Fear No Evil (12 page)

‘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.’

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.’

‘Obviously.’

‘But he was all right, as pigs go. Easy on the eye. Nice arse.’

I almost choked with the need to laugh. Wigwam was a complicated man, that’s for sure.

‘I need to go Wigwam. I’ve got an appointment at the library.’

‘Books late back?’

‘Yeah, and those fines can be bastards. Also, your idiot thugs up front there owe me a new iPod. And a copy of Celine Dion’s greatest hits.’

‘No problem, queen. I’ll run you off a copy of mine.’

Chapter 14

I showered, changed, and walked to Liverpool Library in the city centre. It’s a beautiful old place, all domes and booming acoustics. Donated to the people of the city by one of those warm-hearted founding father-type families. A family like the Deerbornes, in fact, I thought, checking my phone to see if Francesca had called back. She hadn’t.

I was meeting Dan there, along with his blunt-speaking Yorkshire fishwife and the scarlet pimpernel. Adam – dreamboat – was expecting us.

I was running slightly late, following my peskily time-consuming abduction, and hadn’t had time to dry my hair or put any slap on. I was wearing a sweater that was proving far too heavy for the warmth of the day, and arrived feeling hassled, harassed, and looking far from my best.

Dan was waiting outside the entrance, standing next to an Amazonian goddess I presumed was Betty Batty. Not, I have to say, the image the name had conjured up.

Almost six foot in her flat ballet shoes, she was slim, elegant, and gorgeous. Her skin looked like deep brown velvet poured over fine bones, and she had one of those close-cropped hair-dos that only the very, very striking can carry off. Men were literally walking into lamp posts as they passed.

Predictably enough, Justin didn’t look like an eighteenth-century French fop either. He was of average height, but with the physique of a bodybuilder. He was wearing leather biker trousers and had on a short-sleeved black T-shirt that showed full jacket tattoos all over his arms. A straggling goatee was the only hair on his entire head. He looked like the kind of man who rode with the Hell’s Angels and kept boa constrictors as pets.

Dan introduced us, and there were firm handshakes all round. I had no idea what gifts they brought to the party, but I welcomed any help at all.

I led them through to the Reference Hall, where Adam Stone had his lair. He was sitting behind his desk, and I waved as we approached. Even in his uniform shirt, he looked good. In a bookish kind of way. He smiled and stood up. I saw him drink Betty in with his blue eyes, and was impressed he didn’t faint.

‘Hi! I’ll be with you in a minute. Just need to keep an eye on that lot in case they get rowdy.’

He gestured at a table full of silent young Muslim women, all dressed in full burqa and intently studying medical text books. Librarian humour.

We followed him to the cubicle that passed as an office, and tried to fit into it. As I seemed to be hanging round in the Land of the Giants these days, it was a tight squeeze.

I’d filled Adam in on the case the day before. He’d taken it all surprisingly well – a public library is a great training ground for handling the weirder elements of society.

‘So what do you need?’ he asked, speaking to me but looking at Betty. I had a feeling that was going to happen a lot while she was around.

‘We need a full history of Hart House,’ said Dan, perched next to a pile of French dictionaries on a desk. ‘Everything – when it was built, who built it, why, what it’s been used for, and in particular any folklore connected with it.

‘We’re looking for anything unusual,’ said Betty, ‘anything that could suggest violence, turbulence, or potential religious use. Paganism, Satanism, occultism of any kind. You might want to check for any unexplained disappearances or deaths around the time it was built, especially of children.’

‘Why do you say that?’ I asked, my eyes snapping up nervously. I hadn’t told Dan about the mysterious giggling and hand-clapping I’d heard. It all felt a bit too Hammer Horror to admit. But that, and the fact that Joy had mentioned nursery rhymes in her diary, was making me think it might be the right track. Dead, evil, ASBO kids. Marvellous. As if the living ones weren’t enough.

Betty looked at me, her deep brown eyes too perceptive by far.

‘I’ve heard of it before,’ she said, her tone gentle. ‘Cases where a murdered virgin, or the corpse of a newborn, has been buried beneath the foundation stone.’

I smiled. Kind of. What a lovely conversation.

‘I can stay and help you start now, if you have time,’ said Betty, turning her attention back to Adam, who was barely controlling his saliva glands.

‘Yes. That would be a big help,’ he said. ‘We can look at the newspaper archive and see if anything leaps out. And I can take you into the stacks where we keep the really interesting stuff.’

I choked back a snort. A few years ago Adam had taken me into the stacks to look at some really interesting stuff, and we’d ended up swapping notes with our pants down. My judgement was impaired; I’d been to a boozy lunch do. I’ve been worried ever since the CCTV footage was going to turn up on YouTube, despite him assuring me he knew all the blind spots.

‘Great,’ said Dan, standing up in am I’m-out-of-here way. ‘We’ll leave you to it.’

I looked back at Adam as we left. He was leaning very close to Betty and pointing out some vital architectural detail in the Hall. He noticed me watching, and gave me a thumbs-up behind her back. Oh well. I was sure Betty could cope – she must be used to grown men acting like spaniels around her by now. And if Adam was man enough to get her interested in a quickie while they were searching for centuries-old dead babies, he deserved all the fun he could get.

We emerged back into the sunshine, and I turned to Dan.

‘Justin’s off to Hart House,’ he said, ‘to do some temperature checks, and look for hotspots.’

‘Hotspots of what, and how is he going to get in? Is he dressing up as a priest too?’

I glanced at biker boy, who I’d yet to hear speak. In fact if he wasn’t so big, I could have forgotten he was there. I really couldn’t see him carrying off a dog collar. Carrying off a dog, in his teeth, maybe.

‘Hotspots of supernatural activity,’ Dan said, matter-of-factly. ‘We know what happened with Joy, and where, and Justin might be able to pick up a trace. Without getting too technical, it’s like a smell, and he might be able to follow it to other parts of the building. Demons don’t have any physical entity, they’re purely spiritual beings, but they leave a record if you know how to look for it.’

‘Like a signature scent?’ I suggested. Just as I didn’t think things could get any weirder, I could add demon-sniffing hell’s angels to the list. Dan nodded enthusiastically.

‘Yeah. You get a gold star. And he’s getting in as a gas fitter looking at the heating. I phoned up earlier and made him an appointment.’

‘He’s going disguised as a gas fitter?’ I repeated. These people were even sneakier than me.

‘No, not disguised as one. He
is
a gas fitter.’

Justin smiled at me, a hint of pride in his eyes. Now I knew who to call when the radiators made that weird gurgling sound in the winter.

‘Okay. Great. What about you? Could you do me a favour?’

‘Yes. Your wish is my command.’

If only, I thought, sneaking a look at Justin to see if he’d reacted to the flirtatious tone. Nothing. His face was about as expressive as a dead fish on a slab.

‘Could you do a kind of Catholic mafia thing for me? I’m looking for someone. She’s called Lorraine Connelly, and she’s Geneva’s mum. She’s off the radar, but I don’t think anyone’s looked too hard. I’m told she’s devout, and she has a lot on her mind, so…’

‘So you were wondering if the Catholic mafia – nice expression, by the way – could help you track her down? You know nobody will breach the rules of the confessional, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do! And I’m not asking that. What I’m asking is for you, and Father Kerrigan, and all the other God-botherers you know to look out for her. I’m guessing there’s a priest out there who sees a lot of Lorraine Connelly, and if he could pass on my phone number and the fact it’s about Geneva, she might come forward.’

‘You have a lovely way with words, Jayne,’ he said, ‘and I’ll see what the God-bothering Corleones can do for you. But first, I’ve got to see a man about a deer.’

I resisted the urge to ask. I was used to working on my own, and liked it that way. I wasn’t considered the best of team players when I was still on the Force, mainly because of that slight tendency to obsess I mentioned. When my colleagues were going home for barbecues or to walk their dogs or build model aeroplanes, I was still at my desk, going over case files. It made them look bad, and nobody likes that.

But here I was, part of Team Freaky. I had things to do I was better off doing without Dan, and I’m sure the same applied to him. We’d have to trust each other with the brushstrokes if we were going to paint the big picture.