Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller (23 page)

I opened the door and stood aside for Fintan. He looked shaken, lost.

‘This is too weird,’ he said, his eyes restless, unsure.

‘Get in for fuck’s sake, before someone sees us.’

As we stood facing the flat door, I felt his helpless stare.

‘Just pretend it’s my place,’ I urged, stepping forward and sliding the key into the lock.

I pulled the heavy door open, leaned against its weight and nodded at Fintan to enter.

‘Why do I have to go first?’

‘Jesus just get in the fucking door!’

He faltered, then crept inside. I took the key out of the lock and followed him.

Something cracked me in the back.

‘Jesus,’ I cried out.

‘What?’ squealed Fintan.

‘That fucking door just tried to knock me out.’

I followed him up the stairs and turned on the landing light. The zap of familiar yellow instantly banished my nerves. Sure enough, Marion’s bloodstains had been painted over. I talked him through the crime scene, hoping my breezy tone would normalise this morbid tour.

‘So what now?’ he said when I’d finished.

I led him into the sitting room. He sat on the couch, bolt upright, tense. I plucked two glasses from the kitchen and poured large ones.

As he glugged greedily, I hoped one bottle of Glenmorangie would be enough. As I knew only too well, numb don’t come cheap.

We sat there in tortuously stilted silence. But that’s murder scene parties for you. Then I remembered the pot and set to work on a six-sheet Clapham Courgette, as they call them in that neck of the woods. Fintan took an almighty toke: we were both craving levity of any kind. Soon I was entertaining him with imitations of Peter Ryan, Karen Foster and Shep, and had him slapping his knees in helpless hilarity.

I got back from the loo to find Fintan comatose. I dipped the light and checked the time: 1.12 a.m. My mind shot back to that night in Tullamore, watching Meehan on top of Eve, the clock radio flipping to 1.13. The boffins say you can’t read the time in your dreams: I hadn’t been dreaming.

Just then, my head jolted back. Pain rang through my face like it was a tuning fork. A starburst of colour cleared to reveal Marion inches from me, her raging bloodshot eyes locked onto mine. I screamed but the vacuum devoured the sound whole. My senses twitched and flinched, sensing that, this time, she’d come to do me real harm.

I felt her cool flesh against mine as she clasped my right hand. Slowly, she brought it up towards her. She then pressed it, palm-down, on the arm of the sofa. She leaned on it with all her might. My hand tried to fight back, shaking and quivering against her domination.

Her free left hand pinched my little finger and pulled it apart from the other restrained digits. Something glinted in the palm of her hand. I realised what it was, winced and swooned.

As the sharpened metal object – a steel ruler, if I wasn’t mistaken – bore down on that lonely little finger on my right hand, my brain clicked into survival mode. I diverted every ounce of my being into that hand to fight her grip. But it felt limp, useless, dead.

I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t move at all. My eyes fixed upon that descending metal. Without even a nanosecond’s hesitation, the blade pierced the skin, just below the top knuckle. My insides convulsed.

I felt an instant circuit of scalding white heat from that finger to my brain. She struggled to contain my stricken hand’s sudden, frenzied twitching. Then calmly, efficiently, she sliced through my finger’s soft exterior flesh, sending nails of fire bolting through me.

Now the ruler was bending, under pressure, scraping up against the bone and tendons. I wasn’t expecting it to bend. It slipped, slicing the skin down the front of the finger. The digit disappeared in blood: not spurting blood like in the movies, just endless, welling blood. My head lolled, bloodless.

‘Why are you doing this?’ my mind pleaded.

The blade tried again. Real pressure this time. It bent. It slipped under the weight, this time up into the knuckle. I was burning alive now. I wanted my brain to shut down, to cease feeling.

My finger was minced: a small hunk of gristle with threads of blue running through it. Just bone and red mulch, all puddling blood. The ruler’s sharp tip came in again. Glinting. Determined. It was forced down, full-pelt, on the digit’s bone.

Now she set about sawing at the bloody lump. My vision rapidly flickered, as if struggling to comprehend the full horror. Finally, my brain went into shutdown.

My eyes snapped on again, seeing a tiny red lump, wretched, alone, on the arm of that sofa. Everything spun, lurched through black. White exploded, filling my vision, firing me at supersonic speed through more white.

Then I was looking down at myself asleep on the couch, jabbering in tongues, Fintan perched on the edge of the sofa, taking snaps with a tiny stills camera. I could hear the shutter. I could smell the weed. I felt no terror, no pain: just high, ecstatic, free.

‘Whatcha doing, Donal?’ I asked myself, inspecting my floating, unbutchered hand.

‘Just hanging,’ I replied.

I realised I could tilt side-to-side. I willed myself forward through the air and floated on cue, in control, my brain now a jet pack. I thought about performing a Red Arrows-style full roll, when I got distracted by a loud bang downstairs, followed by another, and another.

I laughed in the face of the door and glided through the wall to the landing. Marion’s body lay there, lifeless, just as I had seen her that night. The rhythmic banging continued – boom, boom, boom – as a chill rustled my face. I turned to see the open landing window.

I looked towards the banging at the bottom of the stairs. The flat door crashed shut, over and over. What was I not getting about that fucking door? I floated down, determined to stop the banging, to close that door once and for all.

At the foot of the stairs I reached out, but the door passed straight through my arm, again and again, boom, boom. I turned and looked up the stairs. Marion’s eyes stared directly into mine: bloodshot, betrayed, accusing. I floated up towards those eyes and made my vow: whatever it was on that door, I’d find it.

I snapped back inside my body to find myself sitting cold, calm and sweat-soaked on the couch. Mercifully, my little finger appeared to be intact and the banging had stopped. All I could hear were the crunching metal clicks of Fintan’s camera.

‘Tell me what just happened?’ he demanded.

I looked around at the closed sitting room door, wild spatters of whisky all over my shirt and jeans, the couch, the carpet.

I told him everything, from the impromptu finger amputation to the flat door’s ghosting back and forth through my outstretched arm.

‘What is she trying to say?’

‘Well she’s clearly telling me that the pared-down ruler we found in the Foster family’s garage is the murder weapon.’

‘Why did she cut off your finger?’

‘When she first came to me, she kept slamming my sitting room door, over and over. I thought she must be leading me to a clue on a door. I assumed that clue must be her killer’s fingerprint.’

‘And what do you think now?’

‘Well I think she just let me know in the most graphic way possible that I shouldn’t be looking for a fingerprint, I should be looking for some other sort of clue to do with the door.’

‘What could that be?’

‘I haven’t the foggiest. Hey, you didn’t say you were bringing a camera?’

‘Are you kidding? I take this with me everywhere. You never know, do you? I’ll get them developed tomorrow, should give us a right laugh.’

‘What was I doing?’

‘You were growling and sort of gurning with your teeth clamped together, like a horse on a motorbike.’

I desperately needed to pee and got to my feet. My head sprung stars as I stumbled into the bathroom.

My water-splashed pale face inspected itself in the mirror. Spidery red cracks had turned the whites of my eyes into low-grade marble. They looked lifeless, jaundiced: two decades older than me. When I blinked, my mother’s eyes stared back. I shivered, then batted the image away and returned to the couch.

‘Lilian was right about one thing. Once I came out of my body, I felt sensational.’

‘Did you consciously decide to come out or go back into your body?’

‘No to both. And I won’t sleep at all now unless I get another drink. There’s that all-night off-licence near Clapham Junction. I’m starving too.’

‘Thing is, Donal, I’m not actually an insomniac or an alky. I’m going to grab a taxi home. You should go home too,’ he said.

‘Okay.’

We strolled silently through the sultry night, London’s buried hum soothing our frazzled nerves.

‘Safe home,’ Fintan said, hopping into a cab. I watched until the car turned the corner, then walked back towards Sangora.

Sangora Road, South London

Sunday, August 18, 1991; 09:00

A slamming door jolted my eyes open to dazzling sunlight. I sat up, recognised the sitting room of 21 Sangora Road and my own naked body.

I could hear people coming up the stairs, chatting. I jumped up to grab my clothes but could see only fried chicken-themed carnage: greasy cardboard boxes, half-eaten drummers, a corn-on-the-cob. Beyond that: joint butts, beer can ashtrays, splattered whisky and red wine, but no fucking clothes. The chatting got to the door just as I spotted my boxers near the window. I hurdled the puddles of filth to reach them, then realised I wasn’t going to make it.

The door opened slowly, almost ceremoniously. I stood in the middle of the room, both hands over my knackers.

‘It’s surprisingly spacious …’ said a voice. The estate agent saw me, dropped her clipboard and emitted a horror movie scream. Her two would-be tenants stared for an age, frozen in shock, then wordlessly ran away.

The estate agent bent down slowly to pick up her clipboard without taking her eyes off me.

‘Is this leasehold?’ I asked, trying to suppress my reawakened pot-based euphoria.

She shook her head.

‘Oh, so it’s freehold,’ I said, ‘a bit like this.’

I lifted my hands and wiggled. She screwed up her face in utter disgust, then bolted.

I popped into a corner shop for a diabetic fizz fix but failed to get as far as the fridge.

Blaring out from today’s
Sunday News
: ‘Judas Kiss’ by Fintan Lynch, over a photo of Karen Foster kissing Peter Ryan fully on the lips. Peter’s wearing a morning suit because the grainy image is a still from his wedding video.

Tender embrace … the lovers share a kiss just a few feet from Marion, Peter’s new wife. Now Peter’s mistress Karen is prime suspect in the hunt for Marion’s killer …

My hands shook as I read a couple of the more damning revelations from Karen Foster’s police interview. I couldn’t believe it: Shep had leaked her statement and the wedding video to Fintan. A scene replayed in my mind from Thursday night: Shep signing for two packages, one from Woolwich CID, the other from a data transfer company. He must have got a copy of Marion and Peter’s wedding video made to give to Fintan.

Clever Shep. How could the CPS lawyer not charge Karen Foster, now that the world knew the truth?

Another realisation abruptly stopped me applauding Shep’s ingenuity. The team – and the Met Commissioner – would want to know how Fintan Lynch of the
Sunday News
got his hands on not one, but two pieces of evidence critical to an ongoing murder enquiry. Well, Commissioner, guess who works on the team? Step forward Donal Lynch, younger brother of the journalist who broke the story.

My mind was spinning. Shep knew everyone would suspect me of supplying this material to Fintan. He leaked it anyway. Fintan knew everyone would assume that I was his snout. He ran it anyway. Judas Kiss indeed.

By the time I got to Fintan’s street in North London, I’d convinced myself that he and Shep had plotted this from the very start. My very invitation to join the investigating team had been a ploy cooked up in their Machiavellian imaginations. Both were chess players: they knew they’d find a way to prosper while letting me take the fall. What they couldn’t have anticipated was that I knew the identity of the real leaker.

I couldn’t wait to deliver this little checkmate.

I rang Fintan’s doorbell over and over. Finally he appeared, dishevelled in shorts and my Sonic Youth ‘Goo’ t-shirt. Fucker.

‘What do you want?’ he squawked.

‘You’ve really fucking done it this time,’ I muttered through gritted teeth, barging past him into his barely-furnished bachelor pad.

‘Hey,’ Fintan called after me as I stormed into the tiny nightclub that passed for his kitchen.

‘Who’s that?’

Instantly I recognised her voice, coming from his trendy mezzanine bedroom. Fintan stopped dead in his tracks, opening his arms in a pleading gesture.

‘Look, we were going to tell you,’ he began.

Eve appeared at the top of the metal staircase, wearing my best white linen shirt. I almost expected a serpent and an apple tree. By the time I managed to close my mouth, I’d forgotten why I came here.

‘You’ve been … all along,’ I said, my voice shaking.

‘We never planned it,’ said Eve, quietly.

The sheer scale of their deceit, their betrayal, was too much to take in.

‘Jesus,’ was all I could say.

‘You,’ I said, pointing up at Eve, ‘get the fuck out of my sight, right now.’

‘You,’ I said, pointing at Fintan, ‘outside.’

He led the way, shoulders slumped, head down.

I pinned him against the outside wall, shouted into his wincing face.

‘I’ll have the truth about you and Eve later. Right now, I want the truth about you and Shep, starting at the Feathers.’

Clapham Police Station, South London

Sunday, August 18, 1991; 11:00

My entrance silenced the incident room. Being last in didn’t help. Trust me to have my first good sleep in years at a murder scene. And Fintan had a lot to tell me.

‘Glad you could join us, Lynch,’ Shep said drily.

‘Sorry Guv, domestic thing.’

I sought somewhere to perch and felt all eyes on me.

He’d turn the team against me now, for sure – if he hadn’t already done so. I’d served my purpose. He was ready to dish me up. I told myself to box clever for once. If I threw my one big shot too early, he could evade it and destroy me. I had to bide my time.

‘I’ve already told the team that the Commissioner has announced a full investigation into how the
Sunday News
and more specifically,
your brother
, got hold of Karen’s latest statement and the wedding video,’ he announced.

I hated myself for reddening. I wanted to tell everyone it was anger, not shame.

Shep eyed me coldly.

‘Just to reiterate, we will find out who did this, and that person or those people will never work for the Met police again. As I’m sure you can appreciate, Lynch, this is the last thing we need right now.’

I stood up. Shep squinted, Dirty Harry-style, at the punk not making his day.

‘I am not the source of this story,’ I said clearly. ‘I’ve never passed information to my brother about any case. Think about it. Everyone knows he’s a crime reporter. It would be career suicide.’

Had I got photographs of Shep and Fintan coming out of the Roundhouse pub yesterday, I would have produced them, there and then. As it stood, the only person who could corroborate what I saw was that taxi driver. I scolded myself for not making a note of his driver ID number. All I knew about him was that he was fat, bald, Cockney, objectionable and grasping which, when it came to black cab drivers in London, didn’t exactly narrow it down. I’d pop over to the rank later today, try to trace him. If I was to be the fall guy, I’d do all I could to take Shep down with me.

Shep now adopted a lighter tone: ‘On the plus side, the story has made our lawyer have a re-think. That, and a call from the Commissioner. So our legal eagles are re-examining our evidence against Karen Foster this morning. In the meantime, Laura Foster is in suite three, waiting to be interviewed. Let’s see what we can squeeze out of her.’

As the prime suspect in Leakgate, I didn’t bother asking permission to observe Laura Foster’s interview. Rather than give Shep the pleasure of saying no, I tracked him at distance down that long corridor to the interview suites. As he punched in the secret code to the security door and heaved it open himself, I realised I wouldn’t beat the slam unless I ran. If Shep caught me, he’d send me back – but I’d nothing left to lose.

I launched into a Penelope Pitstop-style series of silent, high-speed, extra-long paces. I felt ridiculous but I caught the door an inch shy of shutting. I expected Shep to turn round at any moment, but he didn’t. Blinkered Olympian speed-walking had proven his downfall again, just as it had when I’d followed him to the Roundhouse pub yesterday.

I followed him into the observation room, took a seat and ignored his lighthouse glare.

The beauty of a two-way mirror is you can stare all you like. Laura Foster was worth a good look. Slim, with lightning blue eyes, she had a pretty, sculpted face and a lithe body – a real beauty. How Karen must have resented her sister’s outrageous good fortune in the genetics lottery.

She wore textbook South London clothing – faded jeans torn at the knees, tight white t-shirt, a chunky gold necklace and a pair of trendy, box-fresh trainers.

The only let down was her voice: like Karen, she spoke in a nasal and whiney monotone.

She sat alongside a podgy man in a tight suit who busied himself with stationery and kept telling her that everything was going to be okay. He looked far more nervous than she did. Just like Karen – and Peter Ryan, for that matter – Laura seemed oblivious to the gravity of the situation. You’d think they got quizzed about a murder every few weeks. I didn’t know whether to put their collective ambivalence down to arrogance, guilt or just plain ignorance.

Mick and Colin burst in, all-business. They sat down and began reading material without saying a word. I saw Laura glancing sideways at her solicitor. He raised his eyebrows as if to say: ‘Fucked if I know.’

This was it: our one-and-only chance to nail Laura. She had lied consistently to protect Karen, and possibly to avoid incriminating herself. One thing was certain: Laura knew a lot more than she was saying about Marion Ryan’s murder. But we had nothing on her. Unless she slipped up now, or broke down and confessed, she’d walk out of here for the last time. She could even get her sister off the hook, if she put on a good show.

After what seemed an age, Mick put his papers down and whistled lightly, as if to say: ‘I’ve got all I need now.’ Without signal, Colin turned on the tape recorder, announcing the time and guests.

Mick opened with the afternoon of the murder. Just like her older sister, Laura couldn’t remember any of the boutiques they’d browsed in Blackheath. They’d clearly thought it through: shops have CCTV.

Laura repeated her alibi as if by rote: returned to the Pines after five, met Bethan Trott in the communal kitchen, watched TV until six when Karen left to service the home’s fish tanks with Peter. They let her regurgitate the entire story, confidently and at length, without mentioning that it had now been completely discredited by the only independent witness – Bethan Trott. I hoped that, sometime soon, a jury would get to decide which of these young women was telling the truth.

Mick tried a fresh tack: ‘Have you ever been to Marion’s flat, Laura?’

She shook her head.

‘The client has shaken her head to indicate a negative to the question. It’s better if you speak, Laura, so that we can get it on tape.’

‘No,’ she said, sullenly.

‘No what, Laura,’ sighed Mick.

‘No, I’ve never been to Marion’s flat.’

‘Do you know where it is, Laura?’

‘It’s in Clapham somewhere.’

‘And how do you know that?’

‘How do you think I know?’ she sneered, then screwed up her face in disbelief at the question. ‘Karen used to go there all the time, to see Marion and Peter.’

Colin sprang to his feet, spun away and prowled the top of the room. He composed himself, sat back down and took over.

‘Karen’s obsessed with Peter Ryan, isn’t she, Laura?’

‘No, she isn’t.’

‘She moved out of your family home and into staff accommodation at the Pines a month before his wedding to Marion, didn’t she, Laura?’

‘Yes but …’

‘In a last-ditch attempt to win Peter Ryan, wasn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘To stalk Peter, spy on Peter, tempt Peter.’

Laura’s face reddened.

‘No.’

‘So that Peter could have her any time he felt like it.’

‘No,’ shouted Laura, ‘she moved out because of my dad.’

‘Oh come along now, Laura. You don’t expect us to believe that.’

‘My dad, when he gets drunk, he can get … aggressive.’

‘Really? The police haven’t been called to your home. Doesn’t sound like the violent type to me?’

‘He’s different when he’s drunk. He’s attacked us all, loads of times.’

‘Attacked?’ sneered Colin.

‘Karen used to stand up to him, to protect me and Stacey. That’s when he turns into an animal and beats the hell out of her, smashing her head into the wall and all sorts. When she got a chance to move into a room she could afford, we persuaded her to go for it. By then, me and Stacey were old enough to look after ourselves. Sometimes, when Dad’s drinking, I go and stay with Karen. I’ve got a spare key.’

Shep got to his feet and walked to the glass. ‘I wonder what else Karen had to protect her pretty little sister from? Their dad, Terry, probably wasn’t attracted to Karen, so moved straight on to Laura. I’ve seen it before. That’d partly explain Karen’s crippling insecurity, and Laura’s blind loyalty. Lynch, as soon as we’re finished here, call up Terry Foster’s previous, and find out if social services have taken an interest.’

As usual, Colin and Mick seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

‘So, you’d describe yourself as a loyal sister?’ asked Colin.

‘Yeah, of course,’ she said, frowning in disdain at the question.

‘She took a few beatings for you, did she, Laura?’

‘Yeah, quite a few actually.’

‘It’s fair to say you feel a sense of debt to Karen for this?’

Laura nodded.

‘Can you please speak?’

‘Yes I do.’

‘So when she asked you to come with her, to confront Marion, you weren’t really in a position to say no, were you, Laura?’

‘Like I said, I’ve never been to Marion’s home.’

‘You thought she was only going to tell Marion about the affair, maybe scare her a little. But then it all got out of hand, didn’t it, Laura?’

‘No comment,’ said Laura. I noticed she wasn’t looking at Colin or Mick now. She’d picked a spot on the far side of the room and was focusing on that. I’d read about this in one of my correspondence classes: a classic anti-interrogation technique, used by IRA suspects and the like. It made her look as guilty as sin. But no jury would ever see this – only sound was being recorded.

‘And now you’re going to get done for murder as well, Laura, as an accessory. You know why, because you’re not taking this chance to tell us the truth? What do you say to that, Laura?’

‘No comment,’ she said, unblinking, spectral.

They needed to get her talking again, or all was lost.

‘Well guess what, we know the truth. We’ve got evidence putting you at the scene.’

Laura’s stare faltered for just a nanosecond, then refroze.

‘You’ll go down for life, Laura, don’t you understand? Twelve years in Holloway prison. That’s what you’re facing. Is that what you want?’

‘No comment,’ said Laura.

Colin sat back and took a deep breath. Shep pressed his forehead against the two-way. ‘This is it,’ he said to the glass, ‘last throw of the dice.’

Colin began gently: ‘You know what they hate most in prison, Laura? Nonces. You know, paedophiles, child molesters, perverts who target children. Did you know that?’

‘No comment.’

‘Do you know what they hate most after nonces, Laura? They hate child killers. Especially people who kill really young kids.’

Laura just glared at that spot, her brain in auto-focus.

‘You did know Marion was pregnant, Laura?’

She stiffened, then shivered, losing her focus spot on the wall. This was it: if she was ever going to break, it would be now.

After a series of sharp breaths, Laura turned to her solicitor and whispered something.

He spoke up. ‘My client is feeling unwell and would like some fresh air. And I really must object to this tone of questioning.’

Mick told the tape recorder the news and shut it down.

‘Fuck,’ screamed Shep, butting the glass, ‘that’s all our ammo gone. She’s never gonna break now.’

A uniformed WPC walked into the suite and signalled to Laura and the solicitor to come with her. The solicitor ushered Laura to the door first. It was then that I spotted just how garish her trainers were. They had a quirky blue and green, cross-strap design on the side that reached above the ankle and bright green soles. I’d only been off the streets a few weeks but I’d never seen a pair like it, even at our Nike trainer identification seminar last year. I couldn’t help thinking: what delicious irony if she got stabbed for them.

I walked out to the corridor just as Laura was being led past. I took a closer look at her shoes: they were Nike, but not the much-stabbed-for Air Jordans. The WPC led them to the security door that divided the interview suites from the main block. Laura’s idea of fresh air clearly meant a Superking in the car park. The WPC hit the green release button, pulled the tightly-sprung door open towards her and walked through, making just a token effort to hold it for Laura.

Feeling the weight of the door, Laura instinctively turned her back against it to keep it open and signalled for her solicitor to walk through next. But he was lumpen, meaning that Laura needed to push the door back further so that he could get past. She achieved this by planting the sole of her trainer against the door and pushing her foot back. While doing this, she turned and looked directly at me.

The case rewound before my eyes, to a soundtrack of the door of 21 Sangora Road slamming shut, over and over. ‘Oh my God,’ I said out loud.

I turned and chased Shep, already galloping towards the kitchenette.

‘We’ve got to ask her about her trainers, Guv,’ I said. He looked at me with withering contempt.

‘Look, Lynch, our case is falling apart in there …’

‘Please, Guv, I’m serious. Just get them to ask her where she got them. Please, you’ve got to trust me on this.’

‘Jesus, Lynch,’ sighed Shep, shaking his head, ‘this better be good.’

Back in the interview suite, before switching on the tape recorder, Good cop Mick cracked a bashful smile and said: ‘Laura, can I ask you something before we start, though it’s a little embarrassing?’

She looked sideways at her solicitor, then back to Mick.

‘It’s just that we’ve got a very fashion-conscious WPC in the team who’s really taken a shine to your trainers. She just wanted to know where you got them from.’

Laura turned again to her solicitor, her frown flipped, clearly dying to elaborate. Her solicitor shrugged as if to say: ‘No harm in it, I suppose.’

‘They’re Nike Air Huaraches,’ she announced loftily. ‘My uncle sent them over from the States for my birthday last month. They’re not even on sale in the UK yet.’

I told Shep I’d be back in a few minutes and ran into a nearby office. I called Fintan for one reason: he had an extensive cuttings library at his behest. He didn’t answer, so I paged him. He knew I’d only do this in an emergency. He called back right away. I told him to find out all he could about Nike Huarache shoes and to let me know as soon as possible. He didn’t dare ask why or object.