Games with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller. James Nally
all know Julie Draper now. Her twenty-four-year-old, shyly smiling face is everywhere. Can it really be just nine days since she rushed out of her estate agent’s office in south London to show a client around a house, only to vanish into thin air? The hunt for Julie Draper goes on. Only two people know she’s already dead. The man who killed her.
And me.
It’s this cursed ‘gift’ of mine, you see. These Games with the Dead that I’m forced to play. Julie comes to me at night now, just like the others did before, haunting and tormenting me. And I know she won’t quit. Not until I find her killer.
Don’t judge me. Please. I’m not a dangler of wind chimes or a martyr to the Tarot. I’m a cop, for Christ’s sake, a veritable tank of scepticism. That’s why I’m so desperate to find a clinical explanation for these close encounters with the recently whacked.
Several shrinks on, I’m told its sleep paralysis, but with an inexplicable twist. Whereas sufferers typically hallucinate traditional ‘bogeymen’ figures, like demons, witches or aliens, I see people whose murders I’m investigating. More baffling still, these murder victims give me clues as to how they died.
There’s nothing in their esteemed medical journals covering that …
Which is why I’ve never bought into this Sleep Paralysis quackery. Neither has my jaded girlfriend Zoe: ‘More like Ambition Paralysis.’ Or my hard-bitten hack brother: ‘It’s the DTs.’ I didn’t expect Mam to clear it all up for me like she did, on her deathbed. Presenting me the answer, wrapped in a family curse.
A curse I’m too scared to open.
Turns out mine is a ‘gift’ that just keeps taking. And taking. I’m twenty-five years old; trying to come to terms with an unthinkable new reality.
It’s 50/50 I won’t make it to thirty.
New Scotland Yard, London
A few days earlier. Wednesday, June 15, 1994; 19.00
‘It’s not too late to pull out you know, Donal.’ Commander Neil Crossley, Head of the Kidnap Unit, stares through my eyes into a future he barely dares to contemplate: ‘If he’s going to kill Julie Draper, there’s no reason why he won’t kill you. And we know he’s killed before.’
But I know there can be no turning back now. I’ve got something to prove. To ‘Croissant’ Crossley. To my brother Fintan. To Zoe, my perennially disappointed partner. The kidnapper might be getting his ransom money, but the payback will be all mine.
Julie Draper’s abductor has named his price. Crown Estates – her employer – must cough up £175,000 cash for her ‘safe return’. He nominated Julie’s estate agent colleague, Tom Reynolds, to deliver the cash. Any sign of police or media involvement during ‘the drop’, he’ll kill both.
Crown Estates gambled on drafting in the police. Commander Crossley is gambling on a Tom Reynolds-lookalike to deliver the cash.
Me.
I’d never won a lookalike competition before.
Crossley remembered me from a previous attachment to the Kidnap Unit, thought me a ringer for Reynolds, rang me personally to ask if I ‘felt up to becoming part of a top-secret operation’. Having spent the past eighteen months in a career Limbo – languishing in the Cold Case Unit as an ‘Acting’ Detective Constable – I agreed immediately.
My new status as hero-in-waiting has already propelled me into exalted company. Yesterday, I accompanied Crossley to New Scotland Yard’s treasury, where we collected a Crown Estates cheque for 175k. Siren wailing, we floored it to a bullion centre in Chancery Lane, where we exchanged the cheque for equal numbers of £50, £20 and £10 used notes, just as the kidnapper had specified.
What a scene those 7,750 notes made! We then whisked the windfall back to technical support at the Yard, who spent the night painstakingly videotaping each note’s serial number.
As if reading our every move, a second ransom note lands this morning with an additional demand: £5,000 in two bank accounts with cash cards and PIN numbers. Our nemesis knows that the serial numbers from cash machines can’t be traced. He can use this ‘clean’ cash to travel anywhere in Europe to launder the dirty money. Our target is so smart, so well-informed, he reads our every move. Many of my colleagues are convinced he’s done this before. Or that he’s one of us, a serving or ex-cop, with a snout inside the investigation.
Today is our last chance to find out. To collect the ransom, he has to break cover. As in any extortion case, this represents our best and, possibly, only chance of catching the culprit.
We return to New Scotland Yard, take the lift to tech support on the third floor and sign for receipt of a black Head sports bag with a transmitter sewn into the base. As per the ransom note instructions, we divide the cash into thirty-one equal units of 250 notes, wrapping each bundle in polythene no more than twelve microns thick. Crossley inserts the cash cards into one of the bricks, but trousers the piece of paper revealing their PIN codes.
‘A little insurance,’ he says. ‘No matter what happens today, he’ll have to get back to us for these.’
We stack the bundles together and gift-wrap them in brown paper. As per a diagram enclosed with the ransom note, Crossley uses nylon cord to secure the parcel, with a substantial loop on top. Why the kidnapper is insisting on certain specifics, we’ve yet to figure out. We place the loot carefully inside the sports bag so as not to disturb the transmitter, then head to the operational hub in East Croydon, just south of London.
As I get trussed up in a bulletproof vest, Crossley re-reads the kidnapper’s delivery brief.
‘At 9pm, the courier must await a call at the Mercury public phone in the foyer of East Croydon train station. He’ll be given instructions and a trail to follow, which will take him from phone box to phone box over quiet roads so that the presence of police surveillance vehicles or aircraft will be detected. Any publicity or apparent police action will result in no further communication.’ Crossley glances up: ‘Which means he’ll kill Julie Draper, and he’ll probably kill you.’
As I refuse to let that sink in, he gets back to the kidnapper’s instructions: ‘Once the courier gets to the drop-off point, the money will not be collected by me, but by a young male who parks up in a nearby lovers’ lane for a few hours every Wednesday night. His female companion will be held hostage while I direct the male to bring the cash to me via a two-way radio. Once I receive the cash, I will reveal Julie’s location via an anonymous call to a media outlet, using the code phrase “Is Kipper a red herring?”’
Crossley folds the paper precisely, as if securing it for posterity, then searches my eyes deeply. For weakness? For reassurance? I can’t tell, but it’s a real ransacking of the irises.
‘Okay Donal, in your car is a two-way radio linked to the controller here in the operations room. He, in turn, is in touch with surveillance teams in front and behind you. You know about the transmitter in the money bag, so keep it with you at all times.’
My mind lags behind, conducting a dry run, seeking out pitfalls. ‘He mentioned quiet roads. How close will these surveillance teams be? I don’t want them blowing my cover.’
‘They’re the best in the business, Donal, shadowed IRA terrorists, underworld hitmen, the lot. They’ll be in constant contact with a stealth chopper who’ll follow the suspect once he picks up the money. Look, if you remember just one instruction tonight, Donal, it’s that these surveillance teams need to know the kidnapper’s every move. Each time you get a fresh set of instructions, pass them on. You must get back into your car and repeat them over the radio, loud and clear, twice. You then wait five minutes before you drive on. Understood?’
I