Josh2606
I log in to Nev’s WordPress account and go straight to his billing information. Underneath one of his listed credit cards there is an address. I find it on Google Maps: a house in Preston.
3
There is a sheen to the red brick of the road, as if it has recently been hosed down. The mock Tudor houses, with brown beams and overwrought gables, are arranged in a semicircle around the cul-de-sac. The planners have tried to break up the monotony of the new builds, adding features to each property: a rockery, climbing ivy, a rustic wooden fence.
It is more upmarket than I imagined, not the sort of place I thought Nev would live. Too middle class, a road for real-estate agents and marketing executives, a road where people read the Mail and the Times and send their children to minor private schools.
I am tired as I park my car outside number 36. The drive, nearly seven hours, was longer than I thought, and I am glad I have booked a hotel for the night.
I walk up the drive, gravel scrunching under my feet, and then follow a neat concrete-slab path through the grass. I ring the doorbell and it is an electronic chime, a deep baritone that echoes around the house. I wait for a while, but no one comes. I am just thinking about leaving when a man opens the door. For a moment, I think it is Nev—a smarter, monied Nev—but then I look again and see that this man is older and wearing some kind of cravat.
“Hello?” he says in what I think is a well-to-do northern accent. “Can I help?” He looks at me askance, and I realize I must be staring.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, seasoning my accent with a little Cambridge. “I’m looking for Nev Barnes. I’m an old friend and we lost contact, and this is the last address I have for him.”
My palms are sweating, and I can sense the man taking me in, my voice, clothes, furtively glancing over my shoulder at the Audi.
“Oh, Mr. Barnes is the previous owner,” he says. “They left about two years ago. Him and his little one.”
Him and his little one. I think about those words. Him and his little one.
“Ah, okay,” I say, thinking about Nev and Josh driving away, in a car packed full of suitcases and garbage bags full of shoes. “And you don’t have a forwarding address?”
“We don’t, I’m afraid. It was a quick sale, and he kept saying he would send one, but he never did. I do have an email address for him, if that helps.”
“No, it’s fine, I have that.”
“Okay,” he says, looking confused and suddenly wary of the stranger standing on his doorstep.
“And you don’t have any idea where he’s gone?”
The man thinks for a moment, still weighing up the situation. “I think he moved to the Reeves property, as unlikely as it sounds. It’s on the edge of town.”
“Reeves as in R e e v e s.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Thank you, you’ve been very kind. I might have a look around there.”
He stares at me again, still unsure what to make of me. “Well, it’s a big place. And not the sort of place you’d want to look around. Or take your car,” he says, nodding at the Audi.
I laugh. “Ah, I see, well, thanks anyway. I might have a rethink.”
“Yes, quite,” he says. “Look, could you do me a favor? We have all this mail piling up for Mr. Barnes. It sounds like you’ve got a better chance of giving it to him than we have. Would you take it?”
“Yes, of course. I’d be happy to.”
He disappears for a minute or two, and I stand awkwardly on the doorstep. Then he comes back with four large shopping bags full of letters. “Here you go,” he says. “Evidently your friend was a very popular chap.”
* * *
I put the bags of letters in the trunk and then, with the man still watching me from his door, drive back to the main road. Along the main street, most of the shops are boarded up. All that are left are a few Indian takeouts, minicab companies, a shabby office advertising “no win, no fee” legal services.
I pull in to the parking lot of a pub, a little one-story building in between two taller row houses. There is fire damage up one wall and in the row of houses, the pub looks like a broken, blackened tooth. I sit there for a while, drumming on the steering wheel, looking at the map on my phone.
As I’m thinking what to do, there is a knock on the window. Standing next to the car are two scrawny children sharing a can of superstrength lager.
“Want any bangs, mister?” says the smaller boy, as the window rolls down.
“No,” I answer, not even knowing what bangs are.
“You some fuckin’ pedo then, parked here?”
“Fuck off,” I say.
“So what you doing here, pedo?” The older kid starts sniggering and they fist-bump and pass their can back and forth.
“I’m looking for someone actually. Can you help?”
“Why the fuck should we help you?” the older boy says, spitting on the ground.
“I’ll pay,” I say.
“How much?”
“Twenty quid.”
“Fuck off, ya twat. I can get that in five seconds selling these wraps.”
“Fifty.”
The boys look at each other, eyeing each other up under their baseball caps.
“Okay. Give us the money then.”
I hold a fifty-pound note just out of their reach. “I’m looking for someone called Nev Barnes. Do you know him?”
“Might do.”
“Don’t play silly buggers. Either you do or you don’t.”
“Believe it or not, pal, but I do actually,” the younger boy says, “but I won’t tell you unless you give us money first.”
I look him up and down. “Come on then,” I say, handing the cash over, but the boys just
