Bleed a River Deep (22 page)

‘It’s him,’ he said.

Later that evening I found myself back in Seamus Curran’s pub in Derry. He was standing behind the bar, listening to two musicians playing an Irish reel. I scanned the bar and noticed that many of those slapping their knees in time with the music were tourists. The locals sipped on their Guinness and waited for the noise to die down to resume their conversations.

‘Mr Curran,’ I called, raising my hand. ‘A Coke, please.’

He brought a Coke and a glass over to me.

‘The Guard. I remember your face, but not your name,’ he said, clicking the top off the bottle and placing it in front of me.

‘I never gave it,’ I said. ‘Benedict Devlin. I think we should talk.’

Curran smiled as he gestured around the crowded room. ‘I’m a little busy,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to come back.’

‘You didn’t tell me you were involved with V M Haulage.’

His smile faltered slightly and then was back in place.

‘You never asked. So what if I am?’

‘You called Hagan an arsehole the last time we spoke.’

‘That opinion hasn’t changed, Benedict. And you don’t need to be a cop for me to confess to that.’

His use of my forename rankled.

‘If you think he’s such an arsehole, how come your company is doing business with his? Is it not a bit hypocritical, chanting anti-war statements from the window of a business partner’s office?’

‘Who told you we work with Eligius?’

‘The documents Leon Bradley sent out. Funny, actually, you were the only one I discussed it with, the one who told me it would arrive the day after we spoke. Then the local postman gets robbed. Coincidence, eh?’

‘And that’s all it fucking is,’ Curran snapped, his hair flicking into his face.

‘So what’s the deal with Hagan?’ I asked again. ‘How do you know him?’

‘We met on a Peace and Reconciliation visit to Chechnya. We led a group on conflict resolution. He supports some of our charity work from time to time. A way to appease his conscience, perhaps.’

‘But you have no problems with yours, I suppose.’

‘None,’ Curran said. ‘I have to serve someone.’

He walked away from me and dealt with his customer. For the next half-hour he avoided my edge of the bar and did not look at me until I stood to leave. I placed £2 on the counter.

‘For the drink,’ I said.

As I drove home, I considered what he had said. If Hagan had made charity donations, V M wouldn’t be invoicing the company; the work would have been done for free. But like all practised liars, Curran probably retained an element of truth in his story. I believed that he probably had met Hagan on a ‘Reconciliation’ tour in Chechnya. I had little doubt that V M Haulage, or someone working for them, was carrying something for Eligius to Chechnya, and on the return leg was bringing back illegal immigrants. A mercy-mission lorry would be the last place someone would check for illegals. Plus the lorry would already have any necessary paperwork to explain the cross-country journey.

Whatever they were carrying for Hagan, it was clearly illegal; otherwise, why the secrecy? Why the attack on the Strabane postman, unless the documents he was thought to be carrying were potentially damaging? All I had to do now was work out whom they were damaging to, and in what way. Then make sure that the damage was done.

Chapter Twenty-three

Monday, 23 October

That evening Natalia had seemed unusually jumpy, and even Penny and Shane managed to elicit only the briefest flicker of a smile from her as they danced wildly to a TV theme tune. I suspected that she knew she would have to give evidence against Strandmann, and that this in turn would lead to questions about her status and the work she had been engaged in before her arrest. If Strandmann could be charged with something significant – say, people-smuggling – then Natalia would be spared the trauma of having to give that evidence.

On Monday I went into the station legitimately, for the first time in a fortnight. Several officers approached me and welcomed me back. I was aware that some of the younger Guards didn’t want to be seen to be too friendly, lest it affect their promotion chances. Even Helen Gorman was circumspect.

I phoned through to Letterkenny and asked to speak to the techie who had been given Leon’s camera. I was forwarded to someone called Marty, a civilian IT specialist who, for the first few minutes of the conversation, explained to me the processes by which he had retrieved the photographs from the camera. I tried to sound suitably impressed.

Finally, I interrupted him: ‘So, did you find any shots?’

‘A load,’ he said. ‘He had a memory card, and images saved on the internal drive. He has over a hundred here. Which ones are you looking for?’

‘Any of someone brandishing a shotgun?’ I asked, half jokingly.

‘None, but there’s some right dirty stuff on this. Must be shots of his missus. Very artistic.’

‘Were they the last shots he took?’ I asked, assuming that the woman in question was Janet Moore. If the last shots he had taken had been of her, then he had not used his camera on the night of his death.

‘No, the last photos are of some old bloke working in the woods.’

‘What kind of work?’

‘Shifting stuff,’ he said quickly. ‘Look, do you want me to send you these? You can look through them at your leisure.’

‘Can you e-mail them to me?’

‘There are too many,’ he said. ‘I’ll save them to a Shared Documents file and you can download them from there.’

Sure enough, several minutes later, the techie sent me an e-mail with details of the file in which he had saved the images. I noticed that he signed off his message with a yellow smiley face.

I opened the file and began to scroll through the contents. Most of the pictures were of no interest. Leon and his friends. The old grey dog I’d seen out at Carrowcreel with the crusties. Images of trees, taken at artistic angles. Then I opened an image of Leon and Fearghal. They were standing side by side. Leon slouched slightly, though still a few inches taller than his brother. His arm rested across Fearghal’s shoulders, his legs crossed at the ankles. He sported a half-smile. Fearghal stood erect, his hands behind his back, his body upright, though he had inclined his head just slightly so that it rested against his younger brother’s.

I printed the picture off, then continued moving through the images. Janet Moore was photographed in various stages of undress, in a manner Leon had probably considered artistic: her breasts obscured by cushions, her face alive with mischief. Then there was one image of her standing naked, uncovered, her hands by her sides, her expression a little plaintive. I flicked on to the next image quickly.

It became clear that I was moving towards the most recent shots. Several images of the crusties out at the camp appeared. One of Peter, the older man, a joint hanging from his mouth. Ted Coyle, half bent over his prospecting pan, his hand raised in salute. Other campers whose faces I recognized, some posed, others caught unawares.

Finally, I saw an image that made me start. I almost missed the person in the shot, for the image was ostensibly of an area of woodland. In the background was an old barn-like structure, its corrugated-iron roofing riddled with rust-edged holes. Just emerging from the barn, though, was a man I recognized, his greying hair pulled back into a pony-tail. The next shot was a better image again. It was also the last. Pony Tail was facing the camera, his features clear, his expression one of bemusement. I suspected that he had seen Leon taking his picture.

I printed off that image too, then lifted both pictures from the printer tray.

Helen Gorman was completing an incident report on a traffic accident when I went across to her.

‘I want you to gather up a team and go back out to the Carrowcreel and find that building,’ I said, handing her the shot of Pony Tail.

‘Why?’ Gorman asked.

‘Because this fucker was obviously up to something in it. Something bad enough to kill Leon Bradley to stop him revealing it. Now gather up a team, Helen.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, standing up quickly and moving off.

Vincent Morrison worked out of a unit on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Derry, near Campsie. When I arrived at his depot, two vans were parked in the garage bays. One had the engine exposed and a young man in a boiler suit was lying on the floor underneath. A girl sat at the reception desk doing a newspaper crossword.

‘I’d like to see Vincent Morrison,’ I said.

‘Have you an appointment?’ she asked, barely glancing up at me.

‘No, I’m the police.’

‘Not up here, you’re not,’ a male voice said. I looked up to see Vincent Morrison standing in the doorway of his office, leaning against the doorjamb with his arms folded. I recognized him from the photographs I had seen on the Internet the day before. He was a slight man, small-framed and underfed. He wore a loose T-shirt which had the effect of making his arms look even more spindly than they actually were. His face was narrow, his mouth slightly pursed, his moustache thin on his upper lip. He wore glasses, behind which he blinked several times in quick succession.

‘That’s true, Mr Morrison,’ I conceded.

‘You’re one of the ones that lifted my van yesterday,’ he said, wagging a finger playfully in my direction.

‘I was there, that’s correct,’ I agreed, stopping myself from asking how he knew. ‘Your employee was selling all manner of things from the back of your van.’

‘You give these people jobs and what happens?’ he said, hands out, palms raised in a what-can-you-do? gesture.

‘All the same, the man was selling illegal goods from your van, Mr Morrison. I’m sure the PSNI will want to discuss it with you at some stage. Meanwhile, I was wondering if you could help me.’

He tilted his head slightly to the side. ‘If I can,’ he said.

‘I’m trying to locate one of your employees. Barry Ford?’

Morrison’s mouth pursed a little tighter, and he shook his head.

I took out the photograph of Ford that I had printed out and handed it to Morrison. ‘No one seems to remember this man,’ I said. ‘He works for you, apparently.’

Morrison looked at the picture, then folded it and handed it back to me.

‘I know Barry. He used to work for me. Haven’t seen him in a few days. What has he done?’

‘I’m not sure where to start,’ I said. ‘I’d like his address if you have it.’

Morrison clicked his fingers in the direction of the girl still sitting behind her desk, chewing on the top of a biro as she struggled with her crossword. ‘Get Barry’s details, Sharon,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ I began, but Morrison interrupted me.

‘Where was that picture taken?’ he asked.

‘We’re looking into it now.’

Morrison nodded and moved out from his doorway. ‘If that’s everything? I had hoped you’d be bringing me back my van, but as you say, I need to discuss that with the PSNI.’

‘There is something else,’ I said. ‘What business does your company have with Eligius Technology?’

‘None of yours, actually,’ he replied with a laugh.

‘Your name came up in the investigation of a murder, sir. Invoices from you to Eligius. Your partner Seamus Curran already confirmed that you are carrying something for Senator Cathal Hagan. He tells me they met in Chechnya. Do you send lorries out there much?’

‘We are a freight carrier,’ he explained. ‘We work with a lot of companies, some better known than others. And we go to a lot of countries.’

‘What do you transport for them?’ I asked.

‘Whatever they pay us to transport. Now, this really
is
none of your business, Inspector. If you want to see our records, you can get a warrant and see what happens. Except, of course, your warrant will be meaningless up here.’

‘A contract from a company the size of Eligius and you really expect me to believe that you don’t know what you transport for them?’

‘That’s not what I said,’ Morrison replied, smiling. I noticed that one of his two front teeth was slightly crooked and overlapped with its neighbour. ‘I said it was none of your business. And I don’t really give a shit whether you believe a word I say or not; you’ve no authority here. I’ll give you that address, because I’m a good guy. Ask me any more questions and I’ll kick your arse out of here.’

Morrison’s aggressiveness only served to strengthen my determination to find out why his contract with Eligius was so important. I also had the sheet of productivity reports; they meant little to me, but I suspected that someone with a head for figures might be more successful in identifying their significance to Leon Bradley. I was reluctant to ask someone within my own station, in case word would get back to Patterson that I was investigating Hagan. There was someone else, though, who I knew would be delighted to dig for dirt on Orcas.

Ted Coyle had told me he used to be an accountant. As I drove out to the Carrowcreel, I phoned Gilmore and gave him the address Morrison had given me for Barry Ford. He lived in Derry, which was out of my jurisdiction. The PSNI, however, could legitimately go after him, armed if needs be.

I was about three miles from the turning to the Carrowcreel when I got a call from Helen Gorman. She and three other officers had trekked up the river again, she said. They had located the barn in the images we had retrieved from Bradley’s camera. It was a five-minute walk to the east of where we had found the camera. It had looked deserted but as they had approached they noticed a car parked near by. Someone was inside.

I told her to wait for me and then drove back towards Orcas. It would take too long to drive to the campsite and make my way upriver. I recalled seeing the fence at Orcas near the spot where we had found Leon’s camera.

I parked the car against the fence, where I estimated the spot closest to the river to be. Before locking up, I removed my gun from the floor locker between the two front seats, in case Pony Tail was armed. He’d already taken one shot at me with a sawn-off shotgun, and I knew a shotgun had also been used to kill Leon. Best to be sure, I told myself. I was able to haul myself up over the chain-link fence, dropped heavily on to the other side and stumbled down to the river’s edge.