Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller Read online

  ‘Neither did she,’ deadpanned Clive, chuckling as he set off across the road. I wondered if that’s what happened to all cops, in the end.

  I couldn’t just leave Peter like that, bent double, bawling at the pavement. I walked over and put a hand on his heaving shoulders. He calmed almost instantly. I couldn’t think of a thing to say, so I said: ‘I’m sorry for your trouble.’

  He breathed in deeply.

  ‘Thank you, Officer,’ he blurted, and I could tell he meant it, before the spasms of grief swept him away once more.

  As the car taking Peter and Karen to Clapham police station moved off, a flash of streetlight illuminated the interior. Freeze-framed in the back seat, Peter’s ghostly white face stared straight ahead, as if into an abyss. How I longed for a glimpse inside that mind. On the far side of him, two large teary eyes gazed into his. Then, for a nanosecond, the eyes of Karen Foster locked onto mine, glinting wounded confusion.

  The murder scene buzz snapped off like a light. A sense of helplessness gnawed away at my red-raw nerves.

  ‘Go home, son, you look shattered,’ said Clive, and I lacked the will to argue.

  It was less than a mile to the flat I shared with Aidan, an old friend from back home.

  Aidan was a psychiatric nurse at the Maudsley hospital, and on ‘earlies’ that week. But I guessed he’d still be up, chain-smoking his Marlboro Reds, noodling on his guitar, crafting a ballad to the latest random woman he’d fallen in love with at the bus stop or in some supermarket queue, the soft eejit.

  Like so many gifted musicians I’d known, Aidan existed in a perpetual emotional state of either unrequited love or rejection. It was as if he’d absorbed the lyrics of all the epic love songs he’d ever learned so that they became his doomed emotional landscape. Any girl he got off with instantly became ‘the one’ – cue a week of Van Morrison (early era), Stone Roses, The Sugarcubes. Then his intensity would scare her off, making her ‘the one who got away’ – cue a week of Van Morrison (late era), Nick Cave and Tom Waits in his locked smoky bedroom. If music be the food of love, Aidan ate only sweet ’n sour.

  His self-inflicted lovelorn existence, coupled with the fact he didn’t drink or take an interest in sport, outcast Aidan from the rest of our circle. But his tendency to get depressed worried me, so I’d always kept in touch. When the cash-in-hand, hard-drinking madness of the North London Irish scene became too much, I ‘retired’ to South London and Aidan’s calm exile. ‘Be good training for when you move in with a woman,’ the lads joked.

  Aidan’s emotional pogo would be too much for me tonight. I elected to walk home, nice and steady, so he’d be asleep by the time I got there.

  The lightest of rain filled the air, cool and gentle, as if a weary cloud had sunk upon the road. ‘Soft rain, thank God,’ the old boys back home would say. The streets went slick. Car wheels sizzled like frying pans. The night buses groaned and closing time laughs rang hollow.

  A lonely phone box cast piss-green light upon the wet pavement. I stared through the scratched glass at the grubby phone inside. I wanted to call her right now, badly. But how could I, at this time of night, after two long years?

  I walked on, unable to fathom why seeing Marion’s body had affected me so much. God knows, like any young Irish adult, I’d seen more dead bodies than Ted Bundy’s chest freezer. It’s nothing sinister – at least not to us. It comes down to one stubbornly lingering Irish tradition: the Wake.

  I remembered comedian Dave Allen’s line: In Ireland, death is a way of life. Whenever someone dies, we lay them out in their coffin and look at them for a few days. Tradition demands that the body is accompanied at all times until its ‘removal’ to the church. Cue an endless stream of relatives and neighbours through the house, a reservoir of tea, a landfill of sandwiches. From the age of seven or eight, every time a relative croaked it – and my extended clan was massive – you were hauled along to the Wake to say goodbye to someone you didn’t know who was already dead.

  Before the corpse is displayed to all and sundry – usually in a bedroom or the sitting room of their home – some poor soul has to wrestle them into their Sunday best, wrench their eyes and mouth shut, apply make-up, and discreetly stuff cotton wool up their nostrils so that they don’t cave in. You never seemed to meet an embalmer socially.

  In some homes, clocks are stopped at the time of death and all mirrors turned to the wall. Once the coffin is hauled into its display position, the family opens the window, to allow the deceased person’s spirit to leave. After two hours, they close the window, to ensure that the spirit doesn’t return. If you stand between the window and the body during this time, then God help you.

  I shuddered at the memory of that open landing window tonight. Did Marion’s spirit pass through me?

  I scolded myself for entertaining such superstitious nonsense. My thoughts turned instead to Marion. I knew that every square inch of her body would be poked and prodded, then photographed, scraped, swabbed or cut open. Body fluids, fingernail dirt and pubic hair would be sealed in plastic or glass and then passed, hand to hand, along the evidential chain; from pathologist to the laboratory, to the prosecution, to the court and to the jury. When you become the central piece of evidence in your own murder, there’s no dignity. Poor Marion – probably worrying about what to make for tea when she got to her front door. I tried to block out how she must have felt the moment she saw the knife. How could someone she knew do this to her?

  Then I thought about Eve. Another blazing redhead ambushed by evil.

  I rubbed my eyes. The soft rain had made my face all wet.

  Eve Daly was more Irish-looking than any woman has a right to be: mischievous green eyes; a pale, sculpted face with just enough freckles; wild hair as red as the flesh of a blood orange. Sexy, curvy, five foot five in heels, her nose crinkled when she laughed, she smelled of pine needles and, when she came, her lips felt as cold and soft as fresh snow. And she was mine.

  Eve’s daddy, Philandering Frank, had fled to London with his secretary three years earlier in a scandal that had seemed to delight everyone except his family.

  Before his midnight flit, Frank had painstakingly stashed his fortune into a myriad of untraceable off-shore accounts, leaving the family penniless and saddled with a sprawling, heavily mortgaged bungalow. In an effort to save their home – and face – Eve’s mum, Mad Mo, and her two older brothers moved to New York. Once her clan had split, Eve felt like she was in Ireland on borrowed time, which is exactly how I felt. She was going to New York; I was bound for London – neither of us really belonged anymore. And so we became an island. Our romance flourished on a shared musical snobbery and a mutual disdain for pretty much everything and everyone around us.

  On Saturday nights, we cemented our superiority at Rocky’s in Tullamore – ‘the Midlands’ hottest nightspot’ – where we perfected our disaffection and snorted with laughter and contempt at the music, the dancing and the fashion.

  The girls sat on one side of the empty dance floor, dressed to repel adverse weather and stray hands. The DJ never warned them of ‘a slow set’ in case they scattered to the toilets. We’d watch in horrified fascination as local men walked the line in vain, seemingly immune to serial rejection.

  On the other side of the dance floor, we identified two clear tribes of men: the Posers and the Poodles. The motto of the Posers seemed to be: if a piece of clothing rolls, then roll it. They wore Miami Vice-style pastel suit jackets (sleeves rolledup to the elbow), pink or blue t-shirts (arm sleeves rolled up to the pit), pegged jeans (scrunched up at the bottom, then rolled up: always twice), slip-on shoes (Oxblood moccasins with the natty little tassels), no socks (inexplicably spurning two glorious rolling opportunities) and mullet hair-dos.

  On the other end of the scale: the heavy rocker types known as the ‘hard chaws’ who rode Honda 50s, head-banged (even during slow sets) and preferred to end the evening with a brawl. The Chaws had wholeheartedly embraced American Poodle Rock, which involv
ed wearing your hair big and your denim bleached. The jeans were so tight they required zips in the lower leg to get on, or off, while the denim jackets were oversized, with obligatory rolled-up sleeves and US band badges on the back: Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses.

  At the end of the night, we’d dare each other to order curry chips from Mrs Maguire’s rancid van: baulking at the peeled spuds in the rusty sink, her crusted black fingernails and the ringworm on her grease-creased forehead. But at two a.m., nothing in the world tasted better and, as exhaustive research had taught me, no one ever hits you when you’re holding a punnet of chips.

  We’d walk back to hers, singing ‘Stand By Me’ and ‘I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight’ while checking out the big sky for shooting stars. I didn’t know if I loved Eve, or if she loved me. But I loved life with her in it.

  Before it all went so horribly wrong.

  I got home just after eleven p.m., registered Aidan’s closed bedroom door with a silent fist pump and uncorked a bottle of red.

  I flopped onto the couch without even switching on a lamp. My mood deserved the streetlight’s soothing amber gloom. I knew I’d have to ration my Shiraz and my irrational emotions for a longer stretch than usual tonight.

  The worst part about insomnia is all the empty time you have to fill. I’m awake four or five hours longer than you each day – up to thirty-five hours every week: that’s twenty-three soccer matches, twelve The Godfathers, an entire French working week. Each year, I’ve got seventy-six extra days to kill when hardly anyone else is awake and nothing is open. These stats alone prove that I’ve far too much time on my hands.

  When an inability to ‘drop off’ first struck me three years ago, I was scorching through three books a week. I read everything I could lay my hands on about sleep, dreams, insomnia. All I learned was how little we know about any of it: the scientific world has yet to even figure out why we dream.

  Just because you can’t sleep doesn’t mean you don’t need sleep and little by little my ability to concentrate ebbed away, leaving me with just the one trusty sedative. Someone clever once said: ‘Time, Motion and Wine Cause Sleep.’ I could rely only on the latter. I opted for Shiraz – that charred fruit flavour making it the hardest to drink fast – and I tried to limit my intake to two bottles a night. That might sound excessive but, spread normally over eight hours – eight p.m. until four a.m. – it’s less than a glass an hour. Trust me, it felt moderate. More often than not, I dropped off somewhere between three and four a.m., congratulating myself on the quarter of a bottle left.

  Some nights, regardless of grape intake, I knew sleep wouldn’t take me. This would be one of those nights.

  ‘Well, Van Winkle, how are they hanging?’ Aidan’s voice startled me.

  ‘Before you display the deep personal concern typical of you,’ he added, sitting beside me on the couch, ‘you didn’t wake me up. I just can’t seem to nod off tonight. It must be catching.’

  After a while, he spoke again. ‘Why don’t you watch telly? That’d help pass the time.’

  ‘Have you seen late-night TV? Their target audience must be Travis Bickle. You have to like your rock soft and your porn hard.’

  ‘And your university open. Speaking of which, what happened to that home course you were doing?’

  ‘I’m still dipping in and out of it,’ I lied, ‘struggling a bit to concentrate at the moment.’

  ‘Criminology eh? But you just can’t do the time.’

  ‘Ha, yeah. Very good.’

  ‘Of course you could try history, but there’s no future in it.’

  He did one of those comedy drum flourishes while racking his brain for more.

  ‘Theology’s another option, but I suspect you lack the belief.’

  ‘We got called to a house tonight.’

  ‘I’d recommend French but, to be frank, I’d say you lack that certain – oh how can I say it – je ne sais quoi?’

  ‘A girl stabbed to death, twenty-three.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ said Aidan.

  ‘Nothing taken, so it must have been domestic, her husband, or a spurned ex. God knows.’

  ‘Or maybe a random nutter. Some of the loons on my ward are capable of anything.’

  ‘She let whoever it was in. She knew him.’

  ‘Jesus. And he stabbed her?’

  ‘Loads of times, multiple wounds. It looked frenzied.’

  ‘He must have been in a rage. Why would someone who knew her be so … angry?’

  I shrugged.

  Aidan was obviously bursting to know more, but had the good grace to park it for now.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it so,’ he said, skulking back to his room.

  The wine slipped down like water. Halfway through the second bottle, I panicked that I’d run out early. I was pondering a trip to the all-night off-licence in Clapham Junction when a slither of cold air wormed its way around my neck, causing me to shudder.

  Unease twanged at my gut. I squinted hard into the other side of the room, beyond the amber gloom, and sensed someone there. I shuffled in my seat: ‘Aid?’

  The air crackled with intent.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I called out.

  I squinted harder, then stiffened. A figure stood just inside the sitting room door, head bowed.

  ‘Aidan?’ I shouted, my heart revving like a getaway car.

  Somehow, soundlessly, this fucker had got into the flat. Now he just stood there, still but poised. He’d come to hurt me. I knew it.

  ‘What the fuck …’ I said, trying to rouse myself. But I couldn’t move a muscle. My body had frozen to ice, but my heart thrashed inside my chest like a trapped bird.

  Head still bowed, the figure started inching towards me. I sat there paralysed, powerless, as he got closer and closer; steady, unflinching, fearless. He grew bigger, until his black frame filled my vision. I realised that it had to be him. After all these years, Meehan had found me. Now he was going to finish the job.

  Inches from my face, he raised his head. Fuck, no. I recognised those staring bloodshot blue eyes, that bleeding mouth. Marion Ryan glared at me with murderous rage.

  Unblinking, deranged, Marion pushed her grotesquely distorted, milk-white face into mine. I screamed, but nothing came out. She smiled a malevolent smile that said: ‘You’re mine now.’

  A loud bang made me jump. Suddenly she stood by the door, violently slamming it shut, over and over. Boom. Boom. Boom. I put my hands over my ringing ears and screamed.

  In a flash, everything turned yellow. My squinting eyes finally made out Aidan’s horrified face in the house lights.

  ‘What the fuck?’ he cried, surveying me in undisguised disgust.

  I could smell and feel warm puke on my chest.

  ‘It’s wine, just red wine,’ I gasped.

  ‘Jesus, I thought you’d been stabbed or something. What the fuck was all that about?’

  I turned to the flat door: it was closed.

  ‘Just a nightmare.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he said again, and headed to the kitchen. I heard water pouring out of the tap. I took the glass of water and tea towel from him and wiped my mouth. I realised how grotesque I must have looked and smiled. It was the sheer relief of being alive.

  ‘It’s no fucking laughing matter,’ he snapped, ‘you’ve got to see someone about this shit. Oh Christ, the smell, get that shirt off, for fuck’s sake.’

  As I unbuttoned I tried to convince myself that it really had been a nightmare. But I felt sure I’d been awake the whole time. Sitting here on the couch, everything around Marion in that streetlight orange glow – the lamp, the posters, the table, my jacket on the back of the chair. It had been real.

  Aidan returned to the kitchen door, where he stood in judgement for fully three minutes.

  ‘You have to see someone, Donal. Not sleeping is one thing, but this …’

  ‘It was Marion, the girl from tonight.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She appeared to me. I tho
ught she was going to kill me. She seemed so angry. Did you hear the door slamming?’

  ‘All I heard was you howling at the fucking moon.’

  ‘I thought it was Meehan.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought it was Tony Meehan, coming to finish me off.’

  ‘You’re raving now, Donal. Jesus. That guy’s long gone.’

  ‘I’ve been expecting him for three fucking years. Every night.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Why would he be wanting to finish you off?’

  ‘It’s why I can’t sleep.’

  Aidan couldn’t have looked more bewildered.

  ‘Something weird happened that night, Aidan. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. I’ve never told anyone. You’ll think I’m insane.’

  ‘What with some of the people I deal with? I doubt it,’ Aidan laughed, but kindly. ‘Try me.’

  Chapter 2

  The Irish Midlands

  Thursday, August 18, 1988

  I last clapped eyes on Tony Meehan three years ago at Tullamore General Hospital in rural Ireland.

  He’d put me there.

  We, the class of ’88, had completed the Leaving Cert exams. It was late summer and tomorrow I’d be flying to London, with Eve. Before the exams, I’d asked her to change her plans and come to England with me. After a few days, she had agreed. She told me that her dad, Frank, would put down a deposit on a flat for her in Camden, where we could both live. She’d work for his construction company and, hopefully, so would I. She was waiting for the right time to tell her mum, Mad Mo.

  I would have jumped on the next flight out after the exams. But for Eve, this felt too sudden; too final.

  ‘We have the rest of our lives to work and pay bills,’ she reasoned, ‘let’s spend one last carefree summer at home, with our friends.’ One last carefree summer. How that statement haunts me still.

  I had conceded to her demands, as usual, but on the condition that we draw a line at the Leaving Cert results.

  And now, finally, we were nearly there. There was just one last hurdle before our flight tomorrow. Never one to knowingly shun a pun, Eve had arranged ‘The Eve of Results Fancy Dress Party’, to be hosted at her sprawling family bungalow.