Gallows Lane

Chapter Five

Wednesday, 2 June

I only remembered to follow up the call to my mobile the following morning, as I charged it in the car. I did not place the voice until Paddy Hannon introduced himself.

‘Ben, sorry to bother you,’ he said, his voice breaking up amongst the static of the phone.

‘Paddy — business or pleasure?’ I asked, lighting my first cigarette of the day.

‘Business; yours, actually. I thought of something. . about. . find.’

‘Sorry, Paddy? You thought of something?’

‘On TV … showing the guns. I recognized some … not … field.’

‘What?’ I called into the phone.

‘. . them. . not. . f. .’

I raised my voice further, then realized that volume would not compensate for a broken connection.

‘I’ll call over to the site,’ I concluded, cutting the connection. I added his name to the number I had saved the previous night, turned the car around and headed out towards Raphoe.

Fifteen minutes later, Paddy Hannon spelt out his misgivings.

As he had watched the news report on the find on Webb’s land the night previous, he had noticed the bag of E-tabs which I had seen the day before. He recalled that he had seen a similar bag in the bunker that had been discovered on his land a month earlier. Something indefinable had bothered him about it and he had tried to phone me on the number I had given him. Unable to get through to me, he had hunted out the footage of the news report on the find on his land; his wife had recorded it because he was interviewed and she wanted to show her sister, he claimed. In reality, Paddy’s vanity was well known; he probably kept scrapbooks of all his media appearances.

He noticed, as he watched the report, that, in the display of drugs from his find, the E-tabs were not included. He checked over the news cuttings his wife had saved — again, no mention of E-tabs. The bag was, he argued, too distinctive for him to have mistaken, or forgotten. It was definitely there, on his land, he said. He just thought it was a bit odd, he said. Thought he should let me know.

I lied, and told him that we didn’t always include every item in a display; that there was probably some simple explanation for it and that I would look into it.

Before I left, I remembered the CCTV footage of the previous night. ‘This is going to sound kind of stupid, Paddy, but how many of your workers would you call muscly, with tattoos?’

‘You’re on a building site, Ben. I’d say that just about covers most of the men here. And some of the women.’

As I returned to the car, I reflected on the suspicions I had felt on the day of the second find, on Gallows Lane, with all the emptiness that such vindication brings.

Colhoun was making himself and Patterson a mug of coffee each in the station’s kitchenette when I arrived back. His eyelids were hooded, his eyes bloodshot. The celebration had clearly run into a second day for his breath stank of the previous evening’s drinking. In fact, the whole station was subdued this morning, Patterson in particular slumped over the keyboard of his computer where he had been surfing the Net.

As I came in, Colhoun was studying a pornographic cartoon his partner had tacked on to the fridge. He had his head tilted sideways, clearly attempting to unravel, among all the limbs, who was doing what to whom. He jumped when I said good morning, and blushed brightly at having been caught taking an illicit peak.

‘Ben, I … I didn’t see you,’ he stammered, heaping spoonfuls of sugar into one of the mugs.

‘So I see. How’re things, Hugh? Have a good night?’

‘Aye, it was great, Ben, great. You know how it is; you have to let the hair down sometimes,’ he said, affably.

‘You looked well on TV, Hugh — you and Harry both.’

‘Shine up well. The missus made me buy a new suit, you know.’ Colhoun smiled and blinked as if staring into direct light. His expression was gormless, lacking deceit, yet his eyes shifted nervously. I liked Hugh Colhoun an awful lot but also knew that he was the weaker link in the partnership with Patterson.

‘Whose idea was it to split the first find, Hugh?’ I asked, smiling with a warmth and camaraderie which, in this instance, I did not feel. His blush from earlier drained almost spontaneously and he licked his lips several times, glancing beyond me to where I hoped Patterson was still slumped, recovering from his night’s exertions.

‘What? What do you mean, Ben?’ He laughed unconvincingly, then turned towards his mugs again, struggling to unscrew the cap from the instant coffee jar.

‘I know those E-tabs you found on Webb’s land came from the batch last month. Paddy Hannon phoned me and told me as much. He recognized them, Hugh. That was a silly move; the one thing he’d recognize. Whose idea was it, Hugh? Harry’s?’

‘Harry’s what?’ Patterson asked, stepping close enough behind me that I could smell the beer off his breath, and placing his hand on the back of my neck. His thick, calloused fingers tightened against the skin. ‘Harry’s what, Devlin?’

‘Ben was just asking about the find, Harry. That was all. Congratulating us, like,’ Colhoun stammered, looking from me to his partner and back eagerly. ‘I’ve made coffee, Harry.’

‘Fuck up, Hugh, will you? I’ve a stinking headache.’ Patterson relaxed the grip on my neck but moved in front of me to face me. I resisted the urge to rub the sweat of his hands from where he had touched my skin.

I should have walked away, or at the very least agreed with Colhoun. But, I didn’t. ‘I was saying that Paddy Hannon contacted me to say he recognized the E-tabs from your little display last night as being part of the batch you found on his land last month. He seems to think it might not have been found on Webb’s land at all,’ I explained.

As Colhoun’s nervousness increased, so exponentially did Patterson’s calmness. He smiled at me, though his eyes were devoid of warmth. ‘What’s really eating you, Devlin? Pissed off that you’ve been left out? Pissed off that when you’re up before the promotions panel, you’ll have nothing to say for yourself?’

‘Give it a rest, Harry,’ I heard Williams say, standing in the doorway to the kitchenette.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Patterson spat, pointing at her.

‘Watch your mouth,’ I said, pushing his arm out of the way.

A scuffle of sorts broke out and I was aware of Patterson raising his fist at much the same time I raised mine. The incident, however, did not escalate any further. Burgess appeared at the doorway to the kitchenette. He glared at us suspiciously, then pointed at me. ‘You’re wanted by the superintendent, Detective.’

Costello asked initially for an update on the Karen Doherty case. I explained what had happened the previous night in Club Manhattan and my belief that the person driving the car into which I had watched her climb was also her killer. I also mentioned the tattoo. I would get the technical department in Letterkenny to try to clean up the CCTV footage, but I doubted it could be made any clearer.

Costello then asked about the Kerr case — not that I had been aware that it was a case as such. Finally, as I was about to leave, he said, ‘What was going on out there, Benedict? With you and Patterson?’

‘Nothing, sir,’ I said.

‘Something about Paddy Hannon?’ Burgess had clearly been listening to our conversation and reported back to Costello.

‘I have a problem with these finds, sir,’ I said, looking up at him. He held my gaze without wavering. ‘Paddy Hannon contacted me last night, sir. He claimed that the bag of E-tabs presented yesterday as having been found on Webb’s land actually came from the cache discovered a month ago on his land. He claims that it was not included in the inventory made at the time. He didn’t say as much, but I think he suspects that someone — some Guard — planted them on Webb’s land. Now, as Webb himself hasn’t even been questioned yet, it doesn’t look too good for us.’

‘Paddy Hannon told you this?’ Costello asked, chewing at the inside of his cheek.

I nodded.

‘That’s all we need. Things were looking good too. Jesus, Benedict.’ He rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. ‘Listen, say nothing about this to anyone else. I’ll take care of it.’

‘What. .?’ I stopped myself from articulating a gnawing suspicion that Costello knew more about the finds than he was letting on. ‘It doesn’t matter, sir.’

That evening, just after I put the children to bed, Williams called me to say that Peter Webb had been lifted for questioning about the arms and drugs found on his property, at the bottom of Gallows Lane.