‘I’d like there to be an inquiry. I want to give my side of the story, Sir,’ I said flatly.

‘Thought as much,’ sighed Glenn, ‘the Police Federation no doubt advised you to hang on for as long as possible so that you can keep bleeding us of your salary.’

‘I’ve never spoken to the Police Federation, Sir,’ I said.

He shifted in his seat, agitated, desperate to get something off his chest.

‘Your side of the story?’ he snorted with contempt. ‘What’s that then, that you have some psychic connection to murder victims?’

‘Sir, that was Dr Krul’s theory, not mine. My name isn’t on the article.’

‘So what do you have to say for yourself about this, er … gift of yours then?’

‘I just think my subconscious sometimes influences my dreams, and that helps me piece things together, Sir.’

His mouth contorted as if he’d just bitten into a dog-shit sandwich.

‘Look Donal, the days of building a case against a suspect are gone. I thought you of all people would know that. Haven’t you read about your compatriots, the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six and what not?’

‘And what not?’ I said, surveying his over-privileged, jowly, smug chops.

A bomb went off in my head. Before I knew it, I had Glenn by the throat, pinning his flabby face on the green leather surface of his ridiculous antique desk.

‘Now I want you to listen to me, Commander Glenn,’ I spat in his hairy ear. ‘I want you to do something for me. I want you to repeat some words after me, understand?’

He mumbled incoherently, reddening until the port-induced, cracked-vein bundles in his face looked set to explode. I saw his free hand reach under the desk for a panic button and grabbed it, twisting it back until he yelped like a kicked puppy.

‘What’s the panic, Commander? Now, I want you to say the word doughnut.’

‘What the blazes?’ he began, so I pulled his arm to breaking.

‘Doughnut,’ whimpered Commander Glenn.

‘Very good, Commander. Now I want you to say another word for me.’

He nodded desperately.

‘Commander, I want you to say “Anal”.’

‘Anal,’ squawked Commander Glenn.

‘I bet you had plenty of that at the posh school, didn’t you, Commander? Now, I want you to put them together. Can you do that for me, Commander?’

‘Doughnut. Anal. What in God’s name …?’

‘Now I want you to drop the nut from doughnut and the A from anal. And put those words together. Do you think you could do that for me, Commander?’

‘Dough Nal,’ he wheezed.

‘Again?’ I barked.

‘Dough Nal,’ he repeated.

‘One more time now, Commander. Both words together please?’

‘DoughNal,’ he said.

‘Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?’ I said, letting go of him and, quite possibly, my career.

Chapter 47

Frank’s Café, Clapham Junction

October 1995

It always troubled me why Samantha and Jazmine Bisset – the mother and daughter so savagely butchered in East London – hadn’t come to me for help. I’d stood next to their recently murdered bodies, just as I had with Tony Meehan and Marion Ryan. Tony and Marion led me to their killers. Why hadn’t the Bissets?

When they didn’t show, I put it down to two reasons:

A: I’d been deluding myself about having some sort of ‘gift’.

B: They didn’t need to come to me because I was already on the trail of their killer.

But I soon learned that my gift was real, whether you believed the scientific explanation or the metaphysical one. More dead people came to me in my dreams, and directed me to their killers. This just added to the torment: what the hell had I missed in the Bisset case?

Gradually, though, I let it go. Until one day, and a chance sighting of a newspaper article.

The Met Police was criticised by an Old Bailey Judge today for missing ‘countless’ opportunities to catch a notorious serial killer and rapist. Robert Clive Napper, 29, of Plumstead, East London, was convicted of the murder of Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter, Jazmine and detained indefinitely at Broadmoor Hospital.

Napper: the man who boasted about raping a woman on a common to his own mother. I’d flagged him up as a suspect in the Marion Ryan murder case.

I remembered Shep’s patronising putdown:

Lynch, get the officers at Plumstead to check him out. Can you stick to solving this case for now?

Except I hadn’t got the officers at Plumstead to check him out. I never raised the subject of Napper again, to anyone. I let my stupid male pride get in the way of doing the right thing. Again.

Of course, I couldn’t have saved the Bissets. This ‘gift’ didn’t bestow upon me the powers of a guardian angel to swoop down and rescue the doomed. I wished it had.

But, sitting in Tony’s sun-drenched café that morning, I told Samantha and Jazmine Bisset that I’d learned to trust my gift, and promised them that I’d never miss a clue like that again.

Acknowledgements

Thanks Ben Mason, literary agent and lover of the long-shot who took an enormous punt on me. Without you Ben, there’d be no book. I’m truly blessed by your wisdom and patience.

Thanks Katy Loftus, former Avon editor, for seeing something in this and painstakingly coaxing it out with your unique combo of guile and chutzpah.

Thanks to the immensely talented and supportive team at Avon: Senior Commissioning Editor, Helen Huthwaite, Editor Kate Ellis and Digital Executive Parastou Khiaban. Jem Carter: you didn’t so much design the cover as bottle the essence of the book. Wow. Thanks Ed Wilson and Anna Power from Johnson and Alcock for taking it forward with such verve and passion and to the ingenious team from LightBrigade PR.

On a more personal note: -

Thanks Pat Hogan, Ireland’s finest English teacher, for giving me the itch to scribble. I hope you’ve aged disgracefully into that pipe!

Thanks to the class of Harlesden ’91: Davey Hayes, the Bracken brothers Donal, Seamus and Frankie, Barty Kennedy, Tom Larkin, David Burke. We made it, somehow.

Thanks Margaret Grennan for giving me that all-important first break into reporting. Thanks Frank Roche from Moate for mentoring me through those early years, and always being there. Thanks National News Press Agency in London - especially former editors Richard Leifer, Mike Doran and Mike McCarthy – for recognising that, somehow, crime reporting suited me.

Thanks Fleet Street legends Ian Gallagher, Dennis Rice, Ian Sparks, Oonagh Blackman for the memories or, at least, the bits I can remember.

My crime contacts and experience soon led me into a far murkier world – that of TV production. Thanks to my comrades in documentary: Paul Crompton, Jeremy Hall, Kathryn Johnson, Emma Shaw, Dan Reeves, Jo Cantello, Andy Wells, David G Hill, Peter Roemmele, Laura Jones, Andy Mason, Max Williams, Hugh Williams, Alastair Cook and Paul Williams.

Thanks to my friends in Brighton for their tireless encouragement: Alun and Hayley Price, Dom Peers and Zoe Fawcett, Rob and Linda Laurens, Gavin and Vicky Shepherd, Charlie and Karen Harrison.

Thanks to my in-laws, the incomparable McGraths; racing legend Jim ‘the Croc’, Anita, Rebecca, Mike, Brian. To the Viels, Philippe and Raphael, Laura Giles and Meagan Jamieson.

Special thanks to my family: parents Jim and Bunny, sisters Helen, Jacqui and Claire; brother-in-law Greg Woods, nephews Lee Ryan, Joe Woods and Lucas Nally and niece Amelie Woods.

Thanks Alison Clements for the friendship. Thanks to my son James Nally the fifth for all the brilliant ideas when I’ve been stuck. Thanks to my new daughter Emma Nally for waiting to pop out literally eight hours after I completed the manuscript.

Thanks Bridget Kathleen McGrath for always believing in this book and encouraging me to chase my dream. That to me represents true love.