Games with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller

‘These people always deny it. You’ve got no idea how many politicians and people in power have got away with affairs because they denied it and we couldn’t categorically prove it. We learned our lesson.’

‘What does it matter that someone’s had an affair? Maybe it was just sex. Or they made a mistake. Don’t you worry about destroying families?’

I’m surprised at the raw emotion in my voice. The last thing I want is Fintan twigging about Zoe’s affair. He might joyously choke from the satisfaction. Luckily, he’s in full lecture mode so doesn’t notice.

‘Hang on, Donal. These are the same Tory politicians who launched moral crusades against single mothers and the press. David Mellor told us we were drinking in the last-chance saloon and threatened privacy laws; we catch him shagging a MAW.’

‘A what?’

‘Model-Actress-Whatever. John Major lectures the nation about morals and getting “Back to Basics” and we expose half his married Cabinet playing away. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s at it.’

‘And, of course, journalists never have affairs.’

‘You know what, Donal? I think everyone has affairs. Monogamy is against our nature. Look at the closest relatives to humans, bonobos. They live in peaceful communes and shag like rabbits. That’s what humans were like for millions of years until society evolved this idea of sexual incarceration.’

I hear my voice creak in emotional protest. ‘Monogamy isn’t always enforced. Some people like the security and the trust. What’s wrong with that?’

‘If we accepted that humans can’t be monogamous, then there wouldn’t be this sense of betrayal by the “wronged” party. That’s what causes all the divorce and strife, someone playing the victim. Anyway, why the hell are we talking about this now? We’ve got to go and shout for whoever’s playing Germany.’

For some reason, the only major international country without a professional soccer league has been awarded the 1994 World Cup. As Fintan puts it: ‘Yanks just don’t get soccer, the way I don’t get fishing, unless I can catch a shark every five minutes.’

On the plus side, the Republic of Ireland has qualified. And the opening ceremony provides unexpected joy when Oprah Winfrey falls off stage and a lip-synching Diana Ross fails to kick a ball ten-feet into an empty goal. ‘Are you watching, Tommy Coyne?’ we chant in delight.

We shout for Bolivia as they lose to Germany. We roar on South Korea as they go 2-0 down to Spain. Then, out of nowhere, South Korea score two late goals and the pub erupts. ‘I doubt they’re this fucking ecstatic in Seoul,’ shouts Fintan.

I can’t face Zoe tonight. But I haven’t got the energy to tell Fintan the truth.

‘She’ll be on the warpath if I come home like this. Can I kip at yours?’

‘Any time,’ says Fintan. ‘You need to show her that you’re still your own man.’

‘God, you really are like something out of The Quiet Man.’

We stumble outside and head for the mini-cab office.

‘Are you sure we should just abandon Jamie’s eighty-grand Porsche outside a pub?’ I ask.

‘What Irish person would be caught dead in a sports car?’ he says. ‘We’re just not like that. Anyway, I doubt if Houdini himself could get in through those welds.’

As we follow the cab driver across the car park, I think suddenly of Nathan Barry – the bailiff Edwina had mentioned to me who’d been axed to death behind a pub in East Croydon. I ask Fintan what he knows about the case.

‘I know the guy who led the investigation.’

‘Will he talk?’

Fintan laughs: ‘Try to stop him! What’s so interesting about the Barry case?’

‘We got information that it might be connected to Julie Draper,’ I say flatly, failing to add that the sole source is one of my rabid, booze-fuelled dreams.

‘Really? How?’

‘I don’t know, but I said I’d check it out.’

‘I’ll text him in the morning. See if he’s up for a meet.’

‘What’s your take on it?’

‘My take? Donal everyone knows who murdered Nathan Barry. And so should you. The police just haven’t been able to prove it.’

Chapter 10 (#ulink_244c8531-dd2d-50c1-985c-92de9d9245c2)

Coombe Road, Croydon

Saturday, June 18, 1994; 11.00

Still not so much as a text from the Kidnap Unit, technically my current employer. I wish to God they’d get on with stitching me up over Julie Draper. There is truly no punishment worse than waiting for punishment.

DI Adrian Lambert insists on meeting us at the Nathan Barry murder scene, right away. Later today, Fintan has an errant Tory MP to ‘front up’ in that neck of the woods, so we bomb down together, spit-roasting in the welded Porsche.

‘Inspector Lambert is somewhat obsessed,’ warns Fintan. ‘Failing to get a collar for this Nathan Barry murder stalled his career. It’s now been investigated three times and they still can’t make it stick.’

‘Who do they think did it?’

‘You’re better off keeping an open mind. You’ll be the only police officer who’s done so since about day two.’

DI Lambert’s pacing the car park as we pull in. He’s slight, a little hunched with a long nose. ‘Oh and he’s Welsh, so he gets very animated,’ warns Fintan. Lambert looks gaunt, nervous. His face seems too red, his hair too black, styled in a disturbing Hitler-Youth undercut, making him look like an emaciated Barry Humphries.

We race through formalities, then I explain my mission; to see if there’s any connection between this case and the murder of Julie Draper. Lambert looks surprised. It’s the first he’s heard of it.

‘It’s the first anyone’s heard of it, Guv,’ I smile. ‘And I’d like to keep it that way.’

‘Understood. I hear Kipper sent a note yesterday threatening to take a child next time,’ he says.

‘You buy the whole Kipper theory then?’ asks Fintan.

‘I don’t know squat about that case,’ says Lambert, strolling over to a corner of the car park. ‘But I know everything there is to know about this one. So, six years ago, April 3, 1988, about 9.30pm, a pub regular drove into the car park and saw Nathan Barry lying here, on his back, with an axe embedded in the left side of his face, right up to the hilt.

‘The pathologist is in no doubt that he was effectively executed. He’d suffered three axe wounds to the head, each one would’ve been sufficient to kill him. The final blow was delivered by a backhand motion as he lay on his back, the axe penetrating four inches into his brain. The coroner had quite a job removing it. Whoever attacked him meant to kill him.

‘The pathologist believes the attacker sneaked up on Nathan from behind, was less than five foot eight inches tall and left-handed.

‘It was a common Taiwanese-made domestic axe, which could’ve been bought in any number of places and had no serial number. Elastoplast had been wrapped around the handle to ensure we couldn’t take any prints off it. And it had been sharpened for the job. The paramedics who treated him found a few hundred quid in cash in his left-hand trouser pocket, so it wasn’t a robbery.

‘The first CID officer on the scene sealed off the car park and uniform officers took statements from everyone inside the pub.

‘Forensics struggled to take prints off Nathan’s car or any others in the car park. It was a cold, frosty night which is a nightmare for them. Last year, they found trace DNA on the axe but the sample is too minute to process.

‘We got a lot of criticism for failing to seize glasses and ashtrays from inside the pub for prints or DNA analysis, to check if a known offender had been drinking here that evening. My argument is that whoever killed Nathan had been waiting outside in the car park and had never set foot in the pub. Why would he risk being seen?’