The body against the fence had already been bagged, following a blessing from Father Brennan. The second form, which I had seen further up the hill, was indeed another corpse, or parts of one at least.
We worked mostly in silence for a further hour or so. One team worked its way up from the bottom of the incline whilst another worked down from the Abbey. Each corpse had to be bagged and blessed. Any belongings or pieces of clothing had to be recovered and, where possible, matched to a corpse. In total we bagged eight sets of remains. I was about to call everyone to head down for a tea break and a chance to warm up a little in Margaret Hunter’s house when I noticed one of the council workers stumbling down the embankment.
He had worked his way further up the hill than the rest of his team and he had been cutting back the nettles I had seen from above the previous night. He swore loudly now as he stumbled backwards down towards us. He managed to stop himself, then turned to one side and vomited noisily onto the ground.
I went up to see if he was OK, and to suggest he stop for a while. He was on all fours by the time I got to him. I put my hand on the arch of his back as he continued to retch on the ground.
‘Take five or ten minutes,’ I said. ‘Have a smoke or something.’
He looked over his shoulder at me, his face ashen, his wet hair hanging in his eyes.
‘There’s a fresh one up there,’ he managed. ‘In the nettles. A fresh body.’
I stumbled up the incline myself, struggling to find my footing. The body lay about halfway up the gradient, making access to it from either top or bottom equally awkward. I could see why the council man had recognized it as more recently deceased, though ‘fresh’ was not quite accurate; ‘fresher’ would have been nearer the mark. Its skin was fairly intact, though it was marbled, the veins unusually visible. The victim’s hair, long blond curls, was tied back from his face, which was pressed into the mud. Though the floodwater had washed away the blood the ragged bullet hole near his left temple was clear. His hands were tied behind his back, his wrists bound with something resembling piano wire. The body was still dressed, in jeans and a T-shirt. Having known the man when he was alive, I said a quiet Act of Contrition for his soul, though I suspected his reckoning had occurred weeks past. Then, getting a decent footing against the flow of water still washing around us, I took out my mobile and phoned through to Patterson.
‘We can call off the search,’ I said. ‘I’ve found Lorcan Hutton.’
Patterson arrived about forty minutes later, lumbering up the incline in his Garda overcoat and a pair of wellingtons. A second man accompanied him, thin and slight of build, brown hair cut tight against his scalp. I put him in his early thirties and, though he was wearing civilian clothes, I pegged him as a Guard straight away.
I slid down to meet them, using my arms to keep my balance.
‘Devlin – this is Rory Nicell from the Drugs Unit. Rory, this is Inspector Devlin.’
‘How’re you?’ Nicell said as we shook hands. ‘I got your call. I’ve been meaning to get back to you, but things are a little hectic at the moment.’
‘No hassle,’ I said.
We stood a little awkwardly on the incline. The hood of my waterproof kept flapping in front of my face as the rainwater dripped into my eyes from my hair.
‘So you found Lorcan then,’ Nicell said, gesturing towards the body.
‘Eventually.’
‘We thought this Rising crowd had driven him underground, to be honest,’ Nicell commented, stepping up towards the body.
‘He was underground all right,’ Patterson said with a smirk.
‘Almost. His body was put in one of the sarcophagi in the Abbey grounds. The rain flooded the place, burst the walls and washed the bodies down. If he’d been properly underground we’d never have found him.’
‘Foul deeds will rise, isn’t that the line?’ Nicell said.
‘So what brings you out to the arse end of Donegal?’ I asked.
‘Your Super asked us to put in an appearance, see if we can’t help out in some way.’ He glanced over his shoulder to where Patterson remained at the bottom of the incline, speaking to some of the council workers. Then he continued in a lowered voice, ‘To be honest, we’re so fucking stretched at the minute we’re just about covering the big players. Hutton’s name featured with us a few times, but he was small fry.’
‘Small fry? He’s been running drugs here for years.’
Nicell stopped and raised a placatory hand. ‘Sorry – I don’t mean it like that. It’s just, there are eight of us to cover the entire county. I know Hutton was a prick, but the actual figures he was pushing were relatively small. There are really only four big players in Donegal and they’re all further into the county. The borderlands have been left fairly much to their own devices. I think most of the big pushers didn’t want to piss off the paramilitaries who were running the trade in the North and over the borders for years.’
‘What about Martin Kielty?’
‘The guy who died?’ Nicell shook his head. ‘Never featured on my radar. I’d heard the name in dispatches. The drugs may have moved out of the cities, but the resources to tackle them haven’t.’
‘We’re looking at Irvine for the killing of Kielty. Seems possible he’s to blame for this one too.’
‘It does, all right,’ Nicell said. ‘Again, Irvine’s figured more in the North than over here.’
‘Kielty’s girlfriend told us that Irvine’s crew threatened him in a local pub and then sent him a death threat in the post. The barman in Doherty’s confirmed it was Irvine. Though he said that he picked on Kielty and ignored other pushers in the pub at the same time.’
‘Who knows what these fuckers are thinking?’ Nicell said. ‘Could be a private beef between the two of them. It sounds likely that he’s your man, though. I’ll keep an ear out and let you know what I hear.’
We reached Hutton’s corpse and Nicell knelt beside him to examine the wound to his head.
‘The ME hasn’t even arrived yet,’ I said.
‘Poor bastard,’ Nicell said. ‘Though the fucker had it coming to him if he was happy enough to keep peddling his shit.’
‘If he was small fry, what’s your interest?’ I asked. I’d already experienced the NBCI arriving halfway through an investigation and sidelining the locals in a previous case. I didn’t want a repeat performance from the county’s Drugs Unit.
‘Honestly? None. Your boss there wants us to show our faces at a press conference he’s organized to say that Hutton has been found. This Rising crew have him riled. I think he wants to reassure the public that the “Drugs Unit” is on the case. Pure bullshit, of course. Fucking PR exercise.’
‘What’s the story with The Rising?’
‘Fuck knows. The only thing it has done is drive a few of the dealers underground or out of the county. Hutton and Kielty are just two of a half dozen we know of, stretching to Inishowen, who have upped sticks and moved. Though in the case of Lorcan and Kielty, the move was more permanent.’
‘Do you know anything about a guy called Vincent Morrison?’
Nicell shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nothing, why?’
I explained my previous encounter with Morrison. ‘He’s a slick bastard and he got away with murder, quite literally. I’d swear if he’s involved with The Rising, there’s something else behind it. He’s not the community-minded type.’
‘I’ll ask around and see what I can find,’ Nicell said. ‘Though I’ve not heard his name in connection with anything. Whatever else I can do, just give me a bell,’ he concluded, handing me his card.
At that, John Mulronney, the ME, finally arrived. He stood at the bottom of the incline where Hutton lay and looked up to the body. Puffing out his cheeks and using his black medical bag for balance, he began his ascent. Halfway up, his feet gave out under him and he landed face down in the mud, his arms out to his side, one managing to hold his bag an inch off the ground.
‘Fuck!’ he yelled, while Nicell and I slid our way down to him to help him up as the others around us bent double with laughter.
Mulronney gave Hutton a cursory examination, signed the death certificate and left again with little conversation. Hutton’s body was not to be touched until the state pathologist arrived and did his initial examination. For my part, I had promised Caroline Williams that I would be at Peter’s funeral. I wanted to get home and showered before Debbie and I headed down. Before that, someone had to visit Lorcan Hutton’s parents and inform them of his death. I suggested to Patterson that he might want to do it.
‘Lifford is your station, Devlin. You can handle it.’
‘In that case, I need you to send a Forensics team to the house in Rolston Court. I also want a team to check Ian Hamill’s car. We found it last night on Barnesmore Gap.’
‘Yes, Inspector,’ he drawled. ‘Lucky I have you to tell me my job.’
Hutton’s father and mother sat together on their leather settee while I informed them that their son’s remains had been discovered and invited them to officially identify his body in Letterkenny Hospital.
Both had been doctors, which may have accounted for the clinical, professional manner in which they received news of their son’s death. Or perhaps, aware of the lifestyle he had been living, they had always expected such a visit.
‘How did he die?’ Mr Hutton asked, leaning back on the seat, stretching his arms across the back, crossing his legs as he did so.
‘That has yet to be established,’ I said.
‘You must have some idea,’ he snapped.
‘It would appear that he was shot, Dr Hutton. The postmortem will be more conclusive.’
Hutton nodded as if I had confirmed something for him.
‘I am very sorry. Would you have any idea of anyone who might want to hurt Lorcan?’
His mother looked at me, slightly bleary-eyed. His father, however, snuffed his indignation at the question.
‘Who
didn’t
want him dead would be easier to answer.’
‘You were aware of what your son did for a living?’
‘We’re not thick, you know,’ Hutton barked, only to be silenced by his wife laying her hand on his knee.
She looked at me plaintively. ‘I don’t know where we went wrong,’ she said.
I silently considered the fact that, for the past decade, they had bankrolled Lorcan’s activities and paid for the best legal representation for him every time he was arrested. Yet they were just another set of grieving parents, no different from Caroline Williams.
‘There was nothing you could have done to prevent this, Mrs Hutton,’ I said, truthfully.
The church in which Peter Williams’s Funeral Mass was conducted was huge, yet there were few empty seats by the time we arrived. The entire left-hand side of the main aisle was awash with the navy blue of the school uniforms worn by several hundred of Peter’s fellow students, who stood to attention as his coffin was carried past. A Celtic football shirt had been placed over the coffin. On a table in front of the altar was a framed picture of Peter sat with a soccer ball and a games console beside it.
The school’s choir began the Mass and I watched as a number of the students wept openly, hugging their neighbours. At the front I could see Caroline and Simon Williams standing side by side in the front seat. Caroline’s parents sat in the next pew.
During his homily, the priest spoke warmly of Peter and referred to the tragic loss of his young life. He encouraged the other students to be careful in all that they did, and to always appreciate the gift of life they had been entrusted with. I could tell from the tone of his oration that he himself was being careful. He did not explicitly say that there had been something untoward about Peter’s death, or that it was anything other than an accident. Still, his admonition to the assembled children was evident.
As we processed from the church afterwards, marching silently behind Peter’s coffin, I noticed that the rain had finally stopped and the sun had managed to break out from behind a thick cloud bank to the east.
Caroline and Simon Williams stood at the church door while the mourners offered them their condolences. Caroline appeared to be holding together reasonably well, though her eyes were puffed and red. She was bent over slightly, as if the events of the week had somehow physically sucked some of her vigour from her.
In contrast, Simon Williams stood ramrod straight. As he thanked people for coming and agreed with them that Peter’s death had indeed been a waste, his gaze flicked towards Caroline, his hatred barely concealed.
After the burial, family and friends were invited back to a local hotel, for some lunch. We stayed long enough to see Caroline, having not had a chance outside the church. As we spoke to her, she seemed dazed. I couldn’t work out whether it was simply her brain’s manner of coping with the day’s events or if, perhaps, her parents had given her something to help her manage. Either way, she looked at us a little blankly while we talked. She thanked us for coming, thanked us for everything we had ever done for her.
‘Anything you need,’ I said, ‘just ask.’
‘That Guard, McCready, came to see us last night,’ she said. ‘He told us they’ve decided Peter’s death was suicide. Is that right?’
I nodded, unsure what to say. ‘He . . . the pathologist thinks that it might have been. You had mentioned he was depressed. I thought . . .’