Borderlands (16 page)

As I drove
into the driveway, I noticed our living-room light on, and realised that I had
missed my son's first Christmas morning and Penny's face when she opened her
presents.

I ran into
the house, hardly bothering to shut the door behind me. Debbie was standing in
the living room, Penny peering down from the top of the stairs.

"What's
happening?" I asked.

"I told
the kids I had to check first if Santa had been. Now he's been, we can bring
them down." Her face revealed her disappointment. I tried to say thank
you but only managed to mumble incoherently. "We'll get the kids settled
with their toys, then we'll talk," she said. "This is their day -
don't spoil it for them."

And so, for
an hour, my self-absorption left me and I played with my children and my wife,
and recalled again all the Christmases of my own childhood and longed for that
magic again.

Then, over
breakfast, while the kids played, I told Debbie everything: the arrest and the
bite and my attack on McKelvey, nearly punching Williams, the incident with
Miriam in the car, McKelvey's death, and Costello sending me home. As I spoke I
felt the familiar catharsis of confession and began to feel a little better -
though aware that reconciliation requires penance and reparation as well as
simple admission of guilt.

Debbie
listened without talking. She drew back from the table while I spoke of my
encounter with Miriam Powell, but not when I told her of my attack on McKelvey,
even when I revealed the visceral thrill I had felt. When I finished she stared
at her hands for a few seconds, then got up and went over to switch on the
kettle.

"I'll
make more tea," she said, as I swivelled in my seat to watch her moving
around the kitchen.

"What do
you think?" I asked, needing some response, but at the same time afraid
that she would answer.

"You're
a stupid bastard, that's for sure. I can't believe you kissed Miriam Powell.
Anyone but that . . . slut!" She lifted the teapot, then put it down and
turned to face me, leaning against the cooker. "Did you not see it coming?
Are you blind? Is this a man thing? I mean, for Christ's sake, Ben, could the
signals have been any clearer?"

"I'm
sorry, Debs," I said, resisting the urge to excuse myself by pointing out
that Miriam had started it.

"I know
you are, Ben. But that doesn't necessarily make it alright."

"I
know."

"God,
I'm so angry with you. Miriam bloody Powell. I'm warning you, Ben - keep that
woman away from me or you'll be investigating another murder, I swear."

I said no
more, and eventually she sat beside me again and refilled our cups with hot
tea.

"You'll
have to speak to Costello. Tell him the truth." It took me a second to realize
that we were not still talking about Miriam Powell. Debbie continued,
"Maybe you shouldn't have kicked him, but you're only human - I'd be
surprised if you hadn't done something. But you need to tell Costello, in case
he thinks you're involved more seriously. Holmes will tell him. You know
that."

"Maybe
not," I argued, weakly.

"Oh,
come on. A uniform, starting out? Taking the heat for an Inspector? He'll rat
you out first chance he gets to save his own skin."

"That doesn't
mean I should rat him out," I said.

"I
didn't say that. I said you have to tell Costello what you did. Let Holmes deal
with his story. Costello has always dealt fairly with you. Square it with
him."

"What if
they fire me?"

"Then
they fire you! We'll deal with it. Not telling Costello the truth is just going
to make it worse. Drink your tea, have a smoke and then go and see him before
this gets further out of hand."

Costello
lived on the road to St Johnston in a house which had once perfectly suited
himself and his wife and four children, but which had become increasingly empty
as, one by one, his children had left for college or to get married. The
youngest, Kate, had gone to university in September. Now, Costello and his wife
Emily shared the five-bedroom house and a silence broken only by the occasional
echoing creak. The house had recently been whitewashed and the garden was
carefully tended, the roses pruned for winter, the hedges carefully shaped.

Costello did
not look surprised to see me. He turned and walked back into the house, leaving
the door ajar. I followed him in, slowly, closing the door behind me. Emily was
standing at the door to the kitchen, a dishcloth in her hands. Behind her,
sitting at the table in her nightdress, with a spoonful of cereal in her hand,
was Costello's youngest daughter, Kate, presumably home for Christmas.

"Hey,
Ben," she called out, raising her spoon in a half-salute.

"Hiya,
Kate," I said, as Emily came forward and took my hand in hers.

"Merry
Christmas, Benedict. How are Debbie and the children?" she asked gently.

"Fine,
Emily. Merry Christmas to you, too," I replied, watching as Costello
lumbered into the room which he called his office.

"Tell
them I send my love," Emily said, then ushered me towards the room with a
kind smile I was unsure I deserved.

I knocked on
the oak-panelled door and went in. Costello was sitting at the roll-top desk
which he had bought at an auction in Omagh and which I had helped him move into
this room. He had on half-moon glasses and was reading an electricity bill.

"What do
you want, Benedict?" he said wearily, peering at me over the rim of his
glasses before returning his full attention to the bill.

"I need
to tell you what happened; my involvement. I should have told you last night. I'm
sorry." And for the second time that morning I recounted the events which
had unfolded the previous night. Several times Costello stopped me for
clarification.

"So you
hit him when he bit you?" he asked when I had finished.

"Yes."

"And he
was alive and healthy when Harvey left?"

I nodded.

"And you
didn't check in on him before you left?"

I shook my
head. It made little difference - he had died in any case on Holmes' watch.

"Did you
see Holmes search McKelvey when he lifted him?"

Again, I
shook my head. "I was out of it with the bite and that. I just assumed he
had when they brought him in."

"Do you
know if Holmes did anything to the boy when he was in custody?"

Neither of us
spoke for a moment.

"I
thought so. Have you any cigarettes?" he asked.

"I didn't
know you smoked." In the five years I had known him I had never seen him
do so.

"Cigars
sometimes, at night. But it's too early for a cigar. Use that for an
ashtray," he said, emptying paper clips out of a ceramic finger-bowl
sitting on the desk. He smoked, looking out the window, puffing the cigarette
as though it were a cigar, while I smoked nervously beside him.

"McKelvey
was an animal, Benedict. In my opinion, he deserved everything he got. The
death in custody thing is bad because we look stupid. He should have been
searched thoroughly when he was brought in. Holmes should have kept an eye on
him and his hands off him. There should have been more than one officer in the
station overnight, for God's sake, Christmas Eve or not. Your bust-up with him
should
have been reported
... Jesus, every part of this thing is ballsed up." He ground the
cigarette out, folding the filter down onto the tip to ensure it was
extinguished.

"But,"
he continued, "he killed that poor girl with those drugs. I hope the wee
shite suffered before he went, because that's as much justice as Angela Cashell
will get. It would've been better for all of us if Johnny had succeeded in
burning the bastard alive last week. So, the question is, where do we go from
here?"

"Internal
Affairs?"

"Probably.
I'll let Dublin decide that. In the meantime, whether it's right or not, we pin
everything on McKelvey. I want that as the official line." As he spoke, he
counted off each point on his fingers: "He was seen with the girl; we know
he lied about seeing her on the Thursday night; we know from Coyle that he was
providing her with drugs; we know they were sexually active; we found the drugs
which killed Angela Cashell on his body when he died; physical description fits
the size of the killer. Everything fits, so long as the post mortem shows an
overdose of those rat-poison tablets as cause of death."

"What
about the bruising?"

"My
inclination would be resisting arrest. Holmes brought him in, didn't he? He's
going to have to take some of the heat for this, whether he likes it or not.
Probably best if he takes it for an over-enthusiastic arrest rather than
criminal negligence."

"Makes
good PR," I said.

"Well,
that's how it is. We'll put Holmes on suspension for a week. With pay. He can
work behind the scenes on the Boyle killing - long as he's not seen around the
station. And McKelvey as a dead murderer rather than a dead victim will help.
So, this is what you do, Benedict," he said, leaning towards me and
tapping me on the knee. "Go into the station and collect your files. Then
get this concluded. Put everything we have on McKelvey and leave no loose
ends. If we can tie this up, we can focus on the Boyle boy. Today."

The station
was buzzing when I arrived, and I was able to get into the murder room and
collect the blue lever-arch folder containing the notes on McKelvey without too
many people noticing me.

McKelvey's
body had been moved and the cell lay empty, the floor marked with white chalk
outlines where tablets and body had been found. I left through the back fire
exit to avoid having to talk to anyone and drove home.

Debbie was
preparing dinner and the kids were playing in the living room, so I sat in the
kitchen and reported all that had transpired with Costello. Debbie listened as
she peeled potatoes and checked on the turkey in the oven, piercing the tender
flesh to check if the juices ran clear. Then I set to work, drawing all the
strands together and trying to fit McKelvey at the centre. The difficulty was
that we did not have hard evidence: no smoking gun, no signed confession. But
then, most detective work is circumstantial - fingerprints and DNA are useful
only when a suspect has been arrested. But I did my best with what we had and
tried to ignore the moral implication of the task I was performing. I knew that
McKelvey probably had killed or contributed to the death of Angela Cashell,
yet, as things were, I would never know for certain, and so I would always
harbour doubts. I was bothered by the fact that I could not find any logical motive.
As McKelvey had said himself, she was providing him with sex - why would he
kill her?

With breaks
for dinner and family, I had the report finished for 8.30 p.m. and, after we
put the kids to bed, I asked Debbie to read it through to see if everything
made sense. She read it twice, both times looking bewildered, flicking between
pages to double-check some piece of information.

From her
expression, I knew there was something that did not read right. "What is
it, Debs?" I asked. As she replied, I realized what had been niggling me
since Costello had run through the facts that morning.

"Why was
he wearing a condom?" Debbie asked. "McKelvey. Why would he wear a
condom? According to this, he didn't care that his girlfriends got pregnant. In
fact he seems kind of proud of it. Especially if he thought she was pregnant.
Wearing a condom when you're already pregnant doesn't seem to make sense."

Something
cold shivered down my spine and settled deep inside me, causing me to shake
involuntarily.

"Unless
maybe it was an AIDS thing. You know, an STD issue or something," Debbie
suggested, but I knew now that was not the case.

"No,"
I said. "It's been bothering me too. If he believed Cashell was pregnant,
they'd obviously already had unprotected sex. Why would he suddenly worry about
STDs that night?"

"Maybe
he didn't want to leave evidence, DNA, you know."

I considered
it, then shook my head resignedly. "Maybe. But that would mean he intended
to kill her; that he had planned ahead and knew he would need to wear a condom
to prevent being caught. It just doesn't fit. We had assumed it was an
accident, a drug-trip that went wrong. At the end of the day, McKelvey didn't
have cause to kill her. That's what that report
doesn't
say. He had no
motive."

"He
thought she was pregnant. Maybe he was afraid she'd tell someone," Debbie
suggested.

"The
same boy would've
wanted
her to tell someone. Another notch in his bedpost." I
felt my back prickle with sweat and my face blazed. "McKelvey doesn't fit.
We were following the wrong line all along. I've missed something." What I
could not vocalize was the fact that, because of it, an innocent
eighteen-year-old boy had died on a Christmas morning, while the rain washed
the streets outside.