Gallows Lane

Chapter Twenty-one

Wednesday, 16 June

Later that evening, four Garda cars pulled up on to the driveway of Sinead Webb’s house. The whole facade looked even more garish in the twilight, every feature accentuated by the orange floodlights placed along the edge of the lawn.

The NBCI team arrived in their own car. Between them and the rest of us, there were eight officers, three of whom moved around to the back of the house, in case McLaughlin made a run for it. Parked in front of the garage was a green BMW, with what I took to be a personalized number plate reading BMW 6. But it then dawned on me that it was not personalized; it was a showroom. Obviously McLaughlin was borrowing cars from Decko’s showroom and taking them out for the night. It would explain why each witness had placed him in a different car.

I knocked several times at the door before Sinead Webb answered. She wore jeans and a striped T-shirt; her hair was pulled back from her face, her features were haggard and her skin was blotched.

‘Inspector, is something wrong?’

‘I’d like to speak to your brother, Mrs Webb. Daniel McLaughlin. Is he here?’

Her gaze shifted slightly, as she saw the number of Guards standing outside her house. She did not move from the doorway though.

‘In connection with what?’

‘A number of things, Mrs Webb. It really would be easier for all involved if you cooperate. We have reason to believe he is here at the moment. Is that correct?’

‘No, he’s not,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him in some time.’

I nodded, unsurprised by her response. ‘You understand that we have to search your home, Mrs Webb. I have a warrant here, if you’d like to check it.’

While I spoke, the others moved in on either side of us and entered the house. Dempsey divided the team up, dispatching people to different parts of the building.

Sinead Webb took the sheet I offered her, complaining a little about invasion of privacy and a family in mourning, though with little conviction.

I stood in the hallway with her as bodies flitted in and out of rooms. Above us I could already hear furniture being dragged across the floor, doors slamming. The plan was to do a quick scout of rooms first, in case McLaughlin was here. Failing that, a more thorough forensic search could be carried out in the hope that something connecting McLaughlin with Karen Doherty or Rebecca Purdy might be found.

Someone shouted from upstairs and I went up, taking the stairs two at a time. Sinead Webb stayed where she was, which made me guess that her brother probably wasn’t up there. She called no warning, did not try to block my progress, as relatives often do in a futile attempt to buy their loved one a few seconds’ head start.

Sergeant Deegan had found McLaughlin’s room, though the man himself was not there. A set of dumb-bells sat in the corner, in front of a wardrobe. The wardrobe itself was fairly empty: a few pairs of jeans, trousers, shirts, shoes. Beside the bed was a stack of body-building magazines; beneath them a number of pornographic magazines. A chest of drawers sat beside the window, on top of which were bottles of aftershave, deodorants and the like. Among them were several blister strips of tablets; one of which I recognized as tamoxifen, the same as those Kehoe had provided us with. The others I did not recognize, but McLaughlin was clearly taking a cocktail of chemicals, both to build himself up and to negate any side effects.

‘Bag everything,’ I said. ‘Especially any pairs of trainers. Helen Gorman will want those.’ Then I added, ‘There must also be more of these lying around,’ waving a pack of tamoxifen. ‘I want a forensics team in here as soon as possible.’ I decided as an afterthought that it might be best to hold Sinead Webb also. I found it hard to believe that her brother had attacked two girls, presumably had gotten their blood on his clothes, and yet his sister hadn’t noticed it.

Dempsey was talking to her when I went back downstairs, attempting to convince her that it was in her brother’s best interests for us to take him in tonight, without any fuss. As I listened to him, I went back through McLaughlin’s room in my mind. Something was missing. I imagined him again in Decko’s showroom, the bald head, the thick neck bulging over the top of the dirty boiler suit. The boiler suit! There were no boiler suits in his room. But then why should there be? Surely that was the kind of thing you’d leave in the garage.

I tapped Dempsey on the upper arm. ‘Come with me,’ I said. ‘I have an idea where he might be.’ Sinead Webb motioned as if to follow us. ‘Stay in here, please, Mrs Webb,’ I added, gesturing to a female Garda to keep her company.

At the back of the house, the three uniformed guards still stood, ensuring that if McLaughlin was about, he wouldn’t get away across the fields backing on to Webb’s land — the fields where Patterson and Colhoun had made their find. I began to wonder if maybe they had seen someone lurking that day; if maybe I had been wrong in my suspicions.

Any sign?’ I whispered to the uniform standing nearest us as we came out the back door.

He shook his head. I gestured for him to follow us.

The side door into the garage was unlocked; the garage itself in darkness. Sinead Webb’s car, the old Vectra I had noticed on my first visit here, was sitting up on a hydraulic jack, its bonnet yawning open, tools scattered on the floor around it. I squatted down and looked beneath it.

Dempsey moved around the side of the car, his gun raised in his hand. To his left, against the back wall, stretched a long workbench covered with engine parts and rags. I thought again of the rag pulled from my own car exhaust and an image of Caroline, unconscious, flashed in my mind. Beside the workbench, directly in front of Dempsey, were a number of large metal lockers. Dempsey moved to the first, the door of which sat slightly ajar. Using his toe, he kicked it open. Nothing.

As he moved forwards, I noticed, at the edge of the workbench, a packet of cigarettes and a brass Zippo lighter. I gestured to Dempsey and pointed to the cigarettes. He glanced at them, then turned to me and nodded that he understood. It was as he reached to open the second locker that its door smashed open. Knocked off balance by Daniel McLaughlin lunging at him, Dempsey fell to the ground, dropping his gun which discharged a shot into the ceiling. Instinctively, I ducked. Meanwhile McLaughlin had barged his way back to the door, a long monkey-wrench in his great hand, and had come face to face with the uniformed Guard I had asked to join us, whose name I believed to be McGuigan. The man didn’t seem to know how to react, raising his hands in a futile effort to cover his head. As I reached for my own gun, McLaughlin raised the wrench and slammed it down. McGuigan fell instantly and McLaughlin was out the door.

I ran to check on McGuigan and heard various shouts as the two Guards outside alerted the others to McLaughlin’s presence. I heard McLaughlin bellow once and heard the sickening thud of metal slamming into flesh. The next moment came the slam of a car door, and the roar of an engine as he started the BMW. He ground the car into gear and took off at speed, spraying gravel which ricocheted off the garage door. I ran after him, watching his rear lights turn the corner of the driveway. To my left another of the Guards lay on the ground, bleeding from a gouge in the side of his neck where McLaughlin had hit him. His colleague squatted beside him, holding his hand against the wound in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood.

I ran to my own car and got in. By the time I had it started, Dempsey was strapping himself into the passenger seat, a welt the size of a man’s hand already purpling on his forehead.

‘I’ll kill the fucker,’ he spat.

At the end of the driveway I halted, unsure which direction to take. To our left, the main road stretched back towards Lif-ford; the road was straight for some distance and we could see no traffic, though McLaughlin had a head start on us and it was possible that he could have made it out of our sight. I guessed, though, that he would have turned right for the road in that direction bent out of sight just a few hundred yards past the entrance to Webb’s property. And so that was the direction I took, while Dempsey radioed through to the station for backup, and for someone to set up a roadblock on Lifford Bridge, in case McLauglin tried to cross the border.

But I began to think that I knew where he was going after all. One of the back roads near Clady would take him into the North quickly and without the likelihood of being stuck behind slow-moving traffic or running into more Guards. He might have suspected that, if we were looking for him, we’d have the main roads closed. A pity we hadn’t been that smart ourselves, I thought.

I used all my weight and pressed my foot flat against the floor, the speedo needle quickly quivering at just under 150 kph. Dempsey gripped the dashboard as we drove, squinting into the distance for a sign of McLaughlin. Finally, on a long straight stretch we thought we caught sight of him, his tail lights visibly wavering across the two lanes of road which were, thankfully, empty at this time of the evening.

As I had expected, I saw his brake lights flash, and the car attempted to turn sharp left on to the road through Clady into the North. He had evidently misjudged the junction, however, and the car overshot it, spinning out of control on to the grass verge. For a few seconds, it was difficult to see through the cloud of dust and grit whether he had crashed. Then the dust cleared and we saw him reverse the car to take the turn again. All in all, his manoeuvre had cost him about half a minute; more than enough time for us to close the gap on him sufficiently to visually identify him and the car with certainty. Of course, I myself had to brake to avoid a similar incident at the junction, which gave him back some of his lead.

The road he had taken crossed the River Finn on a one-lane brick bridge with passing bays placed along its length. I prayed that he might get stuck. And it seemed my prayers were answered. As we turned the junction we saw a traffic jam. The green BMW sat abandoned at the back of a queue of vehicles, the engine still running, the driver’s door flung open. McLaughlin was attempting to cross on foot.

We screeched to a halt behind his car. The driver of the car immediately in front of McLaughlin’s was out of his vehicle and leaning over the parapet of the bridge. As I approached him, I raised my hands in a questioning gesture.

The man mouthed, ‘He’s down there,’ pointing exaggeratedly to beneath the bridge.

McLaughlin would have been quicker just running across the bridge, but, when I looked ahead, I understood why he’d had to go under instead; the blockage on the bridge was a PSNI checkpoint.

Two paths led under the bridge, one on either side of the road. Dempsey had already set off to the left, where the driver had pointed. I took the right; both paths would eventually meet under the bridge.

The path was overgrown with brambles and raspberry canes, the berries small and hard and green. I tore through them as best I could. It was fairly clear that McLaughlin had not come this way, but having come so far myself I decided to persevere.

The air beneath the bridge was cold and damp and smelt of decaying leaves. The river’s surface barely rippled in the breeze. The noise I made startled a heron which took to the air. I began to suspect that we had come the wrong way, then heard the splash and a shout from Dempsey. Looking up to my right, I saw McLaughlin, dressed in jeans and white T-shirt, having broken free from the tree line, wading across the water. To have crossed directly under the bridge would have brought him up at the PSNI checkpoint. For several hundred yards on either side of that path, the opposite bank was blocked by a wire fence. McLaughlin clearly intended to wade upstream until he reached the end of the fence.

Following his lead, I tucked my gun into my waistband, and jumped down into the water. I had to work against a fair undercurrent and my feet skittered on the slimy pebbles on the riverbed. I stayed as close to the edge as possible and made my way up towards McLaughlin. He himself was now halfway across, but would need to work upstream to get past the fence. His strides were big but slow, his muscles shifting against his straining T-shirt, his back massive and intimidating.

He turned at the sound of our splashing, and I heard Dempsey below me shouting at McLaughlin to stop, though this, if anything, served to make him lift his pace.

I moved towards the centre of the river now, my legs aching and my heart racing. Sweat stung my eyes and the taste of salt filled my mouth. ‘Jesus, don’t panic,’ I told myself, over and over.

McLaughlin had reached the other side and was trying desperately to find a gap in the fence, rather than keep going until its end. He pawed at the wire, glancing upwards continually, attempting to gauge its height, which I put at about fifteen feet. He was strong, but he was also heavy. Still, several times he attempted to jump up and grab hold of the wire, only to be forced back down into the water by his own weight.

I turned and saw Dempsey not far behind me and, beyond him, a number of PSNI officers wading through the water alongside the bank. Eventually one of us would reach McLaughlin and he knew it. His jumping became more frantic, and he snarled frenetically. His fear was palpable. Drawing nearer to him, I reached behind my back for my gun. As I did so, McLaughlin dipped his big hands into the water and pulled up a log dripping with mud. He tossed it from one hand to the other as if it were weightless. Then he lunged at me.

His aim was far wide, but I still had to shift quickly to avoid him. In doing so, I lost my balance on the rocks and fell. The world spun from me, all noise became dull and echoed. The river water tasted of mud, and something else. I fought to breathe but only pulled in more water. As I struggled to stand, I felt a blow on my back and I thought my spine had split. My vision splintered then corrected itself, my head thudded, my legs gave way beneath me. I tried to stand again; this time the log hit me in the ribs. I heard the snap, amplified through the water, though I was unsure if it came from my ribs or the wood. The blood in my mouth tasted of old pennies. My stomach turned and I vomited out into the water, over myself. I looked up at McLaughlin as he raised the log above his head. His thick biceps were taut, his chest muscles strained so tightly against the fabric of his T-shirt I was sure it would tear. His facial expression lacked any sign of humanity, yet his eyes seemed frozen in a narcotic gaze, as if he were deriving some sort of sexual gratification from the violence of his actions. His face terrified me and I could think of nothing. I swung a punch in low, under his ribs, the impact registering no more than a dull thud. If McLaughlin bent slightly, that was the total extent of his reaction, though my fist throbbed with the punch. His eyes flashed in fury and he opened his mouth in a snarl as he prepared to bring the full force of the log on top of me.

Then I heard muffled shouting, followed by a single, hollow crack.

McLaughlin stopped and looked down at his chest, where red petals of blood were flowering beneath his right shoulder. He looked at the widening stain in bewilderment, dropping the log in the water. His thick hand pawed at the wound once, then his eyes rolled and he fell backwards into the river, making no attempt to break his own fall.

Spitting out bile and river water, I turned to see Dempsey still standing in position, his pistol trained at McLaughlin’s now inert body, his face drawn and pale. Behind him, thrashing through the water, came a group of policemen, guns held aloft in the river’s heavy air. Their mouths opened and closed, and I knew they were speaking, but all I could hear was the rush of the river, and somewhere a heron’s mighty wings pounding majestically against the sky in time with the beat of my own heart.