Death in the Black Wood

by Oliver Davies

  “I’m sorry about making you wait, James,” he apologised. “I’d have finished reading before you arrived if I hadn’t been interrupted.” McKinnon just nodded understandingly. He knew what it was like running a busy office. “It looks like everything ties up neatly.” Anderson picked up his own mug and took a last swallow of lukewarm tea. “The pathologist’s report backs up Shay’s version of events.”

  “Aye, why wouldn’t it?” James McKinnon had no intention of rising to the bait.

  Anderson just smiled at him. If his friend harboured any suspicions about what had really happened in that cellar that day, James would be one of the last people on earth to air them. It wasn’t just because of his grandson either. Detective Sergeant Jackie Gibson had worked under McKinnon for a long time. Just the thought of what that poor woman had suffered was enough to make anyone feel sick to their stomach, let alone those who had known her well.

  Brady O’Hara had died as the consequence of a single blow delivered by a superbly trained but temporarily deranged man who was trying to incapacitate a very real and deadly threat not only to himself but also to a defenceless child. At the time, Shay was not only drugged, dehydrated, and in a weakened condition, he had also been repeatedly shocked by both a taser gun and a cattle coaxer over a period lasting for over fifty hours. That was a recognised form of torture, inflicting severe pain, and he was lucky that one of those hammering shocks hadn’t stopped his heart and killed him.

  That the blow to O’Hara had proved fatal might be considered by some to be unfortunate, but it was not a crime.

  It was possible, Anderson knew, that the Keane boys had simply told nothing but the truth. Their statements were entirely plausible. Shay had supplied them with over three hours of recorded testimony. Whole chunks of that were word-for-word playbacks of conversations he’d heard Brady have with his alter ego, interspersed with comments like, ‘I cannot be certain if that actually happened or if I imagined it.’

  The blood and urine tests backed him up. He had certainly been drugged in the way he claimed. How well someone like Shay Keane could control himself under such circumstances was the one thing that it was impossible to determine.

  The timing all matched up too. Brady O’Hara had died at some time within the hour before Conall received that call from his cousin. Shay had produced Brady’s phone from his pocket and handed it to McKinnon at the hospital. An understandable lapse, that. He hadn’t been in any condition to think clearly at the scene. Or so it had appeared. The GPS history from Conall’s car confirmed his arrival time at the house so that checked out neatly too.

  “What doesn’t quite make sense is Conall’s behaviour that day. I know he called you within minutes of arriving there, but why didn’t he call you straight after Shay called him? We both know he should have.”

  “Should have? Aye, technically you’re right there. But Shay was barely coherent when he called him. It’s only natural that Conall would have been worried enough to want to get to him first. Can you blame him? Would you have risked letting someone else get their hands on the lad first if you’d been in his shoes?”

  It was a fair point. Shay might have reacted badly to anyone else walking through that door. If he’d been as out of his mind as they were all officially accepting he had been. Shay himself, or someone else, could have been seriously injured in the ensuing struggle. In his own statement, Conall had said that he’d judged his decision to be the right one at the time and would stand by it. DI Philips’ unfortunate suggestion that Shay should be restrained, for everyone’s safety, had rather strengthened his case for him too. Any attempt to do that could have ended very badly for all concerned.

  Maybe, Anderson thought, he was chasing phantoms here. There was nothing provable, thank goodness, but he still couldn’t shake his doubts. Shay Keane wasn’t just a maverick, he was an unquantifiable enigma. Both he and James McKinnon had known that for almost a year now. If the lad had decided that Brady O’Hara needed to die, would he have hesitated before making sure his strike at him was lethal?

  And Conall? Conall Keane was one of the brightest and most promising officers Bernard Anderson had ever met, but there was no question about where his true loyalty lay. If it was a choice between doing his job and protecting his cousin, Shay would win, every time. If he’d heard a different story, he’d keep it to himself.

  Well, it was pointless to speculate. Accidental or deliberate, Brady O’Hara was dead, and a lot of people had been very relieved to hear it, himself included. He’d indulged his ingrained habit of turning over every stone and looking into every crack for long enough.

  James watched his boss as he picked up a stamp and pressed it firmly down on the cover of the folder.

  The Black Wood Killer case was officially closed.

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