Death at Whitewater Church Read online

  fella.”

  That’s rich, I thought. Coming from Mr. Stonehead.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Well, I was there.”

  I sat upright. “You were where, exactly?”

  “I was walking along the Malin Road. Coming from a party. It was about six o’clock in the morning.”

  “And?”

  “I saw two cars coming flying along the road. At first I thought it was two lads having a race. It was pitch black so I couldn’t see properly. But then I copped that one of them was chasing the other, trying to drive it off the road. They nearly ran me over. Never saw me. I had to fucking leap into the ditch. Mental driving.”

  I ignored the self-righteous tone. “Why do you think this has something to do with Danny Devitt?”

  “Because a few seconds later I heard a loud fucking bang, like the cars had hit something. And I thought, serves them right, driving like that.”

  I sat forward. “Go on.”

  “Well, by the time I walked the rest of the way up that road – took me half an hour, fucking long road that, I hate it, especially in the dark.”

  “Eddie.” It was all I could do not to grab him by the scruff of the neck.

  “All right, I’m getting to it. There he was in the ditch. Your man Danny, in his car, slumped over the steering wheel. Didn’t look too healthy.”

  “And what about the other car?”

  “No sign. The cops were there though. That cop who keeps stopping me all the time.”

  “McFadden.”

  “Aye, him. And the ambulance and all was there, too.”

  “And why didn’t you say anything to the guard about what you saw, for God’s sake?”

  The sulky expression returned. “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just couldn’t. It would not have been convenient at that very moment.” He dragged out the words like a rap.

  “You had drugs on you.”

  “I might have.” He looked up again with the hint of a grin.

  I didn’t return it.

  He looked down at his lap. “They might have searched me. I did a runner.”

  I stood up. “You’re coming down to the garda station with me straight away.”

  “Wha’? What about my deal?”

  “I’ll be struggling to get you a deal that involves you not being charged with impeding the investigation of a murder, you idiot. This is extremely bloody serious. What the hell were you thinking?”

  His face fell. For the first time since he’d entered the room, the cocky grin disappeared.

  It wasn’t exactly a question of my taking Eddie Kearney by the ear and marching him down to the garda station, but it was pretty close. He slouched down the hill beside me, his demeanor very different from what it had been half an hour beforehand.

  Molloy was at the front desk. He looked up when I walked in, his air of expectation turning to surprise when he saw Kearney in my wake.

  “Mr. Kearney here has something he wants to tell you. Some information,” I announced tersely. “And he is sorry it has taken him this long to come down – isn’t that right, Eddie?”

  Eddie nodded grumpily.

  Molloy looked bemused. He led us into the interview room at the back.

  In fairness to Molloy, he didn’t ask the obvious question about why it had taken Kearney five days to tell what he had seen. His face was grim while he heard what Eddie had to say, and he thanked him for his assistance when he was finished. I suspected it was the first time that Kearney had heard an expression of gratitude from a member of the Garda Siochana. He even began to look quite pleased with himself again, to the extent that he had to be reined in a little as he warmed to his subject and started to exaggerate. Molloy was capable of managing that well enough.

  My mind was racing all through the interview. My instinct had been correct. Danny Devitt’s death wasn’t an accident. Someone had forced him off the road. But who on earth would want to murder a man like Danny Devitt? A man who lived an almost entirely solitary life – until the last ten days, at least. Maeve had said that he rarely came into town. But he had ventured in when the remains at the church had been found, and he had been in town for days after that. Had he known something that someone else did not want revealed? Had he said the wrong thing to the wrong person?

  By the time he left the garda station, Eddie Kearney’s swagger had almost entirely come back. It appeared he wasn’t fussy which side he was on as long as he got the kudos he thought he deserved. I stood at the front desk with Molloy as we watched him leave, his jeans back to their precarious, low-slung position.

  “Thanks for that,” Molloy said. “I’m assuming there was a little gentle persuasion involved there?”

  “Maybe,” I said, duty towards client returning. “Although, since he has been so helpful, is there any chance you might consider treating him a little more leniently in relation to some other matters?”

  Molloy arched his eyebrows. “We’ll see.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It would have been a hell of a lot more helpful if he’d fronted up earlier. Although I suspect there was a reason for that.”

  I avoided his eye. “So what’s your thinking? It doesn’t exactly sound like an accident now, does it?”

  He sighed. “No, it doesn’t. As long as your man Kearney wasn’t completely stoned when he saw what he says he did, it looks as if we’re going to have to open a murder investigation. I’d better give the garage a call. We’ll need to have a closer look at Danny Devitt’s car.”

  I called back into the office to suggest an early lunch. As I walked up the street with Leah, I made up my mind to continue my chat with Danny’s mother as soon as I got the opportunity. Distracted, I hadn’t noticed that Leah was steering me away from the square.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “I thought we were going to the Oak?”

  “I thought we could duck through the mart. I’m trying to avoid Eithne,” she said, her eyes darting about. “She’s bloody well collecting for something again. She was in the office earlier, and I told her you’d be gone for a few hours.”

  I grinned. “Should we not just give her something? Wouldn’t that be easier?”

  Leah quickened her pace. “I donated half the petty cash last week after she gave me a lecture on my engagement ring. Said it was a sin to be spending so much money on a piece of jewelry with people starving in the world.”

  I looked across the square just in time to catch sight of Eithne’s familiar figure disappearing into Phyllis’ book shop. “Come on, I think we’re safe enough now for a bit.”

  The pub was surprisingly busy for a Monday. The fire crackling in the grate and the hum of voices gave the place an almost festive feel, but there was a distinctly agricultural air about the clientele. The weekly cattle mart was on. We ordered sandwiches and coffee and took seats by the door, the only ones free.

  “Paul rang,” Leah said, taking off her coat and draping it over the back of her chair. “Said he’ll have his report on the church in to us tomorrow, so we can start putting together the contracts.”

  “Good,” I said. “I must give Raymond Kelly a shout then. We need to get details of any planning applications and that kind of thing from the County Council. I know he was refused the full development he’d intended, but there’s a change of use permission knocking about somewhere, I think.”

  “I’ll organize that. I’ll call into the County Council offices later on in the week.”

  “That’d be great.”

  “… Ben?”

  I realized I’d missed what Leah had just said. I’d been watching McFadden at the bar collecting a sandwich and coffee. I stood up.

  “Sorry, I’ll be back in a minute. I just need to speak to …”

  McFadden had walked back down the length of the pub and had raised his hand to open the door by the time I caught up with him.

  “Andy?”

  He turned. “Hiya.”


  “Have you a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  “Outside?”

  We stood on the footpath, McFadden’s face full of curiosity.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Andy, did you tell Mrs. Devitt about Danny’s DNA being found on the blanket and pillow in the crypt?”

  His face froze. “Who told you that?”

  “She did. It’s all right – client confidentiality. I won’t be passing it on.”

  He looked defeated. “Probably won’t make any difference. I’m going to have to tell Molloy anyway, now that it looks like Danny’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s more to it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked uncomfortable.

  “She said you did it to warn her,” I prompted.

  He shrugged. “In a way.”

  “She’s asked me to help her, Andy. She’s afraid Danny is going to be blamed for something he didn’t do. I’m not sure what she means, to be honest, but she said he could be an easy scapegoat.”

  He sighed, turned his back on me, and walked over to the squad car, parked on the footpath as usual. Damn it, I thought, I’ve overstepped the mark. I should have kept my mouth shut. But he opened the passenger door.

  “Here, sit inside for a minute.”

  He took a gulp from his coffee before he spoke, the heat steaming up the windscreen. “I’m going to tell Molloy all of this as soon as I get back to the station.”

  “Fair enough.” I waited.

  He gave in. “It appears that Danny was making a bit of a nuisance of himself.”

  “You mean the drinking in town? I saw you taking him out of the Oak a couple of days before the accident.”

  “No,” he said slowly. “Although that, too. It was more in the weeks and months before he died. Danny’s always been a little on the … nocturnal side, but lately he’d taken to creeping around.”

  “Creeping around?”

  “Creeping around people’s houses at night. Sort of spying on them. Watching them.” He shook his head. “People around here have always been pretty tolerant of Danny, allowed him his oddities, but this was different. It was intrusive and threatening and they didn’t like it.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “We had complaints. Or at least I had complaints. And I didn’t exactly share them with the sergeant.” He gave me a sheepish look.

  “Who were the complaints from?”

  “Lisa Crane and her husband. Well, Alan really, first of all at any rate. He said Danny was hassling Lisa, wouldn’t leave her alone. Waiting for her outside the bank in the evening when she finished work. Hanging around outside their house at night.”

  “That’s odd. She gave me the impression that she was pretty fond of him when I was talking to her at the wake.”

  “I think she was, but he was certainly pushing it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Aye. I saw him myself a couple of times sitting in that battered-up car of his outside their house. I had to tell him to go home.”

  “Was that what the row was about, that afternoon in the Oak? Between Danny and Alan?”

  “Not really. According to Alan, Danny insisted he knew who had burgled their house but he wouldn’t tell him who it was. He was winding him up about it. Alan was convinced it was Danny himself. Still is.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “No, I don’t. He’d have needed a van for a start. And Paul Doherty’s place was done the night after Danny died, with what looks like the same modus operandi.”

  “Did you ask Danny about it? The night you arrested him?”

  “Oh aye. He denied it, just before he passed out in the cell. Then claimed he couldn’t remember saying anything about it in the morning.”

  “Did Mary Devitt know about all of this?”

  Andy nodded, before taking another gulp of his coffee. “Yes. I told her. She said she’d talk to him.” His tone softened. “She’s the greatest wee woman. I’ve known her all my life. She was like a second mother to me; she used to look after me when I was a kid.”

  “And you didn’t tell Molloy?”

  “Sounds stupid now, but I was trying to deal with it myself. I was hoping it wouldn’t have to go any further. You see, if Molloy had found out, he would have had Danny arrested for harassment and charged on the spot. Danny would have had to appear in court and God knows what would have happened. I couldn’t do that to Mrs. Devitt.”

  I couldn’t deny that he was probably right, but then maybe Danny would still be alive if he had been charged. I didn’t share this thought with McFadden though; he looked miserable enough.

  “Then when his DNA was found on the blanket,” he said, “I thought maybe it was another example of him prowling about, messing with things that didn’t concern him. I wondered if he’d been poking about around the church again and had found the bones and decided to wrap them in the blanket or something. It was the kind of thing he might have done. Thinking he was doing the right thing. He could be a bit childlike sometimes.”

  I liked this image better than the one of Danny digging up a skeleton or stealing a body.

  “Maybe that’s what he did do.”

  McFadden sighed. “That’s why I told Mrs. Devitt. I thought she might know something.”

  “The problem is, Molloy is going to be looking at who would have had a motive to kill Danny, and his nocturnal activities might have had something to do with that,” I said.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “I do know that.”

  I watched as McFadden drove off, wearing the expression of a man about to face his executioner. I couldn’t blame him. Molloy was going to be furious. But Jesus, what the hell had he been thinking?

  As I opened the door of the Oak again, I was hit by a waft of very expensive perfume: Lisa Crane. I felt suddenly guilty, as if she had heard me talking about her with McFadden.

  “I got your letter,” she said.

  “Oh, good.”

  “Have you time to see me at half one before I have to go back to Buncrana?”

  I checked my watch. It was quarter past. “Um …”

  “Alan’s free and I want him to be there, too.”

  I put off my plans to go and see Mary Devitt.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the office in ten minutes.”

  It would be a short lunch.

  Chapter 25

  “SO, IS IT possible to do this?”

  Alan Crane’s tone was prescriptive. Lisa had removed her coat before arranging herself neatly on the chair. She was wearing her navy Bank uniform with a name badge pinned to the collar of her jacket. Her blond hair was loose around her face. Alan sat beside her, knees spread, hands clasped between them, his fingers stained with nicotine.

  “It seems the application should include an affidavit from a relative,” I said.

  Lisa’s shoulders slumped. She looked immediately at Alan: his expression betrayed nothing.

  “Why is that exactly?” he asked.

  “When a person goes missing for a long time, there is no simple way of legally presuming them to be dead, Mr. Crane. Under the law, a missing person is presumed alive for seven years, after which time they are presumed to be dead. I’ve explained this to Lisa already.”

  “Yes.” He nodded impatiently. “I know, go on.”

  “Well, when I spoke to Lisa before, I was aware that a relative could apply to the High Court to have a person declared presumed dead after seven years. But I thought at the time that there might be a difficulty in Lisa applying herself, being only a fiancée.”

  “Ex.”

  “Ex-fiancée. And it seems I was right. It should be corroborated by a family member.”

  Alan leaned back in his seat.

  “Well, that’s the end of that then.”

  Lisa looked anxiously at me as if there must be more to come, but there wasn’t.

  A
lan smiled, showing his teeth. A smile totally lacking in mirth. “Looks like we’re just going to have to put up with the whole Conor Devitt bullshit coming up every few years then, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t think a presumption of death would necessarily change that anyway, Mr. Crane,” I said. “It’s still not known what happened to Mr. Devitt. A presumption of death won’t change that. This application deals only with the person’s estate. There would be no issuing of a death certificate, for example.”

  There was no response from either Alan or Lisa. As usual in the face of taciturn clients, I found myself babbling.

  “It’s possible that Claire or Mrs. Devitt could do it, of course,” I said. “They might be willing to, if you spoke to them about it. I know there is the issue of the house: they might see that as a valid reason to do it.”

  “Claire Devitt?” Alan laughed. “Sure, that one is away with the fairies.”

  Lisa played with her rings, twisting them to and fro on her fingers.

  Alan grinned unpleasantly. “What kind of a woman, Miss O’Keeffe, would leap on a man at her own brother’s wake? And that man only just married. Lucky I’m not a fella to take advantage, eh, Lisa?”

  Lisa stared at the floor, eyes now brimming with tears.

  “And Danny was supposed to be the crazy one?” he sneered. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a hit of the crazy stick running right the way through that family. Starting with the father.”

  Lisa began to say something, but changed her mind.

  “What do you mean by that, Mr. Crane?” I said coldly.

  “Ach, old Jack Devitt taking a gun to himself, and then Danny doing his Peeping Tom bit around the town. Breaking into people’s houses.”

  “You don’t know that,” Lisa said quietly.

  Alan glared at her.

  “What about Mrs. Devitt?” I asked, directing my question at Lisa. “She might be willing to sign an affidavit, if it would help get things in order for you. It might be worth talking to her about it at least.”

  Lisa shook her head. “I couldn’t ask Mrs. Devitt.”

  “Lisa’s afraid of old Ma Devitt, Miss O’Keeffe,” Alan said, a spiteful grin on his face. “Just as well she didn’t end up as her mother-in-law.”