Something Hidden (28 page)

Jenny patted the wall and sat. Edie glared at her but did the same anyway.

‘You know what this looks like, don’t you?’ she said, nodding at Andrew. ‘I’m sixteen –
sixteen
– and you’re a grown man.’

Jenny talked across her. ‘You’re having a conversation with me, Edie.’

The teenager stood again. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Fine, we’ll have this conversation with your mum.’

The two young women stared at each, neither wanting to give in, until Edie eventually plonked herself back on the wall next to Jenny.

‘Who was the lad?’ Jenny asked.

‘What lad?’

‘The one with the army coat and stupid sunglasses. And who was driving?’

Edie started to stand again. ‘I don’t know what you’re—’

Jenny gripped her arm and pulled her back. ‘Sit! We know, all right? We saw your rucksack on the back seat of the car. The purple and green badges were quite the giveaway. We’ve come
to talk to you before we do anything else. If you want to be Miss Know-It-All, then walk away and we’ll have to tell other people. If you want to have a conversation, then stop messing
around.’

Edie took her phone from her pocket and pressed the screen. ‘I’ve got to be at registration in fifteen minutes.’

‘So hurry up. What are you going to do with the six thousand you stole from your mum?’

‘What six thousand?’

Jenny leant forward. ‘
Really?
’

Edie threw her hands up. ‘Fine. It was supposed to be a joke, to teach her a lesson but it all . . . got a bit out of hand.’

‘So tell us.’

Edie sighed. She dropped her bag on the floor and stared at her feet. ‘There was this big cat show last month in Brighton. Mum and Dad went down on the Friday evening, leaving me alone for
the weekend. When I was younger, they’d make me go but I started causing problems to get out of it. I’d moan the whole way down, or spend ages talking on my phone, that sort of thing.
You’d do the same if it was you – it’s so boring, just lines and lines of bloody cats parading up and down. Then some old bag picks a winner and everyone spends the next six weeks
moaning about the decision until the next competition. It’s ridiculous.’

‘So you had the house to yourself while they were in Brighton?’

‘Right, and I invited a few mates over.’ She pointed in the direction in which her friends had gone. ‘There were a few from school, plus a few older lads we know. Nothing
stupid but we had some cider and a bottle of vodka. We were mucking about.’ She nodded at Jenny. ‘You know what it’s like, yeah?’

Jenny nodded, though Andrew wasn’t convinced that she did.

‘It wasn’t actually that messy. We had this party round Frankie’s house last year that got well out of hand. Jessie was sick everywhere, then Tia got grounded because she was
really pissed and called her mum a bitch. Frankie’s parents went mental, so we kinda learned our lesson. You still want to get shitfaced, just not so that our parents kick off.’

The way she explained it made it sound perfectly logical.

‘Anyway, we were mucking around and Frankie was like, “Your mum and dad love your cats more than you.” I just remember throwing this cup of vodka over him but then I was in the
toilet later on and . . .’ She paused, gulping and licking her lips. ‘Well, he’s right, isn’t he? They do.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Andrew said, speaking for the first time and getting a scowl for his efforts.

Edie turned back to Jenny. ‘We’d been drinking and Frankie was like, “Why don’t we do something about it?”’

Jenny nodded. ‘You could have just talked to her.’

‘Have you ever tried having a conversation with my mum? Everything she says revolves around those cats. That’s if she’s not taking Dad’s head off, or knocking things
over.’ She checked her phone again. ‘A few years ago, I used to be interested in dancing.’ She laughed humourlessly. ‘I have no idea what I was thinking. The only people at
school into dancing, drama and all that shite are the hippie lot always banging on about government-this, or let’s legalise drugs-that. You should hear them. Anyway, I was twelve or thirteen
and one of my old friends, Katie, got me into it before she moved away last year. We’d practise in her garage and had this whole routine worked out. There was this talent competition at the
school one Saturday and we wanted to enter. It was all right, just a bit of fun, a bit lame now, but we finished second. There were loads of kids there and Katie’s mum was at the back taking
pictures. Wanna know where my mum was?’

She didn’t wait for an answer.

‘Bristol. She and Dad had pissed off for some cat competition and didn’t return until the Sunday evening. When she got back, what do you think she said? Do you think it was,
“How was your competition, Edie?” or, “Sorry I didn’t call, Edie, what was it like staying at Katie’s house?” Or do you think it was, “Elvis and Presley
were robbed by some judges who voted for a different cat”?’

She threw her hands up, jabbing a finger in Jenny’s direction. ‘You want to know where her six grand is, well, bollocks to her. I earned that money by sitting at home by myself while
they pissed off around the country doting on those bloody things. When I wanted new shoes to dance in, she said they couldn’t afford it – but when she wanted to get security trackers
for the cats, they miraculously found the money.’

Jenny had recovered her usual composure, speaking reassuringly. ‘It’s still stealing, Edie.’

‘Too right it is. I’m not giving that money back. If you want to report me to the police, then do it. If you want to tell my mum, do that too. I couldn’t care less. I’ll
tell everyone who wants to know what I’ve had to put up with.’

Jenny’s gaze flickered to Andrew, and he knew this was a call he’d have to make. He wanted to be the adult, to stamp his foot and say that stealing, blackmail, kidnapping, whatever
anyone wanted to call it was wrong, but, if anything, he was on Edie’s side. He’d taken plenty of grief over the past week but it sounded like Edie had been putting up with it for most
of her life.

‘How did you get the tracking chips out?’ Andrew asked.

Edie turned to him, frowning. The flow of students passing the wall had become a trickle as it was almost time for the school day to begin.

‘I thought you didn’t care?’ Andrew added.

‘I don’t, but . . .’ Edie swallowed, staring back at her shoes. ‘Look, I’ve got exams in a few months. It started as a stupid idea when we’d been drinking and
got a bit out of hand.’

‘So how did you get the tracking chips out?’

She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t me. Frankie knows this girl who’s training to be a vet at Manchester Uni. He reckoned she owed him a favour, so she did it. It was all really
sterile, with gloves and cloths and . . . I don’t know, whatever else vets are supposed to use. She knew what she was on about, plus she wasn’t going to say anything afterwards, because
she’d get chucked off her course.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because I’m interested.’

She huffed and stamped her feet almost cartoon-style. ‘There’s this lad called Ricky who’s got a thing for me. He’s a couple of years older and lives down the road from
Frankie. I’d only met him a few times.’ She turned to Jenny. ‘You know what it’s like when a lad keeps asking you out.’ Back to Andrew. ‘I told him that if he
helped us look after Elvis and Presley, I’d go out with him.’ Andrew opened his mouth but she cut him off with a frown. ‘
Just
go out. That’s all.’

‘I wasn’t going to ask that.’

She wasn’t convinced. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time but we’d not really thought it through. Ricky couldn’t let Elvis and Presley out of his house in case they
ran away, or someone saw them, but they kept shitting everywhere because they were stressed out and he didn’t really know how to look after them. I went round each evening to make sure they
were fed. They weren’t mistreated, or anything. They just wanted to get outside. At first, we were going to leave them on the driveway in those carriers for Mum to find, figuring she’d
learned her lesson, but then you got involved.’ She checked her phone again and pushed herself up from the wall. ‘I’ve got to get going. I’m going to be late and I’m
already on a warning.’

‘Why did me being involved change things?’ Andrew asked.

Edie didn’t look up. ‘How much has she paid you?’ Andrew fluffed his words, taking a step back as Edie picked up her bag and rounded on him. ‘Exactly. I don’t
actually care – it’s just more money she was happy to spend on them. What’s new? I figured it was about time I got something for myself.’ She pushed past him, striding
towards the corner, turning and scowling. ‘Look, tell her, don’t tell her. I really don’t care any more. If you want to mess up my life and you can live with that, then it’s
up to you.’

She stormed around the corner, leaving Andrew and Jenny alone on the wall.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Jenny broke the silence. ‘I like her.’

Andrew laughed. Really laughed. If he’d been drinking milk, it would be spewing from his nose. ‘That’s perhaps the least surprising thing I’ve heard this week,’ he
said.

‘What are you going to do?’

Andrew turned, heading for the car and sighing. He didn’t want to make decisions like this. Edie was right – if he told her mum or the police, it probably would wreck her exams in a
few months. Regardless of the money, Margaret Watkins had seemed happy the previous day when the cats were returned.

‘You’re going to let her keep the money, aren’t you?’ Jenny said.

Andrew rubbed the mark above his eye. It had been aching non-stop since Iwan had jabbed it. ‘I’ve not decided yet.’

Jenny squinted at him, not saying it but confident she knew what he was going to do.

‘What next?’ she asked.

‘Now it’s time to get justice for Owen, Wendy and Fiona Methodist.’

‘How are you going to do that?’

Andrew took a deep breath. ‘First, there’s someone we need to speak to – then I sell my soul.’

‘Roses are red, violets are blue, you’ve got big tits, let’s go screw.’ Jenny giggled, peering up from the small yellow heart in her hand. ‘It
does have a sort of poetry to it.’

They were waiting inside a university building just off Oxford Road, where there was a giant pink heart attached to the wall. On a table nearby was a stack of heart-shaped yellow and blue sticky
labels. The idea was that students could write romantic messages on the stickers and then pin them to the bigger heart for one another to discover. True love would be found and everyone would live
happily ever after. Ahhhh . . . .

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on an individual’s viewpoint, as with so many well-meaning events and celebrations, it had rapidly descended into a tsunami of filth, with people
leaving increasingly disgusting or hilarious messages and no one in authority noticing.

Jenny plucked another yellow heart from the board. ‘There once was a girl from Billinge, who had a really long fringe. She had so much hair, that it didn’t stop there, it went right
down to her . . . oh.’

Andrew picked up a blue heart and flipped it around, reading something about ‘Sticky Vicky’. He pinned it back on the board. ‘Some of these kids aren’t even
trying.’

As Jenny continued looking through the messages, sniggering to herself, Andrew gazed around the rest of the reception area. Usually, he would have felt out of place but there were people of all
ages hurrying through and heading to class. Meanwhile, the university campus was a mass of purple and pink banners advertising that night’s Valentine’s Ball, which clashed with a
speed-dating event and a separate thrash metal gig at the Academy. Of the three, he’d have probably gone for the thrash metal.

Andrew was watching Jenny skim through the Valentine’s board when a tap on his shoulder made him jump. An Asian lad wearing jeans and a long-sleeved Man City goalkeeping top was nervously
bobbing from one foot to the other. ‘Are you Andrew?’

‘Ishan?’

‘Yep.’

They shook hands, with Andrew calling Jenny across. She made eye contact with Ishan, smiling and showing off her dimple. He was instantly nervous, avoiding her gaze and turning back to Andrew,
who pointed towards the lounge area next to the coffee bar.

‘Do you want something to drink?’

Ishan shook his head. ‘I’ve got another lecture in half an hour.’

They sat anyway, with Andrew doing the talking. It wasn’t always easy to judge lads in their teens or early twenties. Some preferred to talk to Jenny, bragging and spilling everything they
might usually keep to themselves. Others, like Ishan, were anxious around girls and drawn to Andrew, spotting one of their own.

‘I’d like to ask you about the day Owen and Wendy died,’ Andrew said.

Ishan shuffled nervously. ‘You said on the phone this was to discuss putting together a team for the mathlete Olympics.’

Andrew glanced at Jenny – her idea.

‘I’m trying to find out what happened on the day Owen and Wendy were killed,’ Andrew said. ‘You were there.’

Ishan stood but Jenny was on her feet quickly too. ‘Please don’t go, Ishan,’ she said. ‘It’s really important. This is just the three of us sitting on a couple of
sofas chatting. Nobody needs to know what we’re talking about. Andrew’s a private investigator and I help him out. We’re trying to find out what happened.’

He glanced between the two of them, then Jenny placed a friendly, perhaps flirty, hand on his shoulder. Ishan shivered nervously then lowered himself slowly back onto the sofa. ‘How do you
know I was there?’ he said.

Andrew nodded at Jenny, who reached into her rucksack, the amusement from before now gone. ‘There was so much written about the shootings that it was really hard to find out much of
anything. The papers and Internet sites pretty much all quote the same police press conferences and wire copy, which only mention two witnesses being on the scene.’

Ishan couldn’t sit still, staring towards the cafe counter and the door, fidgeting constantly. ‘They kept my name quiet because of
them
.’