Gallows Lane (Inspector Devlin Mystery 2) by Brian McGilloway Read Free Book Online Page B

not known to share her siblings’ sensibilities, a fact underlined by her marriage to Webb himself – an English Protestant. As with many English socialists who move to Ireland, Webb’s politics were known to lean a little towards anti-Englishness, something which made locals all the more suspicious of him initially. The only person less trusted than an Englishman who opposes the Irish is an Englishman who supports them.
    Webb was tall and wiry, his frame bigger than the weight it carried, which gave him the look of one who has dieted drastically. His hair, once brown, was now mostly grey; likewise his neatly trimmed beard. He needed glasses for reading but had developed a habit of wearing them perched on his head when he wasn’t using them, so that they would never be lost. He did so now as he sat in the interview room, his head twisted slightly sideways as he tried to read the names and initials of former occupants scrawled on the wall beside his seat.
    Patterson was standing outside the room, the door held open by his foot, speaking to Costello. I could see Colhoun sitting patiently across the desk from Webb; his demeanour contrasting so clearly with Webb’s relaxed inquisitiveness that it would have been impossible for a casual observer to guess which was the policeman and which the suspect. But then, Webb was not really a suspect.
    He knew nothing and knew he had nothing to worry about. I noticed Patterson wasn’t even taping the interview. I suspected that something I had said had hit home; Webb had been lifted to convince everyone else that the guns-find was sound.
    As I walked past, unable to look either Costello or Patterson in the face, I overheard Costello.
    ‘Give him a phone call, then let him sweat it out for the night. Try again tomorrow.’
    Patterson did not reply, but as I walked away I felt sure he was staring at my retreating back.
    *
    Williams and I spent some time going through the list of builders’ names Paddy Hannon had provided. I had sent two uniforms out to the site to take notes of which of them had tattoos on their lower forearms. In addition, one of the techies in Letterkenny was trying to clean up the CCTV footage for us.
    While Williams went to call Control and Command in Dublin for criminal background checks on some possible candidates from Paddy’s list, I turned my attention to James Kerr. Although I considered it a waste of time, I had to try to relocate him, as Costello had demanded. The problem was, I had no idea how to do so. I didn’t know where he was staying and his family had long since left the area. As I had brooded on the problem on the way into work that morning, I recalled the one connection I had for Kerr. I hunted out the religious tract he had left in the patrol car the day I had first met him and recorded the phone number for Reverend Charles Bardwell.
    I tried phoning Bardwell several times during the next hour or so, in between scanning records for Paddy Hannon’s builders, with little success in either task. The station had emptied for lunch, the back doors swinging open to allow a little air into the place. I was standing just outside the door, having a smoke, when Helen Gorman, a newly trained uniform, arrived. She looked more than a little annoyed.
    Are your phones broken or something in here?’ she said, her face flustered, her hair hanging raggedly from under her cap.
    ‘The phone hasn’t rung,’ I said, flipping the butt of my cigarette into the gutter and coming back inside. Then I noticed that I had misplaced the phone’s handset after my last attempt to contact Bardwell. The station phone had been off the hook for some time.
    ‘Harkin’s Pharmacy has been broken into,’ she explained, calming down a little. ‘They had to phone Letterkenny to get someone. They sent me on my own.’
    ‘Anything taken?’ I asked.
    ‘I … I haven’t been yet. I was hoping for company. In case I screw it up or something. Do you want to come?’
    I glanced at