Dance With the Dead

by James Nally

  ‘Thanks, Zoe, I really appreciate this.’

  ‘Just so we’re clear, intrigue alone brought me here. What’s got you so worked up?’

  My chin soaked up her first jab and I danced on.

  ‘Funnily enough, the idea came from helping someone move this morning, and our unscheduled blackout last night.’

  ‘Ah yes, that,’ she said, avoiding my eyes while fishing around for a key to the front door.

  ‘So, let’s suppose Georgie’s killer brought her here either dead or unconscious. Locals say the lift hasn’t worked for months. That makes me think Bernard Moss paid for the flat without checking it out first. You wouldn’t elect to carry a lifeless body up four flights of stairs.’

  ‘And they wouldn’t have risked it in daylight, surely,’ said Zoe, producing the key and slotting it into the hole.

  ‘Wait a sec, Zoe. Don’t open just yet. I’ve been thinking, if I turned up here in the middle of the night with a body in the boot of my car, I’d want to recce where I was taking it first, just in case.’

  She nodded. ‘There could be a gang of kids on the stairs say, or a party in the flat next door.’

  ‘So Bernie or Robert Conlon … the suspect … walks into the communal hallway downstairs, realises the lift is out of order, but it’s too late to turn back now. He wants to get that body out of the car as soon as possible. He decides to take the walk alone first, so he climbs the stairs and walks up to this door. What would you do next?’

  She frowned and took a look around.

  ‘I’d make sure the coast was clear,’ she said, ‘and I’d probably take a look through the window, to make sure no one was inside.’

  ‘The windows are blacked out.’

  ‘I’d listen at the door,’ she said.

  ‘With your good ear, you know, the one with the hole in the lobe, or with the one that’d been badly damaged by shooting?’

  A celestial shadow drifted across her wide-eyed face.

  ‘Oh my God. If Bernie brought the body here … he’s so tall that his ear print might still be there. That’s … how did you think of that?’

  ‘What you told me last night, about ear lobes. And a little dramatic reconstruction,’ I said.

  She tilted her head sceptically.

  ‘I used to laugh at those hammy segments on Crimewatch, but I actually tried to walk in the killer’s shoes this morning. I went method on it too. Which is why, if you’d like to step inside, I’ve had another thought.’

  She smiled, albeit wanly, but it felt like a blowtorch to my frozen hopes.

  I led her into the hallway and pointed to the electric meter.

  ‘That meter takes fifty-pence pieces. I had one in a house share in Harlesden a couple of years back. I’m sure they were a great idea in the ’60s when fifty-pence worth of power lasted a few days but now, well … it used to run out every time someone took a hot shower. Anyway, I’ve been thinking, whoever last legally rented this flat five months ago probably left a light on, or the fridge plugged in, before they left. Over a few weeks, that would’ve run the power down. So when the suspect gets here in the middle of the night, he has to feed the meter. Here, have a go,’ I said, handing her a coin.

  ‘You slot it into that tiny little groove thing, then twist the handle …’

  ‘Oh, thank God you’re here,’ she said, ‘my female brain would never have worked that out.’

  Ouch.

  ‘Sorry,’ she added quickly, fumbling with the slot, ‘I’m feeling so ropey today. I haven’t drunk like that since … well, our last date, in fact.’

  Even with her dainty hand, it took quite a few attempts to slot the coin into position.

  ‘You reckon you could do it with gloves on, in the dark?’

  ‘Maybe with a torch.’

  ‘Think about Bernie’s big meaty hands.’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, pointing out the glass section above the front door, ‘anyone passing sees torchlight, they might think burglary and call the cops. He’d want to get the house lights on ASAP. So he rummages around for fifty pence. He probably has to take his gloves off just to get his giant hand into his pocket.’

  ‘The thing is we dusted the meter, Donal. It’s clean.’

  ‘What if he slotted a 50p coin into the meter with his bare hand, then put his glove back on? I know it’s a long shot but it’s not beyond the bounds of reason, is it? All we need to find is a single print to place him here. There’s a phone number for the electricity people on the box. I’m sure they can come out and unlock it.’

  She nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll call the office right away. If this works … well, I’ll be almost suspicious …’

  ‘Like I said, the blackout at yours got me thinking. Then I had that nightmare when my ears felt on fire. It happens sometimes when I’m focussed on a case. I have weird dreams about it.’

  I stopped right there, on the threshold to my secret Twilight Zone. I’d treated her to enough of my inner turmoil for one twenty-four-hour spell. I reminded myself: what goes on inside my head concerns only me. Look at all the trouble blabbing about it caused last time round. Time to change tack …

  ‘So at least our unscheduled blackout wasn’t a complete disaster then!’

  She exhaled pointedly. ‘Look, Donal, it wasn’t you, honestly. I got such a shock when the lights went off, I thought immediately of Matthew. I knew he’d freak out. Then your hands suddenly … they were so cold. It was all just a bit of a shock.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Zoe, I …’

  She raised her palm, indicating that I should shut up.

  ‘I used to go all in, you know, Donal, holding nothing back. But I’ve been burned badly, twice actually. Now I’ve got to make sure I’m doing what’s right by Matthew too. But I want things to work out between us. I really do.’

  ‘I must take you to more murder scenes.’ I smiled. ‘It seems to bring out the romantic in you.’

  ‘Is it some sort of a tic of yours –’ she mock-frowned ‘– having to ruin any moment that even threatens to get deep or meaningful?’

  ‘I really want things to work out between us too, Zoe, which is why I’m going to leave now. It’s called getting out on top.’

  ‘And I can’t believe you’re not hungover,’ she called after me. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

  Chapter 30

  Woodberry Down Estate, North London

  Saturday, April 10, 1993; 13.30

  I skipped down Ennerdale House’s makeshift concrete urinal in record time, feeling giddy, light and unstoppable. Zoe had seen me at my very worst and not dumped me.

  My God, maybe I can tell her everything! Maybe she’ll understand!

  The estate’s basketball courts heaved, the thudding of balls and squealing of trainers sounding like a massacre at a school for mice. A car alarm’s shrill whistle pinged about the tired old tower blocks, like the yelps of a seagull strapped to a high-speed propeller. A souped-up, blacked-out Ford escort growled past, its drum ’n’ bass heart spreading Kiss FM and fresh defiance.

  As I got close to my car, two large men in dark clothes appeared. One leaned against my driver’s door while the other walked towards me.

  ‘Donal Lynch?’

  ‘Not me,’ I said, veering sharply to my left and taking a route between two rows of parked cars.

  The car leaner read it well, heading me off where the final two vehicles stood off, face to face, like duelling cowboys.

  So did we …

  Behind him, a large, blacked-out jeep pulled up. The back door ghosted open.

  ‘Get in,’ his strong Dublin accent insisted, and I found myself hoping to God this was the IRA. At least I had some leverage with the boyos.

  But the acid sizzling my gut told me these were Jimmy Reilly’s grunts, and that he’d dreamed up something diabolical for them to do to me today.

  ‘Shove up,’ said the Dubliner, forcing me to arse-shuffle towards a dead-eyed Eastern European. />
  Dubliner slammed the door shut behind him, but it made no sound. The jeep sped off in total silence.

  The first emotion to penetrate my numb shock was sheer disbelief. I had been abducted, in broad daylight. What the fuck were these men going to do to me?

  Real terror kicked in now, sending blood gushing to my temples so that they throbbed hard. My heart felt like a midget on a pogo stick. My icy back cried hot tears.

  We raced through Camden, down the warehouse wasteland of York Way towards King’s Cross. I recognised the desolate spot where Valerie Gillespie got a hammering from those crack-crazed street cats.

  My vision flashes white. I see a bath full of blood. Valerie’s left leg surfaces, on its own. Then her right leg. Then her arms and those ridiculous fake tits. The arms and legs all bob off in different directions. Then a face emerges from the brown red water.

  My dead face …

  My head reeled and span, no longer connected to my nervous system. Every bone in my body turned to liquid so that I flopped in the seat like a corpse, but full alert. Lucid.

  ‘Stop fucking messing,’ said the Dubliner, unwinding his window.

  ‘I think he’s having some sort of seizure,’ he told the car.

  ‘Maybe he’s an epi,’ said the driver.

  ‘Epis shake, don’t they? This fucker looks like he’s passed out, except his eyes are open.’

  ‘Sounds like one of your sexual conquests, Sean, you know, after you’ve slipped her a roofie,’ quipped the driver.

  They all laughed.

  ‘You’d better fuck him while he’s still quivering.’

  They all laughed harder.

  ‘We’d better not spoil Jimmy’s fun,’ said Bernie. ‘Give him a slap.’

  Mulletski didn’t need to be told twice. Bang. Helplessly, I keeled over face first into the Dubliner’s lap.

  ‘Get off me, ye fuckin’ freak,’ he roared, hauling me back upright. I felt myself loll then face-plant forward, my forehead bouncing spectacularly off the leather console between the front seats.

  ‘Jesus,’ yelped Bernie, triggering another round of callous laughter.

  ‘Fuck it, leave him there,’ he said.

  After a minute or so, my feet tingled. Feeling rose slowly up through me like life-affirming sap. Once it passes, a cataplectic attack has the curious effect of rendering me totally relaxed, an eerie calm after the neurological storm.

  I looked up to see us crawling along Regent Street. They were taking me to the Florentine. Shit.

  The jeep turned right into the fringes of Mayfair, zigzagged through a series of impossibly twee narrow streets before pulling up at a fearsome and opaque security gate. The driver tapped in a number and the metal wall retreated ceremonially, in total silence. The jeep pulled up again in a yard the size of two tennis courts. The Dubliner helped me out. The first thing I spotted was a red Bentley with the plate JDR 14. His fourteenth car? His fourteenth murder victim? Whatever it meant, Jimmy Reilly was waiting inside. For me.

  Bernie invited me to walk ahead of him towards an ominously plain black door. My footsteps echoed around the high brick walls that surrounded us on all sides, bringing to mind a prison yard. The only difference being I couldn’t see a single window or door other than the one directly ahead of us. The only hint of outside world came courtesy of a three-foot-wide section of mesh fence between the yard and an alleyway to the side of the club. Had it really been just a week since I’d clobbered Slob and fled into that rat run?

  Bernie tapped a six-digit number into a metal box, pushed the black door open and nodded me in.

  ‘Where are the dogs?’ I asked, remembering the German Shepherds he’d been comforting during the evacuation.

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘Somewhere they’ll get treated right.’

  I walked in as he hit a switch. Piss-green fluorescents blinked on sleepily, revealing a long, ominous hallway.

  ‘What’s going to happen to me? I asked flatly, neither feeling nor showing fear.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bernie.

  ‘Do you enjoy working for a psychopath, Bernie? You seem too civilised to me.’

  He looked at me like a wounded bear.

  ‘I used to have to crack heads in Basildon, Donal. Trust me, I feel like the Fresh Prince of fucking Bel Air.’

  He led me past a row of dressing rooms.

  ‘You’re not happy about what he did to Liz though, are you, Bernie?’

  He stopped at another security door.

  ‘Take your clothes off.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. Down to your kecks. He’s desperate to fuck an Irish boy.’

  ‘He’d have to kill me first.’

  ‘I’m kidding. He’s paranoid about bugs. Get on with it. He’s waiting.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’

  As each item hit the floor, he picked it up and patted it down.

  ‘I don’t walk around permanently wired, Bernie. How did you know where to find me today?’

  As if to answer my question, he whipped my mobile phone out of my jacket pocket, checked who I’d called and slid off the battery.

  ‘You can’t trace a mobile phone when it has no power,’ he said.

  He tapped six digits into the security pad and the door clicked.

  ‘You’re on your own from here,’ he said. ‘Good luck.’

  I walked into the pitch-black nightclub. What now? Where was he? My eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. The space seemed smaller with no one in it. I walked past the spot where Fintan and I had sat, then down those two steps to the blood-red terrazzo floor and the glass stage.

  ‘So glad you could make it,’ came a hoarse cockney voice to my right. I turned and peered into the shadows. I couldn’t see anyone.

  A sudden thud overhead made me jump. I looked up as a spotlight pinged on. More dull thuds followed as, one by one, the house lights flickered on, scoring my sight. I squinted, but not enough to defend my eyes from a swirling disco searchlight’s direct hit, forcing me to briefly scrunch my eyes shut.

  Bobby Darin’s ‘Mack the Knife’ kicked in, that upbeat tribute to a violent, serial-killing pimp. Good God, was Reilly modelling himself on a mythical villain?

  I turned back to where the voice came from. No one there.

  Something pressed against my back, making me jump fully six inches in the air.

  ‘Which version do you like best?’ rasped the cockney voice in my ear, ‘Bobby Darin or Sinatra?’

  ‘Bobby Darin, every time,’ I said, my voice high and dry.

  ‘Good boy. I love Sinatra but he fackin’ murdered some songs, didn’t he? Like “Fly Me To The Moon”. Julie London does a lovely job on that, doesn’t she? Sinatra’s is awful. “Mrs Robinson”, “Downtown”, “The Impossible Dream” … he facked ’em all up, didn’t he?’

  I clenched everything in preparation for the song’s ending. I dreaded to think what he had planned for me. A beating? Worse?

  Surely he can’t … I’m a serving policeman.

  The song ended. Silence never sounded so sinister, or deafening.

  ‘Of course, the German original is so much darker,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the arson deaths of seven kids and the rape of a widow. But here in dear old England, popular culture has to be a watered down version of middle-class culture, doesn’t it? We water everything down, don’t we? From our beer to our fackin’ nursery rhymes.’ Suddenly he bellowed, ‘To the bridge,’ making me jump again.

  I followed him out to the foyer, up that spiral metal staircase, to the right and through a heavy oak door. He moved swiftly, light on his feet, Jimmy the cat.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he commanded. ‘Have a drink.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  He walked over to a drinks cabinet, grabbed a tumbler and buried it noisily into a bucket of ice. As he selected a Scotch, I took a quick scan of his bird’s nest. To my right, a glass wall overlooked the dance floor. In front of me, his an
tique, leather-bound desk fronted that ornate drinks cabinet and an enormous steel safe. Behind me, a bank of CCTV screens flickered behind a microphone and a joystick. To my left, a life-size portrait of the Marquis de Sade had been painted directly onto the wall. Beside it, a fish tank built into the wall appeared to stretch back forever. Next to that, a cabinet heaved with boxing trophies and memorabilia. Fine liquor, voyeurism, sadism and the sweet science were clearly the mainstays of his existence. Here in his own fiefdom of decadence, I guessed he could engage in all four at the same time.

  With his slicked-back, shoulder-length grey hair, bolt upright posture and fine features, Jimmy had the raffish look of an aristocratic pervert like de Sade, or a leading barrister. Everything about him seemed coiffed, controlled and precise which, in my experience, masks a chaotic and chronically unfulfilled inner life. Of one thing I felt instantly certain: Jimmy couldn’t get no satisfaction. Ever.

  Only his voice undermined his otherwise studiously upmarket image. He wheezed like a toothless old Billingsgate fishmonger.

  He turned to find me inspecting the de Sade portrait.

  ‘Educated by Jesuits,’ he said.

  ‘No wonder he was a pervert.’

  ‘First person I ever gave a hiding to was a Christian Brother.’ He cackled. ‘Lord have mercy on the dirty old bastard.’

  ‘Well, at least they gave you a good education,’ I said.

  He glowered.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I bet you could’ve gone to university, had you chosen that path?’

  ‘Had I chosen that path?’ he repeated, his voice cutting now, drenched in menace. ‘Had I chosen that path? That’s the trouble with your generation. You don’t know what real fackin’ poverty is. Chosen that path? My mum had to perform abortions in our fackin’ shed so we didn’t starve, so don’t talk to me about fackin’ paths, you middle-class cant.’

  I needed to calm him down, and decided that the best way would be to remind him of the grave folly of abducting a cop.

  ‘I’m on duty right now,’ I stated. ‘My boss, a detective super, will be trying to contact me.’

  ‘No one forced you into that motor, did they? I invited you here and you agreed to come. End of.’