The House Guest - Mark Edwards Page 0,48

doesn’t have a weapon in his sneakers.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘It’s always polite to take your shoes off when you enter someone’s house, isn’t it?’

I unlaced my Converse and handed them to Wanda. She shook them and appeared satisfied.

I put them back on while the dog continued to growl and bark nearby. ‘That’s Julius,’ Wanda said. ‘Anyone comes near me and . . .’ She drew a finger across her throat.

Wordlessly, she led us through the cabin’s living room. It smelled of incense sticks and was kitted out with throw rugs and beanbags, piles of books and magazines everywhere: back issues of Rolling Stone and music biographies. One of them, I noticed, had been written by a Wanda Brooks. The walls were covered with signed photos of rock stars, mostly from the sixties and seventies. A framed platinum disc hung beside the door. I stopped to marvel at it.

Wanda, who had been about to exit the room, stopped and said, ‘Stevie gave me that herself.’

‘Wait. You know Stevie Nicks?’

She shrugged. ‘Used to.’

‘Wanda was a rock journalist,’ Callum said. ‘Back in the seventies. She knew everyone, didn’t you, Wanda?’

‘Stevie. Elton. Mick. Jerry. Patti. Bruce. Yeah, I did. But . . .’ She leaned forward. Her yellow glasses gave her face a sickly glow. ‘It’s too dangerous for me to contact them now.’

She left the room before I could ask what that meant, and Callum grinned at me before following her.

I could still hear the dog barking in some part of the cabin as Wanda led us along a corridor that was filled with more framed discs, along with vintage concert posters and magazine covers: Creem, Playboy, more Rolling Stone. We paused in the kitchen and Wanda asked me if I’d like anything to drink.

‘Just water, please,’ I said.

Wanda winked at Callum. ‘These millennials, huh? I’ve heard they don’t drink. Very sensible. Very boring.’

‘I wish I didn’t drink,’ I said. ‘I might not be in this trouble.’

She handed me a glass of water and we followed her further down the hallway. There was a door at the end, which Wanda unlocked using a bunch of keys that hung from her belt.

We went inside. The room was full of computers: desktops and laptops, screens glowing in the semi-darkness. There must have been a dozen of them, some brand new, some knackered-looking, including an original Blueberry iMac.

‘Wow,’ I said.

Wanda eased herself into a huge leather chair, and Callum perched on the edge of a desk beside her. This room wasn’t full of rock memorabilia. Instead, the walls were covered with pages from newspapers and printouts from online news pages. I peered at them. All the stories were about cults.

‘Take a seat, young man,’ Wanda said. ‘And tell me everything.’

So I did. When I’d finished, Wanda took her glasses off and I could see excitement shining in her eyes.

‘Can you help us?’ I asked. ‘Help us find Ruth and Eden?’

‘I’m going to try.’ She looked at me. ‘Nineteen eighty-three. I was on tour with this band called Mister Magpie. Holy shit, they were bad. Made A Flock of Seagulls sound like the Beatles. The singer was cute as hell, though.’

Was she about to start regaling us with tales from the road? I opened my mouth to ask her about what was happening in the present day, but Callum gestured at me to be patient.

‘That’s when I first started hearing about young people going missing. Fans of the band, mostly young women. There was a big group of them who followed Mister Magpie around. Wannabe groupies, a lot of them. Actual groupies, some of them. I thought it would be interesting to talk to them, and found out that a few of the girls had vanished during the tour. There was a lot of whispering about it. I thought they’d probably just gone home – but, well, the rumours were that they’d been enticed to join a cult.’ She shook her head. ‘And that’s what got me interested in the whole thing, though it was just an interest at that point. We never did find out what happened to those missing fans, even though I spent all my spare time trying to dig into it. It still kills me, you know? But I didn’t have the resources back then.

‘Fast-forward to the end of the nineties. I retired from rock journalism. Too old. Too bored. And then I got my first computer and dial-up internet, and I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of