I looked up to see him standing at the doorway. Terror riveted my guts like a nail gun. My brain screamed: ‘Get up. Run.’

But I was rooted to the couch. Frozen.

I couldn’t see his eyes: just his silhouette creeping closer, closer. Now I felt myself backing up against the arm of the couch. I could move. Had I come out of my body?

I screamed with all my might and scrambled over the back of the seat, knocking over the bottle of wine.

The figure kept coming, steady, relentless, determined. It was then that I saw the knife glinting in his hand. I palmed the floor, scooped up an empty bottle in my right hand.

‘Come on then,’ I roared but the fucker kept coming, zombie-like.

Suddenly, swirling bright lights illuminated the room for a split second.

‘What the fuck?’ I cried, recognising those eyes.

I lurched forward, incensed, then found myself free-falling through cold, streaking lights into dark, darker black. I hoped to Christ it was the cataplexy.

Chapter 45

Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland

Tuesday, August 27, 1991; 00:06

My eyelids opened, fighting against blinding yellow light. They swooned and rolled, trying to fix on a shape or a colour.

Slowly, a face came into focus. Eve’s face.

‘What the fuck?’ I mouthed.

‘It’s okay, Donal,’ said Eve, ‘you’ll be fine. Just take it easy, I’m here now.’

These should have been the sweetest words I’d ever heard. But not after what I’d just realised.

‘Lie back, Donal,’ she ordered, bossy now.

I defied her, sitting up to survey my body. A cough spluttered out from deep inside. A twinge twisted my gut and sharpened my mind.

‘What the hell happened?’ I asked, coherent now.

A balding, friendly-faced guy trotted in merrily from the hallway, screwdriver in hand. ‘Ah good man, you’ve come to.’

I looked at him, then looked at Eve.

‘I can’t mix the blow and the booze at all,’ he said. ‘I’m like Woody Allen, I spend the rest of the night trying to take my trousers off over my head!’

‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘I’m Pete,’ he said, coming over and shaking my hand, ‘from Irish Getaway. I missed your call earlier. I tried to call you back but the phone seemed to be dead. I thought I’d better come over and make sure you’re okay. Eve here explained that you’ve, er, overdone it a bit.’

I sat up and took another deep breath. I realised that this handyman had proved very handy indeed. He didn’t know it, but he’d just saved my life.

‘The power went out … Pete, listen to me, please don’t leave me here, with her,’ I said. Pete looked at me strangely. He then looked at Eve as if to say: ‘This guy is mashed.’

He looked back at me: ‘Ah now, listen my friend, I think you’re maybe a bit paranoid from the hash. Take it easy, alright?’

He had no idea what he’d interrupted. Prevented.

‘Is the phone working?’ I asked, getting up.

‘That’s the funny thing,’ said Pete, raising an eyebrow as if I was taking the piss, ‘someone cut the line just outside the house.’

‘And why did the power go off?’

‘Er, someone pulled a fuse out,’ he said, still looking at me like I might be yanking his chain. Then he turned to Eve: ‘Are you sure you’re gonna be okay, love?’

‘Yeah, fine Pete, thanks,’ said Eve, giving him her most reassuring smile.

‘Right so, as long as you’re sure, because I could really do with getting off. I’ll get the phone people out tomorrow.’

He looked at me again, with a mixture of pity and concern. My eyes pleaded with him not to leave.

‘Please don’t go, Pete – I think she’s trying to kill me.’

‘Go, Pete, for the love of God,’ laughed Eve, ‘he’ll be alright when he gets some sleep.’

‘Grand then. Okay, you two have a good night now,’ said Pete, backing out of the door hesitantly.

‘Thanks, Pete,’ I said, not taking my eyes off Eve. I reached down behind the couch for a fallen wine bottle and tried to work out where she’d stashed the knife.

As soon as the front door shut, she ran. I set off after her, my mind trying to process what had happened. My first thought: she’s got rid of the knife and is racing to the kitchen to get another. My second: she’s trying to escape. As she got close to the kitchen door, I launched myself.

We slid against the back door as one. I yanked her over, face-up, gripped her throat and held the bottle over her face like a primed axe.

‘What the fuck, Eve?’ I roared into her face.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she demanded.

‘You were going to stab me!’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re scaring me now, Donal. Get off me.’

My mind raced. I knew what I’d seen: Eve coming for me, with a knife. Only the headlights of Pete’s van had saved me. Had he not swung into the driveway at that very moment, I’d be lying on that couch now, bleeding to death with no way of phoning for help. That hadn’t been any sort of sleep paralysis episode. Eve had set me up to be here, so she could kill me.

‘You know I can’t just let you walk away from this, Eve, as if nothing happened? I have to arrest you for attempted murder.’

‘No one will ever believe you,’ she hissed.

‘What?’

‘I’ve known Pete for years. I told him you’d been smoking weed and drinking and started hallucinating. I told him you got so paranoid that you cut the phone line and shut off the power. He was worried sick about me. He refused to leave until you came to. He wanted to make sure you weren’t going to do something stupid.’

Fireworks exploded in my head.

‘Go on, hit me with the bottle,’ she gloated, ‘strangle me. They’ll put you away.’

‘Hang on a second, you just tried to …’

‘Go on,’ she said, ‘call the Guards. Tell them what you think you saw. I’ll say you were tripping because you were high. Look at the state of the place. Look at the state of you! I’ve got your thumbprints on my neck. I could tell a very different story, far more believable than yours. Pete will back me up. You haven’t got a prayer.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I spat, ‘I’m a police officer. And let’s not forget, you have form for this.’

‘You invited me for the weekend, got pissed and stoned, confronted me about my affair with your brother and flipped out. Pete will back me up and he’s the only witness.’

My grip weakened on her throat, my mind feeling like a bank of footlights all panning in different directions. She was right. How would any of this sound to a Guard? To a judge and jury? Fair play, she’d set me up beautifully.

‘Okay, let’s say we don’t call the Guards,’ I said, removing my hand from her throat but keeping the bottle poised, ‘just tell me why, Eve. Why were you going to do that to me?’

‘I knew you wouldn’t just leave it alone,’ she rasped bitterly, rubbing her throat. ‘Tony’s visits. I knew your prying copper’s mind would have to work it all out …’

‘What were you scared I’d find out, Eve?’

‘I’m not going back to prison. Ever. No matter what it takes,’ she almost recited.

‘What is it Meehan’s been trying to tell me?’

Her cold hateful eyes held back, but her sneering mouth couldn’t wait to deliver the lacerations her knife had failed to.

‘I was never going to go to London with you. Did you really think I could face Daddy after what he did to us? And have to look at that slut Sandra Kelly? I was going to New York. They’d even sent me the ticket. I just didn’t know how to tell you. God, you just wouldn’t fucking listen.’

The universe flipped over like a coin. Strength gushed out of me until I heard my wine bottle weapon shatter on the wooden floor.

‘I was going to announce it at the party, get it off my chest. But then of course you got wasted and carted off to hospital.’

I dismounted, unable to feel the floor beneath my feet. She sat up, coughed hard.