Gallows Lane (Inspector Devlin Mystery 2) (28 page)

McLaughlin’s phone emitted one last warning, then went dead. Dempsey replaced it on the night stand, then looked at the number on my display, as if the digits themselves might reveal something.

‘Could be his sister,’ I said. ‘Or his lawyer.’

‘Only one way to be sure,’ Dempsey said, leaning past me and pressing the green call button on my phone. Before I had a chance to protest, however, the number changed to a caller ID which was already saved on my phone. And I was left to wonder what connected Paddy Hannon with Danny McLaughlin, and why he would be phoning him in the middle of the night.

Before we left for the station, Dempsey called down to the morgue to collect the preliminary findings on the murder of Danny McLaughlin. I read through the notes while he drove. McLaughlin had been killed just after 2 a.m., according to the pathologist’s estimates, soon after I had left him. His throat had been slit with a long, sharp, smooth-bladed knife, which, at the very least, placed a question mark over the guilt of Seamus Purdy, who had been caught with a serrated bread knife. Whilst he may have wanted to kill McLaughlin, the evidence, even at this early stage, suggested that he probably hadn’t done so.

However, we arrived at the station to learn that he had already signed a confession. Deegan was buzzing to tell his boss and was more than a little deflated when Dempsey told him to hand the confession to me and give me a few minutes alone with the man. They, in turn, set off to find Paddy Hannon.

Purdy looked exhausted when I went into the interview room. His breath smelt stale in the enclosed space, his whitening hair unkempt, the beginning of grey stubble like sandpaper on his jaw. His anorak was buttoned up incorrectly, the bottom button fitted into the second hole. One of his eyes wept continually as we spoke and he dried it with the cuff of his sleeve.

‘I read your confession,’ I said, sitting down. ‘Why did you do it?’

The answers were prepared. ‘What else could I do for my girl?’ he said, his lip quivering as he tried all the harder to hold it firm. ‘How could I look her in the eyes knowing I did nothing?’ He spat the last word venomously. ‘Nothing,’ he repeated.

‘Would she not prefer to have her father at home, Mr Purdy? To help her come to terms with what happened? Instead of in jail? Would that not be a more fatherly thing to do?’

He glared at me defiantly, then turned his head aside.

‘You asked me what I would do,’ I said. ‘I have a daughter, Mr Purdy. If it happened to her, I would hold her, and promise her that everything would be all right. I’d do everything in my power to let her know that it wasn’t her fault and that, no matter what, I would always love her with my entire heart. And I would never leave her without my support and my love.’

His glare finally broke and he began to blubber, his lips covered in spittle which he made no effort to wipe clean. His entire frame shook with each sob, as he buried his face in his arms on the table and released all the frustration and anger and guilt that he had felt since his daughter’s assault. And I did the only thing I could as a father. I moved my chair beside him and put my arm around his shoulder and sat with him until he had finished.

‘I know you didn’t do it,’ I said to him. ‘No matter that you wanted to, or that you might have. I know that you didn’t. Isn’t that right?’

Finally, among the sobs, I saw him nod his head. I lifted his confession and tore it in two, then left it on the desk in front of us and waited for him to stop crying.

When he seemed to have calmed I stood and placed my hand on his shoulder for a second, then I turned to leave the room.

‘You’re free to go, Mr Purdy,’ I said.

As I opened the door, he called me back. I turned in the doorway. He had twisted in his seat to see me, his face glistening with tears.

‘I was at his room, you know. I nearly did it,’ he said quickly.

‘Doesn’t matter, Mr Purdy, whether you would have or not. You didn’t.’

‘I saw you come out,’ he explained. And someone else go in.’

My hair stood on end at his words. I let the door swing closed again. ‘Who?’

‘I didn’t know him. A priest.’

‘You’re sure?’ I asked, already beginning to suspect where this was going to end. ‘Definitely a priest?’

He nodded, wiping his eyes with the heel of his palm. ‘He wore a collar; middle-aged man. Black hair.’

‘How long was he in there?’

‘A minute, maybe two. It scared me off; I daren’t go in, in case someone else arrived. But I couldn’t go home either; not without having . . . you know.’

I nodded. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr Purdy,’ I said.

I returned to the hospital to check if any local vicars or priests had been doing their rounds the previous night, but the nurse in charge was certain that none had been on the general wards, unless maybe one had been called into ICU for Last Rites. I guessed, though, that this was not the case. As I was leaving, something caught my eye. On a stand in the foyer, nestled among booklets on sexual health and responsible drinking, was a pile of leaflets, still fastened together by a thick rubber band. The title, ‘Turn from Sin and Trust in Me’, stood out in block capitals.

*

Half an hour later, I collected Jim Hendry and set off for Coleraine. Bardwell lived in the North; he would have to be arrested there, and eventually extradited to the Republic to face charges if he had, as I suspected, killed Danny McLaughlin in revenge for the murder of Jamie Kerr.

We were in Coleraine by eleven o’clock, though it took some time to find Bardwell’s church. Finally, we found the street, a pedestrianized area covered with cobblestones which caused the car to shudder as we drove.

I had expected Bardwell to be based in a traditional church. However, it was, in effect, the upper floor of a commercial building which also housed a restaurant and an accountant’s office. The front door lay ajar, leading on to a set of old wooden stairs on which the red linoleum was faded and torn. When we reached the top of the stairs, Hendry drew out his gun and signalled that he would cover me as we entered through the glass door emblazoned with the name Reverend Charles Bardwell. Inside we found ourselves on a corridor, with six doors along its length.

‘Reverend,’ I called, pushing the first door, which led to a toilet. The second opened into a kitchen, the third an office. We trod lightly down the carpeted corridor, checking each room in turn. The fifth door we reached was the only one with a sign: ‘Prayer Room’.

‘Reverend Bardwell,’ I repeated, pushing open the door. Hendry stood to my right, his body pressed against the jamb, his gun ready in his hand. But it was not needed. Bardwell sat alone in the prayer room, his chair one of twelve arranged in a circle. Posters advocating forgiveness and rebirth curled on the walls around him, among them a larger version of the leaflet Jamie Kerr had been handing out in Lifford.

Bardwell sat, hunched in the seat, his arms resting on his knees, his hands dangling between his legs. He still wore an overcoat, which even from here, I could see was spotted with blood. On the seat beside him lay the knife. He looked up at me, straggles of black hair hanging over his face, his cheeks gaunt and stubbled. His skin was sallow, his eyes dull, his shoulders drooped.

‘Can I come in, Reverend?’ I asked. While I did not really believe him to be a threat to me, he still had a ten-inch blade sitting on the chair beside him.

He did not react, so I carefully moved into the room, breaking the circle of chairs in order to sit nearer to him, with four seats between us. I was glad that Jim Hendry stayed at the door, perhaps sensing that I might have more success in coaxing Bardwell out peaceably on my own. Still, I was equally glad that Hendry was still there, with a firearm.

‘I wondered how long it would take,’ Bardwell said finally, though he did not lift his gaze, continuing to stare at the space between his feet. ‘I’m glad it’s you.’

‘I wish I could say the same, Reverend,’ I said. ‘Anything but, in fact.’

He nodded once, his hair covering his eyes.

‘Was it because of Jamie?’ I asked, sliding myself one chair closer to him.

Again he nodded.

‘We had him for it, Reverend, and possibly the man who ordered it. All of them; all the ones who set up Jamie. We’d have got them all.’

‘For what?’ Bardwell said, looking at me for the first time, a flash of anger on his face. ‘To claim “diminished responsibility” – was that the phrase?’

‘He might not have got it,’ I argued weakly.

‘Of course he would,’ Bardwell spat. ‘No one cares. No one gives a shit.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said, moving a little closer, though still out of his range if he lifted his knife.

‘I went there last night and cut his throat. And I listened. I came back here and sat all night. “And still God has not said a word”.’ He snorted contemptuously.

‘Maybe He has said a word, Reverend,’ I said, quietly. ‘Maybe you just haven’t heard His voice.’

Bardwell looked at me blankly, as if the thought had only just struck him.

‘Jamie heard His voice, Inspector. And look what they did to him. Look what He let happen to him.’

‘
We
let that happen, Reverend –
us.
Not God. People do those things. It’s up to the rest of us to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

‘Are you a believer, Inspector?’ Bardwell asked.

‘I have to be, Reverend. I have to believe that what I do, somehow, makes things better.’

‘Fighting on the side of the angels,’ he said, laughing without humour.

I shifted a seat closer to him, and reached out my hand. ‘Come with us now, Reverend. We’ll take care of you.’

His hand rested on the handle of the knife beside him and, just as I myself tensed, I was aware of Jim Hendry from the corner of my eye, raising his gun, in readiness.

Bardwell looked at his hand, marked with blood, resting on the seat, as if considering for the first time the situation in which he found himself.

‘Seems a little ironic, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘A cop instructing a clergyman about faith and justice. Do you forgive those who have sinned against you, Ben?’

‘Honestly?’ I said. ‘I try. But I’m only human. We’re all only human. Trying might be the best we can do.’

He lifted the knife by the blade and handed it to me, the handle pointing in my direction.

‘You’ll need this for evidence, I believe,’ he said.

I took the knife from him gingerly, holding the handle between my finger and thumb so as to reduce contamination of prints, though I suspected such evidence would be unnecessary. Bardwell would not deny killing Daniel McLaughlin, of that I had no doubt.

Hendry approached him then and cuffed him with plastic cable ties, carefully pulling them tight enough to hold, but not too tight. Bardwell did not protest, merely offered his hands out in a gesture of surrender. Hendry checked the restraints once, before stepping back.

Then we made our way downstairs, back out on to the street. People stopped to watch our strange procession, myself in plain clothes carrying a blood-stained knife, Bardwell in his Reverend’s garb, sporting restraints; and, behind, Hendry wearing his flak jacket, gun holstered on his belt. As we emerged, the sun broke through from behind a thick bank of cloud. Bardwell lifted his cuffed hands to shield his eyes, as might one unaccustomed to the light.

By the time I returned from Strabane, having waited with Bardwell while he was processed, Paddy Hannon had been in Lifford station for several hours, ‘helping with inquiries’, Dempsey had told him.

He was still sitting in the interview room when I arrived. I thought of Peter Webb in this same room, relaxed, a little bewildered, certain of his innocence. I also thought of Seamus Purdy, unkempt, distressed, consumed with guilt for something in which he’d had no hand. Paddy Hannon was like neither. His whole bearing was one of arrogance. His hair was perfectly combed back, his face flushed but still smelling strongly of aftershave. His suit jacket hung over the back of his chair and his shirt sleeves were rolled up in a workman-like fashion. A packet of cigarettes lay on the table in front of him and I noticed someone had dug out an ashtray so he could smoke. His lawyer sat with him and I was not at all surprised to see that, once again, it was Gerard Brown.

‘We ought to charge you rent,’ I said to him when I came in.

He smiled without sincerity.

‘Ben,’ Hannon said, half standing. ‘What the fuck’s going on here? These yahoos from Dublin are asking all sorts of ridiculous things.’

‘Routine procedure, Paddy,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ve already told them, I’ve nothing to say.’

‘So I’ve heard. Maybe you could tell me again.’

He lifted a cigarette and placed it in his mouth, opening his lighter before starting to speak, though he did not actually light the cigarette.

‘The phone went in the middle of the night. I thought maybe it was another attack or something on the site, you know. I checked the number, didn’t recognize it, phoned it back, and got no answer.’

‘You have no idea why Daniel McLaughlin would phone you, of all people, at two a.m.?’

He paused to light his cigarette before responding. ‘None,’ he said, snapping his lighter shut.

‘Did you know the man?’

‘Not really. He worked for Declan O’Kane, I think.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘I buy my cars from Decko. You get to know the staff too, you know.’

He blew out a stream of smoke hurriedly, tapping the cigarette against the edge of the ashtray. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t really see what else I can do here.’

‘Did you know Peter Webb?’ I asked.

‘By reputation,’ he said. ‘We might have met once or twice, nothing else.’

‘What about Jamie Kerr?’

‘That’s the guy they found on the tree, isn’t that right? Terrible business,’ Hannon said, stubbing out his cigarette, half smoked.

‘So, you knew none of these people, or what happened to them?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Wish I could help you, Ben, but . . .’ He shrugged in a way which I found strikingly disingenuous.