Borderlands (20 page)

We parked
outside the Garda station and went in to meet Sergeant Bill Daly. The window in
reception was so low that you had to bend slightly to address the man behind
it. It was almost like a taxi office. Williams introduced us both and asked for
Daly.

Soon we were
buzzed through and welcomed by a middle-aged man, whose black hair was greying
at the temples. His skin was tanned like leather, with wrinkles deeply etched
around his eyes, and he squinted slightly in the glare of the fluorescent
lights overhead. He took us to an interview room.

Daly
excused himself and returned after a few moments carrying a small cardboard
box on which he balanced three cups of coffee and a thin green folder. He set
down the box and sat opposite us, blowing on the surface of his coffee and
squinting at Williams.

"So,
you're here about Ratsy. Take a look; ask anything you like," he said,
gesturing towards the green folder.

Williams
opened it and placed it between us on the desk. The notes were brief and
concise.

Ratsy Donaghey
had been found in his flat overlooking the local playgrounds and swimming pool
on 5th November, tied to a chair, his mouth gagged. His arms were covered with
cigarette burns. Ultimately, his killer had slit Donaghey's wrists and left him
to watch while his blood poured down his hands and dripped off his fingers onto
the ground. Vital reaction indicators around the wounds suggested that he lived
for perhaps another twenty-five to thirty minutes as he watched the life drip
out of him, struggling against his restraints with such violence that he
cracked three ribs.

"Any
leads?" Williams asked when we finished reading.

"None,"
Daly said, draining his coffee and beginning to fold down the lip of the paper
cup.

"Nothing?"
I asked.

"Nope.
Not a thing. Ratsy Donaghey was murdered by someone, but we don't know who
and, to tell you the truth, we don't really give a shit."

I was not
wholly surprised: Donaghey was a career criminal who had made his money selling
drugs for years. No policeman was going to waste effort on the likes of
Donaghey when the crime rate was rising and police recruitment numbers
dropping.

"Let
me tell you a story about Ratsy Donaghey. He bought his little pimp-pad here
fifteen years ago, as well as one in Letterkenny and two others in Sligo and
Cork. He gave free samples of drugs to youngsters of twelve, then got them to
steal cars for him; he took out the radio, they got a free joyride. When they
dumped it, Ratsy stuck syringes used by some HIV hypo up through the driver's
seat. Some poor bastard in a uniform finds this stolen car, gets in to check it
out or drive it back to the station, gets a dirty needle in the ass and Aids
for nothing. That's Ratsy Donaghey."

Aids again.
Why did everybody talk about Aids all the time? I'd never noticed it before. I
reminded myself that I'd been given the all clear. Then an inner voice reminded
me that I had three months to wait to know for sure.

"It's
still a crime," Williams said, though without conviction. It took me a
moment to process the conversation and work out what she was talking about.

"The
only crime involved in this would be wasting tax payers' money investigating
the fact that someone did us a favour. And while you're defending him, you
might be interested to know about the ballistics match you asked about - we
never got anyone for that, but Ratsy Donaghey was our number one suspect. Held
up a sixty-year- old man locking up a filling station; fired a warning shot
above his head when he refused to hand over his cash; guy had a heart attack. He
survived, though, or we'd have had a murder case on our hands. Ratsy Donaghey
was a piece of shit and good riddance to him."

"There'll
be other Ratsy Donagheys," I said.

"There
already are. But while they keep taking each other out, they save us the hassle."

"Do
you think that's what happened here?" I asked.

"Probably,"
he replied. "Could be an unhappy customer, new competition, a Provo
punishment. Honestly, I don't give a shit. So long as Ratsy suffered a lot
before he went."

"Did
you find cigarette butts or any physical evidence?" I asked.

"Oh,
no. Everything was washed and cleaned and left tidy. No prints, no fibres,
nothing. Whoever did it was a pro."

"Fair
enough."

"Now,
what's the connection with your case?" he asked, leaning back in the chair
and stretching.

"None,
maybe. A piece of jewellery turned up on a list of items stolen from Donaghey's
flat in Letterkenny. It's connected with a case we have ongoing."

"That's
it? Hell, it must be quiet in Lifford."

"It
is," said Williams smiling. "His gun was used in a murder a few days
ago. Though, presumably, Ratsy didn't use it himself."

"Maybe
he sold it. Maybe it was stolen along with this ring you're talking
about."

"Maybe,"
I conceded. "Any chance we could see Donaghey's flat?"

"Not a
hope. Day after he died the council came in and fumigated the place. They
moved a Romanian family in last Monday. Didn't tell them the history. Just
hoped they don't see the bloody big stains all over the floor. Everything he
owns that wasn't auctioned by the state is in that box."

While
Williams continued, I opened the box and flicked through some of the contents:
a packet of cigarettes, a set of keys, a bundle of letters, and photographs.
Absentmindedly flicking through the bundle of pictures, I found one I recognized.
It took me a moment to place it or, rather, when I had last seen it. A woman
sat on a flight of steps on a beach. It was the same photograph I had seen
tucked behind a vine of ivy on the tree where Angela Cashell had died.

"Who's
this?" I asked Daly, holding the photograph up.

"His
mother?" Daly guessed. "If he had one."

"I'll
hold on to this, if you don't mind," I said, impatient to get back to
Lifford to Angela Cashell's murder site to confirm that the pictures matched.

"Nothing
you can think of as odd? Nothing that marked this out from a normal drugs
kill?" Williams asked, suspecting, perhaps, that the journey had been a
waste of time.

"Nothing.
Apart from the cigarette-burns torture thing. I only hope whoever did Ratsy
videotaped it. Now
that
I'd pay to see."

We stopped
for lunch at a chippy while I explained to Williams about the photograph. She
offered to phone Holmes and ask him to pick up the picture for us, just so we'd
know it was secure. Then we headed back to Donegal town to the jewellers, stopping
on the way so I could buy a chocolate cake for Debbie. I hoped that the ring
would yield some answers. Instead, it raised more questions.

We arrived
back at the jewellers around 3.30 p.m. to be introduced to Charles Hendershot,
an old man with white hair and a thick handlebar moustache. He was small and
stooped, his movements considered and careful. His fingers were tapered and
feminine, his skin as fragile as aged paper. He sat behind the main sales desk
on an antique chair cushioned with red velvet, his feet crossed at the ankles.
The ring and a tattered red leather-bound ledger sat in front of him. His head
shook ever so slightly as he spoke.

"I
remember this ring," he said softly, after we had sat down with him at the
back of the shop. "I remember every piece I make. Each is different. Each
is a piece of art." He raised a slender finger towards us, speaking mostly
to Williams, who sat turned towards him, her hand resting lightly on the arm of
his chair. "You know, I was asked to make a piece for the Pope in 1979,
when he came to Drogheda. I was asked to make a cross by the President
himself."

"Really?"
Williams said and he smiled at her in a way that was almost boyish.

"1978
I made this piece. June 1978.1 found it here in the ledger. I changed my styles
each year. That year I did rose-cuts. They're an antique cut, but I did them
then, and again in '85 and then in 1991, but never again with moonstones."

"How
did you remember it was June?" Williams asked, and I believe she fluttered
her eyelids at him.

"Easy,
my pet," he said, patting her hand lightly with his own. "The
moonstone. It's the birthstone for June: that and pearl. So June 1978. I
remembered it and I was right," he said as he leaned forward slowly and
tapped the ledger. "It's right there."

"What
about the 'AC', Mr Hendershot?" I asked. "Did you engrave that?"

"Yes.
It should have read 'From AC'. Too much on a piece like this. So they settled
for 'AC'."

'"From
AC', not'
For
AC'?" Williams asked.

"Yes.
Odd that. Really, it's the lady's initials that should go on a piece. You
remember that, young man, when you buy this lovely girl a ring," he said,
pointing at me in a way that reminded me of my grandmother. Williams smiled at
me expansively, probably because he had called her a girl, as well as lovely.
"But it was'
From
AC'. I checked."

He opened
the ledger and, licking the tips of his fingers, flipped the pages slowly,
while I tried to curb my impatience, tapping my open palm against my thigh. He
looked deliberately at my hand and stared directly at me before returning his
attention to the book, turning the pages even more slowly until he found what
he wanted.

"A Mr
A. Costello from Letterkenny. I can't remember the face. Faces escape me."

"A.
Costello," Williams said jokingly; "surely not the Superintendent."

"No,"
I said. "He's Oily - Oliver."

Hendershot
was still reading through the ledger. "Yes, Mr Alphonsus Costello,"
he said. In that terrible moment, while my vision spun and my thoughts
struggled to make sense, Williams's joke suddenly wasn't funny anymore.

"Who
was the girl? His wife?" Williams asked.

"I
don't think she was his wife" the old man said, pursing his lips and
shaking his head slightly. "But, you see, you're in luck here. One of the
diamonds has been replaced."

"Yes,
we were told."

He turned
and looked at me sharply, like a chiding schoolmaster, then spoke exclusively
to Williams for the rest of the conversation, even when replying to questions
which I asked. "Anyway, pet, I noticed one of these diamonds is different
from the rest. A pink diamond. You see, the lady who was given the ring
returned it to us in November of that year, saying one of the diamonds had
fallen out and had been misplaced. That never convinces me. Some people would
actually take out the stones and sell them, then come back and say the stone
was lost. However, this piece cost quite a bit and so I replaced it with
another rose cut. I had to send the piece back to her."

"Do
you have an address?" I asked.

He looked
at his book, then back at Williams. "Her name was Mary Knox. She lived in
Canal View in Strabane."

Williams
looked at me and smiled in a shy, concealed way. We had driven to Donegal to
discover that a ring, which had been deliberately placed on the finger of a
murdered girl, had been bought twenty-six years earlier by our own
Superintendent for a woman who was not his wife. And we were both keenly aware
that he must have recognized the ring when he saw it and yet said nothing. And
we had to wonder how the same ring ended up in the possession of a
drug-trafficking miscreant like Ratsy Donaghey, only to be stolen in the month
prior to his own death. I suspected that Mary Knox, whoever she was, was the
only person who could answer any of these questions.

As Knox had
given an address in Strabane, and as Costello was clearly involved with her in
some way, we decided it would be best to ask Hendry in the North for
information. We could have asked Burgess, but he was unlikely to complete the
task without Costello getting wind of what he was doing.

I called
Hendry on his mobile and when he answered he was slightly out of breath, his
voice fractured.

"I
hope I didn't interrupt something, Inspector," I said.

"Only
my day off, Devlin. What is it now?" he said, in a tone which I hoped was
mock exasperation. "I tell you, I should have taken this case myself,
'cause I've ended up doing most of the work anyway."

"I
need some info on a lead we've run up on the Cashell murder. Mary Knox."

"As in
Half-Hung McNaughten," he laughed.

"Same
name, two hundred years on. Lived in Canal View in Strabane twenty-six years
ago, if that's any help."

There was
silence on the other end of the line and Williams and I looked at each other.
Williams shrugged and was about to speak when Hendry's voice crackled over the
speaker again. "Give me ten minutes and I'll call you back," he said,
all trace of humour gone. Then the line clicked and went dead.

It was
almost half an hour later when he phoned, by which stage we were approaching
Lifford.

"I needed
to check something, but I was right," he said cryptically. "You'll
not have much luck with Mary Knox. She disappeared in 1978, presumed
dead."