Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller (19 page)

Clapham Police Station, South London

Wednesday, August 14, 1991; 10:00

Next morning, Mick and Colin joined us in the bleachers, pre-interview, to take a good one-way look at Peter through the two-way mirror. He sat slumped and unmoved, still fumbling with his fingers, still wearing his wedding ring.

He’d made an effort, wearing a freshly pressed blue striped shirt tucked into a pair of beige chinos. I wondered if Mother-in-Law Mary had ironed them for him this morning. On his belt sat a bright blue pager, standard-issue in any hospital or care home. They would have seized his cash, keys, belt, any potential makeshift weapon. Why hadn’t they seized his pager?

‘Who the fuck let him in with that?’ barked Shep, his contemptuous squint peeled on Peter.

‘It’s work-issue,’ sighed Mick, ‘the rule is they have to be contactable at all times.’

Shep growled. ‘Look at that narcissistic prick,’ he sneered through an upturned punk lip, ‘I want you boys to give this fucker a real good going over. Let’s face it, his pursuit of a bit on the side is the reason Marion is in the morgue. No matter who wielded the knife, it’s Peter who killed her. Since day one, he’s lied through his teeth. We’ve had to drag every last piece of information out of him. Today he finally tells us the truth.’

Peter’s face shot up as the door burst open. Mick and Colin strutted in, chests out, fists clenched, flexing their clamped-shut jaws. If Karen had been a sardine can that needed peeling, Peter was a coconut begging for a hammer.

There was no ceremonial organising of papers, no, ‘so Peter, tell us about …’

Colin read the tape recorder its rights. Mick read the most damning revelations from Karen’s interview. Peter looked on, wide-eyed and bewildered. By the end, his face had twisted into the grotesque grimace of a hooked fish.

‘Karen has told us all about your sexual relationship. We’d now like to hear all about it from you. And don’t leave anything out,’ said Mick.

Peter took his time, obviously treading carefully. He’d got to know Karen soon after he started working at the Pines.

‘I didn’t consider her any more than a work colleague,’ he said.

The boys made it clear they weren’t here for an am-dram production of
Brief
Encounter
.

‘Did you fancy her, Pete? Did you want to sleep with her?’

‘I found her to be pleasant, outgoing, friendly, but not pretty. Not like Marion, who was beautiful.’

Peter started to crack, which earned him no respite.

‘How did your sexual relationship develop?’

‘I became responsible for stocking the nurses’ quarters and that brought me into more contact with Karen. We spoke about twice a day.’

‘Don’t stop,’ barked Colin.

Peter winced and carried on. ‘Around the end of 1988, Karen had to have an operation on her knee and was recovering in her room. I went to visit her a couple of times a day. Then I attended her twenty-second birthday party at her family home in Lee, in the spring of 1989. I met her mum, dad, her sisters Laura and Stacey.’

‘Did you bring Marion along?’

‘No.’

‘Karen tells us she introduced you as her boyfriend.’

‘I don’t remember her ever calling me her boyfriend, to anyone.’

‘She said that at weightlifting and aerobics classes, you told everyone she was your girlfriend.’

‘That’s not true. Go and ask them yourselves. I never introduced Karen as my girlfriend. She never was my girlfriend. She was just … casual.’

‘Your bit on the side. Yes we understand, Peter. When did you start having sex with Karen?’

‘It was around that time.’

‘So you’d been going out with Marion for over two years by now. You started sleeping with Karen in the spring of ’89, a few months before you got engaged to Marion.’

Peter nodded, shame rising through him like red sap.

‘And how did it happen with Karen, that first time?’

‘I can’t remember the details.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t remember the details? You can’t remember the first time you gave one to your mistress?’

Peter’s eyes flinched.

‘Did it mean that little to you? I bet Karen remembers every detail.’

‘We did it in my room at the Pines one evening. I honestly can’t remember how it came about.’

‘So you don’t remember who initiated it?’

He shook his head.

‘You have to speak,’ screamed Colin, making everyone jump.

‘No,’ whined Peter.

‘And what were your feelings for Karen?’

‘I thought it was just casual. Nothing serious.’

‘And did you tell Karen the news, that you saw her as a piece of meat? That in the meantime you’d got engaged to Marion?’

‘I didn’t tell her,’ said Peter.

‘But she must have found out?’

Peter nodded, too quickly, too often, flushing, cracking under the pressure again.

‘How did she find out?’

‘The matron threw an engagement party for us. Karen was there.’

‘How did she react?’

‘She didn’t make a scene or anything. She cooled it for a while.’

‘When did you resume your sexual relations with Karen?’

‘She moved into a room in the home around May of last year. We started sleeping together again.’

‘Let me get this straight: a month before your wedding to Marion in June of last year, Karen moved into the staff accommodation at the Pines residential care home?’

Peter nodded. ‘I advised her to move.’

‘Oh I bet you did, Peter. You could have sex on tap then, couldn’t you, with your unsuspecting fiancée and your 24/7 fuck buddy.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ groaned Peter, ‘she needed to get away from her family.’

‘And why was that, Peter?’

He blinked twice, then let his head drop, resigned to giving away a confidence: ‘Her dad, Terry, when he gets drunk he picks fights with them. He was hitting her, hitting all of them. He’s been doing it for years. She stayed to protect her sisters, but I told her they were old enough to look after themselves now.’

‘So while she was looking for a shoulder to cry on, you provided a bed for her to lie on. What a gentleman you are, Peter. How many days did it take you to get your end away with poor old vulnerable Karen in her new accommodation?’

‘I … we … look, she wouldn’t leave me alone. I told her to meet someone else, but she was always there.’

‘And did Marion know Karen during this time?’

‘I thought they were quite friendly, but after a while Marion started to make certain comments like “we know what she’s after”. But as the wedding got closer they seemed to get friendly again. It was Marion’s idea to invite her over for it.’

‘Tell me about that, Peter,’ said Mick, ‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like having your mistress at your wedding.’

‘She came over to Ireland with us, in the hire car.’

He broke down and sobbed.

‘Gives a whole new meaning to Hertz,’ cackled Shep to me behind the one-way mirror, ‘and Budget rental. That’s all Karen was to him, a Budget rental fuck. And what a masochist she is. Karen kept taking this punishment until she snapped. He’s spilling his guts because it’s all clicking together in his thick fucking skull, at last. Karen was obsessed with him. He’s finally realising that he drove Karen to it. What I want to know is: did he know she was going to kill Marion?’

I couldn’t believe that for one second. He’d been crushed on the night he found her. He was broken now.

‘Did you spend any time alone with Karen on your wedding weekend?’ asked Mick.

‘The night before the wedding, she came into my hotel room. There were two single beds. She lay on one and fell asleep. She woke up and went back to her room. We didn’t have sex.’

‘Denying yourself pre-marital sex until the bitter end, Peter, wow, how very Catholic,’ chirped Colin.

Peter was now on a confessional slide.

‘After the wedding, we got back to my room at the Pines to find that Karen had cleaned it and put up balloons and good-luck messages. She invited Marion and me to dinner at her family’s home. I really thought that she’d finally accepted that we couldn’t carry on. But we still did the fish tanks together every fortnight and one Monday, a few months after the wedding, we had sex again.’

‘Is it true that you told her you’d made a mistake in marrying Marion? That you really loved Karen?’

‘No, God no,’ said Peter, ‘I would never say anything of the sort.’

‘She said you told her that you loved her.’

‘I did one night when I was drunk, but I never loved her. I loved Marion. She knew that. She knew I would never leave Marion.’

‘So what were your feelings for Karen?’

‘I cared for her. But that’s all. Like I say, it was a casual thing. She wanted it as much as I did.’

‘So every second Monday, she invited you to her room at the Pines for sex?’

‘Not her room. It’s next door to the matron’s and we didn’t want to get caught. She had the key to Bethan’s room. We preferred to do it in there.’

Shep leapt to his feet: ‘Bethan’s room was next to Marion and Peter’s. He must be talking about after they moved out. After January this year. Karen said they finished two months earlier, in November.’

Colin and Mick had already homed in on this anomaly.

‘Karen says that by the end of last year she hated you, and that she and Marion had become friends.’

‘You could say they were close around the time of the wedding. They maybe went out for a drink together twice late last summer. But by October last year, it was cooling between them. The three of us didn’t get together very often. When we did it was awkward. There was an atmosphere. They knew they didn’t like each other.’

Shep appealed to his inquisitors through the soundproof glass. ‘Bring it round to this year, boys.’

‘Did Marion realise you were sleeping with Karen? Did she catch on? Is that why she’s dead?’

‘She had no idea. She never knew. To be honest, I was thinking about telling her and getting it off my chest, because it was winding down.’

Shep leaned forward: ‘Winding down?’ he said.

‘What do you mean, winding down?’ asked Mick.

‘This year, we only had sex when we did the fish tanks, every second Monday. I told her I was finishing doing the overtime. That Monday was to be the last time.’

Peter started breaking down again.

‘Keep going, keep going,’ roared Shep.

‘When did you tell Karen that you were going to stop cleaning the fish tanks with her?’

‘The previous time we did them. Two weeks earlier.’

‘Right, so on Monday, 17 June – two weeks before Marion’s murder – you told Karen that you would be cleaning the fish tanks with her just one more time,’ said Mick, ‘so when did you last have sex with Karen Foster?’

‘That same evening. But I told her this was to be the last time.’

‘Did you tell Karen about your plans to move to Ireland?’

Through heaving sobs, Peter gasped: ‘Karen heard the rumours. I told her they were true, that we were moving to Ireland.’

‘When did you tell her?’

‘That night again, two weeks before, you know … Marion got killed.’

‘What did you tell her, exactly?’ shouted Colin.

‘I told her that Marion was pregnant. It was the only way I could put an end to it for good.’

‘You told your secret lover that Marion was pregnant, so that you could dump her?’

‘Yes. Oh God forgive me …’

Peter barely got the last word out before collapsing onto the table.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Shep, mouth agape, ‘I can’t fucking believe he held all this back for six weeks with his wife on a slab.’

Back in the kitchenette, Shep congratulated Mick and Colin for breaking Peter. Now, they needed to go for his jugular. ‘This is our last chance to find out if he was involved in any way,’ he said.

‘He seemed genuinely shocked about Karen spying on them,’ said Mick, ‘I think it only started dawning on him during the interview that Karen is twisted enough to have killed Marion.’

‘Could he be saving his own arse though?’ asked Shep.

Colin shook his head: ‘I think he never considered Karen capable of doing something like this before now. He’s one of those “God’s gift to women” types – too thick, selfish and vain to ever think about the consequences of his actions.’

‘Oh he’s the classic Golden Boy Irishman,’ said Shep. ‘He only cares about himself because he’s never had to care about anyone else. I bet he’s adored by his dear old mum. He’ll use and abuse women until he finds one who’ll adore him the same. How can we be certain he didn’t goad Karen into doing it?’

‘If we can work out for certain that he genuinely loved Marion, then I think he’s innocent,’ said Mick, ‘but how do we do that?’

‘Come on fellas,’ urged Shep, ‘he’s Irish Catholic for Christ’s sake, there’s a reservoir of guilt in there. Tap it. Ask him if he went to see Marion’s body in the morgue. That’ll open him up.’ He was interrupted mid-flow by the sound of his pager. ‘Shit,’ he said inspecting the message, ‘we’ve got to go.’

‘What?’ we all asked.

‘The Commissioner’s PA just paged me. He’s in a right flap. They’ve found a woman stabbed to death in her home in Woolwich.’

My heart plummeted through my arse.

‘We’ve got to get there before the press. He wants to know if Marion’s killer has struck again.’

Then he turned to me: ‘You better not have fucked up, Lynch.’

Woolwich, South East London

Wednesday, August 14, 1991; 12:30

Shep drove fast while I raged silently.

Until now, he’d refused to even consider possible links between Marion’s murder and other crimes. When I brought up Napper, he had humiliated me in front of the team. Now suddenly, if I’d missed a clue or a connection in the ‘unsolved stranger attack’ paperwork, it would all be on my shoulders.

I should have been thinking about the victim. I should have been hoping and praying that this poor innocent woman didn’t die on account of my failings. But I was too overwhelmed by the fear of exposure, humiliation, punishment to think about anyone but myself.

The injustice of it all! I’d been Acting Detective Constable for six days. Maybe that was the problem: I’d been just acting. I didn’t really know what I was doing.

I had ground through all of the ‘unsolved stranger attack’ paperwork with painstaking zeal. But did I really know what I was looking for? Of course I didn’t fucking know! That’s why Shep picked me for the task. As a rookie, he could dismiss any of my findings, leaving him free to focus the team on Peter and Karen.

He pulled up abruptly outside a four-storey block of flats on Heathfield Terrace. A crowd of people stood on one side of the billowing police tape, gaping and gossiping while two paramedics leaned against their ambulance, awaiting instruction. We lifted the tape and strolled right through, just like they do in the movies. I hated myself for enjoying the moment.

‘What’s the score?’ Shep asked the officer at the front door of the basement flat.

The officer stood to one side: ‘Hope you haven’t eaten in a while.’

The walls of the hallway were spattered bright red.

‘Oh great,’ said an older officer, eyeing us bitterly.

‘It wasn’t my idea, Kenneth,’ drawled Shep, ‘we’ve both got enough to do.’

Kenneth was shaking his head: ‘Why do we constantly have to dance to the media’s tune? We should tell them the truth: we can’t link cases until we’ve got all the reports in.’

‘You know how it goes, Ken. The Commissioner’s primary concern is that we don’t get another savaging in the Sunday papers.’

‘Okay,’ said Ken, snapping into senior cop mode, ‘the killer stabbed the woman, Samantha Bisset, twenty-eight, to death here in the hallway. You’d better come into the bedroom.’

We followed him into a typical box room with crayoned drawings on the wall. A little girl lay sleeping, face up, on the bed.

‘He came in here, sexually assaulted the child, Jazmine, aged four, and smothered her. We can’t be sure in which order yet.’

A spasm reversed my swallowing mechanism. I stopped the gag reflex just in time.

‘But that’s not the worst of it,’ said Kenneth in his jovial, sing-song Welsh accent, leading us into the sitting room.

‘What in the name of God?’ said Shep.

I peered round his shoulder.

My mind felt like a misfiring one-armed bandit, reels spinning in different directions. I simply couldn’t absorb what I was seeing.

I heard Ken say: ‘He sliced her torso open from the pubic bone up to her throat and pulled her ribcage back to expose her organs.’

‘Like some sick work of art,’ said Shep.

‘He’s taken part of her stomach, we presume as a trophy. The sick fuck covered her in tea towels so that whoever came on the scene first – which turned out to be Samantha’s partner – had to unwrap his masterpiece.’

Just like that, every bone in my body turned to liquid. Fully conscious, my knees buckled and I keeled slowly, head-first, into the carpet, sliding down in front of Samantha’s lovingly butchered corpse.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ said Shep as I lay there, helpless but still lucid, a beached whale.

‘Get him outside,’ ordered Ken.

Two uniformed officers yanked me to my feet and carried me out of the house. As they hauled me through the hallway, I could feel my helpless feet skidding along the ground, bouncing off the thresholds.

‘Fuckin’ poof,’ muttered one of my bearers.

‘Should think about another line of work,’ said the other.

I could see the crowd pointing, laughing.

‘Fucking hyenas,’ said the first officer.

‘What would you expect in East London?’ said the second.

The two paramedics took over. One of them looked into my eyes. ‘You can hear me, can’t you?’ he said. All I could do was nod and blink twice. ‘He’s fully conscious,’ he told his partner, ‘this is weird.’

They bundled me skilfully under the police tape and hauled me to a patch of grass on the other side of the road where they laid me out in the recovery position. Within seconds, I felt myself recharge from the feet up. Finally, I hoisted myself into a sitting position and helped myself to a few greedy lungfuls of air.

I was a frequent fainter as a kid, nutting more carpet than a devout Muslim. I knew what it felt like to pass out. This had been different. I had remained fully cogent throughout. I hadn’t even felt queasy. My body simply gave way. I could see and hear everything.

‘Are you narcoleptic, mate?’ asked the kinder-faced paramedic.

‘Not that I’m aware of. I am being treated for insomnia.’

‘You need to tell them about this. It could be cataplexy.’

‘What’s cataplexy?’

‘It’s when an extreme emotional experience causes your muscles to seize up. It can be triggered by anything really, shock, love, even finding something funny. I’ve only ever seen it in narcoleptics though.’

‘Should I be worried?’

‘There’s no long-term damage and it usually only lasts a few minutes. But lying about helplessly on the streets of London is never a good idea. Definitely mention it to your specialist.’

Despite what everyone had assumed, it wasn’t the gore that had knocked me over. It was the shock of confronting the unthinkable: had I let Marion’s killer remain free to do what I’d just seen, to slaughter a mother and her four-year-old daughter? If Samantha and Jazmine died horribly because of my mistake, how was I supposed to live with myself? How could I ever atone for that?

The sound of a car braking hard snapped me back to the here and now. Out jumped Fintan, his fat panting snapper in tow. I crawled behind the tree trunk but the fucker had better radar than a bat.

‘So they
are
linking it?’ Fintan gasped shamelessly. ‘Christ, I told you, didn’t I? Forty-nine stab wounds in a domestic? It’s unheard of. So, he’s done a mother and child this time?’

A pair of violated corpses suddenly felt like better company. I scrambled to my feet and headed back to the crime scene, meeting Shep on his way out.

‘Didn’t know you were the squeamish sort, Lynch,’ he said.

‘Neither did I, Guv. Fintan’s turned up.’

‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ said Shep, setting off at his usual lightning pace.

It was too late: Fintan’s baboon hosed us down all the way back to the car. ‘How many photos of us do you need?’ Shep shouted.

We hopped in like fleeing bank robbers. Shep gunned the engine, tried to run down the snapper then took me through what I’d missed.

‘I hate to tell you, but that murder has a lot in common with Marion’s.’

My stomach swapped places with my mouth.

‘There’s no sign of a forced entry. She was attacked with a knife near her front door. It was frenzied.’

I closed my eyes as hard as I could and rubbed my face.

‘So what are you going to tell the Commissioner?’ I finally managed to ask.

‘I have to tell him that they could be linked, because they could be.’

The world fell silent.

‘Of course, Ken was right. We won’t know for certain until the reports are in. But the media will link the attacks right away. They won’t be able to resist it, climbing onto their high horses and demanding to know why we haven’t caught this maniac targeting vulnerable young women in their homes. For them, it’s a Godsend.’

‘What if I’ve fucked up?’

Shep sighed hard: ‘There’s only one way to fix this, Lynch. We’ve got to gather enough evidence to charge Karen Foster. And we’ve got to do it quickly. As soon as she’s charged, you’re out of the woods.’

I wondered when and how I’d found myself in ‘the woods’, but patently I was in them alone. But at that moment, Shep was the only person who could save me. He must have smelled my desperation. ‘Fuck it,’ he said, performing a joyrider’s emergency stop. ‘Run over to that phone box. Ring the incident room. Tell whoever answers that the team needs to call their families. They won’t be home tonight.’