Gallows Lane

Chapter Nineteen

Tuesday, 15 June

The NBCI team had taken turns through the night questioning Decko, having taken a cheek swab for DNA testing. Despite their better efforts, as yet he had confessed to nothing, claiming not even to know James Kerr.

At ten o’clock, Dempsey asked me if I wanted to have a go. To be honest, I had nothing to say to him. My own belief was that if he could be held long enough for the DNA test to come back, the comparison would be enough to charge him.

The sample had been taken almost immediately after Decko had been brought in for questioning the night previous. These things normally took a week or two, but Dempsey assured me that, as the request was coming through the NBCI, we’d have a result within days.

Decko’s lawyer, Gerard Brown, had been with him most of the night, ensuring he got his obligatory breaks and cups of tea. He was still with him, his normally heavy set face even puffier than usual with lack of sleep and the heat of the holding cell. Some time earlier that morning he had requested a fan be brought into the room, likening the conditions to torture. The fan had been duly placed and, though it was directed fully in his face, even with his jacket and tie off and his shirt-neck wide open, his face was slick with sweat.

Decko looked flushed and a little unkempt, in stark contrast with his previous debonair style. His hair gel had long since dried in the heat, causing his hair to stand in clotted spikes. His eyes were baggy and red-rimmed and he spoke nasally, a handkerchief held against his running nose. ‘Hayfever,’ he explained.

White flecks of tissue paper were caught in his moustache and he bit continually at his lower lip.

‘Oh, you’re here,’ he said when I came in. I handed Decko and the lawyer a can of cola each and opened one for myself.

‘Cheers,’ he said, opening the can. ‘You’re Good Cop, I take it,’ he laughed. ‘After those Dublin bozos.’

‘Neither good nor bad, Mr O’Kane. Just a fresh pair of eyes, looking to see if we’ve missed anything.’

‘I think this is just ridiculous, now,’ Brown said. ‘Either charge my client or release him, but this continual coming and going with no real purpose is getting us nowhere.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said, taking out my notebook. ‘Mr O’Kane, where were you on the night of Wednesday, 9 June?’

‘In the house, same as I told the others.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No, actually, you know, now you’ve asked twice, it’s all coming back to me. I was up a field somewhere crucifying some nutter with me mates.’

‘Really?’ I asked, deadpan.

‘What the fuck do you think?’

‘I think you probably were. How did James Kerr’s religious tract get into your car?’

‘I have no idea,’ he said, and for once I knew that he was being wholly sincere. ‘Maybe I. .’

The conversation was cut short by Brown’s mobile phone ringing. He looked at the caller display and said, ‘Excuse me,’ getting up from his chair and standing in the corner of the room.

‘You were saying, Mr O’Kane, about the leaflet,’ I urged him, but it was to no avail. He was watching Brown, or, more correctly, I think he was attempting to piece together the content of the conversation from Brown’s hushed responses. Certainly that’s what I was doing.

Then Brown snapped the phone shut and came back to us, smiling broadly. ‘I think it’s time my client had a break, Inspector. I’m expecting something quite significant within the next ten minutes or so; I think it’s important that I have some time with my client to discuss his case, based on this new information.’

I began to feel more than a little uneasy. ‘Fair enough,’ I managed to say.

‘A package will be delivered here shortly. Perhaps you’d let me know when it arrives.’

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘I think we’ll need a TV and video as well, Inspector,’ he said, and my guts contracted so forcefully that I believed I would be sick.

At that moment, I heard a commotion outside in the corridor.

‘Where is he?’ I heard, and just as I pulled open the door to see what was happening, Patterson appeared in my field of vision.

‘You fucking prick,’ he spat, and before I had time even to raise my arm in protection, he swung and punched me full in the face, taking my feet from under me and knocking me on to the table in the interview room, spilling the cans of cola over myself and the floor.

The room spun as I tried to reconcile all the physical sensations I was feeling. I caught Decko’s face, laughing, and Patterson, spitting at me, held back by Burgess and Dempsey. Colhoun was behind, looking pale and sickly. Finally Costello appeared, his face aghast, his skin red and flushed. I heard someone groan, and realized it had come from me. Then I tasted blood in my mouth and became aware that my nose was aching. I knew it had been broken. I tried to stand up, but the world seemed to give way under me, and I fell again, like a drunk man.

Dempsey and Caroline, who had just come in, helped me to my feet, while Patterson was ushered out of the room and forcibly led down the hallway.

‘I’ll fucking kill you,’ he shouted. ‘You’re dead, Devlin, you prick.’ His voiced echoing down the corridor towards me. ‘You’re fucking dead.’

Finally the room was quiet. I heard Dempsey ask if I was all right, felt his arm grip the crook of my elbow, helping me up from the floor. The other people in the room seemed to be frozen in a still, grey light. I nodded uncertainly.

‘He’s just been suspended,’ Dempsey hissed at me. ‘Being investigated over claims he deliberately hid arms in a local field, then pretended to find them.’

I looked at Caroline, but she did not speak. She simply returned the look with concern, and I believe it was not entirely because of the attack I had just suffered.

I went into the toilets to clean the blood off my face and, more importantly, to escape the glare of my colleagues, most of whom presumably believed that Patterson and Colhoun had been suspended because of me. My eye was already puffing up, my nose clearly out of joint. Biting hard against the flesh at the base of my thumb, I cracked my nose back into place. A fresh clot of blood splattered into the sink, and all at once, I felt hot and cold, shivering and sweating simultaneously.

I sat in the toilet for some time, feeling slightly absurd, waiting for Patterson and Colhoun to leave. I couldn’t tell them that I had lied in my interview — that I had nothing to do with their suspensions. I knew that they would not believe me.

Finally, someone knocked on the door. Inspector Dempsey came in hesitantly, standing in the doorway.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Do you need another minute or two?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

His concern however was not wholly altruistic. ‘I need you in here. We have a problem with O’Kane.’

I had momentarily forgotten about the video that was on its way. I heard myself groan, involuntarily.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Dempsey asked again, looking at me quizzically.

This time I said nothing, but stood up unsteadily and followed him out of the room.

Several people walked past me on the way to the interview room. None looked me in the face, nor inquired as to my state. Someone had ratted on Patterson and, despite his crass behaviour and offensive attitudes, you never turned on your own. As quickly as possible I made my way to the interview room.

The others had already watched the tape, for it was paused at the end of the shot: a single figure, half lit, was scurrying away from Decko’s car.

‘Play it again,’ Dempsey said, gesturing with his chin towards the TV. Brown, who had replaced his jacket and tie ahead of his imminent departure from the station, obliged.

I hardly needed to watch the tape for I knew what would happen. It seemed odd watching myself from above, as though I were an observer in my own life, a thought which recalled the sensation I had experienced earlier of floating outside of myself. Best not think of that, I told myself.

Throughout most of the tape, the image was too distant and too obscure for any possibility of identification. Only in one frame did the figure turn towards the camera, the light catching his face and half-revealing his features; but even then, the image was so blurred that no one could tell it was me.

‘I think this puts things in a new perspective, gentlemen,’ Brown said, pausing the tape again.

‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ I argued. ‘Someone trying to steal your car. I don’t see the link between the two.’

‘It looks to me like someone putting something into the car, not trying to take it,’ Brown said. ‘Someone is seen acting suspiciously around my client’s car. Then you get an anonymous tip-off and this piece of evidence inexplicably appears in that very car. After what we’ve witnessed here today, I think that the grounds for detaining Mr O’Kane any further are very shaky.’

‘Recognize who that is?’ Dempsey asked me, pointing towards the screen.

‘Could be anyone,’ I said.

‘That’s what I thought you’d say,’ Dempsey replied. He turned to Brown and the custody sergeant standing at the door. ‘Let him go.’

Decko left the building shouting about false imprisonment and compensation, though it was unconvincing bluster. I contented myself with the thought that his release was a temporary thing. I had succeeded in getting a DNA sample from O’Kane. When his sample matched that taken from Kerr’s fingernails, his next detention would be a more permanent one.

That afternoon, Jim Hendry called me back. ‘I believe you met Mr Bond?’ he said.

‘Sorry, Jim,’ I said, immediately. ‘I let slip that I knew the files had been edited.’

‘So I heard,’ Hendry said, in such a way that I was unable to read the emotion behind the words.

‘I hope you don’t get any hassle over it.’

I heard him sniff at the other end of the line. ‘The man’s an asshole,’ he said. ‘I mean, calling yourself Mr Bond for a start.’ We both laughed, grateful to dispel whatever tension had been there.

‘So, what can I do you for?’ Hendry asked, his usual bonhomie returning.

I told him about our search for the man with the Cuchulain tattoo. He indicated that he knew someone who might help, and suggested I join him in Strabane later that evening. I looked around for Caroline but she was nowhere to be found.

Before I left the station, Costello called me into his office. He looked exhausted, though he had aged years in the space of a day. He rubbed at his chest as he spoke, belching slightly, as if suffering from indigestion.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

‘Fine, sir,’ I said.

‘Another balls-up with O’Kane, eh? That fucker Kerr landed us in it, just like I thought he would.’ He tapped the table softly with the tips of his fingers. ‘What a way to go,’ he said, a little sadly, and I was unsure whether he was referring to his own retirement or the method of Kerr’s death.

‘What’s happening with Colhoun and Patterson?’ I asked.

‘Suspended without pay, pending an investigation. Might take weeks, the way things are going. Might hold up the Promotions List.’

I nodded, grateful that I didn’t have to ask.

‘They think it was me,’ I said. ‘Everyone thinks it was me.’

‘I know,’ Costello said softly. ‘How did you get on?’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Garrison asked about the guns find directly. I lied. I thought it was for the best.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. They already knew the finds were dodgy.’

‘How?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. That bloody Powell woman was here first thing to tell me. Someone contacted her. Could have been Paddy Hannon.’

‘Maybe,’ I agreed. He had reported his concerns to me, and nothing had been done. If the interview panel knew this, and knew that I had been told, then I had shown myself a liar when they asked me about the find and told them I believed it to be kosher.

‘What about Decko? What’s going to happen to him?’

‘He was on the radio already, claiming all kinds of things. I just had the press on an hour ago looking for a statement. I told them he was released pending the results of forensics tests based on DNA samples. I hope to Christ they help us nail the bastard,’ he said, then winced at the inappropriateness of his comment.

Williams was waiting for me in the car park. She was leaning against the side of the car, her sunglasses perched on her head. She stood away from the car as I approached.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ I said.

‘Was it you?’ she asked.

‘What do you think?’

‘Was it you, sir?’ she asked again. ‘I need to know,’ she added, looking me full in the face.

Something hung between us, something intangible.

‘No, Caroline,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t me.’

She continued to stare at me for a moment, as if assessing my words. Finally she seemed satisfied. ‘I’m sorry. I had to ask.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘We are partners, after all.’

She smiled. ‘Not quite, boss.’ Then she added, ‘How’s the nose?’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I have to meet Jim Hendry tonight in Strabane, about the Doherty case. Do you want to come?’

She considered it for a second. ‘Why not?’

I collected Caroline around six-forty and we made our way across to Strabane. The river was low with the heat, fishermen in the centre of the water only knee-deep in their waders. The summer seemed to be gathering, the heat building, as if in preparation for something.

I noticed that Caroline was wearing make-up. She also wore jeans and a snug-fitting purple satin top. I wondered which was more significant: the fact that she was dressed that way, or the fact that I noticed it.

‘You look well,’ I said. ‘Going on somewhere afterwards?’

She blushed slightly at the compliment. ‘No, I just thought I’d make an effort.’ She smiled to herself, then added: ‘Jesus, does that mean I look like a dog’s dinner usually?’

‘No, I. . I’m just saying you look nice — well,’ I stammered.

‘Thanks,’ she said, then turned her head and looked out of the window.

We met Hendry in the car park of a local hotel. As we went into the lounge he explained who our contact was.

Jackie Cribbins had lived in Bangor for most of his life. He’d seemed an inoffensive sort, Hendry explained. Well-known character in the town; always seen pushing one of those wheeled shopping baskets around. He hung around bus stations, shopping centre doorways, joking with the groups of kids who gathered there.

He used to swap CDs and games with them. Perhaps give the older ones the odd cigarette. He seemed pathetic; they felt a little sorry for him, a little guilty at taking advantage of his need for friendship.

‘It took a while before people worked out he was a kiddie fiddler,’ Hendry said. ‘They burnt him out of his house. He made it here before he found a place where no one knew him. We keep his past activities quiet on the understanding he keeps his ears open for us.’

‘Kiddie fiddler,’ Williams repeated with disgust, when he had finished.

‘Yeah,’ Hendry replied, nodding his head, having misinterpreted her disgust as being aimed at Cribbins, when I suspected it was directed more at him for the flippant manner in which he had described Cribbins’s activities.

‘Does he know anything?’ I asked.

‘Not yet, but he’ll do what he can.’

‘What about money?’

‘I normally give him a twenty — all you need’s a name, right?’

I nodded. As we entered the bar I immediately recognized Cribbins. He was a small, brown-haired man with glasses. His skin was swarthy and youthful looking and I smelt moisturizer off him as we spoke. When I palmed him a twenty, his skin was soft and moist. He held my hand a moment too long. I noticed that Williams didn’t touch or speak to the man during our entire meeting, and in fact struggled hard to keep an expression of condemnation hidden.

‘A big man with a tattoo. It won’t be easy,’ he said, sipping at his orange juice.

‘Big, bald, built like a brick shit-house, tattoo on the left arm, picture of Cuchulain on a tree possibly. Drives a sports car, or sports cars of varying colours.’

‘What has he done?’ Cribbins asked. ‘Don’t mean to pry, but is he violent, I mean?’

‘Could be, but usually to young girls. All I need is a name; you have no reason to go near him.’

‘How do I contact you?’ Cribbins asked me, but Hendry intervened before I could speak.

‘You don’t. You contact me and I’ll pass on the message,’ he said. I guessed he wanted to keep his snitch for himself, which was fair enough. To be honest, the thought of future dealings with Cribbins was not even slightly appealing.

We finished our drinks and left, Hendry leaving with us, Cribbins remaining in the bar with his orange juice.

‘I’m sorry again,’ I said. ‘About Bond.’

‘Forget it. He was a bit pissed about my pushing you in his direction. Still, I denied everything. Webb was small fry, by all accounts, anyway. Whatever he was doing for Special Branch, I don’t think it has a bearing on why he was killed.’

‘Hope it didn’t fuck up your chance for, you know. .’ I added.

‘Promotion. Nah! Few more rounds of golf, lick a few more arses, everything’ll be forgotten.’

‘Nice to see good honest hard work paying off,’ I said, trying not to think about my own dwindling chances of promotion.

Once in the car, I asked Caroline if she was okay.

‘Fine,’ she said, her teeth gritted.

‘What’s up?’

‘Fucking “kiddie fiddler”,’ she spat. ‘I have a son. You know?’ She looked across the car at me, pleadingly, hoping that I would share her outrage.

‘Gallows humour,’ I suggested. ‘Jim’s one of the good guys.’

Our conversation was cut short, however, for just as we crossed the border, my mobile rang. It was Dempsey.

‘We have a problem. Is Williams with you?’

Williams now, not Caroline. ‘Yes, she is,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s Declan O’Kane,’ he said.

It took half an hour to get to Decko’s. We drove with the windows down to keep cool. Even so, the car smelt stuffy and the air was heavy with diesel fumes; in fact, I had a headache by the time we reached Decko’s house. It looked no different than the last time I had been here, save for the police cars and ambulance parked outside.

We were waved straight through by a uniform from Letterkenny and directed to the back of the house. There we met Dempsey and his sergeants by the side of a swimming pool, in which floated the body of Declan O’Kane.

He lay face down, his arms hanging useless in the water. The bullet which had killed him had torn a red gash in the back of his shirt as it exited. The water though had washed the blood away, exposing only the angry wound. A group of Gardai leant over the pool’s edge, using nets to drag the body towards them.

‘Any sign of the gun?’ I asked.

‘None.’

‘Any signs of forced entry?’

Again a shake of the head. ‘He knew whoever killed him,’ Dempsey said.

A number of Scene of Crime Officers were milling about, dusting for fingerprints, sifting through the longer grass at the edges of the lawn for the gun or discarded casings.

A Medical Examiner I didn’t recognize was working at the body now that it had been removed from the pool. After examining the skin and the gunshot wound he pressed on Decko’s chest and water and foam bubbled up out of his mouth.

‘Detectives,’ the ME said. ‘You might want to take a look at this.’

He repeated the procedure again.

‘What of it?’ Dempsey said.

‘The pathologist will be able to tell for certain, but it looks like the victim swallowed a lot of water before he died. In fact, the foam you see confirms it.’ He squinted up at us, pushing his glasses up on to his nose with a gloved hand. ‘Now, I’m no ballistics expert,’ he continued, ‘but I’d have to think that a gunshot wound like that would kill you straight away.’

‘Meaning he swallowed the water before he was shot?’

‘I’d have to say so, yes.’ He moved Decko’s head slightly and pointed to purple markings just beneath the hair line at the nape of the neck. The marks were round and evenly spaced around the circumference of his neck.

‘Finger marks?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘I’d have to think so. I’d say Mr O’Kane had his head held under water at some point before he died. The bullet entry wound is from the front, though, so whoever did it held him under water, then lifted his head out, turned him around to face them, and shot him.’

‘If they’d been trying to drown him and wanted to speed it up, they’d just have shot him in the back, eh?’ Dempsey added.

‘You’d have to think so, yes.’

‘Maybe he was being tortured — questioned and held under water until he was ready to answer?’ I suggested.

The ME looked at me, his expression blank behind his spectacles.

‘You’d have to think so, yes.’

The evening sunlight filtered through the trees at the end of the lawn, creating a flickering pattern on the pool surface. Even now, in the fresh air, my head felt like lead and my thoughts were slow.

‘What do you think?’ I asked Dempsey.

‘I think that someone panicked after Decko was lifted, especially when he got out so soon. Maybe they figured he’d named names. Arrived here to try to find out what he’d said.’

‘There were three other people involved in the Castlederg job with Kerr. Peter Webb hired him. Kerr’s description to Bardwell suggested to me that Decko was one of the remaining two.’

Dempsey nodded. ‘And what’s happened here fairly much confirms it. Why kill him if he had nothing to say?’

‘So we have a killer still running around out there, having picked off each member of his own gang.’

Dempsey and I stood quietly, side by side, surveying the expanse of lawn Decko O’Kane had bought with the profits of his crimes.

‘You have to wonder whether it’s worth trying to stop them,’ Dempsey said. ‘Just let it happen, and mop up afterwards.’

Caroline had been working with the other sergeants, helping the forensics teams search the perimeter. She came over to us.

‘I’ve a thumping headache,’ she said, shaking her head and stretching wide her eyes, as if tired.

‘Me too,’ I said.

‘Were you two out partying or something?’ Dempsey said, nodding at Caroline. ‘This blade’s dressed to the nines.’

Caroline covered her embarrassment quickly. ‘Would youse all shut up! Jesus!’

One of the NBCI sergeants shouted for us from the side gate, where a SOCO was squatted, dusting the bolt.

‘We might have something here,’ he said.

The SOCO pointed with his brush to a faint area just above the circle of the bolt.

‘This has all been wiped clean; but there’s a partial print just here, as if the person who wiped it just brushed it with his finger. Not sure how clear it’ll be, but we’ll try our best. Might be unusable.’

‘Good work, anyway,’ Dempsey said, patting the man on the shoulder. The SOCO beamed back at him with pride and I began to re-evaluate my initial impressions of Inspector Dempsey.

However, as Williams and I turned to leave a little while later, Dempsey called to us.

‘Of course, if O’Kane was telling the truth, then whoever put that leaflet in his car fairly much had the man killed.’

He nodded, almost to himself, put his hands behind his back, and turned, as if to stroll down the manicured lines of the lawn.

*

I had barely driven a mile when the panic attack which Dempsey’s words had elicited became so bad that I had to stop. Without even turning off the engine, I opened the door and tried to vomit on to the grass verge at the side of the road.

I felt Williams’s hands rubbing my back again, heard her voice as she tried to calm me. Then she took my hand in hers and, speaking to me slowly and quietly, got me to straighten up.

‘Breathe,’ she repeated several times, ‘take deep breaths. Everything is okay.’

After a few moments I had recovered enough to get out of the car. The windows were all open to let out the heat, but even with that, the air was heavy with diesel fumes.

‘I’ll drive,’ Caroline said, her hand rubbing my back.

As we stood by the side of the road, the temperature dropped almost in an instant and the sky darkened.

‘More thunder,’ Caroline said.

Sure enough, a moment later the first fat dollops of rain spattered off the roof of the car and hammered on to the dusty road. I ran around the car and climbed into the passenger side.

Caroline drove home, the rain so torrential along the way that, despite the stickiness, we had to close the windows.

When we reached my house, Caroline said she would take a taxi home, but I refused. It made more sense, I argued, for her to take my car and to collect me in the morning. I felt nauseous; my head was heavy and my brain thudded against my skull.

‘Thanks, Caroline,’ I managed to say, and we faced each other awkwardly. I leaned over and hugged her lightly, and she responded.

‘Take care,’ Caroline called as she drove away. ‘Feel better.’

The time was nine-forty when I got into the house and began to feel slightly better, the familiar surroundings helping me to ground myself. I drank tea and took two painkillers. I tried to smoke a cigarette at the back door, but it made me feel worse.

It was around ten-twenty that we received word that a car had been found in a ditch, after seemingly being involved in an accident. The Garda who found it knew it to be mine. When first he saw a female figure strapped unconscious inside, he assumed it would be Debbie. Only when he looked closer did he recognize Caroline Williams.