Free Fear No Evil by Debbie Johnson Page A

cartwheeling from her window at 8.02 a.m. on June 13th. The poor traumatised witnesses – cleaners walking home from mopping floors in a city office block – saw her land on the concrete path that led up to Hart House. I turned forward to the photos, and the gory details that Mr and Mrs Middlemas wouldn’t have had access to.
    Joy was lying crumpled on the ground, one leg bent beneath her like a brutalised mannequin. Her head was surrounded by pooling red blood, her long brown hair trailing cobwebs through it. Not the best way to see someone for the first time, but you could tell she’d been a pretty girl. A touch of make-up. One high-heeled shoe on, the other flung a few feet away.

    Bleeding in the brain; fractures to the pelvis, arms, legs; crush injuries to the chest, a break in the spinal cord. I’ve seen fall victims survive bigger plunges than hers, but even if she had made it, she’d have been left paralysed and brain damaged.
    Forensics checked her room. Nothing out of place. The textbooks on the bay seat suggested she’d been revising for her second year exams. I made a note of the titles – ‘Dissection of the Dog’, ‘Clinical Anatomy of the Cat’, ‘Biochemistry of Domestic Animals’… perfect light reading. If I was ever suffering from insomnia, I knew which part of the library to head for.
    Joy’s window was open, banging to and fro in the breeze. No sign of a break, a push, a shove. It was unlocked, untampered with, no fingerprints other than Joy’s, and others who’d been accounted for, like cleaners and maintenance men and some of her friends. No indication at all that she intended to do herself in. Everyone seemed to have done a thorough job, from the first bobby on the scene through to the D.I who followed it through.
    D.I Alec Jones. I knew the name, but the computer in my brain hadn’t filed a photo next to it. Probably meant he arrived after I’d resigned, but I’d heard the others mention him. Maybe met him at a retirement do or something. I made a note of his number so I could pursue him later. I flicked on through the file. I noticed a new surge of activity towards the end, extra pages tagged in after the inquest date. No mention of a ghostly bad guy, but it timed perfectly with Mrs M reading Joy’s diary and getting a giant bee in her bonnet about it.
    From what I could see, the D.I had done his best. Re-interviewed, re-visited, re-thought. Still nothing to dissuade him from the theory that Joy had leaned back on the window, forgetting she’d left it open, and fallen to her death. Rose Middlemas was bitter and angry about the way the police had performed – but Alec Jones had gone above and beyond on this one, when he was probably struggling with a leaning tower of Pisa of other cases at the same time.

    A few things were bugging me, though, and I jotted them down to talk to D.I Jones about as soon as I tracked him down. I was betting he’d be less than thrilled to have this one come back to haunt him. No pun intended.
    ‘How’s it going, Father Dan?’ I asked, looking up at the glowing hunk of sex appeal sitting opposite me.
    ‘Stop calling me Father Dan,’ he said, without even raising his eyes. It seemed to annoy him, which I found very enjoyable. Naughty me. He finished reading the page he was on, then closed the book and placed it back on top of the desk. It was a hardback journal, covered in a delicate purple floral design. A pretty book for a pretty girl who came to an ugly end.
    He looked agitated, and ran his hand through his hair, leaving it displaced in thick blonde furrows.
    ‘Let’s go to Hart House,’ he said.

Chapter 10
    Half an hour later we were standing outside. It was another warm day, but we were in the shadow of Hart House, where the air was cool and breezy.
    It was even uglier in real life – all neo-Gothic red brick arches and gargoyles with ironically raised eyebrows. The top floor was edged by fake castellations, with a turret at each