The White Gallows (33 page)

McEvoy dropped the papers on the edge of the desk.

‘Have you seen these?’ he asked, jabbing at the papers.

‘No,’ Moench answered, picking up the
Irish Sun
. ‘Killer Koch!’ he said aloud, looking up at McEvoy, his bushy beard containing remnants of his breakfast. ‘Detective Stringer told me that the newspapers were covering the case.’

‘So you’re not responsible then?’ McEvoy asked. ‘Their source material seems to be the papers you have on the desk in front of you.’

‘I haven’t spoken to anyone about these papers,’ Moench said offended. ‘You asked me not to.’

‘Not even your friends?’

‘Not even my wife. And these papers have not left this room.’

‘And are the newspapers right?’ McEvoy asked without apologising for his accusations. ‘Albert Koch really was Adolf Kuchen and he was involved in war crimes?’

‘As I said yesterday, I need to check these papers with the original archives, but it seems that way to me. I have been investigating the Jewish Skeleton Project.’ Moench turned over the book he had been reading –
Race Experiments and the Holocaust
. The cover showed a man in an SS uniform fitting measuring callipers around the shaved head of a nervous child.

‘Conrad Trent,’ Moench said, referring to the book’s author, ‘documents Adolf Kucken as a member of the Abnenebre, a kind of pseudo-academy set up by Himmler, which conducted medical experiments on Jewish prisoners. He notes that Kucken was an SS chemist working in Monowitz, part of Auschwitz, and that he was recruited there by Bruno Beger. During August 1943 Kucken travelled to the Anatomical Institute at the Strassburg Reich University where he de-fleshed the skeletons killed at the nearby Natzweiler concentration camp. There’s not much more information than that, but the book proves that Kucken exists in the archives and he was involved in war atrocities. These papers,’ he gestured at the table, ‘match the book’s evidence. Without checking properly, I’d say they are copies of the genuine files.

‘Jesus,’ McEvoy muttered.

‘It does not prove, however, that Albert Koch was Adolf Kucken,’ Moench warned.

‘We know that Frank Koch was Franz Kucken,’ McEvoy said. ‘I’d say it all adds up.’

_{* * *}

‘It’s Jenny. Do you have a minute?’

‘Yeah, no bother, go on,’ McEvoy instructed. He was stuck behind a tractor pulling a trailer on the gently rolling road between Athboy and Navan, slowly drifting past a procession of one-off houses on one acre plots, each house built in a different style and fronted with an assortment of walls, fences, and hedges.

‘I can’t decide who killed Kylie O’Neill. They’ve both clammed up. Neither will say anything other than to repeat their original stories. I’ve had the phone records checked again. His phone was definitely in Bansha. Her phone made two calls from the mast nearest to Kylie’s home around the time she was murdered, though she swears blind she was in Caher. We can’t find any trace of her there, nor can we in Kylie’s house either.’

‘So what’s your hunch?’

‘I think Brian O’Neill left his phone in Bansha and travelled to his wife’s house carrying Janice Kelly’s phone. He killed his wife and then used Janice’s phone to call his own phone. Then he covered his tracks and headed back to Bansha.’

‘So charge him.’

‘It could equally have been Janice Kelly,’ Jenny said.

‘You’ve just said you couldn’t find any trace of her at Kylie’s house. He must have done it. You have enough circumstantial evidence to convince the DPP’s office,’ McEvoy said, referring to the Director of Public Prosecutions who decided whether there was sufficient evidence for a person to stand trial to answer a charge.

‘I have no witnesses, no weapon, and no evidence to link him to the scene of the crime other than his mistress’ phone was nearby and a witness statement that saw his car on the road from Bansha to the house, but who can’t be sure of the day.’

‘Jesus, Jenny, I have enough to be dealing with here. Can’t you just get it sorted? One of the two of them did it.’

‘I know that! I’m just not sure which of them. My head’s telling me that he did it, but my heart’s saying that she did. She’s a cold-hearted bitch.’

‘For God’s sake,’ McEvoy muttered. ‘If you need to, charge them both – one for murder, one for aiding and abetting. Threaten to throw the book at them. If you want to spice things up, charge her with the murder and see how they both react to that.’

‘She probably won’t even blink,’ Jenny said. ‘I’ll think about it and let you know how I get on. I’d better let you get back to your headlines.’ The line went dead.

McEvoy, frustrated at the call and the slow pace of the tractor in front of him, swung out from behind the trailer. He flung the car back in, narrowly avoiding a car coming the other way. ‘Jesus,’ he mumbled to himself, a shiver running up his spine.

_{* * *}

‘Well?’

‘They admit that Yellow Star leaked selected documents to the newspapers last night,’ John Joyce replied, watching McEvoy approach the bed and breakfast.

‘For God’s sake! What the hell were they playing at?’

‘They say it was in the public’s interest to know the truth about Albert Koch before he was buried and eulogised. They didn’t want all his obituaries to simply state that he was a “great fella”. They want him to be remembered for what he was – a mass murderer.’

‘I guess they have a point,’ McEvoy conceded reluctantly. ‘Come on, I better talk to them.’ He brushed past Joyce and entered the hallway, turning right into the living room.

Ewa Chojnacki and Tomas Prochazka were sitting on the same floral-patterned sofa. Ewa’s oval face was set in a determined pose; Tomas appeared more sheepish, his eyes downcast behind his small, round glasses.

‘I suppose you’re happy with today’s headlines,’ McEvoy asked.

‘I am neither happy nor sad,’ Ewa replied defiantly. ‘I wish there had been no need for it, that the Nazi state had not existed, nor killed millions of innocent people for no reason other than their supposed race.’

‘I know you think you’ve done the right thing, but you’ve made our job more difficult. His family and friends are going to be a lot more reluctant to talk to us now. You should have waited until we’d caught his killer.’

‘We could not let him be buried as a saint,’ Ewa said. ‘The funeral is tomorrow. We needed to act fast.’

‘Where were you between
midnight
and
three o’clock
in the morning on Sunday?’ McEvoy asked, changing tack.

‘We were here,’ Ewa said, her face changing to one of confusion.

‘There were only two sets of guests here on Saturday night. The owners said they heard someone let themselves back in at around two in the morning. The other guests said that they did not leave their room between eleven o’clock and eight the next morning,’ McEvoy lied, ‘so it could have only been you.’

‘We were here all night. We did not leave the room also.’

‘Then who let themselves in at two o’clock in the morning?’ McEvoy pressed.

‘I don’t know, but it was not us.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I am one hundred per cent positive.’

‘If we discover otherwise, you will become prime suspects in Albert Koch’s murder. You will have lied to us, you will have a motive, and you won’t have an alibi. That will be enough for a circumstantial prosecution.’

Ewa and Tomas shared a concerned look, but neither of them ventured an answer.

‘We will be investigating further your time here. If we find you have lied to us, we will be bringing you in for more questioning. In the meantime, you are not to pass any more information concerning Albert Koch’s past to the media. Do you understand?’

‘You think we killed Albert Koch?’ Tomas asked quietly.

‘I think I can’t rule it out.’

‘But that is stupid,’ Ewa said contemptuously. ‘We were seeking justice not revenge.’

‘You were seeking revenge as well,’ McEvoy said evenly. ‘You wanted to destroy Koch’s carefully constructed world. Perhaps not by killing him, but maybe that happened by accident? You were searching his house looking for evidence and you disturbed him. A fight broke out and Albert Koch somehow ended up dead.’

‘We did not break into his house,’ Ewa said angrily. ‘We had all the evidence we needed. And we definitely did not kill him! We were here all Saturday night.’

‘We’ll see,’ McEvoy said, heading for the door before the couple could respond.

John Joyce joined him on the doorstep.

‘That was a bit harsh,’ Joyce observed.

‘They deserved it,’ McEvoy said. ‘They shouldn’t have given those documents to the media. What were they expecting; that we’d thank them for it? I meant what I said about putting them under the microscope. I want you to go over their story with a fine tooth comb. Any inconsistencies, any lies, any anything, get it checked out.’

_{* * *}

He threaded the car past three uniformed gardai wearing luminous yellow jackets and five journalists wrapped in bulky coats, scarves and hats, and drove up past Marion D’Arcy’s house to the stables, parking next to an old water trough.

He found Charles Koch cleaning out a stall. Despite the chill air he was dressed in only a check shirt, dirty jeans, and a pair of green wellington boots.

McEvoy knocked on the stable door. Koch glanced up, then went back to work, dumping a fork full of manure into a wheelbarrow.

‘Do you have a minute?’ McEvoy asked.

‘Have you seen the papers?’ Koch asked without stopping his work.

‘It’s nothing to do with us,’ McEvoy said, slipping into the stable. ‘Your father made many enemies; his past seems to have finally caught up with him.’

‘Do you believe those lies?’ Koch stood up straight, his posture challenging McEvoy.

‘The evidence seems to point that way.’

‘It’s all lies! He came here to join his brother; to escape the carnage in
Europe
. He was a chemist for I.G. Farben in Austria. He didn’t kill anyone.’

‘That’s not what the archive documents show.’

‘Then they’re wrong! And you’ve no right to be investigating his past. Your job is to catch his killer. Nothing else.’

‘And what if his past is responsible for his death? Everything to do with your father’s death seems to point to his past. And my job is to investigate anything that I think matters.’

Koch snorted derision and turned his attention back to the soiled straw.

‘I wanted to talk to you about Saturday night.’

Koch stayed silent, dumping another load into the wheelbarrow.

‘You told me that you stayed the night in your holiday cottage near Oldcastle.’

Koch continued to ignore McEvoy.

‘According to Patricia Kinneally you spent the night with her in Kells.’

Koch paused momentarily, then continued his work.

‘Why did you lie to us?’

‘I didn’t kill my father and there was no need to involve Patricia.’

‘You’re ashamed of your relationship?’