Bleed a River Deep (Inspector Devlin Mystery 3)

by Brian McGilloway

  Despite Hendry’s advice, I couldn’t let go. And I also realized that, while he had said Janet Moore’s post-mortem had not revealed anything, Leon Bradley’s may have done.

  I phoned Lifford station, hoping that Burgess, the desk sergeant, wouldn’t recognize my voice. I asked to speak to Helen Gorman.

  ‘Thought you’d want to speak to the Super first, Inspector,’ Burgess said.

  Damn. ‘No, thanks. Helen’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’ll put you through,’ he said. Then surprised me by adding, ‘You’re being missed.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, sincerely.

  ‘I didn’t say I missed you,’ he retorted, then I heard the line click as I was transferred.

  I could tell Helen was reluctant to do what I asked. She didn’t want to refuse me, but at the same time she didn’t volunteer her help.

  ‘All I need to see is the pathologist’s report on Leon,’ I said. ‘I want to check some details. You’ll be gone for ten minutes, nothing more.’

  Finally she agreed, and told me she would meet me on Gallows Lane, where we were unlikely to be spotted.

  Ten minutes later, Gorman pulled up in a squad car. I was leaning against the bonnet of my own, having a smoke and enjoying the view that the top of Gallows Lane afforded, well into Tyrone.

  She carried a thin manila folder in her hand.

  ‘That’s everything,’ she said. ‘I printed you off a copy. It only took a moment.’

  The entire file held around twenty pages. The pathologist’s report accounted for almost a quarter of them. There were a few witness statements, and some cursory handwritten notes and diagrams illustrating where the body had been found.

  ‘Is this everything?’ I asked incredulously.

  Gorman nodded, grimly. ‘It’s not being made a priority. The Super is worried that Orcas will pull out. He wants the Bradley shooting buried. The official version is that Janet Moore’s husband killed him.’

  ‘What’s the unofficial version?’ I asked.

  ‘The same,’ she said. ‘He killed his wife, you know.’‘I know,’ I said. ‘I found her.’

  Gorman seemed taken aback, and I figured that Patterson hadn’t heard about my involvement in that discovery. I scanned the post-mortem results while I finished my smoke. Leon had been shot from behind, fairly close range, by a shotgun. He had died at between eight and midnight on Friday, which didn’t narrow things down much. I scanned the report looking for any reference to water in his lungs. I hoped that if the pathologist had tested the water and found pollutants, the damage Orcas was doing to the river would become a matter of public record.

  ‘Did anyone check the water from his lungs?’ I asked.

  Gorman looked quizzically at me. ‘Why?’

  ‘Orcas is pumping pollutants into the river. Leon Bradley and Janet Moore were investigating it.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ Gorman asked.

  ‘Good old-fashioned police work,’ I said, offering her back the folder she’d given me.

  ‘Keep it,’ she said, ignoring the diversion. ‘What police work? You’re meant to be on suspension.’

  ‘So everyone keeps reminding me,’ I said.

  That evening I went through the murder folder again in more detail. It looked increasingly likely that Karl Moore had killed Leon, though I was reluctant to simply sit on my hands until he woke and confessed. I wondered if the murder weapon had turned up anywhere yet. I also wanted to know what it was that Leon had posted to Janet from Eligius. If they had been working on a story to do with river pollution, what was the connection with a missile-building company, beyond the fact that Hagan funded – and profited from – both? I would need to ask a different source: one of the remaining members of the Eligius four.

  I rooted through the recycling bin until I found the weekend papers. The names of the four men and their home towns were listed as part of the story of the break-in. All I had to do now was find them.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Wednesday, 18 October

  As it had been the day before, my first task the next morning was to attend a funeral – Janet Moore’s this time. This was the third funeral in as many weeks, and the brightness of the day could do little to lighten the leaden weight that seemed to have settled in my guts.

  The funeral was even better attended than Leon’s. Janet had known a lot of people and I recognized faces from the various papers and television channels amongst the mourners. I also noticed a number of PSNI officers, including Jim Hendry, who winked when we caught one another’s eye.

  The only conspicuous absence was Karl Moore, and I noticed that the front pew of the church had been left vacant. It was also clear from the priest’s homily that he was struggling to avoid mention of the manner of Janet’s death, or its presumed perpetrator. Indeed, he referred throughout to ‘this senseless, tragic incident’. It struck me, though, that all of the incidents in which I’d been involved were senseless and carried with them their own unique tragic overtones.

  I hung back at the cemetery after the burial and, as the mourners dispersed, a woman approached me. She had an athletic physique and blonde hair tied up in a bun.

  ‘Inspector Devlin,’ she stated, her hand already extended.

  ‘Ms McGonagle?’

  She nodded curtly. ‘Nuala,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks for meeting me. I’m sorry about your friend.’

  ‘Karl killed her, is that right?’

  The PSNI had yet to release details of how she had died, so I wondered if Jim Hendry had told her when he had spoken to her. She sensed my reluctance to answer.

  ‘Karl’s not here, and no one’s mentioned him. I’m guessing he did it, is that right?’

  ‘It looks that way.’

  ‘What about Leon Bradley? Where is he?’

  ‘I can’t . . .’

  ‘He’s dead too, isn’t he?’

  ‘Ms McGonagle—’

  ‘Nuala,’ she corrected. ‘He’s dead too, isn’t he? Karl killed him as well?’

  ‘We’re not sure. If he knew about the affair . . .’

  ‘Oh, he knew,’ she stated darkly. ‘Or he had his suspicions.’

  I recalled the first time I had met him; he had mentioned ‘Bradley’ when I asked how Janet knew about Hagan’s visit. I had assumed he meant Fearghal.

  ‘Did Janet say anything to you at the weekend? Anything that made you think she might be at risk?’

  ‘They’d had a row on Thursday,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘Perhaps you could buy me that coffee. I need to be back in Belfast for three,’ she said, and began striding down towards the gates of the cemetery.

  ‘They’d had a row,’ she resumed, once we’d got settled into the café near the Old Courthouse. ‘Karl found out that she’d been involved in that stunt at the goldmine.’

  ‘The shooting at Hagan?’

  She nodded as she tore a chunk off her panini and bit into it and chewed for a few seconds. ‘Uh huh. One of your crowd told him that she gave one of her tickets to Leon, to get into the mine.’

  ‘What do you mean “one of my crowd”?’

  ‘A policeman who’d been working at the mine. He and Karl play football together, apparently. Karl came back from the match swearing blue murder. She denied it, said she was using Leon for research, but she didn’t think he bought it.’

  I wasn’t quite following what she had said. A policeman Karl played football with – and someone stupid or crass enough to reveal details like that to a cheated husband. Patterson had told me himself they played football together. It was unlikely that Patterson had intended to set in motion the chain of events that had subsequently unfolded, but the fact remained that his stupidity had already cost two people their lives – three, perhaps, before this whole thing would be finished.

  ‘So do you think he killed Leon then?’ she asked again.

  ‘Honestly, I can’t say,’ I replied. ‘We know that someone had arranged a meeting with Leon on Friday night usi
ng Janet’s phone. As she was in Belfast with you, it’s unlikely that she also arranged to meet Leon at the same time.’

  ‘So Karl did,’ she concluded. ‘Killed him, then came back and—’

  She was extremely matter-of-fact about the events, and it struck me as strange that she seemed so little affected emotionally by the funeral and the death of her friend. I decided to get off the subject of the killings.

  ‘So Janet brought you water to test, you said.’

  She placed the cup back on the saucer and lifted her handbag from where she had placed it on the ground at her feet.

  ‘She brought me a bottle of water she said had been taken from a river near this new goldmine. Someone had told her they’d noticed a lot of fish dead in the water. Janet was convinced that this mine was pouring stuff out that was killing them.’

  ‘Was she right?’ I asked. Weston had told me they had conducted a full environmental-impact survey before they had started building. A pollution scandal would severely damage the place’s credibility, and possibly put a dent in its record prof its.

  ‘It seems so. As I told you on the phone, I found significant levels of sulphuric acid in the water. Enough to kill fish life, certainly.’

  ‘And could this have come from the goldmine?’ I asked.

  She produced a sheaf of papers from her bag and passed them across the table to me.

  ‘The gold in that mine is found in sulphides. It’s quite rare to find a vein of pure gold; that’s the stuff they make jewellery from. Most gold is found in sulphide compounds. The rock containing these compounds is crushed and put through a number of processes, including being washed with detergents to remove the gold sulphide. Cyanide is then used to extract the gold. Gold mined that way isn’t as pure, but it’s fine for use in computer circuit boards, needles and cables and that.’

  ‘You didn’t find cyanide in the water though,’ I pointed out.

  She raised her index finger. ‘An eighteen-carat gold ring leaves behind over twenty tonnes of polluted waste, Inspector. Cyanide is just one of the problems. In Romania in 2000, heavy rains caused one of the dams holding in the polluted waste from a mine to burst. The cyanide that made it into the local river killed all the fish in the area and made the drinking water for over two million people undrinkable for months. In the US in 1992, gold-mining waste made it into a local river, killing all aquatic life for twenty-five kilometres downstream.’

  ‘But you haven’t found cyanide in the Carrowcreel,’ I persisted.

  ‘Cyanide is only one of the problems,’ she repeated. ‘Even without it, the waste products of mining still contain sulphides. Rainwater can combine with this to create sulphuric acid, which then leaches into the water table or, in this case, the local river. Undiluted, it would be as toxic as battery acid.’

  ‘Could anything else be responsible for it, besides the mine?’ I asked.

  ‘It could occur naturally in sulphide-rich rock, but not at the levels I found,’ she said.

  ‘Is it enough to close the place down?’ I asked. I had my own issues with Weston and his mine, but its closure would be a big blow to the local economy.

  ‘That depends on whether there’s the political will to do something about it,’ she stated. ‘As always, these things come down to who you know, and how well.’

  I thought again of our local politician, Miriam Powell, joking with Cathal Hagan at the mine.

  ‘I’ve included the results of my tests there, Inspector. You’d be better contacting the Rivers Agency here in the Republic and letting them do their own tests.’

  ‘I might have a problem arranging that,’ I said, then immediately regretted it.

  ‘Why?’ Nuala asked sharply.

  ‘I’m not actually on duty at the moment.’

  She nodded curtly. ‘The Northern policeman told me that,’ she said.

  ‘Why did you agree to see me then?’

  ‘Is anybody else really bothered that Janet is dead?’ she asked, her head tilted, her expression free from guile. She raised an eyebrow. ‘Well?’

  As I made my way back to the car, I caught a glimpse of Harry Patterson, watching me from his office window across the street.

  The first of the remaining three of the Eligius protesters was a twenty-year-old from Omagh named John Young. I phoned him from a payphone across the border and asked if he would mind speaking with me about the break-in.

  ‘I’ve nothing to say,’ Young stated. ‘I made a mistake.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I imagined it was gonna be a bit of craic. It got too serious.’

  ‘What happened inside there? Did you see Leon Bradley lifting anything before you were brought out?’

  ‘He wasn’t there like us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I went in to protest about the war. So did the other guys, Curran and Daniels. Bradley was looking for something definite.’

  I guessed ‘Daniels’ was Peter Daniels, a forty-eight-year-old from Navan. I’d tried to track him through the Garda database, but there was no listed address for him. The other man, Seamus Curran, was a name I already knew.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.

  ‘He spent the whole time on the computer, printing off stuff, going through filing cabinets, photocopying sheets. I tell you – I’m sorry I ever set foot in the place.’

  ‘Do you know who might know what Bradley was looking for?’ I asked.

  ‘No idea,’ Young said. ‘The other guy might know; the Provo.’

  Whilst Young had referred to him as a Republican, Seamus Curran had in reality become a convinced pacifist. He had been outspoken in the media about the war in Iraq when it had started and I had little doubt as to the reasons behind his involvement in the break-in.

  I found him, as expected, in a pub he part-owned in Derry. The bar was small and dark, the roof low, the tables divided between small nooks where, despite the smoking ban, lunch-time drinkers sat in a fug of smoke, poring over the day’s racing form in the papers.

  The walls were decorated with a mixture of political memorabilia and black-and-white photographs of local celebrities who had graced the bar at one stage or another. A framed copy of the 1916 Declaration of Independence, which had led eventually to the partition of Ireland, hung beside a signed photograph of John F. Kennedy that someone had gifted to the bar.

  Curran was sitting in front of the bar when I came in. The place was mutedly busy, the numbers of drinkers greater than the hush of conversation they collectively produced. Curran was spooning Irish stew on to a heel of bread which he crammed into his mouth before standing up and moving behind the bar when he saw me enter.

  He wiped his mouth with his hand, which he then rubbed clean against his trouser leg.

  ‘What can I get you?’ he asked, his hand already lifting a pint glass from the counter to fill.

  ‘Just a Coke will be fine,’ I said, producing my warrant card. ‘I’d like to speak to you for a moment.’

  He flipped the glass once and caught it, then placed it on the counter before glancing at my card. He turned his back to me to lift a Coke bottle from the shelf behind him. As he did so he said, ‘You’re a bit off your patch.’

  ‘I’m just looking for some information,’ I explained, taking a seat at the bar.

  ‘Aren’t youse always,’ Curran said, pouring the Coke into a glass and dropping in a few cubes of ice before placing the drink in front of me.

  ‘About the Eligius break-in . . .’ I continued.

  He smiled a little sheepishly. ‘Seemed a good idea at the time,’ he said. ‘Depends what you want to know.’ He leant on the bar.

  ‘The young fella Bradley who went in with you is dead. I’m investigating the killing. I believe he posted some documents out from Eligius; I’m wondering if you know what they were about? Or if he mentioned to you why he was there?’

  ‘He was protesting against the war. And that arsehole Hagan, poncing about like the saviour of Ireland.�
��

  ‘Do you know what he was looking for?’

  Curran shook his head. ‘Did you not see the footage? I spent the evening hanging out a window wi’ a megaphone. I know he was looking for something, but to be honest I don’t know what and I don’t give a fuck.’

  ‘Did you organize the protest?’ I asked. ‘How did you all meet?’

  ‘We didn’t. Leon put an appeal on Bebo and some of those other Internet sites, looking for protesters to join him. Twenty-five signed up – only four of us went in.’

  ‘What about the other twenty-one?’

  ‘They bottled out.’

  ‘That must have been a pisser,’ I observed. I was reminded of my own aborted attempt at protest in college. A load of our friends had said they’d come along with us. They never showed.

  ‘You get used to it,’ Curran said. ‘Everyone cries about the introduction of water charges, then you organize a demo and the same fifty people arrive every time. People like to complain, but that’s all they do.’

  ‘What was Leon Bradley’s beef with Eligius?’ I asked. ‘I spoke to John Young and he seemed uncomfortable with the whole thing.’

  ‘I dunno. I thought Bradley was a bit of an amateur.’

  ‘We believe he posted some things out from Eligius – but we haven’t been able to find them.’

  ‘Posted? What do you mean?’

  ‘He left someone a message saying he was posting documents out to her.’

  ‘Maybe he brought them out with him? Posting them out seems a bit strange.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, he was searched when he came out.’

  Curran nodded. ‘We all were,’ he agreed.

  ‘We know he posted something, but we can’t work out where. It hasn’t turned up.’

  Curran grimaced in concentration. ‘It wouldn’t have, of course,’ he said finally, smiling, his hands slapping on the bar counter. ‘Sure the place only opened today.’

  ‘What place?’ I asked, a little confused.

  ‘Eligius. It’s been closed since we broke in. Doing security checks and that. It opened this morning again. If Bradley did post the stuff in Eligius, they’re sending the stuff out for him without even realizing it. Christ, that’s genius. Maybe he wasn’t such an amateur at all.’ He laughed, then added, ‘This stuff he posted? Does it have anything to do with his death?’