Free Gallows Lane (Inspector Devlin Mystery 2) by Brian McGilloway

remained a bachelor.
    Christy still worked in the shop despite being in his late sixties. He had been affected severely by arthritis and waiting for him to pick change from the cash register was so interminable that most people just gave up and told him to put it in the charity box. The more unChristian suggested that Ward’s illness got suddenly worse when a customer required substantial change. I knew this to be untrue for several times I had seen him placing the monies into the Foyle Hospice collection bucket he kept on the counter.
    When I got to the shop he was sitting on a stool at the front door, a cigarette clasped in the clawed hand his disease had twisted almost beyond use. He looked up at me from his seat, shielding his eyes from the glare of sunlight with his other hand.
    ‘Christy, how’re you doing?’
    ‘Surviving, Ben, surviving. How’s the care – Debbie and the kids?’
    ‘They’re great, Christy, thanks. You’ve had a visitor, I believe.’
    He nodded, dragging a last smoke from the smouldering butt of his cigarette, before he crushed it against the leg of his stool. Then he told me what had happened.
    Around three o’clock, while I was buying a hamster in Letterkenny, a middle-aged Englishman had come into the shop, ostensibly for a bottle of water. He stood at the counter, pressing the bottle to his forehead which was beaded with sweat. Despite the heat, he wore a crumpled grey woollen suit.
    ‘A scorcher of a day,’ he stated, handing Christy the water bottle, smeared with his sweat.
    ‘’Twould be worse if it were raining,’ Christy replied, holding the bottle by the top to scan it into the till.
    The Englishman stared at him through his sunglasses which he did not remove. His face was flushed and red, perhaps from the heat, though Christy said it had the appearance of a heavy drinker’s. When Christy returned his stare the man smiled, then glanced around the shop, as though taking its inventory.
    ‘Perhaps you can help me,’ the man said.
    ‘Oh aye?’
    Aye,’ he said, in a manner that left Christy wondering if he was mocking him. ‘You wouldn’t know anything about those guns that were found, would you?’ As he spoke, he removed a roll of euro notes from his pocket. He placed a twenty-euro note on the counter to pay for the water, which cost just over one euro.
    ‘Which guns would those be now?’ Christy asked, reaching for the note. As he touched it the Englishman placed a finger on to it, pinning it to the counter.
    ‘The guns found the other day.’
    ‘You a journalist too?’ Christy asked.
    ‘Aye.’ The man was looking at the sweet counter now, selecting a bar of chocolate.
    ‘Well, you’re scooped. All the rest of them have been and gone.’
    The man stopped and looked at him across the counter. ‘I’m doing some follow-up work,’ he said, lifting a bar indiscriminately and placing it on the counter.
    Christy pointed the man in the direction of Paddy Hannon’s field and the twenty-euro note was duly released.
    ‘Thank you, sir. Keep the change,’ the man said, lifting a packet of picture postcards of Donegal from the display by the door as he left and wafting it in front of his face as if the warm, dead air it generated might bring some relief from the heat.
    Christy shuffled back from the rack where he had shown me the type of card the man had taken.
    ‘Journalist my arse. I’ve seen enough journalists and enough Englishmen to know a Brit when I see one. He wasn’t army though – but I’ll bet this shop he’s Special Branch.’
    ‘Are you sure? He couldn’t have been a photographer or a feature writer maybe?
    ‘No – his hands weren’t writer’s hands. They were dirty with oil, and his nails bitten tight. He had a scar down his neck. I’m telling you, Inspector: Special Branch. Sure he didn’t even have a fuckin’ journalist’s notebook.’ He shook his head incredulously at the paucity of the man’s disguise.
    That evening the heat