Games with the Dead

by James Nally

  ‘There must be records somewhere?’

  ‘He used to do a lot of the bailiff work with a young freelance guy called Danny Bremner. He lives with his mum near Oval; I think her name is Doris or Dorothy. He can give you chapter and verse.’

  John leans forward, plants his elbows meaningfully on the table. ‘The thing is, Donal, I don’t have a violent bone in my body. Yet I’ve been repeatedly arrested, interrogated and publicly accused of Nathan’s murder for the past six years. Yet you’ve got all these bad men out there, gangsters, drug dealers, wife beaters, who’ve never even been looked at properly. If you want to become famous as the detective who cracked the Nathan Barry case, get after them. Now let’s go and see Gary Warner.’

  Chapter 18

  The Harp Bar, Croydon, South London

  Monday, June 20, 1994; 12.00

  The musical instrument the harp dates back 5,500 years to the first urban civilisation of Southern Mesopotamia. Judging by its exterior, the Harp Bar in West Croydon couldn’t have been far behind.

  Scary, condemned and covered in bad graffiti, and that’s just the Monday midday clientele. Holding court amid the tattoo soup at the bar, two oafish crew cuts stop dead at the sight of me and my affable-but-possibly-murderous Oompa Loompas.

  They exchange some curious code of nods and grunts, then Delaney escorts me to a table in the most remote corner.

  ‘What are you drinking, Donal?’

  ‘Cooking lager, thanks.’

  ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. Not here. You’ll be shitting through the eye of a needle for a week. Try a cask ale. They can’t poison that.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip.’

  Phil Ware seems to know everyone at the bar, but that’s no surprise. Until recently, Met detectives received a booze allowance to frequent dives like this, where they’d bilk underworld intelligence from pissed wannabe villains. Older colleagues describe local ‘faces’ queueing up to spill in return for a top-up. So much for ‘honour among thieves’.

  The crew cuts look too old and podgy for their ‘swiped’ designer brands, favoured by football hooligan ‘casuals’. The older one nods a lot, eases himself off his stool and strides towards me. I work hard not to flinch. Delaney trots behind him urgently with an armful of pints, as if warm ale is the only thing that might stop this guy ripping my head off.

  ‘John tells me you need putting straight,’ he squeaks in a surprisingly high-pitched, almost tearful voice, reminding me of Steve Coogan’s pool supervisor in The Day Today. It’s all I can do not to say: ‘In 1988, someone died …’

  Delaney drops the pints on the table and squeezes in beside me. Phil backs his arse into a chair on the other side. It’s as if they’re buffering me from any sudden violent outbursts. I take a long draw of the warm, soapy liquid and wonder what single quality qualifies it as refreshment.

  ‘I’m just doing my job. Gary, isn’t it?’

  ‘I haven’t carried out any hits myself, you understand,’ he says sarcastically. ‘But I know blokes who do and they’d never take a local job. Never. I mean that’d be stupid.’

  I nod. ‘Of course. So, if you wanted someone whacked, here in Croydon say, how would you go about it?’

  ‘I’d hire one of your lot from Northern Ireland. Plenty of them going freelance right now. He’d want me to carefully select the job site. Despite what the media said at the time, a pub car park is ideal, especially if it’s dark.

  ‘The hitman would wait for the target to bring his car there. As soon as the target goes inside the pub, he’d slash the tyre that’s least exposed to view. When the target comes out and sees the tyre, he’ll bend down to inspect. That’s when the target would get his OBE.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘One behind the ear,’ explains Delaney.

  ‘What if someone witnesses it, or hears the shot?’

  Gary Warner shrugs nonchalantly. ‘He’d use a .22 or .32 revolver, stolen specifically for the job. It doesn’t spit out casings and it makes less noise than a cap gun. It doesn’t matter if he gets seen. Eye witnesses never get the description right. Shock I suppose.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘For a job like this, he’d have flown into Gatwick, rented a car and booked a hotel room at least half an hour from the job site. He’d head back there, stopping on the way to buy a hacksaw and a takeaway.’

  ‘Makes you peckish, does it, knocking someone off?’

  He glares at me with bored contempt. ‘Back in his hotel room, he’d put on his cheap, cotton work gloves and saw his tool into pieces. He’d wrap these pieces in the fast food packaging and chuck each one into a different bin all the way back to the airport. Same with the gloves and hacksaw. By the time hitman returns the rental car, there’s nothing to connect him to the murder. If I ordered a crime like that, to make sure I didn’t get nicked for it, I’d be abroad on holiday at the time getting photographed a lot, know what I mean?’

  A whispering chill flickers the back of my neck like a blowing veil.

  ‘Only a muppet uses an axe,’ declares Gary. ‘Or someone who has lost it, you know, heat-of-the-moment thing and he just grabbed the closest thing at hand. Nathan was a shagger. My bet is Nathan had been followed for a few days by the husband of some tart. He waited in the car park and took his chances.’

  I nod. ‘That’s my bet too. But now you’re all here, we’ve received information that Nathan’s murder is connected to Julie Draper. Any thoughts?’

  ‘First I’ve heard of it,’ says John. Those had been DI Lambert’s exact words.

  Gary leans forward, planting both hands on the table so we’re eye-to-eye.

  ‘You’ve had your time here, copper. If I was you, I’d walk out while your legs still work. And don’t think about coming back, because you won’t be walking out next time. You get me?’

  ‘I get you,’ I say.

  But I’ll have to show my face in here again. I’ve just stuck Fintan’s magic bug, Dusko Pavlov, to the underside of the table.

  Chapter 19

  Vauxhall, South London

  Monday, June 20, 1994; 13.00

  No one at the Cold Case Unit, my regular employer, seems to know I’ve been booted off the Julie Draper investigation, which suits me fine. I can use the unofficial gardening leave to seek out connections between her and Nathan Barry.

  I order up the Nathan case files only to be told I can’t have them.

  ‘The paperwork on that case could fill several rooms,’ explains the records clerk. ‘You’ll have to go into deep storage and find what you need there.’

  ‘Where’s deep storage?’

  ‘Behind Boots on Camden High Street. There’s an underground storage facility there. Just show your warrant card and they’ll provide an index.’

  I squeeze my eyes shut and rack my brains; how could the axe murder of a bailiff outside a sketchy South London pub six years ago be connected to the kidnap and murder of a twenty-four-year-old female estate agent? Apart from the fact they both worked in Croydon, it makes no sense.

  All we know about Julie Draper’s kidnapper is that he selected her at random and exhibited the expertise of someone with inside information, just as the enigmatic Kipper did when he abducted Suzy Fairclough seven years ago. Same modus operandi suggests same offender, which is why the police are convinced it’s Kipper.

  As for Nathan Barry, I now feel much less certain about his killers. John Delaney clearly had the connections to commission a textbook ‘clean hit’ while he could have been abroad with his sun-kissed alibi. I do believe Delaney and DS Phil Ware cooked up a conspiracy the morning after Nathan’s murder; but one designed to protect ‘moonlighting’ cops, not derail the murder investigation.

  For me, the most compelling motive for Delaney to have had Nathan Berry wiped out was the men’s competing affections for Karen Moore. The question is, had she really finished with Nathan Barry, as Delaney claims? If not, did this make Delaney so deranged with jealousy and desire that he carried out th
e ultimate romantic gesture?

  When you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

  It sounds like Karen wouldn’t be the type to appreciate it. But as I’ve learned lately, you never know with women.

  My thoughts turn to Karen’s cuckolded husband, Walter. Did he know his wife had been road-testing two potential replacements? No matter how amicable their split, he must have felt humiliated by her sudden status as West Croydon Lunch Club’s dish-of-the-day. Maybe he resented how flattered she’d felt by the cock-jousting japes of Nathan Barry and John Delaney. Maybe he grew to hate her for encouraging them. He’s got to be a suspect.

  Deep down, part of me hopes Walter did it. Seize the day and slay the bastard who stole your missus. The emasculated part of me constantly fantasises about confronting Charles. I feel a primeval shudder at even the thought of it, and realise with alarm that my wounded, overweening male rage would use whatever might be at hand to hurt the bastard. Moments don’t get any hotter than those. I feel certain, suddenly, that the killer of Nathan Barry must have been an enraged love rival. Somehow, six years later, the same man abducted and murdered Julie Draper. Maybe Fintan is right; her kidnap had been personal. But why? Let’s hope his satanic crime reporter, Alex Pavlovic, is busy unearthing secret enemies and murderous motives in Julie Draper’s personal life. Without that, we’ve got nothing.

  Those bloody fish. That silver block. Why doesn’t Zoe call? What is going on? Has she finished with Charles yet? If not, why not? Does she miss me ever … think of me at all? Surely Matt has noticed I’m gone, after all we’ve been through. How is he coping? Why doesn’t she call?

  The block! The silver-painted block I took from the Julie Draper ransom drop and delivered to her parents; I can call her about that! Purely professional, of course. Fintan would hit the roof but I need to know how that might be evidential, if at all.

  My finger shakes as I dial our home number. I set myself some ground rules: remain business-like, unemotional, in control. I’m perfectly within my rights to ask about Matt’s welfare, but not about ‘nookie with Chucky’.

  She answers, reciting the number; something I used to tease her about.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi,’ she says cautiously, nothing more.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s a work call. I was wondering if you had a chance to check out that concrete block?’

  ‘Oh yes, actually I’ve spent all day on it,’ she gasps, embracing the professional diversion as a drowning woman might a lifebuoy. ‘It is a highly unusual industrial brick, blue-coloured beneath its white coating and the silver paint. The three channels or flutes are a very rare feature so it was most likely designed for something specific, probably connected to drainage. I’ve sent images to all the major masonry associations and no one’s recognised it.’

  ‘You make that sound like good news.’

  ‘The rarer it is, the more useful it might prove evidentially, if we can just pinpoint its manufacturer. I’ve persuaded a local college to carry out thermoluminescence on it, which should date the china clay. That’ll narrow it down, hopefully.’

  ‘There’s an electrician in Dublin who’ll do that for a pint, yeah, Dermo Luminescence.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Great, well I really appreciate it, Zoe, and be sure to invoice for every hour.’

  ‘I noticed you deposited some money into my account at the weekend.’

  ‘Yeah, well I called the CSA and they were able to tell me, pretty much to the penny, what I’m legally obliged to pay.’

  ‘You’re not obliged to pay anything, Donal, legally or otherwise.’

  ‘I want to.’

  ‘Please, I’d really rather you didn’t. It doesn’t feel right.’

  My mind winds back to that night she told me she’d quit her job at the Forensic Science Service; some embittered, barren female manager had been making her life hell. Why do women do that to each other? I hugged her, told her she did the right thing, promised to win whatever bread needed winning while she established herself as a freelance. That warm glow of satisfaction flickers briefly in my chest. As painfully old-fashioned and patronising as it sounds, becoming the sole breadwinner made me feel like a real man. Somehow it legitimised me as a father to Matt. The money I earned clothed him, fed him, kept him warm and dry. It must be a primeval instinct. Paying now keeps my foot firmly in the door. Which is why I don’t want to stop.

  ‘It feels right to me, Zoe.’

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t need it, Donal. Mum and dad are already helping. They really want to and they can afford it.’

  I don’t get this generation, who so willingly enslave themselves to their parents’ bumper mortgage equity. Don’t they realise the consequences; that their mum and dad will try to control them for the rest of their lives?

  ‘I’m still his dad, aren’t I? As his dad, I pay. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me?’

  ‘That night you call, pissed, and announced you were moving out, you agreed to give me time to sort things out. It’s only been a couple of days. I knew you’d do this. I knew you couldn’t just trust me to do it my way, in my own time.’

  ‘Trust?’ I say, shivering in disbelief, screwing the lid down on that volcano.

  ‘All I ask is that you give me some space and time, Donal. Okay?’

  My mind spins back to her parents’ odd behaviour yesterday when I dropped Matt off.

  ‘I’m still picking Matt up on Sunday?’

  She sighs. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he missing me?’

  The ice queen’s voice cracks. ‘Please don’t guilt trip me.’

  ‘I need to know, Zoe.’

  ‘Yes. He doesn’t stop talking about you, okay? Happy now?’

  She breaks down. So do I.

  ‘I really miss him so much,’ I cry, but she’s gone.

  Chapter 20

  Oval, South London

  Tuesday, June 21, 1994; 10.00

  I figure that if Nathan Barry’s ruthless grooming and inveterate shagging of the wives of violent men did lead to his murder, one man would know.

  ‘He was my best mate,’ confirms former colleague Danny Bremner. ‘We worked together pretty much every day for six months before he got killed.’

  Bremner is slight, fair and fidgety. Although in his late twenties, he shares a flat with his mum in a classic four-storey, red-brick council block, one of dozens between Brixton and Oval in South London.

  ‘I want to take you for a drive,’ he says. ‘Show you something that might be of interest.’

  He leads me to one of those small, white panel vans favoured by London’s most committed tailgaters. Stencilled along the side in red vinyl; Dan the Van Couriers … Faster, Safer, Cheaper and an 0800 number.

  ‘Your own business?’

  He nods.

  ‘Impressive. How long have you been in operation?’

  ‘Since not long after Nathan died. I couldn’t work for Delaney anymore.’

  ‘Why not?’

  We jump in, he wheel-spins and the van takes off as if catapulted. I’m beginning to wonder about the coexistence of his dual boasts; ‘faster’ and ‘safer’.

  ‘He hated Nathan and, as I had been his best mate, he let me know he didn’t want me around. I’d had enough of Delaney anyway, constantly bad-mouthing him.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’

  ‘He had a real thing about Nathan being red-haired and of Scottish descent. He used to call him the bitter little Jock, or agent orange or the ginger minge nut. Even after his death. I couldn’t listen to it. He might have been smaller than them but he was a hell of a lot braver.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Nathan took on the stuff no else dared to. John did the investigations side of the business which, as far as I could tell, mostly involved boozing in pubs with coppers.’

  ‘Delaney says Nathan was too gung-ho and provocative.’


  He smiles: ‘The situations he was sent into, he had to have front. But he loved it too. And he only got nasty if provoked. If someone was giving him lip, he’d tell them they’d just been “Nathanised” to wind them up.

  ‘In January that year, he brought me down to Brighton to repossess a Range Rover from some Maltese drugs dealer. We turn up at the address and its proper Eldorado, the souped-up Range Rover sitting on the cobbled drive behind big metal gates. We try the intercom three times, no answer. Nathan reverses his van up to the gates, climbs out, hops up onto the roof and over, gets in the Range Rover, finds the fob for the gates and drives off. He got threatening calls for weeks after that.’

  ‘Did you tell the police about this?’

  ‘They dismissed it, said real gangsters wouldn’t bother calling up on the phone first.’

  ‘If I may be blunt, Danny, Nathan sounded like a liability to me: his aggressive attitude and gloating, his flings with married women?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any flings.’

  ‘Yes, you do Danny. You said yourself you were with him virtually every day for six months. I’ve got witnesses who say you know.’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says, taking a glance at his left-hand wing mirror for the first time on this drive, unwittingly tripping the second of Fintan’s infallible ‘lie wires’. Time to administer the blow torch.

  ‘Okay well if that’s your stance, Danny, then it’s you versus several witnesses who insist you do know about Nathan’s affairs. Oh, and unlike you, these conflicting witnesses don’t have criminal records.’

  He throws his head back like a footballer whose penalty kick has just been saved. ‘For God’s sake, that was a few ounces of grass. I was nineteen.’

  ‘If you end up in court charged with obstructing the course of justice, it’ll be all over the South London Press. Your clients might then decide that faster and cheaper isn’t enough without safer. And your poor old mum will be mortified.’

  I hate myself, but he left me no option.

  ‘If you tell me the truth right now, Danny, I’ll keep it unofficial, off-the-record; you won’t have to make a statement.’