‘Come on, Eve, get to the point. What’s he trying to tell me?’

‘Fine. I’d been seeing Tony since Easter. He was coming with me, to New York.’

She searched my eyes for pain, rage – anything. I just felt blank. A hologram.

‘Then he told me he wasn’t coming with me. He was seeing someone else and he couldn’t leave her because she was pregnant. Tara fucking Molloy. The slut.’

‘Tara Molloy? The girl you sent over to me, for the abortion?’

‘It’s a very long story,’ she smiled bitterly, her eyes peering into the past.

‘How could he do that to me? I gave him everything. Everything.’

‘But you said he tried to rape you. You lashed out in self-defence.’

‘Jesus, Donal, don’t make me spell it out.’

‘But what I saw … he forced himself on you.’

‘You still haven’t fucked anyone, have you, Donal? Well when you do, don’t be afraid to get rough. Most women like being fucked properly.’

My head felt like it was no longer attached to my body.

‘So you had sex with him. He told you that he wasn’t coming with you, that he’d knocked up Tara Molloy. And you stabbed him. That’s what he’s been trying to tell me.’

She got to her feet, glaring at me all the while, her face puce with hatred.

‘And you thought there was a chance I’d find out tonight, if I connected with Meehan. You couldn’t risk it so you waited until I was stoned, pissed, asleep …’

‘I’ve got nearly three years left on my tariff. I’m not going back to prison. No matter what it takes,’ came her demented mantra.

I saw the knife shaking down by her side, in her clenched right fist, pointing behind her. I wheeled towards the kitchen door. She stepped in to cut me off, raising the knife above her shoulder so that it now pointed at my face.

‘They taught me how to do this in prison,’ she said, in autopilot now, all her energy focused on the knife scoping out my heart.

I stumbled backwards but her lunge was greater. As she flew towards me, the world stopped turning. Everything went into slow motion. Total soundless calm.

She flew past me, face down into the hard wooden floor. A figure followed through with a drop kick to the back of her head that sent a sickening thud ringing through the cold hallway.

‘Is that rough enough for you?’ screamed Fintan as her knife skidded along the fake wooden floor, all the way to the sitting room door.

He rolled her limp body over.

‘I think I may even have out-scooped myself this time,’ he congratulated himself.

I heard myself gurgle helplessly like a contented baby. My head felt insanely calm. My brain must have dosed me in preparation for traumatic death.

Fintan walked over and handed me a hipflask. He was film noir, after all.

I took a long draw, letting the liquor pinch me back to reality.

‘How did you … What …?’

Fintan started pacing the hallway; all-knowing, buzzing on adrenaline.

‘I spent the past week working on getting you both here,’ he announced, ‘I made sure Eve believed you have this gift. I figured it was the only way I could flush her out about what really happened here that night.

‘But things kept getting in the way, like Gabby. I couldn’t risk you falling for her, Donal. That would have stopped Eve from being able to talk you into coming back here.’

‘What, so you …?’

Fintan nodded: ‘The clothes slasher, the cuttings.’

‘You wanker,’ I snapped.

‘That’s the thanks I get for saving your arse?’

I took a double draw on the single malt.

‘The more Eve told me about it, the less I believed her story. But it made great copy. That’s all she ever was to me. Great fucking copy.

‘Come on! Let’s get the fuck out of here.’

He offered me an arm. I let it hang. Too many questions squirmed like maggots in my brain.

‘I don’t understand. You helped Eve escape prison?’

‘No, I didn’t! I got everything I wanted from her and then I told her to plead guilty. Told her it would get her a lighter sentence. I couldn’t believe it when they fell for that treaty shit. Come on.’

I ignored his demanding arm, and looked over at Eve’s limp body. As blood trickled from her mouth, my mind flashed back to Marion Ryan sprawled across that landing. A horrific realisation hit home: if Eve died here tonight, the bitch’s crazed spirit would torment me for all eternity.

‘We better check that she’s … you know?’

Fintal walked over, leaned down and gave her face a couple of sharp slaps. Eve groaned.

‘Don’t bother getting up, love,’ he sang to her.

‘We should call an ambulance,’ I said, ‘and the Guards.’

Fintan laughed bitterly: ‘You’re kidding, right? Who would believe any of what went on here? It’d destroy all of us. Come on, I’ve rooms booked at the Bridge House.’

I didn’t get up.

‘Come on, Donal, for fuck’s sake. She’ll be alright.’

I refused to budge.

‘Alright, we’ll call an ambulance from a phone box. Now can we go?’

I ignored his arm and hauled myself up, feeling spent and idiotic.

Fintan opened the front door and stood aside.

‘You’re not going to write a story about this are you?’

‘No, Donal. I think I’ll save this one for the memoir.’

Chapter 46

New Scotland Yard, London

Monday, March 16, 1992; 10:00

‘Commander Glenn?’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘DC Lynch. Please call me Donal.’

Glenn shook my hand lamely, glanced at me but thought better of taking a good look. He’d already made up his mind. I was a goner.

The convictions of Laura and Terry Foster for murder this week had triggered a media Blitzkrieg. Quite simply, the story had all the best elements – sex, lies, videotape and biblical comeuppance.

When they ran out of ways to re-interpret the avaricious sexual mores of Karen and Laura Foster and Peter Ryan, they began to look for other angles. A hungry, eagle-eyed agency reporter spotted a piece in medical bible The Lancet and deciphered that it could only have come from contact with an officer working on the reigning crime story of the year.

And so, on pages four and five of the up-and-coming Sunday Herald newspaper, the banner headline read: ‘How Psychic Detective Brought Down Twisted Sisters.’

Of course, Lilian never sent me a copy for approval. She honoured her promise not to use my name but revealed my age, nationality and details about the case that anyone vaguely connected to it would have recognised right away.

Before I’d even seen the article, a curt pager message instructed me to attend a meeting with Commander John Glenn at Scotland Yard, nine a.m. tomorrow. I marvelled at the irony. My fate lay in the hands of Glenn, the senior cop whose devotion to Professor Richards’ hocus-pocus forensic psychology derailed the Marion Ryan murder probe in the first place. I knew that McStay would have briefed him to the hilt, relishing the chance to bring down one of Shep’s bitches.

‘Please sit,’ he said, scanning his psychotically well-ordered desk.

Glenn had the wavy brown hair, thick set, pinched pink cheeks and impenetrable inner confidence of a Tory Toff. He looked at some papers as I took in the view from his eighth floor office window at New Scotland Yard. I wondered what had happened to Old Scotland Yard.

Finally, in his own time, he spoke.

‘Can I be frank with you, Donal?’ he said, pronouncing it like Donald with a silent second ‘d’, just as Lilian had done.

‘You’ve got a simple choice, Donal. You can do the decent thing and resign. Or you can hang on for an internal inquiry. I dare say though, we’ll find enough grounds to get shot of you.’

‘Get shot of me, Sir?’ I said.

‘This revelation is a total embarrassment to the Met. The only consolation is that you’re so junior. Otherwise it could have bankrupted us. The Fosters could appeal and sue. The family of Marion Ryan could sue. You do understand this, I trust?’