His left shoulder was bulky with the dressing beneath his T-shirt, his arm still suspended in a sling. I smelled hospital disinfectant as he took the seat opposite. Looking at him, I instinctively reached up to my own shoulder where the burn wound seemed to have settled.
I turned on the twin recorders on the table in front of us and introduced myself and Joe McCready, then Kielty and the duty solicitor.
‘I’m sorry about Ms McEvoy,’ I said, after cautioning Kielty.
He nodded.
‘It’s a pity it came to this,’ I said.
He straightened himself in the chair, wincing as he moved his left arm.
‘Came to what?’
‘Let’s start with Ian Hamill, shall we?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
I took out the pictures we had on file of the three leaders of The Rising. ‘Do you know anyone here?’
I had expected him to stonewall me, but after a short pause, Kielty decided to do himself a favour, and thumped his index finger onto the picture of Armstrong.
‘I know him.’
‘How?’
‘He approached me before Christmas, asked me to sell some stuff for him,’ Kielty said. Vague enough not to incriminate himself – detailed enough to incriminate Armstrong.
‘What stuff? Drugs?’
Kielty nodded, a gesture I described for the benefit of the tapes.
‘He said they had produce they wanted sold.’
‘Who was they?’
‘He didn’t say. I guessed he meant one of the paramilitary groups.’
‘And did you sell it?’
‘Not initially,’ Kielty said. ‘I said I had to speak to my supplier.’
‘Lorcan Hutton?’
Kielty didn’t speak for a moment.
‘Elena McEvoy told us,’ I said.
Finally he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Lorcan Hutton. I contacted him and he said they had come to him. Given him a load of produce to shift. Sort of forced themselves into the chain.’
‘Why did Lorcan let them do it?’ I asked.
Kielty glanced at the solicitor beside him who had said virtually nothing since his arrival.
‘He thought they were a joke. He took a load of produce off them and split it between a few of us. We were to shift it and he was going to lie to them about the price he got.’
It didn’t surprise me that Lorcan would imagine he could stiff Armstrong. Hutton had controlled drugs in the area for years and had become arrogant.
‘They didn’t take it well?’
Kielty shook his head. ‘They got wind of it from one of Hutton’s other clients. Kicked the shit out of me in Doherty’s pub one night. Told me to get them the money they were owed. I told them Hutton had it.’
‘What did they say?’
‘“We’ve taken care of Hutton,” they said. “You just make sure you have your bit sorted out.”’
‘Do you know what they did to Hutton?’
Kielty shook his head. ‘I could guess, though. He disappeared one evening. They were able to start picking on all of us, all the ones he’d supplied. I guessed they must have beaten it out of him. He never appeared again.’
I nodded my head. ‘He was found shot dead in an old graveyard in Lifford,’ I explained.
Despite the heat of the room, Kielty shuddered.
‘So, what happened?’
‘I didn’t have the money,’ he said. ‘Elena had her kid and that. Things were a bit tight. I had some of the stash left, but not much, but I knew where Lorcan had the rest of his stash hidden. I couldn’t be seen to be dealing too much around the border or they’d have known, so I came down here.’
‘Calling yourself Ian Hamill? Why?’
‘It just came to mind. He was one of my buyers.’
‘Was,’ I repeated. Kielty swallowed dryly. ‘Go on.’
‘They started threatening a bit more. Sent a Mass card and that.’
‘So you decided to fake your own death?’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Kielty protested animatedly. ‘I went to someone for help. Someone I could trust.’
‘Who?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer.
‘A Garda,’ Kielty said, his chin raised a little defiantly.
‘Rory Nicell,’ I stated.
He nodded, deflated by his trump card’s failure to have the desired effect. He shifted in his seat slightly, glanced at his solicitor who watched him impassively. Kielty had clearly decided to talk; his brief was there only to witness what he wanted to say. Why he was being so forthcoming was another matter, though.
‘What did you tell Garda Nicell?’
‘I explained to him what had happened. About Hutton and his stash and that.’
‘How did you know Nicell?’ I asked.
‘I was an informant for him,’ Kielty said. ‘We helped each other out, you know.’ As if we were all part of the same battle.
‘And what happened?’
‘I don’t remember,’ Kielty said, rubbing at his beard with his knuckles. ‘It wasn’t planned or anything. Hamill came out to the house looking for stuff. He was a regular, so I knew I could trust him. But he had a bad reaction to whatever he’d taken. Went mental. Something in it fucked with his head. He started trashing the place. Attacked me.’
I recalled Kielty’s stash house. It was hardly the type of place you’d worry about having trashed.
‘So you killed him?’
Kielty stared at me, as if realizing for the first time what he was admitting to.
‘Not like that. It was an accident. He grabbed a knife and went for me. We got into a scuffle and somehow the knife ended up in his chest; he may have fallen on it himself.’
‘Where were you taking drugs?’
‘In the back room,’ he said slowly, wondering the relevance of the question.
‘And the knife block was in the kitchen. He ran out into the kitchen and grabbed it, did he?’
Kielty glanced again at the lawyer who shrugged lightly.
‘I don’t remember all the details. I feared for my life.’
‘Regardless, Ian Hamill was killed.’
‘I did report it,’ Kielty said and I began to realize why he was telling me this. He was going to implicate Nicell as deeply as himself.
‘To who?’
‘Nicell,’ he said exasperatedly. ‘He arrived after two. He was the one suggested we leave Hamill in the shed and torch the place. Make it look like someone had got to me first. Burn the place down to make it look like the stash was gone. He loaded his van with our stuff then he set fire to the place.’
Our
stuff. And yet, previously, Kielty had been completely passive – it was all on Nicell.
‘How did you think you’d get away with it?’
‘Elena went into work early the next day and swapped our dental records,’ he said. ‘We thought you’d find out. Check with the hospital or something. But no one did. No one checked.’
‘Then what?’
‘When it looked like things were being dropped, Nicell went up and collected the rest of Hutton’s stuff and brought it and Elena down with him.’
‘Hutton’s stuff? His stash you mean? The stuff that sent Hamill over the edge?’
Kielty nodded. ‘He was a schizo anyway,’ he said.
‘Stuff that you sold in Sligo, to a teenager. A boy who jumped off a cliff after taking it.’
Kielty looked at me blankly. I knew he would feel no culpability. Like Lorcan Hutton, Kielty viewed himself merely as part of a chain of supply and demand, like the arms manufacturer who contents himself that the use to which his product will be put is not his responsibility, or the bartender who feels no compunction about selling just one more drink to the man whose car keys lie on the bar in front of him.
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Kielty said.
‘Is it relevant?’ his solicitor offered, slouching in his seat while doodling on a yellow legal pad.
‘Does your mother know you’re alive?’ I asked, reluctant to believe that the woman had deceived me.
Kielty shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he said, lowering his head. ‘I have to call her.’
At that moment, the door opened and the desk sergeant peered in.
‘The Super wants to speak to you, sir. Urgently.’
‘Maybe you should phone her now,’ I suggested to Kielty. ‘Why don’t we take a break?’
I stopped the tape machines and stood up from my seat. Kielty likewise stood and stretched his back again, as if clicking his spine into place.
‘Between us,’ I said, conversationally, though not casually enough to stop the solicitor from staring at me sharply, ‘why are you being so forthcoming? Is it because of Elena?’
He stared at me and I willed him to display some response to her death, to convince me that he was capable of remorse.
‘Kind of. Mostly it’s Nicell. You can’t touch me without putting Nicell away, too. I’m one of his touts. I’m too valuable to have off the streets. And you’ll hardly want it known that one of the Drugs Unit was involved in all this shit, will you?’
I called Patterson and began to explain what Kielty had told us about Nicell, but he cut me short.
‘Your missus has been looking for you. She’s rung a couple of times. You’d better phone her.’
Something about his final sentence unnerved me and as soon as I hung up I checked my mobile. I’d put it on silent before the interview and hadn’t felt it vibrate in my pocket. The display showed that I had missed over a dozen calls from Debbie. The small tape symbol showed I had a voice message, but I direct-dialled her number.
‘Where the hell are you?’ she snapped when she answered, though I could hear her breath catch in her throat as she spoke.
I began to explain about the interview, but she interrupted. ‘You need to come back,’ she said. ‘Penny’s been in an accident. She’s in Letterkenny General.’
‘Is she all right?’ I asked.
‘We’re here now,’ Debbie replied, non-committally. ‘You need to get here now, Ben. Please hurry.’
With siren going, it took me less than three-quarters of an hour to make the drive back to Letterkenny. When I got into the hospital I was directed straight through to A&E. Penny lay on a trolley in one of the cubicles. Her head was held steady by a neck brace, the side of her face visibly grazed. Her features were covered for the most part by an oxygen mask. I approached her, fearfully, and laid a single kiss on her forehead.
Debbie sat beside the trolley, her hand holding Penny’s, her thumb rubbing the softness of the back of our daughter’s hand. Her own features were pale, her eyes red with tears.
‘How is she?’
‘They need to operate on her straight away,’ she managed, her tongue clicking in her mouth as she spoke. ‘There’s pressure on her brain, they said.’
‘What the fuck happened?’
Debbie swallowed hard, took Penny’s hand in both of hers, turned herself away slightly from me. ‘She fell.’
‘Where?’
Finally she turned and looked at me. ‘She was at Morrison’s home—’
‘Jesus!’ I shouted, kicking out at a table of instruments beside the trolley which fell over and clattered onto the floor.
A nurse tugged back the curtain sharply. I glared at her. She returned my stare angrily, then looked at Penny lying on the trolley. I righted the table and began to lift the fallen implements. When I straightened up again she had drawn the curtain closed again and was gone.
‘She said she was going to the disco,’ Debbie explained. ‘One of her friends, Emma – her father collected her, took the two of them. She told me it was a school thing. They all went to Morrison’s. For the young boy’s party.’
‘I warned her to keep away from him,’ I snapped.
Debbie stood, seemingly reluctant to let go of Penny, but approached me, hand outheld.
‘It was an accident. They all took turns horse riding, apparently. Penny fell off.’
‘Bullshit,’ I spat. ‘Morrison’s behind this.’
Debbie shook her head, though this simply made me more vehement in my anger.
‘I warned you,’ I said, emphasizing the comment with a pointed finger. ‘I told you this would happen.’
‘It wasn’t Morrison. Emma’s father was there. He said it was an accident. She fell off the horse. He said that Morrison rushed to her – he got her here so fast.’
‘I don’t believe it. I’ll kill the fucker—’
My comment was cut short by the curtain being pulled back on the cubicle and a number of staff coming in. One, a young woman doctor in a white coat absurdly too big for her, spoke to Debbie, glancing at me as she did so.
‘We’re ready to take her into theatre. The anaesthetist will give her a little something now to prep her. You can help wheel her up if you want.’ She smiled a brief, sympathetic smile, then stood back as her colleagues began to work with my daughter.
‘Will she be OK?’ I managed to ask.
‘She’s in good hands,’ the doctor said, motioning towards the man standing by Penny’s bed with a syringe, then leaving the cubicle before I asked her to be more direct.
As the butterfly was inserted into the back of her hand, I swore I could see Penny’s eyes flutter beneath the lids, imagined I could hear a low moan escape from her pale lips – though the sound may have come from me. Then the clanging of bars as the sides of the trolley were raised and the orderly began to wheel Penny out.