by James Nally
Except all our lives stopped dead right then, never to be the same again.
I woke to my own screaming voice, loud, desperate, primeval. I saw blood glistening on the pebbledash, the skin on my hands, minced. I was breathing hard but I still couldn’t lift my feet. Slowly, sounds formed. The nearby church bells clanged twelve times.
But it’s after one a.m. right? Why are they chiming midnight?
Trapped birds flapped and flailed inside my skull. A ball of nausea inflated my chest. I still had time to get back inside, to save Eve. I went to move but my legs stuck to the earth. I refused to believe I was gravity’s prisoner. I lurched forward; determined, incensed, but went into free fall through cold, streaking lights into dark, darker black.
I woke up in darkness, to an unfamiliar bed, my guts clanking like an out-of-tune bass.
Flash-frame images of Meehan forcing himself upon Eve flipped through my mind, a rolodex of horrors. I fought an aching neck to sit up. All hopes that it had been some sort of horrific nightmare fled when I saw my bandaged hands, remembering how I’d minced them against the shed’s pebbledash wall.
Far away, I could hear the click-clack of retreating footsteps and a swinging door. Shapes formed in the gloom. Weird patterns became curtains, closed around beds opposite. I hadn’t spent a night in hospital since I was a kid.
They’d left the curtains around my bed open, presumably to keep me under observation. I sensed someone watching me. Sure enough, a silhouette stood beyond the end of my metal bed, in the middle of the ward, as still as a corpse. I strained to see the face, but it was too dark.
‘Who are you?’ I said. The person didn’t move a muscle.
A current of unease zapped through me.
‘What do you want?’ I called.
The figure started moving towards me, slowly, silently, with intent.
I backed up against the metal frame of the bed, the cold steel reminding me I was awake. Still he came, steady, unflinching, unstoppable.
‘What do you want?’ I shouted.
The head tilted up to reveal coal-black pupils glistening inside caked white spots. Meehan’s bloodshot eyes glared hate.
I scrambled to get up, to fight. But I was frozen, helpless.
Those unblinking murderous eyes kept coming, closer, closer, until we were nose to nose. I felt his gloved hands on my throat, his putrid breath on my face.
He leaned all his weight on my neck until my chest caved in and my eyes bulged. My head pounded as dots bounced off the edges of my fading vision. My head drifted, I was floating off.
I knew this was it. I wanted the end. Sorry, Eve.
Then screaming white light gored at my clenched eyelids. I thought: ‘Christ no, don’t tell me all that shit about God and heaven is true.’
Something made me defy the hot white needles and haul my eyelids open. Shapes formed. A face swooned and flickered, eventually settling to reveal Mum’s fretting smile. It was morning and I was alive. Relief overwhelmed me. Someone must have caught him, stopped him, in the nick of time.
‘Meehan tried to kill me,’ I croaked.
She tiptoed slowly to my left side, warily, uncertain. She squeezed my shoulder so hard it hurt.
‘Shhh, don’t get yourself upset now, Donal. Try to relax,’ she said.
I defied her Vulcan death grip to sit up. I didn’t know who the man was to my right, but his snow-white, side-parted hair, fuzzy eyebrows, formal grey suit and hooked nose screamed cop, doc, lawyer; professional busybody.
My neck hurt and my throat burned when I swallowed. I wondered how close Meehan had come to finishing me off.
‘Eve?’ I gasped at Mum, desperate to know if she was okay; desperate to hear that what I’d seen last night wasn’t real, but some sort of absinthe-induced hallucination.
‘Take it easy,’ said Mum, shoulder-crushing again, ‘everything’s okay, love.’ I pulled away before she snapped my collarbone.
‘Everything’s far from okay.’ I jumped at the man’s guttural, knowing voice. I turned to him, confused.
His piercing blue eyes seemed to be searching inside my face: a cop, for sure. ‘We found you unconscious, having imbibed some sort of substance, no doubt illicit,’ he snapped. ‘I trust you won’t object to answering a few questions.’
‘Substance?’ I rasped. ‘What are you on about?’
As I spoke, the pieces clicked together. Absinthe alone couldn’t have done that to me. Choker, the fucker, had spiked me.
I told the cop about the weird green drink, the dead legs, the shed.
I sensed Mum shaking her head sadly. I couldn’t bear to look her way. Instead, my eyes met the nurse’s disgusted glare. What was her problem? Unwelcome, my eyes drifted back to the cop’s piercing blue sparklers.
I asked again: ‘Eve, is she okay?’
I sensed he was holding something back. I vowed there and then that if Meehan had attacked her, I’d kill him myself.
‘Well,’ said the cop, ‘you were out of it, so I guess that rules you out as a potential suspect, or indeed as a witness.’
Suspect? Witness? Christ, no. Say it didn’t happen. Say what I saw wasn’t real …
The cop carried on, measured, enjoying his moment, even producing one of those black flip notebooks you see only in cop shows.
‘We are investigating a very serious crime,’ he began.
‘What the fuck happened?’ I felt like screaming.
‘Someone dialled 999 from the house phone, but refused to give their name. Medics removed you from the garden of the house at 01.52 a.m.’
‘Removed …?’ I couldn’t help picturing the scene; a bloodied and half-frozen Hunter S. Thompson, flat out on a stretcher, hands covered in blood, the glasses skewwhiff on my face. I was sure to hear every last detail soon, if I could ever face them again.
The cop went on, impassively: ‘You were unconscious. An officer at the scene found the bottle of absinthe. It’s gone to Dublin for tests but my bet is it’d been mixed with some sort of tranquilliser or cannabis, possibly both.’
He stopped for effect. I nodded gravely, because I felt that’s what he wanted me to do. Finally, he continued.
‘Whatever substance was in that drink caused a rapid drop in your blood pressure, which explains why you felt paralysed. The good news is, there’s no long-term damage.’
Good news, but not the news I most wanted to hear, so I nodded rapidly.
He got to his feet and started pacing about the room, Poirot-style. The gobshite. Then his throaty ‘ahem’, and my mother’s averted gaze confirmed my worst fear: what I’d heard so far was merely the preamble to this morning’s Main Story. I swallowed hard. God, it hurt.
‘Look,’ said the cop, ‘I might as well tell you. Your girlfriend, Eve Daly …’
I shivered, froze.
‘She’s under arrest.’
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think.
‘For stabbing Anthony Meehan to death.’
From somewhere deep, deep inside me spewed a hideous, cackling, panto-laugh. She did it. She nailed that fucker. My Viking!
The cop looked at me in shock, then disgust. ‘What’s so fucking funny, son?’ he spat. ‘There’s a young man downstairs in the basement on a slab.’
‘No, God, no, sorry,’ I said, ‘it’s just the shock.’
He turned to Mum and the nurse: ‘I’m not sure he’s in a fit state to hear any more,’ he said, pocketing his fancy notebook.
He turned back to me with a scowl: ‘I’ll be back to ask you more questions later.’ He flicked his top coat, matador-style, off the back of the bedside chair.
My mind flailed, trying to make sense of it all. Somehow she’d fought back. But how? She must have stabbed him with the Viking prop dagger. Self-defence of course. I’d seen him attack her. I’d seen the preamble to Meehan’s murder!
Or was that what I had seen? My mind recoiled at the insanity of the idea. Surely it must have been some sort of bad trip? A drug-induced nightmare
out of the dark corners of my twisted, paranoid mind? Or maybe, while I was lying here out of it, I’d heard them talking about the crime. My brain had supplied pictures to what I’d unconsciously learned.
Yet I knew what I’d seen. I saw Meehan attack Eve.
But if Meehan was dead, then who had tried to kill me later, when I was already in the hospital? Surely not …
I had to ask the question.
‘Sir?’
He turned, surprised.
‘What time did you get the call, you know, about Tony?’
Lieutenant Dumbo looked at me, frowned and sighed. He reached back into his breast pocket.
‘Ah let’s see,’ he said, his agricultural thumb dwarfing the notebook’s inky pages.
‘We got that call at … 1.17 a.m.’
My brain flashed back to the scene, to the clock radio turning 1.13. Watching Meehan forcing himself upon Eve. Witnessing the preamble to Meehan’s murder. But that made no sense. ‘And when did he die?’ I croaked.
The cop took a long hard look at me: ‘He was pronounced dead at the scene, son. Why do you ask?’
I told myself there must be a logical explanation – must be … must be. My head swooned. ‘Donal, love, are you okay?’ sounded Mum’s voice as last night’s blinding lights returned, slashing at my vision.
I ignored the panic because I couldn’t take any more: I let myself sink down, down until all those hot white needles of hospital light went away.
Chapter 3
Clapham Junction
Tuesday, July 2, 1991; 08:15
I marched back to Sangora Road, unable to banish the squalid thought that Marion Ryan’s murder represented a gilt-edged career opportunity.
My two-year probation as a beat Constable was almost complete. In a few weeks, I’d be eligible for promotion to Acting Detective Constable. There were more beat officers than Acting DC positions: competition was fierce.
Later today, I was due to make a statement to the investigating team. By re-examining the murder scene, perhaps I could offer up a few fresh insights or theories; make a good impression. I needed a senior officer to spot me and think that I was worthy of championing; to take me under his or her wing.
I took a short cut across Wandsworth Common, ignoring the tarmac pathways. London’s green spaces seemed so orderly and controlled to me: the opposite of nature. It’s a wonder there weren’t signs saying, ‘Keep Off The Grass’. As I trod the dewy sward, I let my mind drift off-road too. After this morning’s chilling encounter, I needed to open myself up to all possibilities. It was time for a logic amnesty.
One fact felt indisputable: Marion’s attack on me hadn’t been a dream. When she came to me in the flat, I’d been wide awake, albeit a bit pissed. I could see and hear everything around her in the streetlight orange tinge – the furniture, the traffic outside, the slamming door. I’d felt her breath on my face.
And, three years earlier, I’d felt Meehan’s cold, gloved hands strangling my throat.
I didn’t believe in ghosts, spirits, religion, the supernatural or any of that stuff. But the most obvious explanation for what happened last night – however crazy – was that the spirit or ghost of Marion Ryan had come to me. A few hours earlier, I’d been physically close to her recently murdered body. Three years ago, Meehan came to me at Tullamore General Hospital as I slept upstairs from the basement morgue hosting his fresh corpse. I had to ask the question: did my proximity to a body that had just met a violent death somehow open up a telepathic pathway between us? And if so, what were their spirits trying to tell me? And how could they get inside me?
The naked malevolence of Meehan’s assault didn’t seem to say much, apart from he wished me harm. But while Marion’s attack felt every bit as threatening, there was something about the encounter that made me think she had been trying to tell me something. That slamming door. What did it mean? I had to get to Sangora Road and see if something snagged on my mind.
As the grass of the Common gave way to concrete, a rancid stench invaded my senses. I checked both soles, located the soft wet dog shit wedged between the grips of my left shoe and declared the logic amnesty over.
As I rubbed my shoe against a grass verge, I tried to come up with a more believable solution. Meehan throttling me had been a graphic hallucination. After all, I’d just ingested enough tranquilliser to poleaxe a sadhu. Marion’s apparition was a result of post-traumatic stress – or post-traumatic Shiraz, as Aidan put it. Seeing her wound-covered body last night had obviously affected me more than I’d realised.
Sangora Road had already recovered its leafy, anonymous poise. On one side, a road sweeper clanked along grudgingly. On the other, a couple of suits made breakneck progress towards Clapham Junction train station. Ahead of them, a racket of rotund school kids swore loudly, smoked and spat. I wondered what Tullamore’s own Jesuit terrorist Father Devlin would give for ten minutes in a locked room with that lot, and how much I’d pay to watch.
Across the road from number 21, the press pack swarmed, keen as hyenas. I counted nine still camera lenses, presumably all jostling for the same shot. I couldn’t help thinking: what a waste.
As I cast them my most contemptuous glare, a morose Northern voice stopped me in my tracks.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Clive ‘Overtime’ Hunt was one of the less offensive nicknames earned by my beat partner over the years. Colleagues would plead with me: ‘Find out what he does with all the money?’ He simply couldn’t say no to overtime and must have worked at least seventy hours a week, every week.
‘You did go home at some stage, Clive?’
‘Oh yeah. I got back here at eight this morning. Easiest gig going this, standing at a door.’
‘Exciting too,’ I said, ‘so what’s been happening?’
‘They removed the body about two hours ago. Forensics are still working, so don’t cross the tape, obviously,’ he drawled, the irritating tit.
He unlocked the internal door to the flat, then almost ceremoniously pulled it open.
‘Thanks, Clive,’ I said, ‘but that’s really not necessary.’
‘Oh but it is,’ he said, ‘it’s one of those fire doors, spring-loaded to close itself, except it’s been sprung too tight.’
‘Oh,’ I said, putting my palm against the half-open door. Just like last night, it pressed back hard.
PC Know-It-All’s furniture-and-fittings briefing wasn’t over yet: ‘Clever things, these fire doors; at a certain temperature they expand and seal the gaps, blocking out flames and, even more important, smoke. Smoke inhalation is actually the biggest killer, you know.’
‘Fascinating,’ I said, turning on the first step, then letting the door go so it slammed behind me.
I imagined Marion coming up these stairs. She had her post, keys, handbag and jacket over her arm. Whoever killed her was either in the flat already, or had met her at the front door as she returned from work. The idea that someone was already inside felt less plausible – there were no signs of a break-in. Only she and Peter had keys. If she let her killer in, then she must have known him.
Ninety-eight per cent of murder victims know their killer.
He followed her up the stairs, launching his attack from behind. But if it was Peter, why would he stab her to death on the landing? He could have killed her in any of the rooms, in a variety of ways, at any time of the day or night, silently and without leaving evidence or causing a commotion. It just didn’t stack up. Unless it had been a crime of passion: one of them had been having an affair, confronted the other. Peter had lashed out in a blind rage. It’s always the man, isn’t it?
My mind turned to Peter and Karen finding the body. I imagined myself as Peter coming up the stairs. I was about the same height – five ten – so I stopped at the spot where he would have seen Marion’s body on the landing.
Karen wouldn’t have seen the body yet. She was five foot four, tops, and must have been at least a step below Peter, if not
two. He called Marion’s name and went to her body.
Karen told me she’d been the one to check for signs of life. That’s how she got Marion’s blood on her hands. Had Peter made any sort of check first? If not, then why not? Did he already know she was dead? I couldn’t be sure if this meant anything, but made a mental note just in case. I’d mention it later to the investigating officers, show them I had solid detective potential.
I walked up to the police tape and exchanged a nod with the forensics who were tweezing every inch of the landing.
There seemed to be very little blood on the carpet and walls, considering all the wounds Marion had suffered. Either she had died quickly – blood stops flowing when you expire – or most of her wounds were superficial. I wondered if I’d get a look at the pathology report.
The window on the landing overlooked a flat roof below. Someone could have climbed onto that roof and scrabbled up the rooftiles to this window. I unfastened the latch and opened it as far as it could go: about four inches. It looked new and hadn’t been forced. The killer didn’t get in through here.
Cool air rushed my face, voodoo lurking in its slipstream.
After three hours, they close the window, to ensure that the spirit doesn’t return.
She usually gets home before six … we got back just after nine …
Had I been standing here as her spirit returned, hungry for vengeance?
My eyes followed the blood streaks along the wall. I wondered what would happen to the flat now. Surely Peter could never come back to live here, guilty or not. Who would paint over the blood? Would future prospective tenants be told of the horror that had taken place, here on these stairs?
The flat door below heaved open, followed by the sound of someone labouring up the stairs.
‘You could probably get this for a hell of a good price now,’ panted Clive, as if he’d read my mind, ‘be a smashing first-time buy.’
‘Could you actually live here though? Every time you’d come up these stairs, you’d be thinking someone died here, horribly.’