Debbie Johnson - Fear No Evil

We’d arranged that I’d come back to Liverpool to start off the investigation, while he tied up a few loose ends at home in the Lake District. I don’t know what he meant by loose ends – maybe he had a possessed sheep to exorcise.

He wouldn’t like the look of Hart House, that’s for sure. I wasn’t sure I liked the look of it either, and it definitely wasn’t a Hall I remembered from my time at the Institute. Then again I was there for less than a year and spent much of that time in an alcoholic stupor, so I’m probably not the world’s best witness.

The website didn’t give much detail about exactly how historic its history was, and instead focused on its intercom security device, 24-hour concierge and its forty-six en-suite rooms, all with individual spyholes in the doors. To put the mind of the worried parent at rest, I suppose.

The building probably belonged to the Institute, bequeathed by some rich merchant family from days of yore. But it was worth a double check, so I logged on to the Land Registry site and typed in the details – for a few quid you can download all kinds of juicy information about absolutely any property in the country. Amazing, isn’t it? Annoyingly, though, I’d forgotten that even in the electronic age, it was closed to inquiries on Sundays. And I couldn’t harangue anyone from the Institute itself for the same reason – bloody lightweights.

I called Corky Corcoran to start my illegal harassment of the police service, but got put straight through to voicemail. I left a threatening message instructing him to call me back straight away or say goodbye to his chances of fathering any more children. Although as he already has four under the age of six, I’m not sure if that wasn’t less of a threat and more of a promise. I also fired off an e-mail to Mr and Mrs Middlemas, informing them that I was progressing my research. Not how, or who with, but enough to reassure them I hadn’t banked the cheque then gone on a week-long booze cruise to the Balearics. Which was actually looking more enticing by the moment.

Bugger, I thought, slouching back onto the couch. There really was nothing else left to try for the time being. Eagle-eyed private eyes and market traders seemed to be the only people working.

I stood up, and grabbed my jacket. I might as well visit Dodgy Bobby – in my experience, minor league crims and wasters had little respect for the Lord’s Day. Or anybody else’s, as a matter of fact.

By the time I’d parked up by Thelwall Towers, fitted the wheel lock and clicked on the car alarm – none of which would do any good at all if someone took a shine to it – it was lashing it down. None of that ‘fine drizzle that gets you really wet’ rubbish – a complete deluge that gets you even wetter.

I ran for the entrance to the tower block. There was an old intercom system next to the front door, where visitors could press the buzzers next to buttons. Only insane people ever left their buzzers on in places like this, or they’d get the local youth passing on their regards 24/7. Anyway, I could tell it wasn’t working from the fact there were wires hanging out of it, and the heavy metal and glass door into the building was propped open with an empty Strongbow can.

I pulled it open, striding in out of the rain as confidently as I could. A couple of feral kids were loitering in the lobby, and I could smell spray can in the air. On a school night as well. I eyeballed them with my best bobby look. They flicked me the Vs, showing me how terrified they were, and went back to vandalising the raw brick wall.

I didn’t want to touch the lift call button, it was so disgustingly coated in greasy smears of God knows what. I pulled a face and poked it with the tip of my nail. I was going to have to start carrying bacterial spray in my pocket.

‘’S not werkin’,’ one of them piped up in his best can’t-talk-right accent, ‘someone fucked it up.’ Yeah, and I wonder who? They looked too smug for it to have been anybody else. Oh well. It would have been fragrant with eau de piss anyway, and I didn’t have much need for a used needle. I took the long way.

The downside was twelve floors of litter-strewn stairs, stone silent apart from the disjointed buzz of flickering neon lighting. Not a sign of another human being. A bit spooky, truth be told. And disgusting – there was crap in one of the corners as I turned up the eighth storey. I hoped it came from a dog.

The upside was nobody followed me, mugged me, or tagged me with a spray can to turn me into a live art installation. And I was pretty much dried out by the time I got to the twelfth, and found the number Clive had given me.

I knocked, hard, on the wood of the door. It was painted a puke green, with a small square panel at the top made out of smoky reinforced glass. No lights, no sounds, no answer, nothing. I walked over to the flat opposite, with its identical door, and pushed open the letter box. It was stuffed with old junk mail and a free weekly paper that had been delivered three months before. I suspected all the flats would be the same. Nobody lived in this block – they’d probably all been moved out into the much nicer new estate that’d been built half a mile, and a whole world away.

All except one. The letter box of Dodgy Bobby’s place was free of clutter, and when I wiggled my fingers through it, they felt warm air circulating. If it was uninhabited, it would have been cold. Damp. Frigid. I could see tiny curtains either side of the glass panel, and I managed to run my fingers over them when I twisted my hand up at a socket-popping angle. No dust.

He was in there. And he had known I was coming early enough to pretend otherwise.

‘Bobby!’ I yelled through the letter box, ‘come out now or I’m fetching Eugene! I’ve got my mobile here, and if you don’t talk to me, I’ll call him – he’ll send the lads round and kick this bloody door down!’

I might not be psychic, but I do have good hearing. There was a scuffle and a rattle from inside, and eventually the door edged open an inch. I shoved it as hard as I could, and Dodgy Bobby flew backwards, hitting the woodchip wall with a thump.

‘What do you want? What does bloody Eugene want? I’ve done everything I can!’ he said, his voice an anguished, nasal whine that seeped out of his nostrils and the tiny slit in his thin, clamped lips. It looked like he was in a room full of toxic gas and was trying to keep his mouth closed when he spoke.

I strode into the living room. Tiny. A beige shagpile decorated with ash, a velour sofa that looked like it was a match for my mum’s shabby market armchair. Three bar electric fire, switched off but the elements still shining orange. A portable black and white telly, with an aerial made out of a wire coat hanger. A copy of the Racing Post and an enormous fish tank, stuffed completely full with cigarette butts. It stank to high heaven.

The only redeeming feature of the whole place was the view – a magnificent vista of the city at night, the glitzy shopping malls and the cathedrals and the beacon of St John’s tower, sticking like an antenna 400 feet into the air.

I turned to stare at Bobby. He looked pretty dodgy, that was for sure. A small man, narrow shoulders hunched in on themselves, trying to appear even smaller. His face was long and thin, with an enormous bulbous nose taking pride of place.

‘Go on then, love,’ he said, sticking his hands into the front pockets of his baggy beige cardigan, ‘do yer worst. What does he want? ’Cause I’m not going back to that place, I don’t give a fuck what he threatens me with.’

I could see his hands shaking inside the pockets, and his left eye was twitching uncontrollably. Bobby had probably spent much of his life in fear of one kind or another, but this time he was obviously terrified.