I felt a bit guilty when the bloke flung himself on the sofa and switched on the telly, obviously having given up on sleep for the foreseeable. I wondered if I should offer to make him a coffee, but it seemed rude in his own house. Although come to that, for all I knew he might have been some bloke off the street Oliver let kip on his sofa.
Whoever he was, he was in his early twenties or thereabouts, with unstyled afro hair and prominent cheekbones. His skin was on the pale side for his African features, so I was guessing he was mixed race. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t get to see much daylight with his hours. He wasn’t bad looking in a lanky, scruffy, bed-head sort of way, in stripy PJ bottoms that hung low on skinny hips and a T-shirt from some sci-fi show I only vaguely recognised. I wondered if him and Hazel were mates, and if not, whether I should introduce them.
Course, he hadn’t told us what the night job actually was. If it was shelf-stacking at the local Tesco, Lilah might not thank me for introducing him to her darling Lola.
Besides the sofa, there were only a couple of hard wooden chairs in the room, but it was them or sit on our reluctant host’s feet. Well, at least it’d warm them up—his toes must’ve been frozen, walking barefoot on that lino. We could, of course, stay standing, but again it seemed rude to loom menacingly over the bloke.
We sat on the chairs. And waited. Several trains went past, reminding me it was rush hour and the traffic was going to be a mare going home. Thank God we’d eaten at the pub.
Which, come to think of it, was probably what Oliver was doing right now. I could picture him sitting in some warm, cosily lit restaurant, glass of wine in hand. Maybe with a hot date, maybe with his mates, casting a leisurely eye over the menu before deciding to go for something with lean meat and steamed vegetables. Or would he go for fish? Yeah, I could see that. As long as it didn’t come in batter. A nice light hollandaise sauce, maybe. Served on the side, because calories.
Christ, I was bored.
Phil stuck it out another five minutes, then caved. “Maybe we could give him a call and see where he’s got to?”
Not-Oliver slapped his forehead. “Now why didn’t I think of that? Oh, right, I didn’t barge in here for the sole purpose of seeing him, did I?”
“Uh, yeah, see, we haven’t got his number,” I said apologetically. “Think you could do the honours?”
I got a foul glare instead of an answer, but he did heave himself and his duvet off the sofa and stomp off upstairs, stomping back down shortly afterwards without the duvet and with his phone in one hand.
He did a few swipes and stabs at it, then held it up with a weary flourish so we could hear it ringing. Except . . . was that an echo?
“Is that it ringing upstairs?” I asked.
Not-Oliver was frowning. “He never leaves his phone when he goes out. It’s like they’re surgically attached.”
“I’ll go and see,” Phil offered, jumping up from his seat and legging it out of the room before Not-Oliver had time to unfurrow his brow.
Phil was back, minutes later, with a ringing phone. “Does he charge it every night?”
“I don’t know, do I? Probably.”
It was an iPhone so yeah, he probably did. Which meant . . . “Was it charging?” I asked.
Phil shook his head. “No. Just slung on the chest of drawers. So my guess is he’s been home this evening already, and gone out again. Without his phone.” His tone was even, but somehow sounded ominous nonetheless.
“Why would he do that?” I asked. “You think he’s trying to stop the police tracking him or something? Isn’t it a bit late for that?” The murder was already done and dusted, after all.
Not-Oliver had ended the call and was staring at us.
“Mind if we take a look around?” Phil asked briskly in what I liked to think of as his copper voice.
“Uh, why? Who are you anyhow?”
“We’re investigating Jonathan Parrot’s death.” Phil tossed Oliver’s phone down on the sofa.
Not-Oliver shivered, but fair dues, him and Oliver could stand to turn the heating up a few degrees and he didn’t have his duvet on him anymore. “I guess it’s okay.”
It didn’t take long to search the house. Not only was it on the small side, Oliver and his mate didn’t have a huge amount of stuff, or at least, not the sort of stuff you could hide a person in. The usual stack of games consoles, controllers, and associated discs, plus an intriguingly respectable collection of music on your actual vinyl. I looked around and yes, there in the corner of the living room was an antique record player, if by antique you meant from the 1980s. I wondered who it belonged to.
Several rooms had marks on the carpet where larger items of furniture, now departed, had stood for years, and Not-Oliver’s bedroom, which was the biggest one at the front of the house, was a weird mix of middle-aged fittings covered in adolescent male trappings. Maybe the bloke was younger than I’d thought.
“You picking anything up?” Phil muttered to me as we established that no, Oliver wasn’t doing a Harry Potter impersonation and hiding in the cupboard under the stairs.
“Uh . . . Thought we’d try it the low-tech way first, right? I mean, he could’ve forgotten his phone when he nipped down the pub, and there’s no chance I’d pick up on that. Or like I said, maybe he didn’t want anyone knowing where he’d gone. Any good old-fashioned cruising areas around here?”
It was daft. I knew it was daft. Just ’cos I was worried what I might find if I listened for it, didn’t mean it wouldn’t still be there if I didn’t. I knew that.
But . . . the last time I’d used my spidey-senses to try to find someone, he’d ended up dead. Okay, not when I’d found him, exactly, but . . .
Didn’t I say I knew it was daft?
Phil gave me a long look. “Cruising? No. Dogging, maybe. But let’s check out the back.”
The way to the back garden was through the kitchen, which was surprisingly well set up for what I’d assumed was a rental property occupied by two young, single men. It was the sort of kitchen you’d expect to see in a family home, although on the cheap and cheerful side. I was beginning to wonder about this place. Not-Oliver’s childhood home? I wondered what had happened to his parents. Hopefully they’d retired somewhere sunny, rather than any less pleasant alternative.
The door was locked, but the key was in the lock so we didn’t have to get Not-Oliver to come and let us out. I’d thought it was cold in the house, but once we got outside I realised I hadn’t known when I was well-off. The stiff breeze blew right through me, and the chances were my hip wasn’t going to be talking to me tomorrow.
Not without a guilty twinge about Oliver’s heating bill, not to mention the planet, I left the door wide open to let as much light as possible spill into the garden.
Which was more of a yard, really, as it happened. It was concreted over, with a few token shrubby things in large tubs looking sorry for themselves. After stubbing my toe on one of them in the dark, I wasn’t too happy either. At the far end—which wasn’t all that far; only around thirty feet, max—I could make out a hip-high brick wall beyond which, I guessed, were the railway tracks.
As if to prove me right, at that moment there was an ear-watering low whistle and a thunderous rattle that got louder and louder until my ribs shook with it, and then just as suddenly, died away again.
At no point whatsoever did I see hide or hair of a train. I mean, yeah, it was dark, but what with streetlamps and all, it wasn’t that dark. And the train should’ve been lit up inside, shouldn’t it?
“Has Herts Rail invested in stealth technology, or what?”
“We’re by a cutting, here,” Phil informed me from the shadows. “The line’s twenty feet down.”
“Huh.” I wandered over to the wall to have a butcher’s. It was actually slightly lower than my hip level, which didn’t seem the sort of thing modern building regulations would allow, although fair dues, there were signs it’d used to have a wooden fence built up on top. Maybe it’d rotted, or they’d taken it down for a better view of the tall trees beyond. “They ought to get that fixed. Wouldn’t want to live here with nippers, would you? I’d be worried sick they’d take a tumble onto the tracks.”
There was a silence.
I looked at Phil, his face ghostly in the secondhand streetlight. “Oh, bloody hell.”