Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller. James Nally

      In yet another scoop, Fintan reported that the company which manufactured the Vixen Viking range were withdrawing their metal prop daggers, replacing them with reassuringly unrealistic plastic models. Sales went through the roof.

      Thanks to a leaked pathology report, he scooped his rivals again with news that – in the course of her struggle with Meehan – Eve had stabbed him in the balls. This sent the story into orbit, globally. Sales of Vixen Viking costumes nosedived.

      Gardai charged Eve with murder – again. She received the immediate and vocal backing of Dublin’s militant feminist group, RAG (Revolutionary Anarcha-feminist Group), who announced that if she was pregnant with Meehan’s rape child, they would finance her abortion in the UK.

      The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) went apeshit. They immediately lodged a High Court injunction which banned Eve Daly from travelling outside the Irish Republic. Abortion was illegal in Ireland: if Eve couldn’t travel, she couldn’t terminate the pregnancy.

      SPUC was backed by the Catholic church and the governing political party, Fianna Fáil. In an off-the-record chat with Fintan, Tullamore’s most famous son, Tourism Minister Phil Flynn – an old pal of Dad’s – accused young women of ‘provoking rape by dressing like Jezebels’. He went on to describe RAG as ‘a bunch of hairy lezzers who need a good root up the hole’. Fintan later admitted that Flynn had been half cut at the time, but he ran it anyway.

      All hell broke loose. The opposition parties demanded Flynn’s resignation: he demanded to know what he’d ‘done wrong’. To this day, Flynn is credited for the election of liberal feminist Mary Robinson to the role of President of Ireland in 1990.

      Pissed off by Robinson’s triumph, the judiciary revoked Eve’s bail. As a security van drove her through the gates of Dublin’s notorious Mountjoy prison, a photographer snatched a shot of her in the back – crying, her hair in bunches, clutching a teddy bear. This secured her martyr status in the eyes of the martyr-loving Irish Left, prompting Christy Moore to write ‘The Ballad of Eve Daly’.

      A week or so later, Eve called Fintan and confirmed she was not – repeat, not – pregnant with rape child. Abortion groups, pro and anti – could barely hide their disappointment at the loss of such a deliciously fleshy flashpoint. They dropped Eve faster than a smoking hornet.

      Fintan too began to feel ostracised. According to his own undoubtedly self-aggrandising claims, he’d exposed too many of Ireland’s gilded inner circle: politicians, the judiciary, lawyers, the Catholic church, lackey journalists. Buckling under a barrage of legal writs, personal attacks and cronyism, he fled to London.

      At least he could escape. Three years on from Meehan’s death, Eve remained locked in political and legal limbo: neither tried nor acquitted. I couldn’t understand why, until Fintan helpfully put me straight a few weeks back: ‘It’s like all these public inquiries and judicial tribunals. They’ll drag it out until people get so bored they don’t give a fuck anymore.’

      Two teas slid across the pink Formica just as Fintan strode through the café door, mac over his arm, fag on, pasty-faced – a film noir wannabe.

      ‘You’ll never guess who’s just landed in Tullamore?’ he smiled, mincing into the screwed-down plastic seat opposite mine before answering his own riddle.

      ‘Only Larry fucking King!’

      I frowned.

      ‘Legendary CNN anchor man? Biggest name in American current affairs?’

      ‘What’s he doing in Tullamore?’

      ‘You heard about Mike Tyson, right?’

      Who hadn’t? Police had arrested the self-proclaimed ‘Baddest Man on the Planet’ in Connecticut that week and charged him with rape.

      Fintan took a violent slurp of his tea and continued: ‘And you know one of the Kennedys was charged with rape earlier this year? Well, CNN has picked up on Eve’s story. They’re saying it’s a landmark case for a woman’s right to say no.’

      ‘Will this help Eve?’

      ‘Christ, no. Her best hope was that it would all peter out. Now it’s an international news story, Ireland’s politicians must be seen to be doing the right thing.’

      ‘And that is?’

      ‘Bush and the Republicans are in power, Donal. They’d have fried her by now! She’ll get a stretch for sure. It’s just a question of how long.’

      Fintan seemed delighted with this development, the twisted fuck.

      ‘It’s ridiculous,’ I snapped, ‘she so obviously acted in self-defence. In any civilised country she’d have been given a medal for getting rid of that menace.’

      ‘You need to forget about her now anyway, Donal, once and for all. There’s a good chance you’ll never clap eyes on her again.’

      I refused to believe that. My heart knew, somehow, that Eve Daly was unfinished business.

      My pork-based bribe landed. Fintan tore into it ravenously.

      ‘So what’s so interesting about this case?’ I asked.

      Half his fry-up already savaged, Fintan turned his attention to the open-spouted sugar jar, emptying the equivalent of five or six teaspoons into his muddy brew. He then lit another cigarette.

      ‘There’s two murders a week in London,’ I pointed out, ‘what makes Marion Ryan good copy?’

      Fintan smiled and shook his head in disbelief at my obvious stupidity.

      ‘She’s white, she’s pretty, she’s a newlywed, she lives on a respectable street. Truth is, if Marion had been black, or Asian, or a single mum in a council block in, I dunno, Deptford, with a little brown baby, I wouldn’t be here.’

      ‘Christ, so class and social status dictate whether or not your murder merits coverage,’ I sighed, suddenly feeling hot and tired.

      ‘Don’t blame me. This is who the readership identifies with, and the fact she was butchered in her own home by a crazed maniac, well, that just about ticks all our boxes.’

      ‘Why do you say it was a crazed maniac?’

      ‘Forty-nine stab wounds. Speak to any pathologist, they’ll tell you the most stab wounds they’ve ever seen in a domestic is ten or twelve. And, if it’s domestic, why was she killed in a frenzy like that? There are a hundred more efficient ways he could have done it. It’s got to be a nutter. Hey, you’re supposed to be the copper.’

      I tried not to visibly bristle as Fintan pressed on.

      ‘Maybe he charged through the door, forced her upstairs at knifepoint?’

      ‘That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Fint, but there is no Bride Ripper out there on the loose, roaming the streets in search of his next pretty ABC1 target.’

      ‘How can you be so certain, Donal?’

      ‘Well, she opened the door and let this nutter in,’ I pointed out, ‘we found her on the landing with her mail, her keys, her handbag all untouched. So where does that leave your ripper theory?’

      He stubbed out his cigarette, leaned back and took a notebook and pen out of his inside pocket. ‘Post, keys and handbag,’ he said, busily writing.

      He stood and put on his coat: ‘Breakfast and privileged crime scene information from an impeccable source, all for free. Thanks, bro. Now, I better go and rewrite some of that copy.’

       Chapter 5

       South London

       Tuesday, July 2, 1991;