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

could clearly read her body language.
    The unidentified person didn’t leave, but shut the door carefully behind him and walked to the bed. I knew that strut, that side profile, that trilby hat. It was Choker Meehan.
    Eve sat bolt upright on the bed, as still as a statue.
    Choker gently took hold of her hands, sliding his right knee, then his left, onto the bed, so that they were planted between her pale, outstretched legs. He whipped off his hat, tossing it away like a frisbee towards the window. I was bursting to do something, but it was hopeless. Eve pushed back against the headboard defensively. Choker leaned forward, so he was nose to nose with Eve, his hands smothering hers.
    He was saying something. Eve remained still, poised, defiant.
    He placed his right hand on her left shoulder. ‘Eve,’ my shout was swallowed by black. I tried to lunge, but I was a fly trapped in an invisible web.
    Now his right hand moved from her shoulder to the base of her skull, then to her pale neck. His other hand moved in under her cheek. His fingers spread round the back of her neck so that his thumbs sat twitching on her windpipe. ‘Eve, Eve, for fuck’s sake, Eve,’ I cried, but only my guts thrashed about.
    Look after Eve for me,
Mo had pleaded into my eyes before she left.
    Eve tried to turn her head away. He wouldn’t let her. She wriggled hard. He easily pushed her back on the bed underneath him, his left hand now moving up to cover her mouth, dwarfing her face.
    I’m counting on you, Donal.
    I went apeshit; screaming, thrashing, fighting with all my might. But no one could hear me. She had lost her fight and just lay there, her skirt above her waist, her white panties yanked to one side. He fiddled furiously with his trousers while I just hovered, in hell.
    Of course, Mrs Daly.
    He pounded now, rhythmically. His downward motion revealed the clock radio on the far side of the bed, its luminous green digits flipping casually to 01.13.
    Except all our lives stopped dead right then, never to be the same again.
    I woke to my own screaming voice, loud, desperate, primeval. I saw blood glistening on the pebbledash, the skin on my hands, minced. I was breathing hard but I still couldn’t lift my feet. Slowly, sounds formed. The nearby church bells clanged twelve times.
    But it’s after one a.m. right? Why are they chiming midnight?
    Trapped birds flapped and flailed inside my skull. A ball of nausea inflated my chest. I still had time to get back inside, to save Eve. I went to move but my legs stuck to the earth. I refused to believe I was gravity’s prisoner. I lurched forward; determined, incensed, but went into free fall through cold, streaking lights into dark, darker black.
    I woke up in darkness, to an unfamiliar bed, my guts clanking like an out-of-tune bass.
    Flash-frame images of Meehan forcing himself upon Eve flipped through my mind, a rolodex of horrors. I fought an aching neck to sit up. All hopes that it had been some sort of horrific nightmare fled when I saw my bandaged hands, remembering how I’d minced them against the shed’s pebbledash wall.
    Far away, I could hear the click-clack of retreating footsteps and a swinging door. Shapes formed in the gloom. Weird patterns became curtains, closed around beds opposite. I hadn’t spent a night in hospital since I was a kid.
    They’d left the curtains around my bed open, presumably to keep me under observation. I sensed someone watching me. Sure enough, a silhouette stood beyond the end of my metal bed, in the middle of the ward, as still as a corpse. I strained to see the face, but it was too dark.
    ‘Who are you?’ I said. The person didn’t move a muscle.
    A current of unease zapped through me.
    ‘What do you want?’ I called.
    The figure started moving towards me, slowly, silently, with intent.
    I backed up against the metal frame of the bed, the cold steel reminding me I was awake. Still he came, steady, unflinching, unstoppable.
    ‘What do you want?’ I