Free Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller by James Nally Page B

really? Wow, I don’t know what to say. Is that …? Thank you, Officer.’
    ‘Donal,’ I said, offering my hand.
    She took it and shook it hard, her tearful smile lighting up a distant galaxy.

Chapter 6
    Salcott Road, South London
    Tuesday, July 2, 1991; 22:31
    I drove up and down Gabby’s road but, of course, at that time of night there were no parking spaces. On a second pass, I spotted the entry to the street’s rear alley and ignored the No Parking sign next to it.
    If Dominic Rogan launched another sortie tonight, he’d get the shock of his fucking life.
    During my shift, Meehan’s words from three years ago had been ringing through my head: Y
ou need to keep an eye on that one.
I couldn’t just hope that Rogan wouldn’t come back and attack Gabby. I’d failed to protect a woman from a violent man before. I wouldn’t be taking that chance again.
    Besides, Rogan had clearly slipped into a delusional cycle that only the sharpest of shocks might break. My springing out of the night could do the trick.
    I also figured, somehow, that Marion’s foul-tempered spirit /ghost would be less likely to find me here. And, having grown up on
The
Rockford Files
,
Cagney and Lacey
and
Remington Steele
, I’d always fantasised about staking somebody out. I even brought doughnuts.
    After midnight, the wind picked up, the last of the house lights went off and the trees groaned.
    Just a handful of people walked past, mostly carefree couples gambolling home from a night out. How I envied their playful bickering, their easy intimacy, their ‘wink-and-elbow’ language of delight.
    It had been almost three years since I’d shared the thrill of giddy affection. Sure, there had been a few drink-fuelled end-of-night snogs and exchanges of numbers, a few awkward dates. At least, they became awkward as soon as anyone mentioned exes. I hadn’t worked out yet how to talk about Eve and what happened – or how to refer to her in the past tense. Unfinished business, and all that.
    I thought back to the last time we’d spoken – two days after she killed Meehan.
    The lunchtime news revealed she had been released on bail. Three or four times that afternoon, I picked up the phone to call her home, only to replace the receiver. Eve wouldn’t answer for sure: what was I supposed to say to Mad Mo?
    ‘Mrs Daly, back from New York so soon?’
    No doubt they’d blame me for not protecting Eve – as if her prop dagger-wielding high-jinks hadn’t proven, beyond any doubt, that the one person who didn’t need protecting was Eve Daly.
    Dusk told me it was time to go and see her. As shadows gathered in the last corners of the golf course, I strode the ninth fairway, relieved to be ‘doing’ rather than ‘thinking’. Barty Morris, keeper of the greens and not many secrets, spotted me and stopped dead in his tracks. It was clear, even from this distance, he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. I gave him a wave of my white bandaged hands and turned towards the Daly back garden. To wide-eyed Barty, this represented the scoop of a lifetime. ‘The Dalys are having another party!’ I shouted, and he nearly toppled over.
    As I hopped into Eve’s backyard, I spied the press pack out front disbanding for the night. I counted six photographers and two TV cameras. To one side, an orange-faced anchor man completed an earnest piece-to-camera. Behind him, a pair of ferrety little reporters, all bustling and self-important in their flappy macs, buzzed about like bluebottles at a picnic. Fintan would feel right at home amongst that lot, I thought. Except with this story, he could scoop his rivals without leaving his flat in Dublin 4.
    As I crept across the crazy paving, I was stopped dead in my tracks by bloodstains –
my
bloodstains – daubed in manic streaks on the shed’s pebbledash wall. It looked like the remnants of some gruesome pagan sacrifice.
    I tiptoed to the outer wall of the house. The kitchen light was off, so I took a quick