Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller (22 page)

I thought back to Marion, all those banging doors. ‘My God, Guv.’

Shep looked at me, expectantly.

‘Have we got Laura’s fingerprints? We need to check the doors at the scene for her prints. She might be an accomplice.’

‘We’ve had no reason to take her prints, until now. Get it sorted, Lynch, you could be onto something there.’

‘Laura’s prints at the scene would make it watertight, against both of them, wouldn’t it? We could definitely charge them. Then it’s just a case of working out who they used as muscle.’

This must have been what Marion had been leading me to, from her very first visit: Laura’s prints on a door at the murder scene. Relief coursed through me so violently that it caused me to giggle. Within seconds, laughter infested every fibre of my being until tears streamed down my cheeks and I had to bend over to breathe.

Shep looked at me, bewildered: ‘Jesus, you’re not having another one of your funny turns, are you?’

Church Road, London SW19

Friday, August 16, 1991; 19:00

I tried calling Gabby again, but her house phone was constantly engaged – probably off the hook. I reminded myself that I’d done nothing wrong, galvanised my pluck with three humongous Shirazs and made a pilgrimage to Church Road.

On the way, I realised I’d learned quite a few lessons since my last visit to SW19, about me, about Eve. The erstwhile love of my life now seemed self-obsessed, devious, a little unhinged – small wonder, after all she’d been through. I realised that I’d wasted the last three years of my life refusing to move on from her, from us. I’d been waiting for some sort of closure that would never come. As Fintan put it, I was still trying to save Eve Daly. Now I realised that the only person I could save was Donal Lynch, and there was work to be done.

I could put Eve behind me now, once and for all, move on with my life. That left me free to give Gabby one more go. After all, she seemed like everything I’d ever wanted in a companion: kind, smart, independent. She deserved better. I had to be a better man for her now.

I gave myself one last talking to and rang her doorbell. I couldn’t believe nobody was in, so pounded the knocker. After another minute, I tried the bell again. Finally a shape appeared behind the stained-glass panels.

Reluctantly, the door opened four inches to the face of an elderly man. I felt pissed suddenly, and confused.

‘What do you want?’ he barked.

‘Good evening. I was hoping to see Gabby.’

‘I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ he said, stiffening and taking a baby step forward. I felt like I was being faced down by Sophia out of the
Golden Girls
.

‘What’s the problem?’ I said.

He turned inside: ‘Richard, are you ready to dial the number?’

‘Ready, John,’ grunted Gabby’s rock’n’reefing flatmate Rick the Prick.

‘What number? Sorry, I really don’t understand what’s going on.’

‘Gabby no longer lives here. You have no reason to come round here. Do you understand?’

‘I’m not Dom Rogan,’ I laughed, ‘I’m Gabby’s policeman friend, Donal. Just ask her housemates.’

‘We know exactly who you are. Now … f – f-fuck off.’

I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Sir, I don’t want to make any trouble. But I won’t leave until someone explains what’s going on. Please.’

Gabby materialised in the hallway. ‘It’s okay, Dad,’ she said, ‘I’ll talk to him.’

They shared a solemn nod, then Gabby stepped outside.

‘Just say the word, darling,’ said her dad, stepping inside the door.

She stood an unnatural distance from me, retaining that front door as an escape option. She looked at me with a mixture of confusion and betrayal, like a child I’d just slapped for no reason.

‘Gabby, what’s going on?’

She took a deep breath and eyed me with mild contempt: ‘When we got up yesterday, we found all our clothes cut up on the clothesline.’

‘Oh, Christ,’ I said, thinking:
Dom’s back.

‘I called the police. Of course they couldn’t help. But they gave me a number to call if they turned up again.’

‘Why didn’t you call me?’

‘I did. I left a message on your home answerphone. I left a message at your work.’

‘I didn’t get those messages, Gabby. I’m sorry. I’ll get Dom charged for you this time, I promise.’

‘You promise?’ she smiled, turning her contempt on full beam. ‘That’s not all. Someone left a package this morning,’ she said, looking at me accusingly, ‘newspaper clippings about your friend stabbing some guy to death.’

Finally her tears burst through: ‘It was addressed to me. It totally freaked me out.’

She cried at the ground as I tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

‘I meant to tell you about Eve, I really did. But I thought I was never going to see her again. She turned up out of the blue.’

‘So now I’m going to be stalked by your ex as well, a demented murderer that you never even bothered telling me about. She could be watching us right now. I can’t stay here. I’m too scared to go to work. Everything’s fucked. Because of you.’

She glared at me through tears.

‘Gabby honestly, I don’t think any of this has anything to do with her. She’s not deranged. It’s got to be Dom.’

‘She’s
not
deranged? She stabbed a man in the balls during sex! I mean for God’s sake, Donal, how would Dom even know about her? How would he have got cuttings about her case? She sent them, to warn me off you.’

‘Gabby, it wasn’t her. I’ll prove to you that Dom’s behind the cuttings and the slashed clothes and, this time, I’ll get him out of your life once and for all.’

She stared at me now, her head shaking in disbelief.

‘You – let – me – down.’ Gabby enunciated every word with all the bile she could muster, turned and stormed back into the house.

This had to be the work of Dom Rogan. He’d followed me here last week. Or he’d found her new address another way. Dom worked for a bank so could pull anyone’s personal information at a stroke. He’d most likely checked me out too, discovered my connection to Eve Daly and sent the cuttings to Gabby to drive a fatal wedge between us. I couldn’t let him win. It was time for me and Dom to have it out.

I took the tube to Barbican near the city of London, stopped off at the Old Red Cow for a couple of sharpeners, then stomped to the brutalist block containing Dom’s swanky apartment, determined to scare the living shit out of him.

I pressed his number on the chrome intercom system violently and repeatedly, an avenging angel with no plans to pass. After the fifth or sixth thumb-grind, a shrill voice finally sounded.

‘What do you want?’ demanded the posh female.

‘I’m here to see Dom Rogan,’ I demanded, teeth clenched, pumped, ‘I need to speak to him right away.’

‘Who is this?’

‘A friend.’

‘If you’re a friend, then you’d know he’s not here anymore.’

‘Let’s just say I’m here to dispense some friendly advice.’

‘Well you’ll need to contact him at his new home.’

‘And where’s that?’

‘Cape Town.’

Clapham Police Station, South London

Saturday, August 17, 1991; 10:00

Next morning, Laura Foster had her fingerprints inked at Lee police station. Forensics bumped her up to the top of their list of suspects to be eliminated from the crime scene.

I was certain they’d find her prints somewhere on or near a door. Marion’s spirit had been telling me this since day one. I’d failed to make the connection because Laura had only just drifted onto our radar. This had to be the breakthrough we craved. We’d have to work out later Laura’s motivations for helping her sister murder an innocent woman, and who had provided the muscle. The bottom line was, if we could place Laura at the scene, we could take both deadly sisters off our streets.

Most crucially of all, if we found irrefutable evidence that the Foster sisters murdered Marion, then I wasn’t to blame for the deaths of Samantha and Jazmine Bisset. My insides still ached with the dread that I’d missed a Lone Wolf Killer in the ‘unsolved cases’ paperwork, leaving him free to butcher the Bissets.

It still troubled me that Samantha and Jazmine hadn’t appeared to me after I attended their murder scene. I’d have to figure out why later … Nailing the Foster sisters would have to be enough for now.

As we waited for news from forensics, Shep outlined our case against Karen and Laura. He couldn’t have looked more supremely all-knowing had he just lugged a pair of freshly inscribed tablets down Mount Sinai.

‘Bethan Trott now says she didn’t see Laura Foster on the day of Marion Ryan’s murder until six o-five p.m. The Foster sisters merely
told
her that they’d been together in her room at the Churchill Clinic between five and six p.m. Nobody actually saw them in her room. As for the phantom shopping trip to Blackheath, Karen Foster’s cash card had been used near the Pines residential care home – six miles away – at four ten that afternoon. They have no record of buying anything in Blackheath. No one saw them in Blackheath. In short, we’ve obliterated the sisters’ alibis.

‘We believe that Karen left the Pines at four p.m., got some cash out, drove home to pick up the murder weapon, Laura and a set of fresh clothes which she placed in a black gym bag, then drove to Sangora Road to wait for Marion.

‘We have a witness who saw a woman aged twenty-five to thirty and a white man coming out of 21 Sangora Road at the time of the murder. This witness says that the woman was carrying a black gym bag.

‘We have video evidence showing that the journey from the murder scene to the Pines residential care home at that time of day takes, on average, just under twelve minutes. The Fosters and an accomplice murdered Marion between five forty-two and five forty-five – remember, the pathologist estimated that the attack took two to three minutes – changed their clothes and drove back to the Pines where they were seen separately by employees at about six p.m. Bethan Trott says that Laura left a black gym bag overnight in her room. She looked inside the top of the bag and saw a red t-shirt. She claims she didn’t inspect the rest of the bag’s contents but we will argue that it contained the murder weapon and their blood-soaked clothes. They collected this bag the day after the murder, presumably to destroy the incriminating clothes and to clean the murder weapon.

‘We believe that the weapon used was the steel blade found in the Fosters’ garage yesterday. Remember, the girls’ father, Terry, was unable to confirm that the blade had been there on the day after the murder. The pathologist has confirmed that this blade is consistent with Marion’s injuries.

‘Most convincing of all, we’ve got motive. Peter was sleeping with Karen until two weeks before Marion’s murder, when he ended their affair and announced that Marion was pregnant. Karen is the classic woman scorned. Laura … well, sibling loyalty? Maybe she thought they were just going to scare Marion, rough her up a bit? Who knows? We’ll have to figure out her motivations once we prove that she was at the murder scene.’

Almost on cue, a records clerk walked in and handed him a piece of paper. The room sat forward as one and held its breath. This was one of life’s penalty shoot-out moments: everything I cared about in the universe had now been reduced to that single piece of quivering paper. If it confirmed Laura’s fingerprints at the scene, my life would never be the same again. It would be proof – surely – that I had some inexplicable hotline to those funsters, the recently-murdered.

‘They’ve found no matches,’ mumbled Shep, blankly. My heart landed in lumps on the floor, like shot birds.

‘Are you sure they checked both sides of both doors?’ I said, a little desperately.

‘And the handrail, and the interior walls. They checked everywhere. There isn’t anything there.’

I didn’t believe in much anymore: religion, politics, policing – even romance – seemed corrupt, self-serving, narcissistic exercises, fuelled by human failure rather than strength. But I had allowed myself to believe in this ‘gift’, hoping, somehow, that it would help me believe again: in the afterlife, in policing, in saving people. In love itself. The only other verse I ever remembered from Gabby’s book of bitter Philip Larkin poetry sprang to mind:

But superstition, like belief, must die.

And what remains when disbelief has gone?

Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky.

Shep refused to let this setback upstage his moment: ‘Listen, I’m confident we’ve got enough to charge Karen Foster. Even if we can’t place Laura at the scene, she must know what happened that afternoon. Let’s get her in for a grilling. If we apply enough pressure, she’ll make a mistake or break down and confess. Then we’ll have them both, bang to rights.

‘I’m going to present our case against Karen to the CPS lawyer now. He’s up the corridor waiting, so let’s see what he says. Regardless of what he decides, well done, team. Go and spend the rest of your Saturday with your loved ones. Keep your pagers on, in case the lawyer has questions or wants anything triple-checked. See you in the morning.’

A ticking bomb wouldn’t have cleared the room quicker. I sat alone, empty, idiotic.

We didn’t have a case. I didn’t have a gift.

I realised I couldn’t carry on like this. I needed to quit therapy, quit drinking, quit the job: quit consorting with dead bodies.

Shep reappeared and started packing up his briefcase.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘He’s a lawyer, Lynch, they charge by the hour. He’s going to take his time.’

‘Will we know today?’

‘If he’s the first honest one I’ve ever come across, then maybe. It’s a fucking miracle we got hold of him at all on a weekend. Listen, there’s nothing more you can do now. Go home, get some rest, spend some time with your girlfriend. Come back fighting fit tomorrow.’

‘I wouldn’t mind waiting around, Guv, in case the lawyer does come back. And they’re still checking the prints from the Pines’ staff. That might throw up something.’

‘Well page me if there’s any developments,’ he said, grabbing his briefcase and coat, ‘I’m off to win hearts and minds.’

I watched him bustling towards the stairs, all business. Fintan popped into my mind – another Riddler, constantly hinting at bigger, mysterious, behind-the-scenes plays. At that precise moment, I wanted to know what Shep was up to more than anything else in the world.

I sprinted to the window overlooking the station’s front entrance. Shep came out and turned right – away from the car park. Wherever he was going, it was on foot. He took another sharp right onto Lavender Hill.

I vaulted down the stairs three at a time, strode outside and turned onto Lavender. In the distance I could see Shep stomping down the hill towards Clapham Junction station with the stilted urgency of a fleeing assassin. He walked past the station on his right, then crossed the road. The first time he looked around, I was behind a gaggle of people two traffic lights back. I couldn’t tell if he’d seen me. I had to run now to have any chance of catching him. I turned into Strathblaine Road and saw him fifty yards ahead. It’s a quiet residential street with no cover. If Shep looked around, he’d see me for sure. I stopped and willed him towards a gentle bend in the road: ‘Don’t look back, don’t look back.’

He disappeared round the corner. I assumed he was on his way to the murder scene. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why. I peeked around the corner and saw him stride into the Roundhouse pub.

I didn’t know what to do next. If I walked past the pub, he might spot me through the window. Whoever he was meeting could pass this way. How suspicious would I look hanging about here? I had a sudden brainwave and speed-walked, Shep-style, back to Clapham Junction. I had remembered the short taxi rank at the traffic lights, opposite the entrance. Luckily, a single black cab sat there, light on. I jumped in, flashed my badge and told him to drive towards the Roundhouse pub. I explained that I needed him to park further up Sangora Road, facing the pub so that I could see who was coming in and out. And that I needed him to be quick.

He didn’t move.

‘What are you waiting for?’ I muttered.

‘I usually set the meter to night-time rates for surveillance operations,’ he announced cheerfully. I was scarcely in a position to negotiate.

‘Fine,’ I said, and he hauled his wheezing black beast into thick traffic.

The nagging voice in my head wondered why Shep was so confident that the CPS lawyer would back his decision to charge Karen. We didn’t have a firm sighting of her at the scene. The steel ruler’s modified blade may or may not have been the murder weapon: it was impossible to prove. There was no forensic evidence at the scene. Her affair with Peter was winding down. She hadn’t expressed a desire to kill Marion to anyone. And what about the male accomplice? No one had any idea who that could be.

Yes, Karen and Laura had lied about their whereabouts on the afternoon of the murder. Yes, Karen had lied about ending her affair with Peter in November last year. But none of this proved they killed Marion Ryan. Since day one, Shep’s obsession with Karen Foster had been all-consuming. What if McStay and Barratt and the Big Dogs were right all along? What if she was innocent?

As the black cab pulled up on Sangora, I ducked down. I didn’t have to wait long. Fintan emerged from the pub, blinking like Barabbas against the light. He raised his collar and set off up Strathblaine, battered leather satchel tucked firmly under his arm. Ten minutes later, Shep stepped out. He looked right, then left, directly at the taxi. He raised his arm to hail it, then registered that the light was off and started walking our way. I got down on all fours and told the driver to step on it to Clapham police station.

As I stared at the stippled grey plastic flooring, Fintan’s words outside Buckingham Palace that day pealed through my mind.

People in power want more power. They don’t serve the public, they serve their own agendas.

‘I’m off to win hearts and minds,’ Shep had said. What had he told Fintan?

The smarter ones recognise the power of the press, and use it to put pressure on their own organisation.

I jumped out at the police station, overpaid my overweight getaway driver and took a look at my beeping pager.

‘Lawyer says we haven’t got enough,’ read the group message from Shep.

As I’d suspected, the CPS brief felt we still lacked that single piece of irrefutable evidence – that elusive smoking gun – to charge Karen.

I marched back into the incident room, my mind made up. I was going to find out who killed Marion myself, once and for all. I had just scooped up the keys to 21 Sangora Road, when the receptionist walked in.

‘Donal Lynch?’

I nodded.

‘I’ve got a message for you to call Fintan.’

As I dialled his direct office number, I thought about mentioning that I’d just seen him in Clapham. That’d rattle the smug fucker.

‘Yeah?’

‘Fintan?’

‘Donal, I’m being arse-fucked by a deadline. Can it wait?’

‘I just got a message to call you.’

‘News to me.’

‘Oh. Okay. What time do you knock off?’

‘I’ve got, let’s see, twenty-six minutes to write the splash.’

‘Meet me after,’ I said, ‘I’ll be at the Roundhouse pub, near Sangora Road in Clapham. You know it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he lied, ‘but I’m sure I’ll find it.’

I took the overground train to Brixton, bought what I needed on Electric Avenue and headed back to Clapham Junction. By the time I got to the Roundhouse pub, Fintan was waiting.

‘Didn’t even know this place was here,’ he smiled, confirming that you shouldn’t even believe his ‘hello’.

As the barman approached, I remembered one of my dad Martin’s favourite expressions – ‘Beer isn’t drinking’ – and ordered two large scotches. Lame liquor had no place in this enterprise.

‘As delightful as it is to see you, Donal, what are you after?’

I opened the palm of my hand, revealing a set of house keys.

‘Let me guess,’ said Fintan, ‘we’ve been invited to a swingers’ party?’

‘Try again,’ I said, ‘and think about where we are.’

‘They’re not … Holy shit. Isn’t it still a crime scene?’

‘No, they’re all done. And I’ve brought along a little something to help me prolong the experience,’ I said, opening my other hand to reveal an eighth of cannabis.

It must have been about nine when we walked out of the pub into the snug, muffled dusk. At the doorway, Fintan furtively removed the batteries from his pager.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Making sure no one can place me at the scene.’

‘What?’

‘These things send and receive messages via the nearest transmitter, which means they can work out your location. But not if you take the batteries out.’

I dreaded how paranoid he’d get after a joint.

We popped into an off-licence for a bottle of scotch, tobacco, a lighter and extra-long papers.

As we walked up the steps to 21, I felt giddy, high, fairground-scared. I suddenly understood the buzz that breeds serial burglars. The key clicked sweetly in the lock. An icy chill wafted my neck. I thought of Marion that evening, turning this key, Karen Foster fingering her blade in the gym bag, poised to strike.