Brian McGilloway - Gallows Lane

‘Harry and Hugh would have nothing to do with this, man. I know Harry gets worked up, but this goes beyond the pale.’

‘Whoever it was, I guess it’s the follow-up to the sympathy card and the bullet, and the brick through my window. Looks like they meant business.’

‘’Twouldn’t be either of the lads, Benedict, no matter how Harry blusters.’

Despite his assurances, I did not share his evaluation of Patterson and Colhoun, and I would have something to say to Patterson in particular, the first chance I got.

As we drove back to the station, I wound down the window and smoked a cigarette. Costello asked me what was on my mind. I could not, of course, tell him that I was considering the fact that my handling of this case had, perhaps, been responsible for both the death of Decko O’Kane, and almost my own partner’s. In addition, my comments to Costello regarding the legitimacy of the guns find some days earlier had prompted the arrest of Peter Webb, who had, in turn, ended up dead. Every turn I had taken in this case had placed someone else in the firing line. Instead of solving crimes, I seemed to be perpetuating them. Perhaps it was time to pack it up, I thought.

My anxiety was not eased by the news, when we reached the station, that Decko’s DNA test had come back. Whoever’s skin had been found under the nails of James Kerr, it had not been Declan O’Kane’s.

Just after lunch I received an unexpected phone call.

‘I heard about your partner, Williams,’ the voice said. ‘Shitty enough; she has a kid, is that right?’

It took me several seconds to place the voice. ‘Helen?’

‘Aye. How’s she doing?’

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘I have some news for you. About the stolen drugs,’ Helen said, the excitement rising in her voice.

That got my attention.

‘A tip-off from a contestant in a local kick-boxing thing. Another contestant in that tournament was disqualified after winning the final. He was on steroids. Turns out he was also on our breast drug. The guy he beat has lodged a complaint.’

Our, I thought. ‘Have you a name?’ I asked.

‘Darren Kehoe; he’s a-’

‘Bouncer in Letterkenny. I know him.’

‘Do you want to go see him?’ she asked. ‘I might need a hand, if he’s big.’

I thought of the man squeezed on to a sofa in his boss’s office, and the footage of him throwing Karen Doherty into the street the night she was killed.

‘I’ll be with you in twenty minutes,’ I said.

I signed out a car, and made my way to Letterkenny. Helen met me at the station there and we drove up past the Oldfield sweet factory to Kehoe’s address. He lived in the end house of a terrace. The entrance gate swung on one hinge, the small front garden had long overgrown with weeds. The wood of the door was crumbling with dry rot, the paintwork blistered and peeling.

Kehoe answered the door after we’d been knocking for several minutes. He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt and was clearly only just getting out of bed. Instinctively I glanced at his arms, thick with knots of muscle but completely free from tattoos of any sort.

‘Late night?’ I asked.

He looked at me blankly. ‘Early morning,’ he grunted, then turned and went back into his house, leaving the door open by way of invitation for us to do the same.

We followed him into the kitchen. While we spoke he poured himself a bowl of cereal and rooted around his sink to try to find a clean spoon. Having settled on the cleanest, he turned to face us, shovelling cornflakes into his mouth as he did. When he spoke, it was through mouthfuls of cereal.

‘Is this about that girl?’ he asked.

‘Should it be?’

He shrugged. ‘Can be if you want. I don’t know nothing.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘This is about something else.’

‘You were involved in a kick-boxing competition recently, is that right?’ Gorman asked.

He stopped eating momentarily, raising an eyebrow in suspicion.

‘Why?’

‘You were disqualified, we’re told.’

He put the bowl down on the counter and placed his two hands behind him, the massive palms spread against the counter edge.

‘What of it?’

‘Why were you disqualified?’ Helen asked.

‘I’d say you know, if you’re asking. Nothing to do with the Guards, anyhow.’

‘That’s not completely true, though, Mr Kehoe,’ I said. ‘Taking steroids is one thing; taking stolen cancer drugs is something completely different.’

‘What?’

‘Nolvadex, I think it’s called. The breast cancer drug that you were also found to have taken? Where did you get it?’

‘Why?’

‘A batch was stolen from a pharmacy in Lifford a week or two ago. As you’re the first person locally to be found with it, we suspect that you must know something about the theft.’

Kehoe’s face blanched. He stared stupidly from Gorman to me and back, his expression almost bovine.

‘I didn’t steal them. I was given them; I swear to God.’

‘Who gave them to you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How convenient,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t you, you know nothing. Who’d have thought it — one more innocent man accused in the wrong.’

‘No, I swear,’ he said, with enough conviction to make me think that he was telling the truth. I didn’t credit Kehoe with sufficient guile to lie so convincingly.

‘Some guy gave it to me at the tournament.’

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Bullshit, Darren. Give me a name, or we’re taking you in now; in your fucking sweatpants if we have to.’

Kehoe panicked, his eyes round and terrified. ‘Please, no. Thompson’ll fire me if I get arrested. Part of my anger-management deal.’

‘What?’ I asked, incredulously, and Kehoe explained.

Kehoe had taken up kick-boxing at school. In fact, he’d progressed well in local competitions, up until he was nineteen. Then things seemed to plateau. No matter how hard he trained, how carefully he balanced his diet, he didn’t seem to progress any further, didn’t seem to have the edge his competitors had.

Then, one evening, after another failed competition in Newry, someone suggested that Darren should try to build himself up with steroids. He’d never get any further without them, he was told. And so, after a few weeks’ resistance to the idea, Kehoe bought some body-building steroids online. The results were amazing. He felt better than ever, seemed to develop strength surpassing his own muscle capability, started to feature in the winners’ lists again. One of the side effects of this, however, was that Darren found himself losing his temper with increasing frequency, and increasing violence. ’Roid rage, he called it. The last straw came when Kehoe had battered a teenager messing around in a club he worked in, an attack which left the boy in intensive care for a month. By agreeing to anger-management classes Kehoe had got a suspended sentence and probation instead of a jail term. He stayed clean of the steroids the whole way through his probation, which had ended six months prior to our conversation.

Of course, Kehoe wanted to compete again, and so had started taking the steroids again, though in lower doses, to prevent the rage he had felt previously. This time however, he experienced a different side effect: moobs. It was for these that a fellow competitor had given him tamoxifen during his most recent kick-boxing contest.

While he had been speaking, things began to slide into place. I should have seen it before. ’Roid rage. I asked Kehoe to explain it.

‘Something to do with hormones,’ he explained simplistically. ‘They make you lose your temper really easily. Incredible Hulk stuff, like. You can’t control yourself. You just want to. . smash,’ he concluded.