The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf (4 page)

“Those two?” He indicated the remaining Social Awesome employees: a suited woman with a blonde bob and a man in a hoodie, a mess all over. “The ones your boss told you to talk to?”

“Oh.” He was smiling at her again, wasn’t he? Was it because she’d cried in front of him? “I… yes, I guess?”

She saw Pete’s sister blasting her brother with the worst glare yet. Pretending not to notice, Angelina made her way across the open-plan mass of desks to that corner, near a huge window and a full whiteboard. There was a similar board in Hobson’s office, with writing left so long, it wouldn’t wipe off.

In front of it, at a workstation drowning in used notepaper, the guy in the hoodie wasn’t looking up at her. What was his name?

“Hi?” Angelina said, waving. “Matt?”

He remained motionless, as if hoping she meant someone else.

From behind her, the woman with the hair called out.
“Hey, Matt!”

He twitched, but not quick enough. A biro arced over Angelina’s shoulder and clattered onto Matt’s spacebar, he jumped backwards with a yell. As his head whiplashed from the desk, tiny earphones dropped out from under his messy hair and fell away.

Once his chair rolled to a stop, he sat for a second, before looking past Angelina. “Emily?”

“Sorry,” came Emily’s voice, “I think the little detective wants to talk to you.”

“Hi, yes, thanks.” Angelina moved towards the window to get out of the crossfire. “Hi, I’m Angelina, looking into William’s murder. I was wondering if either of you knew who might’ve done it?”

Her two interviewees stared at her — maybe a real detective would’ve used a more subtle, insidious and probing question?

Emily cracked first: “Well, I went on a date with him a couple of weeks ago, it was awkward but not so awkward I’d kill him.”

“Oh, okay. That’s good. But why did you do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” Angelina said, “no-one seems to like him, so why did you date him?”

“Because he was funny, because I only met him three months ago when I started here, he seemed interesting, and lastly, because it’s none of your business.”

“Well, like I said, we’re…”

“Looking into it, yes. Who hired you to do this, exactly? Are the police subcontracting?”

Angelina snapped. “Because it’s our job, and we want to. You don’t have to talk to us, but…”

“Alright, that’s all I needed, thank you.”

Emily turned back to her desk. Angelina looked to Matt, but he barely paused before putting his earphones back in. She should try and salvage the interview, shouldn’t she?

She’d taken one step towards his desk, hand raised to nudge his shoulder, when Hobson thundered out of his meeting with Edward Lyne. He grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her towards the exit. Thank God.

Making small attempts at waving to her new friends, she was soon pulled through the swing door, out to the corridor where they pressed the lift button. She almost opened her mouth, but Hobson shushed her with a single hiss. They stood like that until their exit arrived.

As the lift door closed, Hobson cut in before Angelina could say anything.

“I’ve no idea if Lyne did it. Okay?”

“Okay. I think Matt might’ve done it.”

“Any reason?”

“He’s pretty quiet.”

“Right.”

FOUR: Evening Plans

FOUR
Evening Plans

It was nearly eight as they weaved their way to the tube station in East London’s trendy Dalston area. Angelina tried small talk about the case, but Hobson was preoccupied with reaching the underground as fast as possible. Probably worried about catching
Hipster
if he breathed too much of their air.

She imagined Hobson, the middle-aged dull-suited giant, in skinny jeans and huge glasses, and stifled a giggle. Not that she needed to hide it; he was striding too far ahead to notice.

She staggered over a tiny bicycle chained to a lamppost, hooking her foot through the spokes and stumbling forward. As she tottered like a giraffe, the bike itself scraped and rattled around the pavement. She yelled out, not using any real obscenities, but Hobson still looked round.

“Choi. Watch where you’re going, you might damage that child’s bike.”

“It’s not…” Despite the soreness in her arches, she laughed again. “It’s not a
child’s bike
, it’s a BMX.”

“Ah, I see,” Hobson said. “I punched a cyclist once, he came clear off and hit the ground, but the bike kept going and took out the other guy I was chasing.”

Angelina kept smiling despite her pain. “That sounds amazing.”

“It was a better time, Choi. That shitty bike would never knock over a grown man.”

In the end, Hobson dropped his pace and walked alongside Angelina. Nearby men in cardigans stopped laughing at her, probably out of fear Hobson would knock them off their bikes too.

“So, Choi,” he said, “good news: Social Awesome are going to pay us to keep investigating this case.”

“Wow. That was what the Lyne guy wanted to talk about?”

“Yeah.”

She rolled the idea around her mind, as they approached the tube.

“Wow,” she murmured again. “Not sure how I feel about that.”

“Sadly, that was more or less my reaction.”

They stopped outside the underground and stood awkwardly, as if on an age-inappropriate first date.

“So, get on the train and go home.” He pointed into the station. “The bullshit continues at nine o’clock sharp tomorrow.”

“Okay then.” Angelina swung most of the way round on her ankle, before looking back at him. “Aren’t you getting the tube back to South London too?”

“If only.”

“You’re going to break into that other house where the dog came from, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Can I come?”

“Definitely not.”

Angelina almost protested, but reined herself in. Other, shitter teenagers might have complained, but she was sensible enough to pick her battles.

So she nodded at him and entered the station to zip back south. It wasn’t all bad news: with her flappy purple outfit and without the bloke cosplaying a gravedigger, she fitted right in on the escalator down to this particular tube stop.

*****

Markham Road at night, only a few hours since Hobson was last here, felt quiet. The paparazzi were missing, evidently this double murder wasn’t juicy enough. After all, the victims were a single guy in a studenty house share and some loser next door who
kept himself to himself
.

No, to get the presses printing, they’d need a dead kid, or at least a mutilated pretty woman. All that police tape around the two doorsteps was dropping off and sliding away.

For a moment, Hobson considered smashing his way into the other victim’s home. But that would be stupid at the best of times, and he was meant to be avoiding senseless violence. He bought this uncharacteristically expensive black suit to encourage himself not to get covered in dust and blood.

The target house was mid-terrace, joined to others on both sides, and the garden backed on to other people’s property. He could only think of one solution: turning back to the next residence, Hobson pounded on the door.

Ric McCabe answered quickly but with less obnoxious glee than before. He’d also dyed his hair from bright fire engine red to black. Did he think mournful hair would remove him from suspicion?

“Hello, um, Mister Hobson.” McCabe waved. “How can I help you this time?”

“Evening, McCabe.” He pointed over McCabe’s shoulder. “Won’t take up much of your time, just need to use the garden.”

“What for?” McCabe said, laughing in advance of his own joke. “Are you going to do a reconstruction? Did you bring a puppy and a whip?”

“Just routine stuff.” Hobson stared. “Nothing to worry about.”

Standard trick: make him feel like he’s the one being difficult. McCabe was a weakling, so Hobson got through to the garden in minutes. The guy tried to linger, but another look put an end to that.

For the second time that day, he peered at the dog track in front of him, fading as time passed. It was dark now, so he pulled out his torch to check his path through the tall grass to where the dog had entered. Once he reached the end, Hobson wrenched the fence slats aside and shoved his way through the jagged hole to the next garden over. It took effort to get his entire frame past the gap, Hobson being several times larger than a big wolfy dog, but in the end, he made it. The space only doubled in size, no-one would notice.

Whereas Pete and Ric’s garden was a mess through neglect, the dog-owner’s house hit the other end of the spectrum: beaten to death with over-use. Wheelbarrows full of rotten vegetables, metal pieces of engine, the stench of rust and a back door, hanging open.

Damn police, Hobson thought, they never clean up after themselves. Any moron could dash in there to destroy evidence, stash something, steal this bloke’s stuff, whatever they wanted. And hadn’t McCabe said there’d been no way for the dog to get out of the house?

He glanced again at the rubbish on the dead ground, including a pile of plastic sheeting knocked over, probably when the dog bolted. The fence looked even more rotten and brittle on this side, it wasn’t hard to see how the hound made it through. He inspected it with the torch beam for a few seconds, and then turned to go inside.

The back door opened into the kitchen. All these terraced places used the same blueprint. But the sheer level of mess was off the scale — Hobson thought McCabe’s unwashed dishes were bad, but this was rotting, disgusting, like everything had died. No wonder that dog had gone nuts — he was close to savaging someone himself.

There might’ve been a scattering of blood around too, but nothing was visible beneath the scum. Hobson would’ve held his nose, but he needed a hand free to open the next closed door, and the other one was busy with the torch. Knowing his luck, the police had missed a few bits of victim, and he was standing in chunks of brains.

Worst of all: he heard footsteps. Hobson froze and glanced back at the door to the garden. The noise was coming from inside the house, padding down the stairs and towards the living room — he assumed it was a living room behind this door, based on the layout of Pete and Ric’s place.

Glancing behind him, he put down the torch and grabbed the most sturdy looking frying pan in sight, ignoring the mess of brown goo slopping out of it onto the floor. At least it missed his suit and polished boots.

Armed and ready, Hobson seized the living room door handle, pushed and threw it open. The light was already on inside; his fellow intruder was standing in front of the sofa, among a mess of takeaway cartons and empty dog food tins. To his utter relief and extreme disappointment, it was somebody he already knew.

*****

Angelina slipped the key into the lock, twisting gently in the hope of not being noticed, or at least getting credit for
trying
not to make a noise. Unfortunately, when she pressed inwards on the massive wooden slab, it moved only a fraction before jarring.

The door latched into place with a stupid metal bar. She slapped it, hoping for a miracle, but no such luck. Not only did it barely move, but the noise got the attention of her mother. Well,
adoptive
mother.

“Angelina,” she hurried towards the door, “it’s a bit late isn’t it? After ten?”

“Yes.”

Her Mum pushed the door back into her face to disengage the bar. Once it moved back open, Angelina gazed into the bleak cushioning of home. Everything was beige and well-positioned — she’d almost rather live in the student houseshare hell of Ric and Pete.

“So,” her Mum said before Angelina even put her bag down, “how was your first day? Did you catch any criminals?”

“Well,
actually
,” Angelina said, “we’re investigating a murder.”

Her Mum’s smile was small and patronising before, and now it ebbed away to nothing. “Which murder? Not the one on TV with the dogs?”

Angelina’s heart sank. Her Mum was
such
a small-minded suburban white English person.

“Mum, come on, it’s fine, Mister Hobson is with me the whole time and he’s
massive
. No-one’s going to hurt me.”

“Oh, well,” she said, “can he fight off a rabid wolf?”

“We discussed that this morning!”

Her mother sighed and marched off back to the kitchen. Angelina followed, pleased to see the oven firing up for a late dinner. At least she wouldn’t have to cook for herself.

“So, you’re doing paperwork while your boss investigates the murder?” she said.

“Well, I met a few people too, you know, it’s important I learn, I thought we agreed I was doing this because it might be interesting for my psychology course…”

“No, Angelina,
you
said that, I told you it was silly, and then you went ahead anyway.”

“I…”

“Is this what you want to do, Miss Choi?”

“Well, yes Mum.” She nodded. “I’ll stay out of danger, I promise. You know, I’m sure Mister Hobson has researched what I’m legally allowed to do.”

Maybe. You never know.

“I don’t want to see you on the news… running away from explosions or something, Angelina. Remember, you’re only sixteen, some of these people might be dangerous.”

“Right. No running. Got it. Can I watch TV with Dad while I eat?”

Angelina’s mother sighed again, glanced at her daughter, then went to the freezer to get some fish.

*****

She was unmistakable to Hobson even in mostly-darkness: straight hair, black coat, that oh-so-tired expression. Grabbing the torch from the kitchen with his free hand, he took the first step inside the living room, still uselessly holding a frying pan.

“Hello, Ellie,” he said, trying not to sound like he ever panicked. She got her hand all the way inside her coat before identifying him.

She let it drop to her side, nice and casual. “John. I heard you were on this case. Surprised you haven’t called.”

“Yeah, I was getting to it.”

“Worried I wouldn’t pick up?” she said, with a small smile.

“Worried you wouldn’t be helpful.” Hobson strode into the room, kicking a few McDonald’s bags aside and trying not to hold his nose, in case it made him look weak. He tossed the frying pan onto an armchair, and stepped away as it sent up a cloud of noxious-looking mess.