The White Gallows by Rob Kitchin Page B

indignantly. ‘He placed advert in newspaper, I answered it. I come here to work for good money.’
    ‘Dr Koch paid well?’
    ‘He pay average, but he also provided somewhere to stay.’
    ‘He was a good employer?’
    ‘He was… okay,’ she finished lamely.
    ‘And how about his family or people who visited the house, what were they like?’
    ‘Okay.’
    ‘Just okay?’
    Roza nodded her head meekly.
    ‘Yesterday you told me who had visited on Saturday. There was Marion D’Arcy, James Kinneally and his business manager, Mr…’
    ‘Freel.’
    ‘Mr Freel,’ McEvoy repeated. ‘Anybody else?’
    ‘Dr Koch’s son, Charles, was also here in the morning with his son, Francis; Dr Koch’s grandson. They only stayed for half an hour.  They went to the horse racing.’
    ‘Is that it?’
    ‘Yes. Dr Koch has very few visitors. Mostly his brother and Mr Freel. Sometimes Mr Kinneally.’
    ‘His brother’s still alive?’ McEvoy asked surprised. Since Charles Koch hadn’t proffered that information, he’d assumed that the brother had passed away.
    ‘Yes. He lives nearby with his wife. He is very old, but quite well. He visited every week, one or two evenings. They listened to old music and speak to each other in German.’
    ‘Do you know where—’
    There was a knock at the door. George Carter poked his head round the frame. ‘Sorry to interrupt but you’d better come and have a look at this.’
    ‘Can it wait?’
    ‘Not really. One of Koch’s neighbours is trying to take back what he says is his land.’
    ‘Mr O’Coffey,’ Roza said rolling her eyes. ‘Him and Dr Koch were always fighting.’
    * * *
     
    Whichever way he looked at it he was going to have to wade through thick mud laced with cowpats. He looked up from the sodden ground and stared down the field to where a local guard was remonstrating with a man in his late thirties dressed in a check shirt, a dirty pair of jeans and green wellington boots. Behind him was an old, red, Massey Ferguson tractor, an elderly man behind the wheel looking nonplussed. Several posts and rolls of fencing wire lay on the ground. The cows in the field continued to chew the cud whilst keeping a careful eye on proceedings.
    He took a deep breath and stepped forward, his shoe sinking into the mud, water edging over into his socks. His suit was already a mess – if he was in for a penny, he might as well be in for a pound. He squelched his way down the field.
    ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked the guard as he neared.
    ‘They’re saying that this land rightfully belongs to them and they’re taking it back.’
    ‘That true?’ McEvoy asked the man in the check shirt.
    ‘And who the fuck are you?’
    ‘Detective Superintendent Colm McEvoy. I’m in charge of the investigation into the murder of Albert Koch. And you are?’
    ‘Peter. Peter O’Coffey,’ the man said, calming a little. ‘This is our land.’
    ‘This is a murder site,’ McEvoy replied tartly. ‘I don’t care if you think it is your land, I want you off it until we’ve completed our searches.’
    ‘All we’re doing is putting up a fence,’ O’Coffey protested.
    ‘I don’t care. And from what I hear this is still an open dispute.’
    ‘All the maps show that this strip of land is part of our farm. We’re just taking back what belongs to us.’
    ‘What’s the problem, Peter?’ the elderly man shouted from the tractor.
    ‘They want us to leave,’ O’Coffey shouted back. ‘This is a murder site.’
    The old man shook his head dissonantly and stared away across the field.
    ‘You’ve been fighting over this land for long?’ McEvoy asked.
    ‘Since before I was born and this is when it ends.’
    ‘I doubt it. You put this fence up and it’ll end in court.’
    ‘Nothing new there then. They can employ all the fancy lawyers they want, but this is still our land.’
    ‘Worth killing over?’
    ‘Are you accusing me of killing the old bastard?’ O’Coffey said, bristling, squaring