Bleed a River Deep (2 page)

John Weston strode down the stairs towards us, his hand already outstretched, his smile fixed, businesslike, friendly, predatory. He smelt of expensive aftershave. His shirt cuffs sat just far enough past his jacket sleeve to reveal both the quality of the cloth and the gold cufflinks, fashioned again in the torc shape of his company’s emblem. His skin was tanned, his hair neatly trimmed: he looked younger than his fifty years, despite the slight peppering of grey at his sideburns.

‘Gentlemen,’ he began, his accent discernible in the way he slurred the word, the ‘t’ almost silent. ‘Thanks for coming. Let’s grab a coffee.’

Clasping Patterson’s hand in both of his, he shook it, then repeated the gesture with me.

‘John Weston,’ he said, smiling expansively.

‘Ben Devlin,’ I replied.

‘Ben,’ he repeated, with a nod of his head, as if to demonstrate that he was committing my name to memory. Then he placed his hand on my elbow and guided me towards the stairs, physically directing me. I resisted the movement and he stopped.

‘Just admiring your collection here,’ I said. ‘My wife would kill for something like that.’

‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ he agreed, still smiling. His teeth were perfect and straight, and unnaturally white. I was vaguely aware that I was trying hard to find reasons not to like the man, despite the fact he had been nothing but gracious since our arrival.

‘Jackie,’ he said to the girl who had welcomed us. ‘Have you those packs?’

With a timid smile, Jackie produced two thick folders from beneath the desk where she sat. Both were bound in a leather cover emblazoned with the Orcas emblem. No expense spared.

‘And choose something pretty for Ben’s wife, would you?’ he added, winking at me conspiratorially, then directing me towards the stairs again before I had a chance to decline the offer.

Weston’s office itself was the size of the entire ground floor of the Garda station in Lifford where I was based. He occupied a corner room on the top floor of the building so that, from his desk, he could survey his empire both to left and to right. As we entered his office he flicked a switch and the blinds on the windows automatically pulled back, revealing both the expanse of his goldmine and, to the other side, the majesty of the Donegal landscape in which he had quite literally carved his niche.

‘Beautiful country,’ he observed. ‘Absolutely stunning.’

I began to suspect that Weston spoke only in superlatives. I also noticed he was being careful to compliment the landscape, and not the additions he had made to it.

I looked down over the forest to our left, through which I could catch a glimpse of the Carrowcreel, a tributary snaking its way towards the River Finn. The light glittered on its surface as if on shards of broken mirror.

‘Almost a pity to industrialize it,’ I said, earning a warning glance from Patterson, who had continued his ingratiation since our arrival, echoing Weston’s observations on the weather as we had climbed the two flights of stairs to his office.

‘Almost,’ Weston agreed with a smile. ‘This is my country too, Inspector. I’m not going to damage it. Part of our licence is our guarantee that we will leave this area as we found it. Every clod that has been dug up will be replaced. It will be as if we were never here.’

‘And when will that be?’ I asked.

‘When it’s no longer profitable to remain, I suppose,’ he said, his palms held open in front of him in a gesture of honesty. ‘I am a businessman, after all.’ He waited a beat, then continued, ‘Though of course this was all bogland before we arrived. And to bogland it must return, despite the fact that the bogs themselves were artificially created by some Iron Age entrepreneur.’

I nodded slightly, having taken his point.

‘Which leads me nicely on to our friend out there. I’m no forensics specialist, but I’m guessing he or she didn’t die in this century. Is that right?’

‘It would appear so,’ Patterson said, eager to assert his role in the conversation. ‘It shouldn’t cause too much disruption to your works, Mr Weston.’

Weston nodded his head. ‘An amazing country,’ he stated, then pointed a finger at us. ‘I forgot that coffee, didn’t I?’ he said, still good-humoured. He pressed the intercom button on his phone and instructed Jackie to bring us coffee and some biscuits, which she did with startling speed.

Once we had settled into our drinks, Weston explained why he had summoned us.

‘The packs you’ve been given detail the history of the Orcas mine – including our financial reports for the past tax year. You’ll notice that last year we enjoyed record prof its. As a result of this, we have a special visitor coming both to formally open the site and, I suppose, to officially acknowledge the Irish-American finances that have made this all possible.’

‘Who’s the visitor?’ Patterson asked.

‘An old friend of my father’s,’ Weston said. ‘Senator Cathal Hagan.’

We both nodded. Hagan was well known, even in Ireland. He’d been an outspoken Irish-American senator, who had established links with Heal Ireland, ostensibly an Irish aid charity but in fact a front that funded Republican causes in the North.

‘Obviously, anything we can do to help, sir,’ Patterson offered.

Weston nodded soberly. ‘Thank you, Harry. We’ll have to work together on this. The Senator will bring some security with him, and I know a number of the other divisions will be involved in his trip, but we’ll be dependent on yourself and Ben to ensure there’s no trouble while he’s here. Obviously this information is between the three of us for now, gentlemen.’

I didn’t need to ask why there would be trouble. Hagan had called on those senators who expressed reservations over the invasion of Iraq a few years back to be strung up for failing America in its hour of need. Post-9/11 he was an outspoken critic of terrorism in all its forms, apparently forgetting that the charity he had spearheaded in the 1980s had paid for most of the Republican movement’s weaponry in Ireland. His arrival could attract the growing anti-war lobby, which had already organized more than one demonstration in Ireland over the past few years.

‘Do you expect trouble?’ Patterson asked, then seemed to gauge the stupidity of the question by our expressions, for he immediately added, ‘Beyond the usual, I mean.’

‘Senator Hagan has his detractors, both at home and abroad, as I’m sure you’re aware, Harry. In addition, the environmental lobby seem determined to vilify us at every turn, despite the fact that, before a sod was cut here, we invested millions on an environmental impact study, to whose recommendations we have adhered in every point.’

‘How much security will he be bringing with him?’ I asked.

‘One or two personal security men, I suspect,’ Weston answered. ‘He’s retired now, Ben, so he isn’t afforded quite the level of protection he once was.’

‘So we’ll be responsible for the bulk of it,’ Patterson said. It was a statement rather than a question, but Weston nodded.

‘When’s the visit?’

Weston grimaced, then, leaning forward in his seat, consulted a document on the desk before him, although he clearly knew the date by heart: ‘Monday, ninth of October.’

Following coffee and preliminary security discussions, Patterson and I were escorted back downstairs. Weston gestured to the welcome packs we had been given.

‘Everything you could ever want to know about our company is in those packs, gentlemen.’

As we shook hands to leave, the receptionist approached nervously, holding a blue box. She passed it to Weston, who opened it and inspected the contents.

‘Beautiful choice, Jackie,’ he said, nodding with admiration. Clearly relieved to have completed this latest task to Weston’s satisfaction, Jackie smiled and hurried off again. I was a little taken aback when Weston handed me the box. ‘I hope your wife likes it, Ben,’ he said.

I opened the box, a little confused and feeling my face flush with embarrassment. Inside it sat a thick gold necklace, which I was sure I had seen in the display cabinet earlier with a price tag in excess of €3,000.

I held the box out towards Weston again. ‘Thank you, sir, but I can’t accept this. It’s . . . it’s far too much.’

He stood his ground, however, his hands clasped in military fashion behind his back, his smile fixed. ‘No, I insist, Ben.’

I could think of nothing to say, and so in the end simply thanked him for his generosity, though as we left the building to return to Patterson’s car I could not help feeling that, in some way, I had accepted more than just a gift for my wife.

‘Bloody hell, Devlin,’ Patterson said as we pulled out on to the main road. ‘That thing costs a fucking fortune.’

‘I didn’t ask him for it,’ I said defensively.

‘You may as well have done,’ he retorted, and I suspected that part of his reaction was jealousy that he had not been similarly gifted. ‘You can’t fuck up this visit now,’ he added, without looking at me.

‘Me?’

‘You. I’m putting you in charge of it,’ he said. Then, nodding towards the box I held in my hand, he added, ‘You’ve already been paid for it, after all.’

We had only travelled a mile or so when a security van accompanied by a convoy of Garda and Army vehicles approached us on the other side of the road, travelling towards Lifford to stock the banks in preparation for wages day. As it passed, a camper van with number plates so muddied they were impossible to read overtook it, then cut across the lane in front of us and trundled up a dirt track just off the main road. Patterson slammed on the brakes, though there was no real prospect of our colliding with it.

‘Fucking hippies!’ he shouted, flicking one finger in the general direction of the van, whose rear bumper we could see disappearing up the laneway.

While we were sitting there a second camper, which had remained behind the security cortège, indicated and pulled across the road in front of us, also heading up the lane.

‘Where the fuck is everyone going?’ Patterson asked incredulously.

‘Maybe we should find out,’ I suggested, if only so we wouldn’t have to sit in the middle of the road any longer.

He grunted, then turned the car on to the laneway and followed the trail of dust raised by the van in front, up the path and into the pine forest I had seen from Weston’s office. The car shuddered along the dirt track, the air cooling as we drove beneath the canopy of the trees. The lower trunks and boughs were completely bare, the forest floor thick with browned pine needles and lumps of cones, the air sharp with the scent of sap when I wound down the window. Above the drone of the car, I could hear the rushing of the Carrowcreel.

Around the next bend, we pulled to a stop behind the two camper vans, which had parked alongside several other cars and trucks. The occupants of each were unloading tents and camping equipment from their respective vehicles. My initial thought was that it was perhaps a group of travellers or crusties, setting up camp illegally. However, as I looked closer, it became apparent that the people around us were of no single age or social group. The second car from the front was being emptied by a middle-aged couple. The camper van did indeed contain crusties, clad in woolly jumpers, with dreadlocked hair, tight jeans and loose boots. There were also single men and women and families, even a local barman I recognized, Patsy McCann, removing camping gear from the boot of his car.

We got out of the squad car. Patterson immediately made a beeline for the camper van, already fitting his cap on his cannonball head. I wandered over to Patsy McCann, taking the opportunity to light up as I did.

‘What’s up, Patsy?’ I said, holding out the box to offer him a cigarette too.

‘Here ahead of the rush, Ben,’ he said over his shoulder to me, not stopping his unpacking. ‘No thanks,’ he added, nodding at the proffered cigarettes.

‘What rush?’

‘The bleedin’ gold rush, man,’ he said, cocking an eyebrow at my ignorance.

I laughed, assuming it was in some way connected with the record prof its Orcas had just announced. I was wrong.

Patsy turned long enough to hand me the local newspaper, then turned again and, having emptied the boot, strained to pull, from the back seat of his car, a rucksack, tied to which was an old kitchen sieve. I opened the paper. The story could not have been more obvious. Under the headline P
REPARE FOR THE
R
USH
was a picture of a middle-aged man holding up a nugget of gold the size of a penny.

His name was Ted Coyle. He had been camped out in this woodland for three weeks now, without anyone knowing. He had come here, he said, because of the goldmine, believing he was fated to strike it rich. Coyle sounded like a lunatic. Whether he was or not, according to the news report, he would soon be a rich lunatic. The nugget in his hand might just make his fortune, the report claimed. He had found it while panning the Carrowcreel.

Chapter Two

Friday, 29 September

On the final Friday of each month, in preparation for wages day, each bank in the East Donegal region is replenished with cash. A security van, containing on some days over ten million euros, travels slowly from bank to bank throughout the county. As it makes its way along deserted country roads and through mountain passes, its safety is guaranteed not simply by the armour plating and time locks on the van but by the fact that it is sandwiched between two Garda cars, and, in front of and behind those again, two Irish Army jeeps, with armed soldiers. At each bank, as the cash is hurried into the branch, soldiers toting M-16s line the road outside. The message is unmistakable. Only an idiot would try to rob a bank on such a day. Or someone too desperate to care.

It is doubtful that the man who decided to hold up the local Ulster Bank branch in Lifford that morning knew this. Just after eleven, when one of the two cashiers had gone upstairs for his tea break, the man had entered the bank. He was unshaven, his skin sallow, his hair unkempt. He wore denim jeans a size too big and a multicoloured sweater unravelling around the hem. He wore no coat. He glanced around the branch, then shuffled over to the stand of pre-printed dockets, as if to complete one for a transaction. The girl behind the desk, Catherine Doherty, began to suspect that something wasn’t right. She reached under the desk and placed her finger lightly against the alarm button hidden there, ready to press it if the need arose.