Dance With the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller. James Nally

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СКАЧАТЬ some random issue from my personal life into it, then use it against me … well, it’s outrageous …’

      He didn’t even look up.

      ‘I had a son like you,’ he said finally, quietly.

      That shut me up. They never talk about themselves.

      ‘He joined the army just to spite me really. He was a bloody musician, not a soldier.’

      His eyes studied the carpet, softening.

      ‘You always think you have time to sort these things out, but you don’t.’

      He sighed sadly. ‘He got killed in 1982, in the Hyde Park bombing.’

      I shuddered at the memory. The IRA had planted two devices. The first, a car bomb, killed three members of the household cavalry. The second exploded under a bandstand in Regent’s Park, killing eight soldiers as they played songs from the musical Oliver to a crowd of lunching workers and tourists.

      He looked up, his eyes manic now, hunting for understanding.

      ‘He was 22, same age as you.’

      ‘Oh Christ,’ I whispered, shame flooding me, ‘I’m so sorry.’

      ‘The idiot boy who planted the bomb was also 22. He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. They say now the authorities ignored a warning. They let it go off.’

      He shook his head, his gaze somehow peering inwards.

      ‘It’ll be eleven years in July. His mother has never got over it.’

      ‘And you?’ I said, unable to resist turning inquisitor on a shrink.

      ‘I’ve forgiven them, Donal. She hates me for it, but I don’t see any other way.’

      Those eyes flashed agony.

      ‘Anyway,’ he sniffed, snapping back to the present, ‘wasn’t it Wilde who said always forgive your enemies, because nothing annoys them so much?’

      He laughed. I sensed it was that, or cry.

      ‘I couldn’t forgive.’

      He didn’t react. ‘Well, we hear now that the government is talking to the IRA, trying to thrash out a ceasefire. If I can forgive, and they can sit and talk peace, then surely you and your father can give it a go?’

      ‘I tried before, several times,’ I protested.

      His wet eyes begged mine, like a starving dog’s.

      ‘I’m still seeking a second opinion, doctor,’ I said.

      ‘I just hope you get a second chance,’ he said flatly, looking away to release me.

      That night, two vivid dreams terrified me awake. Those same nightmares have been haunting me ever since.

      At least I hope they’re nightmares. Because if either of them is a premonition, Da’s in grave danger. And I’m the only person who can help him.

      Darius looped the holes and I got my badge back. But we’d been sneaky, petty and the Met wouldn’t let it go. They agreed to reinstate me so long as I didn’t work on ‘live’ cases. After all, that had been the root of ‘all my trouble’ last time around. And so they buried me here in their Cemetery with full Acting DC honours. Now it was my job to break out.

      My arrival made us ‘The Filthy 13’. But our odd-numbered battalion of outcasts didn’t follow a granite-souled pilgrim like Lee Marvin. No, we fell in behind a kindly old duffer named Detective Superintendent Simon Barrett – known as ‘Claret Barrett’ on account of his poorly disguised drink problem, or ‘Carrot’ Barrett because of his red hair and crippling inability to ever wield the stick. But Barrett’s soft-touch leadership made him an ideal boss for what had become the Force’s cushiest number. After all, the Cold Case Unit had recently acquired the most effective stealth weapon in criminal justice history.

      The development of ‘genetic fingerprinting’ in the late 1980s had turned ‘DNA’ into the by-word for belated justice. There was no place you could hide from DNA – it was all conquering, infallible, omnipotent.

      As the dispensers of Justice’s indomitable new truth serum, our unit had recently cracked some of the country’s most iconic unsolved murders. Of course the media – tireless proponents of a flat, black-and-white earth – depicted us as a dynamic squad of avenging angels, hoofing down doors and meting out justice to the worst kind of killers – the ones who’d beaten the system and ‘gotten away with it’.

      The truth was rather more mundane: DNA fingerprinting proved to be pretty much all we had. And so we approached every unsolved case in the same way. We’d take DNA samples from either all of the suspects in the original case or every man of a certain age in the local area. Meanwhile, we commissioned the Forensic Science Service (FSS) to re-test all of the original exhibits using the latest DNA fingerprinting techniques. When the results arrived, we cross-referenced them against DNA records. If we got a match, we made an arrest.

      When that failed, we still fell back on the almost mythical power of genetic fingerprinting. We’d reveal to the national and local media ‘a positive new lead’ or ‘significant new information’ about a particular case, and that this fresh twist was being subjected to ground-breaking DNA techniques.

      We peddled this white lie for good reason: it rattled the perpetrators and any witnesses who’d lied to protect them. We then paid them all a visit and acted as if we’d finally worked out the truth – we just needed the imminent DNA results to confirm it.

      The prospect of ‘having to go through it all again’ made many dodgy witnesses and even hardened killers break and confess. Few have the stomach for it, second-time round.

      There was a downside to all this, of course. No matter which route we took – testing new science or knocking old doors – we had to inform the families of the murder victims. The effect tended to be two-fold negative. Firstly, by ‘bringing it all up again’ we were forcing these people to re-live the darkest episode of their lives. Secondly, to flush out twitchy witnesses or repentant suspects, we had to play-up our certainty that, this time round, we would get justice for the victim, thus raising expectations that we couldn’t always meet.

      Either way, there was little actual ‘investigation’. We spent our days cross-referencing the new with the old, be it science or statements, making our work almost entirely clerical, soulless and solitary. And so the alcoholics in the unit drank more. Those prone to depression or other unspecified illnesses got signed-off more. Whatever dastardly deeds the rest of us had committed to end up here, only the Met’s internal disciplinary board truly knew. But I was the most desperate to get away, to swap cold for hot, to get back on a murder squad.

      Now the murder of Elizabeth Phoebe Little presented me with my first real opportunity. If I made a good impression on DS Spence, he might just scout me. I needed to go back through all the unsolved cases and unearth some solid potential leads to present to him.

      A chill slithered around my neck. Until now, my work at the Unit had been as a revisionist, correcting history, backdating justice. Sure I’d helped hunt down killers, but they weren’t active, mid-spree like this maniac.

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