The blood and urine tests backed him up. He had certainly been drugged in the way he claimed. How well someone like Shay Keane could control himself under such circumstances was the one thing that it was impossible to determine.
The timing all matched up too. Brady O’Hara had died at some time within the hour before Conall received that call from his cousin. Shay had produced Brady’s phone from his pocket and handed it to McKinnon at the hospital. An understandable lapse, that. He hadn’t been in any condition to think clearly at the scene. Or so it had appeared. The GPS history from Conall’s car confirmed his arrival time at the house so that checked out neatly too.
“What doesn’t quite make sense is Conall’s behaviour that day. I know he called you within minutes of arriving there, but why didn’t he call you straight after Shay called him? We both know he should have.”
“Should have? Aye, technically you’re right there. But Shay was barely coherent when he called him. It’s only natural that Conall would have been worried enough to want to get to him first. Can you blame him? Would you have risked letting someone else get their hands on the lad first if you’d been in his shoes?”
It was a fair point. Shay might have reacted badly to anyone else walking through that door. If he’d been as out of his mind as they were all officially accepting he had been. Shay himself, or someone else, could have been seriously injured in the ensuing struggle. In his own statement, Conall had said that he’d judged his decision to be the right one at the time and would stand by it. DI Philips’ unfortunate suggestion that Shay should be restrained, for everyone’s safety, had rather strengthened his case for him too. Any attempt to do that could have ended very badly for all concerned.
Maybe, Anderson thought, he was chasing phantoms here. There was nothing provable, thank goodness, but he still couldn’t shake his doubts. Shay Keane wasn’t just a maverick, he was an unquantifiable enigma. Both he and James McKinnon had known that for almost a year now. If the lad had decided that Brady O’Hara needed to die, would he have hesitated before making sure his strike at him was lethal?
And Conall? Conall Keane was one of the brightest and most promising officers Bernard Anderson had ever met, but there was no question about where his true loyalty lay. If it was a choice between doing his job and protecting his cousin, Shay would win, every time. If he’d heard a different story, he’d keep it to himself.
Well, it was pointless to speculate. Accidental or deliberate, Brady O’Hara was dead, and a lot of people had been very relieved to hear it, himself included. He’d indulged his ingrained habit of turning over every stone and looking into every crack for long enough.
James watched his boss as he picked up a stamp and pressed it firmly down on the cover of the folder.
The Black Wood Killer case was officially closed.
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