Debbie Johnson - Fear No Evil

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.

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.

In my case, though, it’s a pain in the arse. I’m constantly asked: ‘Any relation?’ And the asker always has the same expression – eyebrows slightly raised, knowing it’s unlikely but really wanting me to say yes.

Sometimes, I consider getting business cards printed up that answer the question straight off, saving us all some time and minor foot-shuffling embarrassment. ‘Jayne McCartney – Private Investigator – No Relation to Sir Paul’, they’d say.

But that would be rude, wouldn’t it? It would imply that my potential clients are ever so slightly predictable. And even if they are, I have a living to make – I can’t start insulting them until the cheque has cleared. At least not out loud.

So, as I sat at my desk in my Liverpool office, flooded with sunlight streaming through the large picture window, looking at the squinting middle-aged couple opposite me, I knew exactly what was coming.

‘Are you, by any chance…’ Roger Middlemas at least had the good grace to pause, ‘related to Paul McCartney?’

I shook my head, using the surprised-but-flattered fake smile I’ve perfected over the years, and gave my stock answer: ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Middlemas – or my bank manager would be a much happier man!’

Mr and Mrs Middlemas smiled, wriggling slightly on the creaky leather guest chairs. Mr M was sixty-ish, tall and stooped, with thinning steel grey hair on the verge of a comb-over.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘you must think we’re silly – bet you get asked that all the time…’

‘No, not at all, Mr Middlemas,’ I lied smoothly. I could win awards for lying, and this was one of my better practised ones.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘we were given your name by Sgt Corcoran at the Coroner’s Office. He told us you were in the Force yourself some years ago, and that you have a good reputation for solving problems that are especially… tricky, awkward…’ he tailed off, struggling to find quite the right words. Mrs Middlemas had no such problem. She was positively bursting with words.

‘Problems that they can’t be bothered with!’ she said, her voice laced with a bitter vigour that sat uneasily with appearances. She was a plump, attractive matriarch, her large chest buttoned tightly into a bright red coat. She looked like a character from a Beatrix Potter story, a bright-eyed Robin Red Breast.

She shook off her husband’s clasping hand and leaned so far forward in her seat she must have dislocated her spine to manage it. I leaned back to buy myself some personal space, felt the quiet thud of the chair making contact with the window ledge. Any closer and I’d have to stab her with the letter opener.

My tingling spider senses were telling me she’d been a teacher at some point in her life. The kind who’d suggest you got the dog put down if it ate your homework.

‘Well it’s true, Miss McCartney. Our daughter Joy was killed three months ago. They say the fall was an accident – that’s what they decided at the inquest, with all their technology and tests and fancy words. But we know different. She was killed – and we want you to find out why!’

I gulped, hoping it wasn’t audible. Raw emotion coupled with misplaced trust – two of my least favourite attributes in a client. That kind of thing almost broke me when I was police, and since then I’ve kept it simple and solvable and decidedly non-tragic. Cigarettes going missing off the Docks, background checks on nightclub bouncers, insurance work. I even tracked down a missing Yorkshire Terrier that had been dog-napped once.

But this? It already felt too big. Mrs Middlemas’s pain was so raw it was almost my own, filling up the room and soaking through my layers of outer calm like blood through a bandage.

There was a tense moment where nobody spoke. Mrs Middlemas’s fury ricocheted off the walls like a tight rubber ball as we stared at each other. Every tick of the clock sounded ominous, and the noise of the city obligingly filled the silence: traffic roaring along the Strand; the chimes of the Liver Building ringing the half-hour; a cherry-picker crane booming construction cargo around the docks.

Right then, of course, I should have ‘done one’, as they say in Liverpool –explained this wasn’t the kind of case I took, and that the police really were their best bet if they wanted answers. Which was usually true.

Usually… but not always. They had resource issues. And short attention spans. Plus Corky Corcoran was right – I did like odd cases. I was a sucker for them, in fact. I used to obsess over every investigation, even the ones that weren’t mine to obsess over. I never rested easy with the unresolved, and outside of a TV studio, police work is frustratingly full of questions that never meet their answers. It doesn’t make for a peaceful life.

They say everyone has a flaw. I myself have a vast range of them. One of the very worst is the inability to say ‘no’ in the face of human sadness. As a result, I give away ten per cent of my earnings to those Albanian women who travel all the way to England to be homeless, and I’m terminally incapable of dumping a boyfriend. Instead I make up elaborate lies about moving to Aberdeen to nurse a sick cousin, or becoming a lesbian. None of which rings true when they see you two months later in the pub, singing ‘Big Spender’ on the karaoke and snogging a truck driver.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty tough. I don’t mind a fight, and I love a good argument. I was trained by the best – a Scouse Irish family with six siblings vying for airspace round the dinner table. But give me the big eyes and the tears, and I start to sink.

There weren’t any tears involved here yet, thank Christ. And to prevent them from appearing and really spoiling my day, I did the only thing I could – I listened.

Anyway, my existing cases were about as interesting as watching a jelly set, so what did I have to lose?

‘Okay, Mr and Mrs Middlemas, tell me all about it…’ I replied; pen in hand, paper ready and waiting. I could practically inhale the relief from the couple sitting opposite me. I was, it seemed from their reaction, their one and only hope. Lord help us all.

I gave them my trustworthy smile and waited, expecting the ‘usual’. Now, I’m not so cynical that I see the death of a young woman as anything other than tragic, but when a Liverpool student has a serious – or not-so-serious – fall, there are a few possibles that immediately spring to mind. Like alcohol. Drugs. Frayed stair carpets in shoddy student housing. More alcohol. Sleepless nights due to exam pressure. Unfeasibly high-heeled shoes in greasy-floored nightclubs. And again, alcohol.

So, reasonably enough, I expected one of these. I expected wrong. Very wrong.

‘Our daughter was killed by a ghost,’ said Mrs Middlemas, glaring at me with those beady eyes as if daring me to laugh out loud. Okay, I thought. You’ve got me. I’m interested – and possibly a little freaked out. Insanity has that effect on me.