Bleed a River Deep (Inspector Devlin Mystery 3)

by Brian McGilloway

  ‘Orcas reports massive prof its, then these figures surface which suggest the land contains negligible levels of gold. Leon Bradley must have been on to something.’

  ‘The problem, Devlin – which you seem to be ignoring – is that you can’t keep accusing John Weston without corroboration. You accused him of polluting the river and he wasn’t.’

  ‘Though the river was being polluted.’

  ‘Not by him, though. You have a real chip on your shoulder about Weston. After him giving you that necklace.’

  In a perverse way, it was because he had given me the necklace that I distrusted the man, though I couldn’t tell that to Patterson. ‘I think we need to get someone from the NBCI in to go through Orcas’s books. And ask the PSNI to go through Eligius’s. There’s something not right about it all.’

  ‘Get some evidence. Chase up Curran; he’s the weak link. Let the PSNI pressure this Polish fella and Morrison.’

  *

  I went down to Derry that afternoon to question Seamus Curran once more. When I went into the bar, a man I didn’t recognize was standing behind the counter.

  ‘Help you?’ he asked with an upward tilt of his chin.

  ‘I’d like to speak with Seamus Curran,’ I said.

  ‘You and the rest of us, pal,’ the man replied.

  I looked at him quizzically, though I already had a leaden sensation in my gut.

  ‘He didn’t turn up to open at lunchtime,’ the man explained. ‘No one can raise him.’

  ‘Would you have a number I could contact him on?’ I asked.

  ‘No point, pal,’ the man said. ‘I’ve just told you, no one can raise him. I went round his house and there’s no sign.’

  I left my card on the counter. ‘Can you give him this if he turns up? Tell him I need to speak with him?’

  The man took the card, glanced at it and tucked it against the side of the till. I suspected however that Seamus Curran, wherever he was, would be unlikely to receive it.

  That evening, I drove to see Fearghal Bradley. He had called me to say he was in Letterkenny for the day to organize a headstone for Leon’s grave. I wanted to see him one last time before he went back to Dublin. I also wanted to give him the photograph of himself and Leon that had been recovered from the camera.

  We met at a bar, where Fearghal ordered food and drink for the two of us. Linda Campbell, he explained, was working in the museum and hadn’t been able to get the time off to come up again. They were working hard to salvage something of Kate, he told me.

  ‘What about you?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Let go, Benny. Jesus, they couldn’t keep me on, after what I did.’

  ‘Would they not have shown a little understanding – after all that happened with Leon and that?’

  ‘I’m sure they might have,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t want them to. I’m not going to use Leon to excuse myself. I did what I did for a reason. I’d do it again today, if I had to.’ He placed his pint glass firmly on the table, his fist gripping its circumference, his eyes bright.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ I asked.

  ‘Was her being sacrificed once not enough?’ he replied, wiping spilt drops of beer from his beard. ‘We have to sacrifice her again for fucking gold. Fuck that, Benny. We shouldn’t take that shit.’

  I smiled mildly. I had had enough of having to justify myself. And I was tired of feeling that my job was making little difference to a world where even a human life was just one more commodity.

  ‘How’s Linda?’ I asked, if only to change the topic.

  ‘Working, like I told you,’ he retorted.

  ‘I think I put my foot in it with her. I thought you two were an item, you know. She said you aren’t.’

  He lifted his beer and took a mouthful, his eyes mournful and wet beneath the pub’s lamplight. ‘Linda had a tough time. She’s not. . . she’s not the marrying kind. Maybe someday.’

  ‘Something happened to her at college, she said.’

  ‘She was assaulted. One of my fellow lecturers attacked her.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘He runs the department now. And I was shifted to the museum for taking her side. The Guards did fuck-all. That’s the difference you shower make. Fuck-all.’ He spat the words at me.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Fearghal,’ I said.

  He stared at me as if willing me to argue back. ‘What happened to us, Benny, eh?’

  We sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally I rose to leave. ‘I brought you this,’ I said. ‘I thought you might want it.’

  Fearghal took the picture from me and looked at it. His eyes brightened with tears, and he ran his hand down his cheek.

  ‘He was the only one of us,’ he said, turning the picture around to me. ‘He was the only one that didn’t sell out.’

  ‘I’ll see you around, Fearghal,’ I said, lifting my coat.

  He looked up at me and smiled briefly. ‘No you won’t, Benny.’

  ‘It was good to see you, Fearghal,’ I said. ‘Despite the circumstances.’

  He nodded slowly.

  ‘You too, Inspector,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Wednesday, 25 October

  ‘They’ve found a body out at the mine.’

  It took me a few seconds to realize that Patterson was talking to me. I looked up from my desk.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’ve dug up a body out at the mine. We’re going out,’ he repeated irritably. ‘Out to Orcas. It’s a dead body,’ he explained, turning to leave as he did so.

  ‘They gen—’ I began.

  ‘Fuck up,’ he retorted. ‘It looks like it’s Seamus Curran. Let’s go.’

  Curran lay in the same pit from which Kate had been recovered a few weeks earlier. Like her, he had been strangled, the rope burns vivid around his neck. He had also been bound, his arms behind his back, the wire binding his wrists biting deep into his skin. His body lay face-down, his mouth pressed in a final desperate kiss against the clay at the bottom of the pit.

  ‘It’s him all right,’ I said to Patterson.

  ‘Everyone you speak to seems to wind up dead,’ he observed, looking down at the corpse.

  ‘It’s a fairly clear message,’ I said. ‘And not for me. Morrison’s telling Weston something.’

  ‘How do you know it was Morrison?’

  ‘He knew that I’d spoken with Curran. Maybe he figured that with Ford dead and the Polish fella in custody, Curran would be the one we’d go after. There’s nobody else left.’

  ‘Best get in touch with the PSNI, get Morrison in for questioning.’

  ‘Was he not lifted the other day, over the fuel-smuggling?’

  ‘How the fuck should I know? Call them and find out.’

  I called Gilmore myself and explained the situation. He wasn’t hopeful about getting much out of Morrison.

  ‘We had him in the other day for questioning over that fuel dump youse came across. He’s one cool bastard, I’ll tell you. He just sat listening to all we had to say, didn’t answer back, didn’t let a thing slip. Didn’t even bring a fucking lawyer.’

  ‘He’s the obvious candidate for killing Curran.’

  ‘Maybe he is,’ Gilmore said, ‘but don’t be holding your breath waiting for him to break down and confess. No doubt he’ll have an alibi tighter than a gnat’s chuff. The best we’ll get him on is duty evasion on that fuel. Every one of his trucks we tested was using green diesel.’

  ‘Enough to hold him?’

  ‘We didn’t even oppose bail,’ Gilmore stated. ‘No point.’ ‘Fair enough,’ I began.

  ‘We did oppose bail for that other guy, Strandmann, but they let him out.’

  I couldn’t believe what he had said. ‘What? He raped a woman. And he’s an immigrant.’

  ‘He still gets treated the same as everyone else. We couldn’t hold him on anything. He opened up after you killed Ford. Everything was Ford’s fault. He forced him to help him, against h
is wishes. The Chechen girl is lying to stay in the country.’

  ‘So that’s it?’

  ‘He had a clean record, good lawyer,’ he explained. ‘He had to surrender his passport and has to report to his local station every evening at six.’

  ‘Who posted his bail?’

  ‘Vincent Morrison, obviously.’

  I knocked on the door of Patterson’s office and opened it without waiting for his response. He was on the phone when I entered. ‘I’ll come myself, sir. We’ll be with you in a half-hour.’ Then he laid down the receiver. ‘I didn’t hear your knock,’ he snapped.

  He listened while I told him about Strandmann’s release. ‘He’s the North’s problem now anyway.’

  ‘What about Weston?’ I asked.

  ‘That was the NBCI,’ he said. ‘They’re sending up a team tomorrow morning. They’ve requested the Fraud Squad in the North do likewise with Eligius. We’re to go in today and seize all documentation, shut the place down. We better hope things are the way they look. Or we’re both fucked.’

  ‘Weston’s dirty,’ I said.

  ‘Why? Because he’s rich?’

  I started to deny the accusation, then thought of something. ‘I’ll come myself,’ he had said. Not ‘go myself’. He had told the person on the other end of the phone that we’d be with them in half an hour.

  ‘You told Weston we’re coming?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘It’s common fucking courtesy, Devlin. Like knocking on a fucking door. What’s the man going to do in half an hour?’

  I could think of several things, but held my tongue.

  Patterson stood. ‘You can take that fucking look off your face too,’ he added, pulling on his cap. ‘Weston brought a fortune into this county with that place.’

  ‘He brought nothing; the place isn’t producing enough for a fucking ear stud.’

  ‘We’ll soon find out. Let’s go.’

  The drive out to Orcas seemed to drag. I watched the clock: Patterson had given Weston plenty of time to destroy any evidence and prepare his story. I couldn’t help but wonder what hold Weston had on Patterson. Was he just being political in keeping on Weston’s good side? Or had Harry been bought off? I recalled again the necklace Weston had given me, and Patterson’s response. Had Weston already paid him off by the time we had first gone out to Orcas?

  We pulled up in front of the main building just as dusk started to settle across a sky thick with grey cloud. The landscape beyond us was unnaturally scarred, the troughs in the ground’s rugged features darkening slowly.

  The girl we had met on our first visit, Jackie, was already coming from behind the counter when we entered.

  ‘This is outrageous,’ she said, then blushed deeply at her own words. ‘Mr Weston’s a great man.’

  ‘We’d like to speak with Mr Weston, please,’ Patterson said. I moved past them to the foot of the steps which led up to his office.

  ‘We know where he is,’ I said, taking the steps two at a time. ‘He knows we’re coming.’

  The girl called after me about warrants and trespassing. I was more concerned that Weston hadn’t come down himself. I imagined him in his office, shredding as much documentation as he could while Patterson wasted time in the foyer.

  Several people were standing in the corridor at the top of the stairs. Their heads were turned towards the closed door of Weston’s office, their voices a quiet murmur.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, pushing through. I could hear Patterson behind me, calling me to stop.

  I approached Weston’s door and rapped sharply once, then twisted the door handle. It moved only a few millimetres, but wouldn’t shift. ‘Open up, Mr Weston,’ I shouted, leaning my weight against the door.

  By now Patterson was behind me. He grabbed my arm and attempted to pull me back from the door. ‘Step back, Inspector,’ he snapped.

  I pulled my arm from his grip and shoved my weight against the door with as much force as I could. I had to repeat the action several times before I felt the door give as the wood around the lock cracked and splintered.

  As I stumbled into the room through the open doorway, I scanned the office but Weston was nowhere to be seen. Then I noticed the window lying ajar, the canopy of the forest beyond visible in the distance. Patterson and I ran towards the window though I knew we were already too late.

  John Weston’s body lay on the pavement below, haloed by his own blood.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Wednesday, 25 October

  It was almost nine o’clock by the time I got home. The NBCI team were dispatched from Dublin as soon as Patterson contacted Garda headquarters to let them know what had happened.

  I waited at the site until the Dublin team arrived. There were twelve officers in all and within twenty minutes of their arrival they had begun to unearth all kinds of documentation that they told us they considered ‘significant’.

  As it became increasingly apparent, even to Patterson, that Weston had been involved in something he shouldn’t have been, the mood began to become more workmanlike. Still, none of us could ignore the glare of the arc lights that had been set up in the car park below. Eventually, Patterson told me I could go home. Neither of us mentioned the fact that the call he had made to Weston before our arrival had given him time to consider his options. Ultimately, he had decided on the most extreme.

  *

  By the time I got home, the kids were already in bed. Debbie was curled up on the sofa, watching some American comedy series featuring impossibly attractive young people whose worst problem seemed to be where to get a cup of coffee. I had watched too many people dying over the past few days to be in the mood for sharing the entertainment. Instead I went and stood under the shower, until the water ran cold and I could bear the chill no longer. But it made no difference, and as I stood with my face turned against the force of the water, I could still see Weston in his last moment, and Helen Gorman as she shuddered her last breath, and Barry Ford slumping to the ground. I climbed out of the shower and vomited into the toilet bowl.

  As I lay on the floor by the toilet, I gradually became aware again of the noises of my home: the sound of a television; footsteps on the stairs; Penny reading softly to herself in bed. I lay on the floor for ten or fifteen minutes, until I began to shiver with the cold. Then I got up and dressed.

  As I came out of the bathroom, Natalia passed me on the way into her room. She smiled lightly and I noticed that she was wearing a little make-up, her face slightly rouged.

  ‘Where’s Natalia going?’ I asked Debbie when I came downstairs.

  ‘Karol is taking her to a dinner.’

  ‘On a date?’ I asked.

  Debbie shushed me and, glancing up at the ceiling, lowered her voice. ‘Not quite, though I think he’s hopeful it’ll be the start of something. I told you he was very fond of her.’

  ‘Where are they going?’

  ‘Apparently a group of immigrants meet once a month for dinner and a few drinks. He invited her along.’

  I looked at my watch. ‘It’s very late to be going out for dinner,’ I said.

  Debbie threw a cushion at me. ‘She is an adult, you know.’

  ‘I’m just saying. It’s very late.’

  Debbie tutted. ‘God love Penny when she grows up,’ she said, turning her attention back to the television.

  As I heard Natalia’s soft footfalls on the stairs, the headlights of Karol Walshyk’s car swept across the blinds of our front window. Natalia came into the living room and stood before Debbie, waiting to be inspected.

  ‘You look lovely,’ Debbie said.

  Natalia glanced at me and I felt Debbie’s foot strike my calf.

  ‘Sorry. You look very well,’ I said.

  Natalia blushed and straightened her hair with her hands, presumably to hide both her embarrassment and her pleasure.

  The doorbell rang and Natalia waved at us with her fingers and went out to the door.

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell
her not to be late?’ Debbie said teasingly. In response, I leant towards the doorway as if to call out to Natalia.

  The words died in my mouth, though, when I looked out. Pol Strandmann was there in my hall, Natalia held in front of him, a knife pressed against her throat, as he tried to shove her towards the front door.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he snarled, bearing feral teeth. ‘I’ll cut the bitch’s throat.’ He pressed the knife’s edge against her skin, the pressure leaving a long white line on her neck.

  ‘Let her go, Pol,’ I said. ‘You’ve nowhere to go.’

  He glanced behind him to his left and right, as if to ascertain whether he had an escape route. ‘They’ve nothing,’ he spat. ‘Nothing without this bitch. They can’t get me for anything.’

  ‘And what then?’ I asked. ‘You think you’ll get away with it? I’ve seen you here. You think I won’t come after you? Don’t be stupid. Put the knife down. We can talk. Give me Morrison and I’ll see you’re treated lightly.’

  ‘Bullshit! Do you think Morrison’d let that happen?’

  ‘Where are you going to go? Eh?’ I edged closer towards him and he moved back towards the open doorway. I couldn’t let him get out with Natalia. ‘Where are you going to go, Pol? Walk out that door and I’ll have half the fucking force on you in ten minutes. Morrison’ll be the last of your worries.’

  ‘I’ll disappear,’ he said, his voice rising hysterically. ‘How the fuck do you think we bring them in? You think I can’t disappear? Make a new name and vanish?’ He giggled a little manically. Under the light of our hall, I could make out his eyes, his pupils pinpoints, the irises ringed with red.

  I moved towards our fireplace, where the hearth-set contained a poker.

  ‘Not another fucking step,’ he said. ‘I’ll saw off her fucking head.’ He laughed again, a queer, high-pitched giggle that he seemed to have some difficulty in controlling.

  ‘You can get help,’ I said. ‘Morrison is the one we want. You could give him to us. It’ll make things easy for you.’

  ‘Easy? Morrison? He’ll skin me alive.’