Fear No Evil by Debbie Johnson Page B

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