AN electrician stands smoking outside the Zoo Bar on Bear Street, just off Leicester Square.
It’s 11am on Friday morning. He draws on his cigarette.
“What is it about,” he asks in a London accent. “The kid that they found on the roof is it? Yeah, they were talking about it inside this morning,” he says nodding his head over his shoulder at the bar.
“You’d better give the manager a shout.”
The buzzer beside the door sounds a ring and a few minutes later, a blonde-haired woman appears with an A4 notepad. “What’s your name and number?” she asks. “And where are you from? Someone from our Press Office is dealing with this. They will be in touch.”
“Do you have any idea where exactly the body was found?” comes the question.
“I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can say,” she replies, quickly closing the door.
Patrick Halpin, from Loughrea in County Galway is believed to have left the Zoo Bar after midnight on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, while socialising with friends from DCU who were in London as part of an organised trip.
He is said to have told fellow students that he was going to get something to eat in Burger King, which is next door but one.
Patrick Halpin was on a group trip to LondonThis morning the fast food outlet is busy with customers, some of whom are paging through London guide books beside workers breaking to drink tea and roll cigarettes.
Outside, a steady footfall moves in both directions past the windows, down Bear Street towards Charing Cross Road - a short journey of less than 100 yards that Patrick Halpin would have taken in his last hours.
Just off Charing Cross Road, a small alleyway called Hunt’s Court is stacked with large skips bins. The passage is a through-way to the rear entrance of the Zoo Bar and other businesses premises like the Bella Italia and Chiquita restaurants that face onto Leicester Square.
The alleyway is watched over by four CCTV cameras and looked upon by more than 30 windows.
There’s a knot of police security tape wrapped around a steel external staircase midway down the alley. Police say they have footage of Patrick Halpin climbing a steel staircase in the vicinity of Zoo Bar and have confirmed that they found his body on a ‘lower’ roof section of a restaurant, metres from the bar.
But exactly where and how the 18-year-old’s body lay undiscovered for more than 40 hours before being found after 8pm on Thursday night remains unclear?
In the alleyway a heavy steel door opens and a cook appears.
Ermelindo Jardin is Portuguese and works in the Chiquita restaurant.
A smoker, he explains that he and his colleagues frequent the alleyway for cigarette breaks, but in the last two days, they saw nothing untoward.
“But how he would have gotten up there? I don’t know,” he ponders.
The alleyway that led to the police's discovery of Patrick's body. Photo: Malcolm McNallyHis colleague Rui Sereno, also from Portugal stands smoking in one of six doorways that open into the alley.
Jardin points to where the police tied security tape; from a lift door in the alley which could potentially have provided access to the roof, and the stair-rail six metres away.
The door at the top of the metals stairs opens out onto a platform at the top of the stairs. There is no external handle. It is not known whether the body of Patrick Halpin lay undiscovered here for nearly two days.
Nearby, the news of the Galway man’s death is being digested by Irish workers.
“I was following it all on my phone,” explains one twenty-something Irish barman, who declined to be named.
“I wouldn’t have known about it and it only down the road. I wouldn’t mind but I walked by that alleyway when I finished my shift on Wednesday night, about twenty to twelve and the rain was lashing down. I was going to catch my bus after work.
“Terrible… I mean unless I was following it on my phone. I wouldn’t have known about it, and it only down the road.
“There hasn’t been much talk of it in the pub, no,” he adds. “But there wouldn’t have been too many Irish customers through here the last nights.”
In a well know Irish bar on Wardour Street, the manager says she saw the story of a ‘missing Irishman’ as an update on one of her relative’s Facebook page.
“What happened?” she asks. “Do the police know what happened?” she presses.
“It’s so busy down there. How could someone’s body go unnoticed for so long, for more than 40 hours. Where was he found?”
Zoo Bar off Leicester Square where Patrick Halpin spent Tuesday night with friends. Photo: Malcolm McNally“Down the road, a manager in Waxy O’Connors explains that he only heard the story “this morning” despite the fact The Zoo Bar is located less than 500 yards from the premises.
“The Irish staff have been talking about it,” he says. “But I didn’t hear anything until this morning,” he explains.
He wonders at how long it took the body to be discovered and whether people might have seen Patrick Halpin and mistaken him as someone who was drunk, homeless or asleep.
“It’s a tough town that way,” he adds.
Back in Hunt’s Court, Jardin explains that the gated alley is accessible all night and that it’s not unusual for him or his colleagues to stumble upon drug users, drinkers or homeless people.
“No, nothing like this has happened here before.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
In a café across cross from the Zoo Bar that opens from 11am to 2am, a waitress is beginning her shift for the day.
“I wasn’t working last night,” she says.
“But what is it that happened?
“HERE!”
“Across the street?”
“No, I never heard anything about it.”
