‘Does your boss not mind you taking so much time off work?’
‘No, they . . . they were OK about it.’
I began to see where this was going: a middle-aged man, leaving his job and family to commune with nature.
‘What happened? Did they lay you off?’
He looked at me and laughed again, nervously.
‘Why would you think that?’ he asked, his eyes shifting quickly away from me.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter to me. There’s nothing illegal in it.’
We walked in silence for another few moments.
‘Divorce first,’ he said finally. ‘Then I packed the job in.’
‘What happened?’ I asked. I suspected he wanted to talk. Maybe I was just the first person to ask.
‘We just seemed to drift. Neither of us noticed at the time. Then our youngest went to university and we were left in this big house by ourselves. We thought it would be great – get to know one another again. Instead we found that we’d both changed into people that the other one didn’t really like.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.
Having started to speak, Coyle clearly wanted to continue.
‘I gave her the house and I bought a camper van. You’ve a lot of time to think at night, when you’re on your own. You know – I found out she was right. I had become someone I didn’t even like. I was disappointed in myself. I’d never had any great adventures. Then I heard about the goldmine here. Something told me I had to come here. To find my fortune.’
‘And you did,’ I said. ‘You were vindicated.’
A redness crept up his neck into his face.
‘Mr Coyle?’ I said.
He looked across at the people to my right, then shook his head so slightly, I was not entirely sure I had seen the gesture.
‘What? But I saw the picture?’
He nodded. ‘I bought it online,’ he said, without looking at me.
‘Why?’
He raised his head. ‘How much of a loser would you want to appear to your kids? I’m fifty years of age and I’m driving round Ireland in a fucking camper van. How the fuck are my kids meant to be proud of their father? I’m not even proud of me.’
‘What made you do it?’ I stopped walking, wanting to give Coyle my full attention. The other searchers beside us continued their slow movement upriver. Coyle stopped too, though while we spoke he scanned the trees behind me, as if afraid to look me in the eye.
‘One of the papers wanted to interview me. “The nutcase camped out by the river looking for gold.” I knew they’d take the piss, whether I agreed to an interview or not. So I figured, what if I told them I’d found something? They couldn’t take the piss then, could they? So I got a nugget online.’
‘How much?’
He muttered a figure in the hundreds of euros. The financial price was irrelevant anyway – the stunt had cost Coyle much more in terms of the dent to his self-esteem.
‘How did your kids react?’ I asked.
‘They thought it was great,’ he smiled. ‘They thought I was a hero.’
‘A father is always a hero to his kids,’ I said.
‘Your kids must be young,’ he said, squinting at me through his glasses.
‘That’s right,’ I agreed.
‘You’re a hero when they’re young,’ he said. ‘As they get older, they’ll start judging you. How long did you spend in work? Why did you put your job before us? Why did you teach us not to lie when you lie all the time?’
‘They come through it though,’ I reasoned.
‘We make mistakes,’ Coyle said.
‘I’m sure your kids would be proud of you no matter what you did.’
He smiled at me sheepishly. ‘Don’t tell anyone, will you?’
I nodded. ‘Not a word. Though perhaps someone should let the gold rushers down there know that they’re on a high road to nowhere. What if there is no gold to find?’
‘Then Mr Weston in there is going to be the only one to make any money out of this place,’ Coyle said, nodding towards Orcas, which had now appeared to our left.
We had travelled two miles or so upstream and people were starting to get bored. I noticed several of the searchers on the bank swinging their sticks from side to side through the long grass without actually looking at the ground. It seemed like a good time to stop for a break and something to eat.
I sent one of the uniforms back downstream with orders to drive out to the nearest chip shop and stock up on burgers and fish suppers. The rest of us climbed up on to the bank and rested. Someone broke out cigarettes and lighters were passed around.
The river ran slowly, the water beer-brown where it poured over rocks. The trees around us were losing their foliage. The autumn sun was still fairly high in the sky, but its heat had weakened considerably. Still, its rays caught the smoke of our cigarettes, creating a blue haze above where we sat.
After we had eaten and gathered up our scraps, we began making our way upstream again. About a mile up from Orcas, when the afternoon sun was dropping fast and the sky was cloudless but for the ragged scar of an aircraft’s vapour trail, we finally found what we were looking for.
About twenty yards from the river, on the left bank, discarded in the middle of a forsythia bush, lay a digital camera. The screen on the back had cracked, and when I tried to switch it on nothing happened. Still, I was hopeful that some of the technical staff in Letterkenny would be able to recover something from the camera’s memory.
We asked the prospectors to take a break while the Gardai began a fingertip search of the immediate area. Thirty yards upstream we found traces of blood on the stones lying on the higher parts of the bank. We had, at least, discovered where Leon Bradley was shot and, as the camera was discarded thirty yards downstream, it was safe to assume that he had been chased from that direction.
It would be too late at this stage to get a forensics team out to examine the site before dusk settled. Two of the men headed back downstream to bring up a roll of tarpaulin and some crime-scene tape to shelter the area, in case rain should further damage a crime scene left undiscovered for the guts of a week.
First thing in the morning, the SOCO team would need to get up here. And, I remembered, I was also supposed to be accompanying Gilmore on the stakeout at the market outside Derry.
When I got back home I phoned Patterson. One of the uniforms who lived near Letterkenny had taken the camera to the technical specialist to see what, if anything, could be retrieved. Patterson agreed to dispatch a team to examine the site of Leon’s murder first thing in the morning. I explained that I had a lead to follow over the border and asked him to assign someone to take responsibility for the integrity of the site.
I had a shower to warm myself up, and ate dinner with Debbie and the children. Karol Walshyk had taken Natalia out for a few hours to Derry, where a shop specializing in Polish and eastern European goods had opened.
As we ate I reflected on my conversation with Ted Coyle. Shane was balancing a lump of mashed potato on the spoon he held clamped in his fist. Penny held a fork in her left hand and lifted the food from her plate with her right hand. As Shane attempted to manoeuvre the spoon to his mouth, the food fell off and splattered on the table. He grinned with pleasure and rubbed his hands through the potato, while Penny giggled at the mess.
Afterwards we washed Frank, our basset hound. As I towelled the dome of his head dry, the wattles of skin at his throat shook, causing the long laces of saliva hanging from his mouth to fleck the window above the sink. ‘Dirty Frank,’ said Shane, pointing to the spatter marks.
They were the most normal few moments I had spent in the past weeks and, happy as I was to help Natalia, I was glad to have my home back to just my family and me for a while.
Chapter Twenty-one
Sunday, 22 October
Gilmore called me at 8.30 the following morning, just as I was making my way
home from early Mass with Natalia. She had spoken little, though I had attempted to explain to her that I was going that morning to search for Pol Strandmann. I had pointed on my own scalp to where his scar ran. She had nodded and smiled gently.
Five giant metal sculptures of Irish dancers and musicians dominate the border crossing between Strabane and Lifford, and it was beneath these that I met Gilmore. Two carloads of officers were to make their way to the market. A number of them were Excise and Duty officers, looking for illegal cigarettes and pirate DVDs, the sale of which was common at such markets and car-boot sales. We were piggy-backing on their team, ostensibly providing support, but also keeping an eye out for Strandmann.
We arrived at the market shortly before eleven. A queue of cars waited to make its way on to the football pitches where the market was held. Several hundred cars were already parked there and we could see a large number of stalls set up, many pitched beside white transit vans. Already crowds of people were shuffling their way between the stalls. To the rear of the market we could see the tarmac strip of the local airport runway, along which a light aircraft was taxiing before rising unsteadily into the sky.
One of the lead Excise officers stopped at the small shed at the entrance to the market where each shopper had to pay an entrance fee. He asked to speak to the organizer and we waited for someone to fetch the man.
Owen Corrigan, a small, stout man with greying hair, arrived within a few minutes. Over his suit he wore a fluorescent vest.
He read through the warrant with which he was presented, before protesting that all the stalls in the market were completely above board, and that, for his part, he had done all he could to ensure that no illegal activity was taking place in the market. He pointed to a tattered notice pinned to the side of the hut, warning traders that the sale of counterfeit goods would be punished by expulsion from the market.
The lead officer, whose name Gilmore had told me but which I had quickly forgotten, gave us a nod, and we made our way through the gate into the market. A few hundred stalls were set up, and already a queue had formed at the first van to our left, which was selling burgers. The smell of frying onions so early in the morning made my stomach churn.
The next few stalls were selling clothes, some second-hand, some factory seconds by the looks of them. One stall had a pasting table piled high with pairs of jeans. A crowd of women pushed and jostled for position, tugging the jeans off the table, examining the sizes. I could discern amongst them several I took to be east Europeans.
We made our way down the first row. Near the bottom, two young fellas had set up a card table on which they had laid thirty or forty bundles of counterfeit DVDs. On the ground beside them was a travel bag, piled high with more. By the time they noticed us coming towards them, two Customs officers were already behind them, cordoning them in against their own table.
Gilmore nodded for me to keep moving on round the market, looking out for Strandmann. Some of the sellers seemed to peg us as policemen, for I noticed some of them busily removing things from their tables as we approached, then trying too hard to look casual.
It was at the final row of stalls that I finally spotted Strandmann. A large white van had been parked in the bottom corner, catching prospective buyers coming from either direction. Strandmann was standing inside the back of the van. Around him was piled roll after roll of toilet paper, yet I could see him handing people long packages wrapped in blue plastic bags.
‘Is that him?’ Gilmore asked. He had sidled up to me and was standing, hands in pockets, pretending to examine the porcelain dogs on the table in front of us.
I nodded my head.
‘Selling shit-roll? Hardly a criminal mastermind.’
‘I never said he was,’ I retorted. ‘And he’s selling more than toilet paper.’
Gilmore squinted in his direction. ‘Looks like fags,’ he observed. ‘At least it gives us another reason to lift him.’
He took out his mobile and phoned through to his colleagues, instructing them to approach Strandmann’s van from the left, whilst we would approach head-on.
‘He knows me,’ I said. ‘We’d be better coming from the side.’
Gilmore waved away my concern as he continued to speak into his phone. Then he began to make his way towards the van, and I had little choice but to follow.
As it transpired, Strandmann made the other two first. When we were about forty yards from him, I noticed him looking up to his left, looking away and then doing a quick double-take. It was clear that he knew they were cops.
Then he looked straight ahead and caught my eye. For a split second I thought he was going to smile, almost as if he couldn’t quite place me. Then he dropped the parcel in his hand and dashed around the side of the van.
By this stage the other two cops were almost on him. Cursing to himself, Gilmore set off in pursuit. I ran after them as best I could. Strandmann’s van was parked against a barbed-wire fence that separated the market from the airport. Strandmann had climbed on to the bonnet of his own van to clear the fence, and Gilmore was struggling over it by the time I reached him. Dropping over to the other side, he set off at a trot in the direction his colleagues and Strandmann had taken.
I started to climb on to the bonnet with the intention of scaling the fence but decided I was so far behind it would be a waste of time. Getting back down, I noticed a logo on the driver’s door. The image was of a freight lorry, and underneath was the name: V M Haulage.
As I came around the back of the van, the man from the next stall was reaching into the back of Strandmann’s van.
‘What the fuck are you at?’ I demanded.
The man jumped back, clutching five cartons of cigarettes to his chest.
‘I . . . I thought youse had all gone, Officer. I was going to hold these for him – make sure no one stole them or anything.’
I held my hands out, but the man was reluctant to surrender his find. He licked his lips nervously as his eyes darted. I followed his gaze into the back of the van and saw another bundle of cartons stacked behind the toilet rolls. The man had clearly been planning on stocking up for a while, during Strandmann’s forced absence.
‘If you want him, there’s only one place for him to go,’ the man said, slyly, adjusting the cartons in his arms into a more comfortable position but not letting go of them.
‘I’m all ears,’ I said.
‘Drive back out and head towards Derry. About half a mile up the road, you’ll see a turning on your left; a wee gate thing. He’ll have to come up there. All the rest’s fenced off by the airport,’ he said. Then he added, ‘You’ll need to be quick.’
‘Leave at least one, if you don’t want me coming after you,’ I said. We would need some evidence that Strandmann was selling illegal cigarettes. But I doubted that either the cigarettes or the man to whom I was speaking would be there on my return.
I jogged back towards the entrance, passing one of the Excise officers.
‘There’s a guy in the corner with a shitload of illegal cigarettes,’ I said. Then, remembering I hadn’t brought my own car, I turned and went back to him. ‘I need your keys,’ I said. ‘Pursuit of a rapist.’
The officer fumbled in his pocket for his keys then tossed them to me. Within a minute I was driving out of the market. I followed the cigarette man’s instructions and, just as he’d said, about half a mile up the road I spotted the gateway. I pulled in and parked a little past the opening.
I sat in the car, adjusting the rear-view mirror so I could keep an eye on the gateway. Sure enough, within a few minutes a figure climbed over the gate and dropped heavily to the ground. His trouser-cuffs were caked with mud. He looked down the pathway along which he had just come, then began walking towards me.
Suddenly, he began to sprint. Looking beyond him, I saw one of Gilmore’s men scrambling over the top of the gate. Just when I judged Strandmann to be level with the driver’s seat, I flung open the door. He thudded into it, spun sideways and fell to th
e ground.
He bellowed something at me as I climbed out of the car. Half sitting on his torso, I managed to hold him while we waited for Gilmore and his men to arrive. My weight being probably twice his own, he soon stopped struggling.
As Gilmore’s men cuffed him and hefted him to his feet he turned to look at me. One side of his face was pocked red where the gravel had bitten into him, and his skin was still flecked with grit. He glared at me, then spat.
Instinctively, I raised my fist, but one of the PSNI men pulled him roughly away from me while the other placed a warning hand on my arm.
He was taken to Limavady PSNI station and booked. While he was being processed, Gilmore and I returned to the market and searched his van. The cigarette man had left three cartons, as well as two boxes of loose tobacco, a pile of pirated pornographic DVDs and several bags of hash. Opportunistic grabbing of ciggies was one thing; getting caught with someone else’s drugs was clearly a step too far for him.
I searched my own pockets for my cigarettes and realized that I must have dropped them along the roadway when I had been struggling to keep Strandmann down.
‘What’s wrong?’ Gilmore asked, having heard me swear.
‘I’ve lost my cigarettes,’ I said, patting my pockets for the umpteenth time, with no success.
Gilmore, clearly elated with the success of the operation, tossed me one of the cartons from Strandmann’s van.
‘Consider it a bonus for a job well done,’ he said.
‘We haven’t even questioned him yet,’ I said. ‘He could give you nothing.’
‘He’ll talk,’ he replied. ‘They always do. Fear of deportation. They have it cushy here and they know it. That fucker’ll be singing by teatime.’
‘V M Haulage,’ I said out loud, as I tore open the cigarette carton. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘What now? Lost your fucking lighter too?’
‘No. I’ve just realized something,’ I said.
Chapter Twenty-two
Sunday, 22 October
Bleed a River Deep (Inspector Devlin Mystery 3) Page 16
