Death on the Line

by Derek Fee

  ‘I have a number of properties that I rent here in Armagh but aside from those yes, the business is my principal source of income.’

  Wilson withdrew a photo of Walter Hanna from a folder and laid it on the table facing Keenan. ‘Do you know this man?’ Wilson saw the flicker in O’Grady’s eyes. This line of questioning was news to him.

  Keenan put on his thinking face and didn’t reply for several moments. ‘I don’t think so. Mind you, I run across all sorts in my business.’

  ‘Are you sure? The man in this photo is Walter Hanna, a farmer near the village of Moy in County Tyrone.’ Again a flicker of interest from O’Grady.

  Keenan shook his head.

  ‘For the tape, please,’ Gibson said.

  ‘No, I don’t know this Walter Hanna person.’

  Wilson took out a second photo and placed it facing Keenan on the table. ‘This is a photo taken in the parking lot of a public house called the Bottle of Benburb. You are the man seated in the passenger seat of the car and the man behind the wheel is Walter Hanna. I ask you again, do you know Walter Hanna?’

  ‘That was not the name he gave me.’ Keenan was struggling for control. The photo had shaken him.

  ‘May I ask you where you obtained this photo, Superintendent?’ O’Grady asked.

  ‘Your client and Walter Hanna have been under observation for several days.’ Wilson was careful not to mention the existence of the voice recording.

  Wilson looked at Keenan. ‘Do you still insist that you do not know Mr Hanna?’

  ‘Not by that name.’ Keenan’s voice was shaking.

  ‘Where were you on the night of the thirteenth of September and the early morning of the fourteenth?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘What day was that?’ Keenan asked.

  ‘Last Monday night.’

  ‘At home,’ Keenan said.

  ‘All night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And someone can corroborate that?’

  ‘Yes, my wife.’

  Wilson withdrew an A3 sheet from the file and opened it. He spread it on the table. ‘Do you recognise the area in this map?’

  Keenan and O’Grady both examined the map. ‘Yes,’ Keenan said. ‘It’s the area around the village of Aughnacloy.’

  Wilson pointed to a red X on the map. ‘We have a witness who says that he saw you at this location in the early hours of the fourteenth of September in the company of Mr Hanna.’

  ‘Your witness is mistaken,’ Keenan said, but the cockiness he had exhibited when he entered the interview room had almost entirely disappeared.

  ‘Are you aware of the concept of criminal conspiracy?’ Wilson asked.

  O’Grady frowned. ‘Come now, Superintendent.’

  ‘I just wish to make your client aware that if a capital crime is committed in the context of a criminal activity, all those involved in the criminal activity can be charged with the capital crime as accessories.’

  Keenan was now looking shaken. He leaned across and spoke into O’Grady’s ear.

  ‘My client came here in good faith,’ O’Grady said when the whispered conversation had finished. ‘He has tried to answer your questions to the best of his ability but has now decided not to cooperate further. I would suggest that if you have any concrete evidence of wrongdoing by my client that you present it here and now so that my client may refute it.’

  ‘While you are at it, Mr O’Grady, perhaps you would explain to your client the concept of the prisoner’s dilemma.’

  O’Grady’s frown deepened but as Keenan was looking at him he responded. ‘I shall simplify it somewhat. The superintendent is insinuating that where several people are arrested for a criminal enterprise, the one who turns Queen’s evidence first gets the most lenient treatment. I think we should bring this interview to a close unless you wish to charge my client.’

  Wilson picked up the photos and put them back in his file. ‘I would like Mr Keenan to remain available for a further interview. I caution him not to leave the jurisdiction until we have completed our enquiries.’ He looked at Gibson.

  Gibson looked at his watch. ‘Interview terminated at eleven ten.’ He switched off the tape.

  Keenan had lost much of his ruddy colour. He stood together with O’Grady and remained standing while O’Grady repacked his briefcase. The solicitor held out his hand to Gibson, who placed a copy of the tape into it.

  Wilson watched the two men leave the room. He had certainly rattled Keenan’s cage and he could see that O’Grady had not been fully informed of the context of the interview. He followed Gibson out of the interview room and along a corridor. They stopped at a window that overlooked the car park. Beneath them they could see Keenan and O’Grady in animated conversation. ‘I want his alibi checked and a statement from his wife.’

  Gibson nodded. ‘I’ll arrange it. Where did you get the photo of Hanna and Keenan?’

  ‘I’d like to keep that to myself for the moment.’ Wilson continued to observe the scene in the car park. He had the feeling that Gibson was nervous about something. ‘Is there anything you’d like to tell me?’

  Gibson followed Wilson’s gaze. All was not well between Keenan and his solicitor. ‘No.’ If he had been observed entering the Orange Hall in Benburb, he would deal with it.

  ‘I wouldn’t like Walter Hanna to learn any aspect of our investigation. Sooner or later I’m going to get him and when I do everyone connected to him will go down.’

  Gibson watched Keenan and O’Grady leaving the parking area. Hanna wasn’t the type to spill his guts and there was no evidence against him. As long as he remained calm he might well survive. ‘Shall I call a car to take us to Aughnacloy?’

  Wilson turned and started to walk away from the window. He wasn’t sure how much collusion there had been between Gibson and Hanna, but he was very sure that there wouldn’t be any more. ‘I think so.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Wilson and Gibson arrived in Aughnacloy just before one. Browne was engrossed in reading reports while O’Neill was, as usual, glued to a computer screen. The young woman appeared to have a symbiotic relationship with the machine. Unlike Wilson, she never seemed to have that impulse to fling the damn thing against the wall. He envied her. He walked to her desk, pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. ‘How are we progressing?’ he asked.

  She looked away from the screen. ‘I’ve pulled up whatever information there is on the Internet on Hanna’s two boys. They’re a bit of a mixed bag. I hacked the school computer. The eldest, Mark, was a conscientious student while his brother, Henry, was the school bully. Mark moved out of the family home at eighteen and went to work at a local hotel as a trainee manager. He appears to be squeaky clean. The younger one stayed on to help manage the farm.’ She pulled up some files on the screen. ‘Henry has a bit of a temper. He’s been up for unruly conduct twice and ABH once. All cases were thrown out for lack of evidence.’

  ‘Have you had a chance to look at the financials yet?’

  She shook her head. ‘That might require a greater degree of hacking.’

  ‘Do I need to know?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Print off what you have on the boys and start working on the financials.’ He walked over to his own desk. The investigation was becalmed. The interviews with Hanna and Keenan hadn’t really yielded any progress. He was pretty sure that Keenan would run south. He still couldn’t prove that the Hannas and Keenan were at the murder scene or put the murder weapon into a specific person’s hand. He looked round the room. Only O’Neill was fully occupied. Browne was sifting through paper on his desk and Gibson was seated in front of his computer. If he were to describe the ambience in the room, he would say moribund. And he was responsible. He picked up the murder book and started at the beginning. He may have missed something.

  Half an hour later Wilson was still searching for the elusive piece of evidence that would crack the case. He was frustrated that he was pretty sure what had happened but couldn�
�t prove it. Welcome to the wonderful world of police work, he thought. The requirement for concrete evidence is the reason that so many criminals walk free from court. His mobile beeped and he looked at the text message. He stood up and, without speaking, left the room, aware that three pairs of eyes had followed his progress. That was the problem with leadership, everyone looked to the leader to provide direction and answers. At that moment, he was providing neither. He left the building housing the incident room and walked down Moore Street to Salley’s restaurant.

  Entering the restaurant, Wilson saw Duane sitting in the rear. He walked over and sat down.

  ‘Cheer up,’ Duane said. ‘It may never happen. I ordered you a steak sandwich and a coffee, nothing like a full stomach to put a different complexion on things. How did it go with Keenan?’

  ‘He brought along Gerard O’Grady.’

  ‘Good old Gerry, that must have been entertaining. Did he work out that Keenan isn’t a freedom fighter but a common criminal?’

  ‘I think that realisation was dawning on him.’

  The food arrived and Wilson was surprised at how hungry he was.

  ‘Did you shake Keenan up?’ Duane took a bite of his steak sandwich.

  ‘I think so. If we can nail Hanna, we can prosecute Keenan as accessory to murder. That’s a minimum of twenty years inside.’

  “You threatened him?’

  ‘With subtlety, I hope.’ Wilson was already halfway through his sandwich and as Duane had predicted the world wasn’t the glum place it had been a quarter of an hour before.

  ‘Although he’s the weak link, Keenan probably won’t crack. But if the history of the IRA spiriting their criminal brothers away is anything to go on, he’ll run south and hopefully right into my arms. Then we’ll get him to crack.’

  ‘And how long is all this going to take?’

  ‘That depends on the level of scare you put into him.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t run?’

  ‘Then we have a problem.’

  Wilson finished his coffee. He didn’t want Duane to think that he was at the end of his tether. A man had been murdered just outside the village they were currently in. Another man had been wounded and it looked like the miscreants might walk free. He didn’t have enough evidence to ask for a search warrant of either Hanna’s farm or Keenan’s house. Even if he could get a search warrant, he wasn’t likely to find the murder weapon. And the only evidence he had that the gun wasn’t in a bog-hole was Duane’s Quantico experience. It had all the appearances of grasping at straws. It was a detective’s worst nightmare: no witnesses, no forensic clues and no murder weapon; in effect, no evidence. Murder on a dark night on a small rural road. He needed to go through the evidence again. Christ, give him patience.

  ‘How is McDevitt doing?’ Duane asked.

  ‘They’re going to have to tie him to a bed soon. He wants out.’

  ‘He’s a lucky man, your friend.’ Duane called for the bill. ‘I need to get back to Dublin. I have a man on Keenan.’ He put two ten-pound notes on the table and accepted the change from the waitress.

  They left the restaurant together. ‘Don’t worry, Ian, we’ll get them.’

  Wilson wasn’t so sure.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  There was a Post-it note on Wilson’s computer when he returned that indicated Keenan’s alibi had checked out and Gibson had returned to Armagh. A file containing the information on the Hanna boys was lying across his keyboard. He picked it up and saw that O’Neill had been typically thorough. Their short lives had been collated into a series of documents that began with their birth certificates, moved through their school reports, the police and court files of the younger Hanna and the appraisal reports from the hotel of the older boy’s performance. O’Neill had also included their tax returns. When dealing with O’Neill’s skills with a computer it was wise to adopt a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach,which is exactly what Wilson did. After dispensing with his e-mails, he closed his computer and picked up the murder book again. The afternoon dragged by as afternoons without any progress on a case tend to do. Wilson examined minutely every photo taken at the murder site, then he analysed the statements taken from the Kielty family and the recently added statement from McDevitt. He read and re-read the autopsy and forensic reports. It was turning out to be an exercise in futility. But wasn’t that the definition of police work? Finally, the small hand on Wilson’s watch reached five and the big hand twelve and he was glad the Aughnacloy leg of his day was over. His troops appeared equally pleased, Browne because his phone had finally stopped ringing and O’Neill because her eyes were beginning to sting. Before leaving the incident room, Wilson remembered McDevitt’s notebook and pen and retrieved them from the drawer of his desk.

  The three sat into their police vehicle and Wilson gave the instruction to head for the Royal Victoria Hospital. The journey to Belfast passed in silence.

  Wilson found McDevitt out of his bed and seated in a chair. He was dressed in pair of jeans and a white cotton shirt under a dark blue sweater. His left arm was in a sling. In effect, he was beginning to look human again. The hospital pallor was giving way, if not to tanned skin, to an off-white Irish skin tone. Despite considerable improvement, McDevitt still looked weak. He tried to push up to stand but didn’t manage to make it and Wilson eased him back into his seat. ‘Easy does it.’ Wilson sat on the bed.

  ‘I’ve got to get out of here, Ian.’ McDevitt began with what was now his mantra. ‘I’ve always hated hospitals and doctors.’

  ‘Just remember they saved your life. For you, at the moment, hospital is a necessary evil. Gradually your strength will come back and you’ll be able to leave.’ He didn’t say that it might be months before McDevitt regained his full strength. ‘You’re one of the lucky ones; Tom Kielty would gladly change places with you. His funeral is tomorrow, by the way.’

  McDevitt nodded. ‘I suppose you’re right. How is the investigation going? Have you nailed that Hanna bastard yet?’

  ‘We’re making progress,’ Wilson lied and trusted that he managed to disguise the lie. Hopefully McDevitt hadn’t spent a semester in Quantico studying with Paul Ekman. ‘You, more than most, know that it takes time. This isn’t an episode of some US TV show where the miscreant can’t stop telling the police and the amateur detective how he carried out the murder. And it isn’t Walter Hanna’s first experience with the law either.’

  ‘Nor yours with a murder suspect. If I was a betting man, I know who my money would be on.’

  Wilson looked at his watch. ‘Look, I have to get back to brief the chief super and have a debriefing with the team following up on Josh McAuley’s death.’ He took out the notebook from his inside pocket and handed it to McDevitt. ‘I tried to dry it but it got a good soaking the night you dropped it. A lot of the pages are stuck together.’ He fished the pen from his pocket. He passed it to McDevitt. ‘I don’t suppose you have any emotional attachment to this – your father didn’t leave it to you or something like that?’

  McDevitt took the pen and smiled. He pulled apart the pages of the notebook and saw that the ink had run. He’d keep it in memory of his lucky escape.

  Wilson climbed off the bed. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow and you’ll be better.’

  The meeting with Davis was uneventful except that Wilson gauged a heightened level of concern in his chief regarding the possible success of his investigation. The squeeze was being put on by the hierarchy in Castlereagh and Davis was the first person they were leaning on. After leaving Davis’s office, Wilson had gone immediately to the squad room, where he found Browne, Graham and Davidson gathered at the whiteboard dedicated to the death of Josh McAuley. There was a newly created section with photographs of the scene in the front room of the house on Earlscourt Street. Wilson joined the group at the board and examined the photos. It was always sad to view the body of a young person who had purposely or accidentally cut their life short through an overdose. He moved from one photo to the next, v
iewing all five attached to the board. Jesus Christ, the poor wee lass. Everybody will remember her as a prostitute and a drug addict who possibly murdered her child.

  What right did he and people like him have to pass judgement on Gillian McAuley? Wilson had been brought up in a decent house by loving parents who cared for him and he’d had a life as a sporting hero that most young boys could only dream of. He’d also had the love of several women, and he had tried, in his own way, to return their love. For various reasons he had been spectacularly unsuccessfully in at least two cases. He thought about his relationship with Reid. If he were asked how things were going, he would say quite well. If he were pushed, he might say that they loved one another, although the word ‘love’ didn’t come up often in conversation.

  The photos also brought back the memory of Jackie Carlisle’s death, which Wilson hadn’t forgotten but had put on the back burner. He turned away from the board. ‘What have we got?’

  ‘The house is a shithole, Boss,’ Graham started. ‘Forensic have been there since this morning and my guess is that they’ll be there for the rest of the week. The place has been used as a drug den and a party hangout for all sorts of low life. There must be dozens of unidentified and unidentifiable prints. It’s a fucking nightmare looking for evidence. The chief of the Forensic team wasn’t too pleased.’

  ‘To hell with the chief of the Forensic team,’ Wilson said. ‘We need to find out what happened in that room and they’re the only people who can tell us or at least give us a hint. I don’t like it. Two men and a woman go into a deserted property and the two men leave soon after. The next day we find the woman dead. What does the pathologist say about time of death?’

  ‘Sometime around eleven o’clock,’ Davidson said. ‘Just about the time the men left.’

  ‘What exactly are we looking at here?’ Wilson took a black marker and went to the board. ‘Josh McAuley arrives at the hospital half-dead from a beating and dies shortly after.’ He drew a line between a photograph of the boy and his mother. ‘His mother is a known prostitute and drug addict. We start a search for the mother to establish what happened to the child. She has disappeared. Then suddenly we find her dead in the squat she lived in with the boy.’ He wrote the word ‘SUICIDE’ on the board beside Gillian McAuley’s photo. ‘If it’s suicide, maybe she felt guilty for hurting the child and decided to end it all. If I bring this upstairs, that’s the conclusion that’ll satisfy the chief super. But where are the unidentified men in that scenario? If she decided to kill herself, why not crawl off to some corner alone and do it? Then we have the alternative.’ He wrote the word ‘MURDER’. ‘But now we have to consider motive. Why does someone want Gillian McAuley dead? It could be the child’s father for revenge. Do we know who the father is?’