Bleed a River Deep (23 page)

Within a minute or two I spotted the crime-scene tape and cut up on to the bank and headed east. At jogging pace, even with the smoker’s cough that made me stop and gasp for breath every couple of hundred yards, I caught sight of the barn through the trees within a few minutes.

The building, which was constructed of corrugated metal, was located in a clearing in the middle of the forest. Nearer the edge of the treeline close to it, the forest floor was thick with undergrowth. As I approached I saw the four Gardai crouching behind a tangle of bramble bushes about fifty yards due west of the barn. Then I saw Helen Gorman rise, gun drawn, and step out through the bushes behind which she had been crouched. One of the other officers rose to his feet uncertainly, while his two colleagues held their positions.

Beyond them in the clearing, just past Gorman, I could see Barry Ford. He was dressed in a white protective suit, a paper mask covering his mouth. He was leaning into his car and I guessed that Helen had decided to stop him leaving. He looked up at her approaching and his eyes widened slightly. He leant back into the car again. Gorman shouted to him to get out of the vehicle, thinking he was trying to escape. Too late, I realized that that was not the case. From the passenger seat he pulled out a shotgun and twisted quickly towards Gorman, holding the stock firmly in two hands, at waist level. Gorman froze, her own gun held aloft. Then she lowered her arm as if readying for a shot. I shouted to her as I drew my own weapon. But it was too late.

The blast echoed through the trees, causing the birds above us to break into a cacophony of cries. None, though, matched the visceral scream Helen Gorman made as her body was flung backwards. She landed on the ground near where her colleagues were stumbling to their feet. I managed to discharge two shots in quick succession at Ford, but he ducked behind his car and began to stumble towards the treeline to the far side of the barn.

I dropped to my knees beside Gorman, gripping her hand. The blast had caught her on the chest, shredding her Garda shirt. Deep wounds were gouged from the flesh of her breast and shoulder and blood pumped through my fingers as I pressed my hand on the wounds.

‘Call for help,’ I shouted to the three who stood behind me, staring open-mouthed at their colleague. ‘Call a fucking ambulance!’ I screamed. Finally one of them pulled out his phone, whilst the others knelt beside Helen. One pulled up his sweater and tore a strip from the hem of his shirt to use to plug the deepest of the wounds. I had a first-aid kit in my car, but it was too far away.

Gorman screamed as we pressed on her wounds. She gritted her teeth and gripped harder on my hand, twisting my fingers in her own as each spasm of pain hit her. Absurdly, I recalled my wife, holding my hand in the same manner as she gave birth to Penny.

‘You’re going to be OK, Helen,’ I said, smoothing her hair back from her face. In doing so, I smeared her blood from my hand across her forehead, which was already cold and damp with sweat.

‘Jesus, I’m freezing,’ she said. ‘I’m fucking freezing.’

I put my arm around her as her body shook with cold. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably and her muscles began sporadic contractions.

She screamed once more, a high-pitched yowl such as I had never heard before. Her back arched as she twisted around. She gripped my hand tighter, brought it to her mouth and bit down to relieve the agony she was experiencing.

‘The ambulance will be here soon,’ the officer behind me said.

Gorman attempted to smile, her mouth a tight grimace. Then she looked at me, our hands held together in front of her face. ‘I can’t feel your hand,’ she said. ‘I can’t feel your hand.’ Her voice rose as she started to panic. She began to weep, her words spluttering on her lips, and I realized that tears were dripping from my face too, though I had not been aware that I was crying.

Finally, she gasped once, tightened her grip forcefully, then relaxed. Her eyes shifted their gaze past me to the canopy above and slowly lost their focus. Her jaw slackened and her mouth gaped open. One of the other Guards started CPR, leaning close to her mouth in the hope that she might start breathing, but it was obvious that she was gone.

I marked the sign of the cross in the smear of blood on her forehead, and silently mouthed an Act of Contrition. I pressed her hand to my lips, then placed it by her side. Then, barking orders at the others to remain with her until the ambulance arrived, I lifted my gun and set off after Barry Ford.

As I passed his car, I noticed blood smeared against one of the side panels. If I had hit him, it had been fairly low on his leg, judging by the height of the bloodstain. Still, it would be enough to slow him down.

I ducked in under the branches and entered the woodland proper. To my left I could hear the rush of the river. The forest canopy was eerily silent, the wildlife seemingly scattered by the commotion. Ford must have heard Gorman too. Perhaps he felt some grim satisfaction in her screams.

The lower branches of the pine trees were bare of leaves and needles, and I was able to see a fair distance ahead. Far to my left, heading upriver, I could make out the white-suited figure of Barry Ford. He had a head start on me, though not as much as I had feared.

He obviously caught sight of me at the same time, for he twisted and, steadying himself, raised his gun and fired off a shot.

He was still too far ahead for the shot to count for much and it splintered harmlessly against the trunk of a tree twenty feet ahead of me. The noise of the gun reverberated around us and in its wake the silence of the forest seemed to return with a whoosh.

To return fire would only have been a waste of ammunition at this range. I picked up my pace and kept my head down.

Up ahead I noticed that Ford had stopped and was leaning against a tree trunk. I could make out a patch of bright red on his white trousers. Reloading his gun, he turned and fired a second shot. This one splintered the tree to my immediate left, causing me to duck for cover. At least I knew I had gained on him sufficiently that he was now well within range.

I heard another clunk as he shunted his cartridge into place and a third blast ricocheted off the trees around me. This shot blew off the bark of the tree beside me, causing splinters of wood to rain down on me. My stomach muscles clenched and my legs seemed to lose power.

I glanced around the trunk of the tree I had taken cover behind. Ford was struggling to reload his weapon and I used the opportunity to take aim and fire. The shot hit the ground a foot away from him, scattering dirt and pine needles and causing him to scurry backwards. In his turn he took aim again and fired, though his shot was wide and the pellets lodged in a tree some ten feet away from me.

Figuring I had thirty seconds until his next shot, I broke cover and ran towards him, trying to keep cover between us. He fired again, the shot hitting the trees in front of me. This time, as he leant back against the tree he was using for cover, the white of his shoulder was still visible. I took aim, steadying one hand with the other, and squeezed off a shot.

The spurt of blood from his shoulder was enough to let me know I’d been successful. Ford twisted onto the forest floor, still attempting to aim his gun despite his diminishing strength. Finally, he seemed to give up and his arm flopped useless on the ground, the stock of his gun heavy in his hand.

I came out from my cover and approached him warily, my gun trained on his chest.

‘Let go of the gun,’ I shouted. ‘Now!’

Ford half laughed a gasp. ‘I can’t. You’ve fucked my shoulder.’

‘I will shoot you,’ I said. ‘Drop the fucking gun.’ In the distance I could hear sirens, and I was aware that somewhere behind me someone was calling my name.

‘I can’t, you stupid prick,’ he spat.

I trained my gun on him as I approached. He was on his side, his arm lying partially beneath him. His shoulder was soaked with blood, the tear at the front of the white suit he wore showing that the bullet had passed through his body.

‘How’s the girl?’ he wheezed.

My gun twitched involuntarily. My mouth seemed suddenly dry. I tried to speak and had to clear my throat before I could form any words.

‘You killed her,’ I said.

‘She startled me,’ he said, frowningly.

I nodded, but did not trust myself to speak. My gun was suddenly heavy in my grip. I glanced over my shoulder, attempting to gauge how far behind me the other officers were. My mouth felt furred and I had to lick my lips several times.

Ford seemed to sense my thoughts, for he struggled to raise himself up on his weakened arm. ‘I didn’t mean to kill her, man—’ he started to explain.

I raised my gun from his chest to his head and swallowed hard. It would be easy, I thought. No one could dispute my story. He still had his gun in his hand.

‘Why did you kill Leon Bradley?’ I asked, almost to prevent myself from acting rashly.

‘Who?’

‘Leon Bradley. You shot him in the back. Why?’

Ford raised his empty hand in a gesture of surrender.

‘I don’t know what . . . I can’t . . .’ His gaze moved beyond me, as he now attempted to see where the other Gardai were.

‘Was it about Eligius? Something about Morrison?’

He shrugged.

‘You mugged a fucking postman to try to retrieve letters that Bradley stole? Starting to remember yet?’

A laugh gurgled in his throat. ‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re on. I never touched a post—’

‘Tell me about Morrison,’ I snapped.

He smiled again, then glanced past me. ‘You don’t know what you’re messing with. Don’t fucking get involved with him.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Just don’t mess with him, man.’

‘What’s the connection with Eligius?’

Ford coughed roughly. ‘I don’t know, man. We take stuff into Chechnya for them.’

‘What stuff?’

‘I swear, I don’t know. Something small. A few boxes just.’

‘Who organized it? Morrison or Curran?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about the people you bring back? Who organized that?’

Ford glanced past me again, his tongue darting onto his lips. He was losing blood and, I guessed, getting thirsty. His admission would mean nothing if I were the only person to hear it.

‘Vinnie. The guys we delivered to in Chechnya made an arrangement. They had people who were looking to get out of the country, we had an empty lorry coming across Europe. No one got hurt.’

‘Apart from the people you bring in. What about them?’

‘I just drive the fucking van, man.’

‘We’re going back now. I’m going to remove your gun. If you even twitch at me, I’ll shoot you.’

‘No you won’t,’ Ford said. ‘You need what I know.’ He looked past me once more, and I knew that he had made his decision. I saw his jaw set, an instant before he attempted to raise his shotgun one last time, and seconds before I pulled the trigger of my gun. My bullet shattered Ford’s cheekbone before lodging itself somewhere in his brain pan. His mouth gaped in a frozen O and his eyes rolled in his head as his body slid off the tree trunk onto the forest floor.

That’s how I described the events during the investigation that followed into the shooting of Barry Ford, less than a hundred yards from the Carrowcreel.

Chapter Twenty-four

Monday, 23 October

Back-up arrived a few moments later in the form of one of the Gardai I had left with Helen Gorman. He stood beside me, his chest heaving as he attempted to catch his breath, and looked down on the lifeless form of Barry Ford.

He placed his hands on his upper thighs and leant over heavily, as if he were going to be sick. He spat a thick globule of bile on to the ground and stood erect again. Finally he managed to say, ‘Fucker had it coming to him. Good work, sir.’

I wiped the sweat from my eyes. ‘I got nothing from him. Nothing.’

My colleague, whose name I did not even know, placed his hand on my arm.

‘You got
him,’
he said, and winked.

I could hear other voices approaching, the blue uniforms standing out against the dull hues of the forest. They ran past me as I made my way back to where Gorman’s body lay, her face turned towards the sky, the light blue of her shirt almost entirely purpled by her blood.

The medical crew had torn her shirt open, revealing the extent of her wounds. One of them was comforting the man who had been giving her CPR when I left. Several of our colleagues stood near by, smoking and whispering in hushed tones as they glanced at Gorman’s corpse.

‘Cover her up,’ I said to one of the crew as I made my way over to the barn.

Ford’s protective suit suggested he had been up to something in there and my first thought ran to drugs. Then, as I approached, I caught the strong smell of fuel.

The barn itself was around three thousand square feet. The metal sheeting on the roof had started to rust in places and tiny shafts of light streamed through the gaping holes above us. Inside, there were ten home-brew vats, down the sides of which a corrosive sludge dripped. In the far corner were stacked almost a hundred metal drums. I went over and picked a stick from the ground to lift one of the lids. As I prized up the lid of the nearest vat, the air sharpened with the smell of diesel and another more acrid smell.

‘Green diesel,’ a uniform said, appearing next to me.

I turned and looked at him and either my expression, or the bloody state of my face and hands, made him shift his step.

‘Johnny McGinley,’ he said, holding out his hand then withdrawing it again, quickly. ‘It’s green diesel.’

‘How the fuck do you know?’ I asked.

‘My da owns a farm. He uses green diesel for the machinery and that. That’s what it’s for. This guy was cleaning it, so it can be used in normal cars and that. Remove the dye so the customs men can’t get you. Fucks up your car, though.’

‘What’s that sludge?’

‘Something nasty,’ he said. ‘You use acid to clean the fuel – sulphuric acid usually. That’s the remains of the acid and the dye and shit. There should be a shitload of that stuff about somewhere, though, judging by the state of those pods. He must have dumped it.’