Before Karen even had a chance to check, Hughes grimaced and nodded his head. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Ian’s one of mine.’
‘Can I see his notes?’
‘Don’t you need a warrant or something?’ Hughes asked.
I didn’t bother pointing out that, as a Garda, I was out of my jurisdiction anyway; any warrant would have been worthless.
‘I don’t want to read them. I just want to know if they’re in the right place.’
Hughes nodded to Karen who disappeared into a back room. While we waited in silence, I could hear the slide and metallic thud of a filing cabinet being opened and closed. Karen retuned with a thin brown envelope which she handed to Hughes.
He pulled out a sheaf of white A5 cards with scribbles on them, and glanced through them.
‘These are Ian’s,’ Hughes said, handing them back to Karen. ‘Sorry I can’t be of any more help.’
‘These are wrong,’ I heard Karen mutter.
‘I checked them myself,’ Hughes stated with exasperation.
‘No, the content is right. It’s just all the notes for Mr Hamill have been written by the same person, going back years.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Well, they’ve all been written by Elena. Except she didn’t work here five years ago. She’s rewritten Mr Hamill’s notes.’
‘Elena who?’ I asked, my pulse quickening.
Elena McEvoy had worked in Hughes’s dental surgery part-time for about seven months. During her time in the surgery, she had mostly carried out secretarial duties. Occasionally she would have updated patients’ records.
‘But she’s rewritten every card, even the older ones she shouldn’t have been working on,’ Karen explained, showing me Ian Hamill’s record cards.
‘What’s the story with Ian Hamill?’ I asked. ‘Mr Hughes remembered the name straight away.’
‘Mr Hamill has a few problems,’ Karen said, warming to the gossip. ‘We’ve had to turn him away from the surgery on occasions because he was too drunk or stoned. Long straggly hair hanging over his face, unshaven, his breath stinking the place out. Mr Hughes sometimes had to pretend to be giving him treatment just to get rid of him. It was sad, really,’ she concluded.
I phoned Patterson on my way back across the border.
‘It looks like the body’s Hamill’s,’ I said. ‘We need an official request for his medical notes for comparison, but I think his dental notes were switched with Kielty’s by Kielty’s girlfriend.’
‘Making the killing planned well in advance.’
‘Absolutely. Best we get
his
medical notes too, though, to avoid a repeat fuck-up.’
‘Can’t you get that copper in Strabane to do it?’ Patterson asked, presumably to avoid the five minutes’ paperwork the request would entail.
‘He’s helped me out once with notes already – I don’t want to push my luck.’
‘You’ve made a career out of pushing your luck. One more time shouldn’t make much difference,’ Patterson said, though I suspected he’d put the request through anyway. A second mistaken identification of a corpse would really reflect badly on him as commanding officer.
‘You’ll need to organize an exhumation order as well,’ I added.
‘For fuck’s sake, Devlin,’ Patterson said, though I couldn’t see why. He wasn’t being asked to conduct the exhumation himself. ‘Anything else while you’re at it?’
‘I think that should cover us,’ I said.
‘I’ve just had the Assistant Commissioner on the line, giving me a bollocking about this whole fiasco with The Rising rally. Pictures all over the fucking papers. I’m warning you, if a word of this latest balls-up gets out to the press, I’ll pin this whole bloody thing on you. It’s your mess.’
‘I know that, sir,’ I said. ‘Which is why I’m the last person who’s going to be telling the papers.’
He paused for a second, and I could hear his breath, ragged through the car speaker. ‘So, what the fuck has happened here, then?’ he asked at last. ‘Is Irvine tied in with this or not?’
‘Maybe The Rising were responsible for Hutton. We know from his neighbour that Tony Armstrong was with him the last day he was seen, and has been back at the house since. We know the house was ransacked. We could bring him in, put a bit of pressure on and see what happens.’
‘No point,’ Patterson stated. ‘He’ll lawyer up and say fuck all. Dig deeper. What’s the connection with Kielty then?’
‘There’s the problem. If Kielty staged his own death, the focus is off The Rising. His case might not be connected here at all. Maybe he ran scared. The Rising were putting pressure on him so he took his chances somewhere else. Maybe he used the white van spotted at his house to shift his stash. Start fresh somewhere new.’
‘Anything on the van we can use?’
‘Jim Hendry managed to get a registration plate for me. I’m going to follow it up now.’
‘So we have Kielty for the Hamill killing at least?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘And you have no idea where is he now?’
‘I don’t. But if we can find his partner, Kielty won’t be too far behind,’ I concluded, before telling Patterson I was on my way back to the station.
I’d just hung up when my mobile rang again. It was Joe McCready.
‘What’s happening, Joe?’ I called into my hands-free set.
‘Quite a lot, sir.’ McCready’s voice sounded tinny on the small speakers. ‘I’ve some news on Adam Heaney.’
I’d been too distracted by recent developments to think about Heaney. ‘What happened?’
‘He arrived in this morning with a black eye and a busted lip. His father must have given him the hiding of a lifetime when he got him home.’
‘I take it he gave us a name?’
‘Murphy. He says Murphy has been selling stuff around their school, in the toilets and the playground at breaktime. Apparently he’s making quite a profit from it.’
‘Murphy’s not dealing cocaine by himself. Someone is supplying him. Let’s hear what he has to say for himself.’
‘I’m going out to pick him up now. Heaney has just finished writing his statement. We should have Murphy in custody by the time you get here, sir.’
‘I’ll be with you soon,’ I said. ‘I have one other thing to do before I come down.’
I contacted An Garda traffic division and asked them to run the plate number on the white van. The chances were that it was Kielty’s, but it was still a lead to be chased, not least because the van had Southern registration plates. They promised to have something for me within the hour.
I was making my way past Rossnowlagh when my phone rang. The caller introduced himself as a Superintendent Logue, which immediately struck me as strange, for I had placed the request with an unranked officer.
‘Inspector, you placed a request on a white van, registered Dublin 2008. Can you confirm the number of the plate for me?’
I recited the numbers.
‘With what is this connected?’ Logue asked.
‘It’s an ongoing investigation, sir.’
‘I guessed that, Inspector. What’s the investigation?’
The man’s tone made me suspicious.
‘The van in question ran a red light, sir.’
Logue laughed quietly down the phone. ‘Is that all? You have detectives in Donegal chasing up light jumpers?’
‘It’s a quiet month, sir.’
‘It must be. Nothing to worry about, then. The van is one of ours, Inspector.’
‘Ours, sir?’
‘It’s been seconded to the Drugs Unit up there for surveillance and the like.’
I felt the hair on my neck stand on end.
‘That would be Inspector Nicell then, sir.’
‘The very man,’ Logue said, laughing. ‘I think we can forgive him jumping the odd light, don’t you?’
‘Indeed I do, sir,’ I said, cutting the connection.
It was almost five by the time I made it to Sligo. Cahir Murphy sat again in the interview room where we had spoken the previous day, his father sitting upright beside him. When I asked Murphy did he understand why he had been brought in again for questioning, he shrugged.
‘So you’re dealing drugs?’
Murphy’s father laughed, forcibly. ‘Bullshit! Who told you that?’
‘We know that your son took a quantity of cocaine on the camping trip. Peter Williams took a combination of that coke and alcohol. In all probability, the effects of the cocaine caused Peter to enter a psychotic state as a result of which he took his own life.’
‘It was that wee shit Heaney, wasn’t it?’ Mr Murphy snapped.
‘It’s irrelevant who it was. Talk to us about it.’
‘He has nothing to say,’ Murphy continued. ‘You have nothing to say, son. I want our lawyer.’
‘That’s fine, sir,’ I said. ‘So long as you understand the seriousness of what’s happening here; we believe your son gave drugs to a boy who then died. That’s manslaughter. He may not have meant to kill him – but he did. Plus we believe he’s been dealing. In school, too, apparently.’
‘It’s bullshit,’ the man said again. ‘You can’t touch him. I want my lawyer.’
His language, his manner, the clichés he used, all reflected the fact that Mr Murphy was wildly out of his depth.
‘Of course, sir,’ I said, standing up to indicate the interview was concluded, for now.
Joe McCready and I sat in the canteen, having a cup of tea while we waited for Murphy’s solicitor to arrive.
‘What do you think will happen?’ McCready asked.
‘He’ll probably try to plea his way out. Either he’ll blame Heaney, or else he’ll offer the name of his supplier. His lawyer will know we’d be more interested in the next up the chain.’
‘Is that good enough?’
‘I suppose it depends how big a link in the chain it is.’
We sat in silence for a few minutes, waiting for the desk sergeant to call us. I had been considering all that Jim Hendry had told me, and Nicell’s connection with the van that had been seen at Kielty’s and McEvoy’s.
‘I want you to do me a favour, Joe. Charlie Cunningham. Member of The Rising. I want you to do a background check on him. I want to know everything we have on him: what he’s done; who he associates with; when he served time; where; with who. Look in particular for any drug busts or for anything that looks irregular with his financial background.’
‘Yes, sir, I’ll do it today,’ Joe said, just as we got the call to go back to the interview room.
Murphy’s solicitor introduced himself as O’Hare. He complained about our having spoken to his client without legal representation, but this was no more than posturing – Murphy had not requested representation and had been allowed it when he finally asked.
‘This whole thing seems to have been blown out of proportion,’ O’Hare said, when I told him we had noted his complaint. ‘I understand that the mother of the young man who died is a colleague of yours.’
‘Was,’ I said. ‘The child’s mother was a Guard.’
‘The young man in question chose to take substances of his own volition. My client, if he did bring drugs with him, did so for personal use only. He tells me he did not supply.’
‘Though we have a statement that he supplies in his school.’
‘A statement from a young man who could just as easily be guilty, naming my client to spare himself.’
‘We can apply for a warrant and search Mr Murphy’s house, if that would make him feel better.’
‘I hope that’s not a threat,’ O’Hare said.
‘No. It’s a suggestion to your client that we can, if needs be, pursue alternative, more intrusive methods to secure evidence. His cooperation at this stage in the investigation will spare his family and himself much public embarrassment.’
‘Well, that’s what I thought,’ O’Hare said, and I could see where he was going. ‘It seems to me that, whether my client or the other boy on the trip brought a small amount for recreational use, they are not responsible for the death of the Williams boy. I can fully understand that his mother may want someone to blame, but that’s hardly fair.’
‘I accept that,’ I said, glancing towards Murphy and his father, who sat, tight-lipped, listening to the exchange. O’Hare had clearly advised them to say nothing. ‘That doesn’t mean that we are prepared to allow your client to continue selling drugs in a local school. That’s a separate issue and one which I intend to pursue with full vigour. Your client will be charged with supplying and, without further assistance from him, I’ll move on a warrant to search the family home and seize anything considered suspect.’
‘You’ll do no—’ Mr Murphy snapped, rising from his seat, but he was cut short by O’Hare.
‘It seems to me that the source – the supplier – is the person you should be pursuing.’
‘And Cahir would be willing to give us this person, would he?’ I asked.
‘Without prejudice, in return for other minor charges being dropped. Alongside this nonsense about house searches and the like. Yes, my client would be prepared to offer An Garda information about where the drugs Peter Williams took were bought. That though is not an admission that he himself bought the drugs – rather that he is simply aware of where the drugs were bought.’