Games with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller. James Nally
Lambert is somewhat obsessed,’ warns Fintan. ‘Failing to get a collar for this Nathan Barry murder stalled his career. It’s now been investigated three times and they still can’t make it stick.’
‘Who do they think did it?’
‘You’re better off keeping an open mind. You’ll be the only police officer who’s done so since about day two.’
DI Lambert’s pacing the car park as we pull in. He’s slight, a little hunched with a long nose. ‘Oh and he’s Welsh, so he gets very animated,’ warns Fintan. Lambert looks gaunt, nervous. His face seems too red, his hair too black, styled in a disturbing Hitler-Youth undercut, making him look like an emaciated Barry Humphries.
We race through formalities, then I explain my mission; to see if there’s any connection between this case and the murder of Julie Draper. Lambert looks surprised. It’s the first he’s heard of it.
‘It’s the first anyone’s heard of it, Guv,’ I smile. ‘And I’d like to keep it that way.’
‘Understood. I hear Kipper sent a note yesterday threatening to take a child next time,’ he says.
‘You buy the whole Kipper theory then?’ asks Fintan.
‘I don’t know squat about that case,’ says Lambert, strolling over to a corner of the car park. ‘But I know everything there is to know about this one. So, six years ago, April 3, 1988, about 9.30pm, a pub regular drove into the car park and saw Nathan Barry lying here, on his back, with an axe embedded in the left side of his face, right up to the hilt.
‘The pathologist is in no doubt that he was effectively executed. He’d suffered three axe wounds to the head, each one would’ve been sufficient to kill him. The final blow was delivered by a backhand motion as he lay on his back, the axe penetrating four inches into his brain. The coroner had quite a job removing it. Whoever attacked him meant to kill him.
‘The pathologist believes the attacker sneaked up on Nathan from behind, was less than five foot eight inches tall and left-handed.
‘It was a common Taiwanese-made domestic axe, which could’ve been bought in any number of places and had no serial number. Elastoplast had been wrapped around the handle to ensure we couldn’t take any prints off it. And it had been sharpened for the job. The paramedics who treated him found a few hundred quid in cash in his left-hand trouser pocket, so it wasn’t a robbery.
‘The first CID officer on the scene sealed off the car park and uniform officers took statements from everyone inside the pub.
‘Forensics struggled to take prints off Nathan’s car or any others in the car park. It was a cold, frosty night which is a nightmare for them. Last year, they found trace DNA on the axe but the sample is too minute to process.
‘We got a lot of criticism for failing to seize glasses and ashtrays from inside the pub for prints or DNA analysis, to check if a known offender had been drinking here that evening. My argument is that whoever killed Nathan had been waiting outside in the car park and had never set foot in the pub. Why would he risk being seen?’
Fintan pipes up. ‘Do you regret not seizing the glasses and ashtrays now, Adrian?’
‘Every bloody day. But we didn’t know much about DNA then. What we did know was how to spot a suspect. It’s a known fact that ninety per cent of victims know their killer. This was clearly personal. At first, we speculated that it may have been someone he’d upset in the course of his work. But someone else kept cropping up, right from the outset.
‘Nathan had been in the pub that evening with his business partner, John Delaney. In fact, Delaney had left the pub just moments before Nathan.
‘I went personally to tell Delaney the news of Nathan’s murder. He opened the door looking sweaty and agitated, as if he’d been expecting us. His first words to me were, “I’m not the mad axeman of Croydon”. I asked him how he knew and he started dropping names of all his cop pals in Croydon CID. All this time, his wife’s watching the TV, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, believe it or not. She doesn’t look up even once.
‘I take him in to make a statement. He tells us he and Nathan had agreed to meet an associate here in the White Horse that night called Tommy Buchan for a drink to discuss a loan to their company, BD Investigations.
‘We track down Buchan who denies it flat out. Turns out Delaney called him after he left the White Horse that night and arranged to meet him at a wine bar a few miles away.’
Fintan editorialises. ‘Trying to create an alibi after the event, perhaps?’
‘Delaney’s car phone records confirm this call to Buchan at 21.36. They also show a call from a public phone box to his car phone at 21.33. Now the system can’t identify public phone numbers, but we believe that call was made from the public phone outside the White Horse.’
‘The killer confirming job done,’ says Fintan.
Lambert nods.
‘Over the next few days, we discovered Delaney is a crook. Behind Nathan’s back, he’d been up to all sorts, including hiring cops to guard Riley’s car auctions in Bermondsey.
‘Now, BD Investigations wasn’t insured to do this kind of work, but Delaney signed the contract and employed serving cop friends, who he paid cash. One night last June Delaney decided to take the day’s takings to the bank’s night safe alone. According to him, the safe was glued shut so he’d no option but to take the cash home. Guess what? Outside his house, he’s sprayed with ammonia and robbed of the fifteen grand.
‘Riley, owner of the car auctions, doesn’t believe a word, goes to see Delaney in hospital, where he’s dabbing his eyes with tissue and joking with the nurses. Riley sues BD Investigations for the fifteen grand and that’s how Nathan finds out about the entire racket. He goes mental, firstly because it’d been going on behind his back, secondly because Delaney had employed serving officers, which is against the rules, and thirdly because of the missing money. He refuses point-blank to stump up half.
‘Anyway, we need to prove this, so we go looking for any paperwork concerning the Riley contract, but it’s nowhere to be seen. Employees at BD Investigations tell us that the head of Croydon’s murder squad, Detective Sergeant Phil Ware, attended the office the morning after the murder and seized it all, including the Riley’s car auctions file.
‘That same morning, Detective Sergeant Phil Ware took the first formal statement from Delaney, in which he makes no mention of his row with Nathan over the Riley auction.
‘On Sunday, five days after Nathan’s murder, DS Ware reveals to me that he and Delaney are old friends going back years. To make matters worse, Ware admitted that he’d been one of the officers moonlighting for Delaney at Riley’s car auctions. Of course, we kick him off the case but by then he’d already buggered our investigation.
‘Phil Ware retired on the sick and is now a partner with Delaney in BD Investigations.’
Fintan again: ‘So you’re convinced that Delaney and Phil Ware were co-conspirators in Nathan’s murder?’
‘Nathan had never drunk in here before that night. This pub is in Phil Ware’s jurisdiction. None of Nathan’s regular pubs were. Delaney lured him here for that reason, so that his murder would be investigated by his pal who heads the local murder squad. Of course, Delaney didn’t swing the axe. Why get your hands dirty? But he had someone waiting outside that night who did.
‘Now, how many people could’ve known Nathan was in here that night? Delaney’s phone records show he made a call to Ware’s direct line at Croydon police station on that evening at 5pm. I’m certain they were in cahoots.’
My brain is clinging on, just, and screaming one question: ‘So Delaney is behind Nathan’s murder, Ware helped derail the investigation. Who wielded the axe?’
‘Delaney’s brothers-in-law at that time were Chris and Gary Warner,