The White Gallows

by Rob Kitchin

  He pressed his neck further down into the collar of his coat and tipped a fragile umbrella into the wind to try and fend off the driving rain, wondering if he should give the nicotine patches another try.

  Anyone who had listened to the service on the speakers would have thought that Albert Koch was a saint – a loving family man, caring employer, generous philanthropist – rather than a mass murderer, bank robber and ruthless businessman. The editing of the truth was as audacious as it was crude.

  The congregation were now all huddled under multi-coloured umbrellas surrounding Albert Koch’s final resting place. McEvoy couldn’t see what was happening at the graveside or hear what was being said but he didn’t care. His only concern was to make sure that Francis Koch didn’t disappear.

  After a few more minutes the crowd started to break up. A dozen or so headed for the gate almost immediately, either desperate to get out of the wind and rain or to beat the inevitable traffic jam as everyone tried to leave together. Most hung around in small groups and swapped small talk, taking it in turns to sidle over to the grieving family and say a few words of condolence.

  Eventually the churchyard started to empty. Maurice Coakley and Henry Collier left together, looking suitably sombre. Dr Astell was deep in conversation with another elderly gentleman. James Kinneally looked like a broken man, but his wife Patricia, leaving separately, looked like the cat who’d got the cream. Stefan Freel strode out with determination in his eyes, nodding an acknowledgement at McEvoy. Roza Ptaszek looked pale and drawn, clinging onto the arm of her boyfriend, Janek. McEvoy knew from Tom McManus that she felt conflicted by her inheritance given the revelations about Koch’s past and was trying to decide if she could accept. She’d lost several family members in the death camps that dotted Poland during the war and now thought of Koch’s riches as blood money. He nodded a greeting at her, but she just tightened the grip on her boyfriend’s arm and lowered her face.

  The family were the last to leave. Marion D’Arcy swept past McEvoy as if he were invisible. Frank Koch gave him a fierce glare, but his wife smiled weakly. Everyone else trouped out with their heads bowed. Francie Koch was the last person in the group. He was without an umbrella and was soaked through.

  McEvoy stretched out his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Francis, we need a word.’

  Francie drew to a stop but didn’t say anything. His face was pale, his eyes unfocussed and puffy from crying.

  ‘We need to ask you some questions about Peter O’Coffey. I’d like you to come with us to Athboy garda station.’

  Francie visibly blanched at the mention of O’Coffey’s name, but stayed silent.

  McEvoy took hold of his elbow and started to guide him through the gate. Joyce and Stringer were positioned on the narrow road, standing in front of the hearse. A garda car to escort Francis Koch to the station was waiting out of immediate sight in O’Coffey’s field. High above them the news helicopter circled the churchyard, fighting the wind to stay in place.

  Charles Koch appeared in front of McEvoy blocking their passage.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ he demanded.

  ‘I’m sorry, Professor Koch, but we’re taking your son in for questioning about the deaths of your father and Peter O’Coffey.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ Charles snapped.

  ‘I didn’t kill Peter,’ Francis mumbled.

  ‘See?’ his father said angrily. ‘He says he didn’t kill them.’

  ‘He said he didn’t kill Peter O’Coffey. He said nothing about his grandfather.’

  ‘He didn’t kill him either!’

  Marion D’Arcy joined her brother. ‘What the hell is going on?’ she demanded.

  ‘We’re taking your nephew in for questioning.’

  ‘No, no. That’s not happening,’ she warned. ‘We’ve had to put up with all… with all this,’ she said, sweeping her hand in an arc, referring to the security. ‘He’s coming to the reception and that’s it.’

  The garda car pulled up on the far side of the hearse.

  McEvoy tried to move forward, speaking at the same time. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs D’Arcy, but that’s not your decision to make. Another of your relatives was found murdered this morning and I want to discuss his death and your father’s with your nephew.’

  ‘He’s just told you that he didn’t do it,’ Charles Koch spat, continuing to block McEvoy’s path. ‘Francis, say something!’

  ‘Look, I’m very sorry,’ McEvoy said, trying to keep his frustration in check, ‘but I’m investigating two murders. If I want to question your son, that’s what I’m going to do.’

  Terry Macken, John Joyce, and the driver and his partner from the garda car eased Charles Koch and the other family members to one side, allowing McEvoy to pass through to the waiting car with a passive Francis Koch.

  ‘You’re going to pay for this,’ Marion D’Arcy warned. ‘We have powerful friends. You’ll be lucky to keep your job.’

  ‘You work away, Mrs D’Arcy. My family thinks I could do with a career change.’ McEvoy opened the garda car door and eased Francis into the back seat. ‘And besides,’ he said turning round, ‘I doubt your many powerful friends will be in a hurry to help you now your father’s past is coming to light.’

  ‘Why you…’

  Terry Macken blocked Marion D’Arcy’s path as she launched herself at McEvoy, her eyes blazing with hate and anger.

  ‘You’re finished. Do you hear, finished,’ she screamed. ‘Francis, do not say a word until my lawyer arrives. Nothing. Do you hear me? Nothing!’

  McEvoy slammed the car door shut. The driver climbed in, his partner rounded the car and got in the back seat, keeping Francis Koch company.

  McEvoy slapped the roof of the car and it pulled away. He headed back along the laneway to retrieve his own car. He wondered how prophetic Marion D’Arcy’s words would be. Taking Francis from the funeral was not ideal, but he couldn’t take the risk that he might slip away afterwards.

  * * *

  They were in the same room in which James Kinneally had been interviewed. Francie Koch was sitting slumped on an old plastic, grey chair, looking like a drowned rat, his hair plastered to his head. McEvoy was sitting on the opposite side of a cheap table, its Formica top scratched and punctured. Tom McManus was standing by the door, leaning against it.

  So far Francie had refused to say anything.

  ‘The way I see it, Francis, is this,’ McEvoy said. ‘Peter O’Coffey and yourself were making your way back from Athboy, drunk as lords, when you decided to go on a treasure hunt. You let yourself into your grandfather’s house and you started to search for his supposed stash of Nazi gold. Only you disturbed the old man who then came downstairs, armed with his old gun, to see what was going on. One of you hit him on the head – knocked him clean out. Then you carried him back upstairs and fled, hanging a rope from the oak tree to divert attention from yourselves.’

  Francie stayed silent, staring down at his interlocked fingers, his thumbs picking at one another.

  ‘You probably weren’t expecting him to die – just wake up with a bad headache. But the blow was too hard and he had a massive stroke. Or perhaps he died while you were there and that’s why you hung the rope? Either way, you killed him. So now you’re in the frame for murder, but you’re also about to inherit a fortune. Only Peter O’Coffey isn’t going to receive anything and he’s in massive financial trouble, so he asks you for money in exchange for silence. If he’s going down, he’ll take you with him. So you arrange to meet him at the edge of his farm. You bring your grandfather’s gun and you try to reason with him, but he won’t listen, so you shoot him in the head and try and make it look like he’s committed suicide; that he’d killed your grandfather and couldn’t live with himself.’

  Francie continued to stare at his hands.

  ‘So, how did I do?’ McEvoy asked. ‘Did I get everything right? Or most of it right? Or…?’

  ‘I didn’t kill Peter O’Coffey,’ Francie mumbled.
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  ‘But you did kill your grandfather?’ McEvoy pressed.

  Francie stayed silent.

  ‘If you didn’t kill Peter, Francie, then someone else did. Which means you’re probably next… Look, Francie, you’re not helping yourself. At the moment you’re looking at two life sentences for murder. You’ll spend a minimum of twenty years in a prison cell you’ll be sharing with some messed-up psycho. It’ll be a living hell.’

  Francie briefly glanced up, then back to his hands.

  ‘If you’ve got a good lawyer, you might be able to get the death of your grandfather turned to manslaughter. Might even get it ruled as accidental death. Who knows? If that happens you might only end up with a suspended sentence – a couple of years max. But Peter,’ McEvoy shook his head, ‘that was cold blooded murder. A gun to his head, blowing out his brains. No way you’re going to be able to wriggle out of that one, even if you’ve got the best lawyer money can buy.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Peter,’ Francie stated firmly.

  ‘And your grandfather?… We will find forensic evidence linking you to the murder. One of your hairs or some fibres from your clothes in your grandfather’s bed, or on his pyjamas, or on the rope. We have casts of all the footprints at the base of the gallow’s tree. My guess is they’ll match yours and Peter’s. We know that you left the pub together on Saturday night; that you didn’t get home until gone two in the morning.’

  ‘We were just talking.’

  ‘You went on one of your adventures to find your grandfather’s secret vault of Nazi gold.’ McEvoy could see the guilt and shame eating Francie up inside. If Koch was going to confess it would be soon. ‘Francie?’

  ‘We didn’t mean to kill him,’ Francie whispered on cue. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘You didn’t mean to kill who, Francie?’ McEvoy pressed.

  ‘My grandfather,’ Francie snapped. ‘We were drunk. We thought we’d have a bit of a nose around. We knew Roza was with her boyfriend in town. As we neared the farm we spotted that East European bitch’s car parked in on a track, hidden in from the road. We figured they were probably looking for the same thing as we were. I don’t know. It just made us more keen to get into the house itself, maybe catch them snooping around – see if they knew something we didn’t. They’d been a fuckin’ pain, going round asking questions, making crazy accusations. Only we never saw them.’ He snorted a laugh to himself.

  ‘We started to search the place, but we were making too much noise. The whole thing was ridiculous, the pair of us stumbling round drunk. After a few minutes the old fool woke up. We heard him creeping about upstairs, but we didn’t think he’d come down. By the time we heard him on the stairs we didn’t have time to get out. He came into the room holding a gun. I… I mean, Peter, panicked, hit him on the head with the vase. He dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes. I couldn’t believe it. He just slumped down.’

  ‘And?’ McEvoy prompted.

  ‘And we got out of there. We just left him lying where he was. We figured he’d come round and call the guards. Peter had the idea of throwing a noose over the tree. He thought that maybe it might point the finger at the East Europeans – we knew they were there somewhere. Given their stupid accusations they had a motive for breaking and entering; for hanging the rope.’

  ‘You left him there?’ McEvoy said, his brow furrowed. ‘You didn’t take him back upstairs to his bed?’

  ‘No, no. We left him where he fell.’

  ‘And you didn’t clean up the vase or take the gun?’

  ‘No. We got out of there. That must have been the East Europeans unless he came round and did that himself.’

  ‘And then what?’

  Francie shrugged. ‘We swore each other to secrecy and we both went home.’

  ‘That’s it? You just hoped that it would go away?’

  ‘We thought he would come round or Roza would find him.’

  ‘You left an old man to die.’

  ‘We didn’t know he was going to die, did we! We didn’t mean to kill him! It was an accident.’

  ‘And you seriously expect us to believe that this East European couple were there as well? Don’t you think that’s a bit of a coincidence?’

  ‘They were there,’ Francie whined.

  ‘But you didn’t see them.’

  ‘But their car was there. We saw it.’

  ‘And why didn’t you say anything over the next couple of days?’

  ‘Because we… because we couldn’t,’ Francis said limply.

  ‘So why did you kill Peter then? You fell out with one another?’

  ‘I didn’t kill Peter! We were friends. We’ve been friends since we were kids. We were second cousins. Why would I kill Peter?’

  ‘Because you’d inherited a fortune and he was about to lose his family farm. He wanted money for silence.’

  Francie stared down at his hands.

  ‘He did ask you for money,’ McEvoy prompted.

  ‘Yes. I said I’d give it to him – enough to clear his debts.’

  ‘But he wanted more?’

  ‘Yes! But that didn’t mean I killed him!’

  ‘How much more?’

  ‘Half. He wanted half. I told him I couldn’t give him half; that the money was tied up in a trust. He didn’t believe me. He said he needed the money soon or the bank would seek to sell the farm to recoup their debts. He said that if he went down, he would take me with him. I told him I’d cover the debts to save the farm, but I couldn’t do anything else for a while.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he stormed off. He said he needed more than that. That he would find another way.’

  ‘What way?’

  ‘I don’t know. I told him to wait until after the funeral and we’d try and sort it out then, but there was no reasoning with him. I just hoped he wasn’t going to do anything stupid like go to you or the press. I thought that if you hadn’t worked out it was us within a couple of days we’d probably be okay. You’d keep digging for a while and then it would all die down.’

  ‘And instead he did something more stupid. Stupid enough to get himself killed. If you didn’t do it, Francis, who did?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’ve got no ideas at all?’

  ‘No. Maybe the East European couple? They seem to be obsessed with bringing our family down.’

  ‘You really think that they killed him?’

  Francie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What happens now?’

  ‘You sit here and try and work out who killed Peter O’Coffey, we go outside and try and work out what we’re going to charge you with.’

  McEvoy stopped the recorder and pushed himself back from the table and headed for the door. He followed McManus out and down the corridor. ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘I think it’s probably as he told it.’

  McEvoy nodded. His discomfort at his interpretation of the murder scene had resurfaced. The reason the hanging rope had made little sense was because there had been two attempts at a cover-up – one by Francie Koch and Peter O’Coffey, the other by whoever had taken Albert Koch’s body back upstairs to his bed. Neither of them knew about the other’s crude attempt. ‘And the East European couple?’ he asked. ‘Do you think they were there?’

  ‘Possibly. I don’t know. I don’t think Francie killed Peter O’Coffey though.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He seems too in shock. Too afraid for himself.’

  ‘So who the hell did kill Peter O’Coffey then?’

  Before he could continue, the door to the garda station burst open and John Rice, Marion D’Arcy’s lawyer, barrelled in. ‘Where is he?’ he commanded.

  ‘You’re too late,’ McEvoy said, pulling a tight smile. ‘He’s just confessed to killing his grandfather.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ Rice snapped. ‘He’s confused. He’s just buried him for God’s sake! I need to see him.’

  ‘He’s down the hall. Tom, can you show Mr Rice the
way.’

  ‘What have you charged him with?’ Rice demanded.

  ‘Nothing yet. I’m thinking about it. The minimum will be manslaughter. You have ten minutes before I return. Do you want coffee?’

  ‘Tea. White. No sugar. And make it twenty minutes.’

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later and John Rice had still not emerged from the interview room. McEvoy had used the time to make some initial notes and to have quick chats with Tony Bishop and John Joyce.

  A large group of journalists had gathered outside Athboy garda station demanding to know what was happening. Joyce was working with Barry Traynor to prepare a short statement confirming that the man who had died earlier that day was Peter O’Coffey, one of Albert Koch’s neighbours; he had been killed by a shot to the head and a man was being held for questioning in connection with the deaths of Albert Koch and Peter O’Coffey.

  He’d also spoken very briefly to Jenny Flanagan. Given the evidence to date, she hadn’t been able to decide whether it was Brian O’Neill or his mistress that had killed Kylie O’Neill, so she had released both of them without charge late the previous evening. She’d instructed them that they were not to leave the locality. She had spent the day canvassing the area again, while a forensic team combed the O’Neill family house and surrounding land for evidence that would identify which one was the killer and who was the accomplice. She sounded frustrated, but hopeful. If they didn’t discover anything else she would try to persuade the Director of Public Prosecution’s Office to proceed with a case against Brian O’Neill based almost entirely on circumstantial evidence.

  McEvoy looked up from his notebook as McManus approached.

  ‘After y’man comes out, we’ll charge Francie, then go and talk to the East Europeans and see what they have to say for themselves,’ McEvoy said. ‘I can’t see them tidying up after Francie and Peter – they’d have nothing to gain from it. So, the question is, who benefited most from making Koch’s death look natural? It has to be a member of his family, right? They knew Ewa and Tomas were asking questions and the last thing they wanted was a murder investigation that raked over and exposed his past.’