Fear No Evil (31 page)

‘I don’t want you involved either. You haven’t got the brains you were born with. Now fuck off. If he’s gone to the pigs, love, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble. If he’s legged it, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble. If—’

‘Okay. She gets the picture,’ said Dan, standing up, nudging the table sharply towards Wigwam as he did, catching him in the stomach with its edge. ‘She’s in a lot of trouble. We’re leaving now.’

He took hold of my arm and I got out of the chair. My limbs were trembling, but I tried not to look like a mental patient as we walked, slowly and calmly, out of the room. You should never turn your back and run from Wigwam. He was like a wolf – he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from chasing.

Mickey Flynn gave us the evils on the way out, but didn’t bother us. As soon as we were a couple of streets away I stopped, did a shake test on my fingers and found out I was all right. At least I still had all my fingers. I was absolutely exhausted, though. It really had been a bastard of a day.

‘Are you all right?’ said Dan.

‘Yeah. Bit shaky. As to be expected. I think maybe tomorrow I better write a will, just in case. But right now, I think I need to go home.’

On my own. To an empty flat, where I could happily spend the whole night worrying about Casey hit men or dead psychics or Demon Things or Joy Middlemas, lying broken on the ground in a vat of her own blood. Home sweet home.

I looked up at him, and added: ‘Come with me. We could—’

‘We could what?’ he interrupted.

‘Watch telly. Have a pizza. Drink a can of Guinness. Something normal, something a million miles away from all this…’

He took my hand in his, and we started to walk.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘So long as I get to choose the pizza.’

Chapter 37

I woke up the next morning with a vague sense of unease. Until the events of the previous day came back to me, and then I felt a very specific sense of unease – I’d pissed off Eugene Casey. Big time.

Dan had left at about midnight. We’d eaten a lot and drank a bit and watched ‘Terminator 2’ on the telly. No wild, passionate sex, but a lot of comfort and companionship, which we both needed. I’d made him get a cab home instead of doing that weird walking thing, then crashed into bed, worried I wouldn’t be able to rest for all the doubts and fears playing in my mind.

Two seconds later I was asleep, out cold for a solid eight hours, untouched by dreams or restlessness. Which undoubtedly shows what a shallow person I am. But as soon as my eyes creaked open, I started to gnaw at it again. What had happened to Solitaire by now? And more importantly, what was Eugene going to do to me? All very selfish, obviously – but my survival instinct is pretty strong.

There was, of course, a slim chance Wigwam wouldn’t drop me in it with the King of Crime, but I wasn’t holding my breath. Probably made more sense to spend all my savings on plastic surgery and buy a new face.

I dragged myself out from under the duvet, had a shower, and ate leftover pizza straight from the fridge. Life was too short for health food, I was fast realising. I bet Joy Middlemas and Geneva Connelly would give anything for an extra slice of cold pizza.

The phone rang. I saw Tish’s name flash up, closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

‘Solitaire’s dead,’ she said. Talk about getting straight to the point.

I’d known it was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with. I sagged with the news, like a popped balloon.

Part of me had hoped he’d run. Despite everything he’d done, I’d harboured a quiet wish that he’d used his brain, got out fast, and was sitting on a first class plane headed for Rio de Janeiro right now. As much for the sake of my conscience as anything else. But I’d known, deep down, that wouldn’t happen. Perhaps he hadn’t moved fast enough. Perhaps he’d stayed, hoping he could talk his way out of it. Either way, they’d got him. He was dead.

‘Topped himself. The body was found by his housekeeper this morning.’

‘What?!’ I said, so surprised I jumped to my feet.

‘Gun in the mouth. Very messy apparently. And his dogs, except he had the decency to drug them up first. Left an empty bottle of codeine by their chow dish. I picked up on the story, I was keeping an eye on police calls like you said – but I can’t help thinking it’s not a coincidence that you were asking questions about the very same man just yesterday. What happened?’

‘Jesus, Tish. I wasn’t expecting this. Was it really a suicide? Not just a… you know, a Casey-style suicide?’

‘Not from what I’ve heard. It was the real deal. Left a note and everything – the usual stuff, too depressed to carry on, blah blah. Obviously there’s more to it. And obviously, you’re going to tell your best friend everything she wants to know about it, aren’t you?’

‘Obviously I’m fucking well not. Not yet anyway. Christ. I need to think about this, Tish. I saw him yesterday, and he was… well, he was down. I gave him some news. I gave him some choices. I never had him pegged as the type to do this. And equally obviously, none of that can ever appear in a story.’

‘Spoilsport. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’m waiting for a call from someone in Indonesia. Don’t ask. But we’ll get together later – and remember this: whatever you told him, whatever you did, it wasn’t
you
who shoved the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, so don’t spend all day beating yourself up about it. I know what you’re like.’

Easy for her to say. Tish wouldn’t beat herself up about it if she was in my shoes. She’d chalk it up to experience and move on. Possibly get drunk and shag an Italian waiter if she felt really bad. But I wasn’t made that way and she knew it. I talked a good talk, but there was a mounting body of evidence now that wherever I walked, death followed. I was like the Grim Bloody Reaper, with boobs.

I couldn’t figure out why I was so shaken. I’d woken up that morning knowing that Solitaire was probably dead, and that I’d played a part in that. Yet I was still stunned by the choice he’d made…if it had been a choice.

I called Wigwam, left a message on his voicemail: ‘Was that you, and if so, why did you kill the fucking dogs as well?’

Two minutes later he called back, his voice quiet and low, like he was trying not to be overheard.

‘It wasn’t me. No way I’d fucking kill the dogs. I love dogs. By the time we got there it was done. Don’t know why you’re so bloody surprised – seems like the sensible way out to me. He knew what Eugene was going to do to him, and at least this way he didn’t suffer. Much. Guns aren’t the most efficient way to—’

‘Stop! Shut up! I don’t want to know. What about Eugene? Have you told him everything?’

‘Yeah. Apart from the bit about you giving the scumbag the chance to run. ’Cause that’s what you really mean, isn’t it, love? I didn’t tell him, no. Didn’t seem to be any point, once we knew he’d offed hisself. Eugene’s pretty cranked up about it. If I let on you’d given him the chance to cheat him like that, he’d have come after box number two instead.’

Which, lest I forget it, was me. I stayed quiet and concentrated on keeping my pizza down.

‘A thank you might be nice,’ he said sarcastically. He was right.

‘Thank you, Wigwam,’ I muttered.

‘’S okay. I didn’t do it for you. Did it for Eugene. You have too many mates in the filth, love. They’d never have let it rest, and that hunky blonde fella would have stirred it up a bit as well. Now, do you want to see the video?’

‘What video?’

‘The one of Simon Solitaire’s last few moments. Not the head blowing to bits part, like. I’m assuming you’re too much of a girl for that.’

Yes. I most definitely was.

‘I mean the bit before,’ he said. ‘You know the CCTV cameras? He stood there, outside in his driveway, and did a little talk for us. It was a bit like one of those whatchamacallits, them vagina monologues, in a Shakespeare play. Almost felt sorry for the stupid fucker, until I reminded meself what he’d done to Geneva.’

‘And Bobby,’ I added.

‘Yeah. Whatever. So he gives us a speech, tears streaming and everything, about how he did love Geneva, honest. But it all got too much for him and he couldn’t cope and he was too scared of the big bad bogeyman and he’d missed her every day since she’d died. You were right about all of it. Shit himself when Dodgy Bobby came back on the scene, you poking your big bizzy stick in the hornet’s nest and all. He thought it was all dead and buried and suddenly it’s not – and you’ve got fucking Bobby translating messages from the grave, or whatever. He got help. Bloke from Brum did Geneva. Accident specialist, shall we call him? Eugene’s on to that.’

‘I don’t want to know. None of my business.’

I wouldn’t shed any tears over the loss of one more hit man, but I’d heard enough death and disaster for one day. I needed a new job. Maybe as a dressmaker or a nail technician or something. Maybe I could just seduce Will Deerborne and marry him and be a lady of leisure for the rest of my life.

‘Last thing he says,’ carried on Wigwam, ‘was to say thank you to you. Like that “pass my thanks on to Miss McCartney,” he said. Nice, isn’t it?’

Yeah. Very polite.

I needed another shower.

Chapter 38

We met at Will’s later that day, thankfully without the intrusion of Francesca, as it was a Saturday.

I popped in to see Justin, who I expected to be tucked up in bed with his bonce in a bandage. No such luck. He was lying on the sofa, scowling as Betty insisted he drink some pretty vile-smelling herbal concoction. I didn’t blame him. I’d rather eat my own vomit than sip that stuff, but it was nigh on impossible to disagree with Betty, so he had the mug in his hands.

‘You all right?’ I said.

‘Ummm,’ he replied, wincing as he tasted it.

Okay, pleasantries over with, I thought. Down to business.

‘We need to regroup,’ I said. ‘Adjust our brains in the light of recent developments.’

I’d filled Dan in on Solitaire’s suicide before heading over. He’d been quiet, mulling it over to the extent where I expected him to tell me to go off and do seventeen Hail Marys and donate ten per cent of my savings to the parish poor. Eventually, he said: ‘Well. I can see why he did it,’ and that was that. Lecture over.

‘Where’s Tish?’ asked Will, bustling in with an apron on. Black and white stripes, very stylish, probably the chef’s version of a hand-tailored tux, but an apron all the same.

‘Why are you wearing that?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been… making cookies,’ he answered, blushing slightly. Captain of industry Alpha male doing a Nigella. Who’d have thought it.

‘Oh. Well, I hope they’ve got chocolate in them,’ I replied, not really knowing what else to say.

‘They do,’ he responded, taking up a place in a large leather recliner chair. Obviously a bit tired after all that mixing and whisking and whatever else you did to produce cookies. Other than go to the corner shop and buy them.

‘So, we were wrong about Geneva,’ he said, summing it all up on one blunt sentence. ‘She wasn’t killed by the demon youngsters after all.’

I might have been imagining it, but I was sure I heard a tinge of relief in his voice. One less death to chalk up to the Deerborne legacy, I supposed. One less hideous occurrence to keep him up at night. Lucky so-and-so. I still had more than enough to keep my guilt-buds going all year.

‘No. She was killed the old-fashioned way – by an irate lover who’d had enough of her. She became an inconvenience – no, more than that, she became a threat. So Solitaire had her taken out of the equation, and was probably relieved as buggery that everyone seemed willing to believe a ghost had done it. Or that she’d tripped.’

‘Why Bobby as well, though?’ asked Betty, sipping her evil brew like it was a fine glass of Prosecco.

‘Because he didn’t want to take any risks. Bobby had this reputation as being some kind of all-seeing psychic, and there was always the remote chance he might have tipped somebody off that Geneva’s death was something to do with Solitaire. Or at the very least, not to do with some psycho ghost.’

And with the glory of hindsight, he had tipped me off, I now knew – telling me that the demon thingy hadn’t been the one to end Geneva. But I’d been too caught up in unfolding events to give it the attention it deserved. Plus my route to questioning Bobby any further was brought to a pretty effective close when he stopped breathing.

‘Where’s Tish?’ Will repeated. He seemed very concerned with her whereabouts. Maybe he had the hots for her after all.

‘Too busy to make it. She’s working.’

‘Anything to do with this?’ he asked.

‘Not a clue. Last time I spoke to her, she’d been waiting to hear from somebody in Indonesia, but she was keeping it all close to her chest. Which in Tish’s world could mean anything from an in-depth look at third world debt to a debate on whether platforms are in or out this season, so let’s get on without her. My question is this: we made assumptions about Geneva, and they were wrong. Are we making the same mistake with Joy? Is there some disgruntled boyfriend or neighbourhood nutter laughing his arse off at all this Demon Thing crap, when in reality, she just fell out of a window, or got pushed out of one?’

I didn’t think so, but it needed to be asked. I’d missed it with Solitaire, and look what a happy ending that one had.

‘No. We’re not wrong,’ said Dan. It was the first time he’d spoken, and he was in his customary position leaning against the fireplace, arms spread out on the mantel. Sometimes the pose was relaxed, sometimes frenetic. Today, you could tell he had no interest in sitting down, or even in staying still. The energy was fizzing out of him in a constant, low-key buzz you could almost hear. I could anyway. But then again, I suspected I paid a lot more attention to the way Dan fizzed than anybody else in the room.

‘We’re not wrong,’ he repeated. ‘Not about Joy. We were all there, we all saw what it… they… were capable of. The way it talked about Joy; the way it tried to kill Sophie. I’m sure Geneva would have ended up the same – except Solitaire beat it to it.’

I wasn’t so sure about Geneva. I liked to think that if anyone could have sent this demon straight back to hell, it would have been her.