Students bustled in and out of the front doors, books tucked under their arms, backpacks hanging from their shoulders, all looking unfashionably earnest. This must be the Hall for Hard Workers, which might explain why I never lived here. I was firmly in the Hall for Slackers, where the heaviest thing we carried round was a four-pack of Stella and a bad attitude.
There was a bike park to the left of the main entrance, and I noticed the residents using plastic swipe cards to get in and out of the building. The patch of grass outside was bald and faded, like a threadbare carpet, its only decoration a litter bin. The concrete path leading up to the grandiose double doors was clean apart from a few globs of chewing gum, and completely unmarked by the fact that only a few months ago, Joy Middlemas was lying there with her brains splattered all over the paving, bleeding out her last moments on earth.
Dan had been quiet and moody on the drive over. The few times I asked him a question, he snapped back at me, so I gave up. I suppose reading the diary of a dead girl could make the jolliest of souls testy. I couldn’t complain – so far I’d wussed out of reading it at all.
I snuck a look at him. The ‘something’ he’d needed to grab from his van turned out to be a black shirt and trousers and a dog collar, all of which he was now wearing.
‘Isn’t there some kind of law against that?’ I’d asked sarcastically when he emerged from the loo, transformed. ‘Impersonating a member of the priesthood?’
‘Possibly, but I assume you’d know,’ he said. ‘Personally I don’t care, and I don’t think God does – it helps me get in to places. Nobody likes to be rude to a priest.’
I was about to prove him wrong on that point, but he’d pre-empted me by walking out of the door without another word. I consoled myself by being rude to a priest’s back, with two of my fingers.
The security at Hart House wasn’t too bad at all. As well as the swipe card system, I could see CCTV cameras at strategic points, and there was a uniformed guard visible behind a small desk in the lobby. The car park off to the rear had another swipe card entry system, with a barrier that swung up and down on demand. Nothing that would stop anyone serious about their trade, but enough to deter a passing thief or pervert.
‘Come on,’ said Dan, striding ahead. I wasn’t sure if I was glad about the dog collar thing or not. On the one hand, it made it easier to think of him as Father Dan. On the other, it made me feel even more guilty that I was admiring the length of his legs as he disappeared off towards the door. It was a moral dilemma. Or potentially an immoral one.
A girl came out of the door, about nineteen, pretty as a picture with flowing blonde hair and huge blue eyes. She was wearing bell bottom jeans and a fur-fringed suede jacket. Back to the seventies. She looked up as Dan approached, did a slight double take, then smiled at him. Dazzled by his priestly splendour, or maybe that one dimple of his, she held the door open for him. So much for the swipe cards. Security is only as secure as the idiot using it.
‘Thank you,’ I mumbled as she passed, although she clearly hadn’t even noticed I existed. I wasn’t sure I liked the way I was becoming invisible in the presence of the man in black.
The guard glanced at us as we entered, and I saw his eyes clock the dog collar immediately. He was middle-aged and looked like his two favourite hobbies were drinking beer and watching telly.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Dan, confidently, walking past as though he had every right to be there.
The guard nodded and smiled. ‘Afternoon, Father,’ he said, going back to his copy of the Daily Star.
‘Told you it worked,’ he said as we headed to the stairs. Smug bastard. I was sure I’d have got in somehow, probably by telling some kind of big fat fib and carrying a clipboard. For some reason people always take you seriously if you have a clipboard.
Inside, it was cool and calm and dark. The floor of the lobby was parquet, stubbed by a million toes; the staircase probably killed off an entire forest of oak at some point. Now the steps were hidden by shabby brown carpet, and the banisters were untouched by the hand of Mr Pledge. The stairs were quiet – the students, being by definition brainy types, were all using the lift instead of trekking up and down by foot.
Joy had lived on the fifth floor, from the address her parents had given me, and I knew that’s where Father Dan would be heading. I’m pretty fit, but he’s a lot taller, and was taking the steps two at a time. I lost sight of him as he turned the bend up onto the fifth, then put a spring on to catch him up. He’d stopped dead on the top step, which opened up onto the same small landing we’d seen on numbers one, two, three and four.
I stood just behind him, getting an eyeful of a perfectly formed arse hovering two stairs above me.
‘Can you feel it?’ he asked.
I stayed quiet. I wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about, but I was fairly certain it wasn’t his arse.
It did feel a little colder here. No breeze, but a slight drop in temperature that, now I came to think about it, was giving me goosebumps. Dan had gone silent again, and there was no noise from outside filtering through the sound-proofed windows. Deadly quiet. I started to feel the fine hairs on the back of my neck tingle, and pushed past Dan to distract myself.
Four doors, all painted a vomitous shade of beige, each with a number painted on them in that military-style font that reminds you of army surplus or prisons.
I stopped next to him, feeling my heart beating faster than usual in my chest. Dan was still quiet, staring at the door to Joy’s room as though he was magicking up X-ray vision to look through solid wood. I planned something a bit more straightforward, and marched over to knock on it just in case someone else had moved in.
No reply. I banged again, for good measure, and to create some noise. All this quiet was spooking me, as was Dan’s expression. He was frowning, concentrating really hard like he was trying to remember his nineteen times table while balancing a sherry trifle on his head.
‘In her diary, she talks about this hallway,’ he said. ‘About coming up those stairs, or out of the lift, and feeling the cold hit her. She noticed it when she first moved in and reported it to the maintenance staff. They checked the heating and nothing was wrong. They all felt it was cold as well, but when they gauged the temperature, it showed the same as the rest of the building. To start off with she just mentions it, in passing. Later, she says it “got into” her room. Those are the words she used – “it got into my room”. That was a couple of months before she died, and after that she was always cold in there. Always.’
I couldn’t stop myself from shivering. I reached out and tried the door handle. Locked.
‘Can you get us in there?’ he asked abruptly, face set like stone.
I considered protesting, and explaining that would be an invasion of someone’s civil liberties, but one look at him changed my mind. He wasn’t scared, like I was. He was furious. Something here was making Dan mightily angry, and I had the feeling he’d shoulder-charge the door until he knocked it off its hinges if I didn’t intervene.
I’m halfway ashamed to admit this, but I carry lock picks round with me. They’re rarely used for anything other than breaking into my own flat when I’ve lost the keys, but it’s a good set, made for me by a professional locksmith called Lenny the Slipper. Slipper because he was always slipping into places he shouldn’t be. Lenny could never resist the temptation of other people’s houses. He never took anything – just looked around, rifled through the odd knicker drawer, played a few mind games, like eating leftovers from the fridge. He came a cropper when he was caught nosing round the squillion-pound home of a Liverpool Football Club striker. The window cleaner saw him taking a dip in the pool and called us out. He ended up doing community service – litter picking round Anfield, funnily enough. When I resigned and set up shop on my own, I paid him fifty quid and got my picks and a masterclass in return.
I pulled the small wallet from my back pocket and got the two tools I needed. I kneeled down, fiddled until I g
ot a feel for it, then slid the slim edge of the pick in, popping up the pins until the cylinder turned. It took about forty seconds. I gave a little snort of pleasure – one of my quickest yet. It’s the small triumphs that keep you going in life. I avoided Dan’s eyes. It was probably wrong to be so proud of something so bad.
I stood up and gently pushed the door, checking for a chain.
‘Hello! Repairs!’ I shouted as I walked in. Just in case there was a comatose student in there after all, stoned to oblivion or passed out with his head in a copy of A Vet’s Guide to Dog Poo.
I needn’t have bothered. Nobody lived here. Bed stripped bare, open wardrobes empty apart from dangling wire coat hangers; bookshelves clear of anything other than dust. It was also so cold I was chilled to the bone, and wrapped my arms round myself to try and keep warm.
Dan followed me in, opening up Joy’s diary and reading out loud. Which was just what I needed.
‘June 2 – stayed in the library until it closed at 11 tonight. Couldn’t bear the thought of coming back here. It’s so cold. And there’s something here. I know there is. I look in the mirror and I feel something watching me. I take showers in the sports block now; I can’t stand being naked in here. I’m scared of going to sleep. I hear the laughing, all the time. At first I thought it was from another room, coming up through the heating pipes or something. But it’s not. It’s in here. It’s laughing at me, and the more I look round, the more it laughs. It. They. Sometimes it sounds like a man, sometimes like a bunch of school kids. I’m considering getting a boyfriend, or sleeping with that awful bloke from downstairs, just so I don’t have to stay here. Sophie says I’m just stressed and I work too hard. I’m not stressed. I’m scared.’
I walked over to the mirror, stared at my own reflection. Felt nothing but the cold, and the received fear that oozed off Joy’s words. There was still a toothbrush in a holder on the shelf. Probably hers. I touched it with one finger and it clinked against the glass.
Dan sat down on the bed, and carried on reading: ‘June 11th. I don’t know if I can carry on. Everyone thinks I’m nuts. She doesn’t think I know, but Sophie’s told Dr Wilbraham I’m losing it. They want me to see some kind of guidance counsellor. And this thing, here. It wants me to die. I know it does. I hear them at night, whispering at me. Things have started to move now – the books fly off the shelves, and my covers get pulled off me, and they sing. Bloody nursery rhymes. I’ve asked for a transfer again, but I keep getting told there’s nowhere until next term. I think I might ask Mum and Dad for the money to rent my own place. I’d rather live in a cardboard box than here. Sometimes I sleep over on Sophie’s floor. I pretend I’m drunk and passed out. But now she’s seeing Lawrence, so I can’t do that as much. I need to get out.’
I wanted to tell him to shut up. I wanted to leave this room. I wanted to dump this case and wrap myself up in a duvet with a bottle of Bushmills for company.
Instead I wandered over to the window, examining the locks and comparing the descriptions from the crime scene report to what I was seeing. It all tallied – a straightforward sash jammer, tiny key dangling on a string from the handle. I tried to turn it – locked. I sat on the bay seat, leaned back against the glass. Seemed solid enough. Freezing cold though, and dripping with damp. The chill seeped through me, like I was lying on an iceberg.
It felt like it was reaching into my chest and gripping my flesh, fingers made of ice squeezing my heart… I felt choked, coughed slightly, feeling a sense of panic press down on me. Every time I sucked air in, it stuck in my throat, solid as stone, like I was swallowing frozen pebbles. I was freezing from the inside out, and clutched at my neck to try and warm my skin.
I must have imagined it, but I thought I heard something then. A child giggling, small hands clapping together…
‘Get away from there!’ yelled Dan, jumping up and grabbing my hands. He tugged at me, hard, and I flew forward against his chest. I let my head rest there for a minute and took a few deep breaths. My pulse was hammering and I could feel blood rushing through my veins like a tidal wave.
‘I don’t know what the fuck just happened,’ I said, mildly embarrassed now I’d stopped hyper-ventilating.
‘Look at the window,’ said Dan quietly, gesturing behind me. I turned round.
It was wide open, pane banging against the frame in the wind. The lock I’d checked less than two minutes ago was now turned, the tiny key still dangling, handle pointing down.
If I’d leaned back too hard, I’d have been out of that window, and following Joy to my grave.
Chapter 11
I felt my senses soothe as soon as I walked into the Pig’s Trotter. It’s a dark, gloomy hole; steeped in the smell of decades of drinking and smoking. You couldn’t light up in here these days, but the tobacco brown ceiling and nostril-wrinkling odour paid tribute to the times when you could. I’d left Dan outside with a roll-up. I was tempted to join him, but it had been too bloody hard to give up the first time.
‘All right love?’ said Stan, wiping his hands on a tea towel that looked like it’d been used to clean the Suez Canal. He had a grey beard, hair that straggled to his shoulders, and was currently wearing a Motorhead T-shirt, Lemmy’s face stretched over his beer belly.
‘Stan. Get me a JD. Double. Pint. Lager.’
I could tell when Dan arrived by the way Stan’s eyes widened. They didn’t get many priests in the Pig’s Trotter.
‘Friend of yours?’ he asked as he pulled the pint. I nodded, not wanting to get dragged into any explanations. I had no desire to tell the landlord of my local that Dan was a former priest, part-time demon hunter, and my ally in the search for a dead girl’s equally dead killer.
‘Good-looking bloke,’ he said, passing the drinks over, ‘reminds me of myself in my youth.’
Yeah, right. I thanked him and carried the glasses over to the copper-topped table Dan was sitting at. The tremors were still there, and I slopped some of the beer over the sides.
Dan pulled off the dog collar, tugged open the top two buttons of his shirt. I was suddenly glad Father Doheny was about a hundred and looked like a Smurf with a liver complaint – the way priests should look.
‘Okay?’ he asked.
I nodded, and downed the whisky in one. It stung as it went, and the fire and warmth spreading through my throat was heaven.
‘I saw this bloke,’ I said. ‘Dodgy Bobby. Supposed to be a psychic. He told me about another girl, Geneva Connelly, died in Hart House a couple of years ago. Same way. Is it connected?’
‘Was he?’
‘Was he what?’
‘Psychic.’
I paused, gave Stan the eyeball across the room so he’d know to get me another drink.
‘I’d like to say no,’ I answered, ‘but I have to settle for maybe. He’s a petty- minded sod who’s never done any good in his whole pathetic life. But he knew… he knew I was coming. There was no buzzer, no lift, no warning. He had no way of expecting me – but by the time I knocked on his door, he’d already turned out the lights and switched the telly and the fire off, and was pretending not to be in. So, definitely maybe.’
‘Isn’t that an Oasis album?’
‘Aren’t you a fucking priest, not a connoisseur of the Britpop era?’
‘I’m not a priest any more,’ he said, calmly, like he was talking to a five-year-old, ‘and anyway, priests can like music, too. They’re not deaf. On rare occasions you might even find one that likes Formula One, or watches Benny Hill.’
‘Not you, though, I bet.’
‘No. Not me. I have no life, and sleep in a coffin when I’m not out ghost-hunting.’
No life, maybe, but definitely a sense of humour. The banter was calming me down. I suspected that’s why he did it.
‘So what else have you learned, about Hart House, and about Geneva Connelly?’
‘Hart House is owned by a company called Stag Industries, which is registered to a London address. Either that’s something to do
with the Institute, or they lease the building. Geneva Connelly fell down the stairs, after claiming to her cousin that she’d been stalked by a ghost. And I don’t expect Geneva Connelly was the type to spook easily, as she was raised in one of the most hellish families in Liverpool. In fact, if she’s anything like her grandpa, the ghost would have apologised for existing and pissed off back to the underworld.’
I was trying to stay cynical. It made me feel better. Stan delivered the whiskey, and I saw him register the missing dog collar. I knew the way his brain worked – he’d now assume I was shagging Dan, and would spread the word with the regulars later that night. Oh well. They’d all be glad I was getting some. Franny Diamond, the Neil Diamond impersonator who sang there every Friday, told me the week before I was a ‘grouchy cow who needed a good seeing to’. All because I’d booed his ‘Sweet Caroline’.
‘We need help with this. We need to know more about Hart House. I can make some calls. What about you?’ Dan said.
‘I can make calls too,’ I replied, ‘and maybe your people can talk to my people.’
And maybe if they did that, I could carve out some time to do some talking of my own – I wanted to track down Sophie, Joy’s BFF. She’d been mentioned in the diary, and Mr and Mrs Middlemas had suggested her as a good source as well.
After my meltdown in Hart House, I had more of a sense of urgency about this case. It had gone from weird and intriguing to scary and threatening. I wanted to solve this one quickly – and get back to the normality of my usual, non-terrifying life. Time to phone a friend. I was thinking of two people in particular: Adam Stone, the world’s fittest librarian (although there’s admittedly not much competition in the world of the professional book lender), and Tish Landry, girl reporter. She’s like Lois Lane with acrylic nails. We’d known each other since the fourth year at school, when Tish got kicked out of Madame Snot’s Academy for Scouse Princesses and ended up at my local school.
Fear No Evil (Debbie Johnson) Page 7