Dance With the Dead

by James Nally

  Still no sign of Tammy. A horrible realisation suddenly seized me. Shep had treated her appallingly. Her ‘no show’ tonight would be perfect, sweet revenge. What if she’d tipped Jimmy off, to earn a reprieve? She wanted Tammy to ‘go out with a bang’; that would plant a bomb under all our careers.

  My guts yanked and kinked to breaking. I had to do something, so I shot up and went for a walk.

  As soon as my feet touched terrazzo, my eyes seized upon the last person I expected to see here. She looked directly down at me from the glass stage, her cold blue eyes blinking once to focus.

  ‘Holy shit,’ I said out loud, turning and scampering back to our table.

  ‘Fintan, listen to me, we’ve got to get out of here, right now. My cover’s blown.’

  ‘Behave yourself,’ Fintan hissed, jabbing his finger towards my button bug. ‘We don’t want the cavalry charging in now and blowing the whole operation. Calm down and tell me what’s happened?’

  ‘The girl on the stage, the blonde, she knows me.’

  ‘How well?’

  ‘I met her once. But I could tell she just recognised me. She almost stopped dancing.’

  ‘Hang on,’ he said, turning to his hired admirers. ‘Girls, would you say my friend here has a memorable face? Be honest now or you won’t be getting that discount we discussed.’

  They both shook their heads and giggled.

  ‘Thanks for your brutal honesty,’ he smiled.

  ‘See, Donal? To paraphrase dear old Nat King Cole, you’re forgettable, that’s what you are. So forgettable, whether near or far.’

  ‘She’s the assistant at Hornsey Mortuary. She briefed me about Liz Little’s post-mortem.’

  ‘Oh my God. That’s Erika the Viking?’

  We stared in mutual disbelief as realisations rained in like mortar fire.

  ‘She must’ve supplied Reilly with Valerie Gillespie’s hair,’ he said slowly, wide-eyed.

  ‘And tipped them off about the weird battery-insertion MO. They knew that by doing the same to Liz and Georgie, we’d link all three.’

  Fintan shook his head. ‘I wonder what else she’s done for Reilly? Having a mortuary at her disposal … it’s perfect.’

  I suddenly remembered Valerie’s visit to me that night. Her appearance had proved crucial, leading me to Conlon’s fingerprint. I couldn’t understood how she’d reached me. I’d never been anywhere near her dead body. She’d been cremated several weeks earlier. Now I understood. That same day, I’d attended Hornsey mortuary; I’d been close to her body after all.

  ‘Oh my God, she must have kept Valerie’s head,’ I gasped. ‘She told me that she signed out Valerie’s body herself, in a closed casket. But who would’ve checked inside? No one.’

  Fintan put a hand on my arm. ‘We have to assume she didn’t recognise you just now, Donal, or can’t quite place you. We can’t abandon Tammy, or Bernie for that matter. Don’t go walkabout again and keep your head down. I’ll go and see if I can find Tammy.’

  It felt perverse sitting with my back to the stage, cringing at the prospect of a tap on the shoulder from a bouncer, Jimmy Reilly or Erika herself. It began to sink in just how effortlessly she’d been playing us, all along.

  She must have recognised the criminal potential of Valerie’s distinctive hair right away. The head had already been severed, so she kept it refrigerated in a place where it wouldn’t be found. With other needles … How difficult can it be to hide a body part in a busy mortuary? Even a head?

  She ripped the hair out violently, so we’d assume it had been forcibly removed during her murder.

  She tried to credit Edwina with identifying Valerie’s hair, to deflect attention.

  She deliberately didn’t tell me about Liz’s perimortem coccyx injury because she knew it made the battery insertion look staged, like an afterthought.

  I remembered Edwina’s gushing tribute: Erika has struck again …

  How dogged she’d been to discover Valerie’s hair amid the dog waste at Georgie Bell’s murder. I scolded myself for not picking up on even one of her suspiciously impressive ‘breakthroughs’.

  ‘Hi,’ boomed Tammy, acting her little heart out to make it seem like she didn’t hate my guts.

  ‘Hi, Tammy. How have you been?’

  ‘You don’t have to act sheepish, Donal. It’s okay. Tammy’s going out with a bang after all, just how I wanted her to.’

  ‘I don’t want you bullied into anything …’

  ‘That bastard Shep found out my visa’s expired, so I’m heading home. They dropped the charges after I agreed to go through with this first.’

  ‘Are you okay with it?’

  ‘What does it matter? It is what it is. I’ll survive. At least you didn’t rat me out to Jimmy or one of his bent cops. For that I should be grateful, especially after what he did to Liz and Georgie. Okay, order a bottle of Dom Perignon? I’ll point out the four IT girls and then we leave this place for the last time, all captured in glorious technicolour CCTV.’

  ‘Dom Perignon it is,’ I smiled, ‘you fancy a fifty-quid bowl of soggy oven chips with that?’

  ‘Hell, yeah!’

  Chapter 43

  Conduit Street, Central London

  Thursday, April 15, 1993; 09.00

  Fintan, Shep and I scrummed down in headphones for our second live broadcast of the week, this time transmitted to our blacked-out van on Conduit Street, courtesy of Bernard Moss’s wire.

  Shep had outlined stage two of Operation Tammy to the three of us at dawn. ‘Okay, Bernie, you show Jimmy the CCTV footage of Tammy and Donal deep in conversation last night, then you need to achieve just one more thing. Get him to offer you money to either whack Tammy yourself or to get her whacked. Then we can charge him with conspiracy to murder,’ he said. ‘Don’t lead, don’t put words into his mouth. He has to say it. As soon as he does and you leave the building, we go in. Any questions?’

  Bernie had just one. ‘What happens if he smells a rat?’

  ‘The three of us will be listening in as it happens. I’ve got a radio link to two armed units ready to move in on my order.’

  Bernie didn’t need any further instruction. He had that raw, instinctive smart that you just can’t teach.

  He walked in and got straight down to business, cool as a breeze.

  ‘Boss, I need to talk to you. That cop turned up again last night, the one you had a word with on Saturday. DC Lynch.’

  ‘What, that fat little Irish cant? What the fack is he playing at?’

  I baulked. ‘I’m not fat!’

  ‘Ah now, you have piled on a few pounds recently,’ said Fintan.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not fat.’

  ‘Shut up,’ barked Shep.

  Bernie didn’t rush to fill the silences … what a pro.

  ‘He turned up with his brother again, the Sunday News reporter,’ Bernie continued, ‘I kept an eye on which girls they spoke to. I think I’ve finally figured out who gave him that list of names.’

  ‘About fackin’ time too.’

  ‘The cop, Donal, spent about twenty minutes talking to one of our girls called Tammy. She’s a yank, she’d been quite chummy with Liz Little.’

  ‘Ah, poor Liz. Brave as a lioness. Remind me, which one is Tammy?’

  ‘Loud. Cocky. Massive mouth.’

  ‘That could be any fackin’ American, Bernie.’

  ‘I’ve pulled the CCTV so you can see them together. Here, I’ll set it up.’

  Nerves nibbled away at the inside of my skin, like Jimmy’s piranhas.

  ‘I was watching them from the VIP lounge,’ said Bernie. ‘See the way she’s pointing. She’s picking out the other four girls on the list.’

  ‘You absolutely certain, Bernie?’

  ‘One hundred per cent boss.’

  ‘Look at the state of him!’ said Jimmy. ‘He’s hammered.’ His guffaw took hold deep in his chest until he laughed and coughed simultaneously, like a tumble dryer churning a half-load of phlegm
.

  ‘Very thorough, Bernie,’ he stated, dead serious now. ‘What are you gonna do about it?’

  ‘I was gonna ask you boss. How should we play it?’

  ‘What would you do in my shoes, Bernie?’

  ‘I’m not in your shoes, Jimmy.’

  ‘Don’t play silly buggers with me, Bernie. I know you got soft on that Liz girl, you silly cant. Did you really think an ape like you stood a chance with a classy piece of bottle like that?’

  His phlegmy laugh sounded forced now, as if dredging up some deeply buried rage.

  ‘Now, what’s the one thing we can’t have in this team?’ he rasped, in a pitch I recognised from our terrifying face-to-face. ‘A fackin’ grass, Bernie. A fackin’ rat fackin’ everything up. I can’t have it. On my daughter’s life, I’m fackin’ dealing with it myself. I’m the cant. Yeah? I’m the cant. You know what I mean, Bernie.’

  A sharp inhalation sounded like a primeval, inward scream.

  ‘I know. You fackin’ talked. You grasping cant,’ chanted Jimmy to Bernie’s staccato yelps.

  ‘Better get in there,’ I called.

  Shep stared straight ahead, the radio clasped tightly to his heart.

  ‘Shep,’ roared Fintan, ‘Reilly’s killing him.’

  Dull frenzied thuds. Sickening gargles. A breathless rattle.

  ‘All units, move in,’ ordered Shep, finally. ‘Arrest everyone on the premises. Lynch, call an ambulance.’

  Fintan dialled and jabbered, on autopilot.

  ‘My God, you just let him kill Bernie,’ I shouted.

  ‘Well, we’ve got him bang to rights now, haven’t we?’

  ‘You fucking animal.’

  Shep’s eyes recoiled in a blink, wounded. ‘They were never going to put him in witness protection. Not after last year’s overspend. Jesus, I had to beg them to pay for Tammy’s plane ticket.’

  I suddenly recognised what had gone on here.

  ‘My God. You set Bernie up. You made sure Spence found out that Bernie had talked to us, and engineered this whole thing.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he huffed.

  My face burned. ‘You’re no different to Spence. You’re worse than Spence.’

  He sighed. ‘I’m going to call forensics now, get that terrazzo floor ripped up. Shame you can’t be here to see it.’

  He relished my confused reaction, one step ahead as usual.

  ‘Oh, didn’t I mention it?’ He smiled. ‘DS Barrett is expecting you back at your desk at 11. So you’d better fuck off now.’

  Chapter 44

  Irish Midlands

  Sunday, April 18, 1993; 11.00

  ‘What are you planning to spring on him?’ demanded Fintan, speeding us west from Dublin airport.

  ‘Let’s just say Robert Conlon recorded a lot of what went on. Right up until the end. I want Da to talk us through it, because it doesn’t stack up. Someone’s telling big fat porkies.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I’ve got to do the right thing.’

  ‘So you’ll hand these tapes over to the authorities, land your own father in jail, or worse.’

  ‘He used us to get to a man who he then had murdered, or murdered himself. Are you telling me you’re comfortable with that?’

  ‘Oh, and what a great loss to society Robert Conlon is.’

  ‘If it wasn’t Da, what would you do?’

  ‘That’s the whole point though, isn’t it, Donal? Blood is thicker and all that … Don’t forget about Mam in all this. If he gets put away … Jesus, it’d kill her.’

  ‘He should’ve thought about that, shouldn’t he?’

  But he’d needled my weak spot, of course. Poor Mam.

  As we stewed in silence, I let the words of all those who had brought us here ferment in my mind.

  Don’t worry, in an exercise like this, the truth is merely the starting point …

  If you look at anything closely enough, for long enough, you’ll find its dirty little secret …

  There’s always a bigger play, Lynch. Always. Remember that …

  We didn’t speak again until he pulled up outside our home. Fintan turned and grabbed my upper arm, hard.

  ‘Just make sure you consider Mam in all this,’ he said. ‘Don’t rip this family apart.’

  As soon as our feet hit gravel, Da opened the front door. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘shall we get this over with?’

  He led us through to the kitchen and sat at the head of the table. He seemed younger, fresher. At peace. Could this relaxed, middle-aged man in achingly cheerful golf-themed leisure wear really be a cold-blooded murderer?

  I had a sudden flashback to Bernie earlier this week, spewing like a ruptured dam. Had part of Da secretly yearned for this moment, for total and utter cathartic release? After decades of clamming up, shutting down, treading mine-laden eggshells, did he now relish the prospect of opening up that steaming, sweating valve, and letting it all go.

  ‘Why is Mam above in Mullingar?’ I began.

  ‘I had to get her out of the way,’ said Da. ‘You two can throw anything you like at me but I’ll tell you one thing now, I’d never let any harm come to that woman. Ever.’

  ‘We know that,’ said Fintan.

  Da charged on: ‘I couldn’t know what Conlon was capable of, and people were harassing the shit out of me, day and night, about this footage. I had spooks following us, watching outside, even breaking into the house when I wasn’t here, emptying my office just to freak me out. Of course, she’d cottoned on to it. She knew something was seriously wrong and she wanted to do something about it. Unfortunately, this made her a danger to herself.

  ‘I wanted to guarantee her safety, no matter what happened to me. I didn’t know what to do. Then Pat Harnett had the idea of switching her medication for placebos. After about a week, she asked to go into the hospital. I’ll tell you now, the moment they took her in, I stopped worrying. I knew no one could get to her there and I cried out of relief. Okay?’

  He breathed hard, focussing on one spot on the table, hauling back his composure.

  ‘Look,’ he said, strong again, ‘I don’t give a shit about what happens to me, right? I chose this life. But that woman is a saint. I thought I was going to die and all I wanted was to know she’d be okay. I’d die happily enough then. I don’t expect either of you to understand that.’

  He surveyed us now, bitterly. ‘Sure how could ye? Neither of ye has a clue about anything.’

  Fintan’s eyes blinked in wounded shock. I’d heard it all before. But this was my rodeo so I reclaimed the chair.

  ‘You never were very domesticated, Da,’ I began, rummaging in my bag for Conlon’s Dictaphone. ‘You forgot to press the “start” button on that washing machine in Paddington. I found this in Conlon’s jacket pocket. I’ve edited it down to the most significant parts, otherwise we’d be here for days.’

  Martin Lynch’s eyes didn’t even flicker. Fintan’s looked set to topple out onto the table.

  I pressed play.

  CONLON: Why are you stalling on me, John? I’ve fulfilled my side of the bargain. I want my package now.

  JOHN KNOX, SPECIAL BRANCH: You’ll get your package, Bob. It’s taking a few days to sort out, that’s all. It’s not like we have great wads of cash and empty houses sitting abroad waiting for occasions like this. I need to get it signed off, and there are layers of bureaucracy. You know what it’s like.’

  I turned it off.

  ‘Conlon had already handed over the footage to Special Branch,’ I said. ‘They’d promised him a house abroad, a pay off.’

  Da sniffed.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said, looking me directly in the eye. ‘I swear to you on my mother’s grave. Not until the end, anyway. I told ye the truth that night. Conor sent me over to appeal to him personally, to beg.’

  I pressed play.

  CONLON: You said all that yesterday, John. I’ve kept a copy, you know? I’ll release it to the media
if you don’t give me my fucking package. That’ll fuck you all up.

  KNOX: Bob, please. We’re so close to sorting it all out. If you release it to the media, you’re left with no leverage at all. And you’ll fuck everything up. Come on, we’ve put you in a safe house. We’ve pulled the cops off, which had to go to ministerial level. That shows how committed we are to you.

  CONLON: You’re hoping I get shot, aren’t you? Then you won’t have to pay me a penny.

  KNOX: You’ve got to trust me, Bob, after all we’ve been through over the years. How long have I had your back now? Twenty fucking years. Does that count for nothing?

  Click.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ gasped Da, his gaze seeking out anywhere but here, his brain in spasm, unable to cope.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he added as the impact kicked in, first bowing his head then clasping it in both palms.

  I decided to editorialise. ‘John Knox spent fifteen years in the north, working for the Force Research Unit, a shady military intelligence outfit that actively recruited, or should that be blackmailed IRA members to become spies. Bob had been a snout for the Brits since the early seventies. Is that why you set him up to get shot, Da?’

  ‘I did no such thing. I’d no idea he was working for them. No idea at all. As far as I knew, he was trying to shake down Conor for a deal. And Conor was willing to do a deal. But Conlon went cold.’

  I played the next instalment.

  CONLON: I’ve got Michael Lynch calling me every five minutes, wanting to do a deal. My big mistake was trusting ye. What am I supposed to say to him?

  KNOX: He doesn’t know you’ve given it to us. We’re listening in on all his calls. He has no idea. Talk to him, Bob, string him along. You only need to keep it up for another day or so and then we’ll have you on that plane.

  Da piped up first. ‘You heard the man. I’d no idea he’d handed the footage over to the Brits, or that he was working for them all along. Why would I have bothered chasing him had I known that? It was all about the footage for me. I’d no other agenda.’