Chapter 63
We all know Julie Draper now. Her twenty-four-year-old, shyly smiling face is everywhere. Can it really be just nine days since she rushed out of her estate agent’s office in south London to show a client around a house, only to vanish into thin air? The hunt for Julie Draper goes on. Only two people know she’s already dead. The man who killed her.
And me.
It’s this cursed ‘gift’ of mine, you see. These Games with the Dead that I’m forced to play. Julie comes to me at night now, just like the others did before, haunting and tormenting me. And I know she won’t quit. Not until I find her killer.
Don’t judge me. Please. I’m not a dangler of wind chimes or a martyr to the Tarot. I’m a cop, for Christ’s sake, a veritable tank of scepticism. That’s why I’m so desperate to find a clinical explanation for these close encounters with the recently whacked.
Several shrinks on, I’m told its sleep paralysis, but with an inexplicable twist. Whereas sufferers typically hallucinate traditional ‘bogeymen’ figures, like demons, witches or aliens, I see people whose murders I’m investigating. More baffling still, these murder victims give me clues as to how they died.
There’s nothing in their esteemed medical journals covering that …
Which is why I’ve never bought into this Sleep Paralysis quackery. Neither has my jaded girlfriend Zoe: ‘More like Ambition Paralysis.’ Or my hard-bitten hack brother: ‘It’s the DTs.’ I didn’t expect Mam to clear it all up for me like she did, on her deathbed. Presenting me the answer, wrapped in a family curse.
A curse I’m too scared to open.
Turns out mine is a ‘gift’ that just keeps taking. And taking. I’m twenty-five years old; trying to come to terms with an unthinkable new reality.
It’s 50/50 I won’t make it to thirty.
New Scotland Yard, London
A few days earlier. Wednesday, June 15, 1994; 19.00
‘It’s not too late to pull out you know, Donal.’ Commander Neil Crossley, Head of the Kidnap Unit, stares through my eyes into a future he barely dares to contemplate: ‘If he’s going to kill Julie Draper, there’s no reason why he won’t kill you. And we know he’s killed before.’
But I know there can be no turning back now. I’ve got something to prove. To ‘Croissant’ Crossley. To my brother Fintan. To Zoe, my perennially disappointed partner. The kidnapper might be getting his ransom money, but the payback will be all mine.
Julie Draper’s abductor has named his price. Crown Estates – her employer – must cough up £175,000 cash for her ‘safe return’. He nominated Julie’s estate agent colleague, Tom Reynolds, to deliver the cash. Any sign of police or media involvement during ‘the drop’, he’ll kill both.
Crown Estates gambled on drafting in the police. Commander Crossley is gambling on a Tom Reynolds-lookalike to deliver the cash.
Me.
I’d never won a lookalike competition before.
Crossley remembered me from a previous attachment to the Kidnap Unit, thought me a ringer for Reynolds, rang me personally to ask if I ‘felt up to becoming part of a top-secret operation’. Having spent the past eighteen months in a career Limbo – languishing in the Cold Case Unit as an ‘Acting’ Detective Constable – I agreed immediately.
My new status as hero-in-waiting has already propelled me into exalted company. Yesterday, I accompanied Crossley to New Scotland Yard’s treasury, where we collected a Crown Estates cheque for 175k. Siren wailing, we floored it to a bullion centre in Chancery Lane, where we exchanged the cheque for equal numbers of £50, £20 and £10 used notes, just as the kidnapper had specified.
What a scene those 7,750 notes made! We then whisked the windfall
