Games with the Dead by James Nally

Author:James Nally [Nally, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008270971
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-11-09T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

Arsenal, North London

Sunday, June 26, 1994; 10.00

That afternoon of overpriced Martinis provided a gloriously steep slipway into a night of drunken self-indulgence.

As ever, the CD cases scattered across the living room floor this morning reflect my now nightly DABDA routine. It always starts with the stuff Zoe and me used to listen to; Pavement, The Lemonheads, The Breeders, ending some seven hours later with that Holy Trinity of delicious despair: Scott Walker, Radiohead and Tom Waits.

The final song I always wallow in looped misery to is ‘I Know It’s Over’ by The Smiths because, like Morrissey, still I cling, I don’t know where else I can go. Despite everything, I refuse to accept me and Zoe and Matt are finished, and I won’t be engaging with DABDA’s final ‘A for Acceptance’ until I’m shown our relationship’s cold dead body.

I wander down the hall to find Fintan attending to his usual Sunday service; filleting the days’ newspapers. Every front page is emblazoned with the same image; the bright eyes and coy smile of nineteen-year-old Molly Parker-Rae.

‘Sorted!’ blazes The Sunday News. ‘Evil E claims another victim’, by Alex Pavlovic.

‘Please tell me the Prince didn’t manage to inveigle his way into her intensive care unit?’

‘He did, and he got the shot, but the editor decided it was a bit tasteless.’

‘Wow, makes you wonder what would qualify as just plain tasteless? When did your editor sprout a conscience?’

‘Oh it’s not that. The Parker-Raes are middle-class, church-going pillars of the community.’

‘Right, so their grief deserves more respect than, say, that of an unemployed single mum?’

‘Don’t start, Donal. It just makes it more relatable to the average person, which sells more papers, so we need to keep the Parker-Raes on side. Like we do with Princess Di. Every time she’s on the front page, sales spike. Whose fault is that? You get the government you deserve and you get the press you deserve.’

A double-page spread inside warns of a ‘lethal batch of corrupt tablets’. ‘How many more will die?’ screams the headline.

‘Wow, toxicology reports back already?’

‘Nah it’s just speculation.’

‘Right, so you’re scaring the living daylights out of anyone who took an E in Southern England last night?’

‘Well if anyone has a funny turn, they won’t hesitate to seek help now, will they? The police were all for running with that angle. It might save lives.’

Another piece reports that ‘a crack team of thirty-five officers are hunting down the drug dealer who put Molly in a coma’. Meanwhile, the notoriously ill-considered Home Secretary Michael Howard – sworn enemy of fun and under-forties – announces: ‘Every drug dealer is a murderer and should be sentenced to life.’

He rails on: ‘I am declaring war on dance clubs and the druggie rave culture that has spawned these tragedies’. A sidebar helpfully summarises the ‘six high-profile ecstasy deaths’ since 1988.

‘My God, more people have died from eating bay leaves,’ I point out.

‘I know. But it shifts units. Every parent with a teenage kid will be freaking out this morning.’

‘You mean it’s outrageous scare-mongering, Fintan.

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