Fear No Evil

A strong nose, aquiline, saving him from prettiness. A wide mouth with sensual lips, skin lightly sun-kissed from all those hours outdoors – chopping wood, digging the soil, romping naked in the forest…

Dragging my mind out of the gutter and back into reality, I reminded myself this was a man of God and I was a very, very bad girl. The Almighty would definitely know if I was imagining one of His servants stark naked and spread-eagled on a Caribbean beach. Or even in a rent-by-the-hour hotel bedroom on the Dock Road.

‘Father Dan?’ I asked, not quite believing that it could be. A man who looked like this facing a lifetime of celibacy? I’d be forced to get a petition up, or write a letter of complaint to the Vatican. But maybe this was just Father Dan’s handsome gardener. Or his illegitimate son – come on, we all know it happens!

He swung the axe down, hard, to lodge it in the tree stump that was obviously its home. It wobbled slightly from side to side. I knew how it felt.

‘You can drop the Father,’ he said, ‘I haven’t been a priest for six years now.’

Chapter 4 (#u0cd826c3-457b-576a-96ed-0f2f8b9fbf61)

‘Can I help you with something?’ he asked, in a deep, touch-of-gravel voice that almost made my bra strap pop open of its own accord. Hmmm. Yes, I thought, you certainly can. You can help me scratch that itch I have inside my—

‘Hi,’ I replied, cutting short that line of thought and holding out my hand to shake his, ‘my name’s Jayne McCartney, and I’m a private investigator based in Liverpool.’

I paused, waiting for the ‘are you related?’ eyebrow to pop up. Nothing. A man of steel. Maybe he hadn’t caught on yet. He probably didn’t get asked it as much without a Scouse accent on the side.

He wiped his hand on one denim-clad thigh, which I watched with great interest, before reaching out to take my fingers in his. Yikes. He was firm and hot, in all kinds of ways.

‘I wondered if I could talk to you about Katie Bell?’

His grip tensed slightly, and my metacarpals made a little ‘eek’ noise as he squeezed a bit too tight.

He stared at me for a few seconds. His expression was bland, but I knew he’d be taking in every flaw, every nuance, every hint as to my intentions. Defrocked or not, he was clergy by training, and in my experience they’re pretty canny judges of character. Father Doheny, our parish priest, could get a job with the United Nations after refereeing the neighbourhood Scouse Catholic mafia for thirty years. He could also read minds – mine at least. I was fairly sure that wasn’t the case with Father Dan, or he’d have locked himself in the shed by now.

‘You’d better come in, then,’ he said, turning and walking towards a back door into the house. He held it open, gesturing for me to follow. The corridor was cool, dim, and smelled of something herby and spicy and more nutritious than my entire weekly shop.

‘Wait in there, I’ll be back in a minute – help yourself to a drink,’ he said, pointing into the kitchen. I heard his footsteps pounding up the stairs over my head as I nosed around. A large room, flooded with light from the garden. Pale stone floor, worn smooth by hundreds of years and dozens of cooks making the journey from stove to table and back. Something that probably had vegetables in it was simmering in a pan, making my tummy rumble. It’d been a while since those doughnuts.

The windows were open, and the breeze ruffled the curtains inwards slightly. A squat glass jam jar full of sprigs of lavender was perched on the ledge, and a wasp from outside was trying to reach it. I glared and tried not to show my fear – stingy things make me poo my pants. I got one stuck under my helmet once when I was on patrol in Anfield on match day, and I had to let it repeatedly sting my scalp rather than show the crowds we were failing to intimidate that I was bothered. Nothing says ‘authority’ quite like a squealing woman running down the street swatting her own head.

I leaned over the sink, reached behind the taps, and tried to pull the window shut. The bastard saw me coming. I swear to God it was staring at me, stinger at the ready. I snatched my fingers away and knocked the jar over, clattering it into the Belfast sink, where it splashed plant water all over my T-shirt, and smashed in half. Perfect.

I grabbed up the two pieces of the jar, and wondered if Father Dan would notice if I put them in the bin or threw them in the garden. At the very least it’d give me something naughty-but-not-too-sinful to admit during my next trip to the confessional. Better that than the fact I’d been trying to size up Father Dan’s boy bits from the bulge in his jeans.

I was saved the moral dilemma by the creaking open of the door, and the return of my host. Fortunately, for the sake of my shoddy morals, fully dressed. He stopped and stared at me, grasping two broken halves of a jam jar, covered in water and looking decidedly guilty.

‘You could have just used a glass,’ he said, taking the shards from my hands and placing them back in the sink.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘it was a wasp.’

‘Really? It must have been a mutant to knock that thing over. Beer or Coke?’

‘Beer… no, Coke!’ I replied, as he opened the fridge. Beer is always the word that comes out of my mouth first, but I had a long drive home ahead of me. As well as dealing with some very unwanted hormone rushes.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked, pulling open the ring pull on his lager. A slight hiss and a hint of froth. God, that smelled good. I felt my nostrils twitch like a Bisto kid who’d failed rehab.

I nodded reluctantly, and sat down at the kitchen table. Dan sat opposite me, taking a gulp from his beer.

‘So, you wanted to talk about Katie?’ he said.

‘Yes. I saw your entry on pi.share. I have two clients who think their daughter was murdered by a… a…’

‘Ghost? Ghoul? Gothic creature of the night?’

‘Erm… yes. Possibly they’re mad. Possibly I’m mad for listening. But here I am. Is there anything you can tell me about your case that might help?’

‘No, they’re not mad,’ he said, putting down the can and shoving his hand roughly through his hair. He looked distracted and vague, staring off into space over my shoulder. I took a sneaky sideways glance. Nothing there. Not that I could see, anyway – but Father Dan could be witnessing a choir of celestial angels dressed up as Boy George and singing ‘Karma Chameleon’ for all I knew.

He snapped his eyes back to me, sat up slightly straighter. His T-shirt had been washed a few too many times and was stretched a bit too tightly over his shoulders.

‘It’s not mad,’ he repeated, making piercing eye contact with me, ‘because it’s probably true. Things that go bump in the night? They exist, and they can kill. Most of the time we find other names for it. We blame accidents, or bad luck, or too much booze. In Katie’s case, it was a spirit. A pretty bloody unhappy one at that. She wasn’t pleased with being surrounded by gorgeous young girls, all very much alive, when she was dead. So Katie got a shove. She wasn’t the first in that building, but she will be the last.’

He took another gulp of his beer, finished it off, and crushed the middle of the can with his hand. A slight smile tugged at the corners of his lips. He seemed utterly convinced by what he was saying. Maybe nature had walloped him with the loony stick to make up for the face and body.

‘So,’ he said. ‘This is the bit where you start to wonder if I’m a lunatic planning to cudgel you to death and hide your corpse in the well. After I’ve sliced off selected body parts to eat with a nice Chianti.’

Ha bloody ha. I wasn’t scared. Much. He might be big and think he was tough, but I was small and knew I was tough. Except when it came to wasps, obviously.

‘Are you a leg man or a breast man, then?’ I asked, picking up my Coke. ‘I was wondering which body parts you’d go for.’

Which, I realised, could be taken in more ways than one. Accidental flirting.

He rocked back in his chair and laughed. It was a big laugh, honest and loud. It made you want to join in. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I get it. You’re not about to run screaming from the house and into the wild blue yonder.’

God no. I’d be more scared of the wild blue yonder than I would a psychopathic serial killer, but he didn’t need to know that.

‘Look. I’ve come a long way to talk about Katie Bell – have I wasted my time?’ I asked in my best don’t-mess-me-around voice. He might be eye candy to infinity and beyond, but I was here for a reason. A not particularly amusing reason.

‘No. If you think you’re up to it, I’ll tell you about Katie.’

I nodded. I was definitely up to it.

‘ She was nineteen, bright young thing, apple of her parents’ eye. She was originally from up here, in Cumbria, which is how I got involved. I’d done some investigative work before; other… unusual occurrences. But Katie’s was the first where I… solved it, I suppose you’d have to say.’

‘Solved it how?’ I asked. ‘There was no case closed marker on pi.share.’

‘Solved it with a really big, dramatic exorcism. Flashing lights. Bleeding eye sockets. Full on fire and brimstone. Sure you don’t want that beer?’

I narrowed my eyes at him. Was he trying to put one over on me? Having me on for a laugh?

‘No. It’s all true,’ he said, getting up and pulling two more cans out of the fridge.

Fuck. He could read my mind. He was like Father Doheny after all. Except, you know, forty years younger and a million times better looking. I was going to have to be cleaner in thought as well as deed if this carried on.

I took the lager from his hand and cracked it open. One wouldn’t hurt. I wasn’t sure what a yardarm was, but I was pretty sure the sun was past it.

Chapter 5 (#u0cd826c3-457b-576a-96ed-0f2f8b9fbf61)