Murder on Pay Day

by David Pearson

  Lyons went on to tell Bridget O’Toole about the attack on the post office van, and that the driver appeared to have been badly wounded or maybe even killed in the ambush.

  “Good God, the poor man. I hope he will be all right. He has a wife and two daughters you know,” Bridget said.

  “Well Inspector Hays is on his way there now, and we’ll know more in a while. But listen, won’t you need to get another delivery of cash out here or you’ll have a hundred angry pensioners on your hands?” Lyons said.

  “I suppose so,” Bridget said with little enthusiasm.

  “Give me the number that you call in Galway and I’ll arrange it for you. Could you make us all a cup of tea, Bridget?”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll get the number for you now. Thanks inspector.”

  Lyons telephoned the number Bridget had given her and got through to the main post office in Galway. After a few false starts, she finally established contact with the cash office and explained the situation to the manager there.

  “You’ll need to get another delivery out to Mrs O’Toole in Clifden as soon as possible. The pensioners are starting to arrive to collect their double week. I’ve put a notice on the door saying that benefits won’t be available till two thirty for technical reasons, but we won’t be able to hold them back much beyond that. If you get it ready, I’ll arrange an armed escort for the delivery van. They’ll be with you in half an hour or so. And if you have any information of the serial numbers of the notes that were stolen, could you call it through to Garda John O’Connor at Mill Street?” Lyons said.

  “Yes of course. There were a lot of new notes in the van. The Central Bank increase the money supply at this time of year, and they push the extra out through the post office system, as well as through the banks. We should be able to identify which notes went out to Clifden. And tell me, is Paddy McKeever OK?” the manager asked.

  “We’ll know more when the team get to where the ambush took place. Right now all we know is that it was an armed raid, and we think there was violence involved,” she said, not wanting to pass on the bad news till it had been confirmed.

  Next Lyons rang John O’Connor in Mill Street and asked him to arrange for more ARUs to accompany the second delivery of benefits money to Clifden, and to liaise with the cash manager at the main post office to set it up. She requested that the ARU remain in Clifden outside the post office, front and back, till it closed at five o’clock. She also told O’Connor that the man should be calling through with information about the serial numbers of the stolen notes, and that he should get the list out to all the banks in the area as soon as possible.

  Then Lyons sat down with Bridget O’Toole and her daughter in the back of the post office and had a cup of tea. The post mistress was visibly shaken by the events that had taken place, so Lyons tried to get her to focus on the main business of the day.

  “I’ve arranged for another delivery of cash for you, Bridget. It should be here at around half past one or two o’clock. It’s coming with an armed guard, and they’ll stay here until all the money has been handed out just in case there are any more shenanigans. I have to go now, but Detective Fahy and Detective Flynn will stay around here, and you have the two uniformed Gardaí out the back too, so you should be OK,” Lyons said.

  * * *

  Hays pushed his Mercedes as fast as he dared along the old bog road between Clifden and Roundstone. He sped through Ballyconneely, and on past Murvey and Callow before arriving at the scene of the heist just before Dog’s Bay.

  Brosnan, who ran the little Garda station on the edge of Roundstone village single-handedly, had put up blue and white tape all around the small green and white An Post van that stood forlornly at the side of the road. The windscreen had been blown out, and blood and brain tissue were spread all over the panel behind where the driver would have been sitting. Paddy McKeever’s body was still in the van, slumped across the two front seats. The side door of the van was open, and through it the open safe could be seen with its door hanging open, and the contents clearly missing.

  The rain was holding off for the moment, but it wasn’t far away. Heavy dark grey clouds hung low over the scene, adding to the grimness, and the top of Errisbeg was shrouded in a thick mist.

  “Good morning, Inspector,” Brosnan said, walking over to Hays’ car as the senior man got out.

  “Morning, Pascal. This is a rum do. I presume the poor man is dead?”

  “He sure is, sir. Not much of him left above the neck to be honest. They must have fired through the windscreen and the pellets got mixed with glass splinters to do that much damage to a man,” Brosnan said.

  “Bastards! Right. I have the doctor and the forensic team on the way out. How long ago did it happen do you know?”

  “I can’t be exactly sure, sir. But I heard the shot at about half past nine. There’s no shooting in these parts at this time of year, so I came out to investigate, and found poor Paddy here myself,” the Garda said, clearly shaken by the discovery.

  “Have you done anything about sealing off the area?”

  “Well, I called Sergeant Mulholland, and he sent a car out towards Recess to set up a check point, but with some of his men staked out at the post office, that’s the best he could do. Galway have a couple of cars on the way out, but the buggers could be well away by now, out towards Letterfrack, or even on into Clifden and away towards Westport,” Brosnan said.

  “Right. Well get onto Westport and get them to join in the search as well. They can put a checkpoint up and make sure the instruction is stop and search all vehicles – no exceptions.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

  Hays put blue overshoes on his feet and ducked under the tape. He walked all around the van, looking carefully at the ground. He noticed that the key was still dangling from the lock of the safe inside.

  He then expanded his circle around the van, and examined the grass at the side of the road where the vehicle had come to rest. He spotted a spent shotgun cartridge in the long grass, and went and got a yellow plastic marker with the number 2 on it, and placed it alongside the item without disturbing it.

  Pascal Brosnan was busy stopping the few cars that arrived at the scene and turning them back the way they had come.

  Hays’ phone rang. It was Maureen Lyons calling from her car.

  “Hi. What’s the story?” she said.

  “It’s pretty bad, Maureen. Paddy McKeever has had his head blown off with a shotgun. The cash is all gone, and Pascal wasn’t able to arrange road blocks quickly enough to apprehend them. But they may not have gone very far anyway,” Hays said.

  “How to you mean?”

  “Well, think about it. If I was them, I’d probably hole up in one of the many empty holiday homes round here somewhere for a few days rather than risk getting caught on the road. What do you think?”

  “You could well be right. Needle in a haystack then. Listen, we better get someone out to Mrs McKeever before the rumour mill gets to her first. Can you call the station and get two uniforms out to the house?” Lyons said.

  “Yeah, I’ll call it in now. One of each, I guess?”

  “What?” she said.

  “One male and one female Garda – would you agree?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Thanks. See you in about ten minutes,” Lyons said.

  As Lyons approached the scene of the crime, there was a short queue of eight cars backed up behind Pascal Brosnan’s roadblock. It was taking all of his persuasive powers to convince the locals that they needed to go back out the road and endure a twelve-mile detour over narrow boggy boreens to get what was normally less than a mile into the village.

  Lyons put on the siren in her Ford Focus and drove down the wrong side of the road till she arrived at the Garda tape.

  She got out and joined her partner at the side of the road.

  “Christ, Mick, this is a mess. Poor old guy. Don’t worry, we’ll get the toe-rags that did this. If it were me, I’d hang them!” Lyon
s said.

  Chapter Eight

  It seemed ages before the sirens belonging to Sinéad Loughran’s Toyota Landcruiser penetrated the stillness. She pulled the vehicle to a halt on the Roundstone side of the cordon, and alighted briskly from the vehicle. Dr Julian Dodd, the pathologist attached to the force, took a little longer to climb down from the passenger’s seat of the jeep. He was quite a short man, which may, in part, have accounted for his slightly pompous demeanour. But the detectives were happy to overlook this foible – he was a damn fine doctor, and had helped them to solve some very tricky cases over the past several years. As always he was dapper, dressed in a charcoal grey suit and pale blue shirt with a silk tie carefully knotted at the collar.

  “Hello Sinéad, Doctor,” Lyons said as the two approached. Loughran had already donned her white scene of crime suit, overshoes, and bright blue gloves, and was ready to get to work on the scene at once, realising that time was of the essence.

  “Hi Maureen,” Loughran said, “I’ll do the outside till the Doc has finished with the driver, if that’s OK?”

  “Yes please, Sinéad, Mick has already found a spent cartridge over there in the grass. He has it marked.”

  Hays watched Julian Dodd examine the body of Paddy McKeever in the front of the post office van. After a few moments, the doctor straightened up and reversed out of the front of the cab and stood on the road.

  “What can you tell us, Doc?” Hays asked.

  “Well apart from the blindingly obvious, not much. He died instantly from shotgun pellets and glass that entered the frontal lobe of his brain and severed the carotid artery for good measure. I’d say the gunman was standing almost directly in front of the vehicle when he let rip. The van was stopped. Time of death, around nine thirty, give or take. Not much else I can add really. I’ll write it up and send it on. I doubt there’s to be a post mortem unless you want to know what he had for breakfast,” the doctor quipped.

  “It’s OK, Doc, that won’t be necessary. Can you wait for Sinéad to finish up for a lift back to town?” Hays said.

  “I’ll stroll into the village and get a cup of coffee in the Bogbean Café opposite Eldon’s Hotel. Ask her to stop by and collect me when she’s done, would you?”

  “Yes, sure. Thanks,” Hays said.

  Sinéad Loughran and her two assistants spent the next hour and a half combing out the area all around the scene and fingerprinting the van all over, taking special care with the door jambs and the safe.

  “Anything?” Lyons asked her when she appeared to have finished.

  “Not much, Maureen. They were obviously gloved up. There’s a small blood stain on the door of the safe. Could be the driver’s, but just now I’m not sure how that would have been transferred. Can we get the van lifted back to Galway? I can do some more work on it there,” Loughran said.

  “Yes, sure. I’ll get Pascal Brosnan to arrange it. Let me know if you find anything,” Lyons said.

  When Lyons had spoken to Pascal Brosnan, he called Tadgh Deasy. Deasy ran a garage of sorts out the far side of Roundstone village. He repaired cars, vans and tractors, and occasionally traded one or two mostly very old cars and commercial vehicles too. He had a tow truck with a large flat bed at the back, and the Gardaí had used his services previously to move vehicles around after they had become immobile following accidents and the like. The Gardaí suspected that some of Deasy’s dealings were a bit iffy, but it suited them to leave well alone, unless he became involved in anything serious.

  Deasy arrived with the tow truck twenty minutes later and hoisted the broken van onto the back of it, and set off, with instructions to transport it to the locked compound at the rear of the main Garda station in Mill Street.

  With the vehicles removed, one of Sinéad’s team swept the broken glass and debris off the road, and finally, Pascal Brosnan was able to remove the tape that he had used to close off the road, and allow the traffic to flow freely again.

  “Let’s see if O’Dowds is serving lunch,” Lyons said to Hays, “I’m starving.”

  * * *

  When Hays and Lyons were seated in O’Dowds in front of a warming turf fire, with bowls of rich seafood chowder in front of them, Hays began the conversation.

  “What do you make of it?” he asked Lyons.

  “It’s a bit of a cock-up, Mick. Rollo’s information was only half right, and it makes us look pretty ham-fisted to be honest. It won’t take long for the word to get around that we’ve made a mess of it. Have you told Plunkett?” she said.

  “No, not yet. That’s not a job you can tackle on an empty stomach!”

  They finished their soup in silence, and waited till the server had taken away the bowls and replaced them with a generous plate of lamb shank with carrots and mashed potato.

  “Mmm. This looks good. Just what we need for a day like today,” Lyons said.

  And they went on to eat their meal. Even though they said nothing, their brains were working at full tilt, each wondering how they could capture the perpetrators of the deadly deed and save some remnants of their reputation.

  “OK,” Lyons said, sitting back on the bench when she had finished eating. “Let’s take stock. Do you think they’ve got clean away?”

  “Possibly. But let’s think. If you were planning this robbery, you wouldn’t be sure that you could get clear before checkpoints were set up. So, if I were them, I’d definitely have a plan B,” Hays said.

  “And that would be?”

  “I’d have a bolt hole lined up. Somewhere well out of the way with provisions, where I could stay for a good few days till things quietened down, and then use the lull over Christmas Day to get clear.”

  “Do you think they meant to shoot the driver?” Lyons said.

  “I doubt if there was any need to. Paddy was hardly a threat after all. So, they must be vicious bastards, unless he drove at them. The doctor said the gun was fired from just in front of his van.”

  “Let’s get back into town and see if John or Sinéad have dug up anything for us,” Lyons said. “I’ll drive, and you can call the Super on the way,” Lyons said.

  “Thanks a bunch!”

  * * *

  On the way back to the city, the rain had started in earnest again, adding to their already glum frame of mind. They passed the roadblock that had been set up on the road into Recess, stopping just long enough to establish that there was nothing of interest to report.

  When they got past it, Hays called Superintendent Plunkett and gave him an update on the situation. Plunkett wasn’t happy, and told Hays that they needed to get the mess sorted out quickly. He asked to be updated as soon as there were any developments.

  They arrived back into Mill Street shortly before three o’clock.

  As they walked towards their respective offices, Lyons said, “I’ll get on to Sinéad and see if she’s got started on the van. We might get lucky.”

  “Hmph,” grunted Hays in reply. He wasn’t feeling very lucky.

  “Right. Let’s have a briefing in an hour, I’ll get everyone in,” Lyons said.

  Lyons called Sinéad Loughran on her mobile phone.

  Sinéad Loughran was the team leader of the forensic crew that worked with the detectives and uniformed Gardaí in Galway. She had a staff of five, including four more forensic technicians and an administrator. Sinéad was well liked in the force. Despite her often grim work, she managed to keep a cheerful disposition, and Maureen Lyons and herself quite often went out for a few drinks after work to give out about the men in their lives and how the job was becoming almost impossible these days. Sinéad was a pretty blonde girl who usually wore her shoulder length hair in a ponytail. She was nearly always seen in a white all over forensic paper suit, which totally disguised her neat size eight figure.

  “Hi, Sinéad. Just wondering if you’ve got anything? We’re a bit desperate here,” Lyons said.

  “Tell me about it. We’re working on the van now. They were obviously gloved up, and there aren’t
even any shoe or boot prints in the back. I did manage to lift a partial thumb print off the key to the safe, but it’s not enough to generate a match I’m afraid. We’ll keep going and hope we get lucky,” Sinéad said.

  “OK. Thanks. Any clue as to how many of them there was?”

  “No, ’fraid not. They were either very clever or very lucky. Look, I’d best get on. I’ll call you later.”

  “OK. Talk soon.”

  * * *

  At four o’clock, Hays headed up the briefing meeting. Lyons had set up a board in the open plan, and on it there was a photo of the scene, a blow up of Paddy McKeever taken from his An Post security pass, and the figure €64,580, which was the amount that the cashier at the main post office had said was in the van’s safe.

  “OK. What have we got, John?”

  John O’Connor was a young uniformed Garda attached to the unit. His core competence was that he was a technical geek, and could extract an enormous amount of information from a mobile phone or a computer, not to mention his ability to discover almost everything about anyone from the internet.

  “I spoke to the cashier at the cash office in Galway. He told me that at this time of year, most of the notes they handle are new notes issued by the central bank to top up the money supply for Christmas. After a bit of checking around, he was able to identify the particular batch of notes that went to Clifden, and he gave me the serial numbers. I’ve circulated all the banks in the area who said they would watch out for them. The bank in Clifden were particularly helpful,” O’Connor said.

  “What do you think the chances are?” Lyons said.

  “Pretty good, I’d say. The only thing is that they may get a bit overwhelmed with new notes. The second delivery of cash was much the same as the first one,” O’Connor said.

  “Thanks John. Maureen, did Sinéad get anything?” Hays said.

  “Not yet. She got a partial print from the key to the safe, but not enough for a match. But she’s not finished yet. She’s going to call me later.”

  “Right, well let’s hope for something there. Is there any news from the checkpoints?”