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Fear No Evil
Debbie Johnson
THIS PAGE-TURNING THRILLER WILL HAVE YOU UP ALL NIGHT!
The dead don't like to be ignored…
Jayne McCartney, Liverpool's only female private eye, is soon to get a crash course in this and other ghost-related facts.
Until now she’s kept her snooping firmly to the dodgy, sometimes dangerous – but definitely human – Liverpool underworld. But that all changes when an elderly couple approach her with a terrifying story…
Their daughter, a 19-year-old student, died falling from her halls’ window. But she didn't jump, they insist – she was pushed. By a ghost.
Who or what is walking the halls of Hart House? And will this case end up haunting Jayne forever…?
FEAR NO EVIL
DEBBIE JOHNSON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Published by Avon an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2014
Copyright © Debbie Johnson 2014
Cover illustration © Lisa Horton 2014
Debbie Johnson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780008121945
Version: 2016-03-23
Contents
Cover (#u419f6961-1129-5f9b-ad81-fa19f82b100e)
Title Page (#ud580f980-2eca-5453-8128-2c66eaae9331)
Copyright (#uc8e759fc-af27-5021-9c9e-bd4475db0950)
Prologue (#u29a93a42-c295-58b0-8b17-44d0d5a63820)
Chapter 1 (#u0c04d7b1-fab4-5bda-bc4d-254f229df6f5)
Chapter 2 (#uea3924f0-7bdd-5c0a-94af-fe468247df3b)
Chapter 3 (#u096610f2-410c-5f42-8929-ac6a3a9493da)
Chapter 4 (#u07ab9733-fe4b-555b-bc73-f7125b508fb3)
Chapter 5 (#u2bd261f8-08a2-5f20-95e8-7bb9281a49c1)
Chapter 6 (#u3e8eb3ac-fb61-571a-afa6-cdb37a7b3053)
Chapter 7 (#ucf9b9c68-8544-58d7-bc57-9d368839ed77)
Chapter 8 (#u9fbd8473-726f-510e-81fd-04a6513a2591)
Chapter 9 (#u1f2d7d6e-656d-5bc2-b445-6be05911bdfc)
Chapter 10 (#u2b27de87-28f1-5808-8924-f0ad49e31fca)
Chapter 11 (#u738a4801-f244-50bd-a480-9eb6a0ad37c4)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by This Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Avon Social Media Ad (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#u0cd826c3-457b-576a-96ed-0f2f8b9fbf61)
‘So, I says to him, “Who do the friggin’ knickers belong to, then, Dave? Your fancy piece?” I was thinking all sorts, obviously – mainly he was shagging someone else. Someone with an effin’ huge arse, mind. And he says to me – get this – he says to me, “They’re mine, love…I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this for a while.” Can you believe it? Married seventeen years and I’ve only just found out he’s a bloody cross-dresser!’
Dawn McGinty pauses in her rant, standing next to her friend Pat as they pull cigarette packets from the pockets of their overalls. They produce their packs – one Mayfair, one Benson and Hedges – at exactly the same time, as though linked by a psychic smoke ring. Their hands, knuckles red and scraped raw from a lifetime of hard labour and vaguely toxic cleaning products, come up to form protective shields around the flame as Pat flicks the flint on her lighter.
It’s not a warm day, just after 8 a.m. in June.The wind whipping up off the Mersey is still harsh enough to feel like a slap on the cheeks at the right angle, and certainly enough to douse the flickering flame of a five-for-a-quid lighter.
They both inhale, then pause, silently appreciating that first rush of nicotine to the brain.
‘Best of the day, this one,’ says Pat, her voice like gravel. ‘On the way home from work – leaving one shithole and heading for the next…Bernie’ll be waiting there now, expecting me to come in and do his bleedin’ bacon and eggs after I’ve been cleaning offices for two hours, whinging and moaning about his bad back while he picks his bloody horses for the day.’
‘At least yours won’t be wearing a thong and Wonderbra set while he reads the Racing Post,’ replies Dawn, as she pulls in another drag. She doesn’t really care about Dave being a tranny. In fact she’s enjoying sharing the story with Pat, in the same way they’ve been sharing stories on the walk home from work for the last eight years. As long as he doesn’t start picking the kids up from school in a feather boa or anything, she’ll cope. There are far worse habits a husband could have, she knows.
‘So, what size is he then?’ asks Pat, getting into the swing of things. ‘Big fella, your Dave. Have you got him a copy of the Evans catalogue?’
Dawn starts to answer, some quip about him having bigger tits than her, but the words die on her lips as she looks up. Something catches her eye up a few floors in that ugly old building they’re going past. The one with the students in it. The one that’s always kind of given her the creeps, with its blood-red brick and fake castle towers at the top. Looks like something you’d keep nutters locked up in, she reckons.
It was usually quiet at this time of day, but she could see a window banging open up there. Slamming backwards and forwards, the glass jarring in the frame, snot green curtain blowing out into the sky like a cloud of flying puke. And…hair. Brown hair, dangling out in the breeze, like someone was sitting on the window ledge, leaning backwards…
‘Pat,’ she says, pulling the ciggie from her mouth. ‘Can you see that?’
‘What, love?’ asks Pat, following her gaze upwards. ‘I can’t see anything. Must be going blind as well as daft.’
‘That window up there – there’s someone leaning right out of it—‘
Pat looks. She sees. Stares as the body tumbles from the window ledge like a ball of laundry, skirt flapping and hair whirling as it plummets. She sees it rotate, and sees its arms fly out to the side like a child playing aeroplanes, and sees the mouth form into the soundless ‘O’ of an unheard scream. She sees one shoe dislodge from a flailing foot and smash down to the grass, where its stiletto heel lodges firmly in the dewy earth. She sees the hands grasping at empty air; the way the head dips down to greet the ground, hair wrapped around the face like clinging seaweed.
Then she hears it. Dawn hears it too, and it makes her sick, sick to her stomach. They hear the sound of a soft, young body slamming into concrete: a dull, wet thud as fragile flesh is split and torn and twisted; as blood oozes and vital organs concertina and bones shatter and pupils blossom with deep, dark death.
Dawn drops her cigarette onto the path. The stub has burned right into her fingers.
Chapter 1 (#u0cd826c3-457b-576a-96ed-0f2f8b9fbf61)
It’s not easy being called McCartney, you know – not when the name comes with a Liverpool accent anyway.
It’s probably a breeze for the man himself – you know, Sir Paul, he of the moptop and platinum-selling album career. The country pile in Sussex and a few gazillion in the bank probably make it easier.
