Page 49 of The House Guest

The rear window slid down and a wild part of me expected to see the Devil sitting there, ready to offer me a deal for my soul.

It was Callum.

‘Get in,’ he said.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked. The interior of the car was cavernous but ancient. There was a thick screen between us and the driver, and the smell of decades of stale cigarette smoke clung to the cracked leather. It seemed like the kind of car a mob boss might have been chauffeured around in twenty years ago.

‘I want you to meet someone,’ he said.

‘Who? The reporter you went to see earlier?’

He nodded. ‘It’ll be useful for you to hear what she has to say. Now, do you want a beer?’ He fished out a six-pack of lagers from the footwell. ‘It might calm your nerves. No? Suit yourself.’

We drove out of the city. On the way, I told him everything that had happened, from my encounter with Mets up to Jack’s murder.

‘Holy mother ... I didn’t think things would move this fast.’

‘I think someone might have been following me too,’ I said. ‘Probably the same person who tried to run me over.’

He held up a can of beer. ‘Sure you don’t want one of these?’

I watched the city recede, the lights of the five boroughs fading as we hit the highway and then found ourselves on curving roads crowded by trees. Callum sipped his beer quietly while my brain replayed the events of the day on a nightmarish loop. I was just about to give in and ask for a beer when he said, ‘This is it’, and we pulled off the road and drove up a long track into the woods. It was pitch-black, the car’s headlights picking out the reaching silhouettes of trees and exposing the dark places between.

We pulled up outside a large cabin and Callum said, ‘We’re here.’

We got out and I followed him to the front door. I heard a whirr and looked up to find myself staring into a security camera, its red light blinking. Behind us, the car slid away into the night.

The door opened and a dog immediately started barking, loud and close; so loud I thought it might shake the pictures from the walls. A woman shouted, ‘Quiet, Julius’, and then there she was, beckoning us in. She was wearing a baseball cap, from which a few locks of grey stringy hair had escaped, and, strikingly, yellow-tinted glasses that covered most of the upper half of her face. She was broad and short, a Janis Joplin T-shirt stretched across her chest. She wore a copper bracelet on one wrist.

‘Come on, come on.’ Her voice was barely audible above the dog, which continued to bark like only the taste of blood would satisfy it. I hurried inside after Callum, and turned to see her peer out at the woods before shutting and locking the door, sliding across one, two, three heavy bolts.

It was dimly lit inside the house. Somewhere nearby, the dog growled, muffled by a closed door. The woman yelled at it again – her shouts had no effect – before turning to face me.

Callum jerked his chin in my direction. ‘Wanda, this is Adam. Adam, Wanda.’

I put my hand out to shake hers but she ignored it. Instead, she said, ‘Put your arms up’, and proceeded to pat me down like an airport security officer.

‘He’s clean,’ Callum said.

‘How do you know?’ Wanda responded, moving down to my legs and running her hands down one thigh then the other. ‘Take off your shoes.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Callum said. ‘He’s not wearing a wire. And he definitely 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 ofRolling Stoneand 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?’

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