The White Gallows (6 page)

‘Both of them; we’re short staffed.’

‘So you’re going to be away for a while then?’

‘No, no. I’ll be coming home each night, but I’m going to be busy. You’ll be okay at Caroline’s?’

‘Yeah, yeah, half my stuff’s here now.’

‘Just make sure it’s tidy, okay. Not like your room at home.’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘Look, Gemma, I’m sorry, but I have to go.’ It was always a pleasure to hear his daughter’s voice whilst he was working, but it constantly jarred with the mood of the investigation – a rarefied chink of innocence creeping into a dark world. ‘I’ll see you later, okay?’ he muttered regretfully.

‘Remember to drink and eat,’ she warned. ‘You know what you’re like!’

‘I will, I will,’ he said, realising that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast and had barely had anything to drink either. He got so wrapped up in things he simply forgot to sustain himself. ‘I love you, okay. I’ll see you later,’ he repeated and ended the call.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed out slowly. After a moment he pulled up Jim Whelan’s phone number and pressed call.

‘Whelan.’

‘Jim, how’s it going?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘Do you know who he is yet?’

‘No.’

‘How about piecing together what happened last night? Who he was with? Where he went?’

‘Nothing.’

‘And forensics?’

‘Hopeless.’

McEvoy rolled his eyes and stared out at the lime tree silhouettes, frustrated at Whelan’s one word answers. ‘Ring me if you hear anything, okay,’ he snapped and ended the call immediately pulling up Johnny Cronin’s number, the inspector in charge of the laundering suicide.

‘Yeah?’ Cronin answered distractedly.

‘Johnny, it’s Colm.’

‘What? No, no, over there. There. Sorry, hello?’

‘It’s Colm. How’s it going?’

‘Usual shite with the locals, but otherwise okay. It’s the same guy – same description and pick-up routine. He talks to someone at the bar, pump primes them for information about themselves and the other people in the pub. Then he heads over to the one he thinks is the best bet with a little proposition for them – “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours; it’s not exactly above board, but it’s easy money and no one gets hurt. What do you think?” It looks as if the guy knows the person at the bar, he certainly knows all about them, so he seems pretty kosher.

‘He took the old man for thirty grand. He’d borrowed almost all of it from two of his brothers. He’s a bachelor farmer in his sixties; one of the last of the old school. Lives in a shit heap of a cottage on forty acres of bog with two dogs, a few cows and some sheep for company. He has a few debts and no way to pay them other than to sell the land. He’d sooner die than do that so he was suckered in.’

‘Poor bastard. Any leads on your man?’

‘Same as before. Big guy,
Ulster
accent, dark brown hair, dressed in a smart suit, driving a black Mercedes with Monaghan plates.’

‘Get that description circulated and prepare a press conference, we need to let people know he’s struck again and to be on the look out for him.’

‘The family don’t want any publicity.’

‘All you need to say is that another scam has taken place, you don’t need to name the victim.’

‘I’ll get on it.’

‘Okay, let me know if you have any luck. Otherwise I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’ McEvoy ended the call and immediately rang DI Jenny Flanagan for an update on Kylie O’Neill’s murder in
Tipperary
. After four rings he was transferred to her answer service. He left her a message asking her to ring him back when she had a moment.

Next up was Elaine Jones.

‘Colm?’ Elaine answered.

‘Have you got any news for me yet, Elaine?’ McEvoy asked business-like.

‘The young man from Trim was pretty badly beaten. My feeling is that it was by more than one person. Either that or someone lost control. He was killed by a single stab wound just to the right of his sternum. The knife slid between two ribs and pierced the lower half of his heart and collapsed one of his lungs. He died of a fatal heart attack and internal bleeding. I wouldn’t be surprised if the knife he was holding was the murder weapon – it was about the right length of blade; twelve centimetres. I’d say time of death was sometime between three and five in the morning. He was five and half times over the limit. Probably near paralytic when he died.’

‘And Albert Koch?’ McEvoy asked as the front door opened behind him and Tom McManus stepped out. McEvoy acknowledged him with a nod of his head.

‘Just as I said earlier; depressed fracture of the skull. He was hit with some force. The blow—’

‘Would a vase have been strong enough?’ McEvoy interrupted.

‘Possibly. It would depend on the vase. It would’ve had to have been pretty sturdy. Is that what you think; he was hit with a vase?’

‘They found a couple of shards along with some drops of blood in his study.’

‘All the real bleeding was internal,’ the pathologist continued. ‘He had a subarachnoid haemorrhage – bleeding in the layer around the brain – and we found two large blood clots in the parietal lobe. Effectively he had a stroke, the clots stopped oxygen circulating.’

‘So what you’re saying is that he was killed by the blow to the head?’ McEvoy asked.

‘In short, yes.’

‘Well, he didn’t do that to himself while lying in bed.’

‘No. And the bruising on the legs is consistent with the idea he was dragged up the stairs. My opinion is that he died sometime between one and three in the morning.’

‘Right, okay. Thanks, Elaine. I’d better be getting on.’ McEvoy ended the call and turned towards Tom McManus. ‘I hope this is going to be good news, sergeant.’

‘Depends on what you think is good news.’

_{* * *}

They stood in the gloom at the base of a large oak tree, Colm McEvoy, John Joyce, Tom McManus and a local guard, staring up at the heavy rope hanging from a thick branch, its end coiled into a noose high up in the canopy.

‘Well, this puts a different complexion on things,’ McEvoy said, moving his torch beam across the branches. ‘He was either killed deliberately or this is to try and head us off down a false trail.’

‘Why wasn’t he hung out here?’ Joyce asked. ‘If you’re going to kill him as a statement you might as well make the statement.’

‘Maybe they got disturbed or they panicked,’ McManus hypothesised.

‘In that case, why not just leave him in his study?’ McEvoy asked. ‘Why carry him back up the stairs and put him back into bed?’

‘Perhaps they thought whoever found him would think he’d died naturally?’ McManus offered.

‘Nearly did,’ Joyce said.

‘Perhaps it was too much work for one person to carry him out here and hoist him up,’ McManus suggested. ‘Or maybe the blow was just to stun or subdue him; get him to walk out here? Only the blow was too much and he died?’

‘Perhaps.’ McEvoy nodded. ‘Or maybe he wasn’t dead when they took him back upstairs. They might have thought that he’d just been knocked unconscious. The noose was  meant as a message for when he came round. We’ll need to see if we can find out anything from that rope. John, get George Carter to take a look tomorrow morning when it’s light.’

‘No bother.’

The local guard shifted uneasily, signalling his discomfort at being in the presence of a group to which he didn’t feel he belonged.

‘This is Carl Mannion,’ McManus said, introducing him. ‘We’ve drafted him in from Delvin. He’s a bit of a history buff. He’s been telling me… look, why don’t you tell them yourself, Carl,’ McManus suggested.

‘Well, I… I mean… I’m no expert, you understand.’ Mannion paused, but no one intervened. ‘Just over here,’ he pointed to a spot a few metres from the tree near to a laneway, ‘was the site of the gallows. The white gallows, that is, you know, like the house name. This lane used to be the main route to Athboy before the present road became the preferred choice. All the locals would have had to pass the unfortunate bastards hung here.’

‘So what you’re saying is that this rope is no coincidence,’ McEvoy said, stating the obvious.

‘I wouldn’t think so,’ Mannion concurred. ‘Somebody knew their local history. Back in the nineteenth century this house was occupied by Lord Kilchester’s land agent. Kilchester was gentry but he was also a major industrialist. Like Albert Koch he was a chemist; made a fortune creating and manufacturing dyes, soaps, and the like and exporting them round the world. He inherited the Kilchester Demesne from his father, but rarely travelled to
Ireland
. He just came over for a few weeks each year and left the running of the estate to the land agent,’ he said, warming to the subject.

‘In the early 1870s one of the agent’s men was killed in a dispute, probably over rent or the conditions of tenancy. The agent organised the local police and rounded up three local men and accused them of murder. They might well have been guilty but no one knows for sure. The agent then set up a kangaroo court and persuaded a local judge to convict them. They were forced to build their own gallows, facing out on to the laneway, which they were made to whitewash. The men were hung the following evening.

‘Once the
London
media heard of the men’s fate it was branded the Kilchester scandal. It even caused angry scenes in Parliament. The agent fled to
America
, Lord Kilchester’s business suffered a terrible backlash and he ended up selling his interests in
Ireland
. The agent’s house and outbuildings then fell into disrepair until the farm was bought by George Byrne, a wealthy
Dublin
merchant in the late 1880s. For whatever reason, he renamed the place after the incident. I’m not sure when Albert Koch bought it, but it was certainly over forty years ago. The Big House was burned down in 1922. It was about a mile down the road there.’ He pointed to his right. ‘It was probably the finest Palladian mansion in
Ireland
.’

He stopped and stared at the ground, feeling he had rambled on for too long.

‘And what about Koch?’ McEvoy asked. ‘What’s his local history?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Mannion said. ‘I’m more interested in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century – 1798 to independence. Plenty of rumours though.’

‘Such as?’

‘That he was a Nazi war criminal who fled here after the war or he was a prisoner of war who stayed on. That he wasn’t averse to ignoring a few rules and laws; a few brown envelopes here and there. That he could be like that land agent – a real terror to work for and deal with. There are plenty of people who held him a grudge round here. Some people still do. Plenty of people who also thought he was a great fella.’

‘Would someone hold enough of a grudge to kill him?’ McEvoy asked.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time a grudge led to murder,’ McManus observed.

‘He was rich and powerful, and a cantankerous old bastard; no surer way of making enemies,’ Mannion said.

McEvoy’s mobile phone rang. ‘Yes?’ he answered, distracted.

‘What the hell are you up to, Colm?’ Chief Superintendent Tony Bishop snapped. ‘I’ve just had Paul Cassidy, TD for
North Meath
, on the phone complaining about how you’re handling Albert Koch’s death. His daughter’s on the war path. She claims she’s being treated with malice and disrespect and that her father died of natural causes.’