Borderlands (4 page)
Johnny
himself, bleeding profusely, had been found lying in the field across which he
had reportedly pursued the traveller boy. The boy had turned on Johnny, pulling
a knife on him. Only when Johnny was in the ambulance did it become clear that
he had received only a superficial wound, and so he was arrested as soon as he
was discharged from hospital and taken to Strabane. Hendry had heard all about
it that morning when he arrived for work. Recognizing the name from our
exchange the day before, he contacted me.
Johnny
sat on the metal frame which doubled as a bench and bed in the holding cell,
his fingers exploring under the bandage which had been taped around his
abdomen. He looked up when he saw me enter the cell, but went back to his work,
testing the wound for tenderness and inspecting the dressing for blood.
"Well,
Johnny. Do you feel better now?"
"Piss
off, Devlin. You're not allowed in the North. You shouldn't be here."
"Neither
should you, Johnny. I'm off duty. This is a social call. What were you playing
at, taking on the travellers?" I asked, but his attention remained focused
on his dressing. Hendry kicked at Johnny's foot when he still didn't look up.
"I've
nothing to say," Johnny muttered. "Have you a fag?"
"Aye,"
I said, taking the cigarette packet out of my pocket. "But I've forgot my
lighter. Have you got one?"
"Ha,
ha! Stick it up your arse, Devlin."
"Oi!
Mind your mouth, son, you're not in the South now," Hendry said.
"Jesus, Devlin, what class of criminal are you lot breeding over
there?"
I
squatted down beside Cashell, hoping to get his attention. "What had this
to do with Angela, Johnny?" I asked, and saw, for a second, the slightest
glimpse of recognition. "It
was
Angela,
wasn't it, Johnny? You see, that's why Inspector Hendry here has contacted me -
on account of what happened to Angela. But this won't bring her back,
Johnny." I didn't intend to sound as patronizing as I did.
He
looked up at me fiercely, anger and pride defiant in his face. "And you
will, will ye Devlin? Fucking resurrect her? Is that it? You couldn't catch
cold in a snow storm. You're a joke. Fuck you." He grew more animated as
he spoke, getting angrier and angrier until he almost spat in my face,
"Fuck the lot of you!" Then in the silence that followed, his venom
spent, he sank back onto the metal frame again. He buried his face in his
hands, as would any grieving father who has vented his anger and frustration at
the person nearest him because of his failure to do so at those who actually
deserved it.
"The
boy he was seen chasing was Whitey McKelvey. His real name's Liam or something,
but everyone calls him Whitey. A bad wee bugger, too," Hendry told me as
he walked me back to my car, where Debbie and the children were waiting for me.
"He looks about ten but he's nearer eighteen. Undernourished. Some of the
lads here reckon it's deliberate so he can slip through windows more easily
when he's robbing a place. Whitey's been in and out of detention centres. He
hasn't done anything yet to do real time for, but it'll happen soon enough.
Wouldn't surprise me if he's involved in the girl's death. Knives are his
thing, mind you. I don't know if he'd be strong enough to lift a body, either.
He's wiry but fairly weak. Vicious rather than strong, you know."
"I
know him," I said. "He's popped up once or twice on our side too.
White-blond hair, FA Cup ears? Let us know if you lift him. Cashell obviously
thinks he knows something."
We
shook hands. "Surely," Hendry said, "though I hope you get him
first. Last time we lifted Whitey, he left the place in a right mess."
Later
that evening Superintendent Costello arrived at our house. He does this fairly
frequently; part of his personable, policing-the- community bit. He squeezed
into the armchair in the corner furthest from the TV and held in his hand the
teacup and saucer Debbie had given to Penny to bring him. The coffee table upon
which a plate of biscuits sat was just a little beyond his reach and the effort
required to set down and pick up the cup was evidently too much to make it
worthwhile. The cup looked tiny in his hand and he seemed awkward drinking from
it.
"Quite
a good response from the RTE thing," he said, holding the cup just below
jaw-level, his third and fourth fingers jutting out, the handle of his cup too
small to accommodate them. "Twenty-three calls. Twelve nutcases."
For
the press conference we had decided not to mention that Angela's body had been
dumped naked but for her underwear, nor the ring which she had been wearing, in
an attempt to weed out the cranks from those with genuine information.
"A
few promising leads though," Costello continued, stirring the tea now to
give him something to do with his hands and the cup. "A mention of a
traveller boy, presumably Whitey McKelvey. The two of them were seen together
on Thursday night, at a disco in Strabane. Drugs were mentioned too." I
nodded, unsurprised. "In connection with her - not him, Benedict."
"Might
be worth asking for toxicology reports from the state pathologist," I
suggested, though I suspected Costello had already done so.
"I
spoke to her earlier," he said, trying to place the spoon back on the
saucer as gently as possible. "The manager of the Cineplex saw Angela
there on Friday afternoon with her sisters. They bought tickets for a
children's matinee but went to some horror thing. They were thrown out at about
four o'clock." The spoon clattered off the side of the cup and fell to the
ground. Penny scurried over on all fours and retrieved it with a smile.
"On
Friday?" I repeated. "Are you sure? Cashell said she left the house
on Thursday."
"Best
check it out in the morning," Costello replied. "Preliminary findings
are through from the pathologist as well. They put time of death at somewhere
between 11 p.m. Friday night and 1 a.m. Saturday morning." As he spoke,
he lifted a cream-coloured folder out of the bag he had brought with him. He
passed it over to me and turned his attention to Shane, who was sitting on his
sheepskin rug, watching Costello with open mouth, a rusk held aloft in his
hand, his face smeared with soggy biscuit. He grinned, showing off his two
teeth, and gurgled with satisfaction.
I
skimmed through all the technical jargon. In short, Angela had been engaged in
sexual activity before she died - more than likely consensual and most
definitely using contraception; the lubricant found in swabs taken from her
suggested Mates condoms, and precluded any possibility of finding DNA
evidence, unless hairs could be found on her body.
Stomach
contents seemed to verify that she had indeed been at the cinema on the day of
her death: there was no doubt that Angela had eaten popcorn, chocolate and, at
a later stage in the day, burger and chips. The pathologist also noted a
partially decomposed tablet of some sort, speckled brown and yellow. Toxicology
would identify the exact constituents.
The
level of lactic acid in Angela's muscles - all her muscles - when she died was
massive, suggesting that they had been in vigorous use at the moment of her
death. The pathologist suggested that this was probably not consistent with
regular activity. It was more likely that Angela had suffered some kind of
seizure. She had died through asphyxiation. The bruising on her chest and other
bruising, discovered around her mouth when the lipstick was removed, suggested
that someone fairly small had sat or, more likely, knelt on her chest and
covered her mouth, perhaps while she thrashed beneath them in a fit. Eventually
the lack of oxygen and massive electrical activity in her brain became too
much.
"Someone
knelt on her?" I said, breaking my own rule of never discussing such
things in front of my children.
"Someone
small," Costello said, "and s-e-x-u-a-l-l-y active," he added,
mouthing the letters, while motioning with his head towards my children, who
sat pretending to watch TV but were listening to the exchange. I decided not
to tell him that Penny is top of her class in spelling - though I trusted they
had not reached polysyllables like that in Primary Two.
"Outside,
kids," I said and waited until Penny pulled the door quietly shut behind
her, hefting Shane in her other arm. "What do you reckon with the tablet?
E?"
"Could
well be. We'll find out soon enough. Check with the family about drugs history.
Check about epilepsy as well. If she'd never had a fit before, 'twould fairly
much guarantee that it's drug- related in some way."
I
nodded. "Still, this mention of someone small would seem to suggest Whitey
McKelvey."
"Looks
that way, Benedict," Costello agreed. "I'll put out a description,
see if we can't pick him up. Either that or hope the northerners get him before
Cashell's extended family go out and buy more petrol."
On
Monday morning I stopped off at the station early and was informed by Burgess,
the Desk Sergeant, about Tommy Powell's father, who had reported seeing an
intruder in his room at Finnside Nursing Home. Neither Burgess nor I felt it
warranted much of an investigation: a seventy-five-year-old man, placed in a
home because he suffers from dementia, claims someone was in his room, in a
place where the nurses check on the patients every hour or so, night and day.
It seemed like a no-brainer. On the other hand, Powell was not only very rich,
but also influential, with a mouthy son who would think nothing of going to the
local papers about how Garda carelessness left his poor father prone to intruders
in his own bedroom. I told Burgess I would follow it up myself when I got the
chance, just to keep Powell Jr quiet.
I
phoned ahead to the cinema to make sure that Martin, the manager, was there,
then drove round and took his statement, which simply confirmed all that
Costello had told me. Martin knew the Cashell girls; he'd recognized Angela
because of her blonde hair, and her two sisters - one older, one much younger.
Better still, he was able to show me the CCTV recording for that afternoon.
We
sat in the back office of the cinema, the building strange in daylight without
the smell of heating popcorn. Martin fast- forwarded the video until 2.45 p.m.
and we watched. A few minutes later a group entered the shot, coming into the
cinema. But the girl who should have been Angela was not wearing the jeans and
blue hooded top her father had described. In fact, she was wearing a short
skirt and a red coat. It was difficult to identify her for certain because of
the graininess of the shot, but Martin was convinced.
"That's
them," he said, pointing to the group.
"Are
you sure? That's not what we were told she was wearing."
He
sighed and looked at me as though I had disappointed him. "I'm telling
you, that was them. I served them myself; I remember Angela Cashell. My wife
calls that thing she's wearing a greyhound skirt."
"Why?"
"
'Cause they're just behind the hare." He laughed at his joke.
He
forwarded further through the tape, seeming to know where to stop and I
suspected that he had gone over it a few times already in preparation for a
visit from the Guards. At 4.03 p.m. Angela Cashell walked out of the cinema
with her sisters. Despite the graininess of the footage, I think she laughed as
she spoke to the other girls. I hope she did.
"The
younger one was the problem," he explained: "why we asked them to
leave. The older two could watch the horror movie, but not the young girl. It
would give her nightmares."
I
nodded and silently considered that the murder of her sister might have a more
lasting impact on her than a horror film.
Before
getting back into my car, I walked the few hundred yards from the cinema to the
spot where Angela Cashell had been found. The grass was well-trodden now and
some locals had left bunches of flowers lying just beyond the spot where she
had lain. Blue and white crime-scene tape fluttered in the breeze and tangled
in the branches of the old hawthorn tree to which it had been tied.
I
went over to the bouquets at the base of the tree, reading the cards attached
with grim curiosity. There was a bunch left by the
Cashell
girls. Sadie had left an old battered teddy bear with "From
Mummy
and Daddy with love" written on a piece of
foolscap t
ucked
into the ribbon around its neck.
The whole thing reminded me of the fairy trees people used to talk about in the
west of D
onegal.
Locals would tie talismans of
some sort around the tree and in return, the fairies would bless them. The base
of this tree
was
covered with Mass cards and
rosary beads, sympathy cards and
flowers.
Among
them I saw a photograph, clearly taken decades ea
rlier.
In it, a young woman was sitting on a set of concrete steps. Be
hind
her, I could see children playing on a beach. I
assumed the
woman
was a grandmother of Angela's
and replaced the photograph, tucking it behind a vine of ivy that snaked up
around the
hunk
of the tree. I read a few more of
the messages, laying each ca
rd gently
onto the bed
of damp moss at the tree's base.
