Borderlands (17 page)
I phoned
Costello first and told him what I had concluded. He listened, cursed, then
told me to leave it with him until morning so he could sleep on it. We arranged
to meet at the station at 8 a.m. I asked about Holmes and was told that, as we
had discussed, he had been suspended with pay pending an enquiry. Costello did
not mention the beating to him, nor had Holmes told him about it.
Next, I
phoned Williams and started to tell her. In the background I could hear music
playing, some kind of dinner jazz. She sounded a little tipsy and I could hear
the rubbing of her hand on the receiver, as though she was covering it, to
speak to someone.
"Sorry,
Caroline," I said. "Have you company?"
"Kind
of," she said, giggling in a way I had not heard her do before.
"Someone
I know?"
"Maybe, Detective."
"Is
Holmes with you?" I asked, unable to suppress the surprise in my voice.
"Uh
huh," she said with a laugh.
"How did
he take the suspension?"
"He's a
little pissed off. He has to carry on doing the work, but nobody's allowed to
know. Bit of a pisser. He'll get over it, though."
"Listen,
Caroline, this is important. I don't want you to tell Holmes what I'm about to
say - if it turns out McKelvey was innocent, it'll hit him hard. His head
could be on the block for this."
Despite her
earlier playful manner, she seemed to sober quickly and listened without
interrupting. I asked her to meet me the following morning in the station.
At bedtime, I
went out to give Frank a dog biscuit and fresh water for the night. But when I
opened the door of the shed where we kept him when the weather was bad, he
wasn't there. I went back into the garden and called him several times, but to
no avail. I called to Debbie for a torch and we set about searching the
hedgerows and ditches near the house. I shone the torch briefly into the field
where Anderson's sheep were grazing and was relieved not to find him there at
least.
Returning to
the garden, I heard a familiar snuffling from the shed. Frank was lying inside,
his head down, his tail wagging half-heartedly, waiting to ascertain my
reaction to his absence. His coat was wet with rainwater from the long grass of
the fields bordering our property and cuckoo spit hung off his ear. I tried to
find how he had got out of the shed, shining the torch into the corners and behind
the junk we had piled against one wall, but I couldn't see anything obvious. I
ruffled the hair on the dome of his skull and locked up the shed behind me.
Later, in our
bedroom, I had to explain to Debbie why I had lifted my toothbrush away from
the others in the bathroom, and why I was setting up the spare mattress. I
cried as I told her my fears about Aids and whatever else McKelvey might have
been carrying. She knelt down on the floor beside me and held my face in her
hands. Kissing me softly, she promised me that everything would be alright -
and I almost believed her.
At 2.30 a.m.
we were woken by Penny's screaming. Crossing the gallery to go to the bathroom,
she had happened to glance downstairs towards the front door of our house, she
said. Someone had been looking back in at her. She saw the door handle
twitching, she said. He looked evil, she said.
We told her
that she had had a nightmare, that she must have still been half asleep. Then I
went out to the front of the house to check, while Debbie took Penny into our
bed. I had to refill the kettle with water three times to completely wash away
the muddy footprints from our doorstep in case Penny should see them the
following morning.
Boxing Day
broke with spectacular blue skies and an explosion of a sunrise on the
mountains behind the house. I had not slept again, keeping watch all night,
until the sky turned to grey and the remaining puddles from the previous
evening's rain froze and sparkled under the first rays of the morning sun.
There was no wind, only a sharp chill that would keep the grass stiff until
afternoon, so that it crunched beneath your feet as you walked. I told myself
that it was a new day and tried to dismiss from mind our late-night visitor.
At 7.15 a.m.
I threw warm water on the windows of the car to defrost them, then left the
engine idling while I gathered my notes for the meeting with Williams and
Costello. By the time I came back out to the car, the water on the windscreen
had frozen again. Inside, my breath condensed and froze to ice on the interior
of the glass. I sat in the car, letting the engine warm up, and smoked a
cigarette. The details of the case had bubbled inside my head all night. Having
gathered all the evidence the day before to prove that Whitey McKelvey had
killed Angela Cashell, I now had to start proving that he hadn't.
I reached the
station twenty minutes early, but Costello was already there and Williams
arrived soon after me. Just before 8.00 a.m., a blue van pulled up outside.
Several minutes later, a smaller white van with a radio antenna on the roof
wound its way around the bend in the street and slid to a halt against the
concrete posts outside the front doors.
A young
woman, wrapped tightly in a sheepskin jacket and wearing gloves and a scarf,
picked her way carefully along the pavement and into the reception area of the
station. We heard her introduce herself as a radio news reporter for 108 FM, a
local independent station. I had heard her once or twice before on the news,
though she was much younger than her voice suggested. She was wondering if we
would like to comment on either the death in custody of William McKelvey or
the attack on livestock the previous night by the "Wild Cat of
Lifford".
I wandered up
to the reception desk and listened in. Mark Anderson had contacted the radio
station that morning to say that one of his sheep had been mauled the night
before and its innards removed from its body. He had told the receptionist at
108 FM that he had asked twice for assistance from Gardai, and both times
nothing had been done.
I was hoping
to hear more details, but Costello cut the discussion short, telling the young
lady that he would be making a statement later and there would be no comment
until then.
Our meeting
was brief. First, Costello informed us that ballistics had found a match on
the gun used to murder Terry Boyle. Apparently it had been used in a
filling-station robbery in Bundoran a year or so previously.
Costello then
turned his attention to Angela Cashell and the fallout from McKelvey's death.
He had decided to run with McKelvey as our killer for now, while we checked
background details again. If another party entered the frame, in his words, we
would deal with the McKelvey fiasco as necessary. If our investigation yielded
nothing, we were to fold it quietly away and McKelvey would, to all intents and
purposes, remain Angela Cashell's murderer.
I asked him
about the ring which McKelvey claimed to have sold.
"Forget about
bloody rings, Benedict. I want a quick result. Don't ignore the obvious just
because it is obvious!"
Williams and
I returned to the murder room with the files. We worked through the morning,
examining the anomalies and loose ends which hung over the initial
investigation. I became increasingly convinced that the ring which Angela
Cashell had been wearing was somehow central to the whole thing.
"Why?"
"She was
stripped naked; her clothes were kept or destroyed; someone washed her body;
used a condom. Everything seems to have been done to reduce the possibilities
of forensic evidence. Everything was removed, except her pants and this ring.
Why leave her pants?"
"Well,
the panties suggest some form of respect. Some residual affection or liking for
the girl. Someone wanted her to have some dignity."
"Her
father?"
"Maybe.
Worth looking at again, certainly. Or a woman," she suggested.
"Why?"
"I
dunno. It just seems like something a woman would do. It was a conscious
decision to put her underwear back on her. I don't think a man would do that.
In fact, you'd think if sex was involved somewhere, he'd want to
keep
something as intimate
as that - a trophy, you know?"
It made
sense. "What about the ring? It has some significance. None of her family
or friends knew about it."
"Whitey
McKelvey did. Maybe he did give it to her."
"More
likely than him selling it to someone who then came back and killed her,"
I said.
"So, he
steals it from Ratsy Donaghey, gives it to Angela Cashell, and she gets killed
wearing it."
"Do you
think it's worth killing over?"
"I
dunno. Maybe we should get it valued."
"But if
it was worth anything, surely whoever killed Angela would have taken it,"
I pointed out.
"True.
So, it's a message."
"To
whom?"
"I don't
know. But you're right. We'll follow it up."
I asked
Williams whether she had had any luck contacting the Garda in Bundoran who had
dealt with Donaghey's murder.
"Not
yet. He's off until tomorrow, I'm told. I need to speak to him about the gun
used to kill Terry Boyle, too. What do you think is the Donaghey connection
with Cashell? Drugs?"
"Maybe,"
I said, "But he was a different generation. More of an age with Johnny
Cashell than Angela. Follow it up anyway. Get that video of the bar again as
well. McKelvey denied being with Angela that night. Let's recheck it and see if
he was lying or not. In the meantime, I'm going to a wake."
"Whose?"
"Angela
Cashell's. Her body was brought back on Christmas Eve. She's to be buried
tomorrow. I want to see Sadie Cashell before that."
"Is it
not a bit early? It's only just gone ten?"
"Morning's
the best time for us; less chance of a fight brewing." I lifted my keys.
"Do you want to come?"
"Are you
kidding?" she said, grabbing her coat.
A wake is a
long-held tradition in Ireland. The body is laid out for two nights before the
burial. Neighbours and friends congregate - ostensibly to pay their respects,
but on occasions the wake becomes a party. Mourners comment on how well the
deceased looks, as though he or she were not dead. Plates of cigarettes are
passed around like sandwiches. At some stage the whiskey is opened and passed
among the mourners; someone produces a tin whistle or a fiddle and a full-scale
ceilidh breaks out, with people jigging and reeling around the coffin and
resting their empty glasses on the white satin lining.
The following
morning, the wake-house smells like a pub that has been left unaired.
Tea-stained cups are gathered and washed; sandwiches are made in preparation
for the next night, which promises to be even bigger than the previous.
Sadie Cashell
was sitting by her daughter's coffin when we entered the house and, despite the
early hour, three neighbours sat with her. I gave her the Mass card I had had
signed by Father Brennan on the way in, offered my condolences, and stood
beside her at the coffin and prayed three Hail Marys for the redemption of the
soul of Angela Cashell. Sadie leaned over the coffin, pushed a wisp of Angela's
blonde hair back from her face and arranged the ruffle at the throat of the
shroud she was wearing. I finished my prayers and laid my hand gently on
Angela's, which were joined in front of her, intertwined with a rosary. Her
skin was cold and hard, almost like wax. Her expression was one of serenity:
angelic. It was an appearance certainly preferable to my last sight of her,
lying on a bed of leaves and damp moss, the empty winter sky reflected in her
unblinking eyes.
I sat beside
Sadie on one of the hard wooden chairs which a neighbour must have lent her and
passed her a half-bottle of Bushmills that I had bought in McElroy's Bar out of
hours.
She held my
hand in both of hers, which were shaking slightly, and rubbed the back of my
hand with her thumb. She told me that Johnny had not been released for the
wake, but hoped to be back for the funeral. She told me how the other girls had
taken it. Muire had run away the day before, but was found by a neighbour
walking to Strabane. Then she asked if we knew who had taken her daughter from
her, and I told her that I thought we did and that, if she believed in God, he
would be facing justice. She smiled and gripped my hand tighter.
"Sadie,"
I said. "I want to ask you a favour. About the ring Angela was wearing. Do
you have it?"
"Why?"
"Listen,
Sadie, I know it wasn't hers, but I don't care. Keep it if you want. But I'd
like to borrow it for a day or two. I think it might have something to do with
what happened to her."
She seemed
initially unwilling, but eventually agreed and, with some reluctance, turned
away from her daughter's coffin and left the room. I heard her going up the
stairs and moving about above us. Half a minute later she returned with the
ring, still sealed in the plastic evidence bag in which the pathologist had
placed it. She handed it to me without a word and sat again beside her
daughter.
