Dance With the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller

‘Excuse me, sir?’ came the gruff Soviet-baddie command and I leapt fully four inches off the red carpet. I landed but my heart remained lodged somewhere around my Adam’s apple, beating so hard that I couldn’t speak. I nodded, mouth open, like a halfwit.

‘We will need to see ID, proof of age.’

Fintan turned back, a well-rehearsed picture of surprised innocence, while my mind performed a rapid-fire inventory of everything on my person that proved my 23 years.

‘As you can probably tell, gentlemen,’ Fintan gushed, ‘we’re on a very low-key night out. Neither of us expected this to happen. Though I can tell my 23-year-old friend over there is absolutely thrilled.’

Fintan threw me a look that said: ‘Snap out of it now. TALK!’

‘You are both Irish?’ asked the Russian.

Fintan nodded.

‘Then we require ID for you too,’ he said, his darkening eyes letting Fintan know he wasn’t swallowing any of his old blarney, ‘and we must frisk you.’

‘May I ask why?’ Fintan laughed, a little too desperately.

‘Oh, let me see,’ said Russki, his heavy-lidded, hateful eyes somehow managing to convey both tired boredom and latent violence, ‘last October you blow up Sussex Arms in Covent Garden; last November, Canary Wharf; last December, the city centre of Manchester …’

‘Say no more,’ said Fintan, reaching into an inside jacket pocket and producing his driving licence. Russki barked something at his underlings. One began writing down the licence details while the other introduced Fintan’s inside legs to what looked like a black table tennis bat with lights.

My insides collapsed in horrible realisation. I had only one piece of picture ID on me. And I didn’t want any of these men to know I was a cop.

‘I haven’t brought any ID,’ I announced flatly.

Russki looked at me balefully. ‘Close up, you look older. We just search you.’

‘No need to bother,’ I said, hands-up, taking a step back, ‘I can go home and get it, be back in half an hour.’

I took another baby step back and trod on a foot. I turned to apologise, only to nuzzle a great wall of chest belonging to another bouncer – and he wasn’t moving.

‘I’m sure you have nothing to hide from our friend Yulian,’ said Russki with a smile. ‘We do a quick search, you go in.’

My eyes locked onto Fintan’s, relaying the bad news. Through some inexplicable sibling sympatico, he read it instantly.

‘Hang on one minute there,’ he piped up. ‘If he says he wants to go, then he’s free to go. And after this harassment, I’m leaving too.’

Russki’s enormous left hand reached out to Fintan’s chest, shutting him down. Yulian palmed mine like a zombie on a first date. He reached into my inside pocket and whipped out my warrant card. He blankly absorbed the contents before handing over to Russki.

‘Why didn’t you tell us you are an officer-of-the-law?’

‘You didn’t ask,’ I said brightly, matter-of-fact.

‘If I know this, I let you straight in. Why you not show me?’

‘Look at the card,’ I said, suddenly emboldened by the memory of a small detail that I never thought would come in handy. ‘It has my name, photo and number. What’s missing?’

Russki surveyed it, his narrowing eyes dragging his brow into a full-on frown.

Suddenly I felt in control. ‘It doesn’t have my date of birth, does it? That’s what you asked me for. ID for proof of age. That doesn’t provide it.’

Russki handed it back to me nodding.

‘I see,’ he said finally.

‘Besides,’ I added, still a move ahead, ‘we’re not encouraged to broadcast the fact we’re cops, especially on a night out. It can put us at unnecessary risk.’

‘When he says we …’ blurted Fintan, ‘I’m not actually a cop of any sort.’

Russki ignored him.

‘You will be safe here tonight, detective,’ he said solemnly, standing aside, ‘I can assure you of that.’

These words sounded about as reassuring as the last rites.

As I walked through, Fintan turned to Russki and said, ‘You do know that every single ounce of Semtex in the world comes from your old Eastern Bloc. Ironic, isn’t it, that it’s now shitting you all up here in London.’

I floated down the ornate staircase on a current of relief, into the carnal-red, cabaret-style club. Fintan quickly caught up, riding a very different wave.

‘Fucking hell,’ he gasped, ‘I can’t believe you brought your warrant card on a job like this. What were you thinking?’

‘I hadn’t planned on showing it to anyone, Fintan. Did you think we’d get searched? Of course you didn’t.’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t bring my press card. I’d never take it with me on a job like this. Because I’m not a fucking idiot.’

‘We could’ve walked away until you opened your big mouth,’ I pointed out.

‘What?’

‘They could smell your bullshit. That’s when they started getting heavy. Until that point, we could’ve turned around and walked off. Instead they made you produce your driving licence.’

‘Yeah, but if you’d shown them your driving licence, instead of your warrant card, we’d be in the clear now. They’d have our names but no idea what we do for a living. Now they know you’re a copper, they’ll be watching our every move. They’re probably on the phone to Reilly right now, as we speak, telling him about you and some other professional busybody turning up at his club.’

We both stopped dead in our tracks. Until now, neither of us had dared to properly acknowledge what we might be getting ourselves into here. Suddenly Jimmy Reilly felt too real, too close.

‘What if Reilly turns up?’ I rasped, ‘Starts asking questions.’

Fintan’s cheek muscle flickered. He squinted to see things clearer in his mind.

‘We’re safe until the first edition lands,’ he said, ‘but when they see my by-line on that story, then our cover is blown. He’ll realise we came here to check him out.’

‘What time does that happen?’

‘The first batch lands at King’s Cross around midnight. That gives us almost two hours. But we need to be out of here literally on the stroke of 12.’

‘I’ll come and find you Cinders,’ I said.

‘No, you won’t,’ he muttered, ‘we leave separately, and not the way we came in.’