Borderlands (5 page)

Days
later I would still feel saddened by the simplicity of Sadie's
message;
what else could adequately convey a parental
emotion so i
nstinctive
it could barely be
expressed?

When
I arrived at her house, Sadie was sitting on a wooden kitchen chair on her
front door-step, smoking a cigarette and talking to her neighbour, who leaned across
the hedge that divided their two houses, The neighbour, Jim something-or-other,
nodded towards me as  I got out of the car and I heard him say, "Hey
Sadie, someone's brought home the bacon."

I
wanted to tell him to screw himself, but nodded politely and smiled. Sadie
stood up as I approached and walked into the house, leaving the door open,
which I took to be as close to a sign of hospitality as I was going to get.

The
two younger daughters were sitting at the kitchen table, al
most
exactly as I had last seen them and, I noticed, in
the same clothes. Both looked up from their play when I came in, then returne
d
to their dolls. Sadie was standing at the stove,
removing a fresh cigarette from the packet on the worktop beside her.

"Have
I not enough to be bothering me? What do you want?"

She
leaned over the stove, removing a pot from a gas ring and lighting her
cigarette from the flame. She had to drag at it several times to get it lit, billows
of smoke mingling with the steam from the pots which left her face damp and
flushed.

"I've
a few questions, Sadie. About Angela. If you're feeling up to it."

"The
fuck you care if I'm up to it. That bastard's gone and got himself nicked
again. Two days shy of Christmas. What am I meant to do? Eh?" She sat
down, a tacit recognition that, try as she might to blame me, she knew I was
not the architect of her misfortunes. I sat opposite her, studying her face.

She
had always been a fairly heavy woman, her chestnut brown hair tied back from
her face. It had lost its lustre now, and the deep brown, which once had
resembled a mare's mane, was streaked with white and dirty grey. Her skin was
weathered as leather, peppered with burst blood vessels. In another life, with
another husband perhaps, she could have been attractive in a way, but life
with Johnny Cashell had taken its toll on her. She looked significantly older
than her forty-seven years. I had never seen her look more dejected in my life.
I opened my wallet and took out three 50 euro notes that I had withdrawn from
the bank machine that morning in order to buy Debbie's Christmas present. Sadie
watched me with open suspicion.

"Sadie,
we had a whip-round at the station, seeing as all that's happened the past week
to you. Take this to tide you over Christmas."

Her
initial response was indignation and anger, though I assured her that it was
not charity as such, but simply a contribution to help her over a bad patch.
Slowly, and without thanks, she took the money, folded the notes once and
slipped them under the fruit bowl. Then she gestured towards me without
discernible reason, which I assumed to be a sign of her assent to the
interview. I looked at the two girls, not wishing to speak in front of them, but
Sadie, wafting the smoke from in front of her face, said, "It's okay. They
don't understand anyway."

"Sadie,"
I began, still glancing at the girls uncomfortably, "we th
ink
Angela took a fit of some kind—"

"Is
that what killed her? A fit?"

"We
don't know. We're fairly certain
that at some time before she
died
she went into a
seizure. Was she epileptic? Did she take
Ills?"

"Never.
But then, if she had a fit, she weren't murdered. A fit's
not
murder, is it?" For a moment a spark of hope
seemed to flicker
in her
eyes, as though the
means of Angela's death could somehow aft
er
the
final outcome.

"We
don't know, Sadie. She never took fits?"

"Never."

"Was
she
on medication of
any kind?"

"No.
She were on iron for a while, months back, but not now."

"What
did her iron tablets look like Sadie - in case maybe she look some recently and
you didn't know?"

"Why?
What difference do iron tablets
have to make?"

"Just
clearing some things up. Can I see her tablets?"

"Muire,
run up and fetch them tablets
from the bathroom, love," Sadie said, and the younger of the two girls -
the girl whom I had thought was going to speak on my last visit - ran up the
stair
s, her
footfalls thudding across the ceiling
above us.

While I
waited for her to return,
I
promised Sadie that we
would
bring Angela to them as soon as possible. "And her belongings,
Sadie.
You'll want that gold ring back,
I
'm sure,"
I
said,
remembering the ring Angela had been wearing.

"What
gold ring? She didn't wear no gold rings."

"Are
you sure? She was wearing a gold
ring with some kind of s
tone in it. It
looked
expensive."

She
paused for a fraction of a
second too long before responding
, "Oh,
right. Aye. That ring. Aye.
I
forgot about that.
Bought it herself, she did."

But I knew
she was lying. Angela didn't
wear a gold ring and
Sadie was
chancing her arm
for a piece of jewellery she didn't own.

A
more important issue, though, was where, then, the ring had come from. A
boyfriend or lover perhaps? The lover who had had sex with her before she died
and who was, presumably, the last person to see her alive and, logically,
therefore, her killer?

Muire
returned with the tablets. They were red and green in a plastic coating and
looked nothing like the description of the tablet discovered in Angela's
stomach.

"Sadie,
could you ask the girls to leave? I have one or two more questions," I
said.

"Go'on
out and play wi' yourselves," she said and the two girls left with their
dolls.

"Did
Angela have a boyfriend?" I asked.

"Probably.
She were a lovely looking girl."

"You
don't know any names, Sadie?"

"No."

"What
about Whitey McKelvey?"

"Are
you joking? You're as bad as that ignoramus I married. She wouldn't have spat
on McKelvey if he was on fire." She paused briefly as she realized how
inappropriate her choice of words had been.

"Then
why did Johnny go after him? They were seen together. Might she have been
seeing him without you knowing?"

"I'm
telling you. Whatever she was meeting McKelvey for, it weren't boyfriend
stuff."

"Do
you know where she stayed on Thursday night? Johnny said he hadn't seen her
since Thursday, yet we know she was with your girls on Friday at the cinema.
I'm a little confused, Sadie."

Sadie
paused and I sensed there was something she didn't want to get drawn on.
"She stayed with one of her friends; I don't know who. Then she met the
girls at the cinema on Friday and that's that."

"Where
did she go after the cinema?"

"A
friend's, I suppose. Is this not what you're meant to be finding out
yourself?"

"Why
did she stay away on Thursday night?"

"Girls
do these things. Wanted to visit her friend and have one of those American
things - sleep-over things." She knew as well as I did that the answer was
a weak one.

"Why
did Johnny say he hadn't seen her since Thursday? Did he not know that the
girls were with her on Friday?"

"They
had a row, that's all. Same as any family. He didn't need to know she was
taking the girls to the pictures. He wasn't lying; he
didn
't
know any better and none told him otherwise."

"What
was the row about Sadie?"

"None
of your business. It was about family stuff - nothing to do with what happened
to her."

"What
about Angela and drugs, Sadie? Any chance Angela was taking drugs? Was the row
about drugs?"

"You
lot are all the same. Always thinking the worst of people." But again,
despite her indignation, it didn't have any conviction. "Kids'll be kids,
Inspector. You know that. Or do your wee'uns not shite like the rest of
us?"

Muire
was playing in the garden by herself as I was leaving. stopped and watched her.
If she was aware of my presence, she did not show it.

"What's
your dolly called?" I asked.

"Angela,"
she replied without looking up.

"Angela
was very special to you, wasn't she?" I sat on the edge of the chair where
Sadie had been when I arrived. The girl nodded, hut still did not look up.
"Did she take you to the pictures on F
riday?"

"Some
scary thing. It was rotten!" She pulled a face, finally looking at me.

"Where
did you go after that?"

"Home."

"Angela
too?"

"No.
She went to see her friend, I think."

"Whitey?"

"No."

"Who,
Muire? Think. It's really important."

"I
dunno. She never said."

"Did
she say where her friend lived?"

A
shake of the head.

"Which
direction did she go in when you came out of the cinema?"

She
bit her bottom lip and frowned in concentration, but again couldn't answer me.
"The bus stop, just. We left her at the bus stop."

"Good
girl, Muire. That's going to be very helpful," I said trying to sound
sincere. "One other thing, Muire, and then I'll go. Did Angela have a
fight with someone the day before? On Thursday? Did she row with your
Mum?"

Muire
shook her head, but would not look at me again and busied herself with her
dolls.

"Was
it your dad she rowed with?" Again a shake of the head, but this time in
pantomime fashion, as a child does when trying too hard to appear truthful; my
own daughter had done just such a thing many times before. "What did she
row about with your dad?" Nothing. I squatted down right beside her,
pretending to play with her doll. "What happened, Muire? It's really
important if I'm going to catch the man who hurt Angela."

She
looked up at me and tears began to well in her eyes. "Angela said Daddy
was watching her."

"Watching
her?"

She
nodded solemnly. "In the house. Watching her when she went to bed." The
tears began to run down her face but she did nothing to stop them.

"Is
that what you were going to tell me the last day?" I asked and she nodded
at me shyly. Then her expression changed and her line of vision shifted to
above and behind me.

"Don't
talk to strangers, Muire!" Sadie said. Shoving past me and grabbing the
girl by the wrist, she pulled her to her feet. She slapped her sharply across
the tops of her legs, the girl's dress cushioning most of the blow. "Now,
get into the house."

Sadie
marched behind her and left me standing alone in the garden. I looked round to
see the neighbour from earlier, still standing at the hedge, smiling over at
me. "Can I help you, sir?" I asked.

He
shook his head, still smiling. "No. I'm just enjoying the entertainment."

"Would
you enjoy it more down the station?"

"
Piss off, prick," he said, then went into his own house.

When
I returned to the station, I learnt that Costello had assigned two uniformed
officers to assist me full-time in the investigation, while others in the
station could be co-opted when needed. This he explained to me while the two
sat outside his office door. I knew both of them fairly well.

The
more senior was Sergeant Caroline Williams, a native of Lifford, who had been a
Guard for eight years and had recently been promoted. Costello suggested that
she might be useful if the case involved a sexual crime, which was looking
increasingly likely liked Caroline. She was straight-talking and had a good
manner with members of the public. Luckily none of those people had seen her,
.as I had, baton into submission a six-foot-two rocker who had caused a
public-order disturbance after he tried to break into his ex-girlfriend's
house. He would probably have sued for GBH had it not entailed publicly
admitting that a woman of five-foot-five had left him crying in a doorway with
a broken nose.

And
yet, while Williams was meting out such punishments to woman-abusers and
wife-beaters by day, she was herself, for many years, being beaten nightly by
her husband, an insipid salesman frustrated in his life and content in venting
his frustration on the woman who had borne him a son for whom he had little
regard. Caroline Williams told no one about it, but one of the sergeants
noticed bruising on her arms and neck and, in the bar some nights later, we put
together the pieces. Foolishly, that same night, fuelled by the courage a few
pints can bring, four of us visited her house and taught Simon Williams a
salutary lesson in how Gardai stick up for each other and how it feels to be on
the receiving end of things. The following morning, while we congratulated
ourselves on our fraternal actions, Caroline Williams covered with make-up the
two black eyes her husband had given her in the belief that she had set us upon
him. We did not get involved in the affairs of the Williams family again.