Brian McGilloway - Gallows Lane

The storm of the previous day had passed and the morning woke to brilliant sunshine and a freshness about the air. The clouds peppered across the light ceramic sky were no more than wisps, the grass in the fields stretching into Tyrone a deep, lush green, some thick with rapeseed. From the height of Gallows Lane the river below glimmered in the sunlight. By the time I got to the scene, a cordon had been placed around the area for a quarter-mile radius and every local officer was on site. Costello was standing speaking to the two officers who had made the find, dressed in a navy suit, a camel coloured overcoat folded over one arm. It had not taken him long to dress for the cameras. People were gathered around the spot, near the top of Gallows Lane, and, as I walked up it towards the site, I could hardly believe it when I learnt who had made the find.

Harry Patterson and Hugh Colhoun were grinning broadly, caught in the flash of the cameras, holding up some of the weapons found as if in offering. They had reason to smile: in addition to this latest find, just one month earlier the pair had discovered a substantial arms and drugs cache that had made them the toast of the station.

During the Troubles the IRA was known to have kept its arsenal in bunkers along the border. Often these were quite professional affairs: concreted air-raid shelters, perhaps, with steps leading down and electric lights fitted. Usually the entrances were covered with turf or logs or, in the case of a bunker in the middle of a field near Armagh, under a haystack. In that particular case, the British Army had used the field as a landing spot for their Chinook helicopters, dropping and airlifting troops in and out for patrols and house searches, not realizing that the contraband they sought was quite literally under their feet.

In most cases, these bunkers had been sealed up after the Good Friday Agreement seemed to offer the prospect of peace in Northern Ireland. Indeed, when the issue of paramilitary decommissioning became a stumbling block to progress and the governments invited General De Chastelain to Northern Ireland to try to encourage the various terrorist groups to ‘put their weapons beyond use’, the vast majority of the bunkers were filled with concrete, their contents preserved forever like metallic fossils. However, some smaller bunkers were forgotten, their keepers dead, their existence supposedly the stuff of urban myth.

Just occasionally, people stumbled across these bunkers by accident. So it had been in February of this year when Paddy Hannon, a successful land developer who had bought a thirty-acre plot near Raphoe, had begun to excavate the area in preparation for building houses. One of his workers, using an earth-mover to shift tree roots and rocks off the land, had scraped across the top of a bunker, tearing the thick padlock off the rusted iron door which had been buried under a foot of clay and turf.

The man summoned Paddy Hannon, who had gone down into the bunker to investigate, believing he had uncovered an old air-raid shelter. Indeed, even when his torch light racked across a number of weapons lying in one corner, they appeared so rusted he believed them to be Second World War artefacts. Then he discovered bricks of cannabis piled against one wall and called the local Gardai. Patterson and Colhoun duly arrived and could not believe their luck. They called in support and wrote the find up as their own, gaining all the attendant kudos in so doing.

In total the haul had included several pistols and rifles and cannabis resin with an estimated street value in excess of three million euros.

Patterson and Colhoun had become heroes, regaling all who would listen with tales of the discovery, neglecting to mention that it had been made long before they arrived on the scene and that, in fact, they had simply babysat the find until the Drugs Squad arrived.

Today’s find was altogether more impressive, seeming to have resulted from proper police work.

I knew both men fairly well, having been based in the same station as them for the past few years. Patterson, the more senior of the two, was a little older than I, and, though an inspector, was known to have ambitions to make it higher. He claimed he had chosen to stay in uniform as it brought him closer to the people he had enlisted to serve, but it was common knowledge that he had applied and been turned down by the Detective branch several times; a fact which had caused more than a little animosity between us when I had first arrived at the station as a DI.

He was over six feet tall and around fifteen stone, though his height meant he carried the weight well. His hair had begun to recede quite early and, like many in the same situation, he had elected to shave his head so that only the shadow of his hairline remained. This, combined with his physical size, made him an intimidating figure, and he had the personality to match.

Patterson was a divorcee and a proponent of the shower-room mentality: he would openly discuss sexual relationships and female colleagues’ bodies in the station and had once pinned a centre spread torn from one of his porn magazines on the fridge in our small communal kitchen under the banner ‘Stress relief available. Return when finished’. After several of the women in the station complained, he pinned up a picture of a nude male also, under the new title ‘Take your pick’. He defended his own chauvinism as mere fun and games and yet became a vocal feminist when in the company of women he found attractive.

His partner, Hugh Colhoun, was a very different creature. He had only joined An Garda in his late thirties and so was still a uniformed officer despite being forty-five years old. He had a wife and three daughters on whom he clearly doted. He supported Patterson in all that he did, to the extent that he would often echo the last few words that his partner spoke in any conversation, in tacit agreement with the sentiments expressed, whether he understood them or not. He was slow and fairly thorough in his job, though he lacked the imagination to take leaps of faith and see beyond the obvious. If I had to guess, I’d say it was Patterson who had suggested searching the area having spotted someone acting suspiciously there. And yet, despite this or indeed because of this, it was Colhoun whom I approached to congratulate.

He blushed while we spoke and looked around him for his partner, who was standing at the corner of the cordon, speaking with Costello and two uniformed constables from Raphoe.

‘It’s quite incredible, Hugh. Two finds in two months, nearly.’

‘Yes,’ Colhoun said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Incredible.’

‘You must be looking for detective rank with this work rate.’

He laughed at the joke, then became suddenly serious. ‘It was Harry who found them, not me, Ben. He’s the one who deserves the credit really, not me.’

‘Partners are partners, Hugh; the credit’s yours as well.’ I shook his hand which was damp and light as air. In a strange way Colhoun seemed almost downbeat about the discovery.

Patterson was not so modest in success, smiling broadly as he approached us.

‘Looking for tips, Inspector? This is a turn-up, detectives coming to the uniforms for a hand.’ He looked around him as he spoke, trying to encourage others to join in his banter, or perhaps simply to see if he had an audience.

‘I was just congratulating Hugh, here. Good work.’ My puerile side would not allow me to extend the same sentiments to Patterson. ‘Quite remarkable; two finds in so many months.’

‘Well, someone has to-’ Patterson started, but he was cut short by Costello, who had appeared at my side.

‘Good day for the force, men, eh?’ he said, his hand on my elbow to steady himself.

‘Remarkable,’ I repeated.