Gallows Lane (Inspector Devlin Mystery 2) (22 page)

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.

Caroline was admitted to Letterkenny General Hospital just after midnight. She was breathing, albeit shallowly. The doctor who examined her identified fractures in her arm and collarbone, and a tiny fracture in her skull. Her blood oxygen levels were also unusually low. In addition she had severe bruising to her abdomen, with the possibility of broken ribs, and several cuts on her face and neck. As best they could tell there were no internal injuries, but only time would confirm that. Now, they could only wait for her to wake.

Adam Ferguson, the Guard who had found her, was still there, wanting to know if she was all right. We stood outside for a smoke, while he told me what he had seen. As far as he could tell, no other car had been involved in the crash. It appeared that, just under a mile from home, she had failed to negotiate a bend in the road and had ploughed straight through a wall, before the car overturned in a ditch. When Ferguson arrived on the scene, she was still strapped into the car, suspended upside down, the seatbelt taut against her chest, making breathing all the more difficult.

Before coming up to the hospital, I had someone collect her son, Peter, and bring him to our home, to be with Debbie and our kids; I hadn’t wanted to bring him up to see his mother until I saw for myself the extent of her injuries.

Costello sat beside me in the waiting area, his whole frame heaving with each breath.

‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘Terrible. The poor wee girl.’ He looked at me, his eyes red, and simply repeated, ‘Jesus, Benedict; Jesus.’

The two of us would sit till dawn, before finally getting word that Caroline had woken and wanted to speak to us.

Her face was badly bruised and puffy, her eyes both blackened with the impact of the smash. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue frequently as she spoke. I held her hand in mine as we stood by her bed, and was reminded of her doing the same for me just the previous evening.

‘What happened, Caroline?’ Costello asked.

‘Where’s Peter?’ she asked, her eyes wide in panic.

‘He’s with us,’ I said. ‘Debbie’s watching him. He’s okay. Are you all right?’

‘Sore,’ she said, attempting to smile. ‘Can’t remember what happened. I felt . . . I felt really tired – really heavy. There was a smell I . . . I . . .’ She faltered.

‘Was anyone else involved?’ Costello asked, but she shook her head.

‘Just so tired. So tired,’ she repeated, her eyes wet with tears.

‘I’m glad you’re awake, Caroline,’ I said, leaning over and kissing her on the forehead. She squeezed my hand lightly.

Before we left, we stopped in with the doctor to check on her progress. He seemed reasonably happy with her, though he had some concerns about her blood oxygen.

‘Was she suicidal?’ he asked, inexplicably.

‘God, no,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘The only time you see blood levels like that is when someone tries to gas themselves in their garage,’ he explained. ‘Make of that what you will.’

Costello phoned through to the station and asked a team to go out to the car wreck and see what they could find. By the time we arrived, four of them had already gathered at the site.

My car was lying on its roof in a ditch about ten feet below the road. The undercarriage glistened with the remnants of the previous night’s rain. The bonnet was concertinaed against the windscreen, the deflated airbag hanging useless from the steering column. Spare change, CDs and a packet of cigarettes from the central compartment now lay on the headlining of the car. The once white upholstery of the headlining was stained with a mixture of ditch water and Caroline’s blood.

‘Have you men found anything?’ Costello called down to the team from the roadway, the incline prohibitively steep for a man of his limited mobility.

One of the officers held aloft a blackened rag. ‘Very simple, sir. Someone stuffed this in the exhaust pipe,’ he called. ‘Fumes would have knocked her clean out with the windows closed.’

As I thought about it afterwards, it made sense. Both of us had felt nauseous, both of us had complained of headaches; certainly lack of oxygen would have exacerbated my panic attack. It would also have explained the smell in the car. On the way to and from Decko’s, the windows had been open, at least affording some clean air. However, by the time Caroline left my house, she had the windows closed against the rain. It also provided an explanation for her blood oxygen levels.

Of course it also meant that the crash was deliberate and that Caroline had not been the intended victim; it was my car, after all. Debbie’s words about my making martyrs of my family echoed in my head. Because of me, Caroline was in hospital; her son was sitting, frightened and lonely in a strange house. It was one thing to put my own life on the line; someone else’s was a very different matter. I considered how I could possibly make it up to Caroline. In the short term, at least, all I could do was track down whoever had done this thing.

In fact, Costello asked that very question.

‘It could have been in connection with Decko,’ I suggested. ‘The remaining gang member, perhaps? Or it could be something to do with the Doherty case. Or someone with a grudge. Peter McDermott?’ After a pause I added, ‘Or Patterson and Colhoun?’

‘Harry and Hugh would have nothing to do with this, man. I know Harry gets worked up, but this goes beyond the pale.’

‘Whoever it was, I guess it’s the follow-up to the sympathy card and the bullet, and the brick through my window. Looks like they meant business.’

‘’Twouldn’t be either of the lads, Benedict, no matter how Harry blusters.’

Despite his assurances, I did not share his evaluation of Patterson and Colhoun, and I would have something to say to Patterson in particular, the first chance I got.

As we drove back to the station, I wound down the window and smoked a cigarette. Costello asked me what was on my mind. I could not, of course, tell him that I was considering the fact that my handling of this case had, perhaps, been responsible for both the death of Decko O’Kane, and almost my own partner’s. In addition, my comments to Costello regarding the legitimacy of the guns find some days earlier had prompted the arrest of Peter Webb, who had, in turn, ended up dead. Every turn I had taken in this case had placed someone else in the firing line. Instead of solving crimes, I seemed to be perpetuating them. Perhaps it was time to pack it up, I thought.