Borderlands (19 page)

"I
warned you I'd deal with things," he said, as I approached. "You're a
bit late now."

"A
wild cat's a little different from my dog. Are you sure whatever's worrying
your sheep is an animal? How
is
Malachy, by the way?

"Are
you here for a reason?" he sneered, choosing to ignore the implication in
my question.

"Just
thought I'd keep an eye on things. Don't want someone shooting you by accident,
now, do we, Mark?"

I chose a
slight rise in the field to lie against and joined two other men there. One I
recognized as a clay-pigeon shooter from Raphoe, though I did not know his
name. The ground beneath us had frozen to iron and the cold seeped up through
my body so that I had to shift continually to keep warm. And there, in the
frost, we lay and waited, straining against the dark to see shapes shifting
around the sheep, whose wool seemed all the more brilliant in the moonlight.
The holly hedge around the field was thick and lush now with big blood-red
berries. Small animals skittered through it. Directly above us was a weeping
birch whose branches were so heavy they trailed along the ground.

At around
10.30 p.m. someone shouted, and at one corner of the field the loud clear
cracks of shotguns rang out a second after the bright gunfire flashes. A number
of the men lying about clambered to their feet and ran to the spot where
something had been seen, while two men argued about who had shot first.

"Looks
like someone's made a grand," the Raphoe man said, getting to his feet. I
followed suit, only to have my legs buckle under me with stiffness from lying
in one place so long in the middle of winter. I hobbled behind the men to the
spot where a group had gathered, but even before I got there it became
apparent, from the disgusted shakes of collective heads, that the quarry was
not the wild cat they had hoped. Instead, in the middle of the circle of men,
lay the body of a fox, its side shredded by the shotgun blasts, oozing blood as
black as tar onto the sugar-frosted grass. Its tongue lolled in and out of its
mouth, its breathing was laboured and harsh. With each breath, a fresh spurt of
blood pumped out of its side. My companion from Raphoe loaded a shot in his
gun, placed it above the fox's head and fired so close that blood and tissue
spattered on his shoes and the barrel of the gun. The air carried the smell of
cordite and burnt fur.

"Do we
go home then?" someone asked disappointedly.

"Weren't
no fox attacked my sheep," Anderson said, spitting on the carcass.
"Leave this here - might attract whatever that thing is."

He
half-heartedly kicked the body, which flopped over on the grass, then wiped his
boot on the back of his trouser leg. "Back to your positions," he
said, then fixed his cap on his head and trod back to where he had been hiding.

I returned
to the mound again and lay in a different position this time and lit a
cigarette.

"Best
not do that," the other man, whose name was Tony something, said.
"Them cats could smell smoke miles away. That'll scare them off."

"If
this cat can smell the smoke of one cigarette, but can't smell the stink of
thirty Donegal men lying in a field of sheep shit, it deserves to get blown
away," I said, then inhaled deeply for effect, though the air was so cold
it burned my lungs. The Raphoe man laughed and took out a tobacco tin to roll a
cigarette, so I gave him one from my packet.

"Aren't
you hunting?" he asked, noting the fact that I was the only unarmed man in
the field.

"Nope.
Just making sure nobody shoots anybody else," I said, adding, "or my
dog."

"What?"

"Anderson
thought it was my dog that was attacking his sheep. I suppose I should be
grateful that this cat has appeared."

"I
suppose so, officer," he said, joining with my laugh.

I smiled.
"I know your face. I can't place you, though."

"You
gave me a speeding ticket a few years back. You were in uniform then"

"Shit,"
I said. "Sorry."

"Don't
be. I was doing a hundred and two along the Letterkenny Road. I was lucky I
wasn't killed. I got off light, all things considered."

I recalled
the event now and remembered the face, although the man had had a moustache
then. He seemed to assume that I remembered his name, so I didn't want to ask.
"A red Celica was it?"

"Close
enough. A red Capri."

"Have
you still got it?" I asked. "It was a lovely car, even as a
blur."

"No.
Wife had a kid; I got rid of the car. Driving a family car now."

"This
is lovely," the man called Tony said, "and I hate to interrupt, but
could you two shut up?"

We sat in
silence for another hour or so, smoking periodically. The evening was so still
the smoke hung in a silver cloud above our heads. At around 12.30 a.m. I stood
up to stretch the stiffness out of my legs, and it was while doing so that I
saw a black shape snaking its way down from the top of the field just above us.
It crept slowly towards a group of sheep that seemed to be sleeping, its belly
pressed so close to the ground its coat must have been dusted with frost. I
couldn't tell what it was as it slinked down along the furrows tractors had
made in the field.

"Stand
up," I hissed to the two beside me, and they did so, rubbing their legs
while they straightened up. The Raphoe man spotted the shape then and loaded a
shell, as did Tony.

They both
shouldered their shotguns together, steadying the barrels. The Raphoe man
shifted his stance a little, widening his legs so he was standing in a solid
position. I noticed the mist of his breath stop as he took aim, and I found
myself instinctively holding my own breath as I watched the shape slow and
stop, as if it too were suddenly aware of the events which were about to
unfold. Afterwards, I would recall that he shifted his aim just slightly in the
final milliseconds before he shot, though I cannot be sure.

Slowly
then, he pulled the trigger, a fluid movement, and his gun jerked as the blast
echoed across the field and left my ears ringing. Tony fired a second later,
another sharp crack, like a stick being snapped. Then the three of us set off
at a run, stumbling through the furrows and sliding across the sheep dung,
scattering the slumbering sheep who watched us with wide, terrified eyes. As
we ran, we saw the black shape dash back the way it had come, its running
erratic. We reached the spot where it had been when shot, and saw the black
blood of its wound spattered on the white grass. We followed its path, the
grass greener where the frost had been disturbed by the creature, and saw more
blood on the ground. Then the path disappeared into a thicket hedge and we
could follow it no further.

"Hard
luck," I said to the man from Raphoe, who smiled slightly.

"Time
to go home I think, partner," he said, shouldering his shotgun and picking
his way carefully back down the field, while others ran to see what had
happened.

I walked
back down the road to the house about half an hour later and went around the
back of the house to check that the shed was locked. I rattled the padlock on
the bolt and was turning to go into the house when I heard a soft whimpering
from inside the shed. I unlocked the door and went in.

Frank lay
in the corner, curled up, blood congealing on the floor of the shed beneath him.
He raised his head an inch and looked at me, but his usually bloodshot eyes
were pale and dull. He licked ineffectually at the area on his flank where the
shot had skinned him, and I noticed that his right ear, which before had hung
almost to the ground, was tattered and torn, the surface bloody and dark. His
snow-white chest was pink and red with blood, though I could not tell if he was
bleeding there or if this had come from the wound to his ear.

He yelped
weakly when I lifted him and carried him out to the car. I set him on the back
seat with a picnic blanket under him, working quickly lest some of the farmers
wandering down the field, disappointed with the night's hunt, should see him
and realize what had happened. I quickly ran up the stairs to Debbie, who was
sitting up in bed reading a magazine. She had heard the shots earlier and was
interested to hear what had happened. I told her to call the emergency vet in
Strabane, as I was afraid if we took him to a Donegal vet, word would
eventually filter back to Anderson.

I had to
wait outside the surgery for twenty minutes until the vet arrived and she
helped me carry Frank onto the steel table in the surgery. There, she gave him
a shot that knocked him out in seconds, before washing his wounds. I told her
half of the story, saying that I had been shooting at a fox and that the dog
had run into the line of fire.

"Oh,
right," she said, "I thought maybe it had to do with the cat hunt
over there." She brushed one of her bangs back from her face with a bloody,
gloved hand and smiled before returning to cleaning the wounds.

The shot
had skinned Frank's leg but there were no deeper injuries. His ear was badly
torn and was about half its original length, which meant that part of his ear,
a scrap of bloodstained velvet, was lying in Anderson's field. She bandaged his
ear, tying it up behind his head, and put a dressing over the thick white ointment
on his leg. Then she went into the storeroom and brought out a bottle of pills,
antibiotics to reduce infection.

Finally she
checked his eyes and teeth and helped me carry him back out to the car.

"I
hope you weren't shot by accident, too," she said, nodding at the dressing
on my hand, while I manoeuvred Frank onto the back seat.

"No, I
was bitten."

"By
him?" she said, looking concerned.

"Oh,
no," I said. "By a person," I closed the back door of the car
while she looked at me, now more concerned about my mental wellbeing than my
physical health.

"Figures,"
she shrugged finally, taking the money I offered her.

Friday, 27th December

I left the
house at 7.30 the following morning and drove to Williams's house, a two
bedroom bungalow in Ballindrait. As I approached, a blue Sierra drove past, the
windows misted and icy, but I was almost certain that the man hunched over the
steering wheel, looking like he had been hurried out of bed, was Jason Holmes.

I did not
ask Williams about it until we passed through Ballybofey twenty minutes later.
"Did I see Holmes leaving your house this morning?" I asked in as innocuous
a manner as I could.

"Yes,
Father, you did," she said, looking out the side window. "He slept on
the sofa," she added, turning to look at me.

"Hey,
I didn't ask. Nothing to do with me," I said, holding one hand up off the
steering wheel in mock placation.

"I
know," she said. "And I'd keep it that way, unless you want to end up
like your dog."

"Fair
enough. I was only going to ask how he's doing. With the McKelvey affair."

"Fine,
I think," she said. "He doesn't say much. By the way, he thinks he
may have a hit on the Terry Boyle thing. A barman remembered seeing him leave
some nightclub in Raphoe with a girl on the night he died. Small girl - brown
hair. He's going there today to get a description, maybe do up an e-fit."
She rolled down the window and dropped out the gum she had been chewing.

"That's
littering," I protested.

"As I
was saying," she continued, ignoring my comment, "I think he's
alright with it. So long as he thinks McKelvey is guilty."

"Did
you tell him where we were going?"

"Yeah,
though I said we were following a lead on McKelvey, tying up loose ends,
checking out the ring. He wanted to know what he was missing. You know?"

"Understandable,"
I said.

We arrived
on the outskirts of Donegal around an hour later. We called first at Hendershot
& Sons Jewellers which was, indeed, still beside the Atlantic restaurant.
From outside, it looked quite rundown: the woodwork around the door and the
sign above the window were sun-faded and blistered. The windows were dusty and
the shop appeared so dim inside that at first we thought it was closed. Inside,
the style was old-fashioned with a lot of mahogany cases brimming with gold and
diamonds which glittered under the spotlights embedded in the ceiling. The
shop smelt of air-freshener, perhaps used in an attempt to disguise the deeper
smell of tobacco.

The manager
was a young man with wavy brown hair and an expensive smile that glittered like
the stone in his tie-pin. We explained our visit and showed him the ring. He
examined it and suggested that we leave it with him for an hour while he
contacted his father, who had made most of the jewellery they had sold during
the '60s and '70s.

So we drove
on to Bundoran, forty minutes towards the coast. For years Bundoran would have
passed for a 1950s coastal village: bleached cottages, rundown shops with
curling yellowed sunscreens on the windows, the Atlantic buffeting the
coastline even on calm days. Recently, however, it has transformed itself, with
amusement arcades and surfing shops, flickering neon signs, restaurants with
Wild West facades, and bars crammed with old
Irish paraphernalia. In the
early mornings, the streets are littered with broken beer bottles and vomit. By
lunchtime, however, the town again presents its family-friendly face.