Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

boys. Acutely aware of this, none of his players ever went down injured.
    Eve, a true crime nut, was obsessed with the murder of Meehan’s mother. She asked my brother Fintan – a newspaper reporter in Dublin – to get cuttings on the case. I refused to read them. It was difficult enough facing Choker without knowing about his homicidal genetic disposition.
    ‘Mr Aaaal Jolson,’ he sang, to the tune of ‘Mr Bojangles’ while jazz-wafting his enormous white hands. I stared speechlessly, trying to decide if it would be safer to join in or just carry on feigning delight.
    ‘Who are you supposed to be?’ he demanded accusingly.
    ‘James Joyce,’ I said, wanting to keep it simple.
    He shook his head mournfully: ‘Jeez, you could have made some effort.’
    Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he produced a bottle with no label.
    ‘I was gonna save this for later,’ said Choker, ‘but I bet you’d like some right now.’ His tone suggested that I
should
like some, right now.
    As the Incredible Hulk-hued green liquid glugged into my glass for way too long, I heard myself warble: ‘What is it?’
    ‘Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder,’ smiled Choker, sounding like Shank would, if he’d been brought up in a bog.
    I took a sip and fought back tears. Choker nodded, so I took another.
    ‘The really fit birds love fancy dress, don’t they?’ declared Choker. ‘Gives them a chance to strut their stuff. Put those swotty heifer lumps back in their hay boxes, what?’
    He could tell I didn’t follow.
    ‘All those chubby bitches banging on about their As and Bs and which Uni they’re going to? When they see a woman like Eve in an outfit like that, puts them right back in their place, doesn’t it?’
    He grimaced at my confused face, strutted towards the door, then turned.
    ‘You need to keep an eye on that one.’ Choker smiled to reveal his blinding white teeth, then jazz-wafted his huge white hands again, lingering just a bit too long, like a baddie in a B-movie.
    I gulped hard: so hard I could hear it. In my mind flashed Choker’s big white hands, closing in on Eve’s pale and oh-so-thin and snappable neck. My heart felt too big for my chest. My temples throbbed sweat.
    I should definitely go and find Eve.
    As I turned into the hallway, Dinosaur Jr.’s ‘Freak Scene’ skidded into life. Eve had clearly re-appropriated the hi-fi. I was halfway to the sitting room pondering what, if anything, I could do if the orphan got frisky with the Viking, when my legs started to lose their feeling. With every step, they got heavier and heavier. This rattled me. I’d been pissed before, often enough. This felt different, like my legs were dying.
    ‘So fucked I can’t believe it,’ drawled J Mascis and he wasn’t wrong. I felt dead-legged, sweat-soaked and zoned-out, as if life itself was leaking out of my feet. Vanity prevented me raising the alarm. I needed Eve not to see me like this. I needed Tullamore’s teen population not to see me like this; not on my final public appearance. I had to get outside. My only hope was the back door.
    It took some sort of indefinable judo throw to uproot my dead legs and hoist them around, so that they now faced the rear of the house. I set off in a straight-legged goose-step towards the back door, holding my arms ahead of me in case I fell.
    I couldn’t feel my feet or legs now at all. I actually wondered if I was dying. I couldn’t help thinking how gloriously rock ’n’ roll it would be if I dropped dead right here and now, Eve cradling my head, kissing me one last time, Yoko to my John Lennon.
    Suddenly one of the closed bedroom doors creaked open. Out of it came a meek-looking Tara Molloy. In the dark behind her, some fella was struggling to get his trousers back on. She stood and stared but said nothing of my dead-legged, metronomic stomp. What did she think I was doing? My own
Thriller
tribute?
    I goose-stepped on like a Nazi on acid. I only had to make it past the kitchen