James Nally - Dance With the Dead - A PC Donal Lynch Thriller

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

This ebook edition 2016

Copyright © James Nally 2016

Cover design © Jem Butcher Design 2016

James Nally asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © August 2016: 9780008150884

Source ISBN: 9780008149550

Version: 2016-06-29

Jim and Bunny Nally

Thanks

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Postscript

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Let’s get one thing straight – I’m not a ‘psychic cop’. I can’t predict the future. God knows if I could, I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in right now.

Nor do I possess some macabre ability to contact the dead, and I feel nothing but contempt for those chancers who claim that they can. You know who you are … psychics, mediums, men of the cloth.

But something’s not right. Every time I get close to the body of a murder victim, they appear to me in the middle of the night. I’d like to say they turn up in my dreams. That would neatly explain it away. But they don’t. They appear when I’m awake, and engage with me. At first, it scared me half to death. Until I realised they were trying to tell me something.

They’re always trying to tell me something.

It’s got to be my subconscious mind, right? Presenting clues to me in a novel fashion? To a devout sceptic like me, anything else is unthinkable.

I told three people about my ‘visits’ from the other side. My brother thought I’d ‘lost it’. My shrink almost destroyed my fledgling cop career. My ex-girlfriend tried to kill me.

So I’m not telling anyone else. If this cursed ‘gift’ helps me crack more murder cases, then I’ll reap that benefit in secret.

No one else needs to know about my occasional Dance with the Dead.

Manor House, North London

Saturday, April 10, 1993; 13.30

The Woodberry housing estate’s basketball courts heaved, the thudding of balls and squealing of trainers sounding like a massacre at a school for mice. A car alarm’s shrill whistle pinged about the tired old tower blocks, like the yelps of a seagull strapped to a high-speed propeller. A souped-up, blacked-out Ford Escort growled past, its drum ’n’ bass heart spreading Kiss FM and fresh defiance.

As I got close to my car, two large men in dark clothes appeared. One leaned against my driver’s door while the other walked towards me.

‘Donal Lynch?’

‘Not me,’ I lied, veering sharply to my left and taking a route between two rows of parked cars.

The car leaner read it well, heading me off where the final two vehicles stood off, face to face, like duelling cowboys.

So did we …

Behind him, a large, blacked-out jeep pulled up. The back door ghosted open.

‘Get in,’ his strong Dublin accent insisted, and I found myself hoping to God this was the IRA. At least I had some leverage with the boyos.

But the acid sizzling my gut told me these were Jimmy Reilly’s grunts, and that he’d dreamed up something diabolical for them to do to me today.

One week earlier …

Arsenal, North London

Saturday, April 3, 1993

My drunken mistake hadn’t been falling asleep fully clothed – God knows I’d survived that often enough – but forgetting to remove the pager from my front left trouser pocket. Its sudden vibration sent an electroconvulsive blast through my piss–filled nads, forcing my unconscious mind to perform a urethral emergency stop. I woke to the sound of my own desperate yelps.

‘ Tom, Brownswood Red-Light Zone N4 – Check MO ’ flickered the blunt paged message. My clock radio’s Martian digits glowered 0754. Below me, a stricken wine bottle spewed red across the cheap laminate. I saluted Shiraz, my fallen night nurse, for delivering almost three whole hours of sleep.

My grudging slumber had been broken only once, by a recurring nightmare that hadn’t afflicted me for weeks. Why did it come back last night? Was he in some sort of danger?

To banish my angst, I flicked on the radio.

Lost in the Milky Way

Smile at the empty sky and wait for

The moment a million chances may all collide

The Lightning Seeds’ ‘The Life of Riley’ seemed way too excitable for this time of day. I padded into the bathroom. Murdered prostitutes, or ‘toms’ to use police parlance, had become my area of professional expertise these days. Anyone would think I was trying to save their souls. But I had a point to prove about solving their murders. A career-salvaging point, I hoped.

Having spent the past six months on the Cold Case Squad dealing with long-dead stiffs, I comforted myself that at least this body would still be warm. Maybe she’d come to me tonight, like those murder victims had two years ago. Before all the trouble …

I’ll be the guiding light

Swim to me through stars that shine down

And call to the sleeping world as they fall to earth

Or maybe those weird, inexplicable episodes had run their course. A large part of me hoped so. In the meantime, I decided to find out all I could about this local vice hot spot that had slipped below my radar, and knew just the man to help, so I cranked up the radio full blast.

So, here’s your life