Fear No Evil Read Online Free PDF Page 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,