Brian McGilloway - Gallows Lane

‘God no,’ Agnes replied, blowing on the tip of her cigarette. ‘Film reviews and the like.’

‘Can you think of anyone who might have held a grudge against her?’ I asked. ‘Ex-boyfriends? Current boyfriends?’

‘She didn’t have any’ Agnes said. ‘Karen was a lovely girl. Never had no enemies.’

Any idea who she was with last night?’ Williams asked.

‘She went clubbing in Letterkenny, with her friends. Out on a hen night. I phoned round this morning, but none of them knew where she was. Hadn’t seen her since the club. When I hadn’t heard from her by lunchtime, I knew there was something wrong.’ She exhaled her smoke in a single, steady stream.

‘We’ll need names, Miss Doherty.’ I said.

Claire Finley worked in the same newspaper office as Karen Doherty, accepting phone-placed classified adverts. She sat now in the staff kitchen, smoking a cigarette and drinking a mug of tea. Williams sat with her arm around the girl. We recognized Claire’s face from the vest top Karen had been wearing. The girl should have been looking forward to her impending marriage; instead she was mourning the death of a friend. And blaming herself.

‘We shouldn’t have left. I knew that. But I wanted to get home,’ she said, looking at each of us, pleadingly, hoping that we would nod our understanding and offer her some comfort. ‘You see? I had to get up for work. I wanted to get home.’

Claire explained to us that she and five of her friends, including Karen, had gone to Letterkenny for her hen night. They had shared a meal first in a local restaurant, then had gone clubbing in Club Manhattan. One by one, her friends had started to pair up with men. She had lost track of Karen, she said.

When they met up afterwards, Karen and another girl, Julie, were missing. Julie had texted one of the others to say she had ‘scored’ and wouldn’t need a lift. No one had heard from Karen. They waited five minutes or so for her, then, presuming that she had achieved the same result as Julie, they went home. Karen’s sister Agnes had phoned that morning, looking for her. Claire hadn’t been too worried at that stage — maybe Karen was sleeping off a hangover somewhere. But by lunchtime she still hadn’t appeared, or phoned in sick, and had missed two deadlines for articles she had been writing. Claire had phoned around her friends. Only then did it become apparent that she hadn’t made it back to Strabane.

‘You didn’t see her with anyone?’ I asked, a little incredulously. ‘The entire night, you didn’t spot her once?’

‘No, I. . I. .’ Claire began, then spluttered into tears for the third time since our arrival. She looked at Williams, her head tilted slightly. ‘Please.. ’ she managed.

‘Maybe Claire and I could have a few minutes, Inspectors?’ Williams said, nodding towards the door of the kitchen.

Hendry and I went outside and stood on the street, taking the opportunity for a smoke.

‘Well, what’s your reading of it?’ Hendry asked.

‘I’m not sure, Jim, to be honest. The pathologist’s report should be through this evening. There’s a lot of strange stuff with the scene. Locked doors, unused condoms.’

‘Anything we can do, Ben, just let us know.’

‘We’ll need someone to speak to the rest of the girls on the hen night. Could you take care of that over here?’

‘No problem. Keep us up to date on what’s happening your side, eh?’

Williams joined us a few moments later.

‘Anything?’ I asked.

‘Girl stuff,’ she said. ‘Seems Claire met a man last night. One last fling before the ball and chain. Spent most of the disco in the back of his car; doesn’t want her fiance to know, obviously. She has no idea what happened to Karen, but she feels guilty as hell about it.’

When I got back to the station, Patterson and Colhoun were putting the finishing touches to a display for the media. All the weapons they had found had been bagged and tagged and were laid out like a banquet on top of two pasting tables clothed in white paper. Boxes of ammunition were piled on one side, the shotguns in the middle and the revolvers side by side at the front. On a separate desk, in pride of place, lay the bag of Es, some of them spilling on to the desk from the mouth of the bag.

Costello had dressed for the occasion and I noticed he had brought a new black hawthorn walking stick which perhaps he felt was more fitting to a man of his position.

When he spotted us he called Williams and me into his office. It was a sparsely decorated affair, lacking any personal touches, except for a photograph of his children and one of his dead wife. I had not seen his daughter, Kate, since her mother’s death. Kate herself had been injured at the time and had learned, as I had, of her father’s possible complicity in the murder of a prostitute. Though Costello never mentioned it, I believed that Kate held him accountable for her mother’s death.

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, instinctively rubbing at his chest as we spoke. His walking stick hung off the arm of the chair and with his other hand he fiddled with the handle.

First we discussed the attack on Karen Doherty. Costello had received a copy of the pathologist’s report. She had been punched and kicked around the back of the head, her trunk and legs. One of the blows had caused a fracture in the base of her skull. But it was not the beating alone that had killed her. She had suffered an aneurism, caused by a genetic weakness in her brain: it would apparently have happened at some stage; the beating simply acted as a catalyst. Toxicology tests revealed the presence of a chemical, gamma-Butyrolactone, in the girl’s blood. Interestingly, despite her state of partial undress she had not been engaged in sexual activity before her death, nor had she been sexually assaulted either immediately pre- or post-mortem. In fact, Karen Doherty was still a virgin when she died.

‘What do you think, folks?’ he asked.

‘What the hell is gamma-Butyrolactone?’ I asked, apparently a step ahead of Williams, who nodded her head as I spoke.

Costello lifted a sheet of paper from his desk and squinted slightly at it as he read. ‘GBL. Something used in solvents apparently. Can cause sexual euphoria, heightened sensations, lack of coordination and blackouts. It can be taken as a recreational drug, but at higher doses the effects are so strong, it’s currently the date-rape drug of choice in the UK.’

‘So someone slipped it to her then; spiked her drink perhaps?’ Williams suggested. ‘Or might she have taken it herself? Give herself a bit of a high before a night out?’

‘If it’s a sex drug, would someone who was a virgin really take it willingly? More likely someone slipped it to her somehow.’

‘Best keep our focus on what we know,’ Costello cautioned. ‘What have we got?’

‘We know she was in Club Manhattan in Letterkenny, sir,’ Williams said. ‘Presumably someone picked her up there.’

‘We’re going to check there tonight,’ I explained. ‘Show around her picture, see if it stirs up anyone’s memory.’

‘What about the scene, Inspector? Anything useful there?’

I looked at Williams, then responded. We had already had this conversation in the car on the way to the station. ‘There are a number of issues there, sir. The house was locked, so someone unlocked it. Which means that either the victim or the killer knew that the key was under that brick. . And, if Karen Doherty was doped with GBL, she’d hardly have been in a fit state to start looking around in the dark for keys and locking and unlocking doors. Which means her killer was the one who knew the key was there.’

And he locked up the house afterwards, sir,’ Williams added. Assuming it’s a he.’