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

  In Seamus, I found another immigrant turned to granite by hardship. He explained bluntly that he employed Irish staff because they expected a pub to stay open till three or four in the morning, every morning.

  I quickly discovered that the Feathers had become the favoured watering hole of officers working at nearby Scotland Yard. Boy could they drink. And, because it was patronised by the law, it was above the law.

  We never closed before three a.m. No wonder there was a permanent vacancy. It helped that I could take a room upstairs.

  The insomnia that had tormented me since I arrived in London finally proved useful. By the time I talked the last drunks down from their stools each morning, only medicated mini-cab drivers and demented birds were still up. I never heard a bird singing at night until I came to London. Those nightingales on Berkeley Square must be fucking knackered.

  Gabby laughed. But I had an acute boredom sensor. It was time to wrap up.

  ‘So I got to know a few of the officers and they persuaded me to join up,’ I said, skipping the murky truth about how I became a cop. That would have to wait for another day.

  ‘Do you have ambitions, you know, to make detective?’

  ‘Yeah, you could say that. I’m desperate, to be honest.’

  ‘Don’t you worry that your insomnia will eventually catch up with you, make you ill?’

  ‘Of course. I’ve seen specialists. I’ve read books. No one seems to have an answer.’

  ‘I’ve got a friend about to begin her final year of a psychology degree. I remember her saying she’d like to specialise in sleep disorders. She’s looking for a case right now …’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ I laughed, ‘it’s all a bit embarrassing.’

  ‘I tell you what,’ said Gabby, ‘if you agree to help Lily, I’ll go stay with my parents.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously,’ she said, holding out her hand.

  ‘Deal,’ I smiled, shaking her hand and hoping I was the only one lying.

  I pulled open the phone box door, sampled the air inside and nodded gratefully. It couldn’t have been pissed in for at least three days.

  I shovelled in three pound coins and poked those digits you never forget. On the third ring, I realised I hadn’t planned what to say. I slammed the receiver down and heard the three coins clatter down to the tray.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ I said to the stale air, ‘how are you?’

  Chapter 10

  King’s College Hospital, South London

  Thursday, July 11, 1991; 09:55

  The following Thursday morning – ten days after Marion’s murder – I clocked the sign that read King’s College’s Institute of Psychiatry and winced.

  Psychiatry sounded so judgemental, so incurable. But I’d come here voluntarily. They wouldn’t shoot a dart in my arse and cart me off indefinitely for the good of society. Of that I felt almost certain.

  Besides, Lilian Krul hadn’t yet qualified. And this face-to-face with the wannabe shrink had been slated for just sixty minutes: barely enough time for her to knock the shine off my well-polished veneer of sanity, let alone scratch it.

  Of course, I’d fully intended to renege on my deal with Gabby as soon as she’d moved back to her family’s home in Kent. But I hadn’t counted on her academic friend’s tireless perseverance. I was left in no doubt that Lilian could give Dom Rogan a real run for his money in the stalking stakes. She must have left ten messages over two days to make this happen. I caved in because, if this was all it took to keep Gabby out of harm’s way, then it had to be worth every second.

  I told Aidan I had gone to a vinyl sale; I couldn’t bring myself to admit I’d found professional help outside his place of work, the pre-eminent Maudsley . He’d been on at me for months about ‘seeing someone’ there. I tried to explain that every time I’d visited a specialist, I wound up prescribed some sort of medieval haymaker sleeping tablet that turned me into a slack-jawed halfwit.

  Aidan had even described my case in detail to a leading sleep specialist, which put me right off. For one thing, he was prone to exaggeration. God knows what he’d told them. On top of that, when confronted by shrinks, I reserved the right to edit my own symptoms and lunacy.

  I would never admit to any fully qualified member of the medical establishment the true extent of my insomnia. I dreaded being labelled schizophrenic or bi-polar and carted off to some screaming Gothic madhouse where – drugged, drooling and helpless – I’d get arse-fucked daily by some sick, cackling chaplain.

  As an Irish male, I had a scientific right to be scared. Studies have found that four per cent of the Irish population are schizophrenic; that’s four times higher than any other nation in the world.

  They looked for historical reasons behind Ireland’s reluctant success in producing champion nutters. In-breeding turned out not to be a factor, thankfully. After all, over the centuries all manner of imposter – Viking, Norman, Spanish, English, to name a few – had turned the Irish gene pool into alphabet soup. Our women have a proud record of welcoming exotic strangers. It felt reassuring to know that our inadequacy in the eyes of the Irish female was historical.

  Another theory had been the traditional ‘emigration of the strongest’, but they found similarly high levels of schizophrenia in Irish emigrant groups across the US.

  The experts eventually agreed that it came down to a combination of three historical reasons: maternal malnourishment during pregnancy, alcoholism and ageing sperm. In at least two of these disciplines, my auld fella Martin scored top marks.

  He’d already turned fifty by the time my older brother and I came along. Like so many men in rural Ireland, that was the price he paid for inheriting the family farm a couple of decades earlier. It came equipped with his mother, May Lynch – a ringing bitch still spoken about in tones of mild terror and awe. And, like most of these narcissistic matriarchs, she wouldn’t tolerate another woman in the house so he had to wait for her to die.

  That was the ‘ageing sperm’ condition covered. As for ‘the drink’, Martin insisted he did so only socially. But being a local politician, auctioneer and IRA facilitator, he tended to be social every evening of the week. And he’d always wrap up the night with a few whiskies on the couch, considered so anti-social by the rest of us that we’d feel the need to hide.

  So, no one could accuse Martin Lynch of not doing his bit to sire a schizo. Maybe he wanted one to join him fighting for ‘the cause’. Thankfully, no matter how knackered and godawful I felt, I never heard voices. But I still felt a little paranoid about that particular prognosis, so strenuously avoided the only people who could help me. Today’s ‘consultation’ with Lilian was an aberration, and I planned to make sure of that by telling her fuck all.

  ‘Donal?’ came a soft voice. ‘Hi, I’m Lilian.’

  I was expecting someone sterner with less make-up and more gravitas.

  I tried not to look too shocked: she looked surprised enough for the both of us. Her hair was scraped back into a ponytail with such severity that her eyebrows were arched, making her seem permanently startled. Gigantic, thick-rimmed black spectacles made her already large pupils look like a pair of well-polished conkers. Her pronounced cheekbones glowed pink beneath war paint.

  She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but had gone to considerable lengths to appear older. She wore a dark grey trouser suit a couple of sizes too big, as if she’d been playing in her father’s clothes chest. Her shoes would’ve made Freud weep.

  ‘Come with me, please,’ she instructed, shutting my inspection down.

  I followed her into a small room that smelt of handwash and leather.

  ‘Let me take your coat, Donal,’ she said, pronouncing it Donald but with a silent ‘d’ on the end. ‘Please, get comfortable.’

  She sat down opposite me, staring hard at her notes.

  Finally, she took a deep breath and spoke: ‘Okay, so Gabby told me the basics. What I’d like you to do today is run through your enti
re sleep history, from as far back as you can remember.’

  I started, a little reluctantly. Then – like one of my dad’s middle-of-the-night pisses – it just went on and on. The knowledge that this woman hadn’t the authority to prescribe either drugs or indefinite incarceration seemed to liberate me.

  I explained how, as a child, I used to wake in the dark, wide-eyed, unable to move, already choking on an ‘I’m going to die’ level of terror. The slinky black figure would soundlessly appear five or six feet from the end of my bed. Suddenly he’d be on my chest, strangling me. I’d have to fight against the swirling black liquid of his evil eyes. Then, he’d snap off, vanish … just like that.

  I’d be out of bed, gasping for breath, scared for my life. And that would be it for another night: too scared to go back to sleep, too tired to do anything but loll on the sofa. Most times, I’d find Mum already there.

  As far back as I could remember, Mum’s eyes looked dead, as if fixed upon some distant regret. Her criss-crossed skin hung loose on sharp cheekbones, like whittled oak. She was forty-seven now; you would have guessed closer to seventy-four. A life spent almost always awake was killing her. That, and all the medication they kept prescribing.

  She made light of my ‘attacks’, telling me it was St Giles, patron saint of bad dreams, protecting me from nightmares. Quite why this messenger of God felt the need to throttle me, we never fully explored.

  The lack of sleep made me constantly ill. Dad told me not to tell the doctor about my phantom tormentor. I’m sure his primary concern was how it might sound to the local GP, a man he played golf with. Back then, men in black lying on top of defenceless little boys in the middle of the night was the sole preserve of the Holy Orders. He didn’t want Dr Harnett thinking he was some sort of pervert.

  I’d sometimes catch my dad looking at me with an expression that I could read, even back then, as contempt.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with that child?’ I’d hear him ask my mother. I grew up with the unshakeable certainty that, somehow, I’d ruined his life.

  When I turned twelve, the visions stopped, just like that.

  ‘But now it’s started again?’

  I took her through the fancy dress party and Meehan’s attack – right up to my bloodcurdling encounters with Marion Ryan outside Gabby’s flat.

  Lilian scribbled feverishly. She interrupted me once more, to declare that our time was up.

  ‘I’d love to go on but the room’s been booked.’

  ‘I don’t think I could, Lilian, I’m spent,’ I said, getting to my feet, wobbling a little from a light head.

  ‘Are you okay, Donal(d)?’

  ‘I feel a bit … giddy. It’s like how I used to feel coming out of confession as a kid. That was cathartic, I suppose. Thank you.’

  ‘I should be thanking you,’ she said, ‘for opening up like that. I get the feeling you’ve not done that before?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I’m looking for a case study, Donal, and your condition is fascinating,’ she said, tucking her notes under her arm and standing.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, wondering why I felt flattered, ‘but I’m not sure what else I can tell you. That’s it, really.’

  She smiled: ‘You’ve no idea how interesting all this is to someone like me. I have a thousand questions.’

  I felt myself giggling coquettishly and wondered if I had self-esteem issues.

  ‘You said yourself you found it cathartic. Maybe we can help each other?’

  My guard shot up.

  ‘I’m not sure, Lilian, I mean I really have told you everything.’

  ‘I need something new and original for my dissertation. Your case would be perfect.’

  ‘How long does a dissertation take? I’m pretty busy.’

  ‘What if I only ask you to keep seeing me for as long as you feel you’re getting something out of it?’

  She’d reduced me to one last excuse.

  ‘The thing is, Lilian, I can’t have people knowing about this condition, not in my job. If any of this came out, it’d be the end of my career.’

  ‘I don’t need to use your name. You can be anonymous, even in my support notes. That’s not a problem at all.’

  Her giant eyes blinked into mine, pleadingly.

  ‘No mention of my real name, at all, anywhere near it?’

  ‘I promise, Donal,’ she almost cheeped in desperation.

  ‘Okay,’ I said and her stretched face crumpled with relief, ‘but I’m only committing to a few sessions, see how we go.’

  ‘You won’t regret it, Donal, honestly,’ she beamed. ‘Now I just need you to sign a couple of documents so that I can clear it with my tutor and apply for your medical records.’

  She turned and picked up two documents from the table.

  ‘If you could sign here … and here,’ she said, her scarlet fingernails tapping at two tiny white squares amid a torrent of text. I scrawled, both impressed and alarmed by the fact she seemed to have pre-empted my agreement.

  ‘Great,’ she said, whipping the papers away, ‘Gabby was worried you wouldn’t take very kindly to being my guinea pig.’

  ‘Hey, less of the pig … quack,’ I said, strolling out and thinking: I was pretty cool there.

  ‘Oh, Donal!’ she called after me, ‘you’ve forgotten your coat.’

  Chapter 11

  Salcott Road, South London

  Friday, July 12, 1991; 20:55

  It had been twelve days since Marion Ryan’s murder; ten since her spirit unleashed its second assault upon me here outside Gabby’s.

  DS Glenn’s team had still made no arrests or gone public linking Marion’s murder to any other crimes. As a result, the story had all but died in the media. A contact of Fintan’s inside the investigation had said that they were focusing on a ‘Lone Wolf’ random killer. The same source said detectives had so little to go on that they were effectively waiting for this killer to strike again.

  I didn’t buy their Lone Wolf theory. I couldn’t believe Marion had let a deranged stranger into her home, or that a maniac had somehow forced his way in. Yet Glenn’s team must have looked into all potential suspects known to Marion and Peter, and ruled them out. They seemed certain that this had been no ‘domestic’.

  So who did it? As mad as it seemed, I felt certain that Marion had appeared to me on both those occasions to help me catch her killer. I’d just been too thick to interpret her clues. Maybe I needed to reconnect with her ghost or spirit by returning to the scene of the crime – but I’d no means of getting inside 21 Salcott Road.

  I felt glumly helpless and thwarted, a lowly plod forever doomed to remain lukewarm-on-the-trail of long-fled shoe muggers and evasive obsessive stalkers.

  Earlier today, Gabby had left a message at work saying she was returning to her flat at about nine p.m. to pick up some clothes. She didn’t ask me to meet her there. Perhaps she realised she didn’t need to.

  I parked up outside her place, in civvies to avoid attracting attention. A gust of wind slapped a lazy belt of rain against the windscreen: wet enough, surely, to douse the ardour of even the most fervent stalker. She’d taken my advice and was travelling each night to her parents’ home outside London. She’d also acted on my recommendation to buy a can of mace and a rape alarm.

  This was not a good time to spring even a pleasant surprise upon Ms Gabby Arnold, so I got out and stood in the howling wet.

  A lonely streetlight ghosted on, white, dull and useless against the skimming grey cloud. The wind swatted icy rain down the back of my shirt collar and I shuddered. The streetlight warmed yellow then amber, finally kicking through the gloom. I’d never noticed how orange these lights shine. As I admired the ignited horizontal rain, I sensed someone watching me. I spun around. To my left, a footstep sounded. My pivoting eyes caught a fleeing shadow, flitting past a parked white van into the black.

  I walked urgently towards what I’d seen, straining my eyes to make out more.

  �
�Rogan,’ I shouted.

  I reached the back of the van and waited. My own blood hammered at my ears. After a silent count to three, I craned my face around the side.

  Nothing. What had I just seen? He must be somewhere.

  I crept along the side of the van. Fearing he was waiting to pounce at the front, I veered to the other side of the pavement, close to a garden wall. How I now missed my standard-issue wooden truncheon. I baby-stepped sideways until I got level with the van’s front side passenger window. Again, nothing. Through the wet glass, something moved across the road, shadow settling back into shadow at the entry to the alleyway. But there was nothing there when I looked at it now: had I really seen it? Then a sound came from the same place.

  I slid round the front of the van out into the road. At that very moment, a car roared round the corner into the street, engine gunned, headlights scorching like death rays. I froze like a rabbit. The car’s shrill horn sliced through me. I felt myself stagger backwards into the van.

  I could hear the car screaming to a halt forty feet past me. This being London, I fully expected it to reverse back so that the occupant could verbally abuse me for spoiling his joyride.

  I planted a hand on each knee, took two deep breaths, ordered myself to pull the rest of me together. I straightened, stared at the alleyway entrance and strode directly towards it. The blue sporty Subaru that had almost wiped me out was turning in the road. As I got to the alley, I could hear a voice, jabbering whispers from the black.

  ‘Fucking shit. You fucking want it. I’ll fucking give it. Come on then.’

  Was this Rogan? Was he armed?

  Hands flat to the wall, I leaned to my right to peer cautiously around the corner. Nothing. But I could sense someone right there.

  ‘I’m a police officer. Get out here now,’ I ordered.

  I suddenly realised someone was behind me.

  I went to turn when the ground seemed to fly up and hit my face. Someone stood over me. Something struck at my back, thudded off an elbow. I went foetal.