Authors: Brian McGilloway
‘Coneyburrow Road,’ Bryant said. ‘I’d been up at the garage getting diesel when the call came through and I took it because I was so close.’
‘Cleary’s own home,’ McCready said to me.
‘You don’t remember what number, do you?’
‘If I do, will we forget about my overlooking the change in details?’
‘That depends,’ I said. ‘Give me the number first.’ I knew Cleary’s mother lived in 28.
Bryant went across to the car and opened the driver’s door. A yellow Post-it pad was attached to the windscreen with a sucker. He flicked through the first two pages, which were covered
with scribbled addresses, then tore them off and scrunched them up in his pocket. He rifled through the side pocket on the inside of the driver’s door and pulled out a handful of balled-up
Post-its. He unravelled each until he found the one he wanted.
‘Lucky I don’t clean it out every night. Number 142. I picked him up at 10.25 p.m.’
I made a note of the number myself. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr Bryant,’ I said. ‘If you do remember anything else, please do get in contact.’
‘I know that number,’ McCready said as we got into the car. ‘I’ve been there before.’
We headed straight across to Coneyburrow while I called Jim Hendry to update him.
‘Burke was lying, Jim. Sean Cleary definitely had a phone. The driver says Cleary was arranging to meet someone while he was in his taxi.’
‘We’ll try picking Burke up again. He was let out with a caution over the twenty euro. The DPP thought it wasn’t worth the effort. The young fella lives in a hostel down town.
His folks turfed him out of the house a year back apparently.’
‘If we can get Cleary’s phone we’ll know who he was arranging to meet.’
‘I’ll get the number off his mother and try some of the mobile companies. We might be able to get his call listings without the phone itself. I’ll be in touch if I hear
anything.’
‘On an unrelated topic, the bonfire up at the factory. Would you let your daughter go to it, if you were me?’
‘If I were you, my daughter would be in a nunnery already,’ Hendry quipped. ‘Trust me, I’m the worst person you can ask for parenting advice. My own kids hardly speak to
me anymore.’
‘Seamus O’Hara,’ McCready said suddenly from beside me. ‘That’s who lives in 142.’
As soon as he said the name I realized he was right. Seamus O’Hara, the ferryman Reddin had named when I visited him.
O’Hara’s house stood on its own grounds of about half an acre, bordered on all sides by leylandii trees, which obscured it from the road. Only when we pulled into
the driveway did we notice that the curtains were drawn across the windows, as they had been when we called the previous day.
As I approached the house, I could see thick-bodied flies flitting against the small pane of glass in the centre of the front door. I banged on the door a few times, then leaned down and,
opening the letterbox, shouted, ‘Mr O’Hara? It’s the guards.’
There was no response, but I could see more flies flitting in the light shining through the door glass.
I stood back and, aiming my boot as high as I could, kicked the door. It shuddered in the frame but did not shift.
‘Might be best if I try,’ McCready said, stepping back then taking a run at it, shouldering the door open before tumbling into the hallway.
I moved past him, helping him to his feet. The hallway was dull save for the light from the doorway, the wallpaper old fashioned, the carpeting dark and worn. Ahead of us the kitchen door yawned
open, the remnants of an evening meal still sitting on the worktop by the sink. The air in the hallway was damp and heavy with the musty smell of old books, and something sharper and more visceral,
which confirmed our worst fears. Heavy bluebottles buzzed back and forth, alighting on the door frame.
To our immediate left was the living room. A number of large mahogany bookcases dominated the wall facing us as we entered, their shelves sagging a little beneath the weight of the books they
had once borne, but which now lay scattered on the floor. An old TV lay on its side on the ground, still playing soundlessly. On the floor nearby, his hand stretched towards the TV, was Seamus
O’Hara.
He was on his back, clad in his pyjamas, his housecoat hanging open. His belly bulged through a gap in his nightshirt and I noticed his skin had already developed a distinctive greenish tint.
Small blowflies flitted from the body to the curtains.
‘He’s dead a few days, I’d guess,’ I said, moving closer to the body. There was no need to check for signs of life; O’Hara’s eyes were clouded and unfocused,
his face and neck peppered with small black pellet wounds around which his blood had crusted.
‘Shotgun pellets?’ McCready commented.
I shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
He had fallen in front of an old worn armchair positioned by the fireplace. Heaped ashes were piled in the hearth. O’Hara’s pipe lay on the tiles nearby. A tumbler of whiskey sat
near the leg of the chair, its contents shining amber in the dim light.
While McCready called the station to request SOCO and the pathologist, I moved through the rest of the house.
To the rear of the living room was a small office. The room was neat and clean; the only objects that appeared to be out of place were a newspaper lying open on the desk and a pair of scissors
next to it.
I moved through into the kitchen. The rear door to the property stood ajar and the glass from one of its four small square window panes lay shattered on the floor.
‘Anything?’
I shook my head, opening the door and glancing out.
‘I’ll check upstairs,’ McCready said.
As he did so, I moved back into the living room. The TV had not been taken, but then its age would have hardly made it the most appealing prospect for a burglar. As I looked at the glass of
whiskey I silently considered O’Hara’s last night. Presumably he had left the glass there with the intention of lifting it in the morning, in the expectation that the morning would come
for him. The room with its books but no photographs of family or children saddened me. It was as if the man’s life was further diminished in death by the fact that no one had even noticed he
was gone.
A junior doctor from the local health centre arrived within twenty minutes to confirm death. He blanched at the sight of the body and I assumed he’d had little experience
in dealing with such ripe corpses. He conducted his checks with little conversation, confirmed death, and left again as hurriedly as he could.
Our forensics technician, Michael Doherty, arrived just before noon, toting his black sampling cases. He worked the scene while waiting for the State Pathologist, Joe Long, to arrive and examine
the body. Patterson and I stood in the living room. McCready had already begun canvassing neighbours with a team of uniforms, but considering the isolated nature of the house, surrounded by the
high tree-line, it was unlikely anyone would have seen anything of use to us.
‘Fucking pathetic,’ Patterson muttered.
He guessed from my expression that I was unsure what he meant, so he gestured around the room.
‘This. All these books. What did the man have, like? He’s dead how many days, and no one even noticed?’
‘It’s sad,’ I agreed.
‘So, a robbery, then?’
‘Looks like it. The kitchen-door window was smashed to gain access to the house. Whoever they were, they came in here, trashed the place looking for something.’
‘Didn’t take the TV,’ Patterson commented. ‘Anything else obvious gone?’
I shook my head. ‘No computer, no DVD player. A few old VHS tapes but no sign of a video player.’
‘VHS? Jesus,’ Patterson said to the SOCO dusting the hallway doorframe for prints, ‘was he afraid to spend money or something, eh?’ Then, to me, he said, ‘What
about upstairs?’
‘McCready checked it,’ I admitted. ‘I took a quick look around, but I’m not sure about anything missing.’
I followed Paterson up. O’Hara’s bedroom was to the front of the property. The small bedside lamp was still turned on, the bedclothes tossed back, though the bed was otherwise
undisturbed. A tumbler of water sat on a bedside cabinet, its contents spilled slightly onto the wooden surface. The wardrobe facing the bed lay open a little. On top of the bed lay a paperback
book.
I moved across to the window. It was pulled closed, but the handle was not fully turned to lock it shut. I looked across to the neighbouring houses, only just visible over the tops of the trees.
I could see McCready standing at the doorway of one, talking with the occupant.
Patterson began opening the drawers of the bedside cabinet. One contained socks and underwear, the next pyjamas. He flicked through the contents of each.
‘No money lying around,’ he commented. ‘Oh ho,’ he added, pulling a magazine out from beneath the clothes in the middle drawer. ‘O’Hara was one of
them.’
I glanced at the cover; it was a gay pornographic magazine.
‘That’s why he never married,’ Patterson added, flicking through the pages.
For my part, I found this was the most unpleasant part of our job. O’Hara had lived alone but even then had hidden the magazine beneath clothes in his drawer, presumably out of
embarrassment. Through the necessary steps of investigation we learned things about victims that their own families would not know; every secret, every embarrassment laid bare.
I glanced back out of the window and saw Joe Long’s car arrive outside, the uniform manning the cordon lifting the crime-scene tape to allow the car to pass under.
Doherty finished working around the remains to allow Long to examine the body, and moved out to the kitchen in the hope that those who had broken in might have left prints around the door.
We moved back down, Joe Long acknowledging us with a nod of his head as we came into the room again. He flitted away a fat-bodied fly that had lifted from the corpse.
The living room was untouched since our arrival. The books lay scattered across the floor, some still lying atop others, as if whoever had left them there had simply swept them from the
shelves.
‘What do you think they were looking for?’
‘Could be cash,’ Patterson said. ‘Seems a bit deliberate, mind you. Nothing obvious is missing, unless there’s something we’re just not seeing.’
‘The other option is that Sean Cleary did this.’
Patterson nodded. ‘Revenge for his father? It’s possible.’
‘There was no mention of powder or blood on his hands, though,’ I said.
‘He could have been wearing gloves,’ Patterson suggested. ‘Contact the North and ask them to look again.’
‘What about the weapon? If O’Hara was shot with a shotgun, Cleary would’ve needed to get rid of it somewhere.’
‘Maybe he has,’ Patterson said. ‘We’ll search the area if Dr Long here confirms shotgun.’
I moved back into the office area again, although, as with the other room, nothing was obviously amiss. The newspaper was open at a crossword. The page before it had been cut out, the edge rough
with scissor cuts.
Joe Long stood up, pulling off his latex gloves.
‘What’s the damage, Joe? Shotgun?’
Long shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. There’s definitely pellet dispersal, but the pellets aren’t typical of shotguns. Get young Doherty out there to take samples.
You can work the body then bag it and send it to Letterkenny General. I’ll examine it there.’
We spent the remainder of the afternoon searching the house, checking the grounds and the outlying land near the house, and interviewing neighbours. Yet by five o’clock
we were no closer to recovering the murder weapon or developing any clear leads on who had shot Seamus O’Hara.
There were, however, two significant items unearthed among the mess on the living-room floor. The first was a small carriage clock, lying under the piles of books. The casing at the back had
opened and the battery had spilled onto the floor. It had stopped at three twenty-three. To check that the clock had been working before being knocked down, I pushed the battery back in long enough
to see the red second hand twitch to life.
It had come to light because one of the forensics team had been sent in by Michael Doherty to dust down the books on the floor, lest O’Hara’s assailant had removed their gloves to
search through them. The books were aged, mostly pertaining to Donegal or environs. Many were fishing records and charts. It was during this process that I noticed that one of the larger volumes on
the floor was an Ordnance Survey of Donegal. I picked it up from the top of the tottering pile where it had been set and began flicking through it, looking for the map of Islandmore. Sure enough,
the page for that area had been removed. I believed I knew where I had last seen it: inside a plastic folder held by Lennie Millar.
‘Anything interesting?’ Doherty asked, coming into the room.
‘I think we’ve found the source of the tip-off to the Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains.’
Doherty nodded. ‘And I think we might have got lucky out here,’ he said, gesturing that I should follow him.
He led me out to the kitchen where the broken glass from the floor lay.
‘I found blood on the broken glass,’ he said. ‘I want to take it back and run it through the system. It could be the assailant smashed the window and cut himself in the
process. We might hit a DNA match.’
‘Good work. How soon will you know?’
‘If it’s someone on the system, tonight or tomorrow. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know.’
McCready and I met with Harry Patterson that evening in the station. Burgess was still there when we arrived.
‘I followed that information up for you, Inspector,’ he said. ‘I got the run-around all afternoon. There were a load of companies and investors involved; then the whole lot
collapsed. The bank had to take the properties from the builder then auction them off. A company registered in London now owns the estate. I can’t get a name on who runs it unless I file an
official request through the UK police. Do you want me to?’
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I think I know another way to find out. Thanks for checking for me.’