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

  Local knowledge and contacts gave Fintan an unassailable edge over rival reporters. It was Fintan who broke the news that Eve had been wearing a sexy Vixen Viking outfit when she stabbed Tony Meehan to death. As Fintan later explained, each great crime in history has its own Penny Dreadful moniker. The Black Dahlia. The Zodiac Killer. The Yorkshire Ripper. The Boston Strangler. Freelance Fintan coined the Vixen Viking Killer, and it stuck.

  He just couldn’t stop generating fresh, juicy new angles.

  He broke the story that Meehan was a drug-peddling orphan with a track record for assault and bedding attached local women.

  He exclusively revealed that, after Mo Daly had heartlessly abandoned her teenage daughter for a new life in New York, the family home had become notorious for wild sex and drugs parties. I found this article particularly hurtful: whoever had been having all this ‘wild sex and drugs’ had managed to keep it well away from me.

  He announced to the world that while Meehan and the Vixen had consensual/non-consensual sex, Eve’s hapless boyfriend had blacked out in the garden from a suspected drugs overdose. Fintan swore he only broke this story because the Independent had got hold of it, and were planning to splash it on their front page the next day. He ‘killed’ the story by burying it on page twelve of that evening’s Press – ‘not even a facing page!’ – adding, albeit in the last line, the small but significant fact that: ‘Gardai confirmed at the time that Lynch, eighteen, had fallen victim to an alcoholic drink “spiked” with an unidentified substance.’

  In yet another scoop, Fintan reported that the company which manufactured the Vixen Viking range were withdrawing their metal prop daggers, replacing them with reassuringly unrealistic plastic models. Sales went through the roof.

  Thanks to a leaked pathology report, he scooped his rivals again with news that – in the course of her struggle with Meehan – Eve had stabbed him in the balls. This sent the story into orbit, globally. Sales of Vixen Viking costumes nosedived.

  Gardai charged Eve with murder – again. She received the immediate and vocal backing of Dublin’s militant feminist group, RAG (Revolutionary Anarcha-feminist Group), who announced that if she was pregnant with Meehan’s rape child, they would finance her abortion in the UK.

  The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) went apeshit. They immediately lodged a High Court injunction which banned Eve Daly from travelling outside the Irish Republic. Abortion was illegal in Ireland: if Eve couldn’t travel, she couldn’t terminate the pregnancy.

  SPUC was backed by the Catholic church and the governing political party, Fianna Fáil. In an off-the-record chat with Fintan, Tullamore’s most famous son, Tourism Minister Phil Flynn – an old pal of Dad’s – accused young women of ‘provoking rape by dressing like Jezebels’. He went on to describe RAG as ‘a bunch of hairy lezzers who need a good root up the hole’. Fintan later admitted that Flynn had been half cut at the time, but he ran it anyway.

  All hell broke loose. The opposition parties demanded Flynn’s resignation: he demanded to know what he’d ‘done wrong’. To this day, Flynn is credited for the election of liberal feminist Mary Robinson to the role of President of Ireland in 1990.

  Pissed off by Robinson’s triumph, the judiciary revoked Eve’s bail. As a security van drove her through the gates of Dublin’s notorious Mountjoy prison, a photographer snatched a shot of her in the back – crying, her hair in bunches, clutching a teddy bear. This secured her martyr status in the eyes of the martyr-loving Irish Left, prompting Christy Moore to write ‘The Ballad of Eve Daly’.

  A week or so later, Eve called Fintan and confirmed she was not – repeat, not – pregnant with rape child. Abortion groups, pro and anti – could barely hide their disappointment at the loss of such a deliciously fleshy flashpoint. They dropped Eve faster than a smoking hornet.

  Fintan too began to feel ostracised. According to his own undoubtedly self-aggrandising claims, he’d exposed too many of Ireland’s gilded inner circle: politicians, the judiciary, lawyers, the Catholic church, lackey journalists. Buckling under a barrage of legal writs, personal attacks and cronyism, he fled to London.

  At least he could escape. Three years on from Meehan’s death, Eve remained locked in political and legal limbo: neither tried nor acquitted. I couldn’t understand why, until Fintan helpfully put me straight a few weeks back: ‘It’s like all these public inquiries and judicial tribunals. They’ll drag it out until people get so bored they don’t give a fuck anymore.’

  Two teas slid across the pink Formica just as Fintan strode through the café door, mac over his arm, fag on, pasty-faced – a film noir wannabe.

  ‘You’ll never guess who’s just landed in Tullamore?’ he smiled, mincing into the screwed-down plastic seat opposite mine before answering his own riddle.

  ‘Only Larry fucking King!’

  I frowned.

  ‘Legendary CNN anchor man? Biggest name in American current affairs?’

  ‘What’s he doing in Tullamore?’

  ‘You heard about Mike Tyson, right?’

  Who hadn’t? Police had arrested the self-proclaimed ‘Baddest Man on the Planet’ in Connecticut that week and charged him with rape.

  Fintan took a violent slurp of his tea and continued: ‘And you know one of the Kennedys was charged with rape earlier this year? Well, CNN has picked up on Eve’s story. They’re saying it’s a landmark case for a woman’s right to say no.’

  ‘Will this help Eve?’

  ‘Christ, no. Her best hope was that it would all peter out. Now it’s an international news story, Ireland’s politicians must be seen to be doing the right thing.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Bush and the Republicans are in power, Donal. They’d have fried her by now! She’ll get a stretch for sure. It’s just a question of how long.’

  Fintan seemed delighted with this development, the twisted fuck.

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ I snapped, ‘she so obviously acted in self-defence. In any civilised country she’d have been given a medal for getting rid of that menace.’

  ‘You need to forget about her now anyway, Donal, once and for all. There’s a good chance you’ll never clap eyes on her again.’

  I refused to believe that. My heart knew, somehow, that Eve Daly was unfinished business.

  My pork-based bribe landed. Fintan tore into it ravenously.

  ‘So what’s so interesting about this case?’ I asked.

  Half his fry-up already savaged, Fintan turned his attention to the open-spouted sugar jar, emptying the equivalent of five or six teaspoons into his muddy brew. He then lit another cigarette.

  ‘There’s two murders a week in London,’ I pointed out, ‘what makes Marion Ryan good copy?’

  Fintan smiled and shook his head in disbelief at my obvious stupidity.

  ‘She’s white, she’s pretty, she’s a newlywed, she lives on a respectable street. Truth is, if Marion had been black, or Asian, or a single mum in a council block in, I dunno, Deptford, with a little brown baby, I wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Christ, so class and social status dictate whether or not your murder merits coverage,’ I sighed, suddenly feeling hot and tired.

  ‘Don’t blame me. This is who the readership identifies with, and the fact she was butchered in her own home by a crazed maniac, well, that just about ticks all our boxes.’

  ‘Why do you say it was a crazed maniac?’

  ‘Forty-nine stab wounds. Speak to any pathologist, they’ll tell you the most stab wounds they’ve ever seen in a domestic is ten or twelve. And, if it’s domestic, why was she killed in a frenzy like that? There are a hundred more efficient ways he could have done it. It’s got to be a nutter. Hey, you’re supposed to be the copper.’

  I tried not to visibly bristle as Fintan pressed on.

  ‘Maybe he charged through the door, forced her upstairs at knifepoint?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Fint, but there is no Bride Rip
per out there on the loose, roaming the streets in search of his next pretty ABC1 target.’

  ‘How can you be so certain, Donal?’

  ‘Well, she opened the door and let this nutter in,’ I pointed out, ‘we found her on the landing with her mail, her keys, her handbag all untouched. So where does that leave your ripper theory?’

  He stubbed out his cigarette, leaned back and took a notebook and pen out of his inside pocket. ‘Post, keys and handbag,’ he said, busily writing.

  He stood and put on his coat: ‘Breakfast and privileged crime scene information from an impeccable source, all for free. Thanks, bro. Now, I better go and rewrite some of that copy.’

  Chapter 5

  South London

  Tuesday, July 2, 1991; 20:05

  After several months on the beat together, Clive and I had hit on just one mutual interest: food. And even then we rarely saw eye-to-eye. That evening, we pounded the streets of South London discussing which confectionery fridges best, and which shouldn’t be subjected to cooling at all.

  As he launched a passionate defence for keeping the toffee in Rolos soft – thus, unfridged – I realised that the drama of the last twenty-four hours had made me desperate to make the jump to murder squad. I’d grown frustrated wasting time mooching about in a comedy uniform, not quite knowing what we were trying to achieve. ‘Catching baddies,’ I’d initially assumed, ‘gangsters, rapists and people who mug old ladies.’ If only it were like that …

  The training at Hendon College should have given me a clue. I spent most of the six-week course learning about multiculturalism, hate crimes, best practices, paperwork and adopting multi-agency strategies. There was nothing about gathering evidence, hoofing down doors or bitch-slapping villains – surely the job’s only real attractions.

  Since then, I’d spent lots of time taking statements from battered wives who later withdrew them and from gang members who didn’t show up for court. I spent even more time taking statements from victims of vandalism / theft / assault whose complaints against known perpetrators never even made it to court. But I spent the vast majority of my time filling in a mountain of mandatory paperwork that accompanied every single recorded crime, no matter how petty. In other words, I was a uniformed response officer who spent eighty per cent of my time at a desk.

  Occasionally, we’d be knee-jerked into an initiative on the back of media pressure. Last year’s big campaign: Nike Crime. There’d been a worrying spate of young trendies getting mugged at knifepoint for their £120 Nike Air Jordan trainers. Of course, the more the media publicised Nike Crime, the worse it got, which in turn gave the media and politicians licence to grow ever more hysterical. It was a vicious cycle, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, depending on how you made your living. Before long, teenagers began to actually get knifed for their Nikes, vindicating the media frenzy and turning the spotlight directly onto the police’s failure to prevent it. The Commissioner ordered every beat officer in the capital to attend a day-long seminar on how to identify Nike-wearing trendies and defend them from knife-wielding envy. The majority of cops who turned up looked too bloated to catch a pensioner wearing flippers, let alone a lithe young shoe-jacker enhanced by recently acquired air-cushioned soles.

  I resented being dragged away from my soothing, pointless paperwork to protect spoiled teenagers. As far as I was concerned, anyone dumb enough to wear £120 trainers had it coming. I wanted to solve proper crimes, like who murdered Marion Ryan.

  After I caught Marion’s killer, I wanted to ask him: why? Why did you savagely take the life of a completely innocent woman? Look me in the eye and explain it to me. I need to understand.

  ‘Well?’ said Clive.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Have you ever actually seen someone eating a Milky Way? You know, on the tube, or the bus?’

  I was racking my brains when the disembodied fuzz of the radio buzzed in. It was a T call to a house on Salcott Road. A suspected intruder. I realised right away – Salcott was just a stone’s throw from Sangora. Maybe Fintan was right. What if there was a maniac on the loose?

  ‘Fuck, it’s him,’ I said.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Marion’s killer. I bet that’s him.’

  ‘Don’t be soft. Probably some kids …’

  ‘We’re three streets away.’

  Clive sagged petulantly, so I took off. But I kept it to a jog: I’d need some puff left if I was going to disarm any deranged psycho.

  Images of Marion flashed through my mind: the shock in her cold, dead eyes, her partially ripped-off fingernail.

  As I turned into Salcott I checked back. Good old Clive was trundling along fifty feet behind, his head bowed, nodding like a knackered pit pony.

  I looked for number 16 and clenched my fists, ready for anything. I gave the brass knocker three manly raps, shouted: ‘Police, open the door.’

  A voice from the other side said: ‘Oh, thank God.’

  The bright yellow door opened quickly to a pair of big, scared, brown eyes.

  ‘Oh thank you, thank you,’ she panted, as I stepped into the hallway.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Winona Ryder,’ I gasped. The resemblance was uncanny.

  ‘Pardon?’ she said.

  ‘Where is he, er, right now?’ I blurted, hoping she’d assume that’s what I’d said the first time.

  ‘He was looking through my patio door. Now he’s in the alley behind the garden, looking through a gap,’ she explained, shutting the door behind me.

  ‘Oh God, he’s never done anything like this before.’

  ‘You know him?’

  She nodded rapidly, scared. Just then, the knocker went again. She jumped.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. When I opened it, Clive nearly tumbled inside.

  ‘I’ve called for back-up,’ he panted.

  I turned and strode through the house until I got to the patio door. I slid it open and stepped into the garden, totally calm. I’d waited three years for this.

  ‘I’m coming, Eve,’ I thought to myself, ‘this time, I’m coming.’

  I strode to the back of the garden, focusing on the only gap in the six-foot fence.

  ‘Wait for back-up,’ protested Clive from the patio.

  Why give him the chance to escape? I thought to myself, deciding there and then to leap the fence, confront the fucker head on. I took out my standard-issue wooden truncheon, ran three strides, mounted, threw one leg over and braced myself.

  I looked left, right. Nothing.

  I didn’t need to throw my second leg over: this narrow alleyway had no hiding places. He was gone.

  I jumped back into the garden and sensed Clive’s shaking head.

  As I walked back to the house he grabbed my upper arm, hard.

  ‘Get one thing straight, pal, I don’t want to be a hero. If I say wait for back-up, I’m waiting for back-up, whether you wait or not. I’m not risking my neck for you or anyone else.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ I said, yanking my arm from his surprisingly firm grip.

  I marched on into the house.

  Winona had backed up against a neutral sitting room wall to keep an eye on all doors. I realised she was half-expecting her tormentor to outfox us and come through the front. That’s what real terror does: it bestows superpowers upon the aggressor. I loathed bullies, especially men picking on women. I’d spent years watching Dad chip away at Mum until she became what he loathed most: a timid, meek, frightened wreck.

  Winona’s big brown eyes seemed so embarrassed, yet grateful.

  ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ she said, her soft voice oozing exhausted relief.

  ‘I’m PC Lynch by the way, that’s PC Hunt. And your name is?’

  ‘Gabby. Look, I hate calling you but he was trying to open the patio door. I’m really scared he’ll do something stupid.’

  ‘You know him?’ Clive harrumphed.

  She took a deep breath, clearly summoning the ene
rgy to go through it all, yet again.

  ‘He’s my ex. We split up just after Easter, and he won’t accept that it’s over.’

  ‘He’s still bothering you after, what, four months?’ I said.

  ‘It’s getting worse.’

  ‘Has he physically …’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Damaged any property?’ added Clive.

  She shook her head again: ‘But this is the first time he’s come into my place.’

  Clive threw me a look, one that said, ‘Why do we bother?’

  ‘How many times have you called us about this?’ he said.

  ‘This is the third time. Look, I feel terrible dialling 999 but sometimes it’s the only way I can be certain something bad won’t happen. And it’s the only way I can get him to leave.’

  ‘The trouble is, love,’ patronised Clive, ‘unless he’s committed an actual offence, there’s nothing we can do.’

  She nodded, biting her lip.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  I could tell, right away, what she hated most about all of this: the fact that she had to ask for help at all. I’d seen it in Marion’s family that morning: these dignified, fiercely independent, proud people were the ones who paid their taxes so that we could exist, but they never wanted to need us.

  Cringingly, Clive wasn’t done yet demeaning our non-victim of crime.

  ‘I’m not being funny, love, but you could get done for wasting police time. We’re not Relate.’

  She put her hand over her face and nodded again: ‘It’s just … there’s no one else I can turn to.’

  ‘Clive, a word,’ I said, heading to the front door.