Read Online Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller by James Nally - Free Book Online
Authors: James Nally
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announced to the world that while Meehan and the Vixen had consensual/non-consensual sex, Eve’s hapless boyfriend had blacked out in the garden from a suspected drugs overdose. Fintan swore he only broke this story because the
Independent
had got hold of it, and were planning to splash it on their front page the next day. He ‘killed’ the story by burying it on page twelve of that evening’s
Press
– ‘not even a facing page!’ – adding, albeit in the last line, the small but significant fact that: ‘Gardai confirmed at the time that Lynch, eighteen, had fallen victim to an alcoholic drink “spiked” with an unidentified substance.’
In yet another scoop, Fintan reported that the company which manufactured the Vixen Viking range were withdrawing their metal prop daggers, replacing them with reassuringly unrealistic plastic models. Sales went through the roof.
Thanks to a leaked pathology report, he scooped his rivals again with news that – in the course of her struggle with Meehan – Eve had stabbed him in the balls. This sent the story into orbit, globally. Sales of Vixen Viking costumes nosedived.
Gardai charged Eve with murder – again. She received the immediate and vocal backing of Dublin’s militant feminist group, RAG (Revolutionary Anarcha-feminist Group), who announced that if she was pregnant with Meehan’s rape child, they would finance her abortion in the UK.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) went apeshit. They immediately lodged a High Court injunction which banned Eve Daly from travelling outside the Irish Republic. Abortion was illegal in Ireland: if Eve couldn’t travel, she couldn’t terminate the pregnancy.
SPUC was backed by the Catholic church and the governing political party, Fianna Fáil. In an off-the-record chat with Fintan, Tullamore’s most famous son, Tourism Minister Phil Flynn – an old pal of Dad’s – accused young women of ‘provoking rape by dressing like Jezebels’. He went on to describe RAG as ‘a bunch of hairy lezzers who need a good root up the hole’. Fintan later admitted that Flynn had been half cut at the time, but he ran it anyway.
All hell broke loose. The opposition parties demanded Flynn’s resignation: he demanded to know what he’d ‘done wrong’. To this day, Flynn is credited for the election of liberal feminist Mary Robinson to the role of President of Ireland in 1990.
Pissed off by Robinson’s triumph, the judiciary revoked Eve’s bail. As a security van drove her through the gates of Dublin’s notorious Mountjoy prison, a photographer snatched a shot of her in the back – crying, her hair in bunches, clutching a teddy bear. This secured her martyr status in the eyes of the martyr-loving Irish Left, prompting Christy Moore to write ‘The Ballad of Eve Daly’.
A week or so later, Eve called Fintan and confirmed she was not – repeat, not – pregnant with rape child. Abortion groups, pro and anti – could barely hide their disappointment at the loss of such a deliciously fleshy flashpoint. They dropped Eve faster than a smoking hornet.
Fintan too began to feel ostracised. According to his own undoubtedly self-aggrandising claims, he’d exposed too many of Ireland’s gilded inner circle: politicians, the judiciary, lawyers, the Catholic church, lackey journalists. Buckling under a barrage of legal writs, personal attacks and cronyism, he fled to London.
At least
he
could escape. Three years on from Meehan’s death, Eve remained locked in political and legal limbo: neither tried nor acquitted. I couldn’t understand why, until Fintan helpfully put me straight a few weeks back: ‘It’s like all these public inquiries and judicial tribunals. They’ll drag it out until people get so bored they don’t give a fuck anymore.’
Two teas slid across the pink Formica just as Fintan strode through the café door, mac over his arm, fag on, pasty-faced – a film noir wannabe.
‘You’ll never guess
Independent
had got hold of it, and were planning to splash it on their front page the next day. He ‘killed’ the story by burying it on page twelve of that evening’s
Press
– ‘not even a facing page!’ – adding, albeit in the last line, the small but significant fact that: ‘Gardai confirmed at the time that Lynch, eighteen, had fallen victim to an alcoholic drink “spiked” with an unidentified substance.’
In yet another scoop, Fintan reported that the company which manufactured the Vixen Viking range were withdrawing their metal prop daggers, replacing them with reassuringly unrealistic plastic models. Sales went through the roof.
Thanks to a leaked pathology report, he scooped his rivals again with news that – in the course of her struggle with Meehan – Eve had stabbed him in the balls. This sent the story into orbit, globally. Sales of Vixen Viking costumes nosedived.
Gardai charged Eve with murder – again. She received the immediate and vocal backing of Dublin’s militant feminist group, RAG (Revolutionary Anarcha-feminist Group), who announced that if she was pregnant with Meehan’s rape child, they would finance her abortion in the UK.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) went apeshit. They immediately lodged a High Court injunction which banned Eve Daly from travelling outside the Irish Republic. Abortion was illegal in Ireland: if Eve couldn’t travel, she couldn’t terminate the pregnancy.
SPUC was backed by the Catholic church and the governing political party, Fianna Fáil. In an off-the-record chat with Fintan, Tullamore’s most famous son, Tourism Minister Phil Flynn – an old pal of Dad’s – accused young women of ‘provoking rape by dressing like Jezebels’. He went on to describe RAG as ‘a bunch of hairy lezzers who need a good root up the hole’. Fintan later admitted that Flynn had been half cut at the time, but he ran it anyway.
All hell broke loose. The opposition parties demanded Flynn’s resignation: he demanded to know what he’d ‘done wrong’. To this day, Flynn is credited for the election of liberal feminist Mary Robinson to the role of President of Ireland in 1990.
Pissed off by Robinson’s triumph, the judiciary revoked Eve’s bail. As a security van drove her through the gates of Dublin’s notorious Mountjoy prison, a photographer snatched a shot of her in the back – crying, her hair in bunches, clutching a teddy bear. This secured her martyr status in the eyes of the martyr-loving Irish Left, prompting Christy Moore to write ‘The Ballad of Eve Daly’.
A week or so later, Eve called Fintan and confirmed she was not – repeat, not – pregnant with rape child. Abortion groups, pro and anti – could barely hide their disappointment at the loss of such a deliciously fleshy flashpoint. They dropped Eve faster than a smoking hornet.
Fintan too began to feel ostracised. According to his own undoubtedly self-aggrandising claims, he’d exposed too many of Ireland’s gilded inner circle: politicians, the judiciary, lawyers, the Catholic church, lackey journalists. Buckling under a barrage of legal writs, personal attacks and cronyism, he fled to London.
At least
he
could escape. Three years on from Meehan’s death, Eve remained locked in political and legal limbo: neither tried nor acquitted. I couldn’t understand why, until Fintan helpfully put me straight a few weeks back: ‘It’s like all these public inquiries and judicial tribunals. They’ll drag it out until people get so bored they don’t give a fuck anymore.’
Two teas slid across the pink Formica just as Fintan strode through the café door, mac over his arm, fag on, pasty-faced – a film noir wannabe.
‘You’ll never guess
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