I’m halfway ashamed to admit this, but I carry lock picks round with me. They’re rarely used for anything other than breaking into my own flat when I’ve lost the keys, but it’s a good set, made for me by a professional locksmith called Lenny the Slipper. Slipper because he was always slipping into places he shouldn’t be. Lenny could never resist the temptation of other people’s houses. He never took anything – just looked around, rifled through the odd knicker drawer, played a few mind games, like eating leftovers from the fridge. He came a cropper when he was caught nosing round the squillion-pound home of a Liverpool Football Club striker. The window cleaner saw him taking a dip in the pool and called us out. He ended up doing community service – litter picking round Anfield, funnily enough. When I resigned and set up shop on my own, I paid him fifty quid and got my picks and a masterclass in return.
I pulled the small wallet from my back pocket and got the two tools I needed. I kneeled down, fiddled until I got a feel for it, then slid the slim edge of the pick in, popping up the pins until the cylinder turned. It took about forty seconds. I gave a little snort of pleasure – one of my quickest yet. It’s the small triumphs that keep you going in life. I avoided Dan’s eyes. It was probably wrong to be so proud of something so bad.
I stood up and gently pushed the door, checking for a chain.
‘Hello! Repairs!’ I shouted as I walked in. Just in case there was a comatose student in there after all, stoned to oblivion or passed out with his head in a copy of A Vet’s Guide to Dog Poo.
I needn’t have bothered. Nobody lived here. Bed stripped bare, open wardrobes empty apart from dangling wire coat hangers; bookshelves clear of anything other than dust. It was also so cold I was chilled to the bone, and wrapped my arms round myself to try and keep warm.
Dan followed me in, opening up Joy’s diary and reading out loud. Which was just what I needed.
‘June 2 – stayed in the library until it closed at 11 tonight. Couldn’t bear the thought of coming back here. It’s so cold. And there’s something here. I know there is. I look in the mirror and I feel something watching me. I take showers in the sports block now; I can’t stand being naked in here. I’m scared of going to sleep. I hear the laughing, all the time. At first I thought it was from another room, coming up through the heating pipes or something. But it’s not. It’s in here. It’s laughing at me, and the more I look round, the more it laughs. It. They. Sometimes it sounds like a man, sometimes like a bunch of school kids. I’m considering getting a boyfriend, or sleeping with that awful bloke from downstairs, just so I don’t have to stay here. Sophie says I’m just stressed and I work too hard. I’m not stressed. I’m scared.’
I walked over to the mirror, stared at my own reflection. Felt nothing but the cold, and the received fear that oozed off Joy’s words. There was still a toothbrush in a holder on the shelf. Probably hers. I touched it with one finger and it clinked against the glass.
Dan sat down on the bed, and carried on reading: ‘June 11th. I don’t know if I can carry on. Everyone thinks I’m nuts. She doesn’t think I know, but Sophie’s told Dr Wilbraham I’m losing it. They want me to see some kind of guidance counsellor. And this thing, here. It wants me to die. I know it does. I hear them at night, whispering at me. Things have started to move now – the books fly off the shelves, and my covers get pulled off me, and they sing. Bloody nursery rhymes. I’ve asked for a transfer again, but I keep getting told there’s nowhere until next term. I think I might ask Mum and Dad for the money to rent my own place. I’d rather live in a cardboard box than here. Sometimes I sleep over on Sophie’s floor. I pretend I’m drunk and passed out. But now she’s seeing Lawrence, so I can’t do that as much. I need to get out.’
I wanted to tell him to shut up. I wanted to leave this room. I wanted to dump this case and wrap myself up in a duvet with a bottle of Bushmills for company.
Instead I wandered over to the window, examining the locks and comparing the descriptions from the crime scene report to what I was seeing. It all tallied – a straightforward sash jammer, tiny key dangling on a string from the handle. I tried to turn it – 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.
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.’