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

by Brian McGilloway

  As I was lighting my cigarette after I got back into the car, my mobile rang, causing me to start and drop my cigarette onto my lap. I brushed it off quickly, rubbing out the red embers from my trousers.

  ‘McCready here, sir.’

  ‘Yes, Joe,’ I managed, clamping the phone between my cheek and shoulder while I stamped out the smouldering butt lying on the car floor.

  ‘I’ve done a bit of searching on Martin’s company. He made his money in topically applied analgesics, apparently.’

  ‘In words I understand, Joe.’

  ‘Painkilling creams and gels – stuff you rub on your back or that if you put it out. He developed something during the sixties that treated burns victims, some kind of cream that treated the burn and killed pain at the same time. It made him a fortune.’

  ‘Anything to do with retinoids?’

  ‘That didn’t, but the company was put up for sale in the mid-seventies. There were rumours that Martin was developing a skin-care range, too, though it never materialized. He sold the company off in 1976.’

  ‘What about the son?’

  ‘He does nothing by the looks of it. He runs his father’s investments, that’s about it. Alan Martin invested in various building developments following the last boom. He seems to have done the same again during the recent bubble, before it burst.’

  ‘What about at the minute?’

  ‘There are a number of different companies involved here, sir, that invested in a number of the housing developments about three years ago. The company involved in Islandview was actually in the name of Maria Votchek. It collapsed at the start of 2009, bringing down the developments it had bankrolled and bankrupting Votchek and the builders who she had supported.’

  ‘Maria Votchek? She lives with Martin.’

  ‘Well, she was the name on the initial investment company which brought the developer down. The builder kept going, using up his own money on the promise of more from the investment company. By the time he found out they’d screwed him over, he’d run his own business into the ground, but the houses were nearing completion.’

  ‘Then Niall Martin’s company bought up the unfinished estates,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right. For a fraction of the price it would have cost had the initial investor seen the project through. The banks sold off the estates at rock-bottom price to Martin because he couldn’t do anything with them and no one else wanted them.’

  ‘So why buy them? The amount he’d make from renting out to people doing the double on benefits would hardly make it worth his while, considering the money his father must have got for the company in the first place.’

  ‘Well, I was chatting with someone in the fraud division in Harcourt Street. What Martin is doing isn’t actually illegal, but it’s very smart.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The government is going to announce a fund to finish off the ghost estates around the country, for county councils to complete the roads, street lighting and the like. Martin will get the infrastructure of the estates finished for free; he completes the houses while labour is cheap and everyone’s desperate for work, and then he sells when the market starts to recover.’

  ‘If the market recovers,’ I muttered. Even if it stagnated for another few years, Martin would still be on a winner eventually.

  ‘Good work, Joe,’ I said. ‘I’ll speak to Patterson and see where we go from here.’

  ‘Martin isn’t breaking the law, sir,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t really give a shit what he does with his money,’ I said. ‘But the children on Islandmore are a different matter.’

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  It was almost five by the time Patterson was free, having been in a meeting all afternoon. He was readying himself to leave for the day, buttoning up his overcoat while I stood in his office and relayed the information we had uncovered.

  ‘I hear all this,’ he said, mimicking talking with his hand next to his ear, ‘but I don’t hear what, exactly, Martin has done to rile you. He’s a clever bastard with the housing scam, but you say it’s not illegal. The company that went bust is not his.’

  ‘I’d bet Maria Votchek is his housekeeper. Or the person I assumed to be his housekeeper. I suspect she’s actually his girlfriend.’

  ‘His girlfriend? Really? Is he fifteen?’

  ‘Partner, then,’ I said. ‘She’s an eastern European. How many of them came over here with the money to start investing in housing developments? She’s obviously a front company for Martin’s own money.’

  ‘Maybe, but you’ll not prove it. Even if you do, no one will care. Have you not seen what’s going on in the country, Devlin? The banks have screwed the lot of us and they gave them bonuses for it. Do you really think anyone is going to chase up someone making a few quid on ghost estates? The people who live there will be happy just to see them finished.’

  ‘Martin is leasing out houses to benefit-fraudsters. He’s letting people use his houses to claim on both sides of the border.’

  ‘We have one murder on this side of the border. Seamus O’Hara. Have you done anything to find out who killed him?’

  ‘This is all connected, Harry. If we can get who killed Sean Cleary we have O’Hara’s killer, too.’

  ‘You’re still not telling me how you plan to do this.’

  ‘I want a search carried out for Sheila Clark.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘She worked with Cleary Senior,’ I explained. ‘She’s connected with the killing.’

  This was, to the best of my knowledge, not strictly true. I was counting on Patterson’s eagerness to get home to discourage him from pushing it any further.

  ‘And where should we be looking? Border checkpoints?’

  ‘Martin let her live in a show house on Islandview estate,’ I said. ‘I think he’s still covering for her. I’d like to have all the estates he owns searched for her car. Unoccupied houses, probably show houses that are already finished but not sold.’

  ‘Is this a benefit-fraud thing again, or is she actually connected in some way with this?’

  ‘I think she’s at the centre of it. Or at least knows who is.’

  He lifted his bag and flicked off the monitor of the computer on his desk.

  ‘You can have three cars do drive-arounds. Get a list of the estates to Burgess, to send through to here when you’re ready.’

  ‘Thanks, Harry.’

  He nodded. ‘The Chief Super in Strabane tells me your girl was involved in something on Halloween night. Is she okay?’

  I was a little taken aback by the question.

  ‘She’s fine, thanks, Harry. She got punched in the face.’

  ‘So I believe. By someone who you then presented to the PSNI badly beaten.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Any idea what happened him? Who gave him the kicking?’

  ‘None, Harry. Nor do I care.’

  ‘You didn’t do your usual on him, did you?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s hardly my usual,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not the answer I wanted to hear,’ Patterson said.

  McCready gathered up a list of all the estates, both ghost and finished, owned by Martin’s company and gave them to Burgess to send through to Letterkenny, along with the car-registration details I had taken the day I met Clark in Islandview. There were twelve estates in all, few enough that I could probably have gone around them myself were two of them not as far away as Gweedore, well over an hour’s drive from Lifford. I had promised Shane that I would take him to the cinema and it was a promise which I knew I had no choice but to make good upon.

  The film we saw concerned a villain who wanted to prove his greatness by shrinking and stealing the moon. Over the course of the movie, through adopting three children as part of his plan, he learned the error of his ways. I could have told him as much anyway – the real villains do not need such elaborate plans; they brought a whole country to its knees armed with nothing more advanced than ledger b
ooks and gentleman’s agreements thrashed out on golf links.

  By the time we arrived home, Penny and Debs had come back from a shopping trip to Derry. Penny went upstairs to try on her latest purchases while Shane wandered up to his room looking for a book. Less than a minute later, the two of them stood on the landing shouting at each other about some incursion one had made on the other’s territory. The argument ended with Shane’s roar, ‘I hate your guts,’ its final punctuation the slamming of his bedroom door.

  Debs looked at me and smiled bemusedly. ‘You didn’t think one trip to the cinema would change anything, did you?’

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  I had managed the first mouthful from the cup of tea when Paul Black called.

  ‘It’s Garda Black, sir,’ he whispered.

  ‘Where are you, Paul?’ I asked, straining to hear him.

  ‘In the car.’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’

  ‘I . . .’ he coughed lightly and when he spoke again did so with a little more volume, though still sotto voce. ‘I was sent out to look for that woman you wanted: Clark. I think I’ve found her.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘She was coming along the N13 from Derry to Letterkenny. She took a right at the roundabout on the dual carriageway and is making her way towards Lifford now on the N14.’

  ‘Has she spotted you?’

  ‘Well, I’m driving a marked car, sir, and I’m right behind her, so I’d say she probably has.’

  ‘Is there anyone else in the car with her?’

  There was silence for a few seconds. ‘There doesn’t seem to be, sir,’ Black said.

  ‘She may have an infant in the car with her,’ I called. ‘Don’t push her too far. The last thing we need is her going off the road. I’m on my way.’

  If Clark and Black were heading on the N14 towards Lifford they would be travelling towards me, so I guessed that it would take only five minutes or so before I would have sight of them. My plan was to block the road ahead of Clark and, if Black stayed behind her, hem her in between the two cars.

  Once in the car, I made radio contact with Black again to let him know I was on my way. I had only completed doing so when the radio buzzed into life and his voice echoed through the speakers. ‘She’s cut off, sir. At Carrickadawson, onto the R236. She’s heading towards Raphoe on the back road.’

  I turned onto the R236 myself at the next junction and accelerated. On the road ahead I saw two cars round the bend coming towards me, the latter a garda car. I pulled my own car across the centre of the road and, getting out, turned on my torch and began circling it to tell Clark to slow down.

  Initially I thought she was going to try to ram through my block, but I saw her begin to slow and draw almost to a stop. Suddenly she twisted the steering wheel and accelerated into a U-turn. Black tried too late to manoeuvre his car across the road behind her and she managed to slip past him, then sped up and headed back along the road. Black completed a U-turn and followed while I jumped back into my own car and set off in pursuit.

  Clark sped in the direction of the N14, the main Lifford– Letterkenny road, the furtive red winks of her brake lights as she took each corner just visible beyond the flashing blue lights of Black’s car.

  I radioed through to Black’s car.

  ‘Keep on her, Paul,’ I shouted. ‘I’m behind you.’

  ‘She’s a fast driver for her age,’ Black called back through the buzzing of the connection. ‘I expected Driving Miss Daisy.’

  ‘Just don’t push her off the road. There might be a baby with her.’

  I was able to pick up speed myself and, fairly soon, was right behind Black, my own flashers turned on. Clark braked ahead of us as she reached the junction with the N14. She stalled a second, as if deciding which way to turn; left towards Letterkenny, or right towards Lifford. Either way her options were limited. She was still some ten miles from the border and at least five miles from Letterkenny. I hoped she would turn left, for, a mile further along the main road, she would reach the roundabout at Corkey which fed onto a dual carriageway. Two lanes would make pulling her over significantly easier.

  In the event, this was the direction she took. She pulled out onto the road quickly, her passage marked by the low resonance of an articulated lorry’s horn. The vehicle in question had been headed towards Lifford and she had crossed onto its path coming out of the junction. The lorry skidded and stalled, partially blocking the road, while Black and I sat waiting for him to move again so that we might catch up with Clark.

  The driver stared out at us, outraged at Clark’s driving, not realizing he was blocking us in. I leaned out of the window as he rolled his own down.

  ‘Move your fucking lorry!’ I shouted.

  He raised his middle finger in quick salute, then turned the key in the ignition, the hydraulics hissing as the lorry moved past the junction and afforded us a gap to clear.

  I pulled around Black, who had stalled, and set off down the road in pursuit again.

  Clark had created a fair degree of distance between us. I spotted a set of tail lights ahead of me and was initially heartened when they brightened as the driver slowed to pull in. As I drew closer, I realized that the car in question was not Clark’s at all and sped past, waving my acknowledgement to the driver for stopping.

  A moment later I spotted her. She was struggling to pass a tractor which was trundling along the road, its rear wagon too wide to allow her to safely get around it. Beyond her I could see the glare of the streetlamps on the roundabout. If she passed the tractor now she would be on it before she had a chance to stop.

  Sure enough, she pulled sharply out and passed the vehicle, her car wavering on the road as if she had realized too late the closeness of the roundabout. She sped out towards the centre of the roundabout, as a car approaching from her left struck the rear of her car, spinning it around on itself before it mounted the central reservation and came to a halt against the lamp-post at the roundabout’s edge.

  I hit the sirens and pulled out past the tractor, coming to a halt in the centre of the road. If the baby was in the car, especially in the back seat, it would have borne the brunt of the impact.

  I felt sick as I climbed onto the reservation and tried to open the rear door of Clark’s car. The impact had concertinaed the bodywork on one side, effectively sealing the door. A baby seat hung off the seat belt on the back seat. I smashed the window and leaned in, frantically looking for the child.

  Clark sat in the front seat, her face bloody, her nose broken from impacting on the steering wheel, which was slick with blood.

  Pulling open the driver’s door, I leaned in and, gripping her shoulders, shook her.

  ‘Where’s the baby?’ I screamed.

  She looked at me stupidly, as if attempting to process the events of the previous few moments.

  I slapped her hard across the face, shaking her again. The driver of the other car had struggled out and was behind me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘Help her.’

  ‘Where’s the baby?’ I shouted again, struggling to remain in control.

  ‘What happened?’ she managed.

  ‘She needs a doctor,’ the other driver shouted as I stepped away from her and took out my mobile to call for an ambulance.

  ‘She’ll need more than that,’ I said.

  Chapter Fifty

  I met Patterson at Letterkenny station, while Black accompanied Clark to the hospital.

  ‘There is a child,’ I said. ‘She had a baby seat in the car.’

  ‘We’re lucky the kid itself wasn’t there, the way this went down,’ Patterson said.

  ‘I want to search for the infant.’

  Patterson stared at me. ‘You said you wanted this woman because she was connected with the O’Hara killing. Babies didn’t come into it. Especially not ones that some grieving mother heard in a baby monitor.’

  ‘If we can catch Clark on illegal adoptions, we can push her to bargain.
It would give us something to encourage her to talk. But we need to have the child.’

  Patterson considered it.

  ‘Plus, if I’m right, there’s an infant in a house somewhere at the minute with no one looking after it. That’s not something that’s going to end well unless we find it soon.’

  He shrugged reluctant agreement. ‘So what do you want to do?’

  ‘The estates we searched looking for her. I’m betting that the child is in one of the completed houses, the show houses. If we start with the ones nearest where she was picked up and work our way out . . .’

  I worked through the list of Martin’s estates which Burgess had compiled earlier. Black had picked up Sheila Clark on the Derry road to Letterkenny, though that didn’t necessarily mean she was heading to Letterkenny itself; she could have just as easily been going to Lifford, taking a left at the roundabout where she ended up crashing. In that region, from Lifford to Letterkenny, there were four possible estates.

  I sent one squad car to check the smaller of the three; an estate of fifteen houses at Drumbarnet off the Derry road. The second estate was at Drumleene, not far from Lifford itself. The third estate was Islandview, though I suspected that Clark would have been unlikely to return there. And I knew that Christine Cashell would have alerted me if Clark had been in the area, particularly with a child. The final estate was one I wanted to check myself, at Drumoghill, the site of St Canice’s Mother-and-Baby Home.

  The estate lay about a mile off the main road to Letterkenny, a cul-de-sac located in the middle of farmland, bordered on one side by two large metal feed barns. The fields behind the estate were meadow land and heavy-bodied cattle were grazing near the back fences of the rear houses.

  It was much better-finished than Islandview. All the external work on the houses was completed, though a few remained unpainted. The roads had had one layer of tar at some stage, though it had weathered badly and was potholed near the kerbstones, which sat too high above the road surface. As I drove I had to steer around the raised ironwork of man-hole covers and gratings.