Gallows Lane (Inspector Devlin Mystery 2)

by Brian McGilloway

  The storm of the previous day had passed and the morning woke to brilliant sunshine and a freshness about the air. The clouds peppered across the light ceramic sky were no more than wisps, the grass in the fields stretching into Tyrone a deep, lush green, some thick with rapeseed. From the height of Gallows Lane the river below glimmered in the sunlight. By the time I got to the scene, a cordon had been placed around the area for a quarter-mile radius and every local officer was on site. Costello was standing speaking to the two officers who had made the find, dressed in a navy suit, a camel coloured overcoat folded over one arm. It had not taken him long to dress for the cameras. People were gathered around the spot, near the top of Gallows Lane, and, as I walked up it towards the site, I could hardly believe it when I learnt who had made the find.

  Harry Patterson and Hugh Colhoun were grinning broadly, caught in the flash of the cameras, holding up some of the weapons found as if in offering. They had reason to smile: in addition to this latest find, just one month earlier the pair had discovered a substantial arms and drugs cache that had made them the toast of the station.

  During the Troubles the IRA was known to have kept its arsenal in bunkers along the border. Often these were quite professional affairs: concreted air-raid shelters, perhaps, with steps leading down and electric lights fitted. Usually the entrances were covered with turf or logs or, in the case of a bunker in the middle of a field near Armagh, under a haystack. In that particular case, the British Army had used the field as a landing spot for their Chinook helicopters, dropping and airlifting troops in and out for patrols and house searches, not realizing that the contraband they sought was quite literally under their feet.

  In most cases, these bunkers had been sealed up after the Good Friday Agreement seemed to offer the prospect of peace in Northern Ireland. Indeed, when the issue of paramilitary decommissioning became a stumbling block to progress and the governments invited General De Chastelain to Northern Ireland to try to encourage the various terrorist groups to ‘put their weapons beyond use’, the vast majority of the bunkers were filled with concrete, their contents preserved forever like metallic fossils. However, some smaller bunkers were forgotten, their keepers dead, their existence supposedly the stuff of urban myth.

  Just occasionally, people stumbled across these bunkers by accident. So it had been in February of this year when Paddy Hannon, a successful land developer who had bought a thirty-acre plot near Raphoe, had begun to excavate the area in preparation for building houses. One of his workers, using an earth-mover to shift tree roots and rocks off the land, had scraped across the top of a bunker, tearing the thick padlock off the rusted iron door which had been buried under a foot of clay and turf.

  The man summoned Paddy Hannon, who had gone down into the bunker to investigate, believing he had uncovered an old air-raid shelter. Indeed, even when his torch light racked across a number of weapons lying in one corner, they appeared so rusted he believed them to be Second World War artefacts. Then he discovered bricks of cannabis piled against one wall and called the local Gardai. Patterson and Colhoun duly arrived and could not believe their luck. They called in support and wrote the find up as their own, gaining all the attendant kudos in so doing.

  In total the haul had included several pistols and rifles and cannabis resin with an estimated street value in excess of three million euros.

  Patterson and Colhoun had become heroes, regaling all who would listen with tales of the discovery, neglecting to mention that it had been made long before they arrived on the scene and that, in fact, they had simply babysat the find until the Drugs Squad arrived.

  Today’s find was altogether more impressive, seeming to have resulted from proper police work.

  I knew both men fairly well, having been based in the same station as them for the past few years. Patterson, the more senior of the two, was a little older than I, and, though an inspector, was known to have ambitions to make it higher. He claimed he had chosen to stay in uniform as it brought him closer to the people he had enlisted to serve, but it was common knowledge that he had applied and been turned down by the Detective branch several times; a fact which had caused more than a little animosity between us when I had first arrived at the station as a DI.

  He was over six feet tall and around fifteen stone, though his height meant he carried the weight well. His hair had begun to recede quite early and, like many in the same situation, he had elected to shave his head so that only the shadow of his hairline remained. This, combined with his physical size, made him an intimidating figure, and he had the personality to match.

  Patterson was a divorcee and a proponent of the shower-room mentality: he would openly discuss sexual relationships and female colleagues’ bodies in the station and had once pinned a centre spread torn from one of his porn magazines on the fridge in our small communal kitchen under the banner ‘Stress relief available. Return when finished’. After several of the women in the station complained, he pinned up a picture of a nude male also, under the new title ‘Take your pick’. He defended his own chauvinism as mere fun and games and yet became a vocal feminist when in the company of women he found attractive.

  His partner, Hugh Colhoun, was a very different creature. He had only joined An Garda in his late thirties and so was still a uniformed officer despite being forty-five years old. He had a wife and three daughters on whom he clearly doted. He supported Patterson in all that he did, to the extent that he would often echo the last few words that his partner spoke in any conversation, in tacit agreement with the sentiments expressed, whether he understood them or not. He was slow and fairly thorough in his job, though he lacked the imagination to take leaps of faith and see beyond the obvious. If I had to guess, I’d say it was Patterson who had suggested searching the area having spotted someone acting suspiciously there. And yet, despite this or indeed because of this, it was Colhoun whom I approached to congratulate.

  He blushed while we spoke and looked around him for his partner, who was standing at the corner of the cordon, speaking with Costello and two uniformed constables from Raphoe.

  ‘It’s quite incredible, Hugh. Two finds in two months, nearly.’

  ‘Yes,’ Colhoun said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Incredible.’

  ‘You must be looking for detective rank with this work rate.’

  He laughed at the joke, then became suddenly serious. ‘It was Harry who found them, not me, Ben. He’s the one who deserves the credit really, not me.’

  ‘Partners are partners, Hugh; the credit’s yours as well.’ I shook his hand which was damp and light as air. In a strange way Colhoun seemed almost downbeat about the discovery.

  Patterson was not so modest in success, smiling broadly as he approached us.

  ‘Looking for tips, Inspector? This is a turn-up, detectives coming to the uniforms for a hand.’ He looked around him as he spoke, trying to encourage others to join in his banter, or perhaps simply to see if he had an audience.

  ‘I was just congratulating Hugh, here. Good work.’ My puerile side would not allow me to extend the same sentiments to Patterson. ‘Quite remarkable; two finds in so many months.’

  ‘Well, someone has to—’ Patterson started, but he was cut short by Costello, who had appeared at my side.

  ‘Good day for the force, men, eh?’ he said, his hand on my elbow to steady himself.

  ‘Remarkable,’ I repeated.

  ‘Great work, boys,’ he continued. ‘Let’s get it all back to the station for the papers.’

  I began to move in the same direction as Patterson and Colhoun, but Costello gripped harder on my elbow.

  ‘Why aren’t you watching Kerr?’ Costello continued.

  ‘I got a call out to come here,’ I replied, already offended by what I sensed was my imminent exclusion.

  ‘Kerr is your priority, Benedict. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, but he had already begun to hobble back towards the main group, leaning heavily on his walking stick.r />
  As I drove away from the scene, trying not to look as embarrassed as I felt, I realized that, while Costello was right that the find looked good for An Garda in general, it also looked very good for him personally. And I realized that he had achieved the success he wanted for his retirement.

  When I got to Porthall, I discovered that Kerr had never checked into the B&B. The owner told me she saw him being dropped off. He had waited until I drove away, then turned and begun to walk back up the road along which I had just driven.

  As I indicated to pull out on to the road, I spotted the remains of his umbrella, all the spokes broken, discarded on the grass verge outside the woman’s house, hunched like a metallic spider.

  By the time I got back to the station the celebrations had begun. Someone had been to the off licence and had bought crates of beer and Costello was standing in the reception area with two bottles of Bushmill’s whiskey which he was serving to those around him. As I passed he caught my eye and gestured towards a new poster on the wall behind him, inviting applications for Superintendent posts. He nodded as he handed me a drink. I took a proffered glass of beer and retreated to the storeroom at the back of the station’s main area.

  During a previous murder investigation my team had been given the use of the storeroom to coordinate things. Until then, we had all shared one large open-plan space, except for Costello who had his own office to the west of the building. After the case had concluded, the room had remained as a spare office.

  I sat there, pretending to smoke an unlit cigarette and sipping at the beer while I flicked through the notes Costello had given me on Kerr. I have never really taken to whiskey in the way expected of an Irishman and could not differentiate between brands and ages in the ways I knew some of my colleagues could. But then, I had never really taken to drinking at all. At times this made me feel a bit of an outsider among the other men in the station who frequently went to the pub together after work. On the other hand, it suited my family life just fine.

  I was studying the burn marks on the desk when the door of the storeroom opened and Caroline Williams came in, two bottles of beer in her hands.

  ‘Want some company?’ she said, smiling, beers held aloft.

  ‘Sure, what’s up?’ I said, moving a chair towards her so she could sit.

  Caroline and I had been partners for a few years now and, though we were colleagues, I couldn’t say for certain that we were friends. She was a private woman who’d suffered more than once in her relationships with men and maintained a distance between her home and professional lives. It was a quality I admired in her, and knew I would do well to emulate on occasion myself.

  ‘That’s my question. What’re you doing in here on your lonely ownsome?’

  ‘I’m just going over some stuff about this guy Kerr.’

  ‘It was some find,’ she said, handing me one of the bottles which I took and placed on the desk. ‘Patterson and Colhoun. It’s really something.’

  ‘Remarkable,’ I found myself saying, again. ‘Almost unbelievable.’

  ‘Why?’ Williams asked, pausing mid-drink.

  ‘It’s kind of a stretch for those two to find their desks of a morning, never mind something this big.’

  ‘Do you think maybe you’re a bit annoyed we didn’t find them? Detective branch and all that?’ she asked, raising her eyebrows.

  ‘No . . . maybe. I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it.’

  ‘Hey, if it’s good for the station, it’s good for us. Forget about it.’ She drained her beer and nodded towards the untouched one she’d brought in for me. ‘You gonna drink that, partner?’ she said, then burped and grinned.

  Chapter Three

  Tuesday, 1 June

  The following morning broke in a spectacular sunrise. The last drifts of mist, hanging like cannon smoke along the base of the hills behind Strabane, were dissolving and the heat had thickened sufficiently that all the men in the station were in their shirt sleeves by nine-thirty.

  Williams and I were standing in the station’s kitchenette making coffee. Patterson and Colhoun had yet to turn up for work, and many of the others who had were suffering the effects of the celebrations of the night before. Even Williams had joined in. The atmosphere was hushed and fragile, the air heady with the smell of breath mints, and something stronger beneath it.

  Our conversation was cut short by Burgess struggling towards us, his face ashen. ‘A body’s been found,’ he said. ‘Out at Paddy Hannon’s new development.’

  *

  Paddy Hannon was a home-grown success story. His family had owned a struggling dairy farm just outside Castlefinn. When Paddy first took over the business he hit on the idea of cutting out the supplier and shops and selling his milk himself Famously he visited every house in all the villages peppered around the immediate border area, leaving each household a free pint of milk. Several days later he revisited each and offered to deliver milk to them three times a week at shop cost. Within six months he had employed thirty workers and bought four milk floats. Within three years he had bought out his original supplier. Then he moved into property and his personal fortune soared. Yet he never lost his doorstep manner and for each house he sold, he would visit the new occupants with a bottle of champagne and a basket of fruit to welcome them to their new home. Perhaps unsurprisingly he had twice won Donegal Person of the Year, an honour more hotly contested than it sounds.

  When we arrived at the building site, we found Hannon, trudging through the quagmire of mud which covered the area. Despite the growing heat, the ground was still sodden from the storm a few days earlier. A crowd of workmen were standing outside one of the completed houses at the top of the field.

  Paddy shook hands with each of us, then led us towards the house. Meanwhile, a patrol car of uniforms arrived and immediately went about positioning crime scene tape around the perimeter of the field.

  ‘Fucking shocking, Ben,’ Paddy repeated several times. ‘A complete mess. I’ve never seen so much blood.’

  ‘What happened?’ Williams asked.

  ‘One of the lads went into the house to use the toilet. Found the body lying in the sun room. Blood everywhere. Poor fella’s not right yet.’

  ‘I take it no one lives in these houses yet?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Paddy said. ‘They’re nearly finished. Still some painting needed and a bit of joinery.’ Then he added as an afterthought, ‘Jesus, we’ll never sell them now.’

  The house was the second detached townhouse in from the far end of the estate. The external paintwork looked all but finished and the windows and doors were already in place. A grey shale path had been laid around the building and we followed Paddy Hannon along this. When we came around the back of the house, a crowd had already gathered. On the west side of the building was a sun room with French doors, one of which was wide open. Paddy Hannon had not exaggerated: there was blood everywhere.

  The victim’s body lay beneath the French doors, one hand stretched out as if towards the handle. The girl’s face – for she was female – was covered in blood, her brown hair matted and stuck to her face with thick clots, her lips crusted with cement dust. She was clearly an adult but, because of the state of her face, her age was difficult to guess. She was naked from the waist down, yet strangely she wore a green light cardigan and a vest top beneath, both heavily stained with her blood. Printed on the vest was the picture of a smiling girl and the words ‘Claire, 2006’. Her legs were heavy and pale, marked with a number of bruises. I followed a trail of blood into the kitchen and there found her trousers and underwear, lying discarded on the floor beneath the skeletal kitchen units.

  I went back into the sun room. A newspaper lay on the concrete floor, its pages opened at a picture of a topless glamour model, smiling jauntily.

  Williams squatted beside the body, softly stroking the girl’s hair with her gloved hand. She looked up at me, her eyes damp.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Someone be
at her to death,’ she said simply.

  Williams’s opinion was seconded by John Mulrooney, our local doctor, who officially pronounced the girl dead. We stood outside the house, looking in at the body as the Scene of Crime people started to take photographs and dust for fingerprints. Williams went and sat in the car for a few minutes to regain her composure. She clearly recognized the marks a man’s fists leave on a defenceless female body.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Mulrooney said, shaking his head. ‘No, actually that’s not true. I have seen something like it: the injuries are what you’d expect on a hit-and-run victim. As bad as that.’

  ‘What killed her?’ I asked.

  ‘Pathologist will know for sure. I’d expect massive internal trauma. Possibly fractured skull; there’s yellowish residue around the nose and ears, though it’s difficult to tell with all the blood. That came from her nose, I think, which is broken.’

  ‘Any ideas who she is? Age? Anything?’

  ‘Mid-twenties, I’d say. I don’t recognize her, though. Not a local.’ He spat dryly on to the ground and shook his head in disgust.

  Above us a pair of buzzards circled, scanning the surrounding fields for mice, the piercing mew of their cries at once terrifying and beautiful.

  When Williams returned to the scene we questioned the man who had found the body. Robert McLoone’s hands shook as he tried to smoke the cigarette I gave him. He looked back towards the house continually as he spoke, as if in the hope that what he’d seen might not be real. When he finished his smoke, he rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand, nervously.

  ‘I went up the house, like,’ he explained. ‘To shit, like. You know? We all do. There’s nothing wrong with it, you know,’ he added with concern.