Brian McGilloway - The Nameless Dead (Inspector Devlin #5)

by Brian McGilloway

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Paul Black, one of our part-timers, was manning a checkpoint on the border as I crossed back into the south again. He was one of a number of uniforms tasked with finding Jimmy Callan. He looked bored, absentmindedly waving cars through with little more than a cursory glance at the registration plate of each as it passed. He seemed more concerned with the activities of three young fellas working on the bridge. Two of them carried a steel ladder between them, the third struggling with a bundle of sandwich boards he was attempting to hold clamped under his arm. I could see from the one he was flourishing in his free hand that the boards carried posters featuring the image of Dominic Callan. The picture was grainy; Callan looked blurred, his features indistinct. He had worn his hair long, his upper lip shaded – though, at this distance, I couldn’t tell if it was a moustache or simply a shadow.

  I rolled down the window as I drew alongside Black.

  ‘All quiet?’

  ‘Apart from those three bozos,’ he said, nodding towards the trio as one mounted the ladder to attach the posters to the lamp-post nearest us. ‘They arrived an hour ago and realized they’d no bloody string to tie up the pictures,’ Black commented. ‘Amateurs.’

  ‘No sign of Callan?’

  Black shook his head. ‘Nothing, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m checking everything that comes through, too.’

  ‘So I saw,’ I commented. ‘I need you to look out for a second person, too. Her name’s Sheila Clark. There’s her registration number.’ I passed him the details I had recorded the night I met her.

  ‘What do I do if she comes across?’

  ‘Find out where she’s headed, without drawing too much attention to it. Then let me know.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Black said.

  ‘And keep up the good work, Paul.’

  I pulled in at the service station a few hundred yards up the road and sat in the car to have a smoke. Sheila Clark had been involved in something dodgy when she had been in St Canice’s; the McGraths had paid 5,000 punts for their child. The mother-and-baby homes had been glad to find people willing to adopt the children born there; I had never heard of them charging for doing so. Presumably Clark had been involved in some kind of illegal-adoption scam, then. More importantly, she was, potentially, still involved all these years later. It would certainly explain why she had denied the presence of a child at the house in Islandview. Niall Martin’s involvement, though, was less clear. Was he simply giving her a safe house to use? Was he in partnership with her?

  The radio buzzed with static and Burgess’s voice echoed tinnily through the speakers.

  ‘DI Devlin?’

  ‘The very same,’ I said, taking a last drag of my smoke before folding the cigarette on the ashtray.

  ‘Superintendent Patterson is looking for you,’ he said. ‘James Callan has been spotted in Raphoe. A uniform managed to follow him to a cafe in the village. The super says you’re to get out there and wait for back-up.’

  Raphoe was a small village about eight miles past Lifford. It didn’t take long to locate the cafe in question; it was the only one in the village square and was actually a sit-in deli counter in the village supermarket. The uniform who had called in the sighting was standing on the pavement outside. I recognized him as Sean Cahill. He was middle-aged, having stayed with the traffic corps for over two decades, seemingly without wish of advancement.

  ‘I was doing a speed trap on the road into Raphoe and he passed,’ he explained, his arms resting on the sill of my open window.

  ‘Did he make a run for it when he saw you?’

  Cahill shook his head. ‘Damn the bit of him. Headed into the local market for groceries. I packed up the speed check and followed him over. He’s in there eating his dinner. He’s not trying too hard to stay hidden.’

  ‘Maybe he feels he doesn’t need to,’ I commented, undoing my seat belt and opening the car door. ‘Let’s go and ask him why.’

  Cahill glanced in at where Callan sat with his back to the door, hunched over his table. ‘Shouldn’t we wait for back-up?’

  As if aware of our presence, Callan twisted in his seat. He was a heavy-built man, his face ruddy, his hair white and unkempt. He wore a v-neck pullover over a white shirt, the sleeves pulled up to reveal the thick tattoo that coloured his forearm. He raised a mug of tea in salute.

  ‘Apparently not,’ I said.

  I pushed open the door and headed in. Callan was the only person in the deli apart from the waitress behind the counter, who looked up from her magazine with ill-disguised boredom when I passed.

  ‘James Callan?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘I’ve been expecting you before now.’

  ‘I’d like you to come with me to Lifford station.’

  ‘Let me finish my dinner first? Do you want tea? Ask the fat man who was doing the hairdryer, too. I thought he was going to stand out there all day.’

  Cahill stood at the door uncertainly, flicking his attention from Callan and myself to the road outside, clearly hoping that back-up would arrive sooner rather than later.

  ‘You’re wanted in connection with the murder of Sean Cleary,’ I said.

  Callan nodded. ‘I thought I might.’

  ‘And Seamus O’Hara,’ I added.

  Callan laughed lightly. ‘Are you planning on clearing all the crime in Lifford on the back of me?’

  ‘You need to come with me, Mr Callan.’

  ‘Will you get this man tea, love?’ Callan called the waitress, then lifted a half-eaten slice of toast from his plate and smeared it through a slick of egg yolk.

  ‘You don’t seem unduly worried about any of this,’ I said.

  ‘That’s because I didn’t do it,’ Callan replied.

  ‘Then why did you do a runner the morning of the killing?’ I asked, pulling out a chair opposite him and sitting. Patterson would have a team on the way anyhow.

  ‘Because I knew I’d get the blame for it no matter what,’ he said.

  ‘Running just makes you look guilty.’

  ‘Sitting where I was would have done the same,’ Callan replied, his mouth full.

  The girl appeared from behind the counter with a small teapot and a mug. As I poured the tea, some spilled from the loose-fitting lid.

  ‘So someone killed Seamus O’Hara?’ Callan said. ‘When?’

  It was such a bald attempt to deny knowledge of the killing that I was almost inclined to take it as genuine. ‘The same night Sean Cleary was killed. And with the same gun.’

  ‘Which is why you think I did both?’

  ‘That and the fact you were spotted having a row with Sean Cleary on the evening of his death.’

  ‘That fucker next door told you, right?’ Callan shook his head as he lifted a napkin and wiped his mouth clean. ‘I did have a row with the young fella. He came looking to pin his da’s death on me. I had nothing to do with it and told him that. He didn’t believe it. It got a bit heated.’

  ‘What about Declan Cleary? Was he killed in revenge for your son’s death?’

  Callan shook his head. ‘I was inside when it happened. The Brits wouldn’t even let me out for Dominic’s funeral. I told Cleary that.’

  ‘He ended up at Seamus O’Hara’s house. Did you send him there?

  Callan shook his head again as he slurped from his tea. ‘He knew about O’Hara already. O’Hara had called him and told him that he had helped bring the body across. He was the ferryman, you know, bringing the dead across the river to the island. He told Cleary his da was done for Dominic. I told Cleary that that was shit. Or if it was true, it had nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You knew nothing about it?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘I didn’t say that. I said it had nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But he was killed in revenge for your son’s death?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘And you know who did it.’

  ‘Again, if you say I do.’

  ‘So where were you later on t
he evening Sean Cleary and Seamus O’Hara were killed?’

  ‘In the house, with no alibi. The one next door might have heard me moving about, but I couldn’t count on it.’

  ‘So you ran?’

  ‘I was inside for fifteen years after Dominic died,’ Callan said. ‘I never got to his funeral, never got to his grave. I swore when I got out that I’d not miss an anniversary again. I wanted to be able to go to his grave tomorrow.’

  ‘What about this demonstration tomorrow? Are you speaking at that, too?’

  ‘There’s no room for the likes of me at that. That’s a day for hawks; young lads fancying they could be something big.’

  ‘And you’re not a hawk?’

  ‘My young fella’s lying in a grave in Strabane these thirty-five years. I should be a granda now. Instead I’m not even a husband. Dominic wanted to be like me. What the fuck did I know? Everyone signed up when I joined – it was what you did. We thought it would be a bit of craic, like the riots. Then we thought we were somebodies, walking around with a gun in your belt like someone off Chips or something. That’s all it was – feeling big for a change, after years of being made to feel like shite. For all the good it did. I went inside and Dominic thought he’d be following my footsteps – as if I ever knew where I was going in the first place. Now he’s in the ground, I’m on me own, the Brits are still here and the Shinners are in government. The English want out cos we’re costing them a fucking mint, the south doesn’t want us cos they can’t even handle the twenty-six counties they do have. What fucking good would it do anyone, me talking tomorrow?’

  He stared at me, his mouth hanging a little open, his lips wet with spit. I drained my tea then placed the empty mug on the table.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said.

  He lowered his head slightly. ‘This thing tomorrow means nothing to me. They’re using it to try to stir up something. As if another 3,000 dead would change things.’

  ‘I have to take you in, Mr Callan,’ I said, standing.

  ‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I’m done here.’

  As he was standing, Patterson and three armed-response gardai swept into the shop.

  ‘On the floor with your hands flat,’ one of them shouted, moving towards us, his weapon angled towards the floor and shifting back and forth between us.

  Callan’s shoulders slumped as he reached out his hand to the table to steady himself as he began lowering to the floor.

  ‘He’s unarmed,’ I said. ‘We’re coming out.’

  The guard who had shouted lowered his weapon a little further, but stepped lightly back from us.

  ‘You are unarmed aren’t you?’ I muttered to Callan.

  He smiled quickly. ‘For your sake, you better hope so.’

  Chapter Forty

  ‘You were told to wait for back-up,’ Patterson snapped, as we stood on the pavement watching Callan being helped into the back of the garda car.

  ‘He wanted to talk,’ I said. ‘This way was simpler.’

  ‘It could have gone to shit,’ Patterson said. ‘It was stupid.’

  ‘I don’t think he did Sean Cleary or Seamus O’Hara,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t have an alibi, but there’s no evidence to tie him to the scene, is there?’

  ‘That means nothing. He’d know how to be clean, the same man.’

  ‘He says he didn’t do Declan Cleary either.’

  ‘Sure, he was innocent the whole way through the Troubles.’

  ‘He was inside when Declan Cleary was done. I’d say he knows who did it, all right, but he claims he didn’t order it.’

  ‘I got another complaint about you this afternoon,’ Patterson said. ‘Quite the portfolio you’re developing. Niall Martin claiming you were harassing his family illegally over the border.’

  ‘I asked him to help me out with an address. He’s illegally renting out houses in Islandview.’

  ‘The ghost estate.’

  I nodded. ‘A woman was staying there with a child. She used to work in St Canice’s. I think she may be involved in illegal adoptions. She appeared in a picture with Martin and his father, plus Dominic Callan, Declan Cleary and Seamus O’Hara, taken in St Canice’s a few weeks before Cleary was killed. I believe Seamus O’Hara gave Sean Cleary the picture on the night he died.’

  ‘And you know all this despite being told to steer clear of the original Cleary case by Lennie Millar?’

  ‘The children found on the island all showed symptoms of Goldenhar syndrome. We followed it back and traced someone who adopted a child from the home.’

  ‘We? Sergeant McCready was involved, too?’

  I ignored the question. ‘I believe that Clark used the birth certificate of one of the dead children recovered from the island to create an identity for another child that she then sold for adoption.’

  ‘Why would she do that? Create a new identity?’

  ‘Presumably the children she was using were not Irish.’

  ‘And you know this because . . .?’

  ‘We spoke to a women who lost a child with Goldenhar syndrome at birth. Consequently I visited a woman who had adopted the same child, except he was very much alive and very much able-bodied.’

  ‘Do you deliberately ignore every instruction given to you? You were told by Millar that you couldn’t investigate this. I told you that you couldn’t investigate it.’

  ‘It all connects, Harry. Somehow.’

  ‘So what? We can’t prosecute any case which involves evidence found in the dig. It’s a waste of time, Inspector. And a waste of garda resources.’

  ‘Those children deserve their story to be heard. Joe Long has requested that the Commission give him permission to examine the bodies more forensically. He believes there is something more to it, too.’

  ‘Go home,’ Patterson said.

  ‘What about Jimmy Callan?’

  ‘He’ll be processed in Letterkenny. I’ll have a chat with him myself this evening, once he’s lawyered up. The North will be looking to have him extradited across.’

  ‘He wants to attend his son’s grave tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, I do hope our murder investigation doesn’t get in the way of his plans,’ Patterson responded.

  I put off making the call until after we’d eaten dinner and I’d helped Debs wash up. I went out back and sat beneath our cherry tree to have a smoke. Finally I called Mrs Hughes.

  ‘Yes?’ The voice was timid when it answered.

  ‘It’s Benedict Devlin, Mrs Hughes. My colleague and I called with you earlier.’

  ‘Have you found him?’ The question was urgent, whispered.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Hughes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to have brought all this up for you today. I checked out the possible lead I had, but the person in question is not your child.’

  ‘What about the PPS number?’

  ‘It seems to have been a clerical error,’ I said. ‘I just thought you would want to know.’

  The line fell silent for a moment. Finally I heard the snuffling of her breath against the receiver.

  ‘I suppose it makes things easier,’ she said at last. ‘With everything here.’

  ‘I am sorry, ma’am.’

  ‘Do you know where he is? My son?’

  ‘I believe you were right when you said he was buried on Islandmore,’ I said. ‘The pathologist is working on the bodies recovered from the grave there at the moment.’

  She did not respond, so I added, ‘The local priest is conducting a service there tomorrow, to consecrate the ground where the infants lie. It’s at 11 a.m., I understand, if you wanted to come.’

  ‘I’d . . . I’d like to,’ she said. ‘It’s just . . . with . . .’

  ‘I understand completely, Mrs Hughes. I just thought you might like to know.’

  There was silence again on the line.

  ‘Mrs Hughes, I am sorry,’ I said.

  ‘He was my only chance to be a mother,’ she said suddenly. ‘I never had any after that. It’s as if God pun
ished me.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not the case, Mrs Hughes,’ I said. ‘Perhaps your son was too good for this world.’

  ‘Have you children, Mr Devlin?’

  ‘Two, ma’am.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ she said, as if agreeing with something I had not said. ‘Thank you for letting me know.’

  She hung up before I could respond.

  Friday, 2 November

  Chapter Forty-One

  A low mist hung over the fields around our home as I left for work the following morning, the tops of the trees bordering our property cresting the mist’s upper edges.

  I checked in at the station, half-expecting to have heard something from Patterson regarding the questioning of Callan, but there were no messages. I signed out a squad car and headed across to Islandmore after 10 a.m. to attend the blessing of the cillin.

  When I arrived the only person at the site was Lennie Millar. He was standing in the field where Cleary had been recovered. A number of mounds of earth, spoil from the various holes the team had excavated, spotted the site, some piled almost six feet high.

  ‘Good to see you, Inspector,’ Millar said when I parked and got out.

  ‘Ben, please. How’re things?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, refusing my offer of a cigarette with a shake of his head. ‘The post-mortem on Declan Cleary is done. He died of two gunshot wounds to the skull. Now we’re just waiting for final DNA confirmation that the remains were his.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be glad to be done here.’

  He glanced around him. ‘It’s not a bad spot. If I had to be buried somewhere, this would do better than most graveyards I’ve seen.’

  ‘That’s not quite what I meant.’

  ‘I know.’ He smiled. ‘We’re finished now. I didn’t want the diggers running here today, with the blessing and that going on, but they’ll be out on Monday to push all the spoil back into the excavated holes, and that’ll be that.’ He paused before continuing. ‘The State Pathologist has been in touch looking to carry out further tests on the children found here.’

  I nodded.