by James Nally
I drove fast and thought hard all the way to Dublin airport. But each streetlight cast a fresh shadow of doubt across my overloaded brain.
Clearly Valerie Gillespie had been murdered by Robert Conlon. For some reason, after years grooming vulnerable young women for abuse, he’d reverted to a lightning attack on a cracked-out street hooker. Maybe he’d been knocking off the odd prostitute all along, but no one had bothered to properly investigate those killings.
Now we needed to find him before he struck again.
I had to face up to the selfish reasons I hadn’t acted immediately on that print Frank sent through yesterday. I figured it’d be far more beneficial for my career to play it safe, check out the source, make sure it’s all ‘above board’. Since my suspension, I’d grown paranoid about decisions rebounding on me, damaging my precious career prospects.
What an arsehole.
Putting my professional reputation ahead of the lives of vulnerable women made me every bit as culpable as those bent Irish officials who’d been protecting Conlon all these years.
Fintan’s words rang in my ears … you didn’t choose this job to act like a fucking politician. You need to take risks.
Now I had no choice. I’d been flung headlong into something of grave consequence that I didn’t remotely understand.
My mind turned to the other high-profile ‘victim’ of Conlon’s sex party blackmail ruse – the one so dangerous that Frank wouldn’t even utter his name aloud. The piece of paper he secreted into my hand had read; ‘Sean Scanlon, brother of Conor Scanlon, ex IRA commander.’ I now had to confront the unthinkable. Was that what had brought Conlon to London?
Surely Conlon couldn’t expect top-level protection in the UK such as he enjoyed in the Irish Midlands for the past decade? Unless … unless …
The government’s secret talks with the IRA had been this year’s worst-kept political secret. Irish and English, Protestant and Catholic alike learned about these covert developments with disbelief and suspicion. The same question had swirled around all of our minds:
How did the Brits get the IRA to the table?
No, surely this can’t be connected? Surely Conlon wouldn’t be deluded enough to believe he could blackmail the British Government or the IRA with his sordid footage of Conor Scanlon’ brother engaged in unspecified shenanigans with a minor? The former could have him locked away without trial, the latter whacked and buried in a bog.
The very idea of it simply felt too far-fetched. Insane.
Then Da showed up.
Michael Lynch: IRA sympathiser, fundraiser and facilitator; new best friend to leader Conor Scanlon. Michael Lynch, of such fervent interest to ‘the busy little men in suits’ that they camped outside his home, possibly broke in, possibly emptied his study of every single content.
Did he come over to the UK to find Conlon … negotiate with Conlon … to set Conlon up to get whacked by the IRA? How did Fintan fit into all this? Da’s daily phone pal … with links to MI5 spooks … and to someone directly involved in the hunt for Valerie Gillespie’s killer, me. Had Fintan any idea about our dad’s real motive for coming to the UK?
Was Da using his own sons to help him get to Conlon – holder of a secret so damning that it could make or break the peace talks? After all, Conor Scanlon couldn’t afford to have the sordid truth about his brother coming out. It could destroy all of them.
‘No, no, no …’ I laughed, my twitching hands ticklish and slippery on the steering wheel.
‘That’s plain ridiculous,’ I said out loud.
As for Liz Little, I now had to get my head around the fact she was most likely killed by Conlon too. The anal battery insertion was clearly one of his trademark ‘signatures’. And how else would she have wound up clutching Valerie Gillespie’s hair in her hand?
These were the hard facts. Evidence.
Wafting about in the back of my mind, that visit Liz made to me last Saturday night. I couldn’t just discount what she’d come to tell me. She’d clearly identified the Florentine Gardens Club. Remember?
Dirty cash, blood, skull wounds, a red floor …
There must’ve been some connection between Conlon and the club, or Conlon and Reilly. Maybe it all centred on the ‘racket’ Reilly ran using his team of hand-picked IT girls.
At least Spence could now focus on the five names listed by Tammy. Surely some kink in their financial or travel records would throw up a clue. Once we figured out what they’d been up to, we could haul them in for questioning. That should crack the case wide open.
The airport signs loomed. Everyone had been right – the journey’s much quicker now than it used to be. I didn’t even know what towns I’d bypassed on the way. All I’d seen were those EU signs, reminding us that they owned our asses now. Where Britain had failed over 800 years, Europe succeeded in twenty.
‘You’ll never beat the Irish,’ we sing at the football. We should add a new line: ‘But you might soften us up with a few bypasses, grants and tax breaks.’
We’d taken the Federal shilling and were showing the Brits the door. There’d be hell to pay …
I made it to the gate in time to give Zoe a quick call.
‘Hi,’ she said glumly and I apologised for not calling earlier.
I breezily ran her through my day, as if I’d expected nothing less than a politically explosive revelation from a complete stranger, a burgled home and my mother locked away in a loony bin. When all that failed to elicit any kind of emotional response, I hit her with what my ex Eve coined ‘the universal man question’: ‘Are you okay?’
She sighed. ‘I spent most of the day at a really horrible crime scene. It just gets me down sometimes.’
‘Forget, Zoe, it was a grisly murder scene that ignited the flames of our passion,’ I smiled, then wondered why I always felt emotionally incapable of just allowing someone to be a bit down.
‘I think you’d better check it out tomorrow. It’s another one close to Finsbury Park.’
My heart fell through my arse. Frank’s words from earlier performed a gleeful cancan across my brain.
‘Jesus, I hope for your sake he hasn’t struck again since yesterday.’
‘Please tell me she wasn’t killed in the last thirty-six hours?’
‘I doubt if we’ll ever know. There was hardly any of her left.’
‘Jesus,’ I said, a sinkhole of dread swallowing me whole.
Chapter 26
Tottenham Hale, North London
Thursday, April 8, 1993; 23.00
I’d been back in Ireland for less than one day, yet London once again felt like an alien dystopia. Or maybe that was just Tottenham Hale after 11pm.
The Stansted Express proved anything but, taking almost an hour to trundle the twenty odd miles to this North London outpost.
The station forecourt felt underlit and desolate, a murky grey no-man’s-land where – perhaps fittingly – large concrete spheres served as the sole decorative folly. Welcome to London’s ball sac …
Stark high-rise blocks and lurid retail signs dominated the night sky. I needed to catch a bus to Finsbury Park out on the main road, which required walking past a menace of hoodies. I felt certain that, two days ago, this wouldn’t have fazed me. But now I felt nervous. They’d smell it, of course, then see my little travel bag and think ‘tourist, easy prey’. Maybe that’s why they hung around there.
I suddenly felt alone and trapped, small and daunted, spinning helplessly through space like your man in 2001. I needed gravity, perspective, terra firma. I needed to share with Fintan, right away.
He was a political animal with a flint-black heart. I didn’t possess one fibre of his Machiavellian ability to see angles, perceive motivations and weigh risk. He’d be able to grasp what’s really going on here. He probably knew already.
A black taxi suddenly heaved into view, prompting me to adopt the deranged flapping motion of a man on fire. His indicator winked back. He’d be crossing enemy lines to rescue me.
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By the time he pulled up outside our house in Arsenal, I couldn’t wait to share my spectacular news. But I also had a bone to pick with him about Mam. How could he not tell me?
I walked in to the soundtrack of Fatima Mansions blaring out of the hi-fi; Fintan only ‘did’ angry music. I parked my travel bag at the door and flopped into an armchair.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘St Loman’s in Mullingar.’
‘How is she?’
‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?’
‘We didn’t want to worry you, Donal.’
‘Jesus, have you any idea how patronising that sounds?’
‘Well, you are a little prone to hysteria.’
‘I’m not prone to hysteria. Jesus.’
‘It’s not like she’s in a straitjacket, attached to electrodes, is it? She got a little mixed up with her medication. They just need to get her back on track. Da said the rest would do her good.’
‘If someone needs a rest you send them to a spa, not a nut house.’
‘See, you’re getting hysterical now.’
‘I’m not getting hysterical,’ I shouted, a little hysterically.
I forced myself to calm down. I still had my knockout punch to unleash; we’d see who’s hysterical then.
‘She tells me he calls you every day,’ I said.
‘Well, you’ve always been closer to Mam. I suppose I’m closer to the auld fella.’
‘He’s been very tense, acting strangely, up to something. Every time he goes to meet someone, he tells you who and where.’
‘Ah, now that’s not true. Talk to her again when she’s better.’
‘She says he has a mobile phone, for fuck’s sake. This is Da we’re talking about here, a man who can’t use a washing machine. He’s getting texts at all hours and suddenly leaving the house. Meds or no meds, she’s seen this. And men in suits, watching the house.’
‘Tell me, Donal, professionally speaking, would you take this seriously if it came from anyone else currently residing in a mental institution?’
‘What’s going on, Fintan? I know you know why he’s come over here.’
‘Honestly, Donal, I don’t. He won’t tell me a thing. He says it’s safer that we don’t know and I’m inclined to agree with him.’
‘Mam’s not who I actually went to see.’
He looked at me, sensing a revelation.
‘I’ve got a contact over there, very high up in intelligence. The thing is, Fintan, I know why Da is here. He’s trying to find Robert Conlon. And he needs to get to him before the British authorities do.’
‘I fucking knew it. I knew he was up to something.’
He sat forward. It may have been the first time ever that I had him hanging on my every word.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asked, his eyes scouring me like searchlights.
‘Let me kick off with the revelation that a leading Republican’s brother is a kiddie fiddler. Now, go fetch a bottle of Shiraz and two glasses. This could take a while.’
I’d never seen Fintan run before.
Chapter 27
Hornsey Mortuary, Hornsey, North London
Friday, April 9, 1993; 09.30
Someone had taken a lot of trouble to illicitly scrub out the letters ‘s’ and ‘e’ from the sign that should have read Hornsey Mortuary, and I couldn’t help but marvel at such a painstakingly executed act of utter puerility.
It cast my mind back to our police training at Hendon College, and that deadpan briefing about the tragi-comic phenomenon known as Death Erection.
A prim, middle-aged female pathologist had been roped in to warn us about what to expect at crime scenes. She’d let her grisly slide show do most of the talking, which had left the more squeamish of us clutching our blood-light skulls for dear life.
Amid these freeze-framed slasher episodes, our sullen conductress had suddenly poked her pointer at a dead man’s clearly erect cock and uttered the unforgettable words ‘ah, angel lust’.
I’d surfaced from my self-imposed, anti-fainting headlock to learn that when a man dies suddenly and violently, his final act is to produce one last stonking great hard-on. Her purse-lipped, accusatory expression had seemed to add: ‘What else could we expect from you cock-wielding baboons?’
It’s known in the trade as post-mortem priapism, terminal erection or, to the more romantically inclined, angel lust. She’d cited death by shooting, aggressive poisoning, hanging or damage to a major artery as the most likely events to bring about this most unhappy of endings.
She had been busy explaining how it’s all connected to a part of the brain known as the cellebrum, when a tune from my childhood suddenly floated into my head. I recognised it as the well-known song ‘Dem Bones’, leaned into the ear of the trainee beside me and sang: ‘The cellebrum is connected to the … bellend.’
A rip tide of uncontrollable laughter swept us both away. If I learned nothing else during that lesson, it was that somewhere deep in my subconscious, death and hilarity are ill-matched but very eager bedfellows.
Now, as I strode into the mortuary reception, I wondered if their cocks remained hard for all eternity. Now that would be a version of hell only a female God could dream up.
I asked for Dr Milne, dearly hoping not to get her glacial assistant, Erika the Viking. Erika seemed typical of every cover-girl beauty I’d ever encountered: so celebrated for her looks that she hadn’t bothered developing a personality. Terrified of sending out any kind of signal that might be interpreted by the rabid male masses as a ‘come on’, Erika had elected instead to shut down transmission altogether. Now, to me at least, she existed like a hollowed-out tree, a hologram, a pretty ghost at home here with all the other soulless stiffs.
‘Dedwina’ may have been the kind of no-nonsense Tory wife who’d snap the neck of a baby pheasant while listening to Wagner, but she thought like a detective and had a flair for interpreting the tinier, gorier details. What’s more, I sensed that she’d taken some sort of maternal shine to me and would help in any way she could.
‘Donal,’ Edwina hissed from an open side door, making me jump, ‘you’ve got precisely eight minutes of my time so chop-chop.’
I semi-jogged behind her bustling scrubs along the now-familiar corridor, catching her up at the door to the post-mortem room.
She bowed her head conspiratorially.
‘I’m taking you through this one myself because, well, it’s unlike anything I’ve encountered before.’
‘Wow,’ I said, ‘that’s saying something.’
She frowned. ‘I’m not that bloody ancient.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that, Edwina. Erika said you sometimes perform seven autopsies in a day. You’ve surely seen it all.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ she said, arching an eyebrow then turning to lead me through the door.
I followed her past a pair of empty chrome autopsy tables to a third at the top of the room. Upon it sat a fleshless partial skull stripped clean of brain, eyes, most teeth, tissue and blood. Below it, a scatter of dry, sharp bones looked like some Stone Age tool kit.
The cogs in my brain spun fast, trying to make sense of this formless, fleshless skeleton. But the harder I revved, the further I sank.
‘Is this all of her?’ I asked quietly.
‘Not exactly,’ she said, ‘but we’ll come to that later.’
‘What happened here?’
‘Haven’t you been told anything at all?’
I shook my head.
‘What you’re looking at is the remains of a human body after two German Shepherds have lived off it for several days, possibly weeks.’
I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds as my conscience climbed off its cross. My flagging up Conlon two days ago wouldn’t have saved her.
‘Where are her … bones?’
‘Either devoured or crunched into splinters and dust. We’ve bagged everything else found at the scene. Like I said, we’ll get to
that later. The main material I have to work with is here, right in front of you.’
As I examined the freshly chewed skull, it felt as if someone had cracked off the top of my own, as you might a boiled egg. I could feel focus and consciousness leak out, and fought an overwhelming urge to clutch my scalp. That tuning fork buzz grew louder in my ears and my vision dimmed. Shit, I thought to myself, I’m starting to go.
I realised I hadn’t taken a proper breath for several minutes and badly needed to recycle. When I went to inhale, I couldn’t – it felt too much like sucking in death.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘I think so,’ I muttered, willing the swoon to pass.
I forced my eyes back to where the dead woman’s should have been. In the topside of her skull, matted hair marked out two almost perfectly round holes, similar to those suffered by Liz Little. My mind flashed back to her visit … the blood that raced down her neck and shoulders had come from those two wounds.
Edwina clocked my recognition. ‘Someone in N4 getting handy with a ball-peen hammer again,’ she said.
‘Any red matter inside those wounds?’
‘Not this time.’
‘What else can you figure out, from this?’
‘It’s a small skull without a pronounced temporal ridge and a sharp lower eye socket, so I’m ninety per cent certain it’s female. Her third molar isn’t fully grown, which suggests she’s aged between seventeen and twenty-five. Are you aware of sutures in the skull?’
‘Yes, they’re the joins where the skull bones meet.’
‘Correct. The one at the base of the skull, the basilar suture, should fully close between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. Hers hasn’t, so we can put her age at anything between sixteen and twenty-five. Also, the hammer blows to her head didn’t kill her. There isn’t enough for me to establish cause or time of death, I’m afraid. The dogs have seen to that.’
‘I thought they’re supposed to be man’s best friend?’
‘The dogs didn’t kill her, Donal. They just did what they’re genetically programmed to do, which is to eat the best form of nourishment available. It’s their ability to consume human remains that made them our best friends in the first place.’
