Something Hidden Read Online Free PDF Page A

up on his doorstep? And was it just because she was female? Andrew wanted to tell
himself that he’d have been equally concerned if an underfed lad had shown up asking for help but he didn’t know if that was true. He always found himself questioning his own
motives.
    Jenny broke the silence by ruffling in her bag for life and coming up with a packet of mini rolls, waving them in the air as she tore into the purple wrapper.
    ‘Want one?’
    ‘It’s too early for chocolate.’
    She grinned, tearing an individual wrapper open with her teeth. ‘Pfft. It’s
never
too early for chocolate.’
    ‘I don’t know where you put it all. If I ate what you ate, I’d be a giant blob.’
    Jenny tilted her head to the side as she took a bite of the roll. ‘You look . . . confused.’
    Andrew shunted his chair back to his desk. ‘I am.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because I don’t know where I’m going to start.’
    ‘Why didn’t you tell her “no” then?’
    ‘I don’t know . . . stupidity.’
    There was pause in which Jenny could have made a token effort to correct him. Instead, she turned to her monitor, half-eaten mini roll in hand. ‘I can get all the news print-outs from the
time if you want? We’re not going to be able to see the police files without a bit of fudgery-doo-dah, so it’s probably the next best thing.’
    ‘Fudgery-doo-dah?’
    ‘You know what I mean: greasing palms, favour for a mate – that sort of thing.’
    Andrew didn’t like working with second-hand information but he didn’t have too many options. He checked his watch. ‘I’ve got to go out in ten minutes.’
    ‘I can stay and work here.’
    ‘No, you come too. I think I’m going to need backup.’
    He paused, rarely sure how to broach things with Jenny. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, she peered up from her desk and he could see the recognition in her eyes that she knew
she’d missed something. Jenny had once told him that a former teacher thought she didn’t show empathy for other people. She’d found that interesting rather than insulting and
started to learn from observing others. Sometimes, Andrew liked to watch and wait to see what her reaction would be.
    It took a second or two but then Andrew saw something akin to a penny dropping. Jenny’s eyes widened ever so slightly and then narrowed again. She put the remains of the cake on her desk
and started playing with her ponytail, untying it and looping her fingers through the strands. She looked as if she was remembering something painful but Andrew didn’t know if that was
another thing she’d learned.
    ‘I was a student at the time of the shootings,’ Jenny said. ‘Everyone was scared to go out, especially after dark. There was that robbery and then those two students were shot
days later. There were rumours every day that someone had been spotted close to campus with a gun.’
    She hadn’t said that
she
was scared.
    ‘How long did it take to get back to normal?’ Andrew asked.
    ‘A couple of weeks? People soon move on. By the time it’s getting towards the end of term, they want to go out and celebrate.’
    ‘Did you know the kids who were shot?’
    Kids to him.
    Jenny shook her head. ‘I didn’t really hang around with anyone when I was at uni.’
    Andrew’s memory was patchy at best – he blamed age – but the case was recent. Sixteen months previously, Owen Copthorne and his fiancée, Wendy, had witnessed a robbery
in a local jeweller’s. Barely two days later, Luke Methodist shot them dead close to the university campus, a short distance from Oxford Road, before turning the gun on himself.
    After a week of public mourning and outrage, police had arrested the Evans brothers – Kal, Aaron and Paulie, a trio of Scousers, well known to Liverpool authorities, with long criminal
records. Fibres from Aaron Evans’ shoes were found at the scene of the robbery, with one of his fingerprints discovered on the back seat of the car they’d failed to set