The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf

by Nick Bryan

  Blood sopped through Matt’s clothing, dripping between the claw-marks in his shirt and trousers. His left forearm was missing, right hand still clasped loose around the stump. The amputation and hacked-up side of his torso oozed the most red sludge. His neck and head, though, somehow escaped mauling. Whatever attacked him lacked high reach, and he’d stayed upright. For a while, at least.

  The longer the body lay there, the more the mess pooled. His straggly hair lay in the blood puddles, sticking together and turning a dirty red-brown colour. The eyes were cold, face sad. This one wasn’t the killer, Hobson concluded, and felt a little guilty that he and his assistant spent so long asking if he was. But, again, that was the job.

  The dead smell was travelling up Hobson’s nose and down his throat. He stood up again, taking a firm step back.

  It looked like a dog had killed this one too. Could be the same animal that did William Lane, maybe a different beast, but the bite marks clinched it. Fucking hell. A canine serial killer?

  Hobson looked beyond the body, to a trail of blood splurges stretching up the stairs. Matt stumbled from where he’d been attacked, down the building until he bled to a halt right here. If the original mauling site wasn’t Social Awesome on the third floor, he’d ditch detective work right now — maybe go into online marketing.

  He looked down at the door he’d come through. The lift was turned off, and this stairwell the only other way up. So the kid was safe in reception alone, surely? He texted her: Choi, sit tight, going to check all clear up there. Text if anything happens.

  Breathing deep with anticipation, Hobson clenched his fists and started climbing the stairs.

  *****

  Angelina wasn’t sure if this was a good strategic position. She cowered behind the reception desk, staring at the crap underneath it: books, magazines, couple of dusty pairs of shoes, bin overflowing with tissues and crisp packets, wires and receipts leaking from the drawers. Jacq did not keep a tidy workplace.

  All this filth hung around her head as she pressed further into the footwell. She liked being encased on all sides, away from the dripping corpse.

  Should she go outside? Run away home? Follow Hobson upstairs?

  Her phone pinged, and a text from Hobson popped up. Sit tight, he said? At least she had permission from her supervising adult to do nothing, but it still didn’t feel right to her. As she read his text, Angelina realised — she had a mobile.

  Feeling stupid for taking a few minutes to notice her beloved smartphone, she flicked to the telephone keypad and dialled. Waited a few seconds for someone to pick up, then said: “Yes, hi, police please? I’ve got a, um, corpse over here.”

  *****

  The blood never ran out, all the way to the third floor. It flowed softer as Hobson climbed, though. Matt’s grip on his injuries must’ve weakened as he descended the stairs.

  No sign of his severed forearm, nor a dog running along chewing it like a lucky bone. Every so often, the trail of half-shaded red footsteps thinned or thickened, as if Matt had swayed back and forth, but never fallen. Fair enough, Hobson could respect that. Matthew Michaelson may have been a scrawny, maladjusted loser, but he’d fought to survive.

  And failed, but nonetheless, credit where it was due.

  Hobson reached the door to Social Awesome. The lights were still on. He stole a glance through the window into the office, trying not to be obvious.

  No humans nor animals, not a single sound, but quite the fucking blood stain. Filmed over Lettie’s desk at the front, all the way to Matt’s own chair at the back. It was thin but obvious; the dark carpet shone with red highlights. The centrepiece of the whole awful tableau, of course, was Matt’s forearm, white with red specks, flat in the middle of the stain. Horrible teeth marks in the wrist — the dog had seized it as a plaything after all.

  Hobson pushed the door open gently and stepped inside, wincing as the carpet squelched underfoot. He’d been so careful to avoid standing in the blood until now.

  Moving aside to escape the slime, he looked across the room. There were signs of a struggle, a few stains on computers, books strewn around, but this hadn’t been an epic battle. The dog swiped into its victim until it was pulled away, leaving Matt alive to embark on a post-attack hike down the stairs. Why?

  Squinting, as if that helped him see into the past, Hobson made his way towards Matt’s desk at the back.

  There was a crunch underfoot, shuddering up Hobson’s leg. Oh good fuck, please don’t be a tooth. When he looked down, though, it was a piece of plastic — one of many, strewn along the floor. A mobile phone stamped into fragments, probably by a human heel or handheld weapon. Crucially, didn’t look like animal jaws had tried to bite it.

  He took another look around the room, but nothing and no-one jumped out at him. Nearly time to call the cops and let Ellie have a go, see if her forensic chaps could turn up anything.

  As Hobson went for the door again, there was a sudden mechanical hum, shaking out of the walls themselves. It took a second to realise it was the lift coming back to life, the lights above it flickering on. The glowing arrow indicating it was heading down from the second floor, towards the reception area where he’d left Choi.

  *****

  Angelina sat against the front of the reception desk, playing with her phone and resisting the urge to livetweet this experience. Would get her loads of new followers. She eyeballed the stairwell again.

  No sign of the police or Hobson. She considered calling him to check in, when the lift started up with a hiss. Fear leapt straight back up her neck to squeeze her brain tight. She looked at the indicators up top, and confirmed it was lowering towards her. Well, she figured, probably Hobson coming back down — the lazy old man figured out how to switch it on, so cut out the effort of walking down the stairs.

  Yeah, that’d be it. But still, as the lift closed in on the reception floor, Angelina’s feet were twitching, wanting to flee or leap back behind Jacq’s desk.

  The lift squeaked to a halt, and its flower-painted doors began to open. Angelina hoped that growl was her stomach.

  *****

  Smashing his way down the stairs, sending an echo through the Inspiration Gestation Station with every jump, Hobson smeared blood everywhere. Ellie would be furious about this mess, absolutely enraged, but she could wait her turn. If the dog was hiding in the lift and ripped Choi to pieces while he was looking after her, he was fucked.

  Not only had he left her alone to chase a fight, he hadn’t even found anything useful.

  Hobson leapt down from the second floor and put a stomp into his landing, trying to shake himself out of this funk. He smashed down, barely a foot from the gooey corpse of Matt. Pure luck he hadn’t pulped one of the dead legs. As it was, Hobson’s torso dipped to shock-absorb his landing, and he inhaled a gory stench that turned his stomach.

  Standing back up, he slowed for a minute, clinging to the wall as he skirted around the body. At last, he resumed his headlong kamikaze dive down the remaining stairs.

  His boots were so slippery with blood, his grip on the floor slid away during his last take-off. The landing still worked, although with definite stickiness when he pulled his feet up again.

  Hobson wrenched the door at the bottom open and rushed out, ready to fight his wolf.

  *****

  Angelina thought about running, but it seemed pointless. The lift doors were half open before she reached even that conclusion. As the nauseous shudder travelled up her throat and became a mouthful of retch, she realised the growling sound was her stomach rumbling after all.

  Angelina stepped forward, shaking as a tumbling mane of brown curly hair and hippy knitwear stumbled forward out of the lift, tripping over its own feet. At last, it looked up at her and gasped. There was blood rolling off her forehead, staining her hair and sleeves. Seemed you weren’t anybody tonight unless you were dripping with human fluid.

  “Jacq!” Angelina hesitated though, and for a second too long.

 
As Jacq Miller’s legs finally caved in, Angelina grabbed her under the arms and tried to keep her upright. Unfortunately, Angelina was a slight teenager and Jacq weighed more than a toddler, so both ended up staggering backwards until they hit the desk and fell over.

  She felt a flush as the wooden edge jarred into her head. Not only did that hurt, Jacq’s head wound dripped blood onto her Day Two blouse.

  As they slumped together by the desk, there was another loud bang from the corner of the room, and Angelina nearly kneed Jacq in the face. It was only Hobson, making an unnecessary amount of noise opening the stairwell door.

  “Choi!” He rushed over and levered Jacq up with one arm, propping her against the desk. “You alright?”

  “I’m fine, I think.” She glanced behind him. “Your boots are covered in blood, what happened?”

  “Oh. Fuck. Never mind that, what’s she doing here?”

  “Not sure.” Angelina sighed after Jacq stayed silent. “I already called the police though, they’ll find out.”

  “You did what?”

  “Called the police. Was I not meant to?”

  “No! Well, yes, but… just get her to talk, Choi.”

  “I’m not sure she’s up to it, though.”

  Undeterred, Hobson pointed towards the floor next to Jacq. “Choi. You’ve been making friends with these people, you’re on their wanky wavelength. Get the fuck down there and find out what she knows before Ellie gets here and swoops her away.”

  “Who’s Ellie?”

  “Just do it, Choi.”

  Out of excuses, Angelina sat down next to Jacq and put a sympathetic hand on her arm. The terrified panting rasped to a halt.

  “Jacq, hi, you okay?”

  “I, um…” At least she didn’t faint. “What’s going on? What happened?”

  “It’s Angelina Choi, I’m one of the detectives looking into that murder. What do you, um, remember?”

  “I… I…” Jacq felt her own head, a smear of blood came away. “I was turning off the lift just over there, and someone grabbed me from behind and bashed me.”

  “Bashed you?”

  “On the, um, head. I woke up on the second floor, they’d left me there, turned the lift off and stolen my key, then, um, wedged two huge trolleys of rubbish against the entrance. I guess they must’ve…” Another pause, longer, before her eyes grew to their widest yet. “Oh God, did they rob the place? The owner will be so cross…”

  “No, um, nothing taken. I think.” She gulped. “So how did you get out?”

  “I had a spare lift key in my wallet, I always have a spare, I’m a very careful person. So what did they do? Why did they attack me?”

  Another look up, in case Hobson would give some guidance, but he only shrugged. So Angelina spat it out: “They, um, killed Matt, I’m afraid.”

  Jacq didn’t speak another word, just gasped so deep that her belly inflated. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she passed right out, falling onto Angelina’s shoulder.

  “She’s going to blame herself, you know,” Angelina murmured as she lowered Jacq to the floor.

  “Sure. Fine.”

  “No need to be so horrible. So what do you think?”

  “Not sure. She might’ve done it, she was here at the time, alibi’s bit thin, that gash on her head could be self-inflicted.”

  “What do you mean she might’ve done it? She totally didn’t!”

  “Why? Because she’s a cuddly lovable flower child who says things like the owner will be so cross?”

  “Yes! She’s not that kind of person!”

  “What kind of person? The quiet kind? Matt was quiet, and you spent a day yammering about his secret life as a fucking psycho!”

  “That was because…”

  The argument was cut short by a burst of sirens from outside. The law, at last. Two police cars, a van full of officers, an ambulance, and more flashing lights behind those.

  Hobson took a swift turn to take in the entire room, as if checking what to hide before the teacher comes in. And yet Jacq was the one acting suspicious?

  The first police car opened up before it even came to a halt, and a woman in a long coat — much like Hobson’s — leapt out and marched straight at the door.

  She stopped just inside to look down at the bloody footprints on the floor near the stairwell, and then stared Hobson out for a few seconds. “John. Why have you been stamping through the blood? You didn’t think that might contaminate the evidence?”

  “It was an emergency.”

  “I see. So the body’s in the stairwell?”

  “Yeah.”

  The policewoman turned away from them both, never even acknowledging Angelina. Seemed rude, considering she’d called 999. After registering the name she’d called Hobson, Angelina looked up at him. “So is this Ellie?”

  “Yes, this is Ellie. She’s both my ex-wife and a police detective.”

  “Shit.”

  EIGHT

  Little Questions

  They stood in twitchy silence, watching as the Inspiration Gestation Station filled up with policemen. The cops scraped at the blood on the floor, crowding up the stairwell, bringing in men in white, taping off the lift and door.

  Jacq was pulled away by paramedics, but no sign of Matt’s remains being moved. Angelina desperately wanted to be gone before the mangled corpse-splat was paraded past her.

  Ellie, meanwhile, swooped between gangs of police spitting terse instructions, glancing over at Hobson to ensure he felt out of the loop. The big detective was preoccupied leaning against the desk, looking nonchalant so she knew it wasn’t working.

  Honestly, it was like Angelina never left her school playground.

  At last, Ellie ran out of people to instruct, so came over to them.

  “John. Have they searched you and your partner?”

  “Yes, Ellie. It was very sexy.”

  It had not, in fact, been sexy. Angelina was checked over by a woman, but it remained embarrassing. Her most sustained physical contact with anyone besides parents and doctors hadn’t lived up to her fantasies.

  “Good,” Ellie continued, “outside, then. Quickly. And try not to step in any more blood.”

  They emerged into the small driveway outside the IGS, and Angelina breathed deep. It was a skinny gap between buildings, very quaint and unique in the open air, but in the dark, full of blue lights and with a lake of blood behind her, it felt a lot like an alleyway. A small, dark rut, just about big enough for people to drive round the back to park their cars.

  The London air was polluted with exhaust fumes from half a dozen emergency vehicles, but tasted amazing compared to the stale, bloody musk indoors.

  Ellie pointed behind a large van. She stood Hobson and Angelina against it and turned to address them like a drill sergeant.

  “Okay, you two. I’m told it looks like Matthew Michaelson was killed by a dog again, and although you have many fucking character flaws, John, I can’t see any reason or method for you doing this.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, after I’ve taken statements from you both about what you saw here, you can go. But, and I want to make this as clear as I can: no more blundering around crime scenes. To be honest, if you could drop this case entirely, that would be helpful.”

  “I’ll have to consult with my client,” Hobson said.

  “Fantastic.” She gestured to one of her flunkies. “Okay, Sergeant Jensen, take Mister Hobson around the corner while I have a chat to his partner.”

  Hobson was led off past the front of the van before she could say a word to him. Ellie made eye contact with Angelina for the first time, and she felt cold and small. Her dead-straight hair gave her an air of terrifying severity, along with the big coat and ironed suit. Hobson’s black suit seemed increasingly like an affectation, but his ex-wife owned it.

  “So, Miss Choi, is it?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “Okay, Miss Choi,” she said with a surprisingly warm smile, “why
don’t you tell me what happened here tonight? Don’t worry if it makes John Hobson look bad, he does that to himself.”

  She thought about how best to present the story, but her fear choked all the thoughts at birth. So she opened her mouth and began.

  *****

  Hobson’s wait against the front of the police van, with a large sergeant watching him, was grim. He tried to make small talk about the case, hoping this guy would cough up some forensic results, but no luck. Only a few ‘Dunno mate’s and a lot of stony silence.

  So the two of them stood there, picking at their fingernails. Hobson wondered if he could start texting, just as Choi came back around. She looked dazed, but not choked or beaten.

  He chanced a few words. “You alright?”

  She just nodded.

  “Good. Want to head home on your own or wait for me? I’m warning you, pretty sure the papers will be here by now.”

  Police cars boxed them in, a fair way behind the tape that surrounded the scene. Still, when Hobson and Choi glanced over towards that barrier, the flash and throng of a dozen cameras was visible.

  “I’ll wait, thanks.”

  “Fair enough. So, I take it she’s ready for me?”

  Another small nod.

  “Ugh.”

  *****

  “So, you went upstairs, splashed around in the blood a bit, then rushed back down again because you thought your teenage sidekick might be in danger?”

  “More or less, Ellie.”

  “And I suppose the fact you were rushing heroically to save the day means I should let you off for stamping through the evidence?”

  “Do what you want.”

  “John, I’m doing you a favour by not arresting you for tampering with the scene of the crime. The least you could do is not be a prick about it.”

  “Shit, you’re right Ellie. Thanks ever so much. Without you, I’m just a stupid arsehole bumbling around playing detective. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing and what I need is for a real police dogsbody to show me the light.”

  “Many a true word spoken in that particular jest, John.”

  “Such as?”