Borderlands (3 page)
"Yes,
sir."
"Have
you a jacket?" he asked, nodding at the informality of my jeans and jumper
— one of the few perks of being a Detective.
"Not
with me."
"Nip
home and get changed. You're doing a press conference at five. RTE'll be here,
and the northern stations, so look sharp." I had reached the door when he
added, "They haven't found her clothes yet, Benedict. I've requested the
Water Unit to search the river in the morning. The PSNI have said they'll help.
It'll be an early start."
The
press conference was the first that I had done and, while probably quite
low-key in comparison with other such events, it was daunting to face the banks
of lights, cameras and microphones. Costello read a prepared statement, then
invited questions. My role, I had been told, was to sit there so he could
identify me for the cameras. That way, justice would not be faceless, he said,
without a hint of irony. I was also to handle any operational questions which
Costello couldn't answer, though I was told not to go into specifics. It was
strange hearing our voices echo back at us with a slight delay, almost mocking
the fact that, despite all that we said to reassure the public, we had no idea
who had killed Angela Cashell, how she had been killed or, more worryingly, why
someone would kill a fifteen- year-old girl and dump her naked body on a river
bank.
Penny
and Shane were granted a maternal dispensation to stay up past bedtime to watch
Daddy on TV. They almost fell asleep, though, during the main report, which was
on the US President's announcement that 50,000 troops were to be sent to
supplement the 60,000 already stationed in the Middle East.
When
the brief article on the Cashell murder was finally aired, it was sandwiched
between a report on the rising price of housing and a story about a drug
trafficker who had been murdered in Dublin. The newscasters expressed more
sincere concern about the house prices than the death of the unnamed dealer.
As
I placed Shane in his cot, I heard a knock on the door, and a few seconds later
the sound of Debbie inviting a visitor in. I peered out through our bedroom
window and saw our neighbour Mark Anderson's pick-up truck parked in the
driveway. Mark actually lived over half a mile away, but he owned all the land
bordering our house, fields in which he grazed his sheep and cattle. He was an
odd, socially awkward man, and I was surprised to see him. The only time he had
called on us before was to appeal for leniency after I arrested his son,
Malachy, who had been caught peeping in Sharon Kennedy's bedroom window from
the tree outside her house. Her husband had felled the tree that same evening.
When
I came back downstairs Anderson was sitting in the living room, perched so
close to the edge of the sofa he looked as though he would fall off. He stood
up when I came in and I smiled and extended my hand. "Happy Christmas,
Mark," I said. "Good to see you."
He
did not reciprocate my smile or greeting but said simply, "Your dog's been
annoying my sheep."
"Excuse
me," I said, moving over to where Debbie was sitting.
"Your
dog's been worrying my sheep. I saw it."
Our
dog is a six-year-old basset-hound called Frank, which I bought for Debbie on
our fifth wedding anniversary when it seemed we could not have children. Four
months after we bought him, Debbie found out she was pregnant with Penny, and
so Frank became very much my dog. Now that Penny was older, she too had become
attached to him. At night we kept him locked in a shed we built for him, and I
told Anderson as much.
"I
know what I seen," he said. "Anything happens to any of my sheep,
I'll put a bullet in the mutt. I've warned you."
Penny,
who had stopped watching the TV at the start of the conversation, now stared up
at Anderson open-mouthed and panic-stricken.
"There's
no need for threats, Mark. Frank's a good dog and I don't think he'd be
annoying your sheep. I'm sure you're mistaken, but we'll keep an extra careful
eye on him." I winked at Penny conspiratorially. She tried to smile back,
but did so without confidence.
"Well,
don't say I didn't warn you. If that dog's in my field, I'll kill it," he
repeated, then nodded, as though we had had a conversation about the weather,
and bade us a happy Christmas.
When
he left, Penny sidled over to me and tugged on my trouser leg. "Is he
gonna hurt Frank, Daddy?" Her voice cracked as she spoke and her eyes
reddened.
"No,
sweetie," Debbie said, and came over and lifted her in her arms.
"Daddy'll make sure that Frank stays inside every night, then nothing will
happen to him. Isn't that right, Daddy?" she said, looking at me while
hugging Penny into her and swaying lightly from side to side.
"That's
right, sweetheart," I said. "Frank will be alright."
The
following morning I took Debbie and the children to early Mass, where Penny
insisted we say a special prayer for Frank, and the entire congregation prayed
for the repose of the soul of Angela Cashell and for comfort for her family in
their tragedy. Yesterday's snow flurries had cleared and the sky was fresh as
water, the wind sharp, the bright winter sun deceptively warm-looking as we sat
in church, staring out. Strangely, the roses in the gardens at the front of the
church were budding again despite the lateness of the year. As I stopped to
admire them on our way out, Thomas Powell Jr approached me.
Powell
was someone I had known when I was young, at school in Derry. He was my age,
but where I was stocky and carrying extra weight around the gut, Powell was lean
and tanned and carried only the aura of good health, achieved and maintained
through prosperity. He was the husband of a girl I had also known when younger,
and the only son of one of the richest men in Donegal, Thomas Sr. The old man
had been a highly influential politician in his time, and rumour had it that
the son would soon follow suit. It was about the father that Thomas wished to
see me.
"Devlin.
Anything on the old man?" he asked, shaking my hand in both of his, a
gesture which was strikingly disingenuous.
"What
old man?" I asked.
"My
father, of course. I'd assumed you'd know." He smiled with some
bewilderment.
"Sorry,
Thomas. Did something happen to your father?"
He
seemed irritated. "I thought they'd have told you. I phoned your station
this morning. About the intruder."
"I
haven't heard, Thomas. Where was this?"
"His
room in the home: Finnside. He woke in the middle of the night, Wednesday, and
swore there was someone in his room. Look, we told the guy who answered the
phone. He said it would be investigated."
"I'm
sure it will, Thomas. We're a bit up to our eyes with this Cashell girl's
death. Was your father hurt?"
"No."
"Was
anything taken?"
"No.
But that's not the point. Someone was in his room."
I
could see Powell beginning to get annoyed so, having promised to follow it up
at the earliest opportunity, I excused myself.
As
I turned to leave, I caught sight of his wife, Miriam, standing in the
vestibule of the church, talking to Father Brennan but looking over at us,
seemingly distracted. Her eyes caught mine and something shivered inside me and
settled uneasily in my stomach. She smiled lightly and returned her attentions
to the priest.
As
there were only three days till Christmas, I had promised Penny a trip to
Santa's grotto and I wanted to get on the road to Derry as soon as possible.
The events of the day before had made me all the more resolved to spend time
with my children; I couldn't help seeing their faces when I thought of Angela.
Although it was my day off, I had my mobile phone with me and as we drove from
the churchyard its urgent ringing startled me.
It
was Jim Hendry. He was calling to tell me that Strabane police were holding
Johnny Cashell for attempted murder. As I drove across the bridge to Strabane
in the beautiful December sunshine, I was able to look down and see frogmen
from both sides of the border taking turns at searching the murk for anything
that might help us catch his daughter's killer.
On
the northern side of the border, a local government agency, tired of traveller
encampments clogging up car parks and industrial estates, decided to provide
the travellers with their own area. The agency chose a site off the main road
and miles away from any other housing developments and then, showing a severe
lack of understanding of the term "itinerant", built twenty houses
for the traveller families to live in. Needless to say, the travellers parked
outside the houses and lived in their caravans as they always had. However,
someone systematically stripped the brand new houses of anything that could be
sold, making a neat profit and leaving the estate looking like a terrorist
training ground. For several months afterwards, the less reputable local
builders made a huge and completely illegal profit, buying cut-price piping
and slates and putting them into new houses.
It
was unusual, Inspector Hendry told me, when I drove over to Strabane that
morning, for the police to have to go into the camp - the travellers normally
resolved disputes in their own ways. That morning had been different,
apparently.
From
what could be gleaned from various witnesses, it seemed that Johnny Cashell and
his three brothers had walked from his home to Daly's Filling Station in
Lifford at 11 p.m. the previous evening, just as the nightshift staff came on,
and there they each filled ten- litre jerry cans with petrol. The four of them
then sat in McElroy's Bar until 2.30 in the morning, drinking Guinness and
Powers whiskey. While most of the other drinkers in the bar smelt the fumes
coming off the four jerry cans in the corner, no one asked about them or
reacted in any way to imply that such an occurrence was unusual; not even when
Brendan Cashell went to the bar and bought a single packet of John Player cigarettes
and four disposable lighters. Many of the regulars looked at Johnny with a
mixture of pity and suspicion. No one mentioned Angela's name, though some
patted him on the shoulder as they passed by, and a few, including the
publican, stood him a drink. Others were more circumspect, perhaps wary of
being seen to take sides, in case at a later date it transpired that Johnny
himself had been involved in some way in the murder of the blonde-haired child.
The
Cashell brothers walked the half-mile to Strabane from Lifford, each carrying a
can of petrol, and were spotted around 3.30 a.m. crossing the bridge above the
point where the rivers Finn and Mourne merge into the Foyle. What they did for
the next hour is unclear, but they entered the traveller camp at 5 a.m., just
as the first tendrils of grey crept into the pre-dawn sky.
Once
there, they doused as many of the houses and caravans as they could with
petrol, then they each took out cigarettes and disposable lighters, lit their
smokes, and then the houses and caravans around them. The four brothers did not
run away, but rather sat on the massive boulders which had been placed at the
mouth of the encampment to prevent any more caravans from entering. Johnny
listened dispassionately as screams began to shudder through the flimsy metal
of the burning caravans.
A
passing taxi driver radioed for the police and fire engines and watched while
Johnny and his brothers cheered as one traveller family after another stumbled
from the burning caravans, screaming and crying. Then Johnny spotted one
person in particular - a thin boy who looked no more than twelve or thirteen,
with hair so blond it was almost white. Johnny was seen shouting at him. Then
he and his brothers ran after the boy, who scuttled like a rabbit through the
bushes behind the encampment and across the fields beyond, his bare back
luminous in the moonlight.
It
was not clear who realized the Cashells' culpability first, but by the time the
police arrived, someone had beaten Johnny's brothers so badly that they were
unidentifiable. The youngest, Diarmuid, had been rushed to Altnagelvin
hospital. A female taxi-driver had described how she had watched two of the
travellers, barefoot and bare-chested, yet seemingly oblivious to the winter
night (or, perhaps, heated by the flames and the adrenaline of the situation)
grab Diarmuid by his straggled hair and throw him to the ground. As he cowered
against the boulders blocking the entrance to the estate, they took turns
kicking and stomping on him with enough force to shatter his teeth and his
jawbone, which soon hung loose and useless as a dead man's.
Frankie
Cashell was dragged to the ground by the jacket his wife had made him wear and,
though he cursed her when it gave the travellers something to grab, the padding
buffered most of the kicks he received to his trunk so that, although his skull
was fractured, his ribs were only bruised.
The
third Cashell brother, Brendan, was set upon by a number of women, one of whom bit
off one of his ears. By the time the police found it later that day, spat into
the bushes beyond the smouldering wreck of a caravan, it was beyond saving.
