Dance With the Dead

by James Nally

  I notice now it’s only her top half swaying from side to side. She’s a glove puppet without a hand. A bundle of dirty green cash falls out of her. Then another. As roll after grubby roll drops to the floor, she starts to collapse, deflate. I must stuff the money back in.

  I dive to the floor to grab it, but the cash isn’t there. The floor isn’t there. I free fall into thick red metallic goo. It swallows me greedily. Holds me under. I feel pin-sharp jabs to my body as my eyes and chest bulge to bursting. I’m drowning. As I fight this liquid hell, I realise the surface above me is solidifying.

  Hell is freezing over. What is that damn tune?

  I look up through the red glass-like surface to see more red flowing out of two neat round holes in her skull. It cascades down her neck and shoulders, dripping onto the impenetrable transparent plane above me. Plop, plop, plop. Hardening instantly. Trapping me. Devouring me. I must break free. I must break free.

  Stars bounce across my vision and implode. A blinding tunnel spins open. Oh my God, so this is what it’s like to die.

  Chapter 9

  Arsenal, North London

  Sunday, April 4, 1993; 09.20

  I woke in my bed and crept down to the sitting room, like a killer returning to the crime scene.

  Please tell me it didn’t happen … that I didn’t sit on this couch last night and see Liz Little.

  The stubbed-out joint confirmed my recent presence; the drop-kicked wine bottle my violent reaction to an episode. Shit.

  The red light on the answerphone flashed two missed calls. I pressed ‘Play’.

  ‘… oh I hate these awful things … I need more time than that.’

  Mam must have started speaking before the beep.

  My heart raced. Mam never rang. Something must be seriously up.

  She nailed it second time. ‘Hi lads, I don’t want to worry you but I need to talk to you about your father. Give me a call as soon as ye can. God Bless. Oh, it’s your ma by the way. And it’s a quarter to nine on Saturday night.’

  I jabbed re-dial. It went straight through to their answer machine. I guessed she’d be at Mass … I’d try again later. I wondered what the hell was going on. I sensed Fintan knew something, but was holding back. I decided not to mention the missed calls. I’d tap Mam up later, free from his prying.

  I headed to the kitchen. The ashtray told me Fintan had been up for hours. The supplement-strewn kitchen table confirmed he’d already ransacked that day’s newspapers. I couldn’t imagine the strain of constantly chasing news, second-guessing events, scouring between the lines for fresh angles. He was obsessive. I figured you’d have to be.

  ‘Well,’ he said, looking uncharacte‌ristically gloomy, ‘how was your wine-induced coma?’

  ‘Deep,’ I rasped, ‘but all too brief. And yours?’

  ‘I slept a bit better. Liz Little has taken some of the heat off me, at least for now.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll rest more peacefully knowing that.’

  I filled a grubby cup with tepid tap water and drank. My sand-blasted throat would’ve happily sucked it out of a pothole.

  ‘Any sweet, case-cracking dreams?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, re-filling the cup so he couldn’t read my face.

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘Not a dickie bird. Whatever was going on in my head back then has obviously passed.’

  ‘Obviously,’ he said. ‘That must’ve been some other Liz you were screaming about at half past five this morning.’

  ‘I don’t remember that at all. Sorry if I woke you.’

  I scanned the papers. They’d all followed up on his Liz Little scoop. A rival tabloid even had the gall to label their front page story ‘Exclusive’.

  ‘Isn’t that outright theft?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really. They managed to track down the actor who plays Tosh Lines and get a few quotes out of him. My editor won’t be happy about that.’

  ‘Yeah, but you broke the actual story.’

  ‘You don’t know my editor.’

  He sighed. ‘The only reason it made the papers at all is because she’d been on the telly. This is the only currency that matters now: celebrity. There’s not one proper crime story in our paper today, or in any of the tabloids.’

  ‘Doesn’t exposing randy vicars count?’

  ‘We’ve got three million unemployed, schizophrenics who should be locked up murdering people on our streets, IRA bombs going off, a war in Bosnia, corrupt cops, the Tories flogging off the nation’s assets to their grubby pals, gangsters like Jimmy Reilly on the loose and all we feed people is shite about soap stars and the latest tiff between Charles and Di.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what people want, a little light relief.’

  ‘It’s not about what people want. It’s about what people get, whether they want it or not. Our owner has just forked out a quarter of a billion pounds on TV rights to the football. All he’ll let us write about soon will be what’s on his TV channels. Or to destroy anyone or anything that gets in the way of his plans for world domination.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ I laughed. ‘That’s a little Orwellian.’

  ‘Trust me, if he and his ilk get their way, newspapers will be dead in ten years. You’ll all be force-fed entertainment 24/7 on your TVs, computers and mobile phones, no escape, leaving the powerful free to do whatever the fuck they want. Investigative journalism will be dead.’

  ‘Not much point risking your neck pursuing Jimmy Reilly then, is there?’

  ‘I said in ten years. We hacks might be drinking in the last-chance saloon, Donal, but it’s still our duty to cause lusty, democratic mayhem. Besides, I need a big one. A really big one. The inside track on the taking down of Jimmy Reilly would make me. There’d be half a dozen scoops in that, maybe as many awards. Not to mention the documentary, even a book. Now that newspapers are doomed, I’ve got to get out there and flash my wares. A scoop like this would make me high-class Florentine Gardens game, as opposed to Finsbury Park gristle.’

  ‘No matter which path you choose, Fint, your depthless humanity will doubtless shine through. What’s your relationship like with the man in charge of the Liz Little case then, DS Spence?’

  ‘Non-existent,’ he said glumly. ‘He doesn’t drink or smoke, a real dour Scot. Oh, and he hates the media, especially after the kicking he got a few years’ back when a major drugs dealer won an appeal. Turns out one of his men illegally bugged a hotel room. He now insists on personally hand-picking his team.’

  I visibly sagged.

  ‘That’s good for you though. He’s desperate to even the score by nailing another major criminal. If you can deliver hard evidence against someone like Jimmy Reilly, he’ll welcome you on board with open arms.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘Which reminds me, forensics aren’t finished at Brownswood. Shall we take a stroll that way, just in case?’

  ‘Just in case of what?’

  ‘Doe-eyed Zoe might be back. And let’s face it, bro, you have a solid track record in crime-scene romances, having once seduced the Black Widow herself, Eve Daly.’

  Not too long ago, the mere mention of her name would’ve triggered an internal meltdown. Sometime recently – I couldn’t quite pinpoint when – this had cooled to a sort of wounded confusion, a familiar ache I’d almost miss. I was getting over her.

  Ready to move on …

  Having tangled with that crime-scene tape yesterday, and lost, Zoe looked at me with a curious mixture of amusement and worry, as you might a drunk staggering across a busy street. I feared getting to know her and provoking the mild contempt that my flimsy confidence seemed to engender in any woman I’d met since, well, Eve Daly. I wasn’t sure I could handle another knockback.

  But I had an in-built defence with Zoe. Before I had the chance to fuck things up emotionally, I needed a professional favour from her, right now.

  My pursuit of Liz Little’s killer depended upon her saying yes.

  As we walked past Arsenal’s Highbury Stadium
, Fintan pointed to the £10.50 match ticket price.

  ‘It was 9 last season. My pal in sport reckons it’ll cost 30 by the Millennium.’

  I baulked. ‘No one in their right mind is going to pay 30 quid to watch a game of football, I don’t care who is playing.’

  At the Blackstock Road junction, the squealing brakes of two number 19 double-decker buses battled with a clattering Kango for sonic supremacy. A panicking couple in smart suits overtook us, darting across the road and waving furiously at the bus drivers.

  I turned to see a trio of road workers – soggy rollies clamped between their pursed, bloodless lips – wearing the expressions of men jack-hammering to hell. Every main road in London was being turned inside out so that cable TV and the Internet could clasp onto us all.

  I watched the second number 19 bus groan off in convoy with the first, ignoring the frantic, door-bashing appeals of the two suits.

  I shook my head. ‘He only had to open the doors for three seconds.’

  Fintan hadn’t noticed … too transfixed by that freshly dug hole.

  ‘Surely this Internet shite can’t catch on,’ he muttered. ‘I mean who in their right mind wants to sit glued to a screen all day?’

  We crossed Blackstock then bore right into Brownswood Road, a winding cut-through fashioned from the butt ends of grander side roads. Grubby garden walls and gable ends stretched unbroken around the first bend, making it feel like a drained brick canal. Past the second junction, cellophane-strangled flowers huddled abjectly beneath the quivering blue tape, like nuns flinching under a gyrating Chippendale. Fintan was right: forensic officers were still combing the scene. My eyes instantly located Zoe, striking even behind a white facemask, her gloved fingers erotically teasing crime-scene grass. She glanced up at us and scowled, those Holly Hunter eyes squinting into bitter little almonds.

  Fintan bent down to read the dedications on the flowers. I refused to stoop to such shameless voyeurism. Instead, I closed my eyes and allowed the sombre Sunday gloom to envelop me.

  What did Liz’s dance mean last night? She’d come to me as a glove puppet, stuffed with cash which tumbled out beyond her control. Had she lost a lot of Reilly’s money? Blood had run from her skull and trapped me beneath a red floor … cash, blood, skull wounds, a floor. Jimmy’s precious floor?

  Just as the maddeningly abstract charades of previous murder victims eventually led me to their killers, I felt certain that these images would prove critical to her case. But I craved more, to placate those birds of confusion flapping about inside my skull.

  Last night, thanks largely to the pot, I had embraced the terror and let her in. I’d do so again, in exchange for precious clues. So, with all my mental strength, I summoned Liz’s spirit. I visualised her taking a foothold in my psyche, treading the boards of my subconscious, rehearsing for tonight’s second performance.

  Poor Liz: the girl who dared to dream. She’d come to London wide-eyed, ravenous, desperate not to fail. She could never go back and admit it hadn’t worked out. She’d rather not go back at all.

  How proud her parents and friends had been of her TV debut. How careful they were not to dwell on its fleeting insignificance. Liz had explained over and over; it wasn’t about the role or the screen time. It was about getting another acting credit towards that all-important Equity Card, and raising her profile. She might just get spotted by someone of influence, and plucked from obscurity, Lana Turner-style.

  But her agent had received no follow-up enquiries or offers. Her savings dwindling fast, Liz needed paid work. So did three million other skint, unemployed Brits.

  Why slave on your feet in McDonald’s or a factory all day when you can earn a fortune lying on your back?

  Of course, that’s not how it would’ve been sold to Liz Little. She knew or met someone who worked at the Florentine Gardens, heard how they were always on the lookout for accomplished, trained dancers. Performing in London’s West End had been all she’d dreamed of since those first ballet lessons aged four – to follow in the footsteps of her heroine, Audrey Hepburn.

  That, in turn, was how she’d sold it to her parents, Duncan and Audrey. She just had to hope that no one from Armley would ever turn up at the Florentine. What a shock they’d get. But that seemed highly improbable; they didn’t serve bitter or ale, and charged a week’s wages for anything else.

  I could only guess at how she’d squared it with her own conscience to prance about naked for the gratification of strange men, then have sex with those who promised to ‘take care’ of her. But that was her business. Above all else, Liz was striving to make it as a professional actress. Maybe she treated this as her latest role: get into character, get on with the job. Northern grit. I bet she used her classical training to be the best damn dancer in the joint.

  Maybe one day, Prince Charming would appear and sweep her away, never to return to the Florentine. He’d provide the security she needed to fearlessly pursue her true ambitions. In the meantime, Holly Golightly entranced rich and powerful men who showered her with expensive gifts and fancy meals. As Truman Capote said of the original, ‘not a prostitute, but an American Geisha’.

  How then had she upset Jimmy Reilly? Had he fallen under her spell, only to get knocked back? The other theories I liked less. She’d said the wrong thing to the wrong person at Jimmy’s expense. About his small cock, big hands or hairy back. He seemed typical of the type – egocentric to the point of God complex. It wouldn’t take much to earn the full-set, ten plagues of his biblical wrath. Or, had Liz uncovered some dark secret about Reilly? Was she trying to play him? I needed to find out if she could be that greedy, that naïve.

  Whatever she did to earn her wretched end, Reilly was sending a clear message to the other girls: Fuck with me and you’ll end up either butchered or working the streets. The Black Dahlia tribute had to be a chilling postscript, designed to reassert his omnipotence: you all know I did this, but none of you will ever touch me for it.

  ‘Hey, check this out,’ said Fintan, his forefinger pulling out the bottom corner of a hand-written card, attached to a single white lily. I had to bend and lean in close to read the microscopic, feminine writing: Beautiful Liz, so graceful, elegant and warm. The prettiest flower in the garden. How we’ll miss your mischief-making and humor. How I wish I could turn back the clock. Join you one day on one of those trips you so loved, T xxx.

  Fintan didn’t even wait for me to finish: ‘See the way she’s spelt humor? The rest is too eloquent and precise for that to have been a mistake. T is an American. It’s got to be Tammy, that girl you met at the club.’

  My heart sank. I knew what he’d be angling for next; me going back there to tap Tammy up.

  ‘This note doesn’t actually tell us anything though, does it?’ I said.

  ‘Really, detective? Why does she want to turn back the clock? And what trip is she referring to? Whoever wrote this is a yank and a close friend to Liz. She must have some idea about what was going on between her and Reilly.’

  ‘Please tell me you’re not suggesting we go back to the Florentine?’

  ‘There must be another way of tracking down this Tammy?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said, because I had, ‘Liz was new in town. Someone must have introduced her to the Florentine, maybe someone who already worked there. The only way Liz would’ve met someone like that was either at an audition or through her agent.’

  Fintan had already locked onto my idea’s flight path: ‘The agent must have a file of all the women on his books. If one of them works at the Florentine, then bingo. Maybe Tammy’s one of his. I’ll call him first thing tomorrow, ask what Americans he represents. Maybe ‘T’ is another American dancer. Whoever T is, let’s find her, then figure out our next move from there. Going back to the Florentine has to be our last resort.’

  I blew out hard to register my whole-hearted agreement. When a scoop tickled Fintan’s tabloid snout, he could lose all reason, becoming gung-ho to the point of reckless
. Finally, he’d grasped the kamikaze lunacy of braving Reilly’s lair again. At least for now …

  ‘Good job we came down here,’ he said.

  ‘Can we really expect T, whoever she turns out to be, to speak to us? Especially after what’s happened to Liz? We can’t protect her.’

  ‘We’ve got to try,’ he said, ‘don’t forget, you’ve got a cavalry to call on whenever you need to. They’ll be impressed by what you’ve dug up already about Liz and her connection to a major player like Reilly. If you can deliver a witness from the club, you’re well and truly back in the game.’

  The Finsbury Park Tavern’s front door loftily boasted its credentials as ‘a traditional British boozer’. Soulless, soiled and hostile, it proved to be all that and worse. They certainly didn’t need to concern themselves with the missing signs on the toilet doors. You just had to follow your nose …

  The eye-watering stench of blue urinal cakes made our first ‘recovery’ pints hard to get down. But we persevered doggedly.

  ‘Yet another woman shunning you after a single encounter then, Donal,’ Fintan said.

  ‘Shunning you more like. She read your rag this morning and realised you’d tricked her into talking.’

  ‘I didn’t trick her,’ he protested. ‘It’s not my fault she made a lazy assumption and couldn’t stop gossiping. She’s probably just embarrassed.’

  ‘You could have told her you’re a reporter. If you had a decent bone in your body, you would have. Anyway, what are you up to later?’

  ‘I’m meeting a couple of my friendly spooks down at Gower Street for a few jars; should be back about midnight.’

  ‘Hope you’ve brought your longest spoon with you, supping with those creeps. Why are you buying drinks for spooks?’

  ‘They’re buying drinks for me, actually. They’re shitting themselves that peace is about to break out in Northern Ireland. That means they’re out of a job.’

  ‘They shouldn’t worry. It’s only been going on for, what, 800 years now?’

  ‘I know, right? You’d put money on Israel/Palestine getting sorted first. But they seem convinced.’