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

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СКАЧАТЬ it’s a little delicate, Roger. But I’m told I can count on you being discreet. I’m casting for a new film and I’ve heard great things about a young actress called Elizabeth Little.’

      Fintan listened for a very long time.

      ‘Before I do that, Roger, is there any chance I could get hold of a show reel and some quality photos, you know, studio shots.’

      ‘Excellent. I’ll have an assistant pop round within the hour. Thanks, Roger. Ciao.’

      ‘Do you think Neil Jordan says “Ciao”?’

      ‘They all fucking do, don’t they?’

      ‘Well, what’s she been in?’

      ‘She had a bit part in The Bill last year.’

      ‘That’s it?’

      ‘Well, it’ll be a major part by the time I’m done.’

      He was dialling again.

      ‘Who are you calling now?’

      ‘The picture desk.’

      He held up his hand to shut me up: ‘Jim. I need a VHS of an episode of The Bill from last year featuring an actress called Elizabeth Little.’

      ‘No idea.’

      ‘Call them then.’

      ‘Yes. It’s very fucking important.’

      ‘Now I’ve got to get our Northern stringer out of the pub,’ he said tapping out another number.

      ‘Bob, you fat Northern git.’

      ‘Yeah, not bad. Listen, you and your monkey need to get outside an address in Armley and wait for my call. I’ll text it but start heading there now. And be discreet.’

      ‘Actress. Murdered.’

      ‘The Bill. Stage mostly.’

      ‘It’ll be massive, Bob, trust me.’

      ‘I can’t say. Look, the Mirror have already harassed them today so be gentle.’

      ‘Exactly, as soon as it’s official, I’ll call you.’

      ‘Get them on a train to London ASAP.’

      ‘I don’t know. Offer them a ferret or a pair of fucking clogs or a year’s supply of ale. Whatever it takes.’

      Another call: ‘Dennis. Pull everything you can about Elizabeth Little, date of birth 29/07/70.’

      ‘Princess Road, Richmond.’

      ‘The Full Monty.’

      ‘Talk later.’

      ‘Who was that?’ I asked.

      ‘A helpful ex-copper.’

      ‘Let me guess, the Full Monty means her bank accounts, health records, criminal records?’

      He nodded: ‘Best of all, phone records, everyone she’s called in the past year and the five personal numbers on her “friends and family” deal. That’s where the gold is, everyone who knew her best.’

      ‘And I suppose you’re going to insist that this is all perfectly legal?’

      ‘It’s not illegal. Like I’ve told you before, this is all information held on systems that anyone who works for banks, building societies, debt collection agencies or private investigators can get legitimately. Sometime next week, Dennis is laying hands on a floppy disc containing the names and dates of birth of everyone in Anonymous groups in the whole of the UK. He doesn’t collect the data but he can get hold of it and pass it onto me. That’s not illegal.’

      ‘And I suppose morality doesn’t comes into it?’

      He pulled up outside the Cold Case Unit’s non-descript annex off Albert Embankment, just south of the Thames between Vauxhall and Lambeth Bridge.

      ‘You want my help on this story, right?’ he said. ‘You want to find her killer?’

      ‘Not if it involves pulling people’s confidential records … that can’t be right.’

      ‘You do know that there are sales companies out there who routinely access all of our records – financial, medical, everything. There are City banks who employ private investigators full-time to dig the dirt on people. If it’s on a computer system, it’s being sold on.’

      I suddenly felt hot and irritable.

      ‘Look, let me do the journalism. I’ll shake down this story and then you can run with whatever we get out of it, your conscience clear. Okay?’

      I opened the passenger door, hauled myself out: ‘Where are you off to now?’

      ‘Princess Road, Richmond.’ Fintan smiled. ‘With any luck, I can talk my way in and get hold of her post.’

      ‘Jesus.’ I sighed, slamming the door of his blood red Mondeo and wishing to God I’d never set foot in it.

       Chapter 4

       Vauxhall, South London

       Saturday, April 3, 1993; 13.20

      I walked into the library-like silence of work and smiled to myself: that’s what they call us out in the real world – the Cemetery. Wind up in the Cold Case Unit and your career is truly dead and buried.

      Unusually for a Saturday, a couple of the dirty dozen were in, slumped, brooding, in various states of drink-fuelled disrepair.

      The Cold Case Unit seemed to serve as a last refuge for the knackered, disgraced or discredited. By the time of my enforced exile here six months ago, I ticked all three boxes, thanks to a now infamous episode the previous year, 1991.

      That summer, plodding the Clapham/Battersea beat in South London, I’d stumbled across my first freshly murdered body. The victim, Marion Ryan, came to me that night and, in the course of scaring me half to death, acted out what I later recognised to be a key clue to her killer.

      Of course I didn’t ‘get it’ right away. I was too busy fearing for my mental wellbeing. So she came again and again, until I felt haunted and cursed. The fall-out proved catastrophic, costing me a girlfriend, my job and very nearly my life.

      Eventually Marion’s nocturnal charades led me to her killer.

      Sounds bonkers, I know. As a devout sceptic, I refused to accept that a dead person could reach me from ‘the other side’; that something supernatural might be occurring. Then it happened again …

      I СКАЧАТЬ