The Nameless Dead (23 page)

I rubbed his back through the bedclothes, but he shrank from my touch.

‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted, the words muffled.

Eventually, when it became clear that he would not be comforted, I stood up.

‘We’ll go tomorrow night,’ I said. ‘I promise you, we’ll go tomorrow night.’

The duvet flung back and Shane stared at me angrily. ‘No we won’t,’ he said.

Though Burke was brought to Strabane PSNI station before 10 p.m., his solicitor didn’t arrive until after midnight. Hendry phoned me when they were gearing up to start
questioning. He had refused to allow me to sit in on the interview, for obvious reasons, the charge being that Burke had assaulted my child. However, he had given the go-ahead for me to watch the
interview via a video link in the adjacent room.

Debbie’s anger at my letting down Shane had been lessened significantly by the knowledge that I had done so in order to get Burke across to the PSNI. When I told her the state in which I
had found the boy, she had opened her mouth to ask something, then evidently had thought better of it and remained silent.

‘Make sure he doesn’t get away with what he did,’ she had warned me as I left, as if I might have some influence over how the PSNI would prosecute the case.

Burke slumped in the chair of the interview room. He wore an old blue boiler suit usually given to those whose clothes have been removed for forensic examination. In Burke’s case, I
assumed it was because Hendry had taken pity on the boy and had allowed him to change out of his soiled trousers. One of his eyes was still badly swollen, the other carried a fresh purple bruise
beneath it. The bridge of his nose had been stitched, as had his lip, which was puffy and red.

The lawyer who sat next to him was a middle-aged man, rheumy eyed and obviously irritated at being called into the station at midnight. Burke had contacted his parents first, apparently, to ask
for their solicitor but his mother, aware of the incident being investigated by Hendry, had refused to help the boy.

‘Do you understand why we’d like you to make a statement?’ Hendry asked. ‘You’ve been identified as the perpetrator of a sexual assault on one teenage girl and the
physical assault of a second. Coupled with the charges still hanging over you with the theft of money from the victim of a murder, you’re facing jail time.

‘These are two separate issues,’ the lawyer muttered. ‘Let’s stick with the assault.’

Hendry nodded. ‘We have a witness who saw you plying her friend with drink, then attempt to have sex with the teenager while she was incapable of giving consent. That’s tantamount to
rape.’

‘But isn’t actually rape,’ the lawyer said. ‘And if the alleged victim was so drunk as to not be able to give consent, her evidence against Mr Burke must likewise be
compromised and therefore unreliable.’

‘The evidence of her friend, her sober friend, who saw what happened and who was left with a black eye by Mr Burke is, however, extremely reliable.’

The lawyer stifled a yawn. ‘I do think we’re missing a bigger issue here, namely how Mr Burke came to be in custody in the first place. He claims he was in Donegal
and—’

‘Where he had gone to escape charges following the assault,’ Hendry countered.

‘Inspector,’ the lawyer said. ‘Someone assaulted Mr Burke. Then a guard – the father, indeed, of one of the alleged victims – handed him over to the PSNI despite
there being no warrant outstanding for his arrest in the Republic. That’s rendition, is it not?’

‘That’s a separate issue,’ Hendry corrected. ‘And one which we will investigate with full vigour. But it shouldn’t distract from the fact that Mr Burke assaulted
two girls, one sexually. On top of all that has happened to date, we will be asking the PPS to push for a custodial sentence. There’s no way around that.’

‘It’ll never get to court after the way he was brought across to the North.’

‘The guard in question felt that Mr Burke would receive treatment quicker in Strabane than Letterkenny, which is much further away from Lifford. His bringing Mr Burke across was in your
client’s best interests. I don’t believe the PPS will have a problem with that.’

Burke glanced at his lawyer to see what he might offer, but nothing was forthcoming. ‘I can get you the phone,’ Burke said suddenly.

‘What?’

‘The phone. Off the dead guy. I know where it is. I’ll get it for you, if you drop the charges.’

‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ Hendry said incredulously. The lawyer, on the other hand, was suddenly interested, perhaps sensing a way to wrap things up more quickly than
he had expected.

‘I’d like a moment with Mr Burke,’ he said.

Hendry came out of the room directly to where I was sitting. He grimaced when he saw me.

‘What do you think?’ he said.

‘He’s bluffing. The phone is long gone.’

‘Maybe,’ he agreed. ‘But just for sake of argument, let’s say he does have it. It could lead us to Sean Cleary’s killer. And Seamus O’Hara’s.’

‘He tried to rape someone. He punched my daughter in the face.’

‘I understand that, Ben,’ Hendry said. ‘But you know as well as I do that the PPS will probably pass on this anyway. The way he was found, the claims about his being smuggled
across to the North; I know we had no choice, but it will muddy the waters.’

‘You can’t let him skate on the assault, Jim,’ I said. ‘He already walked on robbing Cleary.’

‘But if he helps us get Cleary’s killer, Ben, you know it makes sense; drop the smaller stuff to prosecute the bigger.’

He raised a hand of placation in advance of my inevitable argument. ‘I’m not suggesting that what happened to Penny was small, but this is a murder case he could help break. You said
yourself that if we had Sean Cleary’s phone, we’d have the person he arranged to meet.’

‘Track the phone.’

‘We haven’t been able to,’ Hendry said. ‘And we can’t trace the calls. He must have had automatic network roaming on, because the phone seems to have kept shifting
between different mobile providers north and south of the border. We’ve got records from his home network, but there are gaps all over the place.’

Burke’s ability to act with impunity infuriated me. I thought, once more, of Sean Cleary’s anger on learning his father’s death would not be investigated, even if his body were
recovered.

‘I’ve no choice, Ben. If it wasn’t about Penny you’d agree with me on it.’

Fifteen minutes later, Burke left in a police car to locate the stolen phone. Hendry waited with me in the station canteen for his return.

‘We’ll be letting Jimmy Callan out today,’ he said as he tipped a third sachet of sugar into his coffee cup.

‘Nothing on him?’

He shook his head. ‘No evidence tying him to the scene, no evidence of his involvement except for the row he had with Cleary earlier that night, and your taxi man proved that Cleary was
alive and well after that.’

‘So what next?’

‘We wait for Burke and this phone and see what it reveals.’

We sat in silence. Presumably Hendry could sense that I was angry at Burke’s release, but he made no apology. He would admit to punching Penny and would be cautioned for it. The
sexual-assault charges would be quietly dropped.

Eventually Hendry spoke. ‘So was Burke really like that when you found him?’

‘Are you asking did I smack him around a bit?’

Hendry raised his hands again. ‘You don’t have to tell me. I’m not judging you. If he’d done that to my wee girl, he’d have more than pissed his pants, trust
me.’

‘I didn’t touch him,’ I muttered. Had I known at the time how things would pan out, I’m not sure I’d have made the same decision.

Burke and the lawyer arrived back soon after with the phone. He had removed the SIM card, which he had had to retrieve from the waste basket in the room of his hostel. The
phone itself he had sold to a friend, who was convinced to return it only by the presence of three police officers on his doorstep at 3 a.m.

Wearing his gloves, Hendry reassembled the phone and card and powered it up. He scrolled through the calls list in the memory. There had been one or two calls to the phone on the day after
Cleary’s death, presumably before those who knew him had learned of his killing. There were, however, three calls on the night of his murder. The first was a call received. It was a Donegal
number. So too was the second number, though this was a call dialled. I phoned through to Letterkenny and had them run both numbers for me. The desk sergeant did not even need to check the second
number; ‘That’s a taxi firm, isn’t it?’ he said.

Sure enough, it was the number for the taxi firm for which Bryant drove. The first number, unsurprisingly, was Seamus O’Hara’s. He must have called Cleary, which explained why he had
been at O’Hara’s house. Cleary had then called a taxi which had taken him to town, while he rang the third number. By the time Letterkenny had given me the details of those two calls,
Jim Hendry had identified the owner of the third number; Niall Martin.

Martin’s housekeeper opened the door on the fifth knock. The sky was lightening, the stars fading at the imminent approach of dawn. A single gash of red bled along the
horizon to the east. Early morning traffic trundled along the road outside, mostly larger freight lorries making deliveries.

The woman wore a dressing gown, which she clenched closed at her chest with one hand while the other hand rested on the door, barring our entrance.

‘We’d like to speak to Niall Martin,’ Hendry said. ‘Is he here?’

Martin appeared behind the woman, wearing a pair of striped pyjamas bottoms beneath a white T-shirt. He was comparatively lean for his age, though he was beginning to soften around the trunk and
the flabby outline of his belly and chest was clear under the tautness of the T-shirt.

‘What’s going on? Is it my father?’

His glance shifted from Hendry to me, then seemed to harden as he recognized me.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘You two know each other?’ Hendry asked. ‘That saves introductions. We’d like to come in, Mr Martin.’

‘He has no jurisdiction over here,’ Martin said from behind the young woman. She stayed where she stood but had turned her head to face him. Her outstretched arm still barring the
entrance, it looked like she was protecting him.

‘He’s here on work placement,’ Hendry said. ‘He’s just observing. I have some questions I’d like answered, sir. It seems wiser that we do it here than in
Strabane station.’

Hendry waited a beat while Martin considered his choices. Finally he nodded lightly and the woman lowered her arm and stepped back.

‘Let me put something on,’ he said, disappearing into a room down the corridor from the main sitting area. The young woman followed him into the same room.

Hendry arched his eyebrows. ‘Who’s she?’

‘I thought she was the housekeeper.’

‘She clearly provides the full service.’

The room was gloomy. Martin had not turned on the main light and only the growing luminescence of the sky beyond the large plate-glass window provided some illumination. The objects in the room
seemed to have lost their definition, as if their edges were blurred.

Martin came out of the room alone, closing the door behind him. He had put on a light dressing gown and a pair of bedroom slippers, though he had been gone for longer than it would have taken
him to do only that. I guessed he was giving instructions to his companion. For now, she remained in their room.

‘So what’s amiss that calls the sleepers of this house so early in the morning? Is this about that woman again?’

‘Sheila Clark?’ I shook my head. ‘No. Though I’d still like that address.’

‘And I told you I don’t have it,’ Martin countered.

‘We’re investigating the murder of Sean Cleary a few nights ago,’ Hendry said. ‘He was found shot in a playground in Strabane.’

Martin nodded his head, smiling bemusedly, as if unsure how this appertained to him.

‘I heard about that. That’s right.’

‘Your phone number was the last one he dialled before he was killed,’ Hendry said. ‘Would you be able to explain why?’

Martin composed himself. I suspected he was considering his options; there was no point lying about it, because we had his number. Furthermore, there was no point claiming it had been a wrong
number, for we knew the call had lasted almost five minutes.

‘He called me about his father,’ Martin said.

‘What about him?’

‘I worked with his father around the time he died.’

‘When your father donated money to St Canice’s?’ I added.

He nodded. ‘My father offered them a lot of financial support, that kind of thing. He had been adopted himself and felt a bit of an affinity to the place,’ he explained. ‘In
turn they employed me and a few mates for the summer.’

‘So what did Cleary want to know?’

‘He wanted to know why his father died. I told him that, as far as I knew, his father had been suspected of informing on that lad who was shot on the river.’

‘And how is your father now?’ I asked. ‘I trust he’s okay.’

‘He’s not recovered consciousness yet,’ Martin replied, his smile faded. ‘The hospital are doing all they can.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Hendry said. ‘Did you meet Sean Cleary that night?’

‘Of course not,’ Martin replied. ‘He phoned and we discussed his father. That was it.’

‘Did you leave the house that evening at all?’

Martin tilted his head to the side, considering the question.

‘No, I don’t think I did.’

‘Can anyone verify that you were at home that evening?’

‘I’m sure they can,’ Martin replied. ‘Am I a suspect?’

‘We know that Sean Cleary phoned someone and arranged to meet them.’

‘And you know the content of the call because . . .?’

‘He was in a taxi when he made the call,’ Hendry said. ‘The taxi man overheard the arrangement being agreed.’

‘I see.’

‘The problem is that we have Sean Cleary’s phone and the only call he made or received after calling for a taxi was to you.’