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

       Chapter 7

       The Lamb, Pyecombe, East Sussex

       Thursday, June 16, 1994; 16.00

      Fintan whisks Sandra’s Cherubs back to Angel Islington while I set about getting slaughtered in the Lamb where, mercifully, the hobbling, russet-faced locals leave me alone.

      Before we’d left Pyecombe cemetery I’d run into Dr Edwina Milne, a forty-something, no-nonsense pathologist straight out of a mail order ‘Tory Wives’ catalogue.

      ‘You’re always finding bodies, Donal,’ she’d bellowed across the headstones. ‘Is there anything you need to tell us?’

      ‘Yes, there is something I need to tell you, Edwina, or anyone else who’ll listen, but I’m too scared,’ I screamed internally, before scampering off through the headstones, like Michael Stone after he ran out of grenades.

      Whiskey’s peaty warmth soothes my nerves, melding all sparking thoughts and sizzling fears into a toasting glow of ambivalence. The burnt aftertaste spirits me back to Mam’s funeral; my most recent and somewhat more controversial flit from a cemetery. Only I know what I was really running from. And that I won’t be able to run from it for much longer.

      It’s almost time …

      Those entire two days, Da couldn’t bring himself to talk to me, or even look at me. When they finally lowered her into the dirt, Da earthed his grief by grabbing Fintan’s arm. Why couldn’t he have grabbed my arm too? Just for once?

      I sling back the last of my Jameson and imagine the galvanising heat forging my iron will; I’ll be a better father to Matt. A proper dad.

      My mind drifts to the visions of Julie I’d experienced last night. The church bells and shepherd’s crook have already paid off, leading me to her body. The silver block must be crucial in some way. What the axe, deranged ravens and tiny fish signify, I can’t even begin to speculate.

      Once again, I reassure myself that I don’t possess some inexplicable telepathic hotline to the recently murdered. These performances can come from only one place – my subconscious – which has been obsessively gnawing away on this case for several long days now. My mind must process all the information, then present clues to me through my lurid, sleep-paralysis dream episodes. It’s not that I soak up the spirit of the deceased so much as the essence of the case. That must be what’s happening here … right?

      Unless what Mam said is true … that it’s all wrapped up in a family curse. But who could ever validate such a thing? I’ll cross that bridge soon, when I’m good and ready.

      Edwina’s periscopic peer around the corner promptly torpedoes all thoughts. She’s actively seeking me out; for what, my booze-fogged brain cannot even begin to fathom.

      ‘Donal,’ she hisses, as if secretly rousing me from deep slumber.

      ‘Edwina, how are you?’ I say, making to get to my feet but somehow failing.

      ‘Er, stay where you are,’ she laughs. ‘I trust that’s a double Scotch?’

      ‘Jameson, thanks.’

      Edwina and I go back to the very first murder scene I’d attended as a PC, the brutal stabbing of a girl aged twenty-one. I’d tried hard not to get upset, but failed, much to the glee of my emotionally stunted older colleagues. Edwina’s regal upbraiding of them still makes me smile: ‘You may be surprised to learn, gentlemen, that to the fairer sex, male vulnerability is a very sexy quality indeed.’

      Since then, she’s sought me out at murder scenes to check on my progress and educate me about her craft. I’ve even been teased about it by female colleagues, who rather cruelly dub her my ‘Crime Scene Cougar’.

      She stands at the bar with her back to me, her right boot perched on a foot rail running six or so inches off the ground. This uneven stance lifts one side of her white blouse to reveal a denim-clad buttock. On closer inspection, it’s a textbook half-moon arse cheek that should belong to someone twenty years her junior. I’d never even considered Edwina as a sexual being before and blaze like a KKK cross.

      Christ, Donal, I scold myself, I know you’re not getting any at home, but she’s old enough to be your mother …

       Double Christ, Donal, is this some form of twisted Oedipal grief? Banish such thoughts at once!

      ‘You look a little flushed,’ she teases, and I notice her brandy snifter clasped classily between upturned fingers. I then notice perhaps one button too many undone on her cotton shirt, so shift my gaze swiftly up to her half-amused eyes.

      ‘That’ll be the old uisce beatha.’

      ‘Ah, the one Gaelic phrase I know. The water of life, or whiskey as we inelegant Anglo Saxons call it. To poor Julie.’

      ‘Julie,’ I say and we clink solemnly.

      She sits and sips reverentially. ‘Watch this,’ she says, tilting the balloon-shaped brandy glass. ‘Don’t worry,’ she giggles, sensing my rising panic as she tips it all the way down onto its side. ‘See how it comes right up to the rim but doesn’t spill out? That’s how you measure the perfect single shot of cognac. And that’s the only thing I remember from my three-grand-a-term finishing school.’

      ‘Sounds like the kind of school I should’ve gone to.’

      ‘I heard about the kidnapper making off with the ransom money last night. The good news for you, Donal, is that Julie’s been dead for longer than twenty-four hours.’

      I’d already guessed, but now it’s official, tension escapes me like air from a pricked balloon. ‘Thank God,’ I gasp. ‘And thank you for letting me know, Edwina.’

      She puts her hand on mine and I convulse violently, like a flatliner receiving an electric shock. It’s all I can do not to bellow ‘CLEAR’. My God, is she coming onto me?

      ‘What else can I tell you?’ she husks, the minx, giving my stunned, immobile hand a squeeze, then slowly withdrawing. Reluctantly perhaps? Has she got some sort of weird crime scene horn? ‘The ground where she lay has no grass discoloration or flattened vegetation, so she hadn’t been there very long. She was completely naked inside the blanket.

      ‘There were two obvious fracture injuries to the back of her skull, both about a week-old and caused by a blunt instrument. I’ll be suggesting these were inflicted nine days ago when she was first abducted.

      ‘I found chain-like marks around her right ankle; she had been forced to wear some sort of restraint or leg iron. The redness of the injury shows it was caused before death. I found no chafing marks around her wrists though, which seems odd as this is universally the preferred method of restraint.

      ‘I