Gallows Lane (Inspector Devlin Mystery 2)

by Brian McGilloway

  McDermott was stripped to the waist, his skin slick with sweat, his back solid with packs of muscle. He looked over his shoulder at me as I approached, then continued with his plastering.

  ‘Mr McDermott. I was wondering if I could have a word.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to say,’ he replied, still not looking at me. ‘I don’t know anything about stolen drugs, or battered girls, or anything else you feel like pinning on me.’

  ‘I need your help, actually,’ I said.

  That got his attention. ‘And I would help you because . . . ?’

  ‘Someone who took part in your kick-boxing tournament killed Karen Doherty. A big man, bald, with a tattoo of Cuchulain. Does that mean anything to you?’

  If it did, McDermott wasn’t showing it. He squinted down at me, against the sunlight.

  ‘And why would I want to help you?’

  ‘He drugged, attempted to rape and battered a fifteen-year-old girl, Mr McDermott. I believe it wasn’t you, but you have to understand, I can’t let that happen and do nothing. I need to find the person responsible before he does it again.’

  ‘Do you know how to plaster, Inspector?’

  ‘No,’ I said, a little bewildered.

  ‘You’re no plasterer, then.’

  ‘None,’ I agreed.

  ‘And I’m no copper. So, fuck away off now and do your job yourself. I know nothing about it.’

  I stared blankly at him for a second, numbed slightly by his apparent lack of the most basic humanity. Finally, I gathered my thoughts.

  ‘How did you do?’ I asked.

  The question seemed to knock him off guard. ‘I got beaten in the final. Won by default.’

  ‘Darren Kehoe beat you?’ I asked.

  ‘Just because he was doped,’ he spat, then continued, ‘Now’s we’re getting all pally, I hear your friend was in an accident?’ I was unable, from his tone, to determine the sincerity of his inquiry.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t me, before you bring me in for that, as well.’

  ‘Can you help me?’ I asked, not wanting to indulge him any further.

  ‘Wish I could. I’ve already done my bit.’

  ‘But you must know someone who can help. Someone in your circle must know this guy.’

  But McDermott had finished with me and I knew whatever else I said would fall on deaf ears.

  By the time I returned to the station, Gorman had arrived with the list of participants. There were fourteen kick-boxers, their names listed alphabetically. Crucially, though, the Christian names were abbreviated to a capital letter, and there was no other information about them besides their phone numbers.

  ‘I asked the organizer if he recognized the description. Said he just took the money, gave out the prizes. He’s to ask around for us,’ Gorman explained, a little apologetically.

  I glanced down through the list, as if the name of our suspect would somehow make itself apparent; Kehoe was there and McDermott. Beyond that, though, nothing stood out: Atkins, Doran, Gedeon, Griffin, Johnston, Kerlin, McCready, McLaughlin, Mullan, Montgomery, O’Neill, Wilson.

  ‘Any one of those twelve, then,’ Gorman said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘Kehoe and McDermott are out of it.’

  ‘We can’t phone them,’ I said. ‘The man responsible is hardly going to admit to having a tattoo to the Guards, after almost getting caught last week in Club Manhattan.’

  ‘What about asking them to come into the station – for an interview? The one with something to hide won’t come.’

  ‘Too slow. We could eliminate the non-local phone numbers. Kehoe said he recognized the guy from around the club; that would suggest he lives in the Strabane, Derry, Donegal region. Leave anyone further afield for now. Then, we’ll take a Northern phone book each,’ I suggested. ‘Trace names and numbers to get addresses. And hit them one by one.’

  As it turned out, we didn’t even get as far as that. Fifteen minutes later, I got a phone call from Jim Hendry. Cribbins wanted to talk.

  We met them in the same bar as before. Cribbins looked Gorman up and down, several times, then turned to me. ‘This is a different one from last time.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘You have something for us, I believe.’

  ‘This is going to cost more than I thought. I’d get into a lot of trouble for the name I’m going to give you,’ Cribbins said. I was prepared for this; Hendry had told me this was Cribbins’s usual ploy.

  ‘I understand that,’ I said, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice. I placed a folded twenty-pound note on the table, just out of his reach. He stretched across for it, unsuccessfully, then rolled his eyes, and lifted his glass of orange juice. He drank from it through a straw while he looked from Gorman to me and back again, to ensure we were watching his performance.

  ‘The name?’ I said.

  ‘Inspector Hendry is much more pleasant to deal with,’ Cribbins said, affecting a pained expression, winking playfully at Jim, who looked the other way uncomfortably.

  I’d had enough of his games. I leaned towards him, placing my hand on top of his on the table, putting my weight into it. I heard his breath catch in his throat.

  ‘I have children, Cribbins,’ I whispered in his ear. ‘Being in the same room as you is making me ill. Now cut the shit and give me the fucking name before I lose my temper.’

  I could see his face blanch, unsure whether I was bluffing or was thick enough to follow through on my threat. ‘Daniel McLaughlin,’ he said quickly. ‘He’s a body builder and other things. Five foot nine, bald head, tattoo of Cuchulain on his left arm. The rumour is he deals some low-league drugs; sporting things, usually.’

  ‘Who is he?’ I asked. The name meant nothing to me.

  ‘He’s a mechanic; works in a car dealership in Letterkenny.’

  Then it all fitted into place. I recalled again the scene as we had left Decko’s showroom, his young assistant standing talking with a thick-necked man in a boiler suit.

  ‘I know who he is,’ I said. ‘And I think I know where to get him.’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ Hendry said. ‘Never featured on this side.’

  ‘Nor on ours until now,’ I conceded.

  ‘He only moved here a while back. Apparently his brother-in-law died recently,’ Cribbins added, sipping his juice through a straw, looking up at the three of us from beneath his fringe.

  ‘Who?’ I asked, my heart already racing.

  ‘That lecturer who hung himself – Weaver, Webber. Something like that,’ he replied haughtily, tossing his head back in dismissal.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Wednesday, 16 June

  Later that evening, four Garda cars pulled up on to the driveway of Sinead Webb’s house. The whole facade looked even more garish in the twilight, every feature accentuated by the orange floodlights placed along the edge of the lawn.

  The NBCI team arrived in their own car. Between them and the rest of us, there were eight officers, three of whom moved around to the back of the house, in case McLaughlin made a run for it. Parked in front of the garage was a green BMW, with what I took to be a personalized number plate reading BMW 6. But it then dawned on me that it was not personalized; it was a showroom. Obviously McLaughlin was borrowing cars from Decko’s showroom and taking them out for the night. It would explain why each witness had placed him in a different car.

  I knocked several times at the door before Sinead Webb answered. She wore jeans and a striped T-shirt; her hair was pulled back from her face, her features were haggard and her skin was blotched.

  ‘Inspector, is something wrong?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to your brother, Mrs Webb. Daniel McLaughlin. Is he here?’

  Her gaze shifted slightly, as she saw the number of Guards standing outside her house. She did not move from the doorway though.

  ‘In connection with what?’

  ‘A number of things, Mrs Webb. It really would be easier for all involved if y
ou cooperate. We have reason to believe he is here at the moment. Is that correct?’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him in some time.’

  I nodded, unsurprised by her response. ‘You understand that we have to search your home, Mrs Webb. I have a warrant here, if you’d like to check it.’

  While I spoke, the others moved in on either side of us and entered the house. Dempsey divided the team up, dispatching people to different parts of the building.

  Sinead Webb took the sheet I offered her, complaining a little about invasion of privacy and a family in mourning, though with little conviction.

  I stood in the hallway with her as bodies flitted in and out of rooms. Above us I could already hear furniture being dragged across the floor, doors slamming. The plan was to do a quick scout of rooms first, in case McLaughlin was here. Failing that, a more thorough forensic search could be carried out in the hope that something connecting McLaughlin with Karen Doherty or Rebecca Purdy might be found.

  Someone shouted from upstairs and I went up, taking the stairs two at a time. Sinead Webb stayed where she was, which made me guess that her brother probably wasn’t up there. She called no warning, did not try to block my progress, as relatives often do in a futile attempt to buy their loved one a few seconds’ head start.

  Sergeant Deegan had found McLaughlin’s room, though the man himself was not there. A set of dumb-bells sat in the corner, in front of a wardrobe. The wardrobe itself was fairly empty: a few pairs of jeans, trousers, shirts, shoes. Beside the bed was a stack of body-building magazines; beneath them a number of pornographic magazines. A chest of drawers sat beside the window, on top of which were bottles of aftershave, deodorants and the like. Among them were several blister strips of tablets; one of which I recognized as tamoxifen, the same as those Kehoe had provided us with. The others I did not recognize, but McLaughlin was clearly taking a cocktail of chemicals, both to build himself up and to negate any side effects.

  ‘Bag everything,’ I said. ‘Especially any pairs of trainers. Helen Gorman will want those.’ Then I added, ‘There must also be more of these lying around,’ waving a pack of tamoxifen. ‘I want a forensics team in here as soon as possible.’ I decided as an afterthought that it might be best to hold Sinead Webb also. I found it hard to believe that her brother had attacked two girls, presumably had gotten their blood on his clothes, and yet his sister hadn’t noticed it.

  Dempsey was talking to her when I went back downstairs, attempting to convince her that it was in her brother’s best interests for us to take him in tonight, without any fuss. As I listened to him, I went back through McLaughlin’s room in my mind. Something was missing. I imagined him again in Decko’s showroom, the bald head, the thick neck bulging over the top of the dirty boiler suit. The boiler suit! There were no boiler suits in his room. But then why should there be? Surely that was the kind of thing you’d leave in the garage.

  I tapped Dempsey on the upper arm. ‘Come with me,’ I said. ‘I have an idea where he might be.’ Sinead Webb motioned as if to follow us. ‘Stay in here, please, Mrs Webb,’ I added, gesturing to a female Garda to keep her company.

  At the back of the house, the three uniformed guards still stood, ensuring that if McLaughlin was about, he wouldn’t get away across the fields backing on to Webb’s land – the fields where Patterson and Colhoun had made their find. I began to wonder if maybe they had seen someone lurking that day; if maybe I had been wrong in my suspicions.

  Any sign?’ I whispered to the uniform standing nearest us as we came out the back door.

  He shook his head. I gestured for him to follow us.

  The side door into the garage was unlocked; the garage itself in darkness. Sinead Webb’s car, the old Vectra I had noticed on my first visit here, was sitting up on a hydraulic jack, its bonnet yawning open, tools scattered on the floor around it. I squatted down and looked beneath it.

  Dempsey moved around the side of the car, his gun raised in his hand. To his left, against the back wall, stretched a long workbench covered with engine parts and rags. I thought again of the rag pulled from my own car exhaust and an image of Caroline, unconscious, flashed in my mind. Beside the workbench, directly in front of Dempsey, were a number of large metal lockers. Dempsey moved to the first, the door of which sat slightly ajar. Using his toe, he kicked it open. Nothing.

  As he moved forwards, I noticed, at the edge of the workbench, a packet of cigarettes and a brass Zippo lighter. I gestured to Dempsey and pointed to the cigarettes. He glanced at them, then turned to me and nodded that he understood. It was as he reached to open the second locker that its door smashed open. Knocked off balance by Daniel McLaughlin lunging at him, Dempsey fell to the ground, dropping his gun which discharged a shot into the ceiling. Instinctively, I ducked. Meanwhile McLaughlin had barged his way back to the door, a long monkey-wrench in his great hand, and had come face to face with the uniformed Guard I had asked to join us, whose name I believed to be McGuigan. The man didn’t seem to know how to react, raising his hands in a futile effort to cover his head. As I reached for my own gun, McLaughlin raised the wrench and slammed it down. McGuigan fell instantly and McLaughlin was out the door.

  I ran to check on McGuigan and heard various shouts as the two Guards outside alerted the others to McLaughlin’s presence. I heard McLaughlin bellow once and heard the sickening thud of metal slamming into flesh. The next moment came the slam of a car door, and the roar of an engine as he started the BMW. He ground the car into gear and took off at speed, spraying gravel which ricocheted off the garage door. I ran after him, watching his rear lights turn the corner of the driveway. To my left another of the Guards lay on the ground, bleeding from a gouge in the side of his neck where McLaughlin had hit him. His colleague squatted beside him, holding his hand against the wound in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood.

  I ran to my own car and got in. By the time I had it started, Dempsey was strapping himself into the passenger seat, a welt the size of a man’s hand already purpling on his forehead.

  ‘I’ll kill the fucker,’ he spat.

  At the end of the driveway I halted, unsure which direction to take. To our left, the main road stretched back towards Lif-ford; the road was straight for some distance and we could see no traffic, though McLaughlin had a head start on us and it was possible that he could have made it out of our sight. I guessed, though, that he would have turned right for the road in that direction bent out of sight just a few hundred yards past the entrance to Webb’s property. And so that was the direction I took, while Dempsey radioed through to the station for backup, and for someone to set up a roadblock on Lifford Bridge, in case McLauglin tried to cross the border.

  But I began to think that I knew where he was going after all. One of the back roads near Clady would take him into the North quickly and without the likelihood of being stuck behind slow-moving traffic or running into more Guards. He might have suspected that, if we were looking for him, we’d have the main roads closed. A pity we hadn’t been that smart ourselves, I thought.

  I used all my weight and pressed my foot flat against the floor, the speedo needle quickly quivering at just under 150 kph. Dempsey gripped the dashboard as we drove, squinting into the distance for a sign of McLaughlin. Finally, on a long straight stretch we thought we caught sight of him, his tail lights visibly wavering across the two lanes of road which were, thankfully, empty at this time of the evening.

  As I had expected, I saw his brake lights flash, and the car attempted to turn sharp left on to the road through Clady into the North. He had evidently misjudged the junction, however, and the car overshot it, spinning out of control on to the grass verge. For a few seconds, it was difficult to see through the cloud of dust and grit whether he had crashed. Then the dust cleared and we saw him reverse the car to take the turn again. All in all, his manoeuvre had cost him about half a minute; more than enough time for us to close the gap on him sufficiently to visually identify him and t
he car with certainty. Of course, I myself had to brake to avoid a similar incident at the junction, which gave him back some of his lead.

  The road he had taken crossed the River Finn on a one-lane brick bridge with passing bays placed along its length. I prayed that he might get stuck. And it seemed my prayers were answered. As we turned the junction we saw a traffic jam. The green BMW sat abandoned at the back of a queue of vehicles, the engine still running, the driver’s door flung open. McLaughlin was attempting to cross on foot.

  We screeched to a halt behind his car. The driver of the car immediately in front of McLaughlin’s was out of his vehicle and leaning over the parapet of the bridge. As I approached him, I raised my hands in a questioning gesture.

  The man mouthed, ‘He’s down there,’ pointing exaggeratedly to beneath the bridge.

  McLaughlin would have been quicker just running across the bridge, but, when I looked ahead, I understood why he’d had to go under instead; the blockage on the bridge was a PSNI checkpoint.

  Two paths led under the bridge, one on either side of the road. Dempsey had already set off to the left, where the driver had pointed. I took the right; both paths would eventually meet under the bridge.

  The path was overgrown with brambles and raspberry canes, the berries small and hard and green. I tore through them as best I could. It was fairly clear that McLaughlin had not come this way, but having come so far myself I decided to persevere.

  The air beneath the bridge was cold and damp and smelt of decaying leaves. The river’s surface barely rippled in the breeze. The noise I made startled a heron which took to the air. I began to suspect that we had come the wrong way, then heard the splash and a shout from Dempsey. Looking up to my right, I saw McLaughlin, dressed in jeans and white T-shirt, having broken free from the tree line, wading across the water. To have crossed directly under the bridge would have brought him up at the PSNI checkpoint. For several hundred yards on either side of that path, the opposite bank was blocked by a wire fence. McLaughlin clearly intended to wade upstream until he reached the end of the fence.