Dance With the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)

Postscript (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue (#u8c4e256d-a360-58f7-b0a3-8ef9eed9a2c4)

Let’s get one thing straight – I’m not a ‘psychic cop’. I can’t predict the future. God knows if I could, I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in right now.

Nor do I possess some macabre ability to contact the dead, and I feel nothing but contempt for those chancers who claim that they can. You know who you are … psychics, mediums, men of the cloth.

But something’s not right. Every time I get close to the body of a murder victim, they appear to me in the middle of the night. I’d like to say they turn up in my dreams. That would neatly explain it away. But they don’t. They appear when I’m awake, and engage with me. At first, it scared me half to death. Until I realised they were trying to tell me something.

They’re always trying to tell me something.

It’s got to be my subconscious mind, right? Presenting clues to me in a novel fashion? To a devout sceptic like me, anything else is unthinkable.

I told three people about my ‘visits’ from the other side. My brother thought I’d ‘lost it’. My shrink almost destroyed my fledgling cop career. My ex-girlfriend tried to kill me.

So I’m not telling anyone else. If this cursed ‘gift’ helps me crack more murder cases, then I’ll reap that benefit in secret.

No one else needs to know about my occasional Dance with the Dead.

Chapter 1 (#u8c4e256d-a360-58f7-b0a3-8ef9eed9a2c4)

Manor House, North London

Saturday, April 10, 1993; 13.30

The Woodberry housing 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 lied, 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.