I saw Tony Armstrong prise one of the planks of wood off a park bench to his left and hold it above his head. Irvine stayed where he was, mike in hand, shouting encouragement to his followers to stand firm against aggression.
A boy of no more than thirteen or fourteen, lacking the self-control of the older men there, was the first to strike, lashing out at one of our uniforms with a penknife. His action, and the shout of protest it elicited from the uniform he lunged at, provided the catalyst for others to join in. I noticed a few of my own colleagues similarly swell with anticipation as they reached for their batons.
The boy with the knife was the first to feel the impact of their use. A second uniform approached him from the side, his baton raised high above his head and brought it down so sharply on the boy’s wrist it must have broken.
Armstrong moved suddenly forward, swinging the plank of wood he’d lifted, hitting another Guard on the side of the head with enough force to knock him to the ground. Armstrong raised his foot to kick at the prone man but several of my colleagues lunged forward and brought him down.
I shoved my way through, shouting to the men to get Irvine and to get back to their cars. I saw fists, feet, batons all swinging, the dull thudding of flesh being struck accompanied by the grunting of twenty odd men, their breaths harsh and fogging in the chilled air. Taking out my phone I called through to the station for support, then moved into the centre of the fracas, trying to separate the more vicious of the Guards from the people they were attacking, but any efforts were ultimately futile.
Irvine was moving down now into the crowd, twisting up his shirtsleeves, as if preparing for manual labour. I shouted to the two uniforms closest to me and pointed towards Irvine. As the three of us moved towards him he turned and lifted the stand of the microphone he had been using and brandished it at us. The younger of the two uniforms removed his baton and moved forward, swinging it towards Irvine, despite the fact that Irvine himself had not yet attacked anyone. I became aware of lights flashing around us and at first assumed it was the blue lights of the squad cars I had called. Then I noticed Charlie Cunningham, standing up on the steps where Irvine had previously been speaking, camera in hand.
‘Don’t!’ I shouted, too late, as the uniform brought his baton down on the side of Irvine’s head, splitting the skin of his bald scalp. Irvine smiled broadly, even as he turned towards Cunningham to have his photograph taken, the left-hand side of his face badged now with his own blood, his arms outstretched, before the Garda who had hit him pummelled him to the ground.
A few hours later, Irvine was led into one of the interview rooms in Letterkenny station. He had forsworn the opportunity to go to the General Hospital first, preferring to have the wound on his scalp sealed with paper stitches in the back of the ambulance. Dried blood still streaked from the top of his head to his jaw line. He had called for his lawyer, Gerard Brown, who had duly arrived. I had encountered Brown many times before, normally when interviewing the more amoral inhabitants of the borderland region. In fact, having Brown as representation was virtually a mark of criminality.
Irvine hardly needed legal advice; clearly a veteran of police interviews, he had the routine down pat. He denied everything, said little and looked bored throughout our conversation. He had no recollection of where he was the night Kielty was murdered, he didn’t own a white van and had never heard of Ian Hamill.
After Irvine had been cautioned, Brown immediately stated his intention to file charges against the Guard whose unprovoked attack on his client had been photographed. He placed the picture on the table between us to emphasize the point. In the fracas that followed, I had forgotten to tell Patterson that Cunningham had been taking photographs. He looked from the image to me and back again, shaking his head.
‘You file whatever charges you want, Mr Brown. Your client was seen to raise a microphone stand against my officer. He encouraged vigilante behaviour in a public forum and incited violence against members of the community.’
‘Drug dealers,’ Brown corrected him.
‘Your bread and butter, I’d have thought,’ Patterson said. He continued before Brown could respond, ‘While we’re on the subject, two have turned up dead. Murdered. One of them your client threatened in a public house in Strabane a few weeks ago.’
‘Allegedly.’
‘We have a witness statement,’ Patterson said, stretching the truth a little.
‘You have the word of a barman,’ Irvine said.
‘We have a Mass card with your organization’s name on it.’
Irvine looked at me blankly.
‘We didn’t send anyone a Mass card,’ he said.
‘Kielty’s partner says otherwise.’
‘Then she’s lying,’ Irvine stated. ‘Where’s the card? Let me see it.’
‘We’ll let you see nothing.’ I was grateful for Patterson’s interruption for McEvoy had told me that Kielty had dumped the card.
‘Now, what about Lorcan Hutton?’ Patterson went on. ‘Did you know him?’
‘I knew of him,’ Irvine said. ‘Most people did.’
‘You wouldn’t have threatened him at some point too, would you?’
‘That’s a ridiculous question, Superintendent,’ Brown said. ‘And this whole thing seems spurious. You have the word of a barman that my client threatened Martin Kielty – that’s it. We all know that that means nothing. You have some bullshit charge about inciting violence. Unless you have something concrete, my client is leaving.’
‘We know you threatened Kielty, Mr Irvine: you said yourself tonight that the only good drug dealer is a dead one.’
‘You were doing your job properly, I wouldn’t have to say things like that,’ Irvine began. He was interrupted by a knock at the door.
A uniform came into the room with a slim folder that he handed Patterson. He opened it and glanced at the contents.
‘Perhaps you’d like to spend some time discussing all this with your solicitor,’ Harry said, nodding to me that we should leave.
‘You let yourselves get photographed?’ he shouted when we were back in his office. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘It went to shit, Harry. They had knives with them.’
‘And a fucking camera. They wanted you to do it. We’ll be splashed all over the front pages tomorrow. More shit to deal with.’
‘I’m sorry, Harry. It just snowballed out of control.’
‘What did you lift him there for?’
‘You said be creative. I thought incitement to violence would give us something to hold him on.’
‘You could have let him get in his car, smashed the tail lights, and pulled him over on the dual carriageway. Jesus, Devlin.’
I’d endured enough of Patterson’s tirades over the past few years to know they were mostly bluster. Still, it would not look good for the force, especially with The Rising claiming we weren’t dealing with the drugs problem properly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated.
‘You’re always sorry,’ Patterson said, dropping heavily into his chair. ‘Just another balls-up.’ His tone, though, had dropped too, and I knew the worst of his ire was spent. ‘Forensics found nothing to tie Irvine to Kielty’s house. Not a fucking thing.’
‘That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.’
‘No, but it doesn’t prove that he did, either, does it?’ he snapped. ‘Follow up on Hutton’s house. Contact Forensics and see if they’ve managed to match Irvine’s prints to any taken from Rolston Court. If we can connect him to even one of the murders, we’ll have the fucker yet.’
Friday, 9 February
Chapter Twenty
The following morning I decided to go to early Mass alone. Although Irvine was being held pending charges for the murders of Hutton and Kielty, I was angry that Penny had most likely lied to me about her cinema trip. I was also angry that Morrison seemed to be using my daughter to get to me in some way. And I was angry that, having witnessed Caroline’s loss, instead of it making me value my
children even more, I had allowed my relationship with my daughter to deteriorate.
On the way home I stopped and bought some pastries. The local papers were already running copies of Cunningham’s pictures, under headlines about ‘Police Brutality’. One Northern paper with an extreme political leaning featured the picture of Irvine’s bloody face twisted in a grin.
Christy Ward, the aged owner of the shop, had been on the Bloody Sunday march in Derry in 1972. He glanced at the papers lying on the counter between us.
‘Reminds me of the bad old days, Ben,’ he said, fumbling with my change.
‘It’s not quite how it looks, Christy,’ I said.
‘It’s hard to see how it could be otherwise. When the police take to beating people up, we have to start worrying.’
‘The group in question are not entirely innocent.’
‘Maybe not,’ he said, passing me a handful of coppers, cupped in the twisted claw arthritis had created of his hand. ‘But this’ll win them more support than they ever had. Bloody Sunday did the same for the Provos, and it had nothing to do with them.’
‘They’re not equivalent situations.’
‘No, but the consequences are always the same,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised you don’t see that.’
On my way home I tried to dismiss Ward’s comments and my annoyance at Penny. The kids were still in their pyjamas when I got in and I made a pot of coffee and laid the pastries on a plate at the table. Shane lifted his with a perfunctory, ‘Thank you, Daddy,’ and retreated into the living room where he was watching Jurassic Park. Penny sat at the table with Debbie and me, her legs long enough now for her feet to touch the floor. She tore small pieces from her bun and ate them delicately.
‘How was the film?’ I asked.
‘Great,’ she said, without quite catching my eye. ‘Thanks,’ she added.
‘Just the three of you there?’
Debbie fired me a warning look, though Penny answered innocently: ‘There was a whole cinema full.’
‘Don’t be smart. Was that Morrison boy there?’
‘No,’ Penny said, even as her neck flushed red.
‘Don’t lie to me, Penny,’ I said, managing to keep my voice calm. ‘I saw him going in.’
‘Were you spying on us?’
‘Was he there with you?’
‘There were loads of us there.’
‘Was he there, Penny – yes or no?’
Finally she looked at me, popping a chunk of pastry in her mouth before answering.
‘Yes.’
‘I told you to stay away from him.’
‘He’s in my class. How am I meant to stay away from him? He sits beside me in science.’ From the way she spoke, and the glance she threw at Debbie, I could tell that there was more to it than simply sitting beside her in class.
‘Are you dating him?’
‘Dad!’ Penny exclaimed, the redness making its way right up to her face.
‘Don’t let him fool you, Penny. He’s getting close to you for his father. It’s about me.’
If I had slapped her across the face, I doubt I could have elicited such a pained expression as that sentence did, and I immediately regretted having said it.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ I said, though she quietly slipped out of her seat and padded away. Though her back was to me as she left the room, I could hear the raggedness of her breathing as she tried not to cry.
‘Well done,’ Debbie hissed, glaring at me. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’
‘I don’t want her getting hurt by Morrison,’ I reasoned.
‘The only one hurting her is you. Stop being an asshole. She’s almost a teenager – start treating her like one,’ she said, getting up and following our daughter upstairs.
I finished my coffee in silence, then took the plates to the kitchen and scraped the uneaten remains of the pastries into the bin. My mobile started to ring.
‘Patterson here,’ Harry snapped when I answered. ‘Get yourself up here. We have a problem.’
I made it to Letterkenny in ten minutes, grateful to get out of the house. I assumed the summons would be about the newspaper reports, an assumption seemingly confirmed when I arrived to find Charlie Cunningham sitting in the foyer. He smiled when I came in and offered a ‘Good morning’. Having been directed to Interview Room 1, I discovered Harry Patterson interviewing Patsy McCann, the barman from Doherty’s, accompanied by Gerard Brown, who was looking remarkably fresh considering the late hours he had spent in the station the night before.
Patsy blanched when I entered the room. Patterson announced my arrival for the benefit of the twin tape recorders which were running on the table. The atmosphere in the room was heavy, Patsy’s sheepishness matched only by Patterson’s anger.
‘Here to make that statement, Patsy?’ I said, sitting down. ‘It’s good to see you.’
‘Mr McCann is making a statement all right,’ Patterson said. ‘He tells me that you were mistaken about what he said to you on Wednesday – which is, we’re informed, inadmissible in any case. Furthermore, in the interests of fairness and justice, Mr McCann felt duty-bound to come in and tell us that Jimmy Irvine, Charlie Cunningham and Tony Armstrong were drinking in the bar where he works on the night of Friday the 2nd of February. He tells me that they were there from 7 p.m. until 2.30 a.m.’
‘What?’ I asked. ‘Have you been forced into this, Patsy?’
‘Seeing this morning’s papers, Mr McCann felt it his civic duty to set matters straight, Inspector,’ Brown smiled. ‘The times in question mean that my client, and his associates, could not have been involved in the murder of Martin Kielty.’
‘What about Lorcan Hutton’s?’ I countered.
‘As you don’t know yourself when Hutton was killed, you can hardly expect him to provide an alibi. You give me a date and I will, I have no doubt, be able to provide you with a suitable alibi.’
‘No doubt,’ I muttered.
‘That business concluded, then,’ Brown said, standing up, ‘it remains only for you to release Mr Irvine.’
‘We still have him on incitement to violence,’ Patterson said weakly.
‘For which he will be released on Gardai bail, if you really want to go through the motions.’
Twenty minutes later, Charlie Cunningham posted Jimmy Irvine’s bail of three thousand euros and the two men, with Patsy McCann in tow, left the station. Before leaving, Irvine made a statement about the night before, stating his wish to press charges against the young Garda who had attacked him.
‘I want that fucker,’ Patterson spat, watching him leaving the station. ‘If you don’t get him for Kielty, get him for Hutton. Get Rory Nicell to focus on it too. He knows the druggies – some of them must know something. Search Hutton’s house again yourself, do whatever you have to but get something to pin on him.’
I was leaving the station to head to Hutton’s house to go through it myself, now that Forensics had finished with it, when Debbie called. Caroline Williams’s father, John McCrudden, had phoned our house looking for me. He was sorry to disturb us so early in the day, he said, but he thought I should know: Caroline had been rushed to hospital.
Chapter Twenty-One
When I arrived, the McCruddens were waiting at the end of the corridor, while the nurses worked with Caroline. John explained what had happened. Caroline and Simon had argued at the meal following the funeral. He had accused her of being responsible for Peter’s death and had told the other mourners that she had deliberately stopped Peter from seeing him.
She had become increasingly withdrawn during the rest of the afternoon and early evening. Her mother had given her a second Valium tablet, having already given her one before the funeral. They had asked her to sleep in their house that night, but she had insisted on going back to her own home.
At just after seven this morning she had phoned her mother and father to thank them for their support during the past weeks. She had told them she loved them.
&n
bsp; ‘I just knew,’ her father said. ‘You know your own daughter.’
I nodded, uneasily.
‘So, I got in the car and went over to her house. Straight out of bed.’ He gestured towards his neckline, where the collar of his pyjama top sat over the neckline of his jumper. ‘She didn’t answer the door, no matter how much I knocked. I had a spare key, so I let myself in. She was lying in the bath.’
He paused and raised his chin slightly, as if to hold back the tears which I could see welling in his eyes. He swallowed loudly, and sniffed, tugging at the hem of his jumper as he did so.
‘I thought I was too late. She was just lying there, in the water. She was so cold. She was so . . .’ He raised a trembling hand to his mouth to stop himself saying anything more, and his gaze seemed to settle on the middle distance.
‘You saved her life,’ I said.
‘She’d already taken them. A full pack of paracetamol. They think she brought most of them back up, though they’ll not know for a while the damage she’s done to her liver.’
‘She’s still alive, John, because of you,’ Rose whispered.
He nodded and muttered ‘Aye’ softly, almost to himself, while his wife smiled sadly and rubbed his upper arm with her hand.
We were eventually allowed into Caroline’s room and I was surprised to see that she was awake, though she had turned almost the same colour as the sheet which covered the lower part of her body. I could see the black smears of charcoal still around her mouth, from where she had had her stomach pumped.
As soon as she saw her father she began to cry, heavy, wracking sobs that shook her whole body. He leant down towards her on the bed and hugged her tight against him, while his wife stood to the side, her hand on Caroline’s back. I excused myself and headed out to have a smoke. I phoned home to let Debbie know how Caroline was and to check on Penny following our earlier conversation.
The Rising The Rising (Inspector Devlin #4) Page 11