Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller (27 page)

Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland

Tuesday, August 27, 1991; 00:06

My eyelids opened, fighting against blinding yellow light. They swooned and rolled, trying to fix on a shape or a colour.

Slowly, a face came into focus. Eve’s face.

‘What the fuck?’ I mouthed.

‘It’s okay, Donal,’ said Eve, ‘you’ll be fine. Just take it easy, I’m here now.’

These should have been the sweetest words I’d ever heard. But not after what I’d just realised.

‘Lie back, Donal,’ she ordered, bossy now.

I defied her, sitting up to survey my body. A cough spluttered out from deep inside. A twinge twisted my gut and sharpened my mind.

‘What the hell happened?’ I asked, coherent now.

A balding, friendly-faced guy trotted in merrily from the hallway, screwdriver in hand. ‘Ah good man, you’ve come to.’

I looked at him, then looked at Eve.

‘I can’t mix the blow and the booze at all,’ he said. ‘I’m like Woody Allen, I spend the rest of the night trying to take my trousers off over my head!’

‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘I’m Pete,’ he said, coming over and shaking my hand, ‘from Irish Getaway. I missed your call earlier. I tried to call you back but the phone seemed to be dead. I thought I’d better come over and make sure you’re okay. Eve here explained that you’ve, er, overdone it a bit.’

I sat up and took another deep breath. I realised that this handyman had proved very handy indeed. He didn’t know it, but he’d just saved my life.

‘The power went out … Pete, listen to me, please don’t leave me here, with her,’ I said. Pete looked at me strangely. He then looked at Eve as if to say: ‘This guy is mashed.’

He looked back at me: ‘Ah now, listen my friend, I think you’re maybe a bit paranoid from the hash. Take it easy, alright?’

He had no idea what he’d interrupted. Prevented.

‘Is the phone working?’ I asked, getting up.

‘That’s the funny thing,’ said Pete, raising an eyebrow as if I was taking the piss, ‘someone cut the line just outside the house.’

‘And why did the power go off?’

‘Er, someone pulled a fuse out,’ he said, still looking at me like I might be yanking his chain. Then he turned to Eve: ‘Are you sure you’re gonna be okay, love?’

‘Yeah, fine Pete, thanks,’ said Eve, giving him her most reassuring smile.

‘Right so, as long as you’re sure, because I could really do with getting off. I’ll get the phone people out tomorrow.’

He looked at me again, with a mixture of pity and concern. My eyes pleaded with him not to leave.

‘Please don’t go, Pete – I think she’s trying to kill me.’

‘Go, Pete, for the love of God,’ laughed Eve, ‘he’ll be alright when he gets some sleep.’

‘Grand then. Okay, you two have a good night now,’ said Pete, backing out of the door hesitantly.

‘Thanks, Pete,’ I said, not taking my eyes off Eve. I reached down behind the couch for a fallen wine bottle and tried to work out where she’d stashed the knife.

As soon as the front door shut, she ran. I set off after her, my mind trying to process what had happened. My first thought: she’s got rid of the knife and is racing to the kitchen to get another. My second: she’s trying to escape. As she got close to the kitchen door, I launched myself.

We slid against the back door as one. I yanked her over, face-up, gripped her throat and held the bottle over her face like a primed axe.

‘What the fuck, Eve?’ I roared into her face.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she demanded.

‘You were going to stab me!’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re scaring me now, Donal. Get off me.’

My mind raced. I knew what I’d seen: Eve coming for me, with a knife. Only the headlights of Pete’s van had saved me. Had he not swung into the driveway at that very moment, I’d be lying on that couch now, bleeding to death with no way of phoning for help. That hadn’t been any sort of sleep paralysis episode. Eve had set me up to be here, so she could kill me.

‘You know I can’t just let you walk away from this, Eve, as if nothing happened? I have to arrest you for attempted murder.’

‘No one will ever believe you,’ she hissed.

‘What?’

‘I’ve known Pete for years. I told him you’d been smoking weed and drinking and started hallucinating. I told him you got so paranoid that you cut the phone line and shut off the power. He was worried sick about me. He refused to leave until you came to. He wanted to make sure you weren’t going to do something stupid.’

Fireworks exploded in my head.

‘Go on, hit me with the bottle,’ she gloated, ‘strangle me. They’ll put you away.’

‘Hang on a second, you just tried to …’

‘Go on,’ she said, ‘call the Guards. Tell them what you think you saw. I’ll say you were tripping because you were high. Look at the state of the place. Look at the state of you! I’ve got your thumbprints on my neck. I could tell a very different story, far more believable than yours. Pete will back me up. You haven’t got a prayer.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I spat, ‘I’m a police officer. And let’s not forget, you have form for this.’

‘You invited me for the weekend, got pissed and stoned, confronted me about my affair with your brother and flipped out. Pete will back me up and he’s the only witness.’

My grip weakened on her throat, my mind feeling like a bank of footlights all panning in different directions. She was right. How would any of this sound to a Guard? To a judge and jury? Fair play, she’d set me up beautifully.

‘Okay, let’s say we don’t call the Guards,’ I said, removing my hand from her throat but keeping the bottle poised, ‘just tell me why, Eve. Why were you going to do that to me?’

‘I knew you wouldn’t just leave it alone,’ she rasped bitterly, rubbing her throat. ‘Tony’s visits. I knew your prying copper’s mind would have to work it all out …’

‘What were you scared I’d find out, Eve?’

‘I’m not going back to prison. Ever. No matter what it takes,’ she almost recited.

‘What is it Meehan’s been trying to tell me?’

Her cold hateful eyes held back, but her sneering mouth couldn’t wait to deliver the lacerations her knife had failed to.

‘I was never going to go to London with you. Did you really think I could face Daddy after what he did to us? And have to look at that slut Sandra Kelly? I was going to New York. They’d even sent me the ticket. I just didn’t know how to tell you. God, you just wouldn’t fucking listen.’

The universe flipped over like a coin. Strength gushed out of me until I heard my wine bottle weapon shatter on the wooden floor.

‘I was going to announce it at the party, get it off my chest. But then of course you got wasted and carted off to hospital.’

I dismounted, unable to feel the floor beneath my feet. She sat up, coughed hard.

‘Come on, Eve, get to the point. What’s he trying to tell me?’

‘Fine. I’d been seeing Tony since Easter. He was coming with me, to New York.’

She searched my eyes for pain, rage – anything. I just felt blank. A hologram.

‘Then he told me he wasn’t coming with me. He was seeing someone else and he couldn’t leave her because she was pregnant. Tara fucking Molloy. The slut.’

‘Tara Molloy? The girl you sent over to me, for the abortion?’

‘It’s a very long story,’ she smiled bitterly, her eyes peering into the past.

‘How could he do that to me? I gave him everything. Everything.’

‘But you said he tried to rape you. You lashed out in self-defence.’

‘Jesus, Donal, don’t make me spell it out.’

‘But what I saw … he forced himself on you.’

‘You still haven’t fucked anyone, have you, Donal? Well when you do, don’t be afraid to get rough. Most women like being fucked properly.’

My head felt like it was no longer attached to my body.

‘So you had sex with him. He told you that he wasn’t coming with you, that he’d knocked up Tara Molloy. And you stabbed him. That’s what he’s been trying to tell me.’

She got to her feet, glaring at me all the while, her face puce with hatred.

‘And you thought there was a chance I’d find out tonight, if I connected with Meehan. You couldn’t risk it so you waited until I was stoned, pissed, asleep …’

‘I’ve got nearly three years left on my tariff. I’m not going back to prison. No matter what it takes,’ came her demented mantra.

I saw the knife shaking down by her side, in her clenched right fist, pointing behind her. I wheeled towards the kitchen door. She stepped in to cut me off, raising the knife above her shoulder so that it now pointed at my face.

‘They taught me how to do this in prison,’ she said, in autopilot now, all her energy focused on the knife scoping out my heart.

I stumbled backwards but her lunge was greater. As she flew towards me, the world stopped turning. Everything went into slow motion. Total soundless calm.

She flew past me, face down into the hard wooden floor. A figure followed through with a drop kick to the back of her head that sent a sickening thud ringing through the cold hallway.

‘Is that rough enough for you?’ screamed Fintan as her knife skidded along the fake wooden floor, all the way to the sitting room door.

He rolled her limp body over.

‘I think I may even have out-scooped myself this time,’ he congratulated himself.

I heard myself gurgle helplessly like a contented baby. My head felt insanely calm. My brain must have dosed me in preparation for traumatic death.

Fintan walked over and handed me a hipflask. He
was
film noir, after all.

I took a long draw, letting the liquor pinch me back to reality.

‘How did you … What …?’

Fintan started pacing the hallway; all-knowing, buzzing on adrenaline.

‘I spent the past week working on getting you both here,’ he announced, ‘I made sure Eve believed you have this gift. I figured it was the only way I could flush her out about what really happened here that night.

‘But things kept getting in the way, like Gabby. I couldn’t risk you falling for her, Donal. That would have stopped Eve from being able to talk you into coming back here.’

‘What, so you …?’

Fintan nodded: ‘The clothes slasher, the cuttings.’

‘You wanker,’ I snapped.

‘That’s the thanks I get for saving your arse?’

I took a double draw on the single malt.

‘The more Eve told me about it, the less I believed her story. But it made great copy. That’s all she ever was to me. Great fucking copy.

‘Come on! Let’s get the fuck out of here.’

He offered me an arm. I let it hang. Too many questions squirmed like maggots in my brain.

‘I don’t understand. You helped Eve escape prison?’

‘No, I didn’t! I got everything I wanted from her and then I told her to plead guilty. Told her it would get her a lighter sentence. I couldn’t believe it when they fell for that treaty shit. Come on.’

I ignored his demanding arm, and looked over at Eve’s limp body. As blood trickled from her mouth, my mind flashed back to Marion Ryan sprawled across that landing. A horrific realisation hit home: if Eve died here tonight, the bitch’s crazed spirit would torment me for all eternity.

‘We better check that she’s … you know?’

Fintal walked over, leaned down and gave her face a couple of sharp slaps. Eve groaned.

‘Don’t bother getting up, love,’ he sang to her.

‘We should call an ambulance,’ I said, ‘and the Guards.’

Fintan laughed bitterly: ‘You’re kidding, right? Who would believe any of what went on here? It’d destroy all of us. Come on, I’ve rooms booked at the Bridge House.’

I didn’t get up.

‘Come on, Donal, for fuck’s sake. She’ll be alright.’

I refused to budge.

‘Alright, we’ll call an ambulance from a phone box. Now can we go?’

I ignored his arm and hauled myself up, feeling spent and idiotic.

Fintan opened the front door and stood aside.

‘You’re not going to write a story about this are you?’

‘No, Donal. I think I’ll save this one for the memoir.’

New Scotland Yard, London

Monday, March 16, 1992; 10:00

‘Commander Glenn?’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘DC Lynch. Please call me Donal.’

Glenn shook my hand lamely, glanced at me but thought better of taking a good look. He’d already made up his mind. I was a goner.

The convictions of Laura and Terry Foster for murder this week had triggered a media Blitzkrieg. Quite simply, the story had all the best elements – sex, lies, videotape and biblical comeuppance.

When they ran out of ways to re-interpret the avaricious sexual mores of Karen and Laura Foster and Peter Ryan, they began to look for other angles. A hungry, eagle-eyed agency reporter spotted a piece in medical bible
The Lancet
and deciphered that it could only have come from contact with an officer working on the reigning crime story of the year.

And so, on pages four and five of the up-and-coming
Sunday Herald
newspaper, the banner headline read: ‘How Psychic Detective Brought Down Twisted Sisters.’

Of course, Lilian never sent me a copy for approval. She honoured her promise not to use my name but revealed my age, nationality and details about the case that anyone vaguely connected to it would have recognised right away.

Before I’d even seen the article, a curt pager message instructed me to attend a meeting with Commander John Glenn at Scotland Yard, nine a.m. tomorrow. I marvelled at the irony. My fate lay in the hands of Glenn, the senior cop whose devotion to Professor Richards’ hocus-pocus forensic psychology derailed the Marion Ryan murder probe in the first place. I knew that McStay would have briefed him to the hilt, relishing the chance to bring down one of Shep’s bitches.

‘Please sit,’ he said, scanning his psychotically well-ordered desk.

Glenn had the wavy brown hair, thick set, pinched pink cheeks and impenetrable inner confidence of a Tory Toff. He looked at some papers as I took in the view from his eighth floor office window at New Scotland Yard. I wondered what had happened to Old Scotland Yard.

Finally, in his own time, he spoke.

‘Can I be frank with you, Donal?’ he said, pronouncing it like Donald with a silent second ‘d’, just as Lilian had done.

‘You’ve got a simple choice, Donal. You can do the decent thing and resign. Or you can hang on for an internal inquiry. I dare say though, we’ll find enough grounds to get shot of you.’

‘Get shot of me, Sir?’ I said.

‘This revelation is a total embarrassment to the Met. The only consolation is that you’re so junior. Otherwise it could have bankrupted us. The Fosters could appeal and sue. The family of Marion Ryan could sue. You do understand this, I trust?’

‘I’d like there to be an inquiry. I want to give my side of the story, Sir,’ I said flatly.

‘Thought as much,’ sighed Glenn, ‘the Police Federation no doubt advised you to hang on for as long as possible so that you can keep bleeding us of your salary.’

‘I’ve never spoken to the Police Federation, Sir,’ I said.

He shifted in his seat, agitated, desperate to get something off his chest.

‘
Your side of the story
?’ he snorted with contempt. ‘What’s that then, that you have some psychic connection to murder victims?’

‘Sir, that was Dr Krul’s theory, not mine. My name isn’t on the article.’

‘So what do you have to say for yourself about this, er … gift of yours then?’

‘I just think my subconscious sometimes influences my dreams, and that helps me piece things together, Sir.’

His mouth contorted as if he’d just bitten into a dog-shit sandwich.

‘Look Donal, the days of building a case against a suspect are gone. I thought you of all people would know that. Haven’t you read about your compatriots, the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six and what not?’

‘And what not?’ I said, surveying his over-privileged, jowly, smug chops.

A bomb went off in my head. Before I knew it, I had Glenn by the throat, pinning his flabby face on the green leather surface of his ridiculous antique desk.

‘Now I want you to listen to me, Commander Glenn,’ I spat in his hairy ear. ‘I want you to do something for me. I want you to repeat some words after me, understand?’

He mumbled incoherently, reddening until the port-induced, cracked-vein bundles in his face looked set to explode. I saw his free hand reach under the desk for a panic button and grabbed it, twisting it back until he yelped like a kicked puppy.

‘What’s the panic, Commander? Now, I want you to say the word
doughnut
.’

‘What the blazes?’ he began, so I pulled his arm to breaking.

‘Doughnut,’ whimpered Commander Glenn.

‘Very good, Commander. Now I want you to say another word for me.’

He nodded desperately.

‘Commander, I want you to say “Anal”.’

‘Anal,’ squawked Commander Glenn.

‘I bet you had plenty of that at the posh school, didn’t you, Commander? Now, I want you to put them together. Can you do that for me, Commander?’

‘Doughnut. Anal. What in God’s name …?’

‘Now I want you to drop the nut from doughnut and the A from anal. And put those words together. Do you think you could do that for me, Commander?’

‘Dough Nal,’ he wheezed.

‘Again?’ I barked.

‘Dough Nal,’ he repeated.

‘One more time now, Commander. Both words together please?’

‘DoughNal,’ he said.

‘Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?’ I said, letting go of him and, quite possibly, my career.