Brian McGilloway - The Nameless Dead (Inspector Devlin #5)

by Brian McGilloway

  ‘Do we go in?’ McCready asked.

  ‘Let’s give it a moment,’ I said. ‘I want to catch him in the act.’

  ‘Are you waiting for Morrison?’

  I shook my head. ‘Morrison won’t turn up here,’ I said. ‘He’s too smart to get his hands dirty. But I’d guess O’Connell is using this as his office, so we can expect callers.’

  ‘Even if we get O’Connell, Morrison’ll have someone else out here selling tomorrow,’ McCready said.

  I nodded. ‘Perhaps. But for tonight, O’Connell getting taken will royally piss him off.’

  McCready smiled, but I could tell he was questioning the value of what we were doing. O’Connell was selling drugs, but he was doing so with the permission of, and paying commission to, Vincent Morrison. Morrison had cleared the decks of drug dealers along the border in a previous case I had worked, persuading a dissident paramilitary group to take out his competition, so that he, ultimately, controlled drugs in the borderlands. Two factors complicated things: firstly, we could not prove that he was behind the drugs. Secondly, and more problematically for me, Morrison had saved my daughter’s life following a riding accident, by taking her to hospital. The depth of gratitude I felt for his having so done was surpassed only by my determination to bring him down over his drug dealing.

  A few moments later a Ford Fiesta pulled up in front of the house. As best we could tell, despite the mist of condensation on the windows, there seemed to be three young men in the car, the thumping of the bass beat from the radio audible even from our distance. They parked up and one got out, glanced around, then swaggered up to number 67, banging on the door with his fist three times, then stepping back. O’Connell came to the door, his rolling gait visible in silhouette against the lantern he’d lit when he entered the house. He opened the door, and the two slapped hands then slid them apart, tugging one another’s fingers before separating. They banged shoulders lightly in embrace, then both went into the house.

  ‘I’ll go in,’ I hissed. ‘You take the two in the car. Keep them quiet; we need O’Connell with drugs.’

  We got out of my car, which I’d parked around the curve in the road from number 67, our approach hidden from the Fiesta’s occupants by the condensation of the car’s windows. I headed straight for the house, the door lying slightly ajar where the visitor had neglected to pull it shut behind him; he wasn’t planning on staying long.

  We were just drawing abreast with the car when the rear door opened.

  ‘I’m going in for a slash,’ a voice said, and a youth stood up from the car, his hands already reaching for his fly. He stared at us stupidly for a minute, his eyes glazed, the opened door releasing a waft of cannabis smoke into the night air.

  ‘The guards!’ he shouted, struggling to get back into the car.

  ‘Take him down,’ I shouted to McCready, heading for the house. As I anticipated, before I had reached the door, the driver of the car had begun blaring the horn.

  I pushed open the door and moved into the hallway, my gun drawn, though I had no expectation of using it; O’Connell didn’t strike me as the type to pull a gun on a garda. Morrison wouldn’t want that kind of heat, for a start.

  ‘An Garda, on the floor!’ I shouted.

  In the kitchen two figures stood at a table on which sat a battery lantern. O’Connell looked up at me, a plastic bag in his hand. The younger man, who had only just arrived, looked around in panic. O’Connell pushed him to the ground, in effect blocking the doorway for a moment, then turned and ran.

  I clambered over the young man, who lay prone, his hands pulled up in front of his face for protection. I had initially assumed that O’Connell was making a run for the back door, but he ran past it into the small room to the rear of the house. The door slammed. I ran at it, putting my weight against it. The door gave enough for me to see that O’Connell was standing legs apart, one trying to hold the door shut, while he stuffed the plastic bag down the toilet. I shoved again, though by now he had shifted his own position and was leaning against the back of the door. I heard the flush then shoved a third time, almost falling into the room as O’Connell stepped back, his hands now empty.

  I shoved him against the wall, patting him down in the hope that he had secreted some of the drugs on himself, the flushing of the toilet a bluff, but his pockets were empty save for a wad of bank notes in his trouser pocket.

  I pushed him ahead of me towards the kitchen, where McCready was pulling the other youth, now cuffed, to his feet. McCready held a small plastic bag of pills in his hand.

  ‘I’ve never seen them before,’ O’Connell said, before anyone spoke.

  ‘He says you sold them to him,’ McCready replied.

  ‘He’s a lying sack of shit. I never sold him nothing. He tried to sell them to me an’ I said no.’

  ‘And what were you dumping down the toilet?’

  O’Connell looked at me, his smile lopsided. ‘Took a piss, didn’t I? Didn’t know who you were breaking down the door.’

  ‘Check the place out,’ I said to McCready.

  ‘What about the two in the car outside? They had a joint between them.’

  ‘Take names and let them go with a warning,’ I said. ‘Be sure to phone their parents to collect them; they shouldn’t be driving if there’s drugs taken.’

  I took O’Connell’s details while McCready went through the house. Both actions were pointless; I already knew all I needed to about O’Connell, and I guessed from the cockiness of his demeanour that he had flushed away whatever drugs he might have had. That said, I also guessed that it must have been a fairly big score he’d had to dump, for he’d have had his evening’s supplies with him.

  Sure enough, a few minutes later McCready returned.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ he said. ‘The place is empty.’

  O’Connell smirked, sitting down on the upturned milk crate he used for a seat.

  ‘We’ll never get uniforms out on a Sunday night. We’ll bring out a team in the morning,’ I said. ‘The pumping station here is broken; everything that goes down the toilets around here gets flushed out onto a mound in the field running along the back of the next street across.’

  McCready stared at me.

  ‘We could look now, sir,’ he said.

  I considered it for a moment, then shook my head.

  ‘We’ll see nothing tonight,’ I said. ‘The morning will be time enough.’

  O’Connell looked from one to the other of us as we spoke, his mouth slightly open, unformed words playing on his lips as he followed our discussion. He blinked slowly as he looked up at me, unable to quite believe his luck.

  McCready tackled me once we had left the house.

  ‘He’ll be over there as soon as we leave, getting his stash back,’ he said.

  ‘Of course he will,’ I agreed. ‘His bag of drugs is currently sitting atop a pile of everything flushed out of thirty houses in this estate for the past six months. Do you fancy going in after them?’

  McCready recoiled slightly.

  ‘Exactly. What we can do, though, is wait in the field, let O’Connell go in there and get himself covered in shit getting back his stash, then arrest him with the drugs on him and take him into the station. Problem solved.’

  McCready smiled broadly. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said.

  We waited along the edge of the field for less than twenty minutes. Once he was sure we had left, O’Connell crossed the broken-down yards behind the unoccupied houses and scaled the fence into the field beyond. The pumping station was a small red block at the field’s far corner, though it had long since stopped working. Instead, a pipe around a foot wide broke through the earth six feet short of the station itself, spewing out a constant supply of effluent onto a growing mound. Despite the clear health hazard it presented, no one wanted to accept responsibility for it, for to do so would be to accept liability for its upkeep.

  O’Connell approached it warily, clearly reluctant to take the final steps
necessary for the retrieval of the drugs he had flushed. He pulled his top up over his mouth and, lifting a stick lying on the ground near him, began poking through the mound. He must have seen what he was looking for but couldn’t quite reach it. Pulling his trouser legs up a little, he took a tentative step towards the mound, then a second. Leaning slightly forwards, he stretched to reach the bag. He straightened, took the stick and reached with it, twisting the stick as he fished for purchase on the bag. Finally, he leant a little too far and fell forward, having to use both hands, with only limited success, to prevent himself falling face-first onto the mound of effluent. Having decided he had already got himself dirty he took a final step forwards and lifted the bag.

  For a second he seemed to struggle to understand why the bag was illuminated. Then he turned to where we stood, torches shining on him and his find.

  ‘Weren’t you ever told drugs would land you in a heap of shit?’ I asked him.

  Monday, 29 October

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘I understand you allowed a suspect to sit in a cell for three hours last night covered in excrement.’

  I had hardly made it onto Islandmore the following morning, when Superintendent Patterson arrived. The Commission had started early, having managed to get the new machinery delivered as a matter of priority. Millar was hopeful, he said, that they might have some luck in the search for Cleary by the end of the day.

  The progress was slow and methodical. The digger operator scraped across the surface of the site where they were digging, lifting soil to a depth of four inches or so at a time. This soil was then deposited to his right-hand side, clear of the flagged spot the dog handler had marked two days previous. Jonas then sifted through the clay, looking for bone fragments, or anything which might indicate the presence of a corpse.

  ‘He was found with enough drugs to supply the town for a week. We’ve charged him already; he’s out on bail.’

  ‘There’ll be complaints,’ Patterson continued. ‘His lawyer has already been in touch with the local papers.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll get much sympathy? A dealer crawls through shit to get his stash and is caught in the process? Plus, who’d want to buy from him now, wondering if the goods they’ve just bought came via the U-bend?’

  I could tell from the tone of his voice that Patterson was not that annoyed.

  ‘It’s hardly the result of the year, mind you.’

  ‘But enough to convince Vincent Morrison that we’re still watching him.’

  ‘I don’t think you leave him any room for doubt about that,’ he muttered. Then he added irritably, ‘What’s happening with the son’s case?’ He nodded towards the dig site.

  ‘We know Cleary was seen at Jimmy Callan’s house on the evening of his death.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Callan was the father of—’

  ‘Dominic Callan,’ Patterson said. ‘I remember. Is he their main suspect?’

  ‘At the minute I thinks he’s their only suspect. Cleary was at his house at 8 p.m. but died in the early hours. They still haven’t recovered his phone or the contents of his wallet. Hendry tells me they’re running a reconstruction this evening; I’ll probably cut across and offer some help.’

  Patterson nodded. ‘Get this whole business cleared up ahead of the 2nd. The last thing we need is this all still boiling on when we get as far as that commemoration thing.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  Once things were running smoothly with the dig, I excused myself, claiming I had paperwork to catch up on. In reality, I spent most of that morning with Joe McCready working our way through the list of names John Reddin had given me. Patterson had made it clear he didn’t want me to follow up on the dead child, but I also knew that, with the two bridges down by the time the child was buried, whoever had brought her onto the island would have needed a boat. And, as Reddin had suggested, only net men and smugglers would have run boats at that point on the river. If one of them hadn’t been the boat man, they might at least know who had been. I was acutely aware that the same logic applied to whoever had dispensed with Cleary’s body on the island, too.

  The ferryman, Seamus O’Hara, who lived on Coneyburrow Road on the way to Ballybofey, was not at home when we called, his house standing in darkness, the curtains still drawn. Tony Hennessey had died the year previous, so that eliminated him. Likewise Finbar Buckley, who’d died almost a decade earlier, despite Reddin’s belief he was still alive.

  Pete Cuthins was away for a few days staying with his family in Sligo, his neighbour told us when we called at his house on Gallows Lane. Alex Herron could not be contacted. We called at his home in Carrigans, but the house was empty. I made a note to call again; an empty milk bottle sat on the step, suggesting he had not gone far.

  The dig was well progressed by the time I got back to Islandmore. I spotted Lennie Millar directing the group of men standing in the shallow hole the digger had scraped away. The machine remained at the edge of the hole.

  Millar waved as I stepped down into the field.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Slowly,’ he said, taking the cigarette I offered him. ‘We’re taking it a few inches at a time at this stage; we think the body is just below us now.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s there?’

  Millar dragged deeply on the cigarette, then flipped the butt away. ‘I’d say so. We think there’s a boulder over it, maybe to keep it buried, stop wild animals digging it up.’

  ‘The same as the baby,’ I observed.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Lennie!’ One of the men in the hole was clambering out, shouting to Millar. ‘We’ve hit the stone.’

  I followed Millar across to the hole. Around four feet down, four men stood. One of them had exposed the edge of a slab of rock, perhaps three feet long.

  ‘Try prizing it out with the shovels,’ Millar said, dropping down into the hole beside the men.

  They lifted their spades and wedged them down the side of the rock, wriggling the blades in an attempt to jemmy their tips beneath it, allowing them to lift it upwards. Despite their best efforts, though, the rock remained steadfast in its place.

  ‘Try the tip of the digger spade,’ Millar called to the digger driver. ‘Gently now.’

  The large bucket rose up above us, the arm extending until it had cleared the rock. The driver lowered the bucket again, angling it so that the front edge scraped back along the floor of the hole. He drew it back inch by inch until it snagged on the edge of the rock. Once or twice he angled the bucket back and forth until he felt he had achieved a good hold, then he began to withdraw the arm.

  The edge of the bucket caught a moment on the corner of the rock, then began to scrape up, breaking loose the strata of the rock’s edge.

  ‘Again,’ Millar called. ‘A little deeper.’

  The driver lifted the bucket clear, then repeated the process. This time, the bucket found better purchase and, as he drew the arm back, the rock began to rise out of the earth onto its edge. Eventually, the stone was raised high enough that it tumbled to one side, exposing a cavity beneath it.

  Declan Cleary’s raggedy-clothed skeleton rested beneath, curled foetally, much as his son had been when we found him only a day earlier.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The team worked for several further hours, digging around the body. Earth had compacted around the legs and the right arm, so they began digging it back, gently, working always to preserve the dignity of the dead man’s remains.

  Millar had suggested quite early in the process that we should inform next of kin. I drove to Coneyburrow Road and collected Mary Collins and her husband and brought them to the site. Sean’s body had not yet been returned to them for burial, and I could tell that, until her son was brought home to her, she would exist in her own personal limbo. She spoke little in the car, her hand at her mouth, her eyes vacant, focused on some point in the middle distance. I imagined such a time must have been a mix of emotions
anyway, without the added pain of the loss of her son and the knowledge that neither father nor son had had a chance to meet – in this life, at least.

  Mr Collins initially engaged in small talk, then moved to practical questions surrounding the dig, how the events would now unfurl, what they should or should not do.

  ‘Lennie Millar will be best placed to tell you all that,’ I said. ‘He’s more experienced in this than I am.’

  Finally, the conversation stopped completely and we drove to Islandmore in silence, the only intrusion the rattle of the car’s suspension as we crossed the temporary bridge onto the island.

  The team had pitched a crime-scene tent above the spot where the body was found to protect it from the elements and to maintain privacy. Once it became clear that something had been found on the island, it would not be long until people would congregate on Park Road, opposite the island, to watch events.

  John Mulronney, our local doctor, was called soon after to perform the absurd task of confirming death. I also called Father Brennan, who arrived and administered last rites, while Mary Collins and her husband stood at the edge of the makeshift grave, he hugging her while she silently wept and prayed.

  The team who had uncovered the body stood, hands clasped, joining in the prayers, before in turn approaching Mrs Collins and offering their sympathies. While the remains could not be confirmed as Cleary’s until DNA tests were conducted, the clothes hanging on the bones matched those which Cleary had been wearing on the day he vanished.

  Not long after, the first of the press arrived, followed with astounding alacrity by local politicians of all shades, keen to use the media interest to promote their own agenda. One of the first to arrive was Miriam Powell. She had been our local TD during the latter boom years and had, in the last election, managed to survive the cull which had cost so many of her party colleagues their seats in the Dail.