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 shouted.

The head tilted up to reveal coal-black pupils glistening inside caked white spots. Meehan’s bloodshot eyes glared hate.

I scrambled to get up, to fight. But I was frozen, helpless.

Those unblinking murderous eyes kept coming, closer, closer, until we were nose to nose. I felt his gloved hands on my throat, his putrid breath on my face.

He leaned all his weight on my neck until my chest caved in and my eyes bulged. My head pounded as dots bounced off the edges of my fading vision. My head drifted, I was floating off.

I knew this was it. I wanted the end. Sorry, Eve.

Then screaming white light gored at my clenched eyelids. I thought: ‘Christ no, don’t tell me all that shit about God and heaven is true.’

Something made me defy the hot white needles and haul my eyelids open. Shapes formed. A face swooned and flickered, eventually settling to reveal Mum’s fretting smile. It was morning and I was alive. Relief overwhelmed me. Someone must have caught him, stopped him, in the nick of time.

‘Meehan tried to kill me,’ I croaked.

She tiptoed slowly to my left side, warily, uncertain. She squeezed my shoulder so hard it hurt.

‘Shhh, don’t get yourself upset now, Donal. Try to relax,’ she said.

I defied her Vulcan death grip to sit up. I didn’t know who the man was to my right, but his snow-white, side-parted hair, fuzzy eyebrows, formal grey suit and hooked nose screamed cop, doc, lawyer; professional busybody.

My neck hurt and my throat burned when I swallowed. I wondered how close Meehan had come to finishing me off.

‘Eve?’ I gasped at Mum, desperate to know if she was okay; desperate to hear that what I’d seen last night wasn’t real, but some sort of absinthe-induced hallucination.

‘Take it easy,’ said Mum, shoulder-crushing again, ‘everything’s okay, love.’ I pulled away before she snapped my collarbone.

‘Everything’s far from okay.’ I jumped at the man’s guttural, knowing voice. I turned to him, confused.

His piercing blue eyes seemed to be searching inside my face: a cop, for sure. ‘We found you unconscious, having imbibed some sort of substance, no doubt illicit,’ he snapped. ‘I trust you won’t object to answering a few questions.’

‘Substance?’ I rasped. ‘What are you on about?’

As I spoke, the pieces clicked together. Absinthe alone couldn’t have done that to me. Choker, the fucker, had spiked me.

I told the cop about the weird green drink, the dead legs, the shed.

I sensed Mum shaking her head sadly. I couldn’t bear to look her way. Instead, my eyes met the nurse’s disgusted glare. What was her problem? Unwelcome, my eyes drifted back to the cop’s piercing blue sparklers.

I asked again: ‘Eve, is she okay?’

I sensed he was holding something back. I vowed there and then that if Meehan had attacked her, I’d kill him myself.

‘Well,’ said the cop, ‘you were out of it, so I guess that rules you out as a potential suspect, or indeed as a witness.’

Suspect? Witness? Christ, no. Say it didn’t happen. Say what I saw wasn’t real …

The cop carried on, measured, enjoying his moment, even producing one of those black flip notebooks you see only in cop shows.

‘We are investigating a very serious crime,’ he began.

‘What the fuck happened?’ I felt like screaming.

‘Someone dialled 999 from the house phone, but refused to give their name. Medics removed you from the garden of the house at 01.52 a.m.’

‘Removed …?’ I couldn’t help picturing the scene; a bloodied and half-frozen Hunter S. Thompson, flat out on a stretcher, hands covered in blood, the glasses skewwhiff on my face. I was sure to hear every last detail soon, if I could ever face them again.

The cop went on, impassively: ‘You were unconscious. An officer at the scene found the bottle of absinthe. It’s gone to Dublin for tests but my bet is it’d been mixed with some sort of tranquilliser or cannabis, possibly both.’

He stopped for effect. I nodded gravely, because I felt that’s what he wanted me to do. Finally, he continued.

‘Whatever substance was in that drink caused a rapid drop in your blood pressure, which explains why you felt paralysed. The good news is, there’s no long-term damage.’

Good news, but not the news I most wanted to hear, so I nodded rapidly.

He got to his feet and started pacing about the room, Poirot-style. The gobshite. Then his throaty ‘ahem’, and my mother’s averted gaze confirmed my worst fear: what I’d heard so far was merely the preamble to this morning’s Main Story. I swallowed hard. God, it hurt.

‘Look,’ said the cop, ‘I might as well tell you. Your girlfriend, Eve Daly …’

I shivered, froze.

‘She’s under arrest.’

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think.

‘For stabbing Anthony Meehan to death.’

From somewhere deep, deep inside me spewed a hideous, cackling, panto-laugh. She did it. She nailed that fucker. My Viking!

The cop looked at me in shock, then disgust. ‘What’s so fucking funny, son?’ he spat. ‘There’s a young man downstairs in the basement on a slab.’

‘No, God, no, sorry,’ I said, ‘it’s just the shock.’

He turned to Mum and the nurse: ‘I’m not sure he’s in a fit state to hear any more,’ he said, pocketing his fancy notebook.

He turned back to me with a scowl: ‘I’ll be back to ask you more questions later.’ He flicked his top coat, matador-style, off the back of the bedside chair.

My mind flailed, trying to make sense of it all. Somehow she’d fought back. But how? She must have stabbed him with the Viking prop dagger. Self-defence of course. I’d seen him attack her. I’d seen the preamble to Meehan’s murder!

Or was that what I had seen? My mind recoiled at the insanity of the idea. Surely it must have been some sort of bad trip? A drug-induced nightmare out of the dark corners of my twisted, paranoid mind? Or maybe, while I was lying here out of it, I’d heard them talking about the crime. My brain had supplied pictures to what I’d unconsciously learned.

Yet I knew what I’d seen. I saw Meehan attack Eve.

But if Meehan was dead, then who had tried to kill me later, when I was already in the hospital? Surely not …

I had to ask the question.

‘Sir?’

He turned, surprised.

‘What time did you get the call, you know, about Tony?’

Lieutenant Dumbo looked at me, frowned and sighed. He reached back into his breast pocket.

‘Ah let’s see,’ he said, his agricultural thumb dwarfing the notebook’s inky pages.

‘We got that call at … 1.17 a.m.’

My brain flashed back to the scene, to the clock radio turning 1.13. Watching Meehan forcing himself upon Eve. Witnessing the preamble to Meehan’s murder. But that made no sense. ‘And when did he die?’ I croaked.

The cop took a long hard look at me: ‘He was pronounced dead at the scene, son. Why do you ask?’

I told myself there must be a logical explanation – must be … must be. My head swooned. ‘Donal, love, are you okay?’ sounded Mum’s voice as last night’s blinding lights returned, slashing at my vision.

I ignored the panic because I couldn’t take any more: I let myself sink down, down until all those hot white needles of hospital light went away.

Chapter 3

Clapham Junction

Tuesday, July 2, 1991; 08:15

I marched back to Sangora Road, unable to banish the squalid thought that Marion Ryan’s murder represented a gilt-edged career opportunity.

My two-year probation as a beat Constable was almost complete. In a few weeks, I’d be eligible for promotion to Acting Detective Constable. There were more beat officers than Acting DC positions: competition was fierce.