Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller

by James Nally

  Shep appealed to his inquisitors through the soundproof glass. ‘Bring it round to this year, boys.’

  ‘Did Marion realise you were sleeping with Karen? Did she catch on? Is that why she’s dead?’

  ‘She had no idea. She never knew. To be honest, I was thinking about telling her and getting it off my chest, because it was winding down.’

  Shep leaned forward: ‘Winding down?’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean, winding down?’ asked Mick.

  ‘This year, we only had sex when we did the fish tanks, every second Monday. I told her I was finishing doing the overtime. That Monday was to be the last time.’

  Peter started breaking down again.

  ‘Keep going, keep going,’ roared Shep.

  ‘When did you tell Karen that you were going to stop cleaning the fish tanks with her?’

  ‘The previous time we did them. Two weeks earlier.’

  ‘Right, so on Monday, 17 June – two weeks before Marion’s murder – you told Karen that you would be cleaning the fish tanks with her just one more time,’ said Mick, ‘so when did you last have sex with Karen Foster?’

  ‘That same evening. But I told her this was to be the last time.’

  ‘Did you tell Karen about your plans to move to Ireland?’

  Through heaving sobs, Peter gasped: ‘Karen heard the rumours. I told her they were true, that we were moving to Ireland.’

  ‘When did you tell her?’

  ‘That night again, two weeks before, you know … Marion got killed.’

  ‘What did you tell her, exactly?’ shouted Colin.

  ‘I told her that Marion was pregnant. It was the only way I could put an end to it for good.’

  ‘You told your secret lover that Marion was pregnant, so that you could dump her?’

  ‘Yes. Oh God forgive me …’

  Peter barely got the last word out before collapsing onto the table.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Shep, mouth agape, ‘I can’t fucking believe he held all this back for six weeks with his wife on a slab.’

  Back in the kitchenette, Shep congratulated Mick and Colin for breaking Peter. Now, they needed to go for his jugular. ‘This is our last chance to find out if he was involved in any way,’ he said.

  ‘He seemed genuinely shocked about Karen spying on them,’ said Mick, ‘I think it only started dawning on him during the interview that Karen is twisted enough to have killed Marion.’

  ‘Could he be saving his own arse though?’ asked Shep.

  Colin shook his head: ‘I think he never considered Karen capable of doing something like this before now. He’s one of those “God’s gift to women” types – too thick, selfish and vain to ever think about the consequences of his actions.’

  ‘Oh he’s the classic Golden Boy Irishman,’ said Shep. ‘He only cares about himself because he’s never had to care about anyone else. I bet he’s adored by his dear old mum. He’ll use and abuse women until he finds one who’ll adore him the same. How can we be certain he didn’t goad Karen into doing it?’

  ‘If we can work out for certain that he genuinely loved Marion, then I think he’s innocent,’ said Mick, ‘but how do we do that?’

  ‘Come on fellas,’ urged Shep, ‘he’s Irish Catholic for Christ’s sake, there’s a reservoir of guilt in there. Tap it. Ask him if he went to see Marion’s body in the morgue. That’ll open him up.’ He was interrupted mid-flow by the sound of his pager. ‘Shit,’ he said inspecting the message, ‘we’ve got to go.’

  ‘What?’ we all asked.

  ‘The Commissioner’s PA just paged me. He’s in a right flap. They’ve found a woman stabbed to death in her home in Woolwich.’

  My heart plummeted through my arse.

  ‘We’ve got to get there before the press. He wants to know if Marion’s killer has struck again.’

  Then he turned to me: ‘You better not have fucked up, Lynch.’

  Chapter 28

  Woolwich, South East London

  Wednesday, August 14, 1991; 12:30

  Shep drove fast while I raged silently.

  Until now, he’d refused to even consider possible links between Marion’s murder and other crimes. When I brought up Napper, he had humiliated me in front of the team. Now suddenly, if I’d missed a clue or a connection in the ‘unsolved stranger attack’ paperwork, it would all be on my shoulders.

  I should have been thinking about the victim. I should have been hoping and praying that this poor innocent woman didn’t die on account of my failings. But I was too overwhelmed by the fear of exposure, humiliation, punishment to think about anyone but myself.

  The injustice of it all! I’d been Acting Detective Constable for six days. Maybe that was the problem: I’d been just acting. I didn’t really know what I was doing.

  I had ground through all of the ‘unsolved stranger attack’ paperwork with painstaking zeal. But did I really know what I was looking for? Of course I didn’t fucking know! That’s why Shep picked me for the task. As a rookie, he could dismiss any of my findings, leaving him free to focus the team on Peter and Karen.

  He pulled up abruptly outside a four-storey block of flats on Heathfield Terrace. A crowd of people stood on one side of the billowing police tape, gaping and gossiping while two paramedics leaned against their ambulance, awaiting instruction. We lifted the tape and strolled right through, just like they do in the movies. I hated myself for enjoying the moment.

  ‘What’s the score?’ Shep asked the officer at the front door of the basement flat.

  The officer stood to one side: ‘Hope you haven’t eaten in a while.’

  The walls of the hallway were spattered bright red.

  ‘Oh great,’ said an older officer, eyeing us bitterly.

  ‘It wasn’t my idea, Kenneth,’ drawled Shep, ‘we’ve both got enough to do.’

  Kenneth was shaking his head: ‘Why do we constantly have to dance to the media’s tune? We should tell them the truth: we can’t link cases until we’ve got all the reports in.’

  ‘You know how it goes, Ken. The Commissioner’s primary concern is that we don’t get another savaging in the Sunday papers.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Ken, snapping into senior cop mode, ‘the killer stabbed the woman, Samantha Bisset, twenty-eight, to death here in the hallway. You’d better come into the bedroom.’

  We followed him into a typical box room with crayoned drawings on the wall. A little girl lay sleeping, face up, on the bed.

  ‘He came in here, sexually assaulted the child, Jazmine, aged four, and smothered her. We can’t be sure in which order yet.’

  A spasm reversed my swallowing mechanism. I stopped the gag reflex just in time.

  ‘But that’s not the worst of it,’ said Kenneth in his jovial, sing-song Welsh accent, leading us into the sitting room.

  ‘What in the name of God?’ said Shep.

  I peered round his shoulder.

  My mind felt like a misfiring one-armed bandit, reels spinning in different directions. I simply couldn’t absorb what I was seeing.

  I heard Ken say: ‘He sliced her torso open from the pubic bone up to her throat and pulled her ribcage back to expose her organs.’

  ‘Like some sick work of art,’ said Shep.

  ‘He’s taken part of her stomach, we presume as a trophy. The sick fuck covered her in tea towels so that whoever came on the scene first – which turned out to be Samantha’s partner – had to unwrap his masterpiece.’

  Just like that, every bone in my body turned to liquid. Fully conscious, my knees buckled and I keeled slowly, head-first, into the carpet, sliding down in front of Samantha’s lovingly butchered corpse.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ said Shep as I lay there, helpless but still lucid, a beached whale.

  ‘Get him outside,’ ordered Ken.

  Two uniformed officers yanked me to my feet and carried me out of the house. As they hauled me through the hallway, I could feel my helpless feet skidding along the ground,
bouncing off the thresholds.

  ‘Fuckin’ poof,’ muttered one of my bearers.

  ‘Should think about another line of work,’ said the other.

  I could see the crowd pointing, laughing.

  ‘Fucking hyenas,’ said the first officer.

  ‘What would you expect in East London?’ said the second.

  The two paramedics took over. One of them looked into my eyes. ‘You can hear me, can’t you?’ he said. All I could do was nod and blink twice. ‘He’s fully conscious,’ he told his partner, ‘this is weird.’

  They bundled me skilfully under the police tape and hauled me to a patch of grass on the other side of the road where they laid me out in the recovery position. Within seconds, I felt myself recharge from the feet up. Finally, I hoisted myself into a sitting position and helped myself to a few greedy lungfuls of air.

  I was a frequent fainter as a kid, nutting more carpet than a devout Muslim. I knew what it felt like to pass out. This had been different. I had remained fully cogent throughout. I hadn’t even felt queasy. My body simply gave way. I could see and hear everything.

  ‘Are you narcoleptic, mate?’ asked the kinder-faced paramedic.

  ‘Not that I’m aware of. I am being treated for insomnia.’

  ‘You need to tell them about this. It could be cataplexy.’

  ‘What’s cataplexy?’

  ‘It’s when an extreme emotional experience causes your muscles to seize up. It can be triggered by anything really, shock, love, even finding something funny. I’ve only ever seen it in narcoleptics though.’

  ‘Should I be worried?’

  ‘There’s no long-term damage and it usually only lasts a few minutes. But lying about helplessly on the streets of London is never a good idea. Definitely mention it to your specialist.’

  Despite what everyone had assumed, it wasn’t the gore that had knocked me over. It was the shock of confronting the unthinkable: had I let Marion’s killer remain free to do what I’d just seen, to slaughter a mother and her four-year-old daughter? If Samantha and Jazmine died horribly because of my mistake, how was I supposed to live with myself? How could I ever atone for that?

  The sound of a car braking hard snapped me back to the here and now. Out jumped Fintan, his fat panting snapper in tow. I crawled behind the tree trunk but the fucker had better radar than a bat.

  ‘So they are linking it?’ Fintan gasped shamelessly. ‘Christ, I told you, didn’t I? Forty-nine stab wounds in a domestic? It’s unheard of. So, he’s done a mother and child this time?’

  A pair of violated corpses suddenly felt like better company. I scrambled to my feet and headed back to the crime scene, meeting Shep on his way out.

  ‘Didn’t know you were the squeamish sort, Lynch,’ he said.

  ‘Neither did I, Guv. Fintan’s turned up.’

  ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ said Shep, setting off at his usual lightning pace.

  It was too late: Fintan’s baboon hosed us down all the way back to the car. ‘How many photos of us do you need?’ Shep shouted.

  We hopped in like fleeing bank robbers. Shep gunned the engine, tried to run down the snapper then took me through what I’d missed.

  ‘I hate to tell you, but that murder has a lot in common with Marion’s.’

  My stomach swapped places with my mouth.

  ‘There’s no sign of a forced entry. She was attacked with a knife near her front door. It was frenzied.’

  I closed my eyes as hard as I could and rubbed my face.

  ‘So what are you going to tell the Commissioner?’ I finally managed to ask.

  ‘I have to tell him that they could be linked, because they could be.’

  The world fell silent.

  ‘Of course, Ken was right. We won’t know for certain until the reports are in. But the media will link the attacks right away. They won’t be able to resist it, climbing onto their high horses and demanding to know why we haven’t caught this maniac targeting vulnerable young women in their homes. For them, it’s a Godsend.’

  ‘What if I’ve fucked up?’

  Shep sighed hard: ‘There’s only one way to fix this, Lynch. We’ve got to gather enough evidence to charge Karen Foster. And we’ve got to do it quickly. As soon as she’s charged, you’re out of the woods.’

  I wondered when and how I’d found myself in ‘the woods’, but patently I was in them alone. But at that moment, Shep was the only person who could save me. He must have smelled my desperation. ‘Fuck it,’ he said, performing a joyrider’s emergency stop. ‘Run over to that phone box. Ring the incident room. Tell whoever answers that the team needs to call their families. They won’t be home tonight.’

  Chapter 29

  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.