by James Nally
Had I finally found the root of my dad’s contempt for me? I’d almost killed his wife, probably killed their love life and killed stone dead the chance of more children. In all likelihood, Martin had to explain himself to the local priest, who’d be wondering why there wasn’t a conveyor belt of Lynches.
Because of the speed of my exit, I suffered a suspected diastatic fracture to my lambdoid suture. Lilian’s microscopic, precise notes explained that the skull is made up of eight cranial bones, separated by fibrous joints called sutures that fully close at different stages of your life. The lambdoid suture is the one that runs horizontally around the back of your skull – about halfway – and should fully close by the time you reach forty. Lilian explained that a diastatic fracture may have caused a widening of the lambdoid suture, and that I should get this checked out.
Through the pub chatter wafted those words from my youth.
If you stand between the window and the body during this time, then God help you.
Had this spider-web fault line in my skull acted as some sort of spirit catcher for restless souls seeking peace? Was my brain a living purgatory for the pilgrim spirits of the recent dead?
Another Post-it explained that I’d suffered craniosynostosis, caused when other sutures close too quickly. This causes pressure in the skull, which can lead to extreme headaches and sleeping problems.
Another typed column showed that Mum was first prescribed benzodiazepine sleeping tablets four months after my birth. And since then she’d been prescribed a Latin phrasebook of pharmaceuticals – which she still took to this day. I’d read how over-prescription of these pills in the Seventies and Eighties led to thousands of middle-aged addicts suffering depression, painful withdrawal and, ironically, insomnia.
The horror sank in quickly. I had been the root cause of Mum’s insomnia and need for drugs, drugs that exacerbated her insomnia so that it was now killing her. No wonder Dad hated me.
Poor Mum had never told me any of this, or ever blamed me. I managed not to burst out crying until I got to the loo.
I paged Shep and told him to meet me at the Roundhouse, right now.
I leaned forward and felt the reassuring weight of the bar pushing back, my hands enjoying its cool smoothness. I was ready.
‘That was a masterstroke about the trainers, Lynch. How did you even think of that?’ said Shep, clambering upon a stool beside me.
For once, I didn’t feel myself redden.
‘I’ve been really impressed with your work, son. Stick with me and you could go far.’
My drained, streaked-white Guinness glass needed no cue. He ordered another and a double Glenfiddich for himself. Again, he eschewed anything that might give his drink a leisurely twist. Water, say, or a cube of ice. I doubted that Shep ever did anything simply for pleasure: every action had to somehow reinforce his image of himself. Shep was basically a socially-adjusted psychopath, like Fintan.
He raised his drink: ‘Here’s to a very important pair of collars,’ he said, and I clinked.
He took a sip. I took a long draw, relishing the burnt-barley taste, toasting my burnt ties.
As we sat there side-by-side, Shep intertwined his fingers and started twirling his thumbs. I imagined the cogs in his brain grinding hard, working out his next play.
‘We have a problem,’ Shep finally said, glancing over to me.
‘If this is about Fintan’s story,’ I started, but Shep put his hand on my arm, indicating that I should shut up.
He reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a piece of paper. He laid it out on the bar in front of me.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘Phone records,’ said Shep, ‘from the incident room. The records show you rang the Sunday News at 4.23 p.m. yesterday.’
My mind flashed back: getting the note to call Fintan, his insistence that he hadn’t left any such message.
‘How do you know it was me?’
‘Because the receptionist has confirmed that you were the only member of the team who stayed behind. She watched you making the call. She heard you say Fintan’s name.’
Round one to Shep.
I suppressed my swelling rage. I had to box clever here, play Shep at his own game. I picked up the records and scoured them. There it was, in black and white, the record of my call to Fintan’s direct line.
I stuck to the facts: ‘It says the call lasted less than a minute, hardly enough time for me to pass on a thoroughly detailed story. Not to mention copies of her statement and a wedding video.’
Shep had already thought of this, of course: ‘But enough time to arrange a meeting. Did you meet Fintan on Saturday evening?’
I said nothing, but realised he’d trapped me.
‘If you did, then it doesn’t look very good for you, does it, Lynch?’
Shep was now doing to me what he’d done to the Fosters. He was building a case piecemeal, skilfully creating a comprehensive picture out of fragments of truth and supposition. Jigsaw Justice.
He likes to own people. All of the guys in his team owe him in some way.
‘I got a message to call him, Guv. I didn’t speak to him about this case. I’ve never spoken to him about any case. And I didn’t leak him Karen’s statement or the wedding video. I’ve never had access to the exhibits cupboard.’
‘Everyone knows where the key to that cupboard is,’ spat Shep.
Shep scooped up the phone record sheet and presented it to me: ‘There is only one other copy, which I’ve put in a very safe place. Feel free to destroy this.’
‘Why would you do this for me, Guv?’
‘Let’s just say you owe me a favour,’ he said.
Shep picks up waifs and strays and turns them into his bitches.
I had two choices. I could take the phone record sheet, keep the peace and learn a vital lesson about how Shep operated. Or I could show him that I wasn’t prepared to be anybody’s bitch. I had plenty of dirt on him now. When I had pinned Fintan against his bachelor pad earlier today, he finally coughed about how the racket at the Feathers worked. How he and Shep worked.
Fintan admitted that Seamus – the pub manager – had been acting as a middle man between him and his police sources for about four months, passing messages and money. It soon transpired that Seamus was a double agent, also working for Shep, who knew about every single officer on Fintan’s payroll.
Fintan had expected Shep to put an end to the racket, maybe even press charges. Instead, Shep approached each officer on the take and let them know he could destroy their careers. Before long, Shep was in control of the whole racket, deciding what these officers would and wouldn’t leak. Shep never made a penny out of it. But he took down a few rivals and ducked a few scandals.
Shep owned their arses. Now he thought he could own mine.
‘I know you leaked the story to Fintan,’ I said.
Shep’s reflex turn gave him away.
‘I’d be very careful, making unsubstantiated claims like that, Lynch,’ Shep said slowly, menacingly.
‘I followed you yesterday. I saw you meeting Fintan, here.’
‘Lynch, I’d strongly advise you to stop right there. That is an outrageous allegation.’
‘Do you remember when you walked out of here? You saw a taxi over there, to your left? You started to hail it, then stopped when you realised he didn’t have his light on. I was in the back of that taxi.’
Shep picked up his glass, took a swig, then planted it back on the table, hard.
‘You can’t prove a thing,’ he spat.
‘I’ve made friends with that taxi driver,’ I lied, ‘he’s the smart, observant type. He’s confident he could pick you both out of a line-up.’
‘So I happened to be in a pub at the same time as your brother. What does that prove? Nothing. I didn’t even know he was here.’
‘It wouldn’t look good for you though, would it, Guv?’
‘Don’t cross me, Lynch. I could destroy you like that.’ His fin
ger snapped like a bone.
‘Of course, I’d probably only raise the matter if I was directly accused of leaking a story to my brother.’
Shep placed his hands to his lips as if in prayer. He stared hard into his scotch.
‘You know something, Donal,’ he said, ‘you’re not that different from your brother.’
‘I’m beginning to learn to see the angles,’ I said, sounding and feeling grubby.
He stood, drained his glass and slammed it down hard on the shiny counter.
‘People are now saying McStay is the leaker,’ he said, and strode off.
Chapter 43
Trinity Road, South London
Sunday, August 18, 1991; 22:30
Had Laura and Terry Foster greeted me at my front door that evening wielding pared-down steel rulers, I would have felt more hospitable.
‘I’m not in the mood, Eve,’ I snapped.
‘Donal, please, I just want to explain a few things.’
I decided to hear her out. My ego badly needed some contrition, and my inner martyr demanded to know how and why my ex-girlfriend had started shagging my older brother, in her own words.
‘I’ll let you in on one condition, Eve,’ I said, ‘I want total honesty. No more lies. Do you understand?’
She nodded, her eyes damp, her bottom lip quivering like a scolded toddler. Here was a woman unused to begging.
After all that had happened today, I felt cold, hard, untouchable. No more Mister Nice Guy. Let’s get ready to rumble.
We stood in the kitchen, face-to-face. She was dressed for housekeeping: jeans, green jumper, hair tied up. I wheeled round to make sure I was closer to the cutlery drawer, and did a quick scan of the sink for any potentially homicidal objects: thankfully all clear.
‘The thing is, Donal, Fintan really was my only friend in the world, you know, when things got really bad. You wanted to help but you weren’t even in the country. I felt so … alone. We started a relationship, by accident really. We kept it secret. We had to, even from you. We knew if anyone found out, it would totally compromise Fintan, and me. They’d have used it to destroy me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Think about it. I couldn’t be the rape victim and be having a relationship, especially with a reporter who got all the exclusives. I had to play the victim all the way, until I saw it through. I still have to play the victim now, or they’ll find a way to send me back to prison. I’m on a suspended sentence. They could dream up any reason to send me back.’
I felt disorientated, in need of an emotional standing count. I was struggling to keep up with the political intrigue and Machiavellian shenanigans, which now seemed the very lifeblood of her and Fintan’s existence.
I watched her look through my eyes into some dark, buried memory. ‘I promise you, no matter what it takes, I am never going back there.’
Then she snapped back to now: ‘But someone did find out about us. Fintan didn’t tell me who, but they threatened to expose our relationship. Fintan gambled that they knew about us, but couldn’t prove it. That’s why Fintan left so suddenly and came to London.
‘He didn’t even call me, for months. I understood he had to protect himself, but I started to get paranoid. Did he want to make a clean break? Was I too much hassle? When I turned up last week at the Archway, he seemed so … put out. I thought to myself: “Eve, you’ve been a fool.” He’d gotten his stories out of me; I was no use to him anymore. He didn’t want this burden, because that’s what I am now to everyone, a burden.’
She blinked fast but that failed to stop a tear breaking through, carving a wet scar down her left cheek. All of me wanted to go to her. Instead, I held firm, inviting my newfound hard-nosed cynicism to take a sniff, see if it could detect the real story flitting between her words.
I felt certain Fintan had been shagging Eve just to get her exclusives. He recognised her as his meal ticket to Fleet Street. When there was nothing left to milk, he invented some know-all nemesis bent on exposing them just so he could scarper. He never expected her to beat the rap and follow him over; he’d said so himself. Then, when she turned up at the Archway, he realised a shocking truth: he could be saddled with her for good. He was all she had in the world, for fuck’s sake.
My frown told Eve that I’d caught up, so she carried on.
‘One morning last week, I had it out with him. He said he wasn’t ready for anything “too heavy”. After all the promises he’d made to me, I couldn’t believe it. I stormed out. I then realised you were the only person in the world who gives a shit about me. So I found out where you lived and came to see you.’
I suddenly felt a step or two behind the action.
‘Then, when you and me spent time together this week …’ She broke into a full-on sob, burying her face into a hand. ‘You’re so kind and funny. I remembered why I fell in love with you,’ came her muffled tribute. ‘I began to think that the only reason I ended up with Fintan was because he reminded me of you.’
I couldn’t stop my ego climbing off its stretcher and performing a series of somersaults around the kitchen. Yes that’s right, it boomed, in a straight shoot-out with my older bro, I was the better man.
Eve sniffed back her composure. Finally she looked up, her wet eyes seeking out mine.
‘Then when your friend Gabby came around, I realised that I couldn’t just expect to pick up where we’d left off. She obviously has strong feelings for you. You didn’t want me anymore. I’d nowhere else to go but back to Fintan.’
This was the cue I needed to ask another critical question: in between shagging my older brother, had she been terrorising my fledgling girlfriend? You know, sending her newspaper cuttings to underline her murderous credentials, slashing her clothes. My film noir alter-ego wanted to ask her out straight. The rest of me settled for gentle probing.
‘Speaking of Gabby, some weird stuff’s been happening to her.’
‘What do you mean, weird stuff?’
‘Someone’s been sending her newspaper cuttings, about you. Old articles about the trial.’
Her eyes and mouth fell open.
‘Who the fuck would do something like that?’ she snapped. I could see the red mist swirling. ‘Jesus, you don’t think it was me do you?’
I knew Eve well enough to recognise genuine indignation and felt strangely vindicated: of course it hadn’t been Eve.
‘She has this ex-boyfriend,’ I reasoned, ‘a bit of a stalker. He’s obviously tracked down her new address. He must be doing this from abroad. Speaking of which, how did you find out where I lived?’
Eve searched my face, weighing up how I’d cope with bad news.
‘I rang your mum,’ she said quickly.
My defences sprang up: ‘You did what?’ I felt like screaming.
‘You don’t mind do you, Donal? I’ve always really liked her and I didn’t know who else to ask.’
‘What did she say?’
Eve grimaced. I braced myself.
‘She sounded in a bad way. She really needs to see you, Donal. She didn’t say as much, but I could tell …’
The flimsy dam I’d hastily constructed to block Mum out gave way, sending guilt gushing through me like a mountain stream.
‘Why don’t you go see her?’ said Eve, mirroring my desperation. ‘There must be a way.’
I couldn’t think how: not with Martin still capable of whisky-fuelled fisticuffs.
‘She sounded so lonely,’ Eve said quietly.
How could I have done this? I’d cut Mum out, my only ally. I didn’t need Martin’s permission to see my own mother. Fuck him. Eve seemed to be reading my mind.
‘Your dad doesn’t even have to know. You can stay at the bungalow, meet your mum in town?’
This sounded too weird, even for me, but Eve had already made up her mind. ‘I’ll call the rental people. Just let me know the dates. It’s no problem at all.’
Her voice softened. She moved closer, her hand touching mine: �
�You need to reconnect with your mum. It’ll be good for you.’
‘You’re right,’ I said, squeezing it and realising no one else knew me like Eve.
She leaned into me, her cool skin still smelling of fresh pines.
‘You do know that today was the day three years ago we were supposed to move to London? August 18th.’
I couldn’t believe she’d remembered. After all she’d been through.
‘The 18th of the 8th, ’88,’ I whispered.
‘If you want to try again,’ she breathed, ‘I know we can make it work.’
I knew already. Deep down, part of me realised that I could never move on with my life until I gave it one more go with Eve Daly. Nor could she move on with hers. My brain just couldn’t fathom how my gut felt so certain of this.
I turned my lips to hers. Both our mouths opened, ready to kiss. As I leaned in, she turned away.
‘I’m sorry, Donal,’ she said, ‘but I have to finish with Fintan first, properly. I want to tell him we’re back together. If we’re going to make this work, we’ve got to do everything the right way, by the book, right from the start. I’m done with lying and sneaking around. Let’s do it right this time.’
Chapter 44
Dublin Airport
One Week Later
I had arranged a secret rendezvous with Mum tomorrow afternoon at Tullamore’s Bridge House Hotel. I couldn’t wait for a proper face-to-face. I now knew the debt I owed her, one which I would spend forever trying to repay.
Tonight’s plans were altogether less straightforward. As promised, Eve had put me in touch with the rental company, and I’d managed to get the old Daly bungalow for the weekend. I then paid a week’s wages for a tiny hire car and headed West. Soon, a low, grey Tupperware sky levelled the land. The air thickened, dampened. I wound down the windows: all that yawning was wearing me out.
I stopped off in Kinnegad and bought four bottles of the only red plonk I could find. As I loaded them into the boot, I unzipped my travel bag to check that the Grade A skunk I’d rolled inside a pair of socks had come through unscathed. I now had all the tools I needed for tonight’s mission.