Gallows Lane

Chapter Sixteen

Saturday, 12 June

On Saturday morning the sky cleared early, and remained cloudless for the day; so much for pathetic fallacy. I stood toeing the edge of the grave while Bardwell said a few last words and James Kerr’s body made its final supine journey.

The undertakers almost outnumbered the mourners; as well as Bardwell and myself, only Kerr’s sister Annie had made the effort to attend her brother’s funeral. His mother and stepfather were unable to make it, she explained with a hint of apology. Her father was nowhere to be found. I had half hoped that Mary Gallagher might have returned, but such romantic notions were misplaced. I don’t know if she even knew that Kerr was dead. Or if she’d even have cared.

After the clay had clattered across the coffin top, Bardwell approached me and shook hands. Then he hugged Annie, a little awkwardly. Clearly they hadn’t met before. I, in turn, offered my sympathies once more and suggested tea and a sandwich at the local cafe, but she declined, explaining that she had to get back home to Banbridge, or somewhere. ‘I’ll take that sandwich, if it’s going,’ Bardwell said.

We sat outside the cafe on Lifford main street, across the road from the station, so we could smoke as we talked.

‘Not much of a send-off, was it?’ I said.

‘Jamie didn’t have much of a life,’ Bardwell added. ‘Or a death for that matter.’

I sat quietly and lit a smoke. ‘Who was he going to see that night, Reverend?’

Bardwell held his breath for a second, as if weighing up the question and its potential nuances. Finally he seemed to have decided that, with Kerr dead, whatever Reverend-penitent confidence had existed between them no longer applied.

‘I don’t know any names,’ he said, lighting his own cigarette. ‘He claimed that he never even got to see Webb; when he went to the house, Webb had been arrested. By the time he got a chance to go back, Webb was already dead. But by that point it didn’t matter. He saw one of the gang.’ Bardwell smiled at me as if this revelation would make everything all right; in reality it had done just the opposite.

‘Where?’

‘At Webb’s house,’ he said. ‘Apparently he saw someone in the house with Webb’s wife the night she was arrested. He recognized the features — ’member I told you he said one of them was pimply, or something? Jamie saw his face.’

‘Did he know who it was?’

‘No,’ Bardwell added, wiping his upper arm across his forehead to rub sweat from his eyes. ‘But he said he could find out. He said the man was playing around with Webb’s wife. He forced her into telling him who he was.’

‘Did he tell you the name?’ I asked hopefully. ‘Was it Declan O’Kane? Decko?’ I nodded, as if encouraging him to vindicate my suspicion.

He stared into the middle distance, working the name on his lips, shaping it to see if it fitted. ‘I. . I can’t remember, to be certain. It might have been. The name was irrelevant to me. All I wanted to know was that Jamie was supported on his mission.’

‘Supported? At some point did you not think to warn him how dangerous this all was? It seems like a fairly stupid thing to do.’

‘James designed his own mission, Inspector. How could I stop a man from doing what he felt was right? What if his soul depended on it and I had stood in his way? Where would that have left me?’

‘Facing an armed gang with only forgiveness as a weapon seems like a fairly one-sided affair to me.’

‘Our Lord Jesus did it.’

‘And look what happened to Him,’ I said, regretting it as I spoke.

‘Yes. I seem to remember he won,’ Bardwell replied. ‘Besides, Inspector, I haven’t seen Jamie since he left us to come here. You on the other hand didn’t just fail to stop him from his mission — I believe you gave him money to keep him going!’

I nodded slightly. ‘Point taken,’ I said, getting up to leave.

‘For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing. James’s path was planned by something beyond both of us.’

‘It’s not enough, Benedict,’ Costello said when I told him what Bardwell had said about O’Kane. ‘We can’t lift him based on that. It’s third-hand testimony of a dead man who doesn’t even name O’Kane. A pimply face? That would indict most of the adolescents in the county.’

‘It can’t be just coincidence, sir,’ I argued, though I knew he was right.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘but it’s also not enough for an arrest.’

We were standing in his back garden. I had driven straight to see him after leaving Bardwell. I felt a little out of place, on a scorching Saturday afternoon dressed in a black suit, while Costello stood in cords and a white shirt, weeding the caked flower-beds which had once been the pride of his wife. Costello too seemed a little incongruous, his thick, stubby fingers grasping the heat-withered weeds, their stalks brittle in his hands.

‘Is this a weed or a flower?’ he asked, ripping the dead roots out of the ground. Then he threw it on to the clay. ‘Damn it, I can’t do this,’ he spat, struggling to his feet. ‘What the hell am I meant to do for the rest of me days? Pick flowers? Damn it! Damn it!’ he repeated, stamping his foot like a spoilt child.

I looked at him, speechless, unable to offer any consolation, and saw again a lonely old man, facing an uncertain future. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you, sir,’ I said, turning to leave.

He raised his hand to stop me. ‘Sorry, Ben, I’m having a bit of difficulty adjusting to the idea of retirement,’ he explained unnecessarily. ‘What can I do for you?’ He gripped my elbow as we walked, more, I thought, to steady himself than to guide me.

I explained again the situation with Decko and he gestured halfway through to show that he understood. ‘You need evidence, Ben. Something tangible that links him with Kerr. If you’ve got that, we can bring him in and take a sample for comparisons.’

‘Evidence has a nasty habit of not always being where you need it to be, sir,’ I said.

He smiled at me. ‘Indeed it does, Benedict. Indeed it does.’

We walked towards the driveway where I had parked my car. ‘The Purdy girl got out of hospital. Letterkenny officers are taking her to that club tonight, to see if she recognizes anyone — or if anyone recognizes her. You might want to take a drive over, see what’s happening.’

‘Yes sir,’ I said. ‘I’ll try my best.’

‘If you’re in the area anyway, like,’ he added. Finally he let go of my elbow. ‘So, what are you going to say to this crowd on Monday?’

‘The interview? I don’t know.’

‘That Powell woman seems to have it in for you, boyo,’ he said. ‘Whatever reason she has for that.’ His eyes twinkled with good humour.

‘What about the NBCI, sir? Are they being brought in?’ I asked, turning to face Costello.

His expression sobered quickly and he nodded. ‘We have to, Benedict, you know that. Even if things were moving along, you can’t hide young fellas being crucified off trees.’ He placed his hand on my forearm. ‘It’s not a reflection on you, Ben. Look at it that they’re here to help us. Use them.’ He started walking again. ‘God knows, they might find some piece of evidence we’ve missed. Eh?’ His eyes squinted so narrow they were almost shut against the sunlight, making it impossible for me to say for certain that he winked at me as he spoke.

The heat of the day had not dissipated by evening and in fact the sky, though now darkened, seemed to have held the heat in its grasp, tightening and sweating into a humid evening that promised thunder before dawn.

I wound the window right down as I drove, both to keep the smell of smoke out of the car, in deference to Debs — and to alleviate the stickiness which was making me sweat. The opened window didn’t really help with either.

On the dual carriageway to Letterkenny, I questioned once more the wisdom of what I was about to do. The town lights flickered in the middle distance, the far-away church spire puncturing the red-tipped clouds that hung above the horizon.

Beside me on the passenger seat, weighed down by my cigarette packet to ensure it didn’t blow out of the window, lay the religious tract Kerr had left in my car on the day we first met; one of the many he had carried around the borderlands in his canvas bag.

Decko O’Kane lived on the Lifford Road out of Letterkenny, about a quarter of a mile from his car dealership. I knew that much. As for the rest, I hadn’t really thought it out. If I got as far as his house, unseen, I figured the rest would fall into place. If I’m honest, I didn’t really believe that I was going to go through with it anyway.

I had spent most of that afternoon reinterpreting over and over what Costello had said. Had he meant to suggest that evidence might be found? Or that evidence should be found?

I told Debs at eight that I was going straight to Club Manhattan with Rebecca Purdy. I almost told her what I was actually planning on doing; but then stopped. I knew that she’d advise me against it, that she’d say it was wrong. And I didn’t want to hear her say it because I’d have to agree with her.

I also contrasted my proposed behaviour with what Patterson had done. He had planted evidence for his own promotion. What I was doing was not for promotion but to catch someone who had to be caught. Because that was what justice demanded, I told myself. I cut short my internal monologue before the issues of justice became too hazy.

I parked about a quarter of a mile short of Decko’s house and cut in through the fields bordering it. It took me less than two minutes to reach the perimeter of Decko’s land. His property was bounded by a high drystone wall, which probably cost the equivalent of my annual wages. With more difficulty than I anticipated, I clambered over the wall and dropped down among the trees which lined the driveway.

Decko’s house was huge, occupying a good three-acre site; the house itself squatted in the centre, lit like fairyland, its windows thrown open to the night air. Even from this distance I could tell Decko was entertaining. From his back garden I could hear a party in progress, the dull thudding of something approximating music causing the very ground to shudder seismically. Above the monotony of the thudding and the shouting of a rapper who sounded like he’d been shot, the shrill shrieks of women and drunken cheers of men rose in unison. I wanted desperately to skirt the house and come round the back to see who was there. More importantly, I wanted to do what I had come here to do and get out before Decko or his cronies spotted me.

My original plan had been to leave Kerr’s religious tract somewhere on Decko’s property, as evidence that he had been here — something to connect him with Decko. To be honest, I hadn’t really thought it through too clearly. I scanned the front of the house to make sure I wasn’t being watched. It was then that I noticed Decko’s car parked to the side of the house nearest me. This prompted me to be a little more creative. A sheet of paper found lying in someone’s driveway doesn’t prove anything; the same piece of evidence found in their car is a little harder to explain. Though, of course, this would only work if Decko’s car was unlocked. Which it wasn’t. But his passenger window had been left halfway down, presumably because of the heat.

Keeping to the shadows, and painfully aware that, on the passenger side, I was exposed to the house, I reached into the car and tucked the leaflet into the pocket of the passenger seat, wincing with each movement, in case the car was alarmed. Then I figured that the open window would have disabled the alarm. Once finished, I slipped back into the shadows again and kept moving until I was out on the roadway and nearing my own car.

It was as easy as that. That one innocuous action, placing a single sheet of paper in someone else’s car, was all that I needed to link Decko O’Kane with James Kerr and give us reasonable cause to take a DNA sample for comparison with that found under Kerr’s fingernails.

And that same innocuous action was all that was needed to make my career — and so much more — implode, if it all went wrong.

Club Manhattan was heaving with people by the time I arrived. I noticed a number of officers whom I recognized making their way through the crowds, among them Helen Gorman, out of uniform and dressed for the occasion. Her brown hair was fashioned in a bob, her figure accentuated by a tight striped T-shirt. When she saw me she waved. I made my way over to her, having to shout to be heard.

‘How’s things?’

She gave me the thumbs up and pointed towards the bar. I followed her over.

‘Would you like a drink, sir?’ she asked.

‘Probably best not to on duty, Helen,’ I said.

‘I’m not on duty,’ she replied, then ordered me a Coke. The barman from my previous visit took the order, flashed me an insincere smile and headed off in search of our drinks.

Helen looked younger than she seemed in the station. Her eyes were bright and clear, her skin supple and toned, her mouth thin-lipped. She brushed a strand of her hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear, though it immediately fell back again.

‘I think I have something with the break-in,’ she stated, when her beer had arrived.

‘Really?’ I said.

She nodded a little too vigorously. ‘Our thief wore size nine Gosto trainers,’ she said, punctuating the sentence with a final sharp nod of her head, as though that piece of information in itself was enough to crack the case.

‘And?’ I asked, expecting more.

She widened her eyes slightly, as if to encourage me to share her excitement. I realized I was being a little unsupportive.

‘That’s great, Helen,’ I said, smiling as sincerely as I could. ‘How did you find that out?’

She answered me just as the music in the club got louder. I shrugged my shoulders to indicate I hadn’t caught what she said.

She leaned towards me, her hand on my chest, the skin of her cheek lightly touching mine. As she spoke, her lips, wet and cold with her beer, continually brushed against the skin of my ear, making me shiver involuntarily. ‘I went round every shoe shop until someone found a match with the photo you took,’ she said.

I pulled back a little from her, nodding. ‘That’s great work, Helen. Harkin’s are lucky you’re handling this for them. I don’t think anyone else would have put so much energy into it.’

She leaned towards me again and, when she spoke, her voice seemed to have deepened a little.

‘I want to do well, sir. Make a name for myself. You know?’

‘I’m sure you will, Helen,’ I said, speaking close to her ear. The line of her neck was smooth, her skin pale and lightly perfumed. I tried to pull away from her again, but she held on to my shirt front as she continued.

‘I was glad it was you, in the office,’ she said. I pulled back from her, my hands raised in a gesture of surrender. She blurted out a laugh. ‘Not like that! I heard you’re going to be the next Super. I wanted to work with you.’

‘Helen,’ I said, genuinely. ‘I’ve enjoyed working with you. But I doubt I’ll be the next Super. Someone has misinformed you.’

She stared at me, her eyes glazing slightly, her smile light. She was nodding her head as I spoke and continued to do so for several seconds after I had stopped, as if unaware that I had finished. I guessed that she couldn’t actually hear what I was saying; talking this over with her in the bar might not have been such a good idea.

‘Would you like a dance?’ she asked, already moving in time with the music, linking my arm in hers.

‘Best not to, Helen; I’m a little old for this place,’ I said, feeling flustered. I was aware of several of the other Garda officers glancing over, smiling.

Finally I caught sight of Rebecca Purdy, accompanied by a female officer. I excused myself from Helen on the grounds that Costello had asked me to check on progress with the girl. Helen mocked a petted lip, then backed on to the dance floor.

Rebecca Purdy looked her age this time. She seemed tiny among the officers flanking her, her confidence shattered. Her shoulders were stooped, her head bowed slightly, perhaps to hide the yellowish and purple bruises her cosmetics had failed to conceal.

‘Anything?’ I asked her, scanning the room as we spoke.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I saw some people I know. .’ She cleared her throat and then continued. ‘I saw some boys I recognized before, but no one from that night.’

Whoever the boys were, they were giving her a wide berth this evening and would, I suspected, for many evenings to come.

‘It’s hard to tell, though. There are so many people here. I can’t really see anything.’

‘I know someone who might help us with that,’ I said.

Jack Thompson was perfectly happy to allow us the use of his office and turned on the CCTV monitors. While Rebecca flicked between scenes, he asked her how she was feeling, and whether he could get her anything, before moving on to the question of how she had got into the club that night. He wanted to make sure, he explained, that someone so young would not gain entry again.

Rebecca blushed as he spoke. Her friends wouldn’t be too happy about losing their method of admission. The married bouncer would likely lose his job too, although it was no more than he deserved.

‘I had fake ID,’ she said.

Thompson raised his arms in a semi-shrug. ‘What can I do?’

‘I’d start by retraining your door staff,’ I suggested. ‘And reminding them of the age of consent, for one.’

Thompson looked at me quizzically, but in an exaggerated fashion, and I suspected that he already knew of his bouncer’s extra-marital proclivities.

The conversation was cut short by Rebecca, bouncing in her seat, pointing at the screen. ‘It’s gone,’ she cried. ‘I think I saw him, but it’s gone. He’s bald.’

The images on the screen had changed and Thompson had to work with the monitor controls to retrieve the previous camera feed.

‘The toilets,’ he said. ‘The corridor of the toilets.’

I ran out of the office and out on to the dance floor, shouting for some of the other officers to follow.

By the time I made it to the Gents there was only a young man in there, combing his hair in the mirror.

‘Was a bald man in here?’ I asked.

The youth stared at me in surprise.

I repeated the question, a little more forcefully, adding that I was a Guard.

‘He just left,’ he said.

‘Wait here,’ I shouted, then went back out, scanning the dance floor. Two fellow officers came over. ‘We’re looking for a bald guy,’ I said. ‘Needs to be big, needs to have a tattoo.’

We split and moved through the crowd. The heat and the mass of bodies pressing against me brought sweat to my forehead and made me feel nauseous — a sensation not helped by the insistent thudding of the music and the flashing lights. I could feel my breath quickening and I struggled to get air. For a second I felt strange, divided from the rest of the room, as if peering through a sheet of glass at the people swaying and shifting in front of me. I felt off balance, dizzy.

Better not to stop, I told myself, and kept pushing my way through, trying to examine the men in the crowd as I went.

I saw one bald man dancing near the edge of the floor. His build, though, was wrong, his arms bony, their musculature under-developed, and his skin was tattoo free. A second possibility stood near the bar. Again, though his head was shaved, he was too thin. One of the other Guards waved across the dance floor at me and pointed towards the far wall. Then I saw our man, standing at the fire exit, where people gathered to smoke. By the time I registered him, he had turned from me and was making his way past the smokers. I did not see his face, though he must have recognized mine.

I shoved my way over to the exit, which led out to a side alley and eventually to the car park. The crowd seemed to thicken around me, pushing and jostling, like cattle, towards the promise of fresh air. When I brushed past one couple, the girl shrieked and her male partner grabbed at my arm and shouted something unintelligible. Finally, I made it out through the doorway.

‘Which way did he go?’ I shouted to the smokers standing around, but most of them were too drunk or stoned to notice or care. One girl pointed up the alley, towards the car park. I glanced in the opposite direction which seemed to lead out on to the main road.

I turned and jogged up the dark alley as the girl had suggested, my chest heaving, the warm night air burning my lungs. I really needed to stop smoking. After a couple of hundred yards I had to stop and lean against the gable wall of the building to my right to catch my breath. I bent double, wheezing, my lungs feeling like they would explode. That sensation returned, as if the alley had lengthened or altered in some other way. I looked at my hands and they seemed to belong to someone else.

‘Fuck,’ I thought. My stomach churned and I thought I would be sick. I leaned my arms on my knees for support as I tried to steady myself, my breath catching in my throat.

Then I heard the screech of brakes as a car turned in from the car park, its headlights dazzling me as they raked across the mouth of the alley. Several beer crates stacked against the wall careered off the car’s bonnet as it sped towards me. I had nowhere to go, nothing to hide behind. I squeezed myself against the wall just as the car passed me, cracking my leg. As it pulled out on to the road, I was able to see the model and colour — a silver BMW coupe. But I had been unable to see the registration plate in the glare of the lights, nor did I get a good look at the driver as he’d passed, other than his hand and arm clamped on the wheel, and a baseball cap which obscured his face.

*

A barman brought me a cup of tea while I sat in Thompson’s office, looking back over the security footage, hoping to see my assailant. The best image was the one Rebecca had spotted, of the man walking towards the toilets. It confirmed that he was the man I had chased, but wasn’t clear enough for us to make an identification.

I was feeling fairly shitty about the whole thing until I was reminded that we had at least an eye witness when one of the Garda officers from outside came in and said, ‘There’s a boy in the toilets wondering if he can leave now?’

‘Bring him in,’ I said.

The ‘boy’, it transpired, was actually in his thirties and was called David Headley. He was remarkably lucid and sober, which he explained was due to his being designated driver. ‘It’s my wife’s birthday,’ he said. ‘She still insists on coming to places like this.’ He winced slightly and nodded at Jack Thompson. ‘No offence.’

‘None taken,’ Thompson replied. ‘I only come here because I work here.’

‘Anything you can tell us about the bald man in the toilets?’ I asked.

‘He didn’t wash his hands,’ Headley said, smiling at his attempt at levity. ‘I didn’t really see his face. He stood beside me at the urinals. Kind of intimidated me. I couldn’t pee when he was standing there. Then you panic that he thinks you don’t really have to pee, you just like standing beside men at the urinal. I kept my head down, I’m afraid. Didn’t see much.’ He blushed slightly as he spoke.

‘You didn’t notice a tattoo, did you — on his arm?’

Headley brightened up with that. ‘Yeah, I did. Really detailed. A picture of Cuchulain, I think.’

Cuchulain, the hound of Ulster, is a mythical Irish folk hero, famed for his strength and bravery in battle. More particularly, I remembered that he had suffered battle frenzy, much like the Norse berserkers. He was a warrior both of great skill and great violence. He is traditionally depicted in death, leaning against a tree or a stone pillar, a raven near his shoulder, having tied himself upright to continue fighting his enemies, even when mortally wounded. The image had been famously re-created in a sculpture in the General Post Office in Dublin commemorating the Easter Rising of 1916. Certainly that image of Cuchulain which I remembered would seem to fit with Rebecca Purdy’s vague description of a man standing at a tree.

‘He was our boy, all right,’ I said, wondering at the personality of someone who would sport such a tattoo.

Thompson allowed me to use the first-aid kit in his office to treat my injuries. My knee needed little more than bandaging, but it made me feel older than ever as I limped through the crowd on my way out of the club. I saw Helen Gorman standing at the bar, a tall young man talking to her. She caught my eye and smiled, then rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. Her companion followed her gaze, looked me up and down quite obviously, and continued with his discussion, satisfied that I posed no threat to his evening’s plans.

The air felt warm and dry on my face as I hobbled towards my car and I suddenly felt very tired, and a little alone.

Debbie was sleeping by the time I got home, so I sat downstairs for a while at the kitchen door and had a cigarette. The attack in the club reminded me that I had forgotten to take any more of the beta-blockers John Mulrooney had given me. I took out the box of tablets, read the list of side effects, and decided to leave them for now.