Authors: Brian McGilloway
‘I tried calling a few minutes ago but it went to voicemail.’
‘I’m on Islandmore, over at the Cleary dig. I must have lost reception.’
‘Anything found yet?’
‘Nothing. The diggers were petrol bombed last night following Sean Cleary’s interview. Everything has been held up. I hope he’s happy.’
‘I doubt it. He’s over here. And he’s dead.’
Hendry was waiting for me at the police cordon at the entrance to Beechmount Avenue, just off the main thoroughfare of Melmount Road in Strabane. He wore a loose-fitting suit
that served only to accentuate his wiry frame. He raised one hand in salute when he saw me approach, the other hand tugging at the edges of his sandy moustache.
‘He’s in the playground,’ Hendry said, as I ducked under the cordon and followed him along the road.
‘What happened to him?’
‘Looks like a shooting,’ Hendry said, glancing back at me.
‘Who found him?’
‘A young mother, bringing her kids in for a run-around this morning. He’s down at the back.’
‘How did you ID him so soon?’
Hendry shook his head. ‘Apart from his appearance on TV last night? We found his wallet lying a few feet from the body; emptied apart from his supermarket loyalty card which had his
name.’
As we walked, I glanced across to my left. The entire far side of the street was now derelict wasteland. A factory had once stood here but, since its demolition some years earlier, the spot had
not been redeveloped. The entrance gates remained locked, but had since been bent off at the hinges on one side to allow the local kids access to the site. A gate hut at the entrance remained, the
door burned away. Graffiti was scrawled over its walls, blue bags of empty beer cans piled against the wall nearest us.
‘Have they still not done anything with that place?’ I asked, nodding across.
‘No,’ Hendry said. ‘It’s a bloody pain. Youngsters use it for a drinking den. Plus the Halloween bonnie’s in there.’
Traditionally, bonfire night, both North and south, is held not on November the 5th, but on October the 31st. At the centre of the old factory site a pyramid of stacking crates, wooden planks
and old tyres rose about thirty feet into the air where the local kids were constructing this year’s bonfire. I knew from reports in past years, though, that what started as a good-humoured
evening often turned into something more sinister as the night progressed and the young families dispersed and were replaced with drinkers.
We reached the gate of the playground. I noticed now that the railings along either side of the gateway had been covered by heavy white tarpaulin to block from view the sight that lay
beyond.
‘There’s a church just up the road. The post-Mass exodus will be starting soon and we need to restrict the view,’ Hendry explained.
I followed him in through the gate. The playground was relatively small and shaped like a dog’s leg. At its centre was a large cruciform multicoloured climbing frame with steps leading up
one side and a slide running down the other.
I felt the give of the rubberized tarmac matting as I stepped onto it. To my immediate left a tired-looking wooden hippo hung awkwardly at an angle atop a thick painted spring. A swing-set to
our right creaked in the wind, the breeze causing the chains of the seats to rattle in mild complaint against the metal A-frame. As we followed the bend of the park, which sloped gently down, I saw
Sean Cleary.
At first sight he might have been asleep. He was on his side on the bench at the rear of the playground, his right arm pillowing his face from the wooden slats on which he lay. His legs were
pulled up onto the seat, his feet crossed at the ankles. However, his eyes were open, unfocused, already clouded. His stubble seemed unnaturally dark against the pallor of his skin.
Beneath the bench, his blood had settled into a gelatinous puddle, though as I approached I could see that someone had stepped in the pool to the left-hand side, for the surface tension at that
edge had broken and a second, smaller pool had run off.
Scene-of-crime officers worked around the body, one using a still camera to record any evidence while a second video-taped the entire process. At the centre of it Sean Cleary lay, unmoving.
‘Poor bastard,’ I whispered.
‘The uniform who was first on scene called it in as a robbery,’ Hendry said. ‘There was no phone on him; the wallet was emptied and dumped over there.’ He pointed to
where a small marker stood beside the brown leather wallet.
‘Any money?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What about cause of death?’
‘Wounding to the right side of the skull. The ME’s already confirmed death but said he didn’t recognize the wounding. He thought it was gunshot, but there are multiple small
wounds and reddening of the skin he thought unusual. We’re waiting for the pathologist to get here.’
I glanced around at the houses surrounding us. In one or two in the block running behind the park, I could see the occupants standing at rear windows, watching down on us.
‘No one reported hearing gunshots?’ Hendry had mentioned a parent had found the body earlier that morning. Had Cleary’s death been a shooting, someone would have heard the
shots and reported it.
‘No one,’ Hendry said. ‘But that doesn’t mean anything. If the killer’s connected to any of the splinter groups doing the rounds, potential witnesses might be too
afraid to report anything.’
‘Those days are past,’ I said.
Hendry raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you think?’
As we spoke, I stared across at the old factory site. To one end of the site, the rubble from the building’s demolition had been piled up into a small mountain of hard-fill. It backed onto
the rear of the shops and post office I had passed on the corner. I could see where skaters had set up planks of wood on milk crates, makeshift ramps to practise jumps. To the far right, almost in
line with the playground, sitting to the immediate right of the bonfire, I could see a circle of milk crates set around the charred remains of a fire. I thought I could still see wisps of smoke
drifting up from the ashes.
I pointed across to it and said to Hendry. ‘Is that fire still lit?’
Hendry followed the direction of my finger, squinting against the light.
‘Let’s find out.’
The ground was littered with shattered bottles, pieces of rock, twists of charred wire from previous fires. The numbers of beer cans, in particular, proliferated the closer we
got to the remains of the fire. Sure enough, as we approached, we could smell the sharpness of burning wood being carried to us on the breeze. The fire was almost dead, the last few pieces of plank
lying among the embers blackened but for the edges, which were still glowing with a dying light.
‘Someone was here last night,’ Hendry said. ‘Potential suspects.’
‘Or witnesses,’ I said.
We stood and looked across to the playground. From this angle we could see where Sean Cleary lay. The gate was open, the SOCO team in their blue forensics suits clearly visible where they worked
at the body.
‘Local kids, probably. We’ll need to come back at night when they’re here again and see what we can find,’ Hendry said.
At that, a black van pulled up, blocking our view of the playground, and the forensic pathologist, David Ryan, stepped out.
When we made it across to the playground, he had already begun his preliminary investigation. He’d set up a thermometer to measure the ambient temperature before he
checked the body temperature. As we approached, he was attempting to flex Cleary’s arm, measuring the level of rigor mortis.
He jotted down a few notes in the black book lying on the ground beside him, then, laying almost flat on the ground, examined the underside of the bench. He pushed himself up slightly on his
hands and leaned over the blood puddle.
‘Someone stepped in his blood,’ he said, without looking back at us.
‘I know,’ Hendry said. ‘One of this clumsy lot, no doubt.’
‘When was he found?’
‘About ten.’
The pathologist shook his head as he stood up.
‘The blood has pooled where the surface tension was broken. That means it was still low viscosity. Whoever stepped in that did so within maybe an hour of death.’
‘His killer?’
He twisted his mouth as he considered the question. ‘I couldn’t say. You’ll get a decent print from it, though. If the blood is on the bottom of the shoe, you’ll find
prints for a few yards from here.’
‘How long since time of death?’ Hendry asked.
‘Maybe five hours to eight. Sometime between two and five, I’d say. I’ll know better when I get him on the table.’
Ryan pulled a pair of glasses from inside the forensics suit he wore, then sealed it up again. Putting the glasses on he moved across to the top of the bench where Cleary lay. He raised
Cleary’s head slightly and began examining the skull.
‘Lift this,’ he said.
Hendry and I moved across to the body, Hendry handing me a pair of gloves. Standing either side of Ryan, who knelt again beneath us for a closer view of Cleary’s skull, we held the head
gently between us.
Hendry winked at me as we did so.
‘So how’s it looking, doc?’ Hendry asked. ‘Do you think he’ll pull through?’
‘It’s unlikely,’ Ryan replied, deadpan. ‘Someone’s shot him.’
‘The ME thought that. But he said the wounding was unusual. He wasn’t sure.’
‘Turn his head a little,’ Ryan said. He reached across for a thin throat probe, then used it to brush back Cleary’s hair from the wounding. From such close proximity, I could
understand the confusion. There seemed to be several small wounds, closely packed together, all quite deep, but encircled by a red ring on the skin, perhaps two inches wide.
‘There’s none of the burning one would associate with a gunshot wound at close range. But the relative tightness of the wounding pattern would suggest this was a close-range
shooting.’
‘So?’
‘So, I’d say your killer used a silencer. And not a particularly good one; either old or homemade.’
‘Why?’
‘The baffles inside a silencer help to trap the expanding gas as a bullet is fired,’ Ryan explained, sitting back on his haunches. ‘That stops the sound, but also slows the
bullet. If the baffles aren’t aligned properly, the bullet can strike them inside the barrel and shatter. In that case, you get this kind of pattern; several tiny bullet wounds from each
particle, rather than a single bigger wound. Misaligned baffles suggest something old or homemade.’
‘The silencer would explain the lack of burning tattoos on the skin too,’ Hendry offered.
‘And the lack of reports of gunshots from last night,’ I added.
Ryan nodded. ‘Silencers tend to leave erythematous wounding rather than abraded, at close range; the disproportionately wide red ring on the skin is typical of it.’
‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ Hendry said to me, earning a dirty look from Ryan.
‘You can put him down now,’ he said, grunting softly as he stood. ‘Of course, the redness also suggests vital reaction; his body trying to heal itself. It wouldn’t be so
pronounced in immediate death.’
‘Meaning?’
‘He didn’t die instantly. He was alive for sometime after he was shot. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Maybe more.’
‘How would a gunshot wound to the head not kill him instantly? Especially if the shooter is skilled enough to be using a silencer.’
‘Probably the bullet shattering before impact,’ he said, his hands at his side.
‘Wouldn’t people have heard him screaming, if he took that long to die? There are houses all around.’
‘The force of the shot may well have stunned him, then he died slowly over a period of time. But I suspect we’ll find he bled out as the heart kept pumping.’
A SOCO who had been working to our left called Hendry across.
‘The wallet, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve pulled loads of fingerprints from it.’
Hendry and I stepped out of the playground while the SOCO team got to work, combing the site for evidence. We stood in front of the tarpaulin while I had a smoke.
‘So what’s the story on the dig for his old man?’ Hendry asked.
‘They got a tip-off a while back. They’ve walked the site and brought in a dog. They were planning on digging today but their diggers were burnt out last night in an arson
attack.’
‘On the same night Cleary himself was shot? No such thing as coincidence.’
‘Did you see his interview?’
Hendry nodded. ‘Quality viewing.’
‘We thought the attack on the island might have been prompted by it.’
‘So might this. Maybe someone did get in contact with him. Someone who wasn’t too happy about the case being reopened.’
‘Yet the Commission were tipped off. So someone involved in the killing wanted to come clean.’
‘And someone else didn’t.’
I reflected again on what Costello had said to me the previous evening.
‘Do you know Jimmy Callan?’ I asked. ‘His name was mentioned in connection with Declan Cleary’s killing in ’76.’
Hendry shook his head. ‘He was a suspect, mind you, but he was a guest of Her Majesty’s at the time. Of course, that doesn’t mean he didn’t order it from the inside. He
was heavily involved back then; he’d have had any number of people lining up to do it for him.’
‘Would he kill the son for asking too many questions?’
‘Why don’t we ask him? I’ll come with you if you’re going across to Lifford to inform next of kin about this.’
‘Me? I’m telling Mary Collins her son’s dead?’
Hendry smiled. ‘I thought you’d never offer.’
Jimmy Callan’s house was located on the Park Road in Strabane. The area was low lying, running parallel to the River Foyle. At high tide, during the autumn rains, the
fields bordering the river became little more than floodplains for months on end. As a consequence, the area had not been developed for property to quite the same extent as other outlying areas of
Strabane.
Callan’s house was on our left-hand side as we drove down the road. It was an old cottage which seemed in some need of renovation, especially when compared with the much grander affair
which squatted next to it.