Fear No Evil by Debbie Johnson Read Free Book Online

it’s my job to find them, which means working with Father Dan. At least he’s easy on the eye.’
    She snorted and finished her count, scooping the coins into individual bags ready for banking.
    ‘I was 50p out,’ she said, ‘must be losing my touch. Look, love, while I’m not sure about the spirit world, I am sure about one thing – fancying the priest is wrong. Knock it on the head, will you? I don’t want my only daughter sent to hell – it’s already going to be full of my offspring when the boys get there.’
    ‘He’s not a priest any—’ I started to protest. She cut me off by holding up her tiny hand and saying ‘Shhh, I’m counting’. Which was a lie – she was communing with a plastic bag of pound coins.
    ‘One hundred and two quid, dead on. Why don’t you ask Mystic Melissa? She’s heading over now. Must have sensed your presence.’
    I groaned and went back to the copper. Mystic Melissa – real name Clive Bottomley – was a psychic drag queen who ran a fortune-telling booth at the market. He was five foot eight in height, almost as much across, and was forever on the scrounge for suitably spacious gear at my mum’s stall. He also fancied me something rotten, and I can’t tell you how disturbing that was.
    He bustled over, sporting a ginger wig and wrapped in a sequinned fuchsia shawl. He was wearing more eyeliner than Twiggy in the sixties, and white shag-me stilettos that squeezed his feet so tight the fishnet stockinged flesh spilled over the edges. I tried to ignore him, but he made it hard for me by giving me a bear hug. Seriously, I’d rather have been hugged by a bear. With a flatulence problem.

    ‘Looking limber as ever, Jayne!’ he said, going for the lips and getting a slap, ‘and still feisty as fuck, I see!’
    ‘Clive, our Jayne’s got a bad case of the supernatural. Can you help her?’ said Mum, starting in on the chunkies, heaping them into ten-pound piles. I could happily have choked her.
    ‘Oooh!’ he said, raising his plucked-to-oblivion eyebrows. Shaped brows, mascara and five o’clock shadow. It just doesn’t work.
    ‘Depends what’s in it for me, doesn’t it?’ he said, giving me a coquettish wink and a nudge so hard I almost fell off my stool. I was about to tell him where to stick his sequins when Mum butted in.
    ‘That’s enough of that, mucky pup. You help Jayne, I’ll give you one of those sexy skeleton dresses for nothing. I saved one for you in case you came by. I must be a mind reader.’
    He eyed up one of the frocks hanging on the rail, glowing in the fading light.
    ‘It’s a deal. I’ll be irresistible to man, woman and beast wearing that thing. So, Jaynie-Waynie, sit on Mystic Melissa’s lap and tell me all about it.’
    He’d propped himself on the trestles, which groaned under his psychic power – that or the extra six stone he was carrying – and slapped his knees. I ignored the suggested seating arrangements, but did tell him about the case. I needed all the help I could get.
    As I drew to a close, I noticed an expression I’d never seen on Mystic Melissa’s face before – concern. Jesus, I was being taken seriously by a clairvoyant trannie. I really needed to get a new line of work.
    He pursed his big fat lips together. Like a pair of mating slugs, they were, with bright red gloss sluicing off into the tiny wrinkles around his smoker’s mouth. He blew out a breath and shook his head, ginger fringe waggling from side to side.
    ‘You need to talk to Dodgy Bobby,’ he said finally.
    ‘Who’s Dodgy Bobby? And why do I need to talk to him? And how dodgy is he?’

    ‘Nothing nasty, love – you wouldn’t have encountered him when you were working for Her Majesty, if that’s what you’re worried about. But he’s psychic, is Bobby. The real deal. So he’s used it the best way possible – dodging gainful employment for the whole of his life. At least the kind you pay taxes on. He does a bit of this, bit of that, all the