Brian McGilloway - Gallows Lane

We followed Deegan across to the porters’ office. Inside a group of Guards were gathered around a man who was lying face down on the ground while Meaney knelt on his back, tightening his cuffs. A bread knife lay on the ground several feet from them. When the man was hauled to his feet, I was shattered to see Rebecca Purdy’s father.

His eyes caught mine and he held my gaze for a second, no more, then lowered his head in shame. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

He looked at me once more, pleadingly, as they led him past me, out to a waiting squad car to take him to Letterkenny station, past a crowd of spectators who had gathered in the hospital foyer. I rushed to keep up with them.

‘Mr Purdy?’ I said.

‘What would you have done?’ he called to me as he was pushed out through the doors.

‘What the fuck was that about?’ Dempsey said, a little angrily.

I told him who the man was. I did not need to explain why he had done what he had done, nor could I explain why he had seemingly hung around the scene of the crime for a further four hours. Unless, of course, he had wanted to be caught.

Dempsey and I went up to McLaughlin’s room. The body had been moved now and the forensics team had been and gone. A gelatinous pool of dark red blood lay beneath the bed, the sheets already stiff and brown with the stains. On the night stand beside the bed sat a jug of water, a half-empty beaker and McLaughlin’s phone. His clothes were folded over a chair in the corner. Beyond that, there were no other personal items; no get well cards or flowers, no bottles of lemonade or baskets of fruit. Danny McLaughlin’s passing from this Earth had been friendless and impersonal.

And despite his crimes, I mourned his death, and both its manner and the man responsible for it.

I was roused from my thoughts by a shrill tone from McLaughlin’s phone. When I opened it, the display read ‘Low Battery’. After that message blinked off, however, I saw another: ‘One Missed Call’, with the time noted at 2.20 a.m.

‘Does this constitute evidence?’ I asked Dempsey.

‘Shouldn’t think so,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Someone tried to phone him at two-twenty this morning. He missed the call.’

‘Maybe he was sleeping,’ Dempsey suggested.

‘Maybe,’ I agreed. ‘Or maybe it helps us narrow down time of death.’

Dempsey nodded agreement. ‘Possibly. Who was it?’

‘Doesn’t say. Just that it was at two twenty — this morning. That was just a bit after I left him,’ I said. ‘Maybe he called someone.’

‘Let me see,’ Dempsey said, taking the phone. He played around with a few buttons, until he had a number, which he read out. McLaughlin’s phone beeped its urgent warning again. ‘The battery’s going to go,’ he said. ‘Copy this down.’

He read the number a second time. I didn’t have my notebook with me and so, with nothing else to hand, I saved the dialled number on to my own phone. Something about the digits seemed familiar though I couldn’t place them.

McLaughlin’s phone emitted one last warning, then went dead. Dempsey replaced it on the night stand, then looked at the number on my display, as if the digits themselves might reveal something.

‘Could be his sister,’ I said. ‘Or his lawyer.’

‘Only one way to be sure,’ Dempsey said, leaning past me and pressing the green call button on my phone. Before I had a chance to protest, however, the number changed to a caller ID which was already saved on my phone. And I was left to wonder what connected Paddy Hannon with Danny McLaughlin, and why he would be phoning him in the middle of the night.

Before we left for the station, Dempsey called down to the morgue to collect the preliminary findings on the murder of Danny McLaughlin. I read through the notes while he drove. McLaughlin had been killed just after 2 a.m., according to the pathologist’s estimates, soon after I had left him. His throat had been slit with a long, sharp, smooth-bladed knife, which, at the very least, placed a question mark over the guilt of Seamus Purdy, who had been caught with a serrated bread knife. Whilst he may have wanted to kill McLaughlin, the evidence, even at this early stage, suggested that he probably hadn’t done so.

However, we arrived at the station to learn that he had already signed a confession. Deegan was buzzing to tell his boss and was more than a little deflated when Dempsey told him to hand the confession to me and give me a few minutes alone with the man. They, in turn, set off to find Paddy Hannon.

Purdy looked exhausted when I went into the interview room. His breath smelt stale in the enclosed space, his whitening hair unkempt, the beginning of grey stubble like sandpaper on his jaw. His anorak was buttoned up incorrectly, the bottom button fitted into the second hole. One of his eyes wept continually as we spoke and he dried it with the cuff of his sleeve.

‘I read your confession,’ I said, sitting down. ‘Why did you do it?’

The answers were prepared. ‘What else could I do for my girl?’ he said, his lip quivering as he tried all the harder to hold it firm. ‘How could I look her in the eyes knowing I did nothing?’ He spat the last word venomously. ‘Nothing,’ he repeated.

‘Would she not prefer to have her father at home, Mr Purdy? To help her come to terms with what happened? Instead of in jail? Would that not be a more fatherly thing to do?’

He glared at me defiantly, then turned his head aside.

‘You asked me what I would do,’ I said. ‘I have a daughter, Mr Purdy. If it happened to her, I would hold her, and promise her that everything would be all right. I’d do everything in my power to let her know that it wasn’t her fault and that, no matter what, I would always love her with my entire heart. And I would never leave her without my support and my love.’

His glare finally broke and he began to blubber, his lips covered in spittle which he made no effort to wipe clean. His entire frame shook with each sob, as he buried his face in his arms on the table and released all the frustration and anger and guilt that he had felt since his daughter’s assault. And I did the only thing I could as a father. I moved my chair beside him and put my arm around his shoulder and sat with him until he had finished.

‘I know you didn’t do it,’ I said to him. ‘No matter that you wanted to, or that you might have. I know that you didn’t. Isn’t that right?’

Finally, among the sobs, I saw him nod his head. I lifted his confession and tore it in two, then left it on the desk in front of us and waited for him to stop crying.

When he seemed to have calmed I stood and placed my hand on his shoulder for a second, then I turned to leave the room.

‘You’re free to go, Mr Purdy,’ I said.

As I opened the door, he called me back. I turned in the doorway. He had twisted in his seat to see me, his face glistening with tears.

‘I was at his room, you know. I nearly did it,’ he said quickly.

‘Doesn’t matter, Mr Purdy, whether you would have or not. You didn’t.’

‘I saw you come out,’ he explained. And someone else go in.’

My hair stood on end at his words. I let the door swing closed again. ‘Who?’

‘I didn’t know him. A priest.’

‘You’re sure?’ I asked, already beginning to suspect where this was going to end. ‘Definitely a priest?’

He nodded, wiping his eyes with the heel of his palm. ‘He wore a collar; middle-aged man. Black hair.’

‘How long was he in there?’

‘A minute, maybe two. It scared me off; I daren’t go in, in case someone else arrived. But I couldn’t go home either; not without having. . you know.’

I nodded. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr Purdy,’ I said.