Penny looked from me to Debbie. Redness was already flushing her neckline and cheeks.
‘It’s not that bad out,’ Debbie said. ‘If you could get in and out to work, we can get her to the disco. She’s been looking forward to it all week.’
‘She’s not going,’ I said, a little more forcefully than I had intended, for I noticed Debbie’s jaw set, an expression that was mirrored on our daughter’s face.
‘That’s not fair,’ Penny stamped. ‘Everyone is going. You said I could go.’
‘It’s too wet, sweetie,’ I said.
‘It’s not,’ she snapped. ‘And don’t call me sweetie. I’m not your sweetie.’
‘Penny,’ I warned, my voice rising.
‘Maybe we should talk about this, Daddy,’ Debbie said.
‘Mummy,’ Penny said, pleadingly.
‘Mummy and Daddy will talk about it,’ Debbie said, though with not enough conviction to prevent Penny from dropping onto the top step and beginning to sob into her hands.
I placed my hand on her shoulder, noticed the tiny fingernails of her hand painted pink. ‘Honey, honestly, it’s too—’
She shrugged away my hand and spat ‘I hate you’ before getting up and running into her room, slamming the door behind her.
Shane, sat in the middle of our floor, held aloft a model tyrannosaurus. ‘What’s wrong with Penny?’ he asked in a gruff voice, moving the toy with his hand as if it were speaking.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Debbie hissed to me. ‘It’s her first disco. She was dying for you to come home and see her.’
‘I met Vincent Morrison today,’ I said.
‘What of it?’ Debbie asked quizzically.
‘His son is in Penny’s class. He’ll be at the disco tonight.’
‘What of it?’ Debbie repeated. ‘You can bring suspects and witnesses to our house when it suits you, but Penny can’t go out to a disco in case someone’s eleven-year-old son is there. Catch yourself on. She’s going.’
‘I said she’s not,’ I said.
‘And I said she is. And she’ll love it. And you’ll tell her how pretty she looks and sound like you mean it.’
‘I know she looks pretty. That’s not the point. What if Morrison is trying to . . .’
‘Trying to what?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t trust him.’
‘So I heard. You need to start listening to yourself, Ben. Do you know how you sounded on the radio? Petty. And you’re being petty now. She’s going to that disco, and that’s final.’
‘I said she’s not going,’ I started, though my mobile began to ring, cutting me short. I glanced at the phone. Letterkenny. As I flipped the phone open, one finger held out in a request for a moment’s quiet, I heard Debbie mutter, ‘Fucking typical. Off you go, back to work.’
Shane’s mouth opened into a wide O. ‘Mummy said a bad word,’ he said.
Distracted, I had to ask twice for the desk sergeant in Letterkenny to repeat himself. Finally I managed to piece together his message. An old-style blue Volkswagen Beetle with an orange door had been discovered, abandoned near Barnesmore Gap.
I said my own share of bad words as I negotiated one pool of water after another on my way first to Ballybofey, then on through to the Gap. Streams had gouged red mud scars out of the mountainsides flanking the road, the water thick with dirt washing onto the road ahead of me. The car slid on one particularly bad corner and my headlights raked across withered bunches of flowers that had been taped to the crash barriers, marking the site of an earlier fatality on this stretch. The rain thudded off the windscreen, the wipers serving little purpose beyond distracting my attention from the road. Finally I spotted the blue winking light of a Garda car and pulled over.
The Beetle had been left in the picnic area of a small forest just off the main road, parked far enough back that only someone driving into the picnic area would see it, which was unlikely to happen too often here in mid-February. In fact, I idly wondered why the Guard who had found it had come in here at all.
Whoever had abandoned the car had wanted to destroy it for the doors all lay open, the interior was burnt, the dash console blackened twists of moulded plastic. The rain though had been so heavy that, despite some tarnishing of the metal of the roof, the bodywork was remarkably clean, which meant that there might be the possibility of prints, though no dusting could be completed on the outside of the vehicle in this weather. There was no doubting that it fitted the description given to me by Nora Quigley of the vehicle she had seen outside Kielty’s house on the night of his death.
The rain had also, however, prevented the lower half of the bodywork being too badly damaged and the car’s registration plate – and Northern number – was clear. I climbed back into my own car and radioed through to Letterkenny to request a Forensics team. Then I called Jim Hendry.
‘It’s my night off,’ he said upon answering.
‘How the fuck do you think I feel? I’m sitting in a hurricane in Barnesmore Gap looking at a burnt-out car – a car from your side of the border.’
‘What? Misery loves company, so you thought you’d phone me?’
‘I need a registration number run, Jim.’
‘Can it not wait till tomorrow?’
‘I think it’s connected with the murder of Martin Kielty.’
‘The dealer?’
‘The very one.’
He paused for a second, and I could hear him slurping from a drink. ‘Leave it with me,’ he said finally.
I gave him all the details, then added, ‘Thanks. Sorry to spoil your night off.’
‘Fuck it; I’m sitting having a pint in front of the telly. What else have I to be doing?’
I laughed and hung up, then looked out at the storm that was whipping the fir trees on the incline above me. I wondered what I was doing here. Patterson’s invitation to run the station had been a poisoned chalice from the start. I needed some support, another full-time detective working the border with me. I had hoped when I’d heard from Caroline Williams that her entry back into my life might extend to her coming back into the Guards, too, but I realized that I had been deluding myself.
I ran across to the other car where an elderly uniform from Ballybofey was sitting smoking his pipe, listening to classical music.
‘No one’s going to steal this thing tonight,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we head on, get a team out tomorrow?’
The man shifted his pipe to the corner of his mouth, released a billow of pungent smoke upwards and nodded.
‘Sounds good to me,’ he muttered around the stem of his pipe.
I was almost back in Lifford when Hendry called me back with a name and address.
‘I’ve tracked your car,’ he said. ‘No need for thanks, that’s why I’m here.’
‘Thanks, Jim,’ I said.
‘Ian Hamill, living in 38 Tulacorr Heights.’
‘Do you know him?’ I asked.
‘Bit of a scumbag, just,’ Hendry said. ‘Petty thief, junkie, that kind of stuff. I wouldn’t pin him for a killer, but when these guys are off their heads, fuck knows what they’re capable of.’
‘His car was seen outside Kielty’s the night he died,’ I explained. ‘If he didn’t kill Kielty, he must at least know who did.’
‘Well, that’s his info. I’ll follow it up for you tomorrow if you like.’
I hesitated, a little disappointed that he hadn’t offered to follow it up immediately, though I was aware that it was his night off.
‘That would be great, Jim,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Go home, Devlin,’ he said.
I grunted my agreement and hung up. By this stage I had reached the centre of Lifford. I sat at the roundabout at the bridge. A left turn would take me home; right would take me over the bridge into Strabane and Mr Hamill. It wasn’t a hard decision.
Chapter Fifteen
Tulacorr Heights is an estate along the Derry Road on the outskirts of Strabane. The odd sequencing of
the numbers of the houses threw me a bit and it took me longer than I expected to find the house in question, which was up along a cul-de-sac near the old Mass Rock.
The house appeared abandoned even from the road. It sat on a slight rise, the driveway sloping up towards the front door. The grass was thick and long, and the flower bed had been overtaken by weeds. I took my torch from the glove compartment and ran up to the front door. I knocked a few times and leant against the door until I caught my breath. Then I knocked again and called in through the letter box. It was fairly clear that Hamill was not home. To the rear of the property I could hear a low thudding sound in the wind.
I crossed to the large window in the front of the house and looked in. Though the blinds were partially closed, I could see through the slats that the house was furnished. The screen of a television reflected the light of my torch, the red standby light beneath it glowing angrily in the darkness.
The side gate screeched against rusted hinges and scraped along the concrete path, forcing me to push against it with my shoulder to overcome the resistance.
The backyard of the house was as overgrown as the front, a rusting barbecue collecting rain, lumps of charcoal floating in the bowl. A plastic patio table had blown over against the garden shed which lay open, the door thudding against the wooden side in the wind.
I checked the back-door handle, in vain. Then I scanned the back windows with my torch. The smallest section of the kitchen window was ajar. Laying the torch on the window-sill, I hoisted myself up onto the dustbin to see if I could reach down and open the main window. I was able to reach halfway down, my fingers brushing the edge of the handle but not making sufficient purchase to allow me to open it completely.
Whether it was because I was too absorbed in what I was doing, or because of the noise of the shed door thudding and the wind whistling along the backs of the houses, I did not hear the figure to my left approaching. In fact, I only realized someone was there when a torch beam shone in my face, dazzling me. I was sure, however, that the squat black object he held in his other hand was a gun.
Instinctively I reached out to get a grip on my own torch, in the hope of using it as a baton. Then a voice I recognized said ‘This is a stick up’ before the speaker broke into a cackle that dissolved into a smoker’s cough.
‘Jesus, Jim, you nearly gave me a fucking heart attack. What the hell are you doing?’
Hendry laughed. ‘I fucking knew you’d be over. You can’t help yourself, can you?’
‘I thought you were having a pint in front of the telly,’ I said.
‘I knew you’d be looking for someone to cover your back. Besides, there’s fuck all on anyway,’ he complained. ‘Now, after you break in here, what’s your plan?’
I glanced at the window, trying to come up with some excuse for the position he had caught me in but I had none.
‘I don’t really have a plan,’ I said. ‘Even the breaking-in part wasn’t working so well.’
‘That’s because you didn’t come prepared,’ he said, rummaging in his coat pocket and removing a ring of keys. ‘One of these should do it,’ he said, gesturing towards the lock. ‘A gift from a grateful locksmith,’ he added, smearing the rainwater from his face with the palm of his hand.
Sure enough, the sixth key I tried unlocked the back door. I entered the house, calling out Hamill’s name. Hendry followed me into the kitchen, searching along the wall with the palm of his hand until he found the light switch.
The kitchen was a mess. Dirty dishes lay in the sink. The counter was coated with breadcrumbs and a tub of margarine sat with its lid on the counter beside it and a smeared knife sitting atop the tub. A bowl containing overripe fruit sat to one side of it. Small fruit flies crawled over the blackened bananas. To the other side, a kettle was plugged in and the wall switch turned on.
Hendry went over and opened the fridge. A carton of milk was curdling on the shelf: beyond that sat a half-eaten loaf of bread, the grey furze of mould on its crust clear through the wrapping. A few beer cans were on the bottom shelf with a bowl of something that looked like solidified chilli.
‘Untidy bugger,’ Hendry commented.
We moved into the rest of the house. The hallway was clear, save for a pile of assorted letters which lay discarded beneath the letter box.
As I had seen from outside, the television in the living room was on standby. The remote control sat on a small coffee table in the middle of the floor, beside which was a half-drunk mug of something on which a scum of mould had grown. A newspaper lay on the floor beside the chair nearest the table. On the chair arm, a filter from a cigarette had been broken off. A few small circles of card suggested Hamill had been making roaches.
‘Spliffing up before he goes to kill Kielty?’ Hendry gestured towards the chair arm.
‘It doesn’t look right, does it?’
‘It looks like he thought he was coming back, if that’s what you mean,’ Hendry said.
‘So, if he did kill Kielty, it probably wasn’t premeditated. If he had been planning it, you’d imagine he’d clean up a bit. Especially if he knew he was going to go on the run.’
‘Maybe they had a row.’
‘And he happens to have petrol with him just in case? Unless he killed Kielty then went off and got the petrol then went back again.’
‘Though you’d think he’d come back here and get some stuff.’
‘Maybe he panicked,’ I reasoned.
‘Maybe,’ Hendry shrugged.
The rooms above were in a similar state. There were two bedrooms and a lumber room. One of the rooms – a spare room, we guessed – sat tidy, the bed made. In the other, Hamill’s bed linen spilled onto the floor, his nightclothes rolled in a ball in the corner. A pint glass of water stood on the locker beside his bed.
Hendry flicked through the drawers of his dresser, then lifted out a black pouch about the size of his hand. He unzipped it and peered inside.
‘Aha,’ he said. ‘Mr Hamill’s stash.’
He threw the pouch over to me. Inside was a syringe and a scorched spoon. A small folded white piece of paper bulged slightly in the middle.
‘Would a junkie abandon his stash?’ Hendry asked.
‘If he’d just stolen Kielty’s stuff, then I suppose so.’
But Hendry shook his head. ‘Not a fucking chance. Those guys wouldn’t pass on a hit, no matter how much they had.’
We had locked up the house as well as we could and Hendry phoned the station, requesting that they put out an alert for Ian Hamill on suspicion of murder. I was climbing into my own car when I saw him running over, gesturing to me to wind down the window.
He ducked his head down level with the window. ‘Do you fancy a pint?’ he suggested, squinting through the rain.
‘I know just the place,’ I said. ‘I want to check McEvoy’s story about Kielty being threatened in Doherty’s pub.’
Hendry winced. ‘I’m not sure I could step foot in that place. Five years ago they’d have fucking skinned a copper alive in there.’
‘New times, Jim: haven’t you heard? Besides, we’re only going for the one.’
I drove ahead of him to Doherty’s pub on the outskirts of Strabane. The pub itself was a single room lounge with an oval bar in the centre. The furniture was mismatched, the faux suede upholstery on the booths matted and stained with cigarette smoke, despite the smoking ban. Old-style yellowed wall lamps provided the only illumination. Despite this, the arrival of a PSNI man into the bar did not go unnoticed by the other drinkers, even though Hendry was in civvies.
In all the time I had known Jim Hendry, we had never really socialized beyond grabbing cups of tea after an interview. I sensed that he wanted company on a Friday night and, for my part, I was coward enough to want to avoid Penny. In fact, Morrison was the topic of conversation when Hendry sat down with two pints for us.
‘Vincent Morrison has reappeared,’ I said, supping from my pint, while Hendry swallowed mouthfuls of his.
> ‘Remind me,’ he said, wiping the froth from his moustache with his thumb and forefinger.
‘People smuggler. That Chechen thing a while back.’
He nodded in recognition. ‘So what’s he up to?’
‘I’m not sure. He’s part of a community group supporting this anti-drugs crowd, The Rising. He’s living on my side of the border now.’
‘And you don’t think he’s on the level?’ Hendry asked, one eyebrow raised in mock seriousness. ‘You’re so suspicious.’
‘I don’t trust him. There must be an angle. Have you heard anything over here?’
Hendry shook his head, drained his pint, thumped his chest and belched.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, placing the back of his hand against his mouth. ‘Nothing. I’ll keep an ear out, see if the Drugs Squad up here have anything on him.’
‘I appreciate it. The fucker’s sent his son to my daughter’s school.’
‘Did he actually send him to her school, or have they just ended up in the same school?’ Hendry asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘How many schools are there in your area?’
‘I’ll get your pint,’ I said, standing up.
He started to laugh. ‘How many?’
‘One,’ I said. ‘OK, point taken.’
‘I’ll have a Smithwick’s,’ he said, winking at the barman who was already pulling the pint.
I bought myself a Coke. While the barman was pouring the pint I placed the photograph of Martin Kielty on the bar.
‘How’s it going?’ I said, my money in my hand as the barman approached me. He glanced over my shoulder at where Jim Hendry sat then turned and walked down to the far end of the bar without another word. I watched him walk away until I realized I recognized the man sitting at that end.
Patsy McCann perched on the furthest barstool from me, presumably having just finished his shift, for he was dressed in the livery of the bar. The last time I had seen him, he had packed in his work and was panning for gold on the Carrowcreel river, following a mini goldrush in the area.
The Rising The Rising (Inspector Devlin #4) Page 8