Fear No Evil. Debbie Johnson
calling me Father Dan,’ he said, without even raising his eyes. It seemed to annoy him, which I found very enjoyable. Naughty me. He finished reading the page he was on, then closed the book and placed it back on top of the desk. It was a hardback journal, covered in a delicate purple floral design. A pretty book for a pretty girl who came to an ugly end.
He looked agitated, and ran his hand through his hair, leaving it displaced in thick blonde furrows.
‘Let’s go to Hart House,’ he said.
Half an hour later we were standing outside. It was another warm day, but we were in the shadow of Hart House, where the air was cool and breezy.
It was even uglier in real life – all neo-Gothic red brick arches and gargoyles with ironically raised eyebrows. The top floor was edged by fake castellations, with a turret at each corner. There might have been a roof garden up there at one time, or an observation point for looking out over the Mersey.
Students bustled in and out of the front doors, books tucked under their arms, backpacks hanging from their shoulders, all looking unfashionably earnest. This must be the Hall for Hard Workers, which might explain why I never lived here. I was firmly in the Hall for Slackers, where the heaviest thing we carried round was a four-pack of Stella and a bad attitude.
There was a bike park to the left of the main entrance, and I noticed the residents using plastic swipe cards to get in and out of the building. The patch of grass outside was bald and faded, like a threadbare carpet, its only decoration a litter bin. The concrete path leading up to the grandiose double doors was clean apart from a few globs of chewing gum, and completely unmarked by the fact that only a few months ago, Joy Middlemas was lying there with her brains splattered all over the paving, bleeding out her last moments on earth.
Dan had been quiet and moody on the drive over. The few times I asked him a question, he snapped back at me, so I gave up. I suppose reading the diary of a dead girl could make the jolliest of souls testy. I couldn’t complain – so far I’d wussed out of reading it at all.
I snuck a look at him. The ‘something’ he’d needed to grab from his van turned out to be a black shirt and trousers and a dog collar, all of which he was now wearing.
‘Isn’t there some kind of law against that?’ I’d asked sarcastically when he emerged from the loo, transformed. ‘Impersonating a member of the priesthood?’
‘Possibly, but I assume you’d know,’ he said. ‘Personally I don’t care, and I don’t think God does – it helps me get in to places. Nobody likes to be rude to a priest.’
I was about to prove him wrong on that point, but he’d pre-empted me by walking out of the door without another word. I consoled myself by being rude to a priest’s back, with two of my fingers.
The security at Hart House wasn’t too bad at all. As well as the swipe card system, I could see CCTV cameras at strategic points, and there was a uniformed guard visible behind a small desk in the lobby. The car park off to the rear had another swipe card entry system, with a barrier that swung up and down on demand. Nothing that would stop anyone serious about their trade, but enough to deter a passing thief or pervert.
‘Come on,’ said Dan, striding ahead. I wasn’t sure if I was glad about the dog collar thing or not. On the one hand, it made it easier to think of him as Father Dan. On the other, it made me feel even more guilty that I was admiring the length of his legs as he disappeared off towards the door. It was a moral dilemma. Or potentially an immoral one.
A girl came out of the door, about nineteen, pretty as a picture with flowing blonde hair and huge blue eyes. She was wearing bell bottom jeans and a fur-fringed suede jacket. Back to the seventies. She looked up as Dan approached, did a slight double take, then smiled at him. Dazzled by his priestly splendour, or maybe that one dimple of his, she held the door open for him. So much for the swipe cards. Security is only as secure as the idiot using it.
‘Thank you,’ I mumbled as she passed, although she clearly hadn’t even noticed I existed. I wasn’t sure I liked the way I was becoming invisible in the presence of the man in black.
The guard glanced at us as we entered, and I saw his eyes clock the dog collar immediately. He was middle-aged and looked like his two favourite hobbies were drinking beer and watching telly.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Dan, confidently, walking past as though he had every right to be there.
The guard nodded and smiled. ‘Afternoon, Father,’ he said, going back to his copy of the Daily Star.
‘Told you it worked,’ he said as we headed to the stairs. Smug bastard. I was sure I’d have got in somehow, probably by telling some kind of big fat fib and carrying a clipboard. For some reason people always take you seriously if you have a clipboard.
Inside, it was cool and calm and dark. The floor of the lobby was parquet, stubbed by a million toes; the staircase probably killed off an entire forest of oak at some point. Now the steps were hidden by shabby brown carpet, and the banisters were untouched by the hand of Mr Pledge. The stairs were quiet – the students, being by definition brainy types, were all using the lift instead of trekking up and down by foot.
Joy had lived on the fifth floor, from the address her parents had given me, and I knew that’s where Father Dan would be heading. I’m pretty fit, but he’s a lot taller, and was taking the steps two at a time. I lost sight of him as he turned the bend up onto the fifth, then put a spring on to catch him up. He’d stopped dead on the top step, which opened up onto the same small landing we’d seen on numbers one, two, three and four.
I stood just behind him, getting an eyeful of a perfectly formed arse hovering two stairs above me.
‘Can you feel it?’ he asked.
I stayed quiet. I wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about, but I was fairly certain it wasn’t his arse.
It did feel a little colder here. No breeze, but a slight drop in temperature that, now I came to think about it, was giving me goosebumps. Dan had gone silent again, and there was no noise from outside filtering through the sound-proofed windows. Deadly quiet. I started to feel the fine hairs on the back of my neck tingle, and pushed past Dan to distract myself.
Four doors, all painted a vomitous shade of beige, each with a number painted on them in that military-style font that reminds you of army surplus or prisons.
I stopped next to him, feeling my heart beating faster than usual in my chest. Dan was still quiet, staring at the door to Joy’s room as though he was magicking up X-ray vision to look through solid wood. I planned something a bit more straightforward, and marched over to knock on it just in case someone else had moved in.
No reply. I banged again, for good measure, and to create some noise. All this quiet was spooking me, as was Dan’s expression. He was frowning, concentrating really hard like he was trying to remember his nineteen times table while balancing a sherry trifle on his head.
‘In her diary, she talks about this hallway,’ he said. ‘About coming up those stairs, or out of the lift, and feeling the cold hit her. She noticed it when she first moved in and reported it to the maintenance staff. They checked the heating and nothing was wrong. They all felt it was cold as well, but when they gauged the temperature, it showed the same as the rest of the building. To start off with she just mentions it, in passing. Later, she says it “got into” her room. Those are the words she used – “it got into my room”. That was a couple of months before she died, and after that she was always cold in there. Always.’
I couldn’t stop myself from shivering. I reached out and tried the door handle. Locked.
‘Can you get us in there?’ he asked abruptly, face set like stone.
I considered protesting, and