‘How was it taken?’ Andrew asked.
‘It was at BD Music in the Northern Quarter. The man who owns the shop is renowned for quality repairs and restorations. He’s a good friend and is mortified by what happened. I want you to know that I do not blame him in any way for the outcome. Someone broke in from the alley at the back of his shop.’
Braithwaite reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out a small silver USB memory stick. He passed it to Andrew, who flipped it over. Aside from the manufacturer’s name, there was nothing written on it.
‘What is it?’ Andrew asked.
‘You’ll find out.’ He jabbed a finger towards the pitch. ‘I don’t care how you go about things, but I do not want you talking to the shop owner. Find another way.’
Andrew didn’t feel the need to point out that he hadn’t actually agreed to find Braithwaite’s violin. It wasn’t as if he was going to turn him down. He wasn’t that brave.
Down on the pitch, the players trotted off towards the changing rooms. The rows of sky-blue seats were now around a quarter filled.
‘If I find out who took your violin, what are you going to do to the person who took it?’ Andrew asked.
‘I don’t necessarily need names – I just want what’s mine.’
‘If I can’t talk to the owner and you won’t tell me what’s on the pen drive, what do you think I can do?’
Braithwaite reached across and patted Andrew’s cheek. Although he did it lightly, there was a solidness to his touch, letting Andrew know he was capable of something much harder. Andrew pulled away. ‘You’re an investigator, Mr Hunter – a good one from what I’ve seen – with a clever assistant—’
‘Don’t bring Jenny or anyone else into this.’
‘So don’t disappoint me.’
There was a thorny silence in which Andrew felt as if everything was at a crossroads. He didn’t want to work with, or for, Thomas Braithwaite. He wanted nothing to do with the man – but perhaps, if he could find the damned violin, it would put an end to their business. He had thought the same thing after getting evidence of Max Grayson’s drug-dealing.
One more job.
Just one more job.
But how many one more jobs would there be?
‘If I do this,’ Andrew said, ‘we’re done. No more “one final thing”. No more visits from your ape.’
Braithwaite laughed. ‘I’m sure Iwan would appreciate being called an ape.’
‘I mean it.’
Braithwaite reached into his other inside pocket and took out a small photograph. ‘I don’t like failures, Mr Hunter,’ he said, passing the picture across.
The photo showed a browny-orange violin. The sides were slightly battered and two strings were missing. It looked old and the only marking that distinguished it was a dark ‘LK’ scratched into the wood next to the chin rest.
‘What does LK stand for?’ Andrew asked.
‘Louis Kleinholt – the person who made it.’
Andrew spent another second or two eyeing the photo and then pocketed it. The afternoon was not what he’d expected – and the violin made things all the weirder. He stood to leave but Braithwaite held an arm across him, though didn’t stand himself.
‘Stay and watch the match – free drink, free food. A game of football.’
‘Football’s not really my thing.’
‘Fine – but if you wait around until after the match, if you’re really lucky, I’ll introduce you to Jack Marsh.’
Eleven
Andrew sat on the balcony throughout the match, not entirely sure what was going on. One team scored, then the other, then the other team again. There was lots of shouting and, in the end, Thomas Braithwaite didn’t seem too pleased about the result – which was at least one thing Andrew enjoyed about the day. Iwan prowled throughout at the back of the small row of seats. He didn’t say a word to Andrew, didn’t need to because his beady stare said it all.
After the match, Braithwaite’s friends disappeared, full of backslaps and boozy thanks. Braithwaite himself was tipsy, eyes slightly glazed, speech not quite as crisp as Andrew had known before. Iwan was as alert as ever.
Despite his state, Braithwaite knew where he was going. He led Andrew and Iwan out of the box and along a maze of corridors, flashing some ID card to a couple of security types and eventually emerging in front of a door marked ‘Players’ Lounge’. Inside was a large hall, lined with comfy soft chairs and more tables of food. Large televisions were pinned all around, each showing what appeared to be one long loop of various goals being scored, intercut with a woman in an impossibly tight dress pretending to be excited about it. A wide, well-stocked bar was opposite the door, but waitresses were flitting around with more drinks anyway as old men in suits mixed with the players and their wives.
Braithwaite pulled Andrew to the side, nodding towards an area underneath one of the televisions, where a suited Jack Marsh was tucking into a plate of chicken. In the seat next to him was an older woman with a grey bob of hair and sky-blue trouser suit. On the other side, a tall black man was tapping away on a phone. His suit was so sharp that looking at it was like being punched in the face.
‘There’s your man,’ Braithwaite said.
‘Who are the other two?’ Andrew asked.
‘His mother, Eloise, and his agent. Would you like an introduction?’
Braithwaite stepped forward but Andrew didn’t move. ‘I’ll figure it out,’ he said.
With a shrug and a glance to Iwan, Braithwaite replied, ‘Suit yourself’ and then headed off to the far side of the room, where he backslapped and said hello to a player Andrew didn’t recognise. They were soon chuckling away like lifelong friends, which, perhaps, they were.
Andrew found himself a seat in the corner of the room and took out his phone, using it as a shield that allowed him to watch the room while making it look like he was eyeing the device. After a few moments, another player joined Jack by the television. They chatted and laughed together, before the agent stood and hurried from the room, phone to his ear.
On the other side, Braithwaite had found a group of people he clearly knew – a mix of players and older men. Braithwaite continued to drink, with Iwan nearby, watching but saying nothing.
When Jack finished his food, he left the mucky plate on the floor next to his seat, muttered something to his mother and then headed off towards a separate group of largely women. Men outnumbered women in the lounge by at least two to one and, though some of the females were clearly wives and girlfriends, there was also a small number of women seemingly unattached. They were wearing short, identical dresses in the colour of a team sponsor. Jack homed in on them like one dog to another dog’s arse, full of smiles and hands-in-pockets boyishness.
When he’d been sitting between his mother and agent, Jack had been surly and silent, but in among the women, he was another person. He’d touch one of the girls on her lower back, then lean in to hear what she had to say, before firing back with something of his own. Some laughed, some either didn’t know who he was or didn’t care. Eventually he seemed to settle on a woman with long raven hair that curled along her back. He whispered something in her ear and she giggled girlishly, playfully pushing him away with her well-manicured fingers and then leaning in herself to say something back to him. Of all the things he might be, Jack Marsh was definitely a ladies’ man.
Andrew continued to watch for a few minutes, before realising that he was in danger of standing out. He was by himself, staring at a phone screen – and if anyone challenged him about who he was, he wouldn’t really have an answer.
First, he sidled to the bar, ordering a sparkling water and trying to listen in to whatever Jack might be saying to the woman. All he could make out from them was a series of giggles, which was drowned out by the general hubbub around the room.
Unsure what else to do, Andrew crossed towards the televisions and the comfy seats, sitting in the spot where Jack had been a few minutes before. Eloise
Marsh glanced up to him, didn’t smile, and looked the other way again.
‘Hi,’ Andrew said.
She turned back to him, eyes narrow. ‘Hi,’ she replied, offering the most watery of watery smiles before once again looking away.
‘My name’s Andrew.’
‘If you want to say hello to him, just do so. You don’t need me to introduce you.’
‘Sorry…?’
She spun back, eyes rolling. ‘Look, he might be my son, but if you want an autograph or some ridiculous “selfie”’ – she made bunny ears – ‘then you don’t need me to wave him over and make some ludicrous introduction. Just go and say hello.’ Eloise glanced over towards where her son still had his hand on the lower back of the raven-haired woman. ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Well, you might want to give him a few minutes.’
Her tone was pure Manc, dripping with a hint of brick-through-your-window aggression.
‘I was more interested in talking to you,’ Andrew said.
Eloise scanned him once more, this time lingering on his face. ‘Do I know you?’
‘No.’
‘You a journalist or something?’
‘I’m a private investigator.’
She spat out a breath. ‘That’s a new one. Some wannabe copper, eh? What do you want?’
‘I’d like to ask you about Anna Applegate.’
For a moment, everything froze and then Eloise swore so loudly that everyone turned to look.
Andrew only had a moment to act, holding his hands out to show he meant no harm and saying quickly: ‘I’m trying to help.’
One of the security officers from near the door was marching across and Jack Marsh had even removed his hand from the woman’s back to turn and stare.
Eloise eyed Andrew suspiciously and then held up a hand. ‘It’s fine,’ she called across to the burly bouncer, who frowned and then turned in a circle, seemingly unsure what to do next. Eloise leaned forward, keeping her voice hissingly low. ‘If you’re working for Anna Applegate, then I am politely asking you to leave – but I won’t remain polite for long. That woman is a liar. She’s trying to destroy my son’s reputation.’
‘If you’re referring to her website, then, as of last night, I believe it’s offline.’
She shuffled to face Andrew properly, once again examining his features, taking her time. ‘Assuming that’s true, you’ve bought yourself one minute of my time.’ Eloise slipped her sleeve up and peered down to a sparkly jewel-encrusted watch. ‘Tick-tock.’
Andrew tried to speak clearly, even though he was trying to get his words out as fast as possible. ‘Anna Applegate doesn’t believe the official version of what happened to her daughter. I know you might think that involving me means she wants us to dig up dirt on your son, or try to implicate him in some way – but, if you look at it from another way, the two of you actually want the same thing.’
Eloise’s neck snapped round like a rubber band pinging. ‘She wants to destroy my son.’
‘She wants to know what happened to her daughter. If your son is nothing to do with that, then finding the truth will help you both.’
‘My son did nothing to that girl. The police cleared him.’
‘That’s right – but the rumours about Jack haven’t gone away. If I can find out what happened, Anna will have her closure and those whispers about your son will disappear.’
She paused, breathing in through her nose and glancing over Andrew’s shoulder towards her son. ‘What makes you think the truth is anything other than her stupid daughter falling in the canal?’
‘I don’t know – perhaps that is what happened. All I want to do is prove that one way or the other.’
‘And you’re better than the police, are you?’
Andrew shrugged. ‘Sometimes…’
Eloise looked down to her watch again and then dropped her wrist. ‘That’s your minute.’
‘I’ve said all I have to say.’ Andrew dug into his pocket and removed a business card. He passed it over and Eloise glanced at it quickly. For a moment, Andrew thought she was going to rip it up, but she dropped it into the bag at her side and then turned to look past him towards her son.
‘You don’t seem to be very good at pissing off,’ she said.
‘Um…’
She nodded at the door. ‘Take the hint.’
Twelve
Andrew had fallen into something of a sorry Saturday night routine. Television was full of talent shows in which the word ‘talent’ was a questionable term, plus Z-listers in sequins. Jenny would likely call him a snob for those opinions, but he suspected she was probably trying to wind him up.
Living in Beetham Tower did at least give Andrew another form of entertainment. It was the tallest UK building outside of London and, though it wasn’t quite people-watching given how high his flat was, Andrew had developed a fascination in watching the dots below scuttling from place to place.
By the time Andrew had finished a bottle of beer, he realised an hour had passed. It was a little after eight in the evening and the sun had almost gone, leaving a murky blue haze clinging to the horizon. The street lights were dotted deep into the distance, before the darkness of the countryside took over.
Andrew had been doing his best to forget about Thomas Braithwaite since their afternoon at the football. He didn’t want to work for him but had no other solution. What was he going to do? Go to the police himself? He had friends in the force – one in particular – but he wouldn’t even know what to tell her.
As he fumbled with his jacket, Andrew found the memory stick Braithwaite had given him. His creaky knees and back had a grumble about him getting up and then he retrieved his laptop. It only took a moment to figure out that the drive contained a single video file.
The first shot was from the inside of a shop, showing the back door. A few frames later, there was an explosion of splinters and then three people burst through. They were each wearing hoods, with scarves across their mouths. One was a bit chubby, another taller and thinner, with the final one somewhere in between.
As the angle changed to a wider one from a different camera, Andrew could see it was from a music shop, presumably BD Music in the Northern Quarter. A piano was against one of the walls, with two shelves of music books adjacent. A full drum kit was set up on a slightly raised platform close to the window, with racks of guitars at the back. There were brass instruments Andrew didn’t know the name of, plus a xylophone next to the counter. The xylophone seemed like a hell of a lot of fun.
The chubbier of the men had a hammer, which he instantly embedded in the till. He’d clearly heard the proverb about trying again if a first go wasn’t a success, so thrashed away at it another half-dozen times until the drawer exploded with a spray of banknotes. Andrew didn’t need to be a crime expert to know that robbing shops had largely gone out of fashion because so many people in current times chose to pay on a card. The robber held up a roll of receipts and then dumped them on the floor, before stuffing what little cash there was into his pocket. Relatively speaking, given the risk they’d taken to break in and the potential prison sentence for doing so, the money wouldn’t be worth it. That left the obvious question as to why this trio would be robbing a music shop. There would surely be more lucrative spots to break into?
The footage continued to roll and, as would be expected, there were many items that couldn’t be stolen. Wheeling a piano down the road would be conspicuous to say the least – although there were few sights in Manchester that Andrew would find impossible to believe.
He had seen robberies that weren’t robberies in the past, scenes in which something wasn’t quite right. Here, it felt like three incompetents not realising they’d made a mistake until it was too late. One of the men stopped close to the shelves of music books, plucking off an armful and then saying something to his mate, who shrugged.
Why were they stealing music books? Could they really be that valuable?
The chubby man with the pocketful of money
walked with his shoulders hunched forward and his head drooped, as if he hadn’t entirely evolved and still had a few strands of primate DNA about him. He grabbed three flutes from a rack behind the counter, clasping them under his arm and then crouching down and standing back up with a trumpet in hand. The taller, skinny man was wearing a hoody so loose that it was almost down to his thighs. On a Milan catwalk, it might be some new look for the season – the flabby backside – but on a slightly grainy CCTV image, it looked pretty silly. He walked along the row of instruments at the back and then ducked out of sight behind the counter. He emerged with a violin case, a second trumpet and a ukulele. The trio looked at each other and then scarpered back the way they’d come.
Andrew rewound the footage and watched the final part again. If the violin had been stolen to order, then the thieves had done a good job of hiding their intentions. They’d not hunted around for the case, it had been almost an afterthought for the man with the baggy hoody. The one who’d robbed the till had already looked under the counter, picking out a trumpet instead of the violin.
Braithwaite had said that the thieves were ‘street kids or estate urchins’ and it was hard to argue with the sentiment, if not the choice of words. His contacts would largely be in the Liverpool area, so it was perhaps not a surprise he’d come to Andrew to find the culprits in Manchester.
It was still very odd, though. Were kids nicking violins nowadays? In Andrew’s youth, it had been cans of lager and porno mags. Perhaps the city’s criminals were going upmarket?
Andrew clicked the video back to its beginning and set it to run again. The man with the hammer was just getting tucked into the till when Andrew’s phone started to ring with a number he didn’t recognise. He swiped to answer and an abrupt woman’s voice stung his ear.
‘Mr Hunter?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is Eloise Marsh. I’m calling to tell you that you’re on.’ She asked if he had a pen and then read out an address to the south of the city in the Wythenshawe area. ‘Come to the house tomorrow at six p.m.,’ she added. ‘This is a one-time offer – so don’t be late.’
Something Buried: An absolutely gripping mystery thriller Page 8