Gallows Lane

Chapter Six

Thursday, 1 June

Peter Webb was in his late fifties, having moved to the area in the early 1970s from the English Midlands. He had taken up a position lecturing in Social Sciences in the Institute of Further Education which had opened in Strabane. Still, he claimed he chose to live in Donegal because it was where his family was from originally. He settled in well, buying a small terrace house in the centre of Lifford.

After a few years he met and eventually married a Belfast girl named Sinead McLaughlin. Though her family were Republicans, Webb’s wife was not known to share her siblings’ sensibilities, a fact underlined by her marriage to Webb himself — an English Protestant. As with many English socialists who move to Ireland, Webb’s politics were known to lean a little towards anti-Englishness, something which made locals all the more suspicious of him initially. The only person less trusted than an Englishman who opposes the Irish is an Englishman who supports them.

Webb was tall and wiry, his frame bigger than the weight it carried, which gave him the look of one who has dieted drastically. His hair, once brown, was now mostly grey; likewise his neatly trimmed beard. He needed glasses for reading but had developed a habit of wearing them perched on his head when he wasn’t using them, so that they would never be lost. He did so now as he sat in the interview room, his head twisted slightly sideways as he tried to read the names and initials of former occupants scrawled on the wall beside his seat.

Patterson was standing outside the room, the door held open by his foot, speaking to Costello. I could see Colhoun sitting patiently across the desk from Webb; his demeanour contrasting so clearly with Webb’s relaxed inquisitiveness that it would have been impossible for a casual observer to guess which was the policeman and which the suspect. But then, Webb was not really a suspect.

He knew nothing and knew he had nothing to worry about. I noticed Patterson wasn’t even taping the interview. I suspected that something I had said had hit home; Webb had been lifted to convince everyone else that the guns-find was sound.

As I walked past, unable to look either Costello or Patterson in the face, I overheard Costello.

‘Give him a phone call, then let him sweat it out for the night. Try again tomorrow.’

Patterson did not reply, but as I walked away I felt sure he was staring at my retreating back.

*

Williams and I spent some time going through the list of builders’ names Paddy Hannon had provided. I had sent two uniforms out to the site to take notes of which of them had tattoos on their lower forearms. In addition, one of the techies in Letterkenny was trying to clean up the CCTV footage for us.

While Williams went to call Control and Command in Dublin for criminal background checks on some possible candidates from Paddy’s list, I turned my attention to James Kerr. Although I considered it a waste of time, I had to try to relocate him, as Costello had demanded. The problem was, I had no idea how to do so. I didn’t know where he was staying and his family had long since left the area. As I had brooded on the problem on the way into work that morning, I recalled the one connection I had for Kerr. I hunted out the religious tract he had left in the patrol car the day I had first met him and recorded the phone number for Reverend Charles Bardwell.

I tried phoning Bardwell several times during the next hour or so, in between scanning records for Paddy Hannon’s builders, with little success in either task. The station had emptied for lunch, the back doors swinging open to allow a little air into the place. I was standing just outside the door, having a smoke, when Helen Gorman, a newly trained uniform, arrived. She looked more than a little annoyed.

Are your phones broken or something in here?’ she said, her face flustered, her hair hanging raggedly from under her cap.

‘The phone hasn’t rung,’ I said, flipping the butt of my cigarette into the gutter and coming back inside. Then I noticed that I had misplaced the phone’s handset after my last attempt to contact Bardwell. The station phone had been off the hook for some time.

‘Harkin’s Pharmacy has been broken into,’ she explained, calming down a little. ‘They had to phone Letterkenny to get someone. They sent me on my own.’

‘Anything taken?’ I asked.

‘I … I haven’t been yet. I was hoping for company. In case I screw it up or something. Do you want to come?’

I glanced at my notes spread across the desk. It was too warm to sit inside anyway, I told myself.

‘Why not?’ I said.

Harkin’s Pharmacy is a small building, backing on to the river. The owners also operate a bigger store in Ballybofey and, as a consequence, their branch in Lifford only opens afternoons. Therefore, it was almost lunchtime before the girl opening up the shop realized that someone had kicked in the back door at some stage during the night. It hung off one hinge; several dirty footprints were clear on the area around the handle.

When we arrived, the assistant, Christine Cashell, was standing outside having a smoke. She had turned into quite a pretty girl, her red hair long and tied back from her face, her features fine, her skin fresh and clean. I had met Christine before, while investigating a case which involved the murder of her younger sister Angela.

‘How’s your mum?’ I asked.

‘She’s good,’ Christine said. ‘Taking some typing course in the Tech, in the evenings like. She’s. . she’s good.’

‘And your dad? Any word on Johnny?’

She looked at me suspiciously for a second, as if trying to gauge if I was asking out of genuine interest, or to establish an alibi. Finally, convinced of my sincerity, she shrugged. ‘He calls sometimes. We haven’t really seen him since. . you know, since Angela.’ Neither of us spoke for a moment, then Christine stepped away from me, as if physically distancing herself from the conversation and the memories it recalled for both of us.

‘I’d best clear up in there,’ she said. ‘Mr Harkin’s on his way down.’

We went into the shop together. Surprisingly, the interior had hardly been damaged. I looked around me, searching for some further sign of the break-in.

‘It’s over here,’ Christine said, as if reading my thoughts.

The drugs were stored behind the counter, packed in locked cupboards with letters labelling the doors: A-D’, ‘E-L’, ‘M-R’, ‘S-Z’. Only the final two doors had been broken open, seemingly pulled right off their hinges, the small locks twisted beyond repair.

‘Might be worth dusting for prints,’ I suggested to Helen Gorman, though she had already produced her dusting kit (so new-looking that I suspected this was its first outing). My suspicion was confirmed by the fastidious manner in which she carried out the task.

Within a few moments, it became clear that her work would serve no real purpose. The doors were covered in prints, overlaid so thickly one on the other that in places the white veneer of the door had vanished under the black fingerprint powder.

‘Anything taken?’ I asked Christine.

‘I need to wait for Mr Harkin,’ she explained. ‘He has the inventory list to compare.’

‘Looks fairly deliberate,’ I said. ‘Only two doors opened of the four, which suggests that they were looking for something in particular.’ I gestured around the shop. In the corner stood a glass display cabinet with digital cameras inside. Even that hadn’t been touched. ‘A very specific thief,’ I said, going over to the cabinet. ‘Have you a key for this?’ I asked.

Are you buying?’ Christine said, coming over to unlock the cabinet.

‘More borrowing, really,’ I said, reaching in and lifting one of the digital cameras. ‘I’ll need some batteries too,’ I added, causing Christine to raise an eyebrow quizzically.

When Paul Harkin arrived several moments later, I went out back and took photographs of the shoe prints that had been left in mud on the damaged rear door. By the time I was done, Harkin had already established what had been stolen.

‘Fucking breast cancer drugs!’ Gorman spat, starting up the car to go back to the station once we’d finished with Harkin. ‘What’s the world coming to?’

The thief had been extremely specific, it emerged. He had broken into the M-R cabinet for boxes of Nolvadex, which was used for the treatment of breast cancer. Several boxes of the drug’s generic form, tamoxifen, had also been stolen from the S-Z cabinet.

‘Why would a man steal breast cancer drugs?’ I asked, more to myself than Gorman.

‘Could it not be a woman?’ Gorman asked. ‘Seems more likely considering the drug.’

As she drove I had been flicking through the images on the digital camera I had ‘borrowed’ from Harkin. I held out to Helen an image of the footprint on the door.

‘Only if she’s the Hulk’s sister and wears size 11 trainers.’

‘Fair point,’ she conceded.

‘In fact,’ I said, turning off the camera, ‘might be worthwhile getting those printed out.’ I placed it in the glove compartment for her. Then added, ‘And I suppose you should leave it back with Harkin’s when you’re done.’

She nodded earnestly, as if the idea of doing otherwise had never entered her head. ‘What kind of sick bastard steals someone’s cancer medicine?’

‘Lorcan Hutton would be my bet,’ I said, naming our local drug dealer. ‘And when you bring him in, I’d like to talk to him about something as well.’

The inclement weather of the previous weeks had passed and the sky was brilliant blue. A few wisps of cloud hung raggedly over the hills behind Strabane and the sun was rising higher in the sky daily. The wild rhododendrons were flowering now in blooms big as a man’s fist, the leaves a lush green. I drove up past Croaghan Heights, along the top road which offered a panoramic view stretching from Lifford on into Donegal. I smoked as I drove, glancing down over Peter Webb’s land, across the three rivers into Strabane, where the five giant metal sculptures of dancers and musicians seemed to spin and swirl under the June sunlight.

I considered all that had happened over the past few days: the murder of Karen Doherty, the finding of the guns and drugs, the arrival of Kerr, the impending promotion within the station and the run-in with Patterson. A sense of unease had settled somewhere in my stomach and was spreading through me like a vibration, making my hands shake slightly as I smoked. My futile attempts to get my thoughts in order were interrupted by Burgess radioing through to me to announce that James Kerr was having lunch in a restaurant along the river-front. Superintendent Costello requested that I join Kerr there.

He held his soup spoon in his fist, hunched over in his seat, leaning towards the bowl rather than raising the spoon to his face. He still wore the same clothes that he had been wearing on the day I first met him, his hair a shadow on his skull. He had developed a hint of stubble. The blue canvas bag he had been carrying that day hung now over the back of his chair.

I nodded to the waitress and asked for a coffee when she approached, then sat opposite Kerr. I noticed that, although the restaurant was quite busy, most lunch patrons had sat well away from Kerr, thinking him a tramp, perhaps. I suspected that correcting their mistake by revealing he was an ex-con might not have set their minds at rest.

‘Sleeping rough, James?’ I asked. He grunted and continued shovelling the soup, pausing to scrape a spillage off his chin with his spoon, its edge rasping lightly against his fine beard growth. ‘Don’t mind me,’ I said to him, then thanked the waitress when she brought my drink, gesturing to her that she should use the ten-euro note I gave her to pay for both the soup and the coffee.

He nodded towards the retreating girl; ‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘You’ve no money, have you, James? That’s why you didn’t stay in the B amp;B — isn’t that right?’

He nodded again, tearing a chunk from the bread roll he had been given and smearing it thickly with butter.

‘How were you going to pay for that?’ I asked.

‘I figured one of you lot would turn up and cover it for me,’ he said, smiling.

‘And where are you staying?’

He crooned inharmoniously, ‘Wherever I lay my head, that’s my home,’ and went back to his food.

‘You can’t sleep rough, James, you do realize that, don’t you?’

‘What are you going to do — arrest me for vagrancy?’

‘If you want. You’ll get a dry room for the night; breakfast’s not great but at least there’s room service.’

‘No, thank you, Inspector. I travel as I am — if someone offers me food and shelter, then God bless him. If not, I will wipe the dust of this town from my feet as I leave.’ He spoke without a hint of irony, no sense of the absurdity of his words. He blinked, simplistically, then asked: ‘Can I get dessert as well?’

I stood up to leave. ‘James — I’m supposed to “drive you out of town”, so to speak. I’m not going to do that, because I think you’re on the level. Please don’t make my trust turn out to have been misplaced.’

‘I appreciate your candour, Inspector. I wish to speak to someone. When I have done that, I’ll be on my way; I promise you.’

‘Care to tell me who?’ I asked.

‘No. But I only want to speak, nothing else.’

‘No violence?’

‘None from me; on my honour.’ He raised his right hand as he spoke, his left hand placed on his chest.

As I left I handed the waitress another twenty euros. ‘Give him whatever he wants and give him back the change,’ I said as I left, then turned back to her. ‘And when he leaves, point him in that direction,’ I added, nodding towards Strabane.

‘God bless you, Inspector,’ Kerr called to me as I opened the restaurant door. I looked back. A family seated at a nearby table stared at him, the mother’s face pulled in revulsion, as though he had shouted an obscenity. When he winked at her, the family moved seats.

That evening I sat in the garden and watched Frank playing with a chew-bone. The sinking sun had suffused the air with a pink light of a quality that gave the puffed clouds the appearance of candyfloss and darkened the red azalea blooms the colour of blood. Shane sat beside me in his swing, twisting around in the orange seat, repeating ‘Gagga’ over and over, his tiny features drawn with determination. Debbie and Penny came out and sat on the step with me, each carrying a bowl of ice cream, which we shared. Our house is several miles from our nearest neighbour, so isolated that, over the humming of bees around the garden, the earth was silent. Debbie smiled at me as she handed me a spoonful of ice cream. The world might have been deserted and I wouldn’t have minded. Penny hugged into me, wiping ice cream off her face on to my shirt. I put my arm around her and ruffled her hair, guessing that her display of affection was a prelude to a request.

‘What are you looking for, sweetie?’ I asked. She smiled up at me, her milk teeth marked with strawberry sauce under the smear of an ice-cream moustache.

‘Noffin’!’

‘What’re you really looking for?’ I said, cocking an eyebrow, peering at her with mock suspicion.

‘A hamster called Harry,’ she said, grinning till her eyes disappeared. ‘Please.’

I looked up at Debbie who shrugged and gave Shane a push on his swing. ‘We’ll see,’ I said.

Penny squeezed my leg and leaned into me. ‘Thank you, Daddy. I love you!’

‘I love you too, sweetie,’ I said. The sun crested the hills to the west, filling the sky with a brilliant explosion of warmth that stained the clouds orange and red and created a physical presence in my throat that I could not clear.