‘Only Larry fucking King!’

I frowned.

‘Legendary CNN anchor man? Biggest name in American current affairs?’

‘What’s he doing in Tullamore?’

‘You heard about Mike Tyson, right?’

Who hadn’t? Police had arrested the self-proclaimed ‘Baddest Man on the Planet’ in Connecticut that week and charged him with rape.

Fintan took a violent slurp of his tea and continued: ‘And you know one of the Kennedys was charged with rape earlier this year? Well, CNN has picked up on Eve’s story. They’re saying it’s a landmark case for a woman’s right to say no.’

‘Will this help Eve?’

‘Christ, no. Her best hope was that it would all peter out. Now it’s an international news story, Ireland’s politicians must be seen to be doing the right thing.’

‘And that is?’

‘Bush and the Republicans are in power, Donal. They’d have fried her by now! She’ll get a stretch for sure. It’s just a question of how long.’

Fintan seemed delighted with this development, the twisted fuck.

‘It’s ridiculous,’ I snapped, ‘she so obviously acted in self-defence. In any civilised country she’d have been given a medal for getting rid of that menace.’

‘You need to forget about her now anyway, Donal, once and for all. There’s a good chance you’ll never clap eyes on her again.’

I refused to believe that. My heart knew, somehow, that Eve Daly was unfinished business.

My pork-based bribe landed. Fintan tore into it ravenously.

‘So what’s so interesting about this case?’ I asked.

Half his fry-up already savaged, Fintan turned his attention to the open-spouted sugar jar, emptying the equivalent of five or six teaspoons into his muddy brew. He then lit another cigarette.

‘There’s two murders a week in London,’ I pointed out, ‘what makes Marion Ryan good copy?’

Fintan smiled and shook his head in disbelief at my obvious stupidity.

‘She’s white, she’s pretty, she’s a newlywed, she lives on a respectable street. Truth is, if Marion had been black, or Asian, or a single mum in a council block in, I dunno, Deptford, with a little brown baby, I wouldn’t be here.’

‘Christ, so class and social status dictate whether or not your murder merits coverage,’ I sighed, suddenly feeling hot and tired.

‘Don’t blame me. This is who the readership identifies with, and the fact she was butchered in her own home by a crazed maniac, well, that just about ticks all our boxes.’

‘Why do you say it was a crazed maniac?’

‘Forty-nine stab wounds. Speak to any pathologist, they’ll tell you the most stab wounds they’ve ever seen in a domestic is ten or twelve. And, if it’s domestic, why was she killed in a frenzy like that? There are a hundred more efficient ways he could have done it. It’s got to be a nutter. Hey, you’re supposed to be the copper.’

I tried not to visibly bristle as Fintan pressed on.

‘Maybe he charged through the door, forced her upstairs at knifepoint?’

‘That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Fint, but there is no Bride Ripper out there on the loose, roaming the streets in search of his next pretty ABC1 target.’

‘How can you be so certain, Donal?’

‘Well, she opened the door and let this nutter in,’ I pointed out, ‘we found her on the landing with her mail, her keys, her handbag all untouched. So where does that leave your ripper theory?’

He stubbed out his cigarette, leaned back and took a notebook and pen out of his inside pocket. ‘Post, keys and handbag,’ he said, busily writing.

He stood and put on his coat: ‘Breakfast and privileged crime scene information from an impeccable source, all for free. Thanks, bro. Now, I better go and rewrite some of that copy.’

Chapter 5

South London

Tuesday, July 2, 1991; 20:05

After several months on the beat together, Clive and I had hit on just one mutual interest: food. And even then we rarely saw eye-to-eye. That evening, we pounded the streets of South London discussing which confectionery fridges best, and which shouldn’t be subjected to cooling at all.

As he launched a passionate defence for keeping the toffee in Rolos soft – thus, unfridged – I realised that the drama of the last twenty-four hours had made me desperate to make the jump to murder squad. I’d grown frustrated wasting time mooching about in a comedy uniform, not quite knowing what we were trying to achieve. ‘Catching baddies,’ I’d initially assumed, ‘gangsters, rapists and people who mug old ladies.’ If only it were like that …

The training at Hendon College should have given me a clue. I spent most of the six-week course learning about multiculturalism, hate crimes, best practices, paperwork and adopting multi-agency strategies. There was nothing about gathering evidence, hoofing down doors or bitch-slapping villains – surely the job’s only real attractions.

Since then, I’d spent lots of time taking statements from battered wives who later withdrew them and from gang members who didn’t show up for court. I spent even more time taking statements from victims of vandalism / theft / assault whose complaints against known perpetrators never even made it to court. But I spent the vast majority of my time filling in a mountain of mandatory paperwork that accompanied every single recorded crime, no matter how petty. In other words, I was a uniformed response officer who spent eighty per cent of my time at a desk.

Occasionally, we’d be knee-jerked into an initiative on the back of media pressure. Last year’s big campaign: Nike Crime. There’d been a worrying spate of young trendies getting mugged at knifepoint for their £120 Nike Air Jordan trainers. Of course, the more the media publicised Nike Crime, the worse it got, which in turn gave the media and politicians licence to grow ever more hysterical. It was a vicious cycle, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, depending on how you made your living. Before long, teenagers began to actually get knifed for their Nikes, vindicating the media frenzy and turning the spotlight directly onto the police’s failure to prevent it. The Commissioner ordered every beat officer in the capital to attend a day-long seminar on how to identify Nike-wearing trendies and defend them from knife-wielding envy. The majority of cops who turned up looked too bloated to catch a pensioner wearing flippers, let alone a lithe young shoe-jacker enhanced by recently acquired air-cushioned soles.

I resented being dragged away from my soothing, pointless paperwork to protect spoiled teenagers. As far as I was concerned, anyone dumb enough to wear £120 trainers had it coming. I wanted to solve proper crimes, like who murdered Marion Ryan.

After I caught Marion’s killer, I wanted to ask him: why? Why did you savagely take the life of a completely innocent woman? Look me in the eye and explain it to me. I need to understand.

‘Well?’ said Clive.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Have you ever actually seen someone eating a Milky Way? You know, on the tube, or the bus?’

I was racking my brains when the disembodied fuzz of the radio buzzed in. It was a T call to a house on Salcott Road. A suspected intruder. I realised right away – Salcott was just a stone’s throw from Sangora. Maybe Fintan was right. What if there was a maniac on the loose?

‘Fuck, it’s him,’ I said.

‘You what?’

‘Marion’s killer. I bet that’s him.’

‘Don’t be soft. Probably some kids …’

‘We’re three streets away.’

Clive sagged petulantly, so I took off. But I kept it to a jog: I’d need some puff left if I was going to disarm any deranged psycho.

Images of Marion flashed through my mind: the shock in her cold, dead eyes, her partially ripped-off fingernail.

As I turned into Salcott I checked back. Good old Clive was trundling along fifty feet behind, his head bowed, nodding like a knackered pit pony.