Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller (20 page)

Clapham Police Station, South London

Wednesday, August 14, 1991; 17:30

Shep called a wildcat briefing. He told the assembled team that, as yet, there were no definite links between the murder of Marion Ryan and the Bissets in East London – and that we should ignore any media reports saying otherwise. McStay sniffed and gave Barratt the eye. He wanted so badly for us to be wrong. I decided to watch his smug face as Shep delivered the rest of today’s news, starting with the interview suite revelations.

‘Peter Ryan admitted today that he slept with Karen Foster two weeks before Marion’s murder.’

He gave that statement plenty of air for dramatic effect.

‘That same night, Peter told Karen that he was giving up their twice-monthly Monday night trysts, thereby ending their affair. He also told her that he and Marion were moving to Ireland. Because Marion was pregnant.’

Even my neck hairs stood to attention: and I already knew about it.

‘By telling Karen this news, Peter effectively signed his wife’s death warrant.’

McStay’s nose turned the colour of a scalded bellend.

‘Marion wasn’t pregnant, but Karen Foster didn’t know that. She and an accomplice murdered Marion and, as far as she was concerned, their unborn baby because she wanted Peter Ryan all for herself. The challenge now lies in proving it. We have no weapon, no witnesses, we still haven’t found a hole in her alibi and, as for forensics, we need a fucking miracle.’

He took a deep breath.

‘I’m asking each of you to give it one last push. Not for me, but for Marion and her family.

‘The murder weapon: I want a team to carry out a search of Karen’s parents’ home in Lee. Maybe Karen and her accomplice went there to pick up the murder weapon before driving to Marion’s flat.

‘Witnesses: get back to Sangora Road, conduct another door-to-door. Karen and her accomplice parked near the pub at around five thirty p.m. There would have been drinkers in at that time, some possibly sitting outside. Someone must have seen them. The last door-to-door team asked locals if they’d seen anything suspicious. This time, just ask people what they saw.’

Barratt piped up: ‘It’s almost seven weeks ago now, Sir.’

‘Yes but it’s not that usual to have a murder on your street, is it Barratt? Even in South London. I call it the JFK Syndrome. Neighbours will remember exactly what they were doing before and after they heard the news. All we need is one person to place Karen at the scene at the right time.’

Shep drove on: ‘Alibi: we have to prove that Karen and her accomplice could have murdered Marion, changed their clothes and made it back to the Pines by six p.m., when she was seen in the car park. I need a team to make that journey at the same time of the evening, several times. Record it in real time on video. We will need to prove that this is possible.

‘Also, get Karen’s main alibi providers in. That’s her sister Laura and the woman they watched TV with between five thirty and six p.m. that day, Bethan Trott.

‘Forensics: I want the fingerprints of everyone employed at the Pines, and anyone who’s worked there in the past twelve months, temporary, agency, contractors, everyone. Cross-reference them against the prints found at the murder scene.’

I felt my head shake. I’d suggested this yesterday morning. We knew that Karen couldn’t have carried out this killing without a male accomplice. Why had we wasted two days before looking for him?

‘I can keep Karen in custody until nine a.m. tomorrow. I’ve already applied for a twelve-hour extension. We’ll only get it if we come up with something new. We need to attack this with all we’ve got.’

Shep walked over to where I sat. ‘We’ll nail her, don’t worry about that.’

‘Thanks, Guv,’ I said, and I meant it.

‘Now I want you to draw up a comprehensive list of why we shouldn’t link Marion’s murder to the Bisset case. I’ll have the Commissioner on the blower first thing tomorrow, as soon as he’s read the papers. Make sure I’ve got enough ammo to buy us a couple of days.’

Before convincing the Commissioner, I had to satisfy myself that Marion’s killer hadn’t struck again and murdered the Bissets.

As I sat down at the computer to compile my list, the warnings I’d fended off rang through my mind.

If it’s domestic, why did he attack her on the stairs?

Speak to any pathologist, they’ll tell you the most stab wounds they’ve ever seen in a domestic is ten or twelve.

Perhaps Fintan and the Big Dogs had been right all along: there’s no way Peter and/or Karen would have stabbed Marion forty-nine times – even with an accomplice.

On top of that, the odds that there were two knife-wielding maniacs on the loose in South London capable of butchering female strangers in their own homes seemed remote.

If, somehow, I’d missed Marion’s Lone Wolf Killer in the ‘unsolved stranger attack’ paperwork, and he’d gone on to kill Samantha and Jazmine, I’d quit the force right away. I saved for another day the imponderable matter of how I’d live with the guilt.

Before that, I’d have to deal with the shame. The media – no doubt exhaustively briefed by McStay and Barratt – would hammer the team and annihilate me. I’d read enough of Fintan’s toxic, hysterical prose to know how he’d garner maximum public outrage.

Blundering cops left a maniac knifeman free to slay a mother and her four-year-old daughter when they missed vital clues from his previous attacks …

… Despite warnings from an eminent forensic psychologist that a Lone Wolf Killer was on the loose, the investigating team tried to frame a twenty-five-year-old trainee nurse with no criminal record …

… An insider today revealed that a junior officer – Acting DC Donal Lynch – missed several clues that pointed to the triple killer …

I had to hope Shep was right. And I needed to provide as many compelling reasons as possible to make the Commissioner believe us. If I could show him significant differences in the
modus operandi
of each crime, he’d realise that there had to be two killers, however improbable.

Soon I had scraped the barrel and come up with a list, which I wrote out in large hand on a clean sheet of paper.

• •
  Samantha Bisset’s killer(s) attacked her as soon as she opened the front door. Marion Ryan had let her killer(s) inside her flat, which suggests she knew her killer(s).
  
• •
  Samantha Bisset’s killer(s) spent a considerable amount of time fastidiously dismembering her body before leaving the scene. Marion Ryan’s killer(s) carried out a frenzied attack which lasted between two and three minutes, then fled.
  
• •
  Jazmine Bisset had been sexually assaulted. Samantha Bisset had been genitally violated with a knife. Marion Ryan had not been sexually assaulted or genitally violated.
  

That was the best I could come up with. I might as well have written: ‘He didn’t rush so much the second time.’ I placed my handy, bite-sized, exaggerated bullet points on Shep’s desk: I would have felt less grubby squatting over it and taking a dump. Guilt and doubt gnawed away at me, eroding what little bottle I had left.

I exited the station into the hum of a warm summer night. As I turned into Lavender Hill, a sudden guttural grunt startled me.

‘Cheer up pal, it might never happen,’ said a drunk in a doorway.

‘It happens all the fucking time, pal,’ I said wearily, flicking him a pound coin and wondering why they always seemed to be Scottish or Irish.

‘Yer still here though, aren’t ya?’

I had to smile: today’s events had pretty much stripped me down to that level of existential optimism.

As I turned onto Trinity Road, it hit me like a brick in the face. Today I’d attended a double murder scene. The spirits of Samantha and Jazmine Bisset would come to me tonight, for sure. At that precise moment, I wanted to be dead. I’d never felt like that before.

Trinity Road, South London

Wednesday, August 14, 1991; 21:00

I got back to the flat, forced the front door open over the junk mail we never picked up, and smelled cleaning products. Confused by the gloom, I crept cagily into the shadowy sitting room, sensing someone inside. The irrational part of me feared that the Bissets were already waiting.

Slowly, my eyes adjusted to register a pair of candles glowing above a table set for two. The romantic mood failed to soothe my gnawed nerves.

‘Is that you, Donal?’ Eve called from the kitchen.

‘Yeah, wow, what’s all this?’ I said, feeling unsettled, wrong-footed.

She walked in with a bottle of wine and two gleaming glasses.

‘I’ve cooked you dinner, just to say thanks for letting me stay.

‘Here,’ she handed me the uncorked bottle, ‘it’s one of your favourites. I made a note when I threw out all your empties.’

I wondered what else she’d made a note of. I couldn’t figure out why her efforts had set me on edge: I said she could stay for a few nights, not assume the role of Woman of the House. I hoped to Christ that Aidan hadn’t planned to come home tonight.

She returned to the kitchen as I filled a glass to the brim, downing half of it. ‘Shall we pretend it’s 1988?’ I said, to no one in particular.

I sat at the table as she carried in two steaming oval plates. As she placed one in front of me, I registered her low-buttoned white blouse and scarlet lips. She teetered back to her side, giving me an eyeful of her short, tight black skirt and strappy heels. Had she remembered my thing about waitresses?

‘Wow,’ I said, as she sat down, ‘and the food looks tasty too.’

‘Stop it,’ she giggled. ‘Now, tell me all about your day.’

I looked down at the plate, registered the ribs and managed, somehow, not to spew.

‘Are you okay?’ she demanded.

In a bid to distract myself from recalling the Bisset horror show, I focused on Peter’s interview and the bunny boiler antics of Karen Foster. Once we’d exhausted that subject, our unplanned date began to feel a little awkward. I realised that we’d already wrung dry all our news from the last three years. The only subject that remained unresolved was our future. Did we have one? We had hit an impasse. I had to find out how she felt.

‘So, what are you planning for the rest of the summer?’ I tried.

Somehow, she wriggled free of this and steered the conversation back to Marion and her post-death visits. I’d found her initial interest in the topic flattering, but now it was all we – she – wanted to talk about. It reminded me of the time she became obsessed with the murder of Choker Meehan’s mother; how she hassled me for months to get Fintan to pull all the newspaper cuttings for her.

I was growing jealous of my dubious ‘gift’ – it was getting more attention than me.

She seemed particularly fascinated now by my daylight visions of Marion at both Sangora and Strathblaine Roads.

‘You need to stop going to that road, never mind the murder scene. It’ll drive you spare,’ she said, and I had to smile. ‘Drive you spare’ already seemed such an outmoded teenage expression. I realised that the trauma of her ordeal had stunted Eve emotionally so that, in effect, she was still seventeen – suspended in 1988 like an ant in amber. I suddenly felt overcome with pity.

‘And what did your psychologist say about it?’

‘Oh well, that’s another story. It’s the most excited I’ve seen her. She wants to try to prove that my subconscious is using dream imagery to crack the case. In the scientific world, this could be quite a big deal, apparently.’

‘You never mentioned it was a she,’ said Eve, eyeing me suspiciously. Another realisation: she was now a professional victim, always seeing and interpreting things in ways that made her the wounded party – deceived, wronged, cheated. What an effective distraction from looking within.

‘Didn’t I? She’s about forty. Nice old dear.’

I wasn’t sure why I’d said that.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Lilian. Lilian Smith. Why do you need to know?’

‘I’m only asking. Jesus, why are you so defensive?’

I was trying to think of an answer when the doorbell’s electroconvulsive buzz shook my bones.

‘Shall we ignore that?’ I said.

‘It could be important,’ she frowned.

I went to the door, booting the post to one side to open it.

‘Hi,’ said Gabby, reading my startled face.

‘Hi,’ I said, wondering if she could see inside.

‘Are you not going to ask me in?’ she smiled. I noticed she was wearing more make-up than usual. And a dress.

‘Yeah, erm, of course,’ I said, taking a step out into the hallway, half closing the door behind me.

‘Just to let you know, I’ve got someone staying at the moment. An old friend from home,’ I said quietly.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’ she said, her smile now quizzical, curious. I had two choices: run inside and slam the door or let her in. I stood to one side.

As Gabby tiptoed over the mail into the sitting room, I added quickly: ‘She’s made dinner actually, just to say thanks.’

As we entered the room, I saw it through Gabby’s eyes and knew I should have slammed that front door.

‘Hi,’ smiled Eve, a little triumphantly, I thought, not bothering to get up.

Gabby spent what seemed an age taking it all in.

‘Candles,’ she said, finally.

‘Oh God it’s not how it looks …’ I said, each word shrivelling faster than the last, ‘Eve’s staying for a few nights until she gets herself sorted, isn’t that right, Eve?’

Eve didn’t say a word.

‘Perhaps you could give me a call some time,’ said Gabby, ‘when you’re not busy.’

She turned to Eve: ‘It was nice meeting you, Eve.’

Eve pulled a ‘yeah, whatever’ shrug. Gabby turned, marched out and gave the front door fittings their sternest test yet.

‘Well thanks a lot,’ I said, ‘you could have said something there to help me out.’

‘I didn’t know who she was. You didn’t introduce us.’

‘Oh and I suppose Fintan didn’t tell you all about her. He tells you everything else.’

‘
You
didn’t tell me though, did you Donal?’ she spat, slamming her cutlery on the table, storming into my bedroom and creating another Force 10 door quake.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll take the couch,’ I shouted after her.

As I scraped our aborted rib dinner into the bin bag, I spotted a pink overturned Post-it note deep in the mulch. I managed to fish it out. ‘Gabby called, coming over at 9’ it said, in Eve’s unmistakably neat print.

What the hell was she playing at? Did she really want us – me – that badly?

As I blew out the candles, my brain suddenly bit on a thought and refused to let go. Was I as bad as Peter Ryan? The
same
as Peter Ryan? Shep’s words boomed between my ears:

Oh he’s the classic Golden Boy Irishman, adored by his dear old mum.

I would have slept with Eve last night, had she let me.

He’ll use and abuse women until he finds one who’ll adore him the same.

Could I look in the mirror and say I was any better than Peter Ryan?

I dismissed the idea, flopped onto the couch, opened a Shiraz and wallowed in grape-based guilt. The Bissets were coming tonight: fuck it, bring them on. I could take the terror of another ghostly encounter, if it got me any closer to the truth behind their murders.