Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller

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The worst part about insomnia is all the empty time you have to fill. I’m awake four or five hours longer than you each day – up to thirty-five hours every week: that’s twenty-three soccer matches, twelve The Godfathers, an entire French working week. Each year, I’ve got seventy-six extra days to kill when hardly anyone else is awake and nothing is open. These stats alone prove that I’ve far too much time on my hands.

When an inability to ‘drop off’ first struck me three years ago, I was scorching through three books a week. I read everything I could lay my hands on about sleep, dreams, insomnia. All I learned was how little we know about any of it: the scientific world has yet to even figure out why we dream.

Just because you can’t sleep doesn’t mean you don’t need sleep and little by little my ability to concentrate ebbed away, leaving me with just the one trusty sedative. Someone clever once said: ‘Time, Motion and Wine Cause Sleep.’ I could rely only on the latter. I opted for Shiraz – that charred fruit flavour making it the hardest to drink fast – and I tried to limit my intake to two bottles a night. That might sound excessive but, spread normally over eight hours – eight p.m. until four a.m. – it’s less than a glass an hour. Trust me, it felt moderate. More often than not, I dropped off somewhere between three and four a.m., congratulating myself on the quarter of a bottle left.

Some nights, regardless of grape intake, I knew sleep wouldn’t take me. This would be one of those nights.

‘Well, Van Winkle, how are they hanging?’ Aidan’s voice startled me.

‘Before you display the deep personal concern typical of you,’ he added, sitting beside me on the couch, ‘you didn’t wake me up. I just can’t seem to nod off tonight. It must be catching.’

After a while, he spoke again. ‘Why don’t you watch telly? That’d help pass the time.’

‘Have you seen late-night TV? Their target audience must be Travis Bickle. You have to like your rock soft and your porn hard.’

‘And your university open. Speaking of which, what happened to that home course you were doing?’

‘I’m still dipping in and out of it,’ I lied, ‘struggling a bit to concentrate at the moment.’

‘Criminology eh? But you just can’t do the time.’

‘Ha, yeah. Very good.’

‘Of course you could try history, but there’s no future in it.’

He did one of those comedy drum flourishes while racking his brain for more.

‘Theology’s another option, but I suspect you lack the belief.’

‘We got called to a house tonight.’

‘I’d recommend French but, to be frank, I’d say you lack that certain – oh how can I say it – je ne sais quoi?’

‘A girl stabbed to death, twenty-three.’

‘Oh Christ,’ said Aidan.

‘Nothing taken, so it must have been domestic, her husband, or a spurned ex. God knows.’

‘Or maybe a random nutter. Some of the loons on my ward are capable of anything.’

‘She let whoever it was in. She knew him.’

‘Jesus. And he stabbed her?’

‘Loads of times, multiple wounds. It looked frenzied.’

‘He must have been in a rage. Why would someone who knew her be so … angry?’

I shrugged.

Aidan was obviously bursting to know more, but had the good grace to park it for now.

‘I’ll leave you to it so,’ he said, skulking back to his room.

The wine slipped down like water. Halfway through the second bottle, I panicked that I’d run out early. I was pondering a trip to the all-night off-licence in Clapham Junction when a slither of cold air wormed its way around my neck, causing me to shudder.

Unease twanged at my gut. I squinted hard into the other side of the room, beyond the amber gloom, and sensed someone there. I shuffled in my seat: ‘Aid?’

The air crackled with intent.

‘Who’s there?’ I called out.

I squinted harder, then stiffened. A figure stood just inside the sitting room door, head bowed.

‘Aidan?’ I shouted, my heart revving like a getaway car.

Somehow, soundlessly, this fucker had got into the flat. Now he just stood there, still but poised. He’d come to hurt me. I knew it.

‘What the fuck …’ I said, trying to rouse myself. But I couldn’t move a muscle. My body had frozen to ice, but my heart thrashed inside my chest like a trapped bird.

Head still bowed, the figure started inching towards me. I sat there paralysed, powerless, as he got closer and closer; steady, unflinching, fearless. He grew bigger, until his black frame filled my vision. I realised that it had to be him. After all these years, Meehan had found me. Now he was going to finish the job.

Inches from my face, he raised his head. Fuck, no. I recognised those staring bloodshot blue eyes, that bleeding mouth. Marion Ryan glared at me with murderous rage.

Unblinking, deranged, Marion pushed her grotesquely distorted, milk-white face into mine. I screamed, but nothing came out. She smiled a malevolent smile that said: ‘You’re mine now.’

A loud bang made me jump. Suddenly she stood by the door, violently slamming it shut, over and over. Boom. Boom. Boom. I put my hands over my ringing ears and screamed.

In a flash, everything turned yellow. My squinting eyes finally made out Aidan’s horrified face in the house lights.

‘What the fuck?’ he cried, surveying me in undisguised disgust.

I could smell and feel warm puke on my chest.

‘It’s wine, just red wine,’ I gasped.

‘Jesus, I thought you’d been stabbed or something. What the fuck was all that about?’

I turned to the flat door: it was closed.

‘Just a nightmare.’

‘Jesus,’ he said again, and headed to the kitchen. I heard water pouring out of the tap. I took the glass of water and tea towel from him and wiped my mouth. I realised how grotesque I must have looked and smiled. It was the sheer relief of being alive.

‘It’s no fucking laughing matter,’ he snapped, ‘you’ve got to see someone about this shit. Oh Christ, the smell, get that shirt off, for fuck’s sake.’

As I unbuttoned I tried to convince myself that it really had been a nightmare. But I felt sure I’d been awake the whole time. Sitting here on the couch, everything around Marion in that streetlight orange glow – the lamp, the posters, the table, my jacket on the back of the chair. It had been real.

Aidan returned to the kitchen door, where he stood in judgement for fully three minutes.

‘You have to see someone, Donal. Not sleeping is one thing, but this …’

‘It was Marion, the girl from tonight.’

‘What?’

‘She appeared to me. I thought she was going to kill me. She seemed so angry. Did you hear the door slamming?’

‘All I heard was you howling at the fucking moon.’

‘I thought it was Meehan.’

‘What?’

‘I thought it was Tony Meehan, coming to finish me off.’

‘You’re raving now, Donal. Jesus. That guy’s long gone.’

‘I’ve been expecting him for three fucking years. Every night.’

‘What are you talking about? Why would he be wanting to finish you off?’

‘It’s why I can’t sleep.’

Aidan couldn’t have looked more bewildered.

‘Something weird happened that night, Aidan. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. I’ve never told anyone. You’ll think I’m insane.’

‘What with some of the people I deal with? I doubt it,’ Aidan laughed, but kindly. ‘Try me.’