Gallows Lane

Chapter Twenty-four

Saturday, 19 June

I woke at around six-thirty the following morning to someone banging at our front door. I rushed downstairs before the noise should wake the kids and peered out the window to see who was outside before opening the door. Dempsey stood back from the door, looking up towards the bedroom windows.

‘Get dressed,’ he snapped, when I opened the door.

‘What?’ I said, not quite able to process what was happening.

‘You’re lucky I’m not arresting you,’ he said. ‘Get dressed.’

‘Arresting me for what?’ I said, immediately thinking of my actions involving Decko’s car. Surely not.

‘Danny McLaughlin was murdered last night,’ he stated. ‘And you were the last in his room.’

‘What?’ I spluttered.

‘Somebody cut his throat,’ Dempsey said. ‘Now get dressed and you can tell me on the way why you were there last night on your own.’

On the way to Letterkenny, I explained everything: my deduction, based on his age, that McLaughlin wasn’t part of the Castlederg gang, and my suspicions that someone was using him as a fall guy. I told him how I had turned the screws on McLaughlin by suggesting his paymaster might try to clear him off the board. And I explained that he hadn’t so much as broken sweat.

‘When you left, was the Guard at his door?’ Dempsey asked.

I felt more than a little ashamed. ‘No, he went for a cup of tea; I expected he wouldn’t be long.’

‘He fell asleep in the canteen. A cleaner woke him at four in the morning. By that stage, McLaughlin was already dead. A night nurse found him before your uniform even made it back to the room.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered.

‘Sorry might not be enough on this one,’ Dempsey said.

When we arrived at the hospital, Deegan was standing in the foyer, bouncing excitedly.

‘We’ve just got someone, sir,’ he said to Dempsey as we approached the doors. ‘Just caught him on the grounds; still had the knife in his pocket. We’ve got him over here.’

We followed Deegan across to the porters’ office. Inside a group of Guards were gathered around a man who was lying face down on the ground while Meaney knelt on his back, tightening his cuffs. A bread knife lay on the ground several feet from them. When the man was hauled to his feet, I was shattered to see Rebecca Purdy’s father.

His eyes caught mine and he held my gaze for a second, no more, then lowered his head in shame. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

He looked at me once more, pleadingly, as they led him past me, out to a waiting squad car to take him to Letterkenny station, past a crowd of spectators who had gathered in the hospital foyer. I rushed to keep up with them.

‘Mr Purdy?’ I said.

‘What would you have done?’ he called to me as he was pushed out through the doors.

‘What the fuck was that about?’ Dempsey said, a little angrily.

I told him who the man was. I did not need to explain why he had done what he had done, nor could I explain why he had seemingly hung around the scene of the crime for a further four hours. Unless, of course, he had wanted to be caught.

Dempsey and I went up to McLaughlin’s room. The body had been moved now and the forensics team had been and gone. A gelatinous pool of dark red blood lay beneath the bed, the sheets already stiff and brown with the stains. On the night stand beside the bed sat a jug of water, a half-empty beaker and McLaughlin’s phone. His clothes were folded over a chair in the corner. Beyond that, there were no other personal items; no get well cards or flowers, no bottles of lemonade or baskets of fruit. Danny McLaughlin’s passing from this Earth had been friendless and impersonal.

And despite his crimes, I mourned his death, and both its manner and the man responsible for it.

I was roused from my thoughts by a shrill tone from McLaughlin’s phone. When I opened it, the display read ‘Low Battery’. After that message blinked off, however, I saw another: ‘One Missed Call’, with the time noted at 2.20 a.m.

‘Does this constitute evidence?’ I asked Dempsey.

‘Shouldn’t think so,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Someone tried to phone him at two-twenty this morning. He missed the call.’

‘Maybe he was sleeping,’ Dempsey suggested.

‘Maybe,’ I agreed. ‘Or maybe it helps us narrow down time of death.’

Dempsey nodded agreement. ‘Possibly. Who was it?’

‘Doesn’t say. Just that it was at two twenty — this morning. That was just a bit after I left him,’ I said. ‘Maybe he called someone.’

‘Let me see,’ Dempsey said, taking the phone. He played around with a few buttons, until he had a number, which he read out. McLaughlin’s phone beeped its urgent warning again. ‘The battery’s going to go,’ he said. ‘Copy this down.’

He read the number a second time. I didn’t have my notebook with me and so, with nothing else to hand, I saved the dialled number on to my own phone. Something about the digits seemed familiar though I couldn’t place them.

McLaughlin’s phone emitted one last warning, then went dead. Dempsey replaced it on the night stand, then looked at the number on my display, as if the digits themselves might reveal something.

‘Could be his sister,’ I said. ‘Or his lawyer.’

‘Only one way to be sure,’ Dempsey said, leaning past me and pressing the green call button on my phone. Before I had a chance to protest, however, the number changed to a caller ID which was already saved on my phone. And I was left to wonder what connected Paddy Hannon with Danny McLaughlin, and why he would be phoning him in the middle of the night.

Before we left for the station, Dempsey called down to the morgue to collect the preliminary findings on the murder of Danny McLaughlin. I read through the notes while he drove. McLaughlin had been killed just after 2 a.m., according to the pathologist’s estimates, soon after I had left him. His throat had been slit with a long, sharp, smooth-bladed knife, which, at the very least, placed a question mark over the guilt of Seamus Purdy, who had been caught with a serrated bread knife. Whilst he may have wanted to kill McLaughlin, the evidence, even at this early stage, suggested that he probably hadn’t done so.

However, we arrived at the station to learn that he had already signed a confession. Deegan was buzzing to tell his boss and was more than a little deflated when Dempsey told him to hand the confession to me and give me a few minutes alone with the man. They, in turn, set off to find Paddy Hannon.

Purdy looked exhausted when I went into the interview room. His breath smelt stale in the enclosed space, his whitening hair unkempt, the beginning of grey stubble like sandpaper on his jaw. His anorak was buttoned up incorrectly, the bottom button fitted into the second hole. One of his eyes wept continually as we spoke and he dried it with the cuff of his sleeve.

‘I read your confession,’ I said, sitting down. ‘Why did you do it?’

The answers were prepared. ‘What else could I do for my girl?’ he said, his lip quivering as he tried all the harder to hold it firm. ‘How could I look her in the eyes knowing I did nothing?’ He spat the last word venomously. ‘Nothing,’ he repeated.

‘Would she not prefer to have her father at home, Mr Purdy? To help her come to terms with what happened? Instead of in jail? Would that not be a more fatherly thing to do?’

He glared at me defiantly, then turned his head aside.

‘You asked me what I would do,’ I said. ‘I have a daughter, Mr Purdy. If it happened to her, I would hold her, and promise her that everything would be all right. I’d do everything in my power to let her know that it wasn’t her fault and that, no matter what, I would always love her with my entire heart. And I would never leave her without my support and my love.’

His glare finally broke and he began to blubber, his lips covered in spittle which he made no effort to wipe clean. His entire frame shook with each sob, as he buried his face in his arms on the table and released all the frustration and anger and guilt that he had felt since his daughter’s assault. And I did the only thing I could as a father. I moved my chair beside him and put my arm around his shoulder and sat with him until he had finished.

‘I know you didn’t do it,’ I said to him. ‘No matter that you wanted to, or that you might have. I know that you didn’t. Isn’t that right?’

Finally, among the sobs, I saw him nod his head. I lifted his confession and tore it in two, then left it on the desk in front of us and waited for him to stop crying.

When he seemed to have calmed I stood and placed my hand on his shoulder for a second, then I turned to leave the room.

‘You’re free to go, Mr Purdy,’ I said.

As I opened the door, he called me back. I turned in the doorway. He had twisted in his seat to see me, his face glistening with tears.

‘I was at his room, you know. I nearly did it,’ he said quickly.

‘Doesn’t matter, Mr Purdy, whether you would have or not. You didn’t.’

‘I saw you come out,’ he explained. And someone else go in.’

My hair stood on end at his words. I let the door swing closed again. ‘Who?’

‘I didn’t know him. A priest.’

‘You’re sure?’ I asked, already beginning to suspect where this was going to end. ‘Definitely a priest?’

He nodded, wiping his eyes with the heel of his palm. ‘He wore a collar; middle-aged man. Black hair.’

‘How long was he in there?’

‘A minute, maybe two. It scared me off; I daren’t go in, in case someone else arrived. But I couldn’t go home either; not without having. . you know.’

I nodded. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr Purdy,’ I said.

I returned to the hospital to check if any local vicars or priests had been doing their rounds the previous night, but the nurse in charge was certain that none had been on the general wards, unless maybe one had been called into ICU for Last Rites. I guessed, though, that this was not the case. As I was leaving, something caught my eye. On a stand in the foyer, nestled among booklets on sexual health and responsible drinking, was a pile of leaflets, still fastened together by a thick rubber band. The title, ‘Turn from Sin and Trust in Me’, stood out in block capitals.

Half an hour later, I collected Jim Hendry and set off for Coleraine. Bardwell lived in the North; he would have to be arrested there, and eventually extradited to the Republic to face charges if he had, as I suspected, killed Danny McLaughlin in revenge for the murder of Jamie Kerr.

We were in Coleraine by eleven o’clock, though it took some time to find Bardwell’s church. Finally, we found the street, a pedestrianized area covered with cobblestones which caused the car to shudder as we drove.

I had expected Bardwell to be based in a traditional church. However, it was, in effect, the upper floor of a commercial building which also housed a restaurant and an accountant’s office. The front door lay ajar, leading on to a set of old wooden stairs on which the red linoleum was faded and torn. When we reached the top of the stairs, Hendry drew out his gun and signalled that he would cover me as we entered through the glass door emblazoned with the name Reverend Charles Bardwell. Inside we found ourselves on a corridor, with six doors along its length.

‘Reverend,’ I called, pushing the first door, which led to a toilet. The second opened into a kitchen, the third an office. We trod lightly down the carpeted corridor, checking each room in turn. The fifth door we reached was the only one with a sign: ‘Prayer Room’.

‘Reverend Bardwell,’ I repeated, pushing open the door. Hendry stood to my right, his body pressed against the jamb, his gun ready in his hand. But it was not needed. Bardwell sat alone in the prayer room, his chair one of twelve arranged in a circle. Posters advocating forgiveness and rebirth curled on the walls around him, among them a larger version of the leaflet Jamie Kerr had been handing out in Lifford.

Bardwell sat, hunched in the seat, his arms resting on his knees, his hands dangling between his legs. He still wore an overcoat, which even from here, I could see was spotted with blood. On the seat beside him lay the knife. He looked up at me, straggles of black hair hanging over his face, his cheeks gaunt and stubbled. His skin was sallow, his eyes dull, his shoulders drooped.

‘Can I come in, Reverend?’ I asked. While I did not really believe him to be a threat to me, he still had a ten-inch blade sitting on the chair beside him.

He did not react, so I carefully moved into the room, breaking the circle of chairs in order to sit nearer to him, with four seats between us. I was glad that Jim Hendry stayed at the door, perhaps sensing that I might have more success in coaxing Bardwell out peaceably on my own. Still, I was equally glad that Hendry was still there, with a firearm.

‘I wondered how long it would take,’ Bardwell said finally, though he did not lift his gaze, continuing to stare at the space between his feet. ‘I’m glad it’s you.’

‘I wish I could say the same, Reverend,’ I said. ‘Anything but, in fact.’

He nodded once, his hair covering his eyes.

‘Was it because of Jamie?’ I asked, sliding myself one chair closer to him.

Again he nodded.

‘We had him for it, Reverend, and possibly the man who ordered it. All of them; all the ones who set up Jamie. We’d have got them all.’

‘For what?’ Bardwell said, looking at me for the first time, a flash of anger on his face. ‘To claim “diminished responsibility” — was that the phrase?’

‘He might not have got it,’ I argued weakly.

‘Of course he would,’ Bardwell spat. ‘No one cares. No one gives a shit.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said, moving a little closer, though still out of his range if he lifted his knife.

‘I went there last night and cut his throat. And I listened. I came back here and sat all night. “And still God has not said a word”.’ He snorted contemptuously.

‘Maybe He has said a word, Reverend,’ I said, quietly. ‘Maybe you just haven’t heard His voice.’

Bardwell looked at me blankly, as if the thought had only just struck him.

‘Jamie heard His voice, Inspector. And look what they did to him. Look what He let happen to him.’

‘We let that happen, Reverend — us. Not God. People do those things. It’s up to the rest of us to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

‘Are you a believer, Inspector?’ Bardwell asked.

‘I have to be, Reverend. I have to believe that what I do, somehow, makes things better.’

‘Fighting on the side of the angels,’ he said, laughing without humour.

I shifted a seat closer to him, and reached out my hand. ‘Come with us now, Reverend. We’ll take care of you.’

His hand rested on the handle of the knife beside him and, just as I myself tensed, I was aware of Jim Hendry from the corner of my eye, raising his gun, in readiness.

Bardwell looked at his hand, marked with blood, resting on the seat, as if considering for the first time the situation in which he found himself.

‘Seems a little ironic, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘A cop instructing a clergyman about faith and justice. Do you forgive those who have sinned against you, Ben?’

‘Honestly?’ I said. ‘I try. But I’m only human. We’re all only human. Trying might be the best we can do.’

He lifted the knife by the blade and handed it to me, the handle pointing in my direction.

‘You’ll need this for evidence, I believe,’ he said.

I took the knife from him gingerly, holding the handle between my finger and thumb so as to reduce contamination of prints, though I suspected such evidence would be unnecessary. Bardwell would not deny killing Daniel McLaughlin, of that I had no doubt.

Hendry approached him then and cuffed him with plastic cable ties, carefully pulling them tight enough to hold, but not too tight. Bardwell did not protest, merely offered his hands out in a gesture of surrender. Hendry checked the restraints once, before stepping back.

Then we made our way downstairs, back out on to the street. People stopped to watch our strange procession, myself in plain clothes carrying a blood-stained knife, Bardwell in his Reverend’s garb, sporting restraints; and, behind, Hendry wearing his flak jacket, gun holstered on his belt. As we emerged, the sun broke through from behind a thick bank of cloud. Bardwell lifted his cuffed hands to shield his eyes, as might one unaccustomed to the light.