The back room was a small kitchen. An assortment of crockery was piled up in one of the cupboards. The worktops were empty, save for a block of knives, the uppermost one absent. On the floor by the sink, arranged in order, were several empty vodka bottles and a black bin bag, spilling beer cans onto the floor. The room stank of stale water and the sweet yeasty smell of beer.
‘Look at the state of this place,’ Patterson said, surveying the room with disgust. ‘Imagine thinking your kid was living here, sticking some filthy skag needle in their arm.’
I glanced around him, grateful that I was unable to imagine my own children in such a place.
‘Have we any next of kin for Kielty yet?’ I asked.
‘Your pal, Hendry, is meant to be working on it,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t been in touch – he was asking about you earlier.’
I patted my pockets and realized I had left my phone in the car. Sure enough, when I went out to retrieve it, Hendry had left a message for me. He had located Kielty’s girlfriend, in Plumbridge.
I met Jim Hendry and a young female officer, whom he introduced as WPC Tara Carson, just over the border. He had offered to take me to Plumbridge, a small village a few miles out of Strabane. Patterson had initially been reluctant for me to go. Finally he relented, sensing that I felt I should be the one to see Kielty’s partner, having been witness to his death. Before leaving, I contacted Burgess in the station and asked him to send one of our uniforms, Paul Black, to come to the barn to assist the Scene of Crime team.
On the way to Plumbridge, Hendry, having asked in his own gruff way about the fire and my injury, filled me in on all he had learned about Kielty.
‘Drugs Squad know him fairly well. He’s a low-grade dealer. Or he was. Word is he was trying to make a name for himself. Operated mostly over here until the paramilitaries warned him off. He’s done time twice – first for aggravated assault when he was eighteen, then for burglary when he was twenty-two. He broke into an old woman’s house outside Donemana. Threatened her with a syringe full of his own blood. Took over four hundred pounds she had in her mattress. The woman was so terrified she wouldn’t leave the house again. She died from heart failure a few months after, though they could never link it to Kielty’s break-in. He’s stayed out of trouble since then.’
‘Until now,’ I said.
Kielty’s girlfriend’s house was at the end of a row of terraced houses. A lone hydrangea bush, its spiky branches bare of leaves, sat in the centre of the small front lawn, the thin skin of the petals translucent in the weak sunlight.
From inside the house I could hear the raised voices of an American daytime chat show. The front door was white PVC with two narrow panels of frosted glass, through which we could see someone moving about. Hendry rang the doorbell then stepped back. We could see a figure approach the door, heard the grate of the key in the lock.
The girl who answered looked around eighteen. She was soft-featured, with a rounded face framed by brown hair cut in a long bob. Her eyes were clear and bright green, her nose thin and her full lips parted, as if she were expecting someone else. She smiled quizzically as she shifted the weight of the baby girl she held in her arms from her left to her right shoulder. The baby must have been no more than a few months old.
‘Yes?’ she said. A question, not the statement of greeting common in the North. I thought I could discern an English accent.
‘My name is Detective Inspector Jim Hendry,’ Hendry said. ‘We’d like to speak to you about Martin Kielty.’
Her expression remained one of mild bemusement.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, then shushed the baby who had stirred at the sound of her voice.
‘Might be best if we come inside,’ Hendry said, nodding gently towards the house next door. An elderly woman’s face peered at us through the front window, without even a pretence of subtlety.
I smiled at her and she scowled in return.
Kielty’s girlfriend introduced herself as Elena McEvoy. She brought us into the living room and invited us to sit as she laid the baby in a Moses basket. She wore a dress patterned with roses, and as she sat she swept her hand beneath her to ensure the dress covered her legs. There was a sense of dignity and decorum to the gesture which made me reassess my original assessment of her age. She rested one hand on the edge of the basket, which she rocked gently as we spoke.
‘What’s she called?’ Tara Carson asked, looking in at the infant.
‘Anna.’
‘She’s beautiful. What age is she?’
‘Three months,’ Elena McEvoy replied, smiling at her with pride.
Hendry looked at me and winked.
‘So, is something wrong?’ McEvoy asked. Clearly she was used to policemen calling at her home. Her question also told me something about the body in the barn. If it was her boyfriend, then she was used to going days or nights without seeing him, for she did not seem to connect our presence to his absence. Nor, it appeared, had she reported him missing.
‘There was a fire, at a property outside Carrigans, over the border,’ I explained.
She stared at me levelly, holding my gaze, one hand resting lightly on her knee, the other still rocking the basket.
‘We believe the property belongs to your boyfriend, Martin Kielty? Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Was anyone hurt? Is Martin OK?’
‘I’m afraid we’ve found human remains at the scene. We haven’t been able to identify the victim yet. We were hoping that you might be able to tell us where Mr Kielty is.’
Her expression did not change, though I noticed a shift in the rhythm of the rocking. So too did the child, for she mewed mildly, causing McEvoy to lift her. She stood, swaying gently from side to side, whilst regarding me over her daughter’s shoulder.
‘I don’t know where he is. He hasn’t come home.’
‘When did you last see him, ma’am?’ Hendry asked.
She shook her head. ‘Thursday, sometime. Late afternoon, maybe.’
‘Yet you haven’t reported him missing,’ Hendry commented.
She glanced at him. ‘He’s often away for a day or two at a time.’
‘We suspect that your partner was involved in drugs,’ I said, finding it hard to place this woman alongside a drug pusher. ‘Is that the case?’
She nodded, her mouth a thin defiant line.
‘Would you have any reason to believe that someone might want to hurt Mr Kielty?’ I asked. ‘That’s not to say that he has been hurt, of course. It’s too early to tell.’
‘He was assaulted in the pub a month or two ago. Told he’d have his knees done. He was terrified.’
Though not terrified enough to stop selling drugs, I thought. ‘Where was that?’
‘Doherty’s,’ she said. ‘In Strabane.’
‘I know it,’ I said. ‘Was there any follow-up on the threat?’
‘He was sent a Mass card with a bullet in it a week or two after it,’ she continued. ‘That terrified me.’ She shuddered involuntarily and rubbed away the shiver in her arms. Having been at the receiving end of such a threat myself in the past, I knew the effect it could have.
‘Any idea who might have sent it?’ Hendry asked, glancing at me. The threat was one commonly associated with the paramilitaries during the height of the Troubles.
She shook her head. ‘Martin binned it, said it was nothing.’
‘He should have contacted us,’ Hendry said.
‘As if you’d have done anything. They signed it the Rise or something.’
‘The Rising?’ Hendry asked. He nodded lightly at me to let me know he would explain later.
McEvoy nodded once, curtly. ‘That sounds like it.’
‘That’s very useful, ma’am,’ Hendry said.
‘Anyone else your partner would have dealt with who might be able to help us?’ I asked, sensing that our interview had reached a natural conclusion.
‘He mentioned someone called Lorcan Hutton,’ McEvoy answered, her jaw set. Hutton was a well-known pusher on both sides of the border, though he had settled in the South. I’d had experience of Lorcan Hutton before, though would never have considered him to be violent. Then again, violence and drugs tend to be easy bedfellows.
We asked a few more questions regarding Kielty’s movements. McEvoy was unable to tell us anything more about the threat made to him. She did not know where he might have kept lists of contacts or phone numbers; he had his mobile with him, she said. I suspected it might have been the one I’d seen lying broken on the floor of his cottage. McEvoy denied using drugs herself. As she spoke, she smoothed down her daughter’s hair softly with one hand. The child in turn gripped her mother’s dress in her small fist, twisting the cloth in its grip.
‘Does Martin have any other family?’ I asked. ‘Any blood relatives?’
‘His mother lives in Derry. In Galliagh,’ McEvoy said. I could tell from her tone that their relationship was not a good one.
‘We’ll need to contact her.’
She nodded sharply, tossing her head a little to the left.
Finally, I asked for a photograph. I needed to put a face to Kielty’s name. Plus, of course, he was still technicelly a missing person. Elena McEvoy went into the next room and I heard the sliding of a drawer. She returned with a single colour photograph of Kielty reclining on a bed, smiling, his infant daughter comfortable in the crook of his arm.
‘This was only taken a few weeks ago. I hope it’s OK,’ she said.
‘It’s fine,’ I replied. Then added, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to need the name of Martin’s dentist too.’
Her face twisted with revulsion as she realized the implication in what I had said.
Back in the car I called Patterson and reported back. He promised he would have someone go out to Kielty’s mother while I retrieved the dental records. When I finished the call, I asked Hendry about the group he had named, The Rising.
Ten minutes later, in his office, he handed me three photographs. The first image focused on a youngish-looking man pictured coming out of a house, his thick head covered in a bennie hat, his fists shoved in his coat pockets.
‘Charlie Cunningham,’ Hendry said.
I flicked to the next image. An older man, the shape and size of a club bouncer, his hair cropped short. He had a spider’s-web tattoo on his neck.
‘Tony Armstrong. Did time for shooting a policeman during the Troubles.’
Another picture. This time the man was in his forties I guessed, his head completely shaven. His brow was heavy over hooded eyes and he was looking directly at the camera. I thought I recognized him.
‘Jimmy Irvine.’ He tapped the picture. ‘All three are ex-paramilitaries. All three have done time for murder. All are hardliners pissed at the political process. Fed up with being told they had to stand down, the war was over.’
‘What’s the connection?’
‘They’ve started an anti-drugs organization called The Rising. Small fry really, but they’ve learned one good lesson from their previous allegiances: you want political clout in a community, you give the people what they want. They reckon if the local communities see them ‘dealing’ with the drugs problem, they’ll gain some electoral support.’
‘How are they “dealing” with it?’ I asked.
‘Mostly punishment beatings so far: that’s why I didn’t immediately think of them for Kielty. They haven’t killed anyone yet. They tried to shoot a dealer in Derry about two months ago, outside the cinema, but they made a balls of it.’
I recalled the case. A young couple walking out of the late night screening of a movie were shot at from a passing car. The girl had been hit in the arm.
‘Bit amateur, to be honest. If you’re going to shoot someone, get them when they’re stationary at least, right?’
‘I’m not sure if it’s the same racket,’ I said. ‘Kielty was stabbed in the chest and set on fire. It looks like a spur of the moment killing, not something planned.’
‘Don’t dismiss this crew. They tarred and feathered a young fella in Galliagh in Derry a few weeks ago, and then kneecapped his business partner. They’re not afraid to evolve – change their methods.’
‘You don’t think they’re just trying to control drugs in the area themselves?’
‘Apparently not,’ Hendry said. ‘The word coming to us from the street is that these guys are thugs, but they don’t have the money to invest in product. They seem to be purely political. All they want is public support. Get people behind them on the anti-drugs thing, get their feet under the table in a few areas, then introduce some of their more extreme political ideologies bit by bit. They’re not the first to try it – I doubt they’ll be the last.’
After leaving the station, I made my way into Strabane to the dental surgery Elena McEvoy had named. It was a Saturday and the surgery was closed but Hendry had called the dentist at home instructing him to meet me there. He had also offered to contact the Drugs Squad again and ask them to keep a look out for Kielty and to follow up on Lorcan Hutton if he ventured north of the border.
The dentist was waiting for me when I got to the surgery, clearly a little piqued at having to open up on his day off. Still, he handed me a small, A5 slip-wallet in which were a batch of white cards and a few X-ray sheets.