Gallows Lane (Inspector Devlin Mystery 2) Read Online Free PDF

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.’
    ‘I think that’s a safe assumption, Caroline, considering the extent of her injuries.’
    ‘The condom we found coupled with the state of undress of the girl’s body, would suggest a sexual element to this. Seems a bit out of character for someone who’s kept her virginity to suddenly up and off with someone she’s met for the first time. So either she knew her killer very well. . .’
    ‘Or else this was a rape that went wrong, which the toxicology reports support.’
    ‘So why didn’t he go ahead with the rape, if that was the case?’
    ‘Maybe he killed her by accident,