It rang seven or eight times before someone finally answered. A male voice. English accent.
‘Who’s this?’ he said, by way of greeting.
‘Peter Webb,’ I said.
The line went dead.
I redialled. It rang four times.
‘Who the fuck is this?’ the man on the other end snapped.
‘Peter Webb,’ I replied a second time.
The man did not speak for a few seconds. Then, ‘No it’s not. Now who is this?’
Time to come clean, I thought. I’d obviously hit a nerve with Webb’s name alone.
‘My name is Inspector Devlin. I’m investigating the murder of Peter Webb. Who’s this?’
‘Well, I assumed you’d know, seeing as how you’re the man phoning me,’ the voice replied with a note of humour. ‘Or are you pissing in the wind?’
‘I’m guessing you’re Special Bran—’ I began, but the line had gone dead.
I tried again a third time. The call was answered quicker this time.
‘You don’t take a message, do you?’ the man said. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’
‘I don’t believe that’s true. If you didn’t want to speak to me, you wouldn’t keep answering your phone.’
The man laughed, a little coldly. ‘So, Webb was murdered?’ he said.
‘We believe so, yes.’
‘And what do you want with me?’
‘I’d like to talk to you. About him.’
He did not speak for a few seconds and I could sense he was thinking about it. Finally he said, ‘I’ll get back to you.’
‘Do you want my mobile number?’ I asked.
‘No need,’ he said.
‘What should I call you?’ I asked, eager to keep him on the line.
A pause. ‘Mr Bond,’ he said, laughed once and then hung up.
Just as I put down the phone, Burgess blundered into the office. Sinead Webb had phoned moments earlier in a panic, having sighted the prowler around her house once more. She sounded genuinely frightened, he said. Would I take a look, since I had dealt with her last time?
Despite Burgess’s report, when I arrived at her home several minutes later, Sinead Webb seemed to have regained control of herself. She laughed a little forcibly, said she had panicked. She thought he must have been frightened off. Still, her hand shook as she struggled to light a cigarette, and her voice threatened to crack as she spoke. She laughed again nervously as she tried to blame her jumpiness on the events of the previous days.
‘I’ll just check around; make sure there’s no one about,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back in a second,’ I added, turning into the kitchen to go out the back door. Mrs Webb tried to direct me to the front of the house, but too late to prevent me from seeing the shards of broken glass that were lying on the kitchen floor.
Someone had clearly smashed the glass in the door, then reached in and unlocked the door. The glass beneath the door had been crushed underfoot, so I could only assume the intruder had made it into the kitchen. Whoever it was – and I had to suspect it was Kerr – had cut themselves on the remaining glass lodged in the window frame of the door, for their blood was smeared around the keyhole where they had obviously fumbled with the key.
‘What really happened here, Mrs Webb?’ I asked. ‘You call us. Then you act as if you can’t wait to get rid of me.’
She slumped down in the kitchen chair where she had sat a few days earlier when we had broken the news of her husband’s apparent suicide to her. She rested her head in her hands and, for the first time, I witnessed her actually crying. Her sobs shook her, her back heaving, as she leant over the table. I laid my hand on her shoulder and, unsure what to say, rubbed her back lightly, and looked out of the windows towards where the earliest of the apples were starting to fill out on the trees in their orchard.
‘I understand this has been a difficult time for you, Mrs Webb,’ I said, pulling out a chair beside her and sitting down.
She sniffed a few times, then blew her nose into a tissue clenched in her fist and smiled wanly. ‘I must look a sight,’ she said.
‘Not at all,’ I replied, for I assumed that was what she most wanted to hear. ‘Now, you really will feel better if you tell me what happened here. I can help.’
‘I . . . I saw that . . . man again. The one I told you about before. He was out there.’ She pointed to the general area around the apple trees. ‘I thought he wanted to hurt me, so I phoned you and locked the door. Only he . . . he . . .’ She gestured again towards the door.
‘He smashed the window and let himself in.’
She nodded, as she composed herself again. ‘I thought he was going to attack me. Instead he said he knew something about Peter. Something about those drugs. He said he needed money. I . . . I didn’t know what to do. I . . .’
‘You paid him,’ I said, finishing her statement.
She nodded.
‘How much?’
She held aloft three fingers. ‘Three hundred euros,’ she said. Then added hastily, ‘I know I shouldn’t have, but I wanted rid of him. I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘Is that all he wanted? Three hundred euros?’
‘It’s all I had in the house,’ she explained, wiping her nose and straightening herself a little, her demeanour more calm now.
‘Mrs Webb, it’s important that I know exactly what this man wanted,’ I explained. ‘What did he say he knew?’
She paused a little, raising her chin slightly, a show of dignity despite the circumstances. ‘He said he knew Peter was a drug dealer. He said he would leak it to the papers. I couldn’t let that happen. I may not have been a perfect wife, but my husband’s dead, Inspector. How could I live in this village with that slur attached to me?’
When I was sure she had composed herself, I went out once more into the garden to look for signs of Kerr, but there was nothing to be found. It made sense that Kerr should be looking for money; I knew myself that he was penniless. His method of obtaining it, however, was more than a little incongruous with his professed mission in Lifford. And the story about Webb actually being a drug dealer was news to me. Either it was complete lies – or else Peter Webb had been keeping more secrets than anyone knew.
When I returned to the station, Williams was sitting outside at the back, sunning herself. She had brought out two of the wooden chairs from indoors and was slouched in one, her legs stretched across the other. She had pulled her trouser legs up to below her knees. She pushed her sunglasses up into her hair and listened as I told her of Mrs Webb’s payoff to Kerr.
‘Do you think there’s something to it?’ she asked.
‘God knows. It seems unlikely – but then again, Webb as an armed robber or a British spy seemed unlikely a week ago. Might be worth following up.’
‘Give me another ten minutes; I’m nearly cooked.’
‘The sun’s gone to your head,’ I said, lighting up a cigarette.
‘But it hasn’t dulled my investigative brain! I got your registration number processed. It belongs to a Letterkenny resident. You’ll like this one, boss. A certain Mr Declan O’Kane.’
‘Decko?’
‘The one and only. Looks like the professor’s missus was playing away from home.’
‘She was playing at home, more like. How the hell does she fit in with Decko Kane?’
‘Who knows? But . . . what a tangled Webb we weave,’ she said, chuckling to herself.
I groaned. ‘How long have you been waiting to use that?’
‘Since you told me this morning. I had to time it right, though, you know?’ She winked at me, then pulled her sunglasses back down again and turned her face towards the sun.
*
Ostensibly, Declan ‘Decko’ O’Kane was a used car salesman. He was born in Strabane where his first career had been recidivism. One year after being handed a suspended sentence for aggravated assault, Decko was put away for two years for a spate of burglaries around Ballymagorry, where he posed as the elec
tricity man calling to read pensioners’ meters and instead was emptying tea caddies and purses of savings and benefits. His spell inside introduced him to drugs, initially as a hobby and then in a more professional capacity. He was linked for some time with one of the paramilitary fringe groups in Strabane until he took a beating with iron bars and baseball bats which left him with two crushed ankles and ten broken fingers. Unlike many others in the same situation, Decko stood his ground and stayed in Strabane, limping from bar to bar, peddling small amounts of hash, poppers and Es to the Goths and ravers of the early nineties. He kept business small enough to stay off the radar of other interested parties, while earning sufficient to put a little aside. He cleaned up his own act too, by all accounts, swearing off drugs, drink and smokes. Despite his weakened ankles, he took up jogging, pounding along the roads around Strabane every evening, regardless of the weather. Then, all of a sudden, Decko disappeared.
And reappeared eight months later in Letterkenny, twenty miles south of the border, with five cars he had bought in a used car auction. He fixed them up, washed and waxed them, and sold them for a three thousand mark-up through the classifieds. With the return he bought another eight, and so on and so on, until finally he opened a used car lot with fifty cars in stock. That was in 1997. Now, less than a decade later, Decko’s yard contained more than three hundred cars and employed six other salesmen. He lived on a three-acre estate along the back road between Lifford and Letterkenny and he drove cars that cost more than an average Garda officer’s annual wages.
Unlike Paddy Hannon, though, Decko had never been nominated for Donegal Person of the Year, not least due to the fact that he was a Northerner. Regardless of all that he had done to affect an air of respectability, he was still a drug peddler made good. He had been refused membership of the Rotary Club, the Lions Club and even the Knights of Saint Columbanus.
Physically, Decko was a strange mixture of ostentation and gaucheness. He wore Armani suits and silk ties. His face, however, had been savaged by acne when he was younger and was still pock-marked with the scars of the infection. On account of the beating he had taken, he still walked with a sloping gait; his fingers were long and gangly like a professional piano player’s. His drug habit had screwed his sinuses and he sniffed continually while he spoke and wiped at his nostrils with the back of his hand, despite sporting a silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. His voice had a nasal quality that made his vowels short and his consonants harsh.
He was also connected with Peter Webb or, more particularly, Webb’s wife. While it had no bearing on Webb’s arrest or James Kerr’s whereabouts or indeed the appearance of Special Branch over the border, it certainly needed to be considered in connection with Webb’s death.
Back in the office I gathered up the various letters and notes which had accumulated on my desk over the past few days. Top of the pile was an old note from Williams saying she had gone out canvassing more pubs to find out where Webb and his English friend had gone the night he died. Underneath were various reports from locals about break-ins, domestic disputes, pets lost and found, and a standing request for a daily wake-up call from an elderly lady living in Raphoe, named Martha Saunders. We took turns ringing her at nine each morning – in time for Mass, she explained. It appeared that tomorrow was my turn.
At the bottom of the pile, carefully tucked beneath the rest of the junk, was a card in a sealed envelope, its shape distorted by something small and compact inside it. I was a little confused when I opened the envelope to find a ‘Sympathy’ card, the cover image one of Christ, nailed to the cross. I was more than confused when I opened it and discovered a small bullet taped inside beneath the name of the deceased. And the name of the deceased was Benedict Devlin.
Chapter Thirteen
Wednesday, 9 June
Our forensics specialists were unable to find anything noteworthy on either the bullet or the card. The envelope had been posted from the box outside Lifford Post Office, which limited the list of suspects to the several thousand people living in Lifford, possibly the twenty-odd thousand living across the bridge, in Strabane, as well as those just passing through.
Costello examined the card through the polythene evidence bag in which it had been placed. He had pulled down the blinds in his room to take the edge off the sunlight, but had not opened the windows to reduce the heat. I kept having to wipe the sweat from my forehead, wafting a page in front of my face to cool down. Costello assumed that my sweating was caused by fear – and he was perhaps partially right.
‘Don’t worry, Ben. We’ll get to the bottom of this. It’s probably nothing – just an empty threat,’ he added, unconvincingly. ‘Have you any notion who might have sent it?’
‘Could be anyone, sir. I assume it’s related in some way to something I’m working on at the minute.’
‘Any names?’
Plenty, I thought – James Kerr, Reverend Charles Bardwell the self-confessed Catholic killer? Special Branch? Mr Bond had, after all, laughed when he said about my not getting the message. Was this the message he meant? And then, of course, there was the possibility that one of my colleagues had sent it. Not to mention the recently identified Decko O’Kane.
‘The postmark is dated on Monday, sir. After Peter Webb died.’ This seemed to exclude Bardwell, whom I hadn’t met by then, and the spook, ‘Mr Bond’, about whose activities I had only recently asked questions. And, at that stage I knew nothing of Mrs Webb’s affair, so, as a suspect, Decko O’Kane was dead in the water. So that left James Kerr – and Patterson. The religious aspect of the card seemed to implicate Kerr. But then, terrorist groups in the North had been posting people bullets and sympathy cards for years without religion featuring at all. This attempted emulation of hard-man tactics made me suspect that the card had been sent by my colleague – and rival in promotion – following my doubting the probity of his detective work.
‘Well, don’t worry about it, Ben. I’m sure it’s probably just harmless bluster. Still, best keep an eye out, eh?’ He winked at me in an avuncular manner, resting his hands across his girth, feigning an air of indifference. ‘Did you get a letter about the interview?’ he asked, not quite catching my eye.
I nodded, deliberately holding his gaze, but not feeling the confidence I was hoping to project.
‘There’ll be mention of these finds, I dare say. And Webb’s death. Have you thought of what you’re going to say?’
I shook my head. ‘Not . . .’ I cleared my throat and started again, ‘Not really, sir. Not yet.’
‘I’ll not try to influence you, Benedict; you know your own mind best. But I’d hate to be in your position.’ He held my gaze then, until I had to look away.
‘In fact,’ he added, passing me the sympathy card, ‘I think I’d rather receive one of these than that interview you got. One might be a threat – the other could be suicide, if you’re not careful.’
If Patterson had sent the card, he played the role of innocent well. As I made my way back to my desk, a number of my colleagues came towards me and offered sympathies and support, some with words of defiance, others with a mixture of pity and fear on their faces, as if I had already died. Patterson did not speak to me, though I watched him carefully throughout the rest of the day for any sign, any slight twitching of the lips which would validate my suspicion and give me cause to confront him.
Finally, just before I headed home, I walked over to his desk. He was reading a report, seemingly unaware of my presence. I leaned towards him, smiling amiably for the benefit of those who were watching.
‘If I find it was you who posted that card, I’ll square it with you when you least expect it.’
‘What are you going to do? Run and tell on me? Cry in the playground. Grow up, Devlin,’ he said, not even looking at me.
My face burned with shame and I lost my balance slightly as the floor seemed to shift under me. I heard a sound in my ears as if I had held a conch shell against each one. Then Patterson turned and returned my smile
and beneath the rush of blood I could discern his final words: ‘I wouldn’t bother with a poxy card, Devlin. I’d just go straight ahead and kill you, you useless prick.’
Debbie’s concern was not for me – or even herself – but for the children. She read the card several times, as if by doing so she might decipher some hidden message, some implicit threat to Shane and Penny which I had missed. I put my arms around her shoulders where she sat and tried to convince her that it was an empty threat from a disgruntled colleague, though even I doubted that.
She shrugged my arms away. ‘What if it’s not? What if someone actually does want to kill you? How do you know that they won’t attack you when the kids are in the car? Or when we’re in our beds? This is the second time you’ve put us at risk just so you can prove your rectitude.’
‘This isn’t about me, Debs,’ I said, though she was right. During a previous murder investigation our home had been attacked and Debbie and the kids held at gunpoint by a killer.
‘Well, who is it about? Me? The kids? Who else feels they have to prove a drugs find isn’t a drugs find? Or a suicide’s not a suicide? Why not just leave them, eh? Let someone else take the shit for a change? You’re not the only honest policeman in the world, Ben – stop acting the martyr.’
‘I’m not acting the martyr.’
‘No – that’s right. You’re worse. You’re going to make your family martyrs instead.’
That evening I sat out in the garden with Frank once the children had gone to bed, partly because Debbie was not speaking to me, but also because I was afraid for my family’s safety. I thought about what Debbie, and Hendry, and most of those with whom I had been in contact recently, had said about being part of the team – and my need to prove myself right, regardless of the cost. Perhaps there was some truth in it.
And so I sat outside with my dog, and listened and waited while the sunlight died in the west and the sky turned a wash of burnished gold that could do nothing to lift the heaviness I felt around my heart.
Gallows Lane (Inspector Devlin Mystery 2) Page 11