Something Hidden: A totally unputdownable murder mystery novel (Andrew Hunter Book 2)

by Kerry Wilkinson

  The shop owner plucked something from his wound and dropped it on the floor as his gaze continued to flit between his workbench and the shop front, before finally settling on Owen. His tone was flat, emotionless, eyes unblinking.

  ‘I should probably call the police.’

  Two

  Monday

  Andrew Hunter jammed his hands deep in his pockets, ducked his head down and bustled towards his office in a not-quite-running, not-quite-walking kind of way. The chilled wind bristled through his mousy definitely-not-ginger, definitely-not-thinning hair.

  Seriously, what was the point of February? Somebody had obviously made the decision to ram Valentine’s Day in there to give couples something to do but, apart from that, why bother? November was shite – everyone knew that. It got dark early, it was always cold, if you lived in Manchester – which he did – it would spend most of the time pissing down, but at least Christmas was around the corner. There’d be lights threaded through the city centre and a general sense of optimism as everyone looked forward to that golden week between Christmas and New Year, in which they could go on a seven-day drinkathon and not care about work. January was rubbish but at least it was a new year, with shops flogging anything they could on the cheap, something different on the telly and the memories of Christmas. But February? It was just there: a waste of everyone’s time. Plus this February was colder than usual – which was saying something for the ice-ridden north of England. Quite frankly, February could sod off. Bring on the spring, with bouncing baby bunnies, early blooming daffodils, and… okay, it rained a lot in spring too – but at least it was a degree or two warmer.

  Frost clung to the shadows along the cobbled alley as Andrew hurried from his parking space to the office. It was only a few hundred metres but more than enough in this weather. A biting breeze sizzled around the tightly packed buildings, whistling into the minuscule gap between Andrew’s shirt and coat and sending a new wave of shivers bristling through him.

  Brrr.

  Bloody February.

  As he reached the corner and turned onto the street that housed his office, Andrew glanced up, spotting the hazy shape on the steps ahead. At first he thought it was a crumpled bin bag but then the outline moved, sending a thin spiral of breath into the atmosphere. It was a girl or a young woman, somebody small, with arms wrapped around her spindly legs, which were tucked into her chest. She was wearing a purple bobble hat, with long, dark hair peeping out at the bottom. All elbows and knees and seriously underfed.

  Another breath disappeared into the ether as Andrew reached the front of his office, towering over the shrunken figure.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  She peered up at him through sleep-deprived half-closed eyes, her voice a harsh croak in the cold. There was a politeness to her tone that wasn’t forced. ‘Are you Mr Hunter?’

  ‘Yeah, I, er… it’s Andrew.’

  Andrew stepped backwards as the girl clambered to her feet. She was young: twenty-one at the most but probably not even that. She was wearing a thin jacket and shivering uncontrollably under the northern onslaught. After stepping around her, Andrew unlocked the door and held it open, offering a thin smile as he turned off the alarm system. The girl was brushing grit from the back of her trousers, stretching her legs and suppressing a yawn. Her skin was white, almost grey. How long had she been outside? It had been below freezing the previous night and it looked as if she’d slept on the street.

  She tried to smile but her jaw clicked and she winced as she wrapped her arms around herself. When she spoke, her teeth chattered. ‘You investigate stuff, don’t you?’

  Andrew nodded towards the stairs beyond her. ‘Let’s get you upstairs first – the heating’s on up there and you look, er…’

  He didn’t finish the sentence.

  The office wasn’t quite cosy but it was certainly warmer than the hallway. As Andrew fussed around putting the kettle on, the girl sat next to the radiator, splaying her fingers wide and taking deep breaths. Andrew wondered if she’d say anything else but she seemed happy to enjoy the temperature. He fished a pint of milk from the back of the mini-fridge and straightened the pile of cardboard folders next to his computer, before crossing to the other desk and taking a packet of Jammie Dodgers from the bottom drawer. He pulled apart the wrapper and passed the packet to the girl, offering a ‘go on’ as she asked silently if he was really giving them to her.

  She ate slowly, nibbling at the layers and devouring one crumb by crumb, not allowing anything to fall.

  ‘You can have another,’ Andrew said. ‘They’re Jenny’s… my assistant’s. She’s got packets and packets of the things in her drawer. I don’t know how she eats so much.’

  The girl nodded eagerly, eyes darting towards the open packet next to the radiator and taking a second biscuit as the kettle clicked off.

  ‘Do you want a tea?’ Andrew asked. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Tea.’

  ‘Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘Just milk.’

  Andrew made three identical teas – no sugar, don’t go mental with the milk – plopping one on Jenny’s unoccupied desk; resting one on the radiator next to the girl; and wheeling his chair over so that he was sitting next to her, before looping his fingers through the third. This is how you got through Mondays in February.

  The girl smiled properly, holding the mug underneath her bottom lip and sucking on the warm fumes. ‘I’m Fiona.’

  ‘You look cold.’

  She shrugged and took a sip of the tea. She wasn’t looking at Andrew, more gazing through him. ‘I saw your name in the paper the other month and got your office number from the operator.’

  ‘Are you… homeless?’

  Fiona shook her head. ‘I can just about pay my rent but that doesn’t include bills, so I don’t put the heating on. You know what it’s like with British Gas.’

  It wasn’t just Andrew who knew – everyone did. In a public popularity poll, energy companies were ranked below the Nazis, Piers Morgan, and that bloke who answers his phone in a cinema.

  ‘I’ve been saving,’ she added.

  ‘For what?’

  She wriggled on the seat, thrusting a hand into her back pocket and pulling out a wad of crumpled five- and ten-pound notes, before dropping them on Andrew’s lap. He put his tea on the floor and then picked up the money, flattening the notes between his fingers until he’d counted the sixty quid, and placing them on the radiator.

  ‘I’m not going to take your money, Fiona.’

  ‘But I need your help.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  Fiona opened her mouth to answer but the door rattled open. A bristle of chilled air followed and then Jenny came in, complete with a Morrison’s bag for life. Her black ponytail swung from side to side as she closed the door, spinning on the spot, dimple on show.

  ‘You’ll never guess what this guy said to me on the bus… oh…’

  Her brown eyes locked on Fiona, instantly examining the scene: freezing cold girl, sixty quid, mugs of tea, Jammie Dodgers.

  She held up the bag, offering it to the other girl: ‘I’ve got some choccie biscuits if you want – and some Mini Rolls. I’m Jenny, by the way.’

  Andrew gave her a barely there nod to indicate all was well as Fiona held up her half-nibbled biscuit. ‘I’m okay.’

  Jenny motioned towards the door but Andrew shook his head, nodding at her chair. Plenty of room at the inn.

  ‘What is it you need?’ Andrew tried again.

  Fiona stared into the tan-coloured tea. ‘Everyone’s saying my dad did something that he didn’t. They all hate him, so everyone hates me. People spit at me in the street. I used to live in Oldham but my old landlord threw me out, so I’m living in this horrible place where I can’t afford the heating. I had a job in this office but no one wanted to work with me – they wouldn’t even talk to me. I thought that if I came to the city centre, there’d be more places to hide, more people, that they wouldn’t know me
.’ She stopped, breathing and sniffling, then adding: ‘But there’s always someone…’

  She stopped for another bite of the biscuit. Her sentences had come out so quickly that Andrew needed a few moments to take it all in. Before he could ask any follow-up questions, she was off again.

  ‘I had to use a fake name to get the new flat just in case – and then I gave my neighbours a different name, not that we talk to each other anyway. Then my CV’s all over the place. I can’t use my actual name, which means none of my exams are going to show up if they check – plus I can’t ask for a reference. I just…’ She stopped again, exhaling heavily and blinking rapidly. ‘I’m not sure what to do.’

  Andrew met Jenny’s eyes across the room but she shrugged in answer to the silent question. She didn’t know who Fiona was either.

  ‘Who’s your father, Fiona?’

  The girl shook her head, sloshing a drip of tea over the top of the mug onto her finger. She winced but didn’t put it down. ‘You don’t understand – it wasn’t him. I know how it looks… I know what everyone says happened but he wasn’t like that. He was just a bit sad – anyone would be if they’d been through what he had.’

  Fiona tried to drink from the mug but her hand was shaking so much that she spilled the tea across her chin. She gasped, rattling the chair backwards and dropping the almost-finished biscuit. She scrambled forward to make amends but Andrew already had a cloth in his hand. He took the tea from her, placing it on the table next to them and briefly rested a reassuring hand on her knee. It crossed his mind – as always – that this was rather creepy, but then Andrew always thought that. Accidentally glance at a girl on a bus: creepy. Give a homeless person who just happens to be female some change: creepy. Offer a girl directions when she’s clearly lost: creepy. Ask a crying woman outside a club if she’s all right: creepy. Sometimes – or a lot of times in his case – a man could try to be nice to a woman without there being any more to it than that.

  Andrew tried to make eye contact but Fiona was doing all she could to avoid looking directly at him. She had found a spot on the wall behind him instead.

  ‘You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,’ Andrew said, ‘but if you want help, we’re going to need to know.’

  Fiona nodded pitifully, one arm hugging herself, the other dabbing at her chin.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s just… my dad was Luke Methodist.’

  Three

  Sixteen Months Ago

  Ishan Chopra was bored. There was no getting away from it: mathematics was really dull. It was one of those degree subjects he’d thought his parents would like him to take, something he didn’t find too hard, a subject which would hopefully help him find fortune, if not fame. That might all be true but it was as interesting as watching paint dry, or staring at grass growing. The people were nice, but still…

  He gazed down at the lecture amphitheatre from the back row as the screen flipped from one PowerPoint slide to the next. He would download the notes from the uni portal later and might get around to reading them at some point before the end-of-semester exams. There really was no reason to turn up, except to meet the attendance criteria.

  Below, the lecturer was droning on in a monotonous tone of voice, hypnotic in the sense that it made a person feel sleepy… very sleepy…

  A gut-wrenching yawn forced its way up from Ishan’s stomach until it felt as if his head was going to split in two, not that anyone around him noticed he was on the brink of hibernation. A handful of maths nerds bashed away on their laptops and tablets, with a few others actually using a pen and paper to take notes.

  Unbelievable.

  Most of the class wallowed in their boredom, leaning back into their seats and strapping themselves in for at least another ninety minutes. Ishan often wondered what might happen if he smuggled in a small rodent. There were enough of them making a racket by the bins at the back of his flat for him to be able to catch one. He could wrestle it into a rucksack, wait until the lecturer started sending everyone to sleep, and then set it free. If that didn’t liven up proceedings then nothing would. If not a rodent then how about—

  Bang!

  Bang!

  Everyone turned as the sounds boomed from somewhere behind the theatre. The lecturer stopped speaking, mouth half-open as if he had forgotten what he was talking about. In an instant, Ishan was awake. He’d heard those noises a few months previously when he and his friend Vikram had been chased home from the city centre after dark. Vikram blamed a backfiring car, saying they shouldn’t worry about contacting the police, but Ishan knew the truth.

  One or two people near the back started to stand but Ishan was ahead of them, sliding along the aisle until he was next to the door. He opened it a sliver, peering out into the empty corridor.

  Bang!

  The third shot was louder than the first two, with a loud gasp ricocheting around the theatre. Ishan took a moment to compose himself, waiting to see if there would be a fourth noise, before pushing his way through the doors into the hallway and slowly approaching the front of the building. Through the wire mesh glass, he could see the path beyond, with long rows of white paving slabs reflecting the October sun. The jeweller a couple of streets away had been robbed at gunpoint a few days previously and everyone was on edge.

  Behind him, one of his classmates’ voices hissed through the silence: ‘Ish, where are you going?’

  Ishan ignored him, continuing to edge towards the front door until he had a clear view of the scene beyond. He could reach up and lock the doors to keep out whoever was there but his eyes were drawn to the pooling patch of red staining the bright white fifty metres ahead.

  There was a gurgle in his stomach that was nothing to do with food.

  He knew he should stay back, think about himself, yet Ishan found himself opening the doors and stepping outside.

  ‘Ish!’

  The paths from the various lecture theatres converged in a courtyard that also served as a cut-through for students trying to get from Oxford Road to the halls of residence and flats beyond. Thousands of people would stream through at the top of each hour, yet it was almost always empty while lectures were going on. Now, the space was far from clear.

  Ishan continued to move ahead, marvelling at how silent it now was. There was no distant chirp of birds, no hum of traffic or honking of car horns. Everything had stopped.

  Forty metres. Thirty. Ishan could see all he needed to from where he was but he continued to edge forward a step at a time. To his left, there was a flicker of movement as another figure stepped out from the corner of the adjacent building, treading slowly, staggering even. It was a man in a dark blazer and trousers. He put his hand over his mouth as he approached the scene, knees wobbling.

  Ishan was close enough to see what had happened, to smell it: the faint odour of burning, the coppery haze.

  The other figure glanced up to catch Ishan’s gaze, eyes wide as his arm flailed. ‘He shot them both. I was on my way here and he…’

  Ishan reached for the phone in his pocket, feeling unnervingly calm. The man was Professor Steyn: Ishan had studied an elective in his class during his first year.

  Steyn dabbed at his forehead, eyes still bulging as he took another step. Ishan wanted to tell him to stay away but the professor was the grown-up, after all. Ishan was… well, he didn’t know. The student. Shouldn’t a professor know what to do? As if anyone knew what to do in a situation like this.

  The expanding pool of blood seeped along the bright white tiles, nudging the edge of Steyn’s shoe, and it was only then that Ishan saw the complete horror of it. A girl was slumped on the ground face-down, surrounded by the deep red, her wavy black hair soaking in the liquid that was oozing from the side of her face. Lying on his front next to her was a lad somewhere around Ishan’s age, wearing a hoody and jeans, both arms trapped unnaturally underneath him. Ishan was sure he had the identical top somewhere in his wardrobe. Another day and he could have been walking around in
the exact same get-up.

  The third person was the only one facing upwards: a man in a heavy green jacket with a pistol lying next to his hand and spurts of black and red exploding across the tiles where his head should have been.

  As Ishan dialled 999, the background noise fizzed into focus again. Someone nearby was screaming and there was a hum of voices. The traffic was moving, there were footsteps, a door banging, windows opening. Chatter-chatter-chatter.

  Professor Steyn reached forward to touch the girl’s arm, trying to turn her over.

  Ishan wanted to tell him that it was no good, that it was too late, but the voice was already speaking into his ear. ‘Emergency. Which service?’

  ‘Police.’

  Professor Steyn gripped the girl’s arm, turning her onto her back, but the sight was horrendous and he let her flop back into her lifeless state. He turned to face Ishan, skin colourless, mouth open, before emptying the contents of his stomach half onto his shoes, half onto the pool of blood.

  More people drifted towards them, arms outstretched, hands over their mouths. Some screamed, some cried. Others turned and went back the way they’d come. Only a few stood and watched as Ishan somehow talked the operator through the sight in front of him.

  The tremble in her voice matched his and she didn’t even have to look at it. Professor Steyn was on his feet again but he was a mess, blood and vomit covering his lower half.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ the operator’s voice asked.

  Ishan blinked into the present. He’d been on autopilot talking her through the scene, but it suddenly felt real now he could hear the sirens closing in.

  ‘Sorry?’ he said.

  ‘Can you see anything else around you?’

  Ishan wished he could close his eyes and make it all go away but he knew why the operator was asking – soon, this area would be swarming with police and crime scene experts. No one would see it as it was now and only himself and Steyn would be able to describe how things looked in the immediate aftermath. He forced himself to run his eyes across the bodies one final time, to search through the expanding mass of red for anything out of place. As he scanned the taller of the figures, Ishan noticed something he’d previously missed. It wasn’t just a green jacket the man was wearing, it was an army jacket, or definitely something from the armed forces. There was a patch on the lapel, a name visible even through the dark smear of blood across it.