The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf

by Nick Bryan

  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.

  The dog food cans were everywhere, furniture clawed a thousand times, that table had a leg missing. There was a coil of turd poking through the upholstery and you couldn’t sit on the sofa without worrying about falling into it. The inside of both doors was scratched into sawdust.

  “Y’know, Ellie, I think they may have kept a dog in here,” Hobson said, kicking the stained water bowl in the middle of the room.

  “Wow. Thank God you came to point that out.”

  “Yeah,” Hobson said, “anything good upstairs?”

  “Considering I’m the police and you’re not, John,” she was looking at him, rather than the evidence, “I could easily tell you to fuck off out of my crime scene.”

  “I know,” Hobson murmured, glancing behind the sofa cushions anyway and recoiling from the poo. “But I was hoping you’d let me off for old times’ sake.”

  “I guessed. Are you really doing this case for Twitter followers? Because that’s what I heard, and it’s tacky.”

  “Is it? Shit. I rely on my intern to tell me what’s tacky on the internet, Ellie, and she told me this was what all the detectives do nowadays.”

  “There’s not going to be anything small and valuable down the back of the sofa if they kept the dog in here, John,” she said as he yanked the cushions up from the base. “They couldn’t risk it being found and eaten.”

  “Hey, Ellie, what if the dog wolfed down some crack before it mauled those two people?”

  For a moment, there was almost a laugh, as he dropped the upholstery back into place, but happiness seemed the last straw for her. She backed him into the corner, towards the door he’d come through.

  “John, you usually cover cheating husbands and petty shit. Are you only taking this case because you wanted an excuse to see your lovely police ex-wife?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact,” he announced, “it ain’t just about Twitter followers anymore, I have a client paying me to turn over this dogshit.” Even though Edward Lyne was creepier than a Christmas party at a second hand car dealership. “So yup, this is a real case.”

  Ellie didn’t say anything at first, just stared. Tapped her pocket, as if considering seizing her handcuffs and arresting him, but it passed. In the end, she nodded and pointed towards the back door he’d entered through.

  “Fuck off out of my crime scene, John.”

  “Can’t I at least see if there’s anything upstairs?”

  “No.”

  “Or go out through the front door?”

  “No.”

  “Bloody hell. You left the back door open, by the way.”

  FIVE

  Bad Breakfast

  Angelina wound her way past a man in a fancy dress pimp costume — surely no real pimp would wear that bright red velvet suit and enormous matching top hat? Taking her eyes off him, she looked around at the brown buildings, rubbish bags on the street and tiny indie supermarkets selling odd vegetables instead. She didn’t normally come to this bit of South London, the part between her Kentish suburb and the centre, and it made her nervous.

  She’d eased off the impressive clothes combinations for her second day, opting for a subdued black-and-blue ensemble to avoid drawing attention. Still got a few looks though.

  Hoping someone would let her in quick, she knocked on the glass door to the Brightman Business Centre — an ambitious name for a two-storey crumbling maze of small rooms. Let’s face facts, it was no Inspiration Gestation Station. Still, Peckham was taking off as a trendy area. There were cool-looking design firms in there, but also scary, shuffling guys who glared at her, wearing faded double-denim and exchanging suspicious parcels.

  Through the door, she could see pretty receptionist Will, feet up on the desk and reading a magazine, hair just the right amount of askew even when he thought no-one was looking. Angelina assumed he’d be perusing some hip journal, but no, it was Cameras & Photography Magazine. Of course, she thought: Will was a real enthusiast, not some poser.

  However, would be nice if he opened the door before the pimp caught up and tried to recruit her. Angelina didn’t know what the small Asian girl fetish market was like in Peckham, but was in no hurry to find out. She banged on the glass harder, and Will finally looked up, nodded cheerily and swung upright.

  He cruised across the reception area, didn’t take long as it was a corridor with a small desk stuffed in, and pressed the button to let her in. His unironed dark shirt and thin red t-shirt clashed beautifully, topped off with a sweeping dyed-black fringe.

  “Thanks,” she smiled and mumbled.

  “No problem,” he said, squeezing back behind his desk, “but get Hobson to give you a card for the door. You don’t wanna be stuck outside if you catch me on a toilet break.”

  “That’s, um, good advice, thanks.” She smiled, and thought with a sigh that this was one disadvantage of dressing down. She didn’t feel good in herself wearing plain black trousers and a blouse, even if it was a blue one she liked. She had a hoodie over it for extra deflection.

  There wasn’t much corridor left before the stairs, so she took a few steps, before turning around, pretending she’d just remembered something. “Oh, by the way, you have the same name as the dead guy.”

  Will looked up from his camera magazine, still not seeming annoyed yet. “The one ripped apart by the dog?”

  Angelina nodded, and he sighed. “I know, it was in all the papers. Always a shame to see a fellow William get shredded.”

  He paused, taking a moment’s silence for his namesake, before looking back down. Angelina stung wit
h disappointment — she’d thought of this conversation starter going to bed last night, and expected more from it.

  Determined to try harder, she pushed through the doors and made for the stairs. The lack of a lift felt like a let-down, even though the building only had two floors.

  *****

  Angelina reached Hobson’s door and raised her hand to knock, before taking a breath and telling herself: this is your office now, you have as much right to walk in as he does. Please please don’t let him be touching himself or anything.

  She pushed the door aside and entered, finding Hobson sitting at his desk tapping irritably at his computer keyboard. No untoward behaviour of any kind. As she stepped over the threshold, he looked up and nodded.

  “Morning Hobson.”

  “Choi,” he said, sounding pleased to see her. If only Will had done the same. “Ready to get to work?”

  “Yeah, in a sec,” she said. “You know there’s a guy hanging around here in a red velvet pimp suit? Complete with hat?”

  “Oh, you mean The Pimp?”

  “That’s what you call him?”

  Hobson shrugged. “Seemed to make sense.”

  “So he’s really a pimp?”

  “No idea.”

  “Shouldn’t you want to know, as a detective?”

  “Pay me a few hundred,” Hobson said, with a chuckle. “I’ll find out for you.”

  “Right.”

  She was about to turn on her computer and check the Twitter account, when Hobson stood up. “No rest today, Choi. Now we have a client instead of just the stupid internet, we’re going to act like professionals.”

  Angelina liked the sound of this. “So what first?”

  “The other victim, Pete Vole’s next door neighbour who owned the dog,” Hobson said, holding up a newspaper. It displayed a half-page Facebook-stolen picture of an angry looking shaven-headed man in a vest, accompanied by a mildly racist headline. Hobson pointed at his face as he declared the name: “Yalin Makozmo. They call him ‘Yam’ on the streets, according to this shitty journalism right here.”

  This was someone Angelina would cross the street to avoid. Possibly hide in a skip too. Did this make her racist? She wasn’t white, she told herself, so that meant she couldn’t be. “So, um,” she stumbled over herself trying to sound calm, “we’re going to look him up online?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Choi. The internet is for losers and paedophiles according to my newspaper. We’re hitting some of his hangouts and getting the real story.”

  “Oh.” Choi felt her enthusiasm from ten minutes ago leaking out through her boring Day Two black shoes, replaced by a rising tide of fear. “Great. My Mum will be so happy.”

  *****

  “Hello, Tony?”

  “John Hobson? Is that you?”

  “Yes. Listen, Tony…”

  “Is it true you’ve hired a tiny Asian girl as your new partner?”

  “She’s not my partner, she’s an intern.”

  “Since when do you have interns?”

  “Since I ran out of money to pay people.”

  “Not just because of your whole self-punishment thing?”

  “Not really in the mood for this, Tony. Got a question for you.”

  “Go on then.”

  “If I wanted to bet on a dogfight in North-East London, where would I go?”

  “Since when do you bet on dogfights? Is this how you relax now instead of hitting people?”

  “Maybe. Where would I go?”

  “Lefty’s, I s’pose.”

  “They have dogfights at Lefty’s? I thought it was one of them McHellerman chain pubs? All cheap and bright?”

  “It is, but it’s gone bad, man.”

  “How does a Hellers pub go bad?”

  “Don’t go there, John. Trust me on this.”

  “Alright, well, thanks for your time.”

  Hobson dropped the phone before Tony could say anything else. Choi was already peering, as if she might ask questions about what she’d overheard.

  So he headed her off at the pass. “Okay Choi, we’re going to a Hellers pub. You’re under the legal drinking age, so you’ll fit in better than me.”

  She nodded and leapt to attention. “What’s a ‘Hellers pub’? Like with pictures of the Devil?”

  “Very funny.” He pulled his coat off the back of the chair.

  “No, seriously.”

  “It’s a cheap chain of bars, serving microwave food and full of old men or teenagers.” He stopped mid-movement to give her a critical stare. “You’re sixteen, I thought you’d live there.”

  “Sorry,” she said, seeming regretful. “Don’t really go out drinking.”

  “Bloody hell.” Hobson straightened and whipped the coat around his shoulders. “Well, you won’t be starting today. Move it.”

  *****

  Angelina and Hobson came out of the same tube entrance as yesterday, but turned in the opposite direction, away from Markham Road. They’d estimated that The Left Hand — aka Lefty’s — was only fifteen minutes walk from the scene of the wolf-murders, so definitely a place of interest.

  They passed a row of shops, degrading from huge supermarkets to dingy holes as they moved away from the station, with their own crew of locals who never left. Hobson kept his eyes forward and stomped, making the occasional scathing comment. The laundrette covered in a thick layer of dust was heavily critiqued.

  They reached a dark green-and-red building, a hanging sign proclaiming The Left Hand and displaying the dulled golden outline of a fist. Hobson gave the facade an eyeball, as if trying to establish dominance already.

  Angelina just squinted. “Is this it?”

  “Yeah. Looks the same as usual.”

  The deceptively light wooden doors flapped in the wind, and she peered through. Tables dropped at random across muddy-green carpet, manned by grey men in huge coats staring at their pints.

  “Um, what do we do when we get in there?”

  “Order a drink. No alcohol. Try not to look so fucking terrified.”

  “Thanks.” Didn’t stop her leg from shaking.

  Hobson gave the pub another stern look, before pushing himself towards the entrance; Angelina slipped in behind him. The warmth enveloped her as she stood on a huge red welcome mat, feeling the atmosphere settle. Everything was dark and made of shiny wood.

  The nearest decrepit man swung his eyes up at her over his massive beard, nodded, looked down again. A moment later, the next one along did the same. A woman and her husband glanced up from the crossword, continued the Mexican Nod, passing it along to the barman fiddling with the coffee machine.

  Dirty plates slipped over each other on the tables, and it was only eleven in the morning. She followed Hobson up the room, wanting reassurance, but he wasn’t paying attention.

  Once they were standing at the bar, her feet sticking to patches of hard grey flooring, he leaned in to address the barman. He was tall and skinny, with a pointy nose, goatee beard and visible disdain. “Hi, two coffees and two breakfasts for me and my friend.”

  The lanky barman gave her a glance, as if considering what friend might be a euphemism for, before turning away to tap at his cash register. “And where are you sitting?”

  “Over there.” Hobson indicated the blackness at the back of the cavernous room. If the smattering of islandesque tables at the front had been weird, this was downright eerie. The layout over there was longer, thinner, darker, with booths embedded in the walls and awful lighting. No windows, no other customers. Not to mention, Angelina didn’t even like coffee.

  “What table number would that be, sir?”

  “Who cares? There’s no-one else there.”

  The barman looked like he might argue, before he met Hobson’s eyes and went back to typing. “Yes, sir. That’ll be nine twenty.”

  Hobson thrust a ten pound note at him, grabbed the change, then they meandered up to the back, among the maze of vacant tables.

  Customers clustere
d at the front, scraping their plates and talking loudly in accents and languages she strained to understand. Many stared up towards Angelina and Hobson — by stepping into this grim back area, they’d sent some kind of message.

  “So, um…” She eyeballed the empty seats all around, “where do you want to sit?”

  “Booth over there.”

  So they did, plonking opposite each other. Hobson concentrated on glaring down everyone else, while Angelina tried to think of something to say. “So,” she managed in the end, “where are all these teenagers?”

  “At school, obviously. I’m not here so you can make friends, and you wouldn’t like them anyway.”

  “So why are we here?”

  “Curiosity, to be honest,” he said. “I’ve been in a few crooked bars, but never a crooked McHellermans.”

  “And how is it?”

  “Not sure. Everyone in here is either a criminal or a territorial alcoholic.”

  A short man in a leather jacket strode into the bar and sat straight down at a table near the door, entering into intense conversation with whoever was there already. Angelina tried not to look over, but Hobson just chortled.

  “Well, they’re definitely passing drugs under the table. This is fuckin’ downmarket.”

  Across from their booth, the kitchen doors flapped and a man in white strode out. He wielded two plates, plonking them down in front of Hobson and Angelina before they could even look round at him.

  The fried breakfast already looked dry and worn out, yet still warm to the touch, oozing its outline into the brown-white plate. Angelina peered, trying to work out which parts were safe to eat, while Hobson ignored it and looked up at the man who’d served them.

  He was large, not a giant like Hobson but vastly overweight, seemingly held together by a greasy apron straining at all its knots. He didn’t look happy. “You snotty pricks,” he greeted them, “what do you mean downmarket?”

  Hobson and Angelina exchanged glances. “Hi.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Hobson grinned. The excitement of not being recognised must’ve shot straight to his head. “John Hobson. Do you have five minutes to talk?”

  Angelina started to feel sick. Never visiting a McHellermans before had been a great decision. And that was before the fat guy shoved his way into their booth, prodding her up against the wall with his beefy arms and sliding the food towards her. She held her breath to avoid vomiting from the smell and hoped Hobson didn’t have a long conversation planned.