Brian McGilloway - Gallows Lane

‘These men are victims too, Inspector.’

‘Perhaps.’ The smoke from our cigarettes hung in the space between us. Eventually, Bardwell spoke.

‘So, I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way down here to appreciate the sport. What can I do you for?’

‘You mentioned James Kerr. I need to find him. I think you could help me.’

‘Now why would I do that?’

‘James left a leaflet in my car with your name on it. If he’s proselytizing for you, I can only assume he’s still in contact with you.’

‘And I’d tell you where he is because. .?’

‘He’s wanted in connection with a possible murder.’

Bardwell laughed emptily, shook his head and dropped his cigarette butt on the ground, grinding it under his foot. ‘Jamie didn’t kill anyone, Inspector. Even when he went away before, it was armed robbery — and he was the only one of the gang without an effing gun!’

‘Well, in that case, he should hand himself in — let us question him and eliminate him from inquiries.’

‘Bullshit, Inspector. Jamie’s a sitting duck. An ex-con: perfect for stitching up — again. Who’s he meant to have killed anyhow?’

‘A local man called Peter Webb.’

Bardwell paused momentarily and it was clear that the name meant something to him. He stared into the middle distance, shading his eyes as if from the glare of the sun. But the sun wasn’t in his eyes and I knew the gesture was a stalling tactic. ‘What evidence have you for suspecting James?’

‘He was seen prowling around Webb’s house in the days prior to his death. During a conversation I had with James, he as good as told me he wanted to see Peter Webb.’

‘How did he die?’ Bardwell asked, looking over my shoulder at the men laughing and sharing tales of soccer glory already exaggerated.

‘He was hanged from a tree on Gallows Lane. Made to look like suicide. We believe he was strangled.’

‘In Potter’s Field,’ Bardwell muttered.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Potter’s Field — where the traitor Judas hanged himself in remorse for his crime.’ Bardwell finally turned and looked at me. ‘I’m thinking out loud. I won’t tell you where James is, but I can perhaps explain the connection with Webb.’

This is the story he told me.

Following his community service, James had taken an interest in gardening, realizing that it was something in which he was not unskilled, which could earn him money and which did not require an education. He took to tending the gardens of several of the bigger houses in Lifford, reasoning that fewer clients with larger gardens would pay better and lend him a certain exclusivity. One of the gardens he tended was that of Peter and Sinead Webb. And, if the story he told Bardwell was to be believed, it was Webb who encouraged James to participate in the robbery which resulted in his arrest.

Kerr claimed that, during one of their conversations over his tea break, he had expressed admiration for Mrs Webb’s new car. Webb apparently had engaged the boy in a lengthy discussion on cars and driving, during which Kerr boasted openly about his own driving skills. The next time Kerr turned up to work on the Webbs’ garden, Peter Webb made him a proposition: he told him that he needed a driver for a job; someone who could handle a fast car along the back roads. Kerr asked what kind of job and Webb tapped his nose and winked. ‘You’ll be seen right,’ he said.

Kerr thought nothing more of the conversation for several months, as the days began to turn and his gardening work slowed. Then, one day in late November, he received a phone call from Peter Webb, asking to meet in a local bar.

That evening he approached McElroy’s with a nervous skittering in his stomach, as though he were going for a job interview. Webb sat near the back of the bar nursing a hot whiskey — for a cold, he said. He bought the boy a whiskey too, and Kerr felt respected. Then Webb told James that, on the following Tuesday, he would be needed to drive. He was to collect a car from the local chapel car park and drive to the picnic area on the outskirts of Ballindrait. There he would meet three men. He was to drive them along the back roads across the border into the North. By this stage all the permanent army checkpoints that had blighted the border roads were long gone. Though the police still carried out spot searches on the main roads, the back roads were generally empty. No force could police them all and no one knew them as well as Kerr, who had spent half his youth joyriding along them.

Once in the North, James was to drive the men to Castlederg Post Office and wait for them, before returning via Clady, over the back road into the South again. He was to drop the men off at a point of their choosing and then burn out the car. For this service, James would receive an early Christmas present of ?1,000.

Tuesday, 23 January 1996 was a crisp, clear winter’s day where the sun lay low in the sky and stretched the shadows of the cattle in the fields. James walked out to the chapel, his heart thudding in his chest. One of his neighbours drove past and offered him a lift, but he refused. What if they asked him where he was going? Or sat in the car park and saw him getting into a car that wasn’t his? No, Jamie Kerr wasn’t stupid. He waved them on and, thereafter turned his face towards the privet hedges that edged the roadway whenever he heard a car approach. Finally he made it to the car park, ten minutes early, too. There were three cars sitting outside the chapel: one, he knew, belonged to Father Jackson, the parish priest — the black sporty Honda, if you don’t mind; was it any fucking wonder he’d no time for the Church? All that hypocrisy about poverty and that. He spat on the car in disgust as he passed it; then the thought of poverty made him think again of the grand that would soon be his and his stomach flipped and something tingled deep in his loins. He’d buy a car — a proper one of his own. After that he’d pull some bitch; then she’d pull him in the back of the car. That made him laugh and tingle all over again. Better get a hold of yourself, he thought. Keep focus.

He approached the car closest to him — an old Fiesta — and tried the door. Webb had said the car would be unlocked; the keys under the seat. The Fiesta was locked tight and, when James looked in, someone had put one of those security bars across the steering wheel. For fuck’s sake, he thought — who’d want to steal an old Fiesta anyhow? The other car was sweet: a silver Rover 400. He tried the handle, his back to the car, his hands behind him, surveying the church and the road to see if he was being watched. It all came naturally to him, he thought. He was cut out for this kind of job.

It took him a few minutes to familiarize himself with the car and reset the radio to some decent music. He looked through the previous owner’s tape collection, but it was mostly crap he’d never heard of and country and western shit. Instead he settled for a station playing Oasis. ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’; there’d be plenty of both when he got his grand. He turned the music right up and rolled down the window in defiance at the Church, then spun out on to the main road.

He waited fifteen minutes in the picnic area for the others to arrive. While he waited he practised looking hard in the mirror: chewing gum at the side of his mouth; his sleeves rolled up; his hair slicked back. He chewed exaggeratedly and winked at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t sure whether he needed a shit or a shag, he was so nervous and excited. And maybe he thought about Mary Gallagher. And maybe he didn’t.

Then, almost without his noticing, they were there. Three men appeared and got into the car. The three wore stockings halfway down their faces, so only their mouths showed. James winked into the mirror and turned to the one who had sat up front beside him. ‘All right men,’ he said around his chewing gum. ‘Let’s go to work.’ He’d heard that in a film and it sounded cool.