Brian McGilloway - Gallows Lane

‘That tape will be. No doubt it was replaced with a fresh one though. Which will still be in the recorder, in Decko’s house.’

He jumped to his feet and barged on to the dance floor, grabbing Deegan and Meaney. By the time they’d got their coats, I was waiting at the front door in the car, engine running.

Decko’s house was in darkness when we arrived. The front gates were closed, blue and white crime tape wrapped around the bars. The building itself was imposing — squat and black against the darkening sky. The windows were closed; no noise of a party in full swing now, as there had been the first time I’d come here. No sign of life at all. Decko had left his fortune to no one, for he had no one to leave it to.

We pulled up at the front of the house. I took the torch from the boot and shone it up across the facade, trying to spot the camera, but none was immediately visible. I went over to the spot where Decko’s car had been parked the night I had planted the evidence. As best I could I stood where I had stood that night and then, recalling the angle of the shot on the videotape, I shone the torch up to where I thought the camera might be placed. I moved the torch beam inch by inch along the wall, every tiny movement of my hand amplified. Then, just to the left of one of the side windows, something glinted.

‘There,’ Deegan called, pointing to the spot.

I handed him the torch. ‘Hold that steady,’ I said.

Dempsey was already at the door, picking the lock. I looked at him quizzically. ‘Ask no questions, I’ll tell you no lies,’ he said, winking. Seconds later there was a click as the lock opened, and we were inside. The SOCO team wouldn’t have been able to set the burglar alarm when they’d locked up the house after their search.

We sprinted up the stairs, trying to judge which window the camera was at. Finally, in a disused bedroom sitting at the back of the house, we found it.

The room had four windows; two to the side of the house and two to the back. The beam of the torch Deegan was holding down below hit the ceiling above the first side window. It didn’t take long to spot the tiny white box sitting on the outside windowsill. Nor did it take long to follow the trail of the wire, running from it to a cabinet sitting in the corner beside a mahogany dresser.

The cabinet was locked but proved little challenge for Dempsey. Sure enough, inside we found a two tiny monitors and a video recorder. The video had stopped recording, the monitors showed no picture, though a red light on each showed they were on standby.

‘Another wire,’ Dempsey said, pointing over my shoulder, his breath warm on the back of my neck.

This one led to one of the back windows, where we found another tiny security camera, tucked in at the corner of the window frame.

The tape in the video recorder was fully rewound, suggesting it had run out. We played with the monitor until the screens came to life, then pushed in the tape and pressed play. A split screen image appeared on the monitor. By pressing a few more buttons, we discovered that we could watch either a recording of the back of the house, the front of the house, or both.

The date and time on the tape showed us that it had started recording at 8.37 p.m. on 12 June. We forwarded it, hoping that it hadn’t run out before Decko’s killing. Figures flickered on and offscreen as the tape moved. We stopped every so often to try to identify any of them. In one we could see Decko, standing near his pool, on the phone. Through the night and early part of 13 June, there was little to see.

Finally, at around 6.30 p.m., Hannon’s car pulled into the driveway. Danny McLaughlin was unmistakable: despite the graininess of the shot his bald head and sheer size were obvious. Paddy Hannon, on the other hand, was not quite so clearly identifiable, though we had little doubt that it was him. They approached the front of the house, then disappeared from view.

Several moments later, Decko suddenly appeared in the back garden, lying on his back, as though someone had thrown him. Next screen, Danny McLaughlin was over him, his hands clamped on Decko’s back. Then they were at the pool. As the images flicked by, one after another, we sat in silence, stunned and disgusted as we watched frame after frame shot of Decko’s torture. McLaughlin held his head under the water in some shots and out of the water in others. Then Decko lay alone at the pool’s edge, McLaughlin standing out of the picture. The next image revealed O’Kane’s body in the pool, around which a darkening circle was spreading.

Several images later we watched the two figures make their way down the side of the house to the car. McLaughlin opened the car door for Paddy Hannon, who was peeling off a pair of gloves. Then the car backed out and the frame was empty.

As the screen continued to flicker on to the end of the tape, we sat back and looked at each other.

‘Is it enough?’ I asked.

Dempsey smiled grimly. ‘I think it might be,’ he said.

Wednesday, 23 June

Over the subsequent days, Paddy Hannon moved from protesting his innocence, to blaming others, to finally agreeing to make a detailed confession in return for a reduced sentence. His version of events was as follows.

Jamie Kerr’s return to Lifford had caused none of them any concern. Even when he confronted Peter Webb, no one had really worried. Webb was an old hand, reliable as they came. Then a Brit came looking for Webb after the guns were found on his land. His wife put two and two together and finally realized that her husband had, in fact, been an informer in the earlier days of the Troubles. She and her younger brother had confronted him. A scuffle had ensued and in a rage Danny throttled Webb. Panicking, they contacted Decko O’Kane, who helped stage Webb’s suicide.

Jamie Kerr had witnessed Decko’s arrival at the house and his departure with Webb’s corpse. When the body was discovered, he had easily pieced together the truth. He had indeed blackmailed Sinead Webb, but not for money. He had threatened to tell the police, unless she organized a meeting with Decko and the other member of the Castlederg gang. It was at that meeting that Kerr was killed, nailed to a tree. The joke was that Kerr had wanted to forgive them, Hannon said. But, he’d pointed out, he hadn’t wanted to crucify the man; Decko and Danny had done that.

Then, of course, Decko was arrested and released suspiciously quickly. Things were closing in on them. Decko had been sleeping with Webb’s wife; things were getting messy. If Decko was linked with Webb and Kerr and arrested, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t name Hannon in an effort to plea-bargain. And so they had dispatched him, just as we had seen. Hannon had been able to blackmail McLaughlin into doing his dirty work, even killing his sister’s lover, as Decko had told him that McLaughlin was borrowing cars for the night and bringing them back with blood stains on the seat. It hadn’t taken a genius to compare the dates with the attacks on the two girls and make the connection.

The rest we knew. Hannon played down his involvement in all aspects of the cases. He’d wanted nothing to do with it, even from the start, he’d said.

Still, that didn’t stop an eagle-eyed accountant employed by the NBCI from finding a paper trail leading right back to the funds gained from the Castlederg robbery in Hannon’s accounts. The Assets Recovery Agency plan to seize all Hannon’s belongings and the building site in Raphoe where Karen Doherty lost her life will, for the foreseeable future, remain unfinished.

Sinead Webb was arrested following Hannon’s statement and will face a number of serious crime charges, including her involvement in the murder of her husband, and aiding and abetting her brother in his attacks on Karen Doherty and Rebecca Purdy.