by Nick Bryan
“Mister McCabe,” he said, “has the mess from the murder been cleaned up yet?”
“Afraid not,” he sighed, “they make you do it yourself, did you know that? The cops cart off your mate’s body, then you have to either scrub his guts up, or pay through the nose to get a crime scene cleaner in.”
“What, seriously?” Angelina said. “They just leave them there?”
“I know, it’s a fucking disgrace isn’t it? I mean, it’s not as if I killed him.”
“Thanks for clarifying, Mister McCabe. So you haven’t called a cleaner?”
“Well, y’know,” Ric said, “it took us long enough to arrange a guy when the washing machine packed up.”
“I can probably recommend someone if it’ll help.”
“We’re kinda hoping the landlord will take care of it, to be honest.”
“I see. You say we, is the other housemate in?”
“Pete, no, think he’s at work. Do you want to question him and stuff?”
“Would be nice to have a word. But I should probably look at your kitchen first.”
The thought of hard blood left untouched on a kitchen floor was scabbing over Angelina’s thoughts, but instead of wrenching the door open this time, Hobson turned to her.
“Choi,” he said, pulling out his wallet, “saw a Subway up the road, could you get me a meatball sub? Brown bread, no onions, coke. And whatever you want too.” He thrust a ten pound note at her.
She wasn’t sure whether to be thrilled or disappointed. “But… what about…”
“I’ve asked my friends and they say this is what interns are for. Get the sandwich. Mister McCabe can talk me through the murder. You’ve read up already, it’ll be boring for you.”
Telling herself it was fair enough, Angelina nodded. She took the money, turned and headed out the door with a wave, pulling her hood up to deter the paparazzi. It was unlike her to be conflicted about the prospect of a free Subway — last time her Mum had offered to buy one, she’d danced two full circuits around the living room.
As soon as she popped her head outside, the flashing and clicking started, but died down when they realised it was just some little girl. She sighed and headed back the way they came.
Must try not to look too hard at the meatball sandwich with globs of tomato sauce, in case it reminded her of crushed guts.
*****
“Seriously, Mister Hobson, you sure you’re a detective?” McCabe was facing the other way when he said it, so chanced a clever-clever smile. Hobson saw his smug face reflected in the living room window. “Because based on the suit, you’d be better off as an insurance salesman.”
“Right. Thanks.” Hobson ignored him and kept listening for the front door slam. He was old enough not to care about awkward silences — in fact, you could get a lot out of people by riding them longer.
The crash sounded, and Choi was gone. No shuffling to indicate she’d faked her exit to listen in. Time to get to work, then.
“Okay then, Mister McCabe,” he indicated the still-closed kitchen door with his entire hand, not even bothering to point with a specific finger, “let’s see the crime scene.”
“Um, sure.” McCabe said, suddenly shy. “Of course.”
More squeamish panic? Should he send McCabe off to pick him up some cake? He settled for an angry glare. McCabe was skinny and defensive, he’d bow down to sheer size.
Sure enough, Ric’s hand went straight to the door handle. It swung open to reveal, at long last, the scene of a brutal murder. It was a kitchen, the kind Hobson hadn’t lived with since his very early twenties — a few plates which obviously rotated on and off the drying rack, rusty cutlery, one browned-to-death baking tray, barely enough space to swing any pet, even a hamster.
However, it turns out there was enough room for a dog to maul an adult male to death with tooth and claw. They’d removed the whole body — few police were cartoonishly incompetent enough to leave a stray finger behind — but the blood splashed far and wide, dribbling towards the entrance down a slight incline in the floor.
It spattered down the fridge, rendering the magnetic poetry illegible, seeped into the loaf of half—chopped bread on the side, forming a new dark crust. Even with afternoon light flooding in, it was a defiled, scabby mess. Hobson couldn’t even find an unbloodied spot of floor to step inside.
“So,” Hobson said, “could you walk me through what happened here?”
“Well,” Ric said, “in case it wasn’t obvious, my housemate William was ripped apart by some sort of huge dog or wolf or whatever. Maybe a fox, I hear they’ve been trying to get into our houses and eat our babies for years now. Or that’s what the newspapers say anyway.”
McCabe snorted with laughter, Hobson refused to smile.
“Thanks,” he said, voice flat. “But maybe some more detail?”
“Do I actually have to go stand in the blood and walk it through? Because these are new shoes.”
“Just shut the fuck up and get on with it,” Hobson said, feeling his fingers twitch.
“At the same time? Because…”
“Mister McCabe. Now, please.”
“Right.”McCabe gulped and continued. “Okay. So I was out, came home and the police were all over my house.”
“Out where?”
“Pub. So turns out, William — that’s the dead one — had been in the kitchen making tea, when someone kicked the back door in, looks like, and let his dog in to do the dirty work.”
Tired of being dainty, Hobson ground his boots into the blood and entered. The clots sent up a thin red dust, but he’d stood in worse than that. Sure enough, the back door lock was smashed, didn’t even shut properly anymore. Only a plastic mop bucket on the floor kept it in place.
“So someone let the dog in.”
“Well, yeah,” McCabe said. “Unless it was a fucking werewolf, I suppose. It smashed through the fence in the garden,” he pointed towards the back of the house, “and around the same time it killed our neighbour on the other side too.”
“Yeah, the other guy.” Hobson stroked his chin. Looked down and saw a couple of red flaky pawprints pointing towards the back door.
Without asking permission, he kicked the mop bucket away, sending it scraping through the blood to a halt, then tugged the door open and stepped out.
A thin pathway led alongside the house, weeds sprouting between paving stones and in all other gaps. A few bloody smears next to the doorstep, and after that not a drop, never mind a pawprint.
“Someone picked it up,” he murmured.
“Yeah, but they can’t find it,” McCabe continued. “No sign of it here or next door, and all the doors were shut.”
Hobson ignored the idiot and swept up the garden, glancing over to the afore-mentioned hole in the fence. It looked like it’d been knocked through from the other side.
No obvious blood stains out here, although he’d struggle to spot them among all the mud and overgrown plants anyway. Unfortunately, the pavement finished, and all that remained was a jungle of tall grass and attacking foliage, snaking up then falling back down again. Still, that meant you could see a clear, blood-free trail of stamped-down plantlife where the dog had scythed through the garden.
Hobson nodded to himself, just as McCabe caught back up.
“Right. And you said you didn’t like the victim?” Hobson said, with another firm look.
“Well.” McCabe paused over his answer. “He was a sulky, difficult, messy guy. Not many people did. He worked with my other housemate, no-one at their office really liked him either.”
“Right, thanks. And the other housemate’s at work right now?”
“Pete? Yeah.”
Hobson gave a polite smile, which he only ever granted someone once their audience was at an end. “Good. Just give me the address of that company and I’ll leave you be for now.”
*****
When Hobson emerged back onto Markham Road, Choi was already coming the other way, munching on one
sandwich and carrying the other in a bag. She dawdled at first, but picked up speed once she noticed him.
“Choi.” Appreciative nod. “Thanks for the food. Come on, we’re off to meet some trendy brats.”
“What?” she said, almost spinning in place.
“Some social media marketing company in East London. Dead guy and third housemate both worked there, I’m told not many of them liked him. Maybe they whipped an envelope round the office to fund a hitman.”
“Oh.” She looked back at the two taped-up houses and small group of photographers in front of them. “Aren’t we going to look at where the other guy was killed?”
“Not yet,” Hobson said. “He lived alone, and I ain’t breaking in with the paparazzi watching.”
“Right.” Choi nodded, probably trying not to seem relieved. “So what did you make of that guy Ric?”
“Massive wanker.”
“Think he did it?”
“Probably not.”
“Why?”
“I’m just never that lucky.”
THREE
Social Awesome
“So it’s not an office block?” Hobson took another look at the mess of conjoined rectangles across the road. “Because it looks a lot like one to me.”
“No,” Choi read out from its website on her needlessly expensive phone, “according to this, the Inspiration Gestation Station is a shared space where ideas can thrive.”
“I see.”
The duo sat in a stained café, down the road from the idea-pod in question. If they were going to enter that hellish new age pit of self-love, Hobson had insisted, they were damn well going to collect their thoughts in a proper greasy spoon first, rather than the heavily upholstered coffee house Choi wanted.
This being shitty East London, of course, it took an eternity to even find an acceptable café.
“So why are we here?” she said. “Shouldn’t we be investigating the dodgy neighbour with the attack dog?”
“No. That isn’t the interesting part, Choi. Someone went to the trouble of kicking the door in to kill William Lane. That means motive, and it looks like half his life is in that shitheap over there.”
“And what are we waiting for?” Choi glanced across the road. “It’ll be the end of the day soon.”
“That’s the trick, Choi,” Hobson said. “Or my trick, at least. Catch people late enough in the day that they’re relaxing, but not so late they’ve started going home.”
She started tapping at her phone again — Hobson almost made a sharp comment about texting while the boss was talking, until he realised she was writing down what he’d said.
So he gave her a second to finish, draining his tea from the no-longer-white cup.
“Shall we go?” He pointed at the Inspiration Gestation Station, determined not to speak its name out loud. “Think we’re in the right time zone now.”
“Sure thing!” Choi slipped her phone away and leapt upwards at once, taking another nervous glance at nearby tables. A couple of the stares were lingering on the kid; maybe he’d been too successful in making her uncomfortable.
Shooting a glare at one particularly lascivious middle-aged man, he swept her out to the street. Considering how uncomfortable the Hipster Box Station was about to make him feel, hopefully karma would balance out.
*****
Hobson had never been famous. People rarely recognised him in the streets, and the ones who did either ran away or punched him. So it still came as a shock when he entered the Inspiration Gestation Station, and the receptionist’s eyes widened before the door even fell shut.
The foyer itself, behind the bland-looking glass door, was full of brightly coloured geometric shapes, murals of white-and-yellow flowers, TV monitors and a couple of vending machines. It was like a playground area for tall children. Hobson scowled at it all — Choi was grinning widely.
“Mister Hobson?”
The receptionist herself was a tiny, cutesy thing with long curly hair — the curveless figure of a cocktail stick and the dress sense of My Little Pony. Hobson didn’t like to rule anyone out at this early stage, but she might not be the killer.
He paced across the horrible green flooring — fucking Christ, was this fake grass? — and shook her tiny hand in his enormous one. “Hi, John Hobson. Nice to meet you. You’ve seen us on…” Reluctant pause. “On the tweets, I suppose?”
“I’m Jacqueline Miller — everyone calls me Jacq — yes I saw you on Twitter — I can’t believe what happened to William, you’ll catch the killer won’t you?”
“No, yeah. Just getting started right now, we’re here to talk to the victim’s colleagues.”
And oh Lord, Hobson thought, they’ve painted the sun on the blue walls, above the flowers and the actual fucking astroturf. This was the pasture of his nightmares.
“Of course, so you want to go up to Social Awesome on the third floor.”
“Social Awesome.” Hobson sighed. “I suppose so. Do I need to sign in somewhere?”
“Yes, Mister Hobson,” she pulled out a clipboard, “then you can head up to Social Awesome.”
“Can’t wait.”
He snatched the pen.
Without waiting for orders like she should, Choi decided it was her turn to question Jacq. He’d thought she was content staring at the awful murals. “So, um, you knew William Lane?”
“Not really, I mean, I just work down here at reception,” she said, “but we talked, I suppose, sometimes, about stuff.”
“And he didn’t, like, say anything to you?” Choi said.
“He never said much.” Jacq shook her head. “I’m sure he had his own problems, I don’t want to be mean about him when he’s only been dead a couple of days.”
“What,” Choi said, “problems like drugs? Or running a brothel?”
Hobson signed his name in a scrawl, then cut in. “What my intern meant to say was: did William Lane seem troubled at all in the last few days?”
“No, well, he had been leaving sooner after work, but these guys often have to go to parties and stuff, so I just thought, you know, busy. He was about the same as he ever was. He did, um, well…”
Hobson smacked the guest clipboard over to Choi, almost winding her. “Yes?”
“He’d been on a date with my friend Emily not that long ago. It didn’t work out, but nothing bad, just didn’t work. Can’t believe he’s gone, she was only talking about him the other day.”
“I see.”
“And she also works upstairs, so, y’know, maybe it had been awkward. Still, I can’t believe they would… you know, I just saw him a few days ago.”
“Bloody hell. Right.”
Choi finished off the form, and Hobson pointed at the huge double doors off to the right, with man-sized daisies painted on them. “Is this the lift?”
“Yes! Press for the third floor.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem! Hope you catch the bad guys!”
Jacq managed a wide smile, which Hobson and Choi returned awkwardly until the lift closed over their rictus faces.
“So, Hobson, think she did it?”
“Will you be asking me this whenever we meet anyone?”
“Did she, though?”
“Probably not, but hard to trust anyone that twee, innit?”
*****
After a day spent in a tiny office, a dark house and a stinking café where fat stubbly men stared at her and licked their lips, Angelina felt pure joy when she saw the offices of Social Awesome.
The foyer area was fun enough, with its field motif and cheerful sheep murals. She’d seen Google’s offices in pictures and always liked their primary coloured amazingness. She liked the sound of that working day too: sit on a cylindrical bean bag during meetings, look through a wall made of glass, play on-site table-tennis at lunch, deliver an inspirational talk on YouTube afterwards.
Upstairs, in Social Awesome itself, everything was clean! Open-plan! Freshly assembled wooden furniture! Of
fice chairs with wheels! White boards with TWITTER STRATEGY at the top! Enough employees to be busy yet unintimidating!
No, Social Awesome didn’t solve murders, but so far, Angelina wasn’t blown away by the glamorous world of detective work.
Angelina and Hobson took a few steps into Social Awesome, and a red-haired woman in dishevelled business casual noticed them. She seemed pissed off about looking away from her computer, and seeing the guests responsible only made it worse.
“Hey, are you Hobson?” she said.
Hobson didn’t help by sighing. “Yes, I am. And you are?”
“I’m Lettie Vole, I’m office manager here,” she got up from her seat, striding around the desk to shout at them, “and you vultures can fuck off back where you came from.”
“Okay, look, Ms Vole, we’re just trying to…” Hobson began.
“Pick up Twitter followers from William’s murder? Look, he may have been a bit of a nob, but he was our nob, and I’m not going to let you cash in. You’re like those lawyers on the TV, telling people they could claim a huge pay-out from the accident they had.”
There was a pause. Angelina almost blurted out a tearful apology, but Lettie Vole continued: “Only worse, because at least those accidents aren’t fatal since people are still alive to claim on them.”
That seemed to be it. Hobson didn’t have much to say, although he did give Angelina one of the now-familiar I Told You So glares.
“Look, Lettie,” Angelina said at last. “I’m really sorry, I was just trying to…”
She was on the verge of crying now. Not how she’d wanted her first day to go. Between Lettie shouting and her own high-pitched squeaks, the other four people in the office couldn’t help but watch.
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m the one who did the Twitter thing.” She was dying on her feet. “Hobson was just humouring me because it’s my first day. We’ll go.”
“Sorry,” said a voice from off to one side, “I couldn’t help but overhear — that was your Twitter strategy?”
Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, Angelina looked round. There was a guy there, casual shirt, same shade of red hair as Lettie, small pointy face. “Um, I guess,” she said. “Don’t know if it was exactly a strategy.”