‘Does that happen often?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe. She always gets the most attention on nights out. It’s like all the men just flock to her, like she’s got some sort of cock signal that calls out to all the arseholes. But she never does anything with them, never kisses them or anything. She likes to tease them. She’ll let them buy her a drink, and then she’ll move on to the next one. It’s a cheap night out, but it’s also stupid. I’ve warned her so many times about the dangers of it. That’s why we always go out together and look out for each other.’
Tomek sensed there was something Elodie wasn’t sharing.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, last night, there was this guy, right? Tall, dark and handsome – her type, down to a T – all covered in sweat and his eyes as wide as the fucking DJ’s decks, right? He comes up to her at the bar and tries to spike her drink. I didn’t see it, but Xan did. We tried telling someone but nobody listened to us, so we moved to a different part of the club. He found us a couple of minutes later and went straight back to Ange. He was besotted with her, like he had a hard-on and wanted to rub it out against her.’
‘But you didn’t let him?’
‘I wish. We told her he’d tried to spike her drink earlier, but she didn’t care. She told us to trust her and then she went off with him, dancing with him, grinding all over him.’
Tomek tried not to imagine the twenty-nine-year-old Angelica gyrating her hips against a man off his face, because he was afraid the girl would transform into his daughter. While she was still only thirteen, he didn’t want to think about how that might be her someday – in as little as five years – putting herself in danger, at the mercy of disgusting men like the one Elodie had just described.
‘Did anything happen between the two of them?’ he asked.
‘No. We pulled her away and then we went home before anything could.’
‘How did he react?’
‘He followed us out of the club.’
‘Did he follow you in the cab?’
Elodie paused, staring into the carpet again. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see. We were so focused on getting ourselves out of there that I kind of forgot about him.’
Tomek made a note to visit the nightclub. They had a long time until it opened, but he could guarantee there would still be workers setting everything up for a Saturday night of alcohol-fuelled debauchery and antics.
So far, everything had made sense to him. The group had gone out, they’d had a good time, they’d come back home, and then in the time between getting out of the cab and turning up to work in the morning, Angelica had gone missing. She had left her home, and not returned.
‘Has she ever done anything like this before?’
It didn’t take long for Elodie to respond. ‘Loads of times.’
‘As in, she’s gone home, left the house shortly after in the middle of the night, and then no one’s been able to contact her?’
‘Oh! You meant that?’ Elodie scratched the back of her head. ‘She’s only done that a couple of times. Sorry, I thought you meant whether she’d danced with guys in the club before, because she’s always doing that. She’s always the one to make conversation with guys on a night out – it helps that they always come up to her in the first place, like I said, but she loves it.’
‘When has she gone out in the middle of the night in the past, Elodie?’ Tomek asked, trying to get her back on track.
‘With a couple of her exes. Crawling back to them for a quick one-night stand, even though we’d warned her not to.’
Tomek was beginning to understand that this was a woman who did what she wanted, ignored her friends’ advice even though it had been in her best interests, and didn’t seem to care about the repercussions. Quite the opposite of the angelic image her parents had of her.
‘Is it possible she did the same last night?’
Elodie considered a moment. ‘Possibly. But she’s not been with Sammy for a couple of months now.’
‘Sammy’s one of her exes, I presume?’
‘Yes. And then you’ve got Cole before that. They’re the most recent two that she’s had in the past year or so. They don’t tend to last very long.’
‘Why not?’
‘She gets what she wants out of them and then moves on. Sometimes they take it well – only because they’re after the same thing and they’re glad she’s the one to call it off, that way they don’t look like arseholes – while some don’t.’
‘And which categories do Sammy and Cole fit into?’
The sides of her mouth lifted as she stifled a laugh. ‘Sammy is very much in the second category, while Cole… he couldn’t have cared less about the two of them breaking up. Fairly sure they were both just fuck buddies for each other.’
Tomek peered down at his mug. By now a thick layer of grime and soapy residue had formed on the top. He eyed it suspiciously as it moved and shimmied against an invisible breeze, as if there was so much bacteria and mould in it that it had started a life of its own.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘I’ve told them so many fucking times to stop using my mug, and then when they do, they don’t even have the decency to fucking clean it properly.’
Tomek could relate. He’d stayed in various shared accommodations during his mid- to late-twenties. Not because he enjoyed staying with people, but because he couldn’t afford to move into a place of his own. He’d left home at eighteen, and had later been booted out of an ex-girlfriend’s, whom he’d been living with at the time. From there it had been a string of sleeping on friends’ couches, trying his best to be as clean and respectful as possible, followed by a multitude of spare rooms and shared flats, until eventually he’d managed to get a place of his own. It had been so precious to him that he’d stayed there for just over a decade until a few months before, when he and Kasia had been forced to move out due to lack of space.
He picked up the mug and handed it back to her, a look of pity on his face.
‘Is there anything else you think I should know?’ he asked as he rose from the sofa. ‘Anything else you saw last night? Anyone following you at all? Anything you think might be worth looking into?’
Her eyes fell to the carpet, and her leg bounced up and down. It was then that Tomek noticed her painted toenails for the first time. Red, seductive. There had been a time, only a few years ago, when he would have found himself in bed with a woman of her age, someone considerably younger. Some women he’d been with liked him for his age, while others liked him for his job, and the fantasy that came with it. But it had all been superficial, physical, the coming together of two horny individuals desperate for another’s attention. He’d been happy to give it to them and they’d been more than happy to receive it. That had all started to change since Kasia had come into his life, but there were times, moments, when he felt the urges smother him, blur the sensible, logical part of his brain, and make him regress. He was sitting firmly on the fence, only a breath or two away from going back into his old life, one where he’d found fulfilment and nourishment in the touch of a younger woman. That same sensation rushed into his bloodstream now as he surveyed her red toenails, his eyes moving farther and farther up her legs.
In that moment, Elodie noticed his gaze crawling up her, but she made no effort to stop him or cover her leg. Instead, she stroked her hair behind her ear again.
‘No…’ she said slowly. ‘There’s nothing else I think you should know.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Memo nightclub had been a staple of the Southend high street and underground club scene – literally, because the club was situated down two flights of stairs – for over thirty years, since the early nineties. The owner, Jimmy Rayner, had designed and built it, and despite a turbulent and rocky past, it had continued to survive while the rest of the high street and other nightclubs had crumbled. Over the years, it had been on the receiving end of several nicknames. Some positive, others pejorative, from the likes of Messy Memo to Mandy Memo, which had followed a weekend of proficient drug taking, and had resulted in tighter restrictions and larger bouncers on the doors and on the dance floors. The club was famous for its Monday Night Memo, or MNM as it quickly became known, and had once been the host of such stars as Danny Dyer, Professor Green and pop boyband JLS in the late noughties. Going to Memo was a rite of passage for anyone either living in Southend or within a ten-mile radius. And when they needed somewhere that had plenty of late-night kebab and pizza shops open, with easy access to cabs and transport home, it was the perfect place. And at the height of the nineties rave and dance culture that had gripped and bled through every twenty-year-old that was part of that generation, it had offered the perfect mix. Tomek had been there countless times in the past (countless, namely because he’d been so drunk he hadn’t remembered many of the nights), and had even made out with a few of the girls from his school there. By and large, he had fond memories of the place.
Despite the club being there so long, none of it had changed. The entrance to the building was still a hole in the wall that was entered via the same wooden doors, padlock and chain, which Tomek remembered from his first visit. It was a miracle it hadn’t been broken into or vandalised more times over the years. Above the doors was the club’s name, spray painted on the wall, presumably to stop people from damaging the signage or it becoming a hazard. Even the smoking area, delineated by metal barriers that had been welded into the ground, was as small as it had been twenty years ago. Nothing about its exterior had changed. But that was what made it so beautiful, so historical. Like a castle, or Buckingham Palace, a place of local historical significance. It was too beloved to modernise it or update it in any way. It was a part of Southend’s heritage, a part of its history, and nobody dared touch it.
The downstairs was the same as the outside. Old and untouched, still sporting the same circling stairs he’d once plodded down, swaying, holding onto the banister for support; the first bar that frequently bottlenecked and caused one too many arguments as egos collided; the stickiest dance floors known to man; the DJ booth at the back of the dance floor, with podiums on either side, and another set of bar areas in the same corner; the second dance floor that played a different type of music, catering to a different consumer.
It all came back to him as he stepped off the final step. Dressed in his smartest shoes, the baggy jeans, the tight-fitting Topman V-neck that showed more chest than it ever should, his mates by his side, alcohol coursing through his veins already, his body would vibrate along with the music. Men and women would be everywhere, dancing, having a good time, a thick layer of smoke hanging in the air and rapidly filling his lungs. The queue for the toilets that never seemed to go down, but that was okay because you always made a new best friend while you were waiting for a piss – or even when you were standing next to someone mid-flow.
Tomek had made the most of those days in his twenties, and some of it had spilled into his thirties. While there were parts of him that missed it, he realised he was far too old for anything like that now. He was forty, for fuck’s sake. Nobody who was any way respectable should still be doing that at his age.
At the bottom of the step, he made his way through the large archway that connected the first dance floor with the second. In there, the lights were on, and he saw the interior of the club in the flesh. It unnerved him. It was like walking into a brilliantly lit cinema. Disorientating and confusing. The seats and floor were grimier than you first thought, covered in popcorn and sugary drinks, and it just felt wrong being there. Waiting for him behind the bar was the manager, Marcus Rayner, Jimmy’s younger brother. The word that immediately sprang to Tomek’s mind was Oasis, one of the world’s biggest bands. Marcus looked as though he was still stuck in the nineties, with his long sideburns, his bowl haircut, parka jacket and circular sunglasses. The only thing that was missing from the Liam Gallagher homage was a more prominent monobrow.
‘You the detective that called?’
‘Definitely, maybe.’
‘What?’
Tomek sighed deeply, unable to hide his disappointment.
