The White Gallows

by Rob Kitchin

  ‘We’ll try our best,’ McEvoy conceded. ‘How about you? Did someone take your statement?’

  ‘Yes. A Detective Sergeant Joyce. I was in Galway at a concert with my wife and some of her family. I spent the night at my in-laws. Believe me, if I was going to kill any of my family, that’s where I’d start. Not that I’d ever…’ D’Arcy trailed off.

  ‘It never seems like a joke once you say it, does it?’ McEvoy said flatly. ‘The media relations people will be in contact shortly. Perhaps we could meet sometime in the next couple of days to discuss Ostara Industries? I want to try and get a better handle on your grandfather’s business interests.’

  ‘You think his death might be related to Ostara?’

  ‘Somebody was searching the house for a reason. The reason might have been related to his business dealings. If we can determine the reason, we narrow down potential lines of inquiry.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m going to be able to help you much,’ D’Arcy said cautiously. ‘You’d be better off talking to James Kinneally or Stefan Freel. They would have a much better knowledge of the company and anyone who might hold a grudge or who might want to steal company secrets.’

  ‘I thought you were the rising star of Ostara?’ McEvoy pressed.

  ‘I’m just working my way up the same as everyone else,’ D’Arcy muttered defensively, clearly used to people thinking his promotions were due to family connections rather than business acumen.

  ‘Nevertheless, I think it would be useful to meet. I’ll get someone to call to arrange a meeting.’ McEvoy ended the conversation. Mark D’Arcy had started assuredly then drifted towards caution, and he was holding something back. The best way to try and prise whatever it was out of him would be face-to-face when McEvoy could get a better sense of the man – gauge his body language and read his eyes.

  His mobile phone beeped telling him he had a message. He sighed to himself and dialled his answering service.

  ‘You have one new message,’ the automated voice said. A moment later his sister-in-law started to speak. ‘Colm, it’s Ciara. I know you’re probably busy but we need to talk about Friday. I think I’ve got most things sorted but I wanted to check in with you. Give me a call, later, okay? Okay, bye for now.’

  He ended the call. He’d try and remember to ring her later; he couldn’t face talking about Maggie and her memorial service right now. If truth be known, he really wasn’t looking forward to the day. Ciara wanted it to be a day of reflection, remembrance and celebration. As far as McEvoy could see it would be a whole day of re-living the past, of wallowing in grief; a day of re-stoking his anger, sorrow and guilt at her death.

  * * *

  The room contained more than a dozen men. McEvoy recognised only four of them – two of Jim Whelan’s sergeants, Mickie Brehan and Colin Vickers, Tommy Boland the local superintendent, and Kenny Clarke from the Garda National Immigration Bureau – all of whom he had just spoken to for updates. The others were local detective constables and others assigned to the case.

  None of the team’s reports had done anything to improve his sour mood. Tommy Boland had been courteous but cold after their last encounter. He’d made it clear he was determined to try and help solve any murder on his patch, but he wasn’t going to put up with much grief from outsiders either. Whelan’s sergeants were as downbeat as their boss. They were a couple of days into the investigation and they had no leads and no ideas. Kenny Clarke wasn’t any more hopeful either. All they could think to do was show the picture of the young victim to various immigrant groups, try and keep the case in the national press, and seek some coverage in the Lithuanian media, assuming he was Lithuanian. Unfortunately, Koch’s death and the attack on Hannah Fallon had pushed the story deep into the inner pages of the papers and to a twenty second slot late on in the television news.

  ‘Right, okay, let’s get started,’ McEvoy shouted, trying to settle the room. ‘Come on, pipe down!’

  The room slowly quietened to a few murmured conversations as people took seats or sat on the edge of desks.

  ‘Well, so far it looks like this case is going nowhere fast. Our dead man’s identity is still a mystery. No one knows anything about him. The rumour that he worked for Ostara and therefore might have had a connection to Albert Koch’s death has proved to be false so far. Beyond hoping that his picture in the papers jogs someone’s memory we need to widen the search. I want all places of work within a twenty mile radius of Trim that employs manual labour surveyed in the next couple of days.’

  A loud groan rumbled round the room, accompanied by harsh mutterings.

  ‘I know, I know,’ McEvoy sympathised. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get the usual overtime, but we need to find out who the victim is. Once we have that, we can work on catching his killers. It might not matter to you, but it’ll matter to his family and friends. You’d better add pubs and fast food shops to that list,’ he said as an afterthought. ‘Any questions?’

  His audience stared down at their desks or feet, or rolled their eyes at one another.

  ‘Right, okay. Well, let’s get to it then. I want every survey logged. And no shortcuts. Colin, Mickie, Kenny, can you stay behind, please?’

  The rest of the team filed out the door, swapping snide remarks and quips.

  Whelan’s two sergeants remained sitting behind desks, Kenny Clarke perched on the edge of a table.

  ‘Colin, I want you to carry on running the incident room,’ McEvoy continued. ‘Log and cross-reference all of the survey data. Mickie, I want you to coordinate those surveys. Make sure the whole thing is done as systematically as possible. Somebody must recognise him from something. He didn’t get drunk and land here from Mars. Kenny, see if you can get the appeal for information translated into as many East European languages as possible for that lot to take round with them. And get back on to the media and see if you can get them to give the case a bit more profile. Offer to do interviews; whatever it takes.’

  ‘Surely that’s Superintendent Boland’s job,’ Clarke said unenthusiastically.

  ‘I don’t care which one of you ends up with the theatrical make-up on if it moves things forward. Just do the best you can.’

  ‘I doubt it’s going to do much good,’ Clarke said disconsolately. ‘He’s going to be buried a John Doe.’

  ‘That might be the case, but we’re going to do our best to make sure that doesn’t happen, aren’t we?’

  Clarke remained silent.

  ‘Aren’t we?’ McEvoy repeated, feeling like a school teacher.

  ‘Sir,’ Clarke mumbled without conviction.

  ‘Right, well, I’ll let you get on with it. If you need me I’m on my mobile. I’m heading back up to Athboy. I’ll pop back in on my way home tonight; see how you’re getting on.’

  ‘I’m not going to be here past six thirty,’ Vickers said. ‘My daughter’s appearing in a play. I promised I’d be there. Sorry.’

  ‘I promised the wife I’d help her brother knock through an internal wall,’ Brehan added defensively. ‘He wants to make the kitchen and dining room into one. I’ve already clocked up several hours of overtime this week.’

  ‘Whatever,’ McEvoy said, waving his hand and heading for the door. ‘Just make sure that the survey is carried out properly. I’ll talk to you later.’

  The door clicked closed behind him and he descended the stairs, rolling his shoulders trying to ease out the knots of stress. It was obvious that the rest of Whelan’s team were going to be just as awkward to deal with as their boss. The only thing he could do was to try and keep the pressure up. The case was probably as hopeless as they were expressing, but that was no excuse to not even try.

  * * *

  Stefan Freel held the front door of The White Gallows wide open allowing McEvoy to pass into the hallway. The building had a stillness that was unsettling; the air cold and damp.

  ‘I’m sorry you couldn’t make lunch, Superintendent. Are you sure it’s okay to meet here?’ Freel asked closing t
he door and drifting past him, heading for the back of the house. He was dressed in smart black boots hidden under pressed, dark blue jeans, a black polo-neck shirt and a black jacket. ‘Your men are finished here?’

  ‘They’ve done all the preliminary work. They’ll keep drifting back for additional tests and searches.’ He rubbed his hands and followed Freel into the back office. The room contained a desk pressed up against a wall and several filing cabinets.

  ‘Roza hasn’t lit the fires since Dr Koch’s death,’ Freel explained, sitting on an office chair and pointing to another. ‘She’s been avoiding the house. She feels it’s haunted.’

  ‘But she is here?’ McEvoy said sitting, wanting to meet her after Freel.

  ‘Yeah, she’s across the yard in her quarters. She’s deciding what to do. Marion D’Arcy’s asked her to move out now that she’s no longer needed to care for her father.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! He’s only been dead a couple of days. She’s going back to Poland?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She’s moving in with her boyfriend. I’ve offered her work as my personal assistant. She wanted to think about it.’

  ‘What’s there to think about?’

  ‘Her future? She’s very shaken by Dr Koch’s death. Perhaps working for me would remind her of him?’

  ‘Maybe she’s concerned that she’s not qualified for such a post. Or perhaps she’s suspicious of your motives?’ McEvoy knew he would be – there was something oddly disturbing and unsettling about Stefan Freel, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  ‘My motive is simple – to make money. She might not be qualified in business terms, but she’s very good at organising things. Dr Koch often had her arrange meetings. Running his house was not simply a case of doing a bit of dusting and turning down the beds at night. I’m sure she’ll do an excellent job if she wants it. And if she’s got a bit of sense she could do very well from it.’

  ‘As you’ve done?’

  ‘Exactly. If someone like Albert Koch thought that buying gold was a good investment, then I’ve found it was prudent to follow suit.’

  ‘So what are you doing out here?’ McEvoy said, swinging his arm round the room.

  ‘Tidying up the files and catching up on business. Just because Dr Koch’s been tragically murdered doesn’t mean that business grinds to a halt. We had a number of deals in progress that need to be completed.’

  ‘On your behalf or Ostara’s?’

  ‘Both. We can’t afford for people to think that they can take advantage of the situation. We need to press ahead.’

  ‘Money doesn’t grieve,’ McEvoy observed, feeling that Freel would sell seats at the funeral if he could get away with it.

  ‘One way of putting it,’ Freel said, pulling an ugly smile. ‘It’s a good job we’re not a publicly listed company or the shares would be tumbling. Investors would be worried about what would happen now that the company’s biggest asset is gone. We need to tell people it’s business as usual.’

  ‘Which means you taking over at the helm?’

  ‘It means I continue to do my job. James Kinneally is still the CEO of Ostara until I hear otherwise.’

  ‘But you still pull the strings,’ McEvoy stated. ‘You’re expecting him to be replaced?’

  ‘I’m not expecting anything. I have as much knowledge as to what happens next as you do. I assume it’s all in his will. Until that’s announced, it’s in all of our interests to carry on regardless.’

  The way Freel was speaking, it seemed to McEvoy that he was quite confident about how things would turn out. ‘There are those that seem to think that you’ve most to benefit from Dr Koch’s death,’ he prompted, ‘That you’re best placed to take over his empire.’

  ‘By those, I’m assuming you mean Marion D’Arcy and James Kinneally. Both of whom would kill their own…’ Freel trailed off, smiling. ‘Sorry, bad choice of metaphor. Marion D’Arcy has long been jealous of my position as her father’s right-hand man. She would have loved to have been in that role. She would have been disastrous in it, not that she would admit as much, but she’d have also revelled in it. As I’ve said to you before, I didn’t kill Dr Koch. I had no reason to and I could have searched the house anytime I wished. I spend most days here.’

  ‘And nothing seems to be missing to you?’ McEvoy asked, wondering how wise it had been to agree to meet Freel here and to let him get back to business using Koch’s files.

  ‘Not that I can see. Your officers have not been the greatest at putting everything back as it should be, but nothing appears to have been taken. Certainly no worse than after one of Marion’s fishing expeditions.’

  ‘You’re saying that Mrs D’Arcy had searched through the files?’

  ‘It was either her or Roza and I think Roza would have been more careful to cover her tracks.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘It’s happened a couple of times, the last time two or three weeks ago. I think she was just trying to get a handle on things; understand what’s going on; how much she’d be worth if she inherited. She really is obsessed with her father’s business. She rooted through pretty much everything. There didn’t seem much rhyme or reason to it.’

  McEvoy nodded slowly. Marion D’Arcy appeared to be a control freak with little control. Pushed away by her father, she’d tried to stay in touch and muscle in on his business by searching his personal effects. And there was clearly no love lost between her and Stefan Freel.

  ‘She’s not the only one,’ Freel continued. ‘I’ve also caught her brother snooping around as well. Claimed he was trying to find a hotel receipt he’d accidentally left behind when visiting so he could claim it back through university expenses.’

  ‘You didn’t believe him?’

  ‘If he’d left it in the living room as he said he did then Roza would have found it and rung him. It wouldn’t have ended up in here.’

  ‘So what’s in here?’ McEvoy said, pointing to the three filing cabinets.

  ‘Mostly it’s open projects; deals that we’re presently working on. In the main it’s property or land deals or stocks and shares. Markets might have collapsed but we were still trading. In fact, buying in a fallen market is the time to invest – plenty of growth when it does rise. We shuttle the files back and forth to a safe store as needed. Most of what they were looking through would no longer be here; they would be back in Blanchardstown.’

  ‘And the files are kept by Ostara Industries?’

  ‘No, they were filed in a data store on behalf of Ostara Investments, a division of Ostara Industries.’

  ‘So, they’re not accessible to the rest of Ostara?’

  ‘Each division keeps their own files. Dr Koch would have access to all of them and technically the Executive Management Board, but each division is effectively run as a separate company. Ostara Investments is the one Dr Koch ran personally after he officially retired from Ostara Industries as a whole.’

  ‘And were there others searching through the files?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s possible. I wasn’t always here when his family were visiting. I usually went back to the office or home. The information here is interesting, but I’m not sure what they would do with it.’

  ‘Perhaps they were searching for something else,’ McEvoy offered. ‘Such as Dr Koch’s will.’

  ‘He doesn’t keep a copy here. That’s kept by his solicitor. He wasn’t prepared to discuss it with anyone.’

  ‘Not even you?’

  ‘Not even me.’

  ‘So tell me about Ostara Industries,’ McEvoy said, changing tack.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Let’s start with some history. Koch and his brother, Frank, started Ostara in 1952 after buying an old fertiliser factory. What happens next?’

  ‘They manage to make a go of it. Dr Koch knows his chemistry and his brother’s a natural salesman. The 1950s is a tough time in Ireland; lots of people getting the boat to England, some to America. Thousands are leaving agri
culture given the weak economy and farm mechanization, but Ostara manages to catch the first wave of farming intensification selling specialist fertiliser depending on soil or crops. In the late fifties, his brother left to set up his own business and Ostara diversified into pharmacies.’

  ‘With Maurice Coakley,’ McEvoy said, remembering the previous day’s conversation.

  Freel nodded. ‘In the sixties the company diversified again into cement, concrete and oil refining. The seventies saw a move into dyes and paints and a modest expansion of all the other divisions. Where we really start to hit the big time is in the early eighties’ London property boom, followed by our own Celtic Tiger.’

  ‘Yet, Ostara are hardly in the public conscience and Koch is barely a public figure.’

  ‘That’s not entirely true. Ostara Pharmacies are on the main streets of pretty much every town in Ireland, and anyone in agriculture or construction would have heard of us. As for Dr Koch, well, he liked to keep a low profile. He knew all the major players in any sector, but he didn’t seek any publicity. He didn’t need to and he didn’t want to.’

  ‘And the company is sound? It’s not about to collapse in a debt ridden heap?’

  ‘The company is thriving despite the recession. Certainly some of the divisions are under pressure – paints and dyes, for example. The property portfolio is down a fair bit, along with construction supplies. It’ll bounce back again, eventually.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I know. Property always rises over the long term. As long as you can ride out the negative equity and pay back the loans you’re fine.’

  ‘And you can?’

  ‘Nearly all of our property is owned outright. He hated paying interest to the banks.’