he was younger. Someone’s uploaded a scan to the Internet from a programme of this variety act he used to be involved with.
There are singers, magicians, comedians, impressionists: the usual. They used to perform in a few smaller music halls and theatres a couple of times a week. It seems quite local – Manchester
and Liverpool were the biggest cities but there were a host of smaller places around Lancashire and Yorkshire. Franklin used to do a mind-reading act.’

‘How long ago was this?’

Jenny ummed as she fiddled with the on-screen document. ‘Over thirty years ago. He would have been in his twenties at the time, so before Lara was born.’

‘What exactly did he do?’

‘It’s hard to tell because it’s a promotional thing. Look at his picture.’

Andrew peered around her to see a figure in a top hat and long black cape, arms outstretched extravagantly, like a penguin that was particularly pleased with itself. Franklin had a long, thin
face utterly unlike Lara’s but there was certain similarity.

‘You can just about tell Lara’s his daughter,’ Andrew said. ‘Same nose, same eyes. I saw her without the make-up today.’

‘All the programme says is that he’ll read your mind and help you speak to long-lost loved ones. I guess it’s one of those cold-reading things. I have no idea why people fall
for it.’

The printer whirred and Andrew collected the pages from the programme, flicking through them at his own desk. The show sounded very old-fashioned but understandable in the context that it was
before the days of widespread satellite and cable television. For a few quid, people got a night out and a host of entertainers. If half the acts bombed, the punters were still happy because of the
sheer number of performers. Aside from the photo of a youthful Franklin and the brief description, there was little else. Jenny was probably right that he was a cold-reader. Ask if there’s
somebody in the audience whose name begins with J, pick the oldest one and then blabber about how their mother or father had a message for them and you’d have people in the palm of your hand.
It would be even easier in the remnants of the industrial market towns it seemed like they toured. Tell a few people that money was coming their way and they’d go home happy.

Andrew glanced across to Jenny. ‘Is there much else?’

‘Not really. There’s a big gap until the next thing. How much do you know about tarot?’

‘Only what was in that James Bond movie with the voodoo.’

She looked at him blankly.

‘Have you never watched a James Bond film?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Okay, well, I don’t know very much about tarot other than it’s some sort of card thing where people claim they can read your future.’

‘That travelling act was thirty-ish years ago and probably ran for two or three years. Fourteen years ago, Franklin Loveless was sent to prison. I found two different news articles from
the time and another from a year or so later when he’s referenced from a separate story about someone else going to prison.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Fraud and tax evasion. He pleaded guilty, so no big trial. He was forty-two at the time. What’s interesting is that it’s really unclear how much of it was actually him. It
talks about his wife, Hari Loveless. They ran some sort of mystic business from their house in Cheetham Hill. He’d do the mind-reading, talk-to-your-dead-relatives thing and Hari would give
tarot readings. They weren’t done for that, they were picked up for not declaring all of the income.’

‘How long was he in prison for?’

‘I’m not entirely sure. He was sentenced to three years.’

‘What about Hari?’

Jenny’s dimple made a reappearance as she reached for another biscuit. ‘That’s the interesting thing. It looks like he pleaded guilty to take all of the blame. In the article
it mentions that charges were dropped against Hari Loveless because “prosecutors did not want to deprive her of the ability to raise her four-year-old daughter”.’

‘Lara.’

‘I suppose. The ages would match.’

‘So Lara grew up with her dad in prison for at least a year. That must have been tough.’

Jenny continued without acknowledging it. ‘Hari Loveless died six years ago in a car accident. There’s quite a lot about that on various news websites – it was that which
helped me find everything else. She was driving on Mancunian Way when a lorry flew across the central barrier and crashed into her head on. The other driver had been working through the night and
there was a prosecution of him and the company he worked for, plus they redesigned the entire stretch of road. The series of articles runs over a year or so but most of the detail is in the court
reports. Hari was killed instantly but her twelve-year-old daughter was in the back seat. Firefighters worked for over an hour to cut her free. She’s not named in any of the reports, probably
because she was only twelve, but the age fits Lara.’

Andrew found himself tugging unnecessarily at his sleeve as Jenny paused. ‘Her father went to prison when she was four and she was in the back of the car when her mother died in front of
her . . .’ He blew out loudly. ‘. . . poor kid. It’s no wonder she flips to being furious in a moment. If I’d been through all of that by the time I was twelve, I’d be
a mess too. And with her father dying last year too. It’s a wonder she managed to get herself to university.’

He stopped for a moment, remembering that she’d chosen the name Malvado for herself.

‘There’s more,’ Jenny added, almost impatiently. ‘At the bottom of one of these reports, there’s a bit you should read.’

She passed a print-out across from the
Manchester Morning Herald
. Andrew scanned through the details at the top about the accident but he felt a tingle as he reached the second page.

‘“The accident is the latest in a string of misfortunes to hit the Loveless family. Eight years ago, Franklin was sentenced to three years in prison for fraud offences, plus this
year is the thirtieth anniversary of Franklin’s brother, Mark, disappearing on his eighteenth birthday. He was never found.”’

Andrew peered up, meeting Jenny’s triumphant gaze. ‘Lara’s uncle disappeared on his eighteenth birthday?’

‘That’s what it says. Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Mark was two years younger than Franklin.’

‘How would the police have missed it?’ Jenny didn’t reply but Andrew wasn’t asking her anyway. ‘The Malvado name-thing might have confused them because she would
have been an orphan when Nicholas went missing but still . . .’

He reread the date on the report. Mark Loveless would have gone missing thirty-six years ago, so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that it might have been missed in among the
police workload. He and Jenny had only got this far by going in one big circle, finding out the significance of Lara’s chosen name, discovering her original name, tracing her parents and then
uncovering a solitary news report. At the time Nicholas disappeared, he and Lara were both eighteen – relatively normal teenagers out for a drink on his birthday. There were no particular
reasons to dispute her side of the story, plus, unfortunately, people went missing all the time. Most cases would never be reported by the media, with the police making the basic checks and then
hoping for the best. If the person’s bank cards, SIM card or passport were never used, then there wasn’t an awful lot they could do. With Nicholas, they had got somewhere with the
severed fingers find but digging up the woods was expensive and time-consuming. They would have hoped to quickly find a body but when it didn’t show up, it was no wonder someone had pulled
the plug.

Andrew read the article for a third time before he remembered something Keira had told him.

‘
. . . All sorts of different sects or people might have their own interpretations about various icons or numerology . . .
’

He spun in his chair to face Jenny. ‘Did you find anything else?’

‘That’s all I could see about the Loveless family. Now we’ve got the name, I can do the usual, credit checks and the like.’

‘Mark Loveless disappeared on his eighteenth birthday thirty-six years ago. Nicholas Carr went missing on his eighteenth birthday this year. What if there was another eighteen-year-old who
disappeared exactly in the middle?’

It was perhaps no surprise that Andrew and Jenny couldn’t find anything from exactly eighteen years ago. If they’d known the name of whoever might have disappeared,
they would have had something to go on. As it was, they didn’t have access to police records and the Internet didn’t prove very useful. There was no official list of missing people and
a host of charities with incomplete records. There definitely were eighteen-year-olds who vanished in the year they were looking at – every year in fact – but they had too little to go
on.

Jenny sat chewing on a pen, presumably as a replacement for biscuits or cakes. She suggested searching for the names they’d been able to make out from Kristian Verity’s contacts book
but they threw up nothing. Even Kristian Verity himself produced no results. The only thing they were sure of was that Lara was the sole remaining Loveless family member and that two people
connected to her disappeared on their eighteenth birthdays. Not only that, she’d chosen to name herself after a sort of mythical devil-like figure.

More pen-chewing, which couldn’t be healthy. Andrew would probably have to fill in a health and safety clearance form in case there was a danger of her choking to death on it, or getting
plastic poisoning, something like that.

She eventually removed the pen. ‘Do you know what happened to my backpack?’

‘The one we had at the garage?’

‘Exactly.’

‘It’s still at my flat. I keep meaning to bring it in.’

‘Can we fetch it?’ Andrew must have pulled a disapproving or confused face because she continued straight away. ‘It’s not for me. I’d like to check something that
we, er, borrowed from Kristian Verity’s stuff.’

Andrew didn’t have any better ideas but Jenny had never been to his flat. He could say he would pick up the bag and return it to the office but that would make it obvious he was trying to
avoid taking her there. He didn’t necessarily have a problem with Jenny being in his living space but it felt like worlds colliding: home and work life uncomfortably close.

Still, he didn’t have much choice. ‘Let’s go.’

Andrew found it hard to press the key into the lock of his flat without pausing to make sure there was no one else around. He peered over his shoulder and leant back, gazing
towards the end of the corridor: the corner from which Stewart Deacon had appeared a few evenings previously.

Next to him, Jenny sensed his unease. She nudged him gently with her elbow. ‘You okay?’

He turned the key and pushed ahead. ‘Yes.’

Inside, Andrew stood to the side, waiting for the inevitable reaction. Jenny followed him in and started unzipping her jacket before feeling the magnetic pull towards the window. She crossed the
floor, footsteps resonating, until she was in front of the glass, staring across the entirety of the city. Visibility was good, buildings and roads stretching into the distance, with the frosted
fields far beyond.