Games with the Dead

by James Nally

  ‘I know! I’m like the Grim Reaper,’ I say brightly, guiltily, giving myself away. I tag on an unconvincing: ‘Just one of those strange things, I guess.’

  A single eyebrow pump prompts a Marco pitcher invasion; some sort of cocktail by the jug. ‘I think we’re going to need this,’ she announces gravely. ‘Marco here introduced it to me as the world’s most underrated cocktail. Gin and honey. Might be more to your taste, Donal.’

  ‘All alcohol is to my taste, Edwina.’

  As Marco pours two kamikaze measures, I think: Forget soulmate, I’ve finally found a female drinking partner who can hold her liquor.

  She takes a decidedly unladylike glug and I imagine the honey gin taste on her lips.

  ‘Last year, when you were probing the deaths of those street girls, you found two bodies, isn’t that right?’

  I nod. ‘One of them in your mortuary.’

  ‘A year before that, you were the first officer at two more murder scenes, again young females?’

  She knows something’s going on; that I can’t be stumbling across all these murder victims by chance.

  ‘And this week you found Julie Draper.’

  ‘What are you implying, Edwina?’ I laugh weakly.

  She stops blinking, tilts her chin down to inspect my eyes.

  ‘I’ve been doing this job for almost twenty years. In all that time, you’re the only officer I know that keeps stumbling across all these freshly murdered young women. At least five that I know of. How many more has there been, Donal? Is there something you need to tell me?’

  Her tone has turned accusatory, toxic. I freeze in disbelief. It’s only when I try to say ‘what?’ that I realise my mouth is hanging limply open.

  ‘Well?’ she snaps.

  I refill my tumbler. She clocks my shaking hand. I hear the gin mix pouring, the ice clinking off the inside of the glass. Nothing else. I’ve been amazed that none of my police colleagues had spotted my frankly alarming run of stiffs. Fintan knows I get these visions, but it’s all too whacky and ‘out there’ for him to handle. Zoe’s scientific mind is even less forgiving, so I tell her as little as possible.

  I take a long hard draw on my cocktail.

  ‘I really like this drink, Edwina. Does it have a slang name, you know, like John Collins or Margarita?’

  ‘It’s called Honey Trap,’ she says, deadpan as hell.

  I suck up some more, realising with a certain sweet satisfaction that she’s got me. For once, the truth might be more palatable than her competing theories. I might be a bona fide unstable nutter, but at least I’m not a killer.

  ‘Okay, you’re going to think I’m bonkers, Edwina, but something keeps happening and I don’t understand how or why.’

  She sits forward, stirring her cocktail absently.

  ‘Every time I’ve been physically close to a murder victim … they’ve come to me that night, in really vivid visions. I can’t say dreams because they’re not. They’re too real and they happen when I’m awake.’

  She nods greedily, demanding more.

  Gin-trapped, I run her through every incidence; the visions, the clues, how it helped me find bodies and even crack some tricky investigations. She hangs on every word, a rapt audience of one, growing increasingly uneasy with each revelation.

  To assuage her mounting horror, I tell her about my sleep paralysis diagnosis, and how this might explain what’s happening to me. I then hit her with my own pragmatic theory; that my subconscious mind is presenting clues to me in an unorthodox, visual way.

  ‘I really can’t listen to much more of this,’ she declares suddenly, standing and flapping about for her belongings.

  ‘Look, I know as a scientist you don’t buy a word of it. Trust me, I wish it wasn’t happening to me.’

  ‘I really must be off.’

  ‘But there’s half a pitcher left … why don’t we take it with us down to the South Bank?’

  ‘Have it,’ she snaps.

  ‘I feel like I’ve angered you, Edwina.’

  ‘Not at all,’ she says. ‘It’s just this place can get so noisy and stuffy. I need some air, okay? I’ll call you.’

  She casts me an apologetic, closed-mouth smile before vanishing into the throng. She’s right. It is noisy and hot, but I know few things bring a date more swiftly and decisively to an end than declaring you receive regular one-on-one briefings from the recently murdered.

  Then it hits me. Mam made it clear on her deathbed why this thing is happening to me. It’s time I dealt with it, once and for all. Otherwise I’ll never be able to hold down a proper relationship, or live an ordinary life. I need to book that appointment tomorrow.

  Chapter 17

  Croydon, South London

  Monday, June 20, 1994; 10.00

  When London banned skyscrapers in the 1960s, Croydon’s town planners stepped in and invited every phallic-worshipping developer down to Surrey for a good old high-rise orgy. They duly delivered an inferno of towering vanities, throwing up forty-nine thundering concrete blocks in a kamikaze act of self-destruction so breathtaking that it even gained its own neologism, Croydonisation. Aiming for mini-Manhattan, they wound up with a brutalist Benidorm, minus beach and sunshine, plus flyovers, feral youth and fried chicken.

  As I negotiate the endless, blood-knotting one-way systems, I recall how David Bowie once said Croydon represents ‘everything I want to get away from’. BD Investigations, owned by John Delaney, one-time business partner of murdered bailiff Nathan Barry, is everything I need to get to right now, but I can’t. During her visit to me, Julie led me to a murder victim who died with an axe in his face. There is only one; Nathan Barry. Julie came to me five nights ago to tell me his murder is connected to hers. The only connection I can see so far is geographical. Their workplaces are just over a mile apart. Her home is two miles from here, in South Norwood. Now I need to speak to the prime suspect in Nathan’s murder, but I’m struggling to even get to him.

  Dizzy and distressed, I park up near East Croydon train station to tackle the tangling tarmac on foot.

  As I walk, I re-examine the text message that kept me awake all night.

  If you want to know the truth about Nathan Barry’s murder, be at BD Investigations HQ tomorrow, 10am, JD.

  There can only be one JD. How does John Delaney, Nathan Barry’s erstwhile business partner and the prime suspect in his murder, know I’ve been investigating the case? And how has he got hold of my phone number?

  Along the way, I’m accosted by religious maniacs, screamed at by a regular maniac and treated to ‘evils’ by a succession of brooding hoodies lashed to pumped and pink-eyed pugs. Reaching the infamous lair of an alleged axe murderer comes almost as a relief.

  BD Investigations conducts its joyless work in a fittingly low-rent drab brick terrace house that sits between a bunting-festooned car sales yard and one of those fried chicken shops ingeniously named after a US State that isn’t Kentucky. I press the nose of a grey metal intercom. A nasal female voice instructs me to push the buzzing door and go upstairs.

  Delaney is waiting for me on the landing, wearing a cream shirt, densely patterned blue tie, beige suit trousers and incongruous blue suede slip-on shoes. Everything about him is meringue-shaped; from his bouffant mousey hair and jowly face to his equator of a waist. Hail fellow well-fed, he smiles and offers me his hand: ‘DC Lynch. John. I had a feeling you’d come.’

  ‘Please, call me Donal.’

  He directs me past a timid, tightly permed and heavily goggled secretary whose head bobs like a woodpecker as she types. Delaney performs a hilarious imitation and, despite myself, I warm to him.

  Inside the office, behind one of two desks, sits the Tory minister Ken Clarke, if someone had ironed his hair into a comedy fringe and fed him pie and ale for two decades.

  ‘Phil Ware,’ he declares, wobbling to his feet in a straining all-grey ensemble. ‘Why don’t we sit over there.’

  I lead the rhinos to our watering hole, a glas
s table next to the bay window. Phil brings an ashtray, a box of Players and a Zippo lighter, determined to clog his last good artery. With their hangdog faces and crinkled necks, they look about as murderous as a pair of St Bernard rescue dogs.

  ‘I hear you’ve met our old friend DI Lambert? Let me guess what he told you,’ says Delaney in his no-nonsense Geordie brogue. ‘I lured Nathan to the White Horse that night to set him up to be whacked because he was about to blow the whistle on the fact I hired a few serving police officers to help me at Riley’s car auction. Am I warm?’

  ‘Red hot.’

  ‘DI Lambert seemed surprised that I knew about Nathan’s murder when he knocked on my door at 1 o’clock that morning. Funnily enough, knowing most of the officers on the Croydon murder squad, I got several calls about it. And the reason my ex-wife didn’t react to the news is because I’d already told her, and she’d just taken a sleeping pill.

  ‘As for the auction, there is no record that I paid any of those officers and, even if I had, the most they’d get for moonlighting is a slap on the wrist. Do you really think I’d have my business partner murdered for that?’

  I meet his stare head-on. ‘But you had more than one motive, John. You and Nathan were both married, and you were both seeing the same mistress.’

  ‘We both liked Karen. She and Nathan had dated, briefly, months earlier. Me and Karen didn’t become an item until about a year after Nathan’s death.’

  ‘That still seems soon to me,’ I say.

  John smiles, his eyes twinkling. ‘When you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.’

  I’m not about to get suckered by his schmaltz. ‘Apart from you, Karen was the last person to see Nathan alive that evening. They had a cosy little date in that wine bar. Why did she need to see him, John? What was she trying to persuade him to do? Or not to do?’

  ‘They bumped into each other outside her work. Look, Donal, if Karen thought for one second I’d anything to do with Nathan’s murder, she’d go straight to you lot. Nathan Barry was worth more to me alive, and there isn’t a shred of evidence to prove any of this nonsense.’

  Poor Mr Karen Moore, I suddenly think, empathising with a fellow cuckold. Then I wonder if he’s been properly examined as a suspect.

  ‘What about Karen’s husband in all this?’

  ‘Their girls had grown up. She and Walter had been living separate lives for years, so it’s not like Karen did a midnight flit.’

  I move onto the other damning evidence against Delaney, alleged commissioner of the murder, and Ware who, at the very least, covered it up. ‘What shocks me is that you two didn’t declare your close friendship for several days at the start of the investigation. And the fact that in your first statement, John, which you, Phil, took the morning after Nathan’s murder, you both decided to make no mention of the Riley car auctions business. Oh, and the small fact that the Riley auctions file vanished.’

  ‘What auction file?’ says John. ‘It was a cash deal that I didn’t want to declare to the taxman. Why would I have kept a file?’

  Phil lights up and pipes up: ‘I didn’t think the arrangement with Riley’s auctions was worth mentioning.’

  I let him know I’m not buying that. ‘You didn’t think that an ongoing row about fifteen grand that had gone missing was worth mentioning?’

  ‘It wasn’t worth killing for, was it?’ says Ware. ‘Look, we’re both cops, Donal, albeit I’m retired now, and we both know that the standard rate for a hit in south London is twenty grand. Whacking Nathan over fifteen grand makes no sense.’

  I don’t take my eyes off Phil. ‘Why didn’t you declare your friendship with John right away?’

  ‘I did. I told DI Lambert’s boss, DCI Frank Vaughan, the day after the murder and he told me to stay tight with John over the next few days to see if he’d let anything slip. He denied this later, but it’s the truth. By the Sunday, it was causing a lot of friction between us, wasn’t it John? I realised my position was untenable and stood down.’

  ‘With respect Phil, DI Lambert believes five days was enough time for you to, in his words, bugger the investigation.’

  Phil bristles. ‘Come on, think about it? We had twenty-five cops on this case from day one. How much damage could one officer do to a murder investigation over a few days? Even a senior officer? It’s not like I was some puppetmaster pulling all the strings. That was Lambert’s job, and if anyone buggered the investigation, he did.’

  ‘And how did he do that?’

  Ware takes a long drag of his cigarette. ‘He’d just been on one of those bloody courses at the FBI headquarters in Quantico. He loves all the forensic psychology stuff and thinks its bible. One of the mantras he brought back is that the last person to see someone before they’re murdered is almost always involved. He kept quoting the rate of eighty-five per cent and, of course, some of the lads were taking the piss. He didn’t like that one bit. He’s very puffed up, Lambert. From that moment on, he became totally blinkered and fixated on John. He wouldn’t listen to or consider anything that didn’t point to his guilt. He became obsessed.’

  I feel my engines revving. ‘DI Lambert had been a detective for over twenty years. I dare say he knew a collar when he saw one. It’s always money, drugs or a woman, isn’t that what they say? I’ve seen people murdered for fifteen quid, never mind fifteen grand. To top that, John, your macho code couldn’t countenance losing Karen to this man you’d clearly grown to hate. You just had to click your fingers to get it done, didn’t you, John, at mate’s rates too. Your psychopathic brothers-in-law, the Warners, were desperate for money at the time and happy to do your dirty work for you.’

  John picks up his mobile, taps a few times and puts it to his ear. ‘Can you meet me and Phil at the Harp in half an hour? Yeah, put him right on a couple of things. See you then.’ John hangs up and looks at me: ‘I’ll let Gary Warner answer that charge himself. In the meantime, let me tell you about all the suspects DI Lambert didn’t bother to check out. You know he sent me to break the news to Nathan’s wife, Emma, that night? He must have been testing his Quantico theory already. We rang the doorbell, she answered and led us to the kitchen. As soon as she sat, DC Rooney said: “I’m afraid John has bad news”. She stared at me. I said: “Sorry Emma, Nathan’s dead.” She said: “How?” I said: “He’s been hit over the head”, and she said: “I thought they might hurt him, but I never thought they’d kill him.” I looked at DC Rooney as if to say: “Aren’t you going to press her on this?” He just blanked me.

  ‘I had a hip flask of Scotch. She took a swig. She then told us that Nathan had left an envelope with someone important containing the details of someone who wanted him dead, as insurance. DC Rooney asked her what she meant and she just went into hysterics. They had to send for a medical team to sedate her.’

  I know nothing of this; at a stroke, he’s turned me from interrogator to pupil.

  ‘Did they ever track down this envelope?’

  ‘They tried all the usual suspects: his solicitor, his closest friends, the local vicar. Nothing.’

  ‘And who might these enemies have been?’

  They share a glance and a grim, knowing laugh.

  John chooses his words carefully. ‘Nathan was a small man with a large chip on his shoulder.’

  ‘A sack of King Edwards, more like,’ says Phil.

  ‘When you’re a bailiff and you go to repossess a car or shut down a business, you’re going to get a lot of verbal. You can’t blame people for becoming emotional. I hated that side of the job and would always try to placate people and explain that I was just the messenger. Nathan would rub their noses in it. He couldn’t help himself and the stories are legion.’

  Phil picks up the thread. ‘Once he went to seize assets from a builder and brought Dave along, one of the biggest guys on our books. As Nathan’s seizing stuff, Dave starts kicking a ball about with the guy’s little kid ou
tside, you know, keeping it all civilised. When they drove off, Dave turns to see what Nathan managed to get his hands on and there, in the back of the van amongst the tools, is the kid’s football.’

  John shakes his head. ‘He would’ve found that hilarious. He pissed people off and sometimes they came after him. He was always getting threatening phone calls, there were always psychos turning up at the office wanting to hurt him because of what he’d said to their partners or kids or parents. And then there were the women.’

  They blow out their cheeks and shake their heads like a couple of gossiping fishwives.

  ‘One of his jobs was serving court papers to violent husbands,’ says John. ‘Barring orders, injunctions, that type of thing. Nathan would always read the case paperwork, find out all he could about the battered wife. He’d then approach her, knight in shining armour, give her his phone number and tell her to call if there was any trouble. Later, he’d be round there smashing a window or slashing a car tyre to make sure she called.

  ‘He’d use the knowledge he gained from the case papers, which were always massively detailed, to bring round her favourite takeaway or video or wine. For him it was just a leg-over, but these women were vulnerable and would fall for him head over heels. I think nowadays they call it grooming.’

  Phil takes up the slack. ‘And then violent husband gets wind. A lot of these men were obsessives, you know, spying on their partners, planting bugs. Needless to say, they didn’t take kindly to the man who barred them from their own homes now getting his feet under the table.

  ‘We had a couple of husbands turn up here threatening to kill him. And I know one followed him for a few days. We had several complaints from solicitors.’

  ‘Can you give me names, addresses?’

  ‘We stayed well out of it,’ says John. ‘To be honest, Donal, I didn’t agree with that kind of carry-on at all. Nathan had a wife and young kids at home. I had words with him about it. He was damaging the business, so he started keeping it all low-key.’