Gallows Lane

Chapter Fourteen

Thursday, 10 June

I awoke early the following morning, eager to get on the road and tie up at least one loose end: James Kerr. Debbie had slept with her back to me, her body taut and hard. She spoke little over breakfast and, truth be told, I was glad to have the distraction of work. I could not bring myself to admit that she was right and that my pride had placed my family in harm’s way. I hoped that if I could satisfactorily conclude the business with Kerr, such an admission would not be required.

It was almost eight-thirty when I reached the station. I was the first there. The freshness of the night air was dissipating and I could feel already the encroaching heat that would leave us fractious by lunchtime. I was glad to be meeting Kerr outside, if only to enjoy the sunshine, infrequent a visitor as it is to Donegal.

Having called Martha Saunders at nine, I drove up to the house on Gallows Lane for nine-thirty and sat in the car, waiting for Kerr to show. I smoked a cigarette and listened to the radio. At nine-forty-five I got out of the car and wandered over to the front of the empty house, peering in through the windows. Then I sat on the doorstep and smoked another cigarette.

At quarter past ten, bored with waiting, sweat already gathering in the small of my back, I checked around the side of the house, in case Kerr should be waiting for me in the back garden. It was then, I believe, that I caught sight of something which will never leave my memory. The body of James Kerr hung from the same oak tree on which Peter Webb’s corpse had been found. Except James Kerr had not been hanged. Bright silver twelve-inch nails had been hammered through his feet, pinning him to the trunk, his arms spread and nailed to the thickest of the lowest branches, one hand torn away slightly from the nail which had held it. His head hung limply on his chest, which was raised and barrelled by virtue of his outspread arms. His feet were crossed over one another, his entire form a grotesque crucifixion.

I searched for vital signs, though I knew that I would find none. James Kerr had been dead for some time; his body was already cold and immobile, his face drawn and pale, his stubble dark against his skin’s pallor. His legs, held though they were by nails through his feet, were bent slightly, as though he were squatting, while thick divots of flesh were visibly absent from the kneecaps. Clearly whoever had crucified James Kerr had smashed his kneecaps to ensure that he would die quickly. In emulating Christ in his mission to forgive those who had betrayed him, it seemed James Kerr had also been fated to suffer a similar degradation and death.

Within twenty minutes, most of the station and a substantial number of sightseers and ghouls had gathered in the garden and immediate vicinity. Costello sweated and puffed down the side of the house towards where I was standing with Williams. His face was scarlet, whether with the heat or his exertions.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ he said when he saw the body, blessing himself. ‘Sweet Jesus, boy, what did they do to you?’ He hobbled over to the body and peered closely at the face, angling his head as if through examination he might discover yet some truth in the old belief that the dying man’s eyes capture an image of his killer. But James Kerr’s eyes held no such secrets.

‘Jesus, Ben,’ he said, shaking his head, clearly unable to find anything else to express his revulsion at the scene. ‘What kind of. . of animal does this?’

I could not speak — could hardly feel. Caroline, sensing perhaps my emotional torpor, took my hand in hers, intertwining her fingers with mine, and squeezed my hand softly. I smiled at her, then my vision blurred as I felt tears, both of anger and regret, begin to well. Williams put her arms around me then and hugged against me.

‘Come on,’ she said in my ear as she pulled away from me. ‘It’s all right.’ Then, so lightly I might have imagined it, she placed a kiss on my cheek.

‘Come on, son,’ Costello said, taking my arm and leading me out towards his car which had been parked in the driveway of the house, out of the direct line of vision of the crowd gathered on the street. ‘Let’s go get a drink.’

We sat in his office and Costello poured us each a glass of the whiskey he had bought just days earlier to celebrate the guns find. ‘For the shock,’ he said. I swallowed the first quickly, then sipped the second.

‘This is an almighty balls-up, Ben,’ Costello said, loosening his tie and leaning back in his chair, his body angled towards the window which had been opened wide in a vain attempt to allow some air into the room. The blinds hung dead in the stillness; not even a slight breeze disturbed the browning leaves of his spider plants.

‘We’re going to have to bring in outside help. I mean — a crucifixion? In Lifford? It’s unbelievable.’

‘What about Kerr, sir?’ I asked, placing my empty glass on his desk.

‘What about him? God knows I feel sorry for the lad and I hope he didn’t feel what they did to him — but we gave him every opportunity to leave, Ben. He was a fool, though by Christ, he’s paid for it.’ He shook his head sadly and drained his glass, then refilled both glasses.

‘I haven’t got the least notion who did this, sir. I’ll be honest with you — I don’t know what’s going on.’

‘I know, Ben,’ he said, nodding slightly. ‘I think we can all tell that. Maybe it’s time you took a back seat. I have a feeling whether we want them or not, the NBCI will be drafted in to sort this mess out.’

I stood up to leave and felt light-headed. It’s only the drink, I told myself. But, as I looked again at Costello, I suddenly felt as if I were standing in a vacuum. Almost instantly, my stomach twisted, sweat popping on my forehead, as my pulse thudded in my skull. A pain spread across my chest, my jaw tightening and, all at once, the thought struck me that I was having a heart attack.

Costello stood and said something to me, but I could not connect with him, his words were a mumble. Then, with a sound like a rush of water or the thrashing of a bird’s wings, everything seemed to lose its colour and I knew that, unless I could get out of that space, that room, I would die.

I turned and rushed from the room, out into the central concourse of the station, where empty desks awaited the return of their occupants, some of whom were, at that moment, standing guard by the body of James Kerr.

And, as if the simple act of motion had been enough, the room suffused with colour again, and though my heart still thudded, its beats seemed to have lost their urgency. And I could hear Costello, who stood behind me, his hand on my back; ‘Jesus, Ben, are you all right? Will I call an ambulance?’ I looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time, a slightly lame old man who had aged visibly in the years since his wife’s death.

‘I’m fine. I just need to get a breath of air.’

‘Sounds like a good old-fashioned panic attack, Ben,’ John Mulrooney explained to me a few hours later as I sat in his surgery. He perched on the corner of his desk scribbling in his prescription pad, while I buttoned up my shirt and rolled down my sleeve having had my blood pressure tested. ‘Have you been under unusual stress lately?’

I didn’t answer him, though clearly my expression told him all he needed to know; he grimaced slightly and said, ‘Fair enough.’ Then he stood up and tore a page from his pad.

‘These are beta-blockers. They regulate your heartbeat a little. You might never take another attack or you could take one in the car on the way home. That’s how they work. There’s actually nothing to be afraid of — it’s just your body firing off adrenaline when it’s not really needed. If it gets unbearable, take these. They don’t stop the panic. But they will take the edge off an attack, and give you a chance to see it through.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, though he obviously guessed from my tone of voice that I wasn’t entirely happy about having to take the tablets.

‘Alternatively, take a few deep breaths, slow and steady. Help you relax.’

I thanked him as I took the script he offered me. ‘Actually, now I’m here, there was something I was wondering, John. Something that has come up in a different case. A heart drug as well, I think. ‘Moobs’?’

Mulronney smiled slightly. ‘Are you sure they’re drugs, Ben?’ he asked.

‘Something to do with your heart, apparently,’ I said. ‘So I was told.’

‘Who told you this?’ he asked, genuinely confused.

‘A local druggie. Said moobs were something close to my heart? I’m guessing they’re heart drugs.’

He attempted to suppress a laugh. ‘Jesus, Ben; moobs aren’t drugs; it’s short for man boobs.’

‘What the hell are man boobs?’ I asked, embarrassed both by my ignorance and the fact that Lorcan Hutton had taken a dig at my expense without my even realizing it. I may have folded my arms as I spoke.

‘Just what they sound like,’ he said, trying hard not to lower his gaze to my chest. ‘Your druggie friend was taking the piss, Ben.’

‘It was in connection with stolen drugs,’ I explained. ‘Tamoxifen, I think it was. Breast cancer drugs.’

His smile faded and he began to nod his head a little more earnestly. ‘Well, actually, that would make a bit more sense. I’ve never heard of them being used for man boobs, but, in theory, they could be. Let me check it out, Ben. I’ll get back to you on it.’

‘Thanks, John,’ I said, getting up to leave.

As I opened the surgery door, he called me back. ‘Oh, and Ben; try to learn to relax. If you need time off, I’ll give you a sick line.’

‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve already been given one.’

If nothing else, the events of the day precipitated a thaw in the cold war at home. Debbie paled when I told her of the discovery of Kerr’s body and she was genuinely concerned when I told her about my panic attack and my visit to Mulrooney. She took the beta-blockers from me and read the label, examining the side effects which included circulatory and respiratory problems.

‘Do you think you need these, Ben?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘John said to take them if I had another attack.’

Debbie nodded slowly, then put the tablets down. ‘What’s going to happen now, then?’ she asked.

‘The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation will probably send a team to work on the case. I might assist them with their enquiries — or I might be pushed to the side.’

‘None of this is your fault, Ben,’ she said, softly. ‘I know I said things yesterday, but none of this is because of you.’

‘Costello told me to send Kerr back up north; I didn’t. In fact I gave him money and told him I was going to trust him.’

‘That didn’t get him killed.’

‘It did. If I’d chased him, he might have given up his bloody thick-headed “mission” and gone off and got drunk or laid like any normal ex-con.’

‘You can’t tell someone with principles what to do, Ben. You of all people must know that. You still went to meet Kerr this morning, even after all that happened yesterday.’

‘That’s different.’

‘Why? You both seem to think you’re on a mission. Well, if that’s true, God may get His business done in unusual ways, but I don’t think He’s ever wrong.’

I looked at her for a moment and believed that I saw something more than my wife sitting beside me.

‘You’re not the one hammered nails into James Kerr,’ she said.

‘Maybe it’s a collective responsibility, Debs. Maybe we’re all to blame. He lived rough; no one believed a word he said. He came back here to forgive the people who betrayed him. I can’t be the only one who sees religious connotations in this. What if we’re all to be judged for what happened to him?’

‘You’re not a judge, Ben. You’re a policeman and a father and a husband, and a man. Stop trying to be more than that.’