Deliver Us from Evil by Peter Turnbull

else of promising significance, returned downstairs. She found Stanley Hemmings still in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea. ‘I have all I need,’ she told him, calmly.
    â€˜Oh. What are you taking?’ Hemmings sounded alarmed.
    â€˜Nothing. I am leaving everything where I found it. I have seen the birth certificate and passport and found her notebook; I have made a few notes but left everything in its proper place. We would ask you to do the same. Please do not clear the room, not just yet.’
    â€˜Yes, understood. I won’t. I’ll be cremating her, by the way.’
    â€˜Sorry?’
    â€˜I’ll be cremating her. Just thought you might be interested or would want to know. They have released the body.’
    â€˜I see . . . yes, the post-mortem was conclusive.’
    â€˜Yes . . . so they cut her up so much it just seems the right thing to do is to cremate her. She won’t rest at peace with her insides cut open. She was neat like that. Liked things just so, did our Edith.’
    â€˜Have you anybody to keep an eye on you, Mr Hemmings, to look in on you at a time like this?’
    â€˜At a time like this I am best on my own, but thank you very much for your concern. Best back to work in my brown smock . . . but again, thank you for your concern, Miss. I appreciate it,’ he added with a weak smile.
    Carmen Pharoah let herself out of the house and walked slowly back to where she had parked her car, feeling a strange sense that she had visited emptiness.
    â€˜He’s right.’ Terry Selsey, proprietor of The Hunter’s Moon, leaned on the highly polished bar of the pub, having handed a coffee each to Yellich and Webster. ‘It’s the recession, you see. This is a struggling pub at the best of times. It struggled when I opened for seven days a week, when folk had money to spend, and I just kept my head above water, but only just. Then customers stopped coming in and the hard times began. I had to let staff go, one by one, and now me and the wife run it between us. Just the two of us. We tried everything to lure the punters in, put on food but nobody had the money to eat out. Lowered the price of the beer until we were virtually selling it at cost but still nobody came in. So now we don’t open until eight p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday and even then it’s like this most of the time.’ He nodded to the empty chairs and to the silence. ‘I’d even welcome a fight to break up because that would mean there were customers in the place . . . that it should come to thinking like that.’
    â€˜I know what you mean.’ Yellich stirred his coffee.
    â€˜Do you?’ Selsey snarled. ‘You with your security of employment, early retirement at fifty-five years, inflation-proof pension . . . do you know what I mean?’ Selsey’s eyebrows knitted. He was clearly, thought Yellich, a man with a short fuse.
    â€˜I meant,’ Yellich replied calmly, ‘I knew what you meant about wanting a fight to break up because that meant you had customers in the pub.’ He thought Selsey to be like many publicans he had met. He was a man with a ready smile, superficial joviality, but with the ability to turn and growl at the slightest provocation. It occurred to Yellich that a change in attitude on Selsey’s part might generate a little more business for The Hunter’s Moon. ‘So, the Canadian?’ Yellich asked.
    â€˜Yes,’ Selsey glanced to one side. ‘He came in a few times, when we were busier; this is going back a couple of years mind. He went into the Black Bull further up the street as well but in the end he seemed to prefer this pub. The Bull is also a weekend-only shop now. Never caught his name but he seemed a likeable bloke, friendly when you talked to him, wore a wedding ring, but he definitely had an agenda.’
    â€˜An agenda?’
    â€˜Yes, by that I mean