Fear No Evil (Debbie Johnson)

by Debbie Johnson

  ‘So, what do you want from me?’ she asked. Finally. I knew she’d get there in the end.

  ‘Help. You can find things out that we can’t – or we can, we just don’t have the time right now. To start off with, we need to know more about Hart House, and the company that owns it, Stag Industries. I’m going to get Adam on to the history—’

  ‘Dreamboat,’ she said, interrupting my train of thought. She’d always had a thing for Adam. Then again, he was male.

  ‘But I need you to get the up-to-date stuff for me. Who owns it, a name, a face, a phone number. Anything I can use.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ she said, smugly. ‘Haven’t you got anything harder for me? I know all about Stag Industries, and if you’re a very good girl, I’ll tell you… not right now though, because I’m distracted. Please tell me that belongs to you.’

  I followed her line of sight to the entrance. Dan was staring out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, taking in the view. This place was called Panoramic for a reason – we were in one of the highest spots in Liverpool, perched on a new-build tower, surrounded by the sights of the city below. It was really beautiful, especially at night, with the dark thread of the Mersey twisting into the distance, and the buildings glowing with neon lights. They call it the Pool of Life – and you could believe it from this angle. Adding Dan into the mix didn’t exactly detract from it.

  I waved at Dan, and he walked over. He was wearing black jeans, showing off long thighs and trim hips. His black jacket was perfectly fitted over broad shoulders, and there was a hint of golden chest showing at the neck of a crisp, brilliant white shirt. He’d obviously showered not that long ago, and his hair curled slightly on the collar, still damp. Dishevelled James Bond.

  ‘Father Dan, this is my friend, Tish Landry,’ I said, after a few deep breaths. He held out his hand, and she twined her uber-manicured fingers into his, holding on way too long for decency.

  ‘Father?’ she asked, gazing up at him with innocent blue eyes. The bitch. She was practically salivating. ‘I thought you said he wasn’t a priest any more, Jayne? So that would make him just Dan, wouldn’t it? A man, not a priest.’

  ‘That’s right Tish,’ said Dan, gently extricating his fingers from her soft grip. ‘Jayne seems to keep forgetting that. See, Jayne? It’s not that hard. Think of me as a man, not a priest.’

  He leaned back, stretched out his legs, apparently completely relaxed in the company of a predatory female who made the black widow spider look like Mary Poppins. I could practically see her spinning a web.

  ‘So, Dan, Jayne’s been telling me all about this business with Hart House. I have to say I find it all very worrying. That poor girl, all alone in there. It’s terrifying, really, isn’t it? I feel so scared.’

  The big, faking cow. I’ve never known Tish scared in her entire life, not once. Apart from that time she thought she’d lost her Karen Millen store card. Her eyes were now so huge I feared the waitress might try and serve bread onto them.

  If she was expecting a consoling hug, she was in for a disappointment. Dan tilted his head back and laughed, loud. She looked a bit shocked at that. It wasn’t a reaction she was used to. I confess it made me smirk.

  ‘I’m sure you’re not that scared, Tish,’ he said, ‘you look tough as old boots to me.’

  Her jaw dropped, and I thought she might punch him. I knew she’d be at the very least considering it. I took that moment to slam my foot down, hard, on her instep. I forgot I had heels on, so it probably hurt a bit more than intended. Or maybe it hurt just as much as I intended.

  ‘Ow!’ she yelled, and turned back to look at me. I raised my eyebrows, and she sighed and nodded. It was our special ‘sign’. We’d used it since we were teenagers, as a way of letting the other one know if we were interested in a boy. As we fancied about seventeen boys a week at that stage, we spent a lot of time with bruised toes, but it worked. We’d never, ever fallen out over a man.

  I wasn’t sure if I was actually interested in Dan, but I was pretty damn sure I didn’t want her interested in him. Tish was always very graphic in her descriptions of her amorous encounters, and the idea of her recounting Dan’s prowess – or even worse, lack thereof – in the bedroom made me feel queasy.

  ‘Tish was just about to tell us about Stag Industries, the company that owns Hart House,’ I said, getting us all off the pheromone express and back into reality.

  Dan straightened up, and Tish shuffled her chair back in my direction. Normal business was resumed.

  ‘The clue’s kind of in the name,’ she said, tucking her hair behind her ears now she didn’t need to flick it at Dan any more.

  ‘Hart House. Stag Industries. You might have heard of the Fawn Group? There’s even a Doe Hall out near Roby, from the time it was posher. What’s the connection here? Come on, come on, you can do it. Lateral thinking for beginners.’

  She tapped her nail on the table top until it became so annoying, I had to tie her fingers together with a napkin.

  ‘We get it,’ I said. ‘The connection is, well, it’s deers. Or deer, whatever. Things to do with deers.’

  ‘And what family in Liverpool, with enough poke for country piles and gothic monstrosities, has a connection to deer?’

  She was making a noise like on ‘Countdown’ during the conundrum, which made me feel stressed straight away. Carol Vorderman always has that effect on me. I could feel Tish’s nail tapping away under the napkin again, so I squashed it.

  ‘Bitch,’ she squeaked, ‘I’ll never play the violin again.’

  ‘The Deerbornes,’ I said, as the penny finally dropped in the box.

  ‘Who are the Deerbornes?’ asked Dan.

  ‘Old money. Liverpool family from way back – not sure how they made their cash, but they’re always described as “one of the city’s merchant dynasties”, that kind of thing. In the old days they’d have been called philanthropists – set up schools for the poor, funded public bath houses, pioneered scholarships for women, that kind of stuff.’

  ‘And today? What are they today?’

  ‘The same, as far as I know,’ I said. ‘Their business interests seem to revolve around financial services, banking, making the rich richer. I think they have some manufacturing still – what do they make, Tish?’

  ‘Mainly money,’ she replied. ‘But also bespoke furniture, and luxury goods. You know, that £1,000 toilet roll holder made of authentic pan-Asian teak that you just have to have for the downstairs loo.’

  ‘Not really. I’m usually just happy if I’ve got a bog roll.’ I replied. ‘Do you know them, Tish? If I need to speak to them, what’s the best way in?’

  ‘It might have been via me, before you broke my fucking nail.’ Oops. Tish took damage to her hooks very, very seriously.

  ‘I did something on William Deerborne a while ago. He was running in the marathon to raise cash for kids with cancer. Still have his secretary’s number. Francesca. She’s a bit scary – like a really posh enforcer. You’ll have to go through her first. Worth it though – he’s hot. Single as well, and not in a dodgy confirmed bachelor way.’

  It’d be easy to assume Tish had a one-track mind. And in fact, she did – it ran entirely in the direction of what stories she could scoop, use in the Gazette, and sell on to bigger fish. She just pretended to be a nymphomaniac fashion addict. It was her disguise.

  Scary secretaries, I thought. No problem. If I was willing to go through Wigwam to get to the Caseys, I’d have no problem going through Francesca to get to William Deerborne. They might be at completely different ends of the social spectrum, but the approach was the same: push, push and push some more.

  Chapter 13

  The next morning, I was abducted. With a hangover.

  We’d had a few too many drinks at the Panoramic, and me and Tish shared a cab home. Dan, for some odd priestly reason, decided to walk back to Everton. It’s not the most pleasant of strolls so I had to assume it was a self-flagellation thing. Probably feeling guilt
y for spending the night with a pair of wanton hussies. I was worried about him for all of thirty seconds, but then reminded myself he was a big boy. In fact I’d been admiring his bigness all night, in what I hoped was a totally covert way.

  I’d woken up way too early with a killer headache, my eyes glued together with mascara, and Tish’s fake nail in my handbag. There was an open bottle of white out on the kitchen counter, so I’d obviously carried on when I got back. The TV was, shamefully, still switched to QVC, so fuck knows what parcels might get delivered over the next few days. Some torture device designed to give you Perfect Abs in 28 Days maybe, or some nice diamonique earrings. That was Christmas sorted, then.

  I’d rolled out of bed – literally – and landed with a thud on the carpet. I allowed myself a couple of minutes recovery time, where I stared at the ceiling and willed the world to stop spinning, then crawled upright and started to drink coffee.

  After a ten-minute sit down and a couple of paracetamol, I was ready to face the world and run my hangover into the ground. I like exercise. I know, it’s weird. I didn’t when I was at school, and my idea of hell is still a place where tall, sporty girls pick me last for their netball team, but running is different. I can do it on my own. It allows me leeway on the chocolate cake front. And, maybe most of all, it clears my mind of the extraneous crap it always wants to hold on to.

  I decided to go as far as Otterspool and back, which is hardly a big ask as it only amounts to about four miles. By the time I got there, I was feeling a lot better, and stopped for a minute to drink some water and admire the view. There’s a waterside walk and a grassed area that looks out over the Mersey, and on a clear day it’s gorgeous. At night it used to be renowned for other things – things that consenting adults got up to in parked cars – but I hadn’t been here after dark for a while. Car sex loses its appeal after you hit thirty, and you realise there are places gear sticks just shouldn’t go.

  I was sitting on the grass, watching a particularly entertaining fight between two seagulls over half a sausage roll, when I was grabbed from behind and lifted right off my feet. I hadn’t heard them coming, which might have been something to do with the fact I was listening to Celine Dion’s greatest hits on my iPod. I know I should be ashamed, but I love a good power ballad.

  I lashed out straight away, and managed to get a good kick in to one of them, feeling his knee buckle slightly as I made contact. But there were two of them. They were big, and probably ugly, and I didn’t stand much of a chance.

  A black Audi Q7 was parked up by the road, one of the doors open. Unsurprisingly, I was thrown straight into the back. And they weren’t gentle. I scraped my shin on the step, and I’d also lost my iPod somewhere in the scuffle, which pissed me off.

  I wasn’t anywhere near as terrified as I should have been, though. It was kind of my own fault – if you go marching around demanding to speak to mobbed-up meatheads, you eventually get what you wish for.

  Wigwam was on the back seat. I straightened myself up and sat next to him, retaining as much dignity as a person can when they’ve just been caught singing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ to a pair of squabbling seagulls.

  He’s not a large man, Wigwam. A heroin-addicted mother doesn’t make for the best maternal habitat, and I’d guess she wasn’t taking her folic acid supplements and going to baby yoga.

  As well as being whippet thin, he has one of the worst cases of acne-scarring I’ve ever seen. His face is cratered like the moon. He hadn’t inherited his mother’s white skin, or his father’s black, but settled in between on a sickly yellowish shade. The only plus point for Wigwam on the looks front was the fact he had the most beautiful dark brown eyes in the world. Soulful, almost. Maybe that’s what always made me think there was more to him. And yes, I am that shallow.

  ‘D.C McCartney, nice of you to drop in,’ he said. He knew I wasn’t police any more. He was just saying it to irritate me. Now I knew how Father Dan felt.

  ‘My pleasure, Lilt,’ I replied, shuffling around on the leather seats. I had shorts on, and I was sweaty, and my skin was sticking. Nice.

  He narrowed those soulful eyes at me and I gave myself a mental kick. He hated being called by his real name – who could blame him? – and there was no sane reason for me to provoke him. I needed his help. Plus, you know, I was scared of him.

  ‘Geneva Connelly,’ I said, deciding to get straight to business. This wasn’t going to be pleasant, so I might as well try and make it fast.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s dead. Eugene thought there was enough truth in her story about ghostly goings on to bring in Dodgy Bobby. That went tits up, and now I’m investigating a case that’s similar in a lot of ways. I wondered if you wanted to, you know, pool resources.’

  I couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling, and I’m usually pretty good at picking up that stuff. Wigwam had had a lifetime of experience at training his face to show nothing. That’s assuming he did, in fact, have feelings at all.

  ‘What do you have?’ he asked. ‘And tell the truth now – I don’t like naughty little ex-pigs telling me fibs.’

  ‘Joy Middlemas. Nineteen, dead, fell out the window at Hart House. She left a diary, Wigwam. All about how she was being haunted. This isn’t a girl given to fantasies, and I’m guessing Geneva was the same. I have some help on this. The kind of help you were looking for with Dodgy Bobby, but with bigger balls.’

  ‘And what do you think we can do for you, assuming all of this is of any interest to us? Do you want money?’

  ‘Not right now, but thanks for the offer. I want to know more about Geneva and what happened to her. I want to talk to this cousin of hers, Theresa. And I want to find out who, or what, did this, and make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.’

  ‘Give over,’ he said, making an unhappy smiling shape with his mouth. ‘We’re not in the business of making the world a better place. If we help you, it’s for one reason only – Geneva. Eugene’s got a hard-on the size of Blackpool Tower for this. He loved that girl.’

  ‘Then he’ll want this sorted, won’t he? Nobody likes to have a hard on for too long. I want to talk to her mother as well.’

  ‘Lorraine?’ he said. ‘She’s long gone.’ He paused, stared out at the river for a second. ‘Can’t say as I blame her, poor cow. She was always too soft for this life. Good Catholic girl, overdeveloped sense of conscience. Got a brain too, so she noticed things she couldn’t live with. Geneva was all that kept her around. If she doesn’t want to be found, she won’t be. I’ve told Eugene that. Subject closed.’

  Hmm. That was a bit too definite. I had a sneaking suspicion Wigwam hadn’t looked for Lorraine Connelly very hard at all.

  ‘What was she like?’ I asked. ‘Geneva?’

  ‘She was like all of them, love. Tough, took no shit. But she was clever, and she was going to do it different. Wanted to take over the legal side of things. Said she didn’t want to be a breeding mare for the family, she’d do it her way. So Eugene let her. Now he thinks it’s all his fault, he should’ve kept her at home with the other women.’

  Casey women lived in velvet-lined dungeons. As much Gucci as you could eat in one sitting; unlimited budgets for home improvements and bodily renovations; constant holidays in the Caribbean; and the best boxes at Anfield. But what they didn’t have was freedom. They were expected to look good, run the house, have kids, and turn a Botoxed blind eye to where all that money came from. It struck me that Geneva had made the right choice, even if it didn’t work out quite as planned.

  ‘Well, I’m pretty sure a lot of things are Eugene’s fault,’ I said. ‘But not this. What did the police say?’

  ‘Tragic accident. Not that we wanted them involved anyway, for obvious reasons. Lorraine did all that. Dealt with some stupid-arsed liaison officer who didn’t have a clue who Geneva was, just spent a lot of time patting her hand and putting the fucking kettle on. We let it slide – we have our own ways of dealing with things.’
<
br />   Yeah. Ways that often involved the use of meat hooks and machetes. I can only imagine how frustrated Eugene Casey was at not being able to kick the shit out of whoever harmed his granddaughter. It’d be eating him alive.

  ‘What about this Joy girl? What’d the bizzies do there?’

  ‘More than put the kettle on,’ I said, ‘but the same conclusion. Her parents are convinced it’s true, that some… supernatural being… caused her death. Wigwam, what did you make of it? Hart House, when you went with Bobby?’

  He clamped his lips together, like he was trying to stop the words coming out. His nostrils flared, and I saw his fingers clench into small fists.

  ‘Just a building. Just another one of those shitty old buildings we specialise in in this city,’ he said. He was lying. He’d been scared, I could tell. So had I. But apparently we were both too macho to mention it.

  ‘Okay. Well this afternoon I’m seeing the bobby who dealt with the case. I’ll find out more then.’

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked. Wigwam would probably have a better knowledge of working coppers than I did. That whole ‘keep your enemies close’ thing.

  ‘Alec Jones.’

  A genuine smile broke out on his face. It looked out of place, like a rainbow over Chernobyl.

  ‘Nice one. I know him. He had our Liam up for shoplifting once, couple of years ago. The stupid little turd pinched a multipack of Durex from the Superdrug in town. As if he couldn’t afford them, and as if he was likely to be getting any. Nothing dumber on the face of the planet than a fifteen-year-old boy. Came to nowt. The security guard realised he’d been wrong all along, obviously.’