Borderlands

by Brian McGilloway

  Costello's face blanched. "You're sure?" he managed.

  "Fairly much. If you need me for anything else, leave it until Boxing Day." He smiled ruefully as he waved goodbye and left.

  Costello moved to behind his desk and dropped heavily into his chair, grunting as he did so. "What happened, Benedict?" he said in a tone both friendly and weary. But I said nothing.

  He looked at me for a moment, waiting. I wanted to come clean and tell him all that had happened, but I could not speak.

  "What happened, Inspector?" he asked again, the change in mood evident.

  "I'm not sure, sir. Everything was fine when I left. He was lying sleeping, I think."

  "You think!" he said. "What about this bruising to his face?"

  "Picked up during his arrest, sir?" I offered.

  "A punch in the face?" he snapped, loud enough, I imagined, for those outside his office door to stop and pretend they weren't listening to our conversation.

  "Go home, Inspector," he hissed. "And get your story straight. Because in the morning I'll have to announce an internal enquiry to the press, the McKelvey family and every shit-head who's looking to run down this force. Someone's going to take a fall, Inspector - and it won't be me."

  I left his office in silence, absorbing, but not fully comprehending, all that he had said. Those outside were no longer even pretending not to have heard. I saw Williams with her son, who was wrapped in a blanket, lying asleep across three chairs in the waiting area. Williams was standing with her hand on Holmes' shoulder, and he sat, head bowed, staring at the floor. She must have spoken to me for he looked up at me, then he shrugged off her hand and came over.

  "What happened, Jason?" I asked.

  "I don't know sir. He... he kept goading me. Acting like he was off his head. I might have smacked him about a bit. Nothing serious, though. Nothing to do ... this," he said, gesturing slightly towards the floodlit cell with his head.

  "Nothing serious! He's fucking dead, Jason," I hissed, trying desperately to keep the conversation between us.

  "Well, I'm not the only one who smacked him about a bit, sir, am I?" With that he looked towards Williams, who held my gaze awkwardly for a second and then looked away.

  "Don't worry," he said. "We'll say nothing. Your secret is safe with us." He placed his hand on my shoulder, as Williams had done to him, and kneaded the muscle slightly. I looked at him, my mind buzzing with thoughts, my jaw muscles seemingly beyond my control.

  I stood outside, under the wash of the streetlamps, as the first light of a Christmas dawn turned pink the edges of the mountains behind the town and the rain began to ease. It felt fresh on my face after the heat of the station and my inclination was to walk down along the river, down to where Angela's body had been discarded one week earlier, but I realized that it was dawn and the children would soon be up for their presents.

  As I drove into the driveway, I noticed our living-room light on, and realised that I had missed my son's first Christmas morning and Penny's face when she opened her presents.

  I ran into the house, hardly bothering to shut the door behind me. Debbie was standing in the living room, Penny peering down from the top of the stairs.

  "What's happening?" I asked.

  "I told the kids I had to check first if Santa had been. Now he's been, we can bring them down." Her face revealed her disappointment. I tried to say thank you but only managed to mumble incoherently. "We'll get the kids settled with their toys, then we'll talk," she said. "This is their day - don't spoil it for them."

  And so, for an hour, my self-absorption left me and I played with my children and my wife, and recalled again all the Christmases of my own childhood and longed for that magic again.

  Then, over breakfast, while the kids played, I told Debbie everything: the arrest and the bite and my attack on McKelvey, nearly punching Williams, the incident with Miriam in the car, McKelvey's death, and Costello sending me home. As I spoke I felt the familiar catharsis of confession and began to feel a little better - though aware that reconciliation requires penance and reparation as well as simple admission of guilt.

  Debbie listened without talking. She drew back from the table while I spoke of my encounter with Miriam Powell, but not when I told her of my attack on McKelvey, even when I revealed the visceral thrill I had felt. When I finished she stared at her hands for a few seconds, then got up and went over to switch on the kettle.

  "I'll make more tea," she said, as I swivelled in my seat to watch her moving around the kitchen.

  "What do you think?" I asked, needing some response, but at the same time afraid that she would answer.

  "You're a stupid bastard, that's for sure. I can't believe you kissed Miriam Powell. Anyone but that . . . slut!" She lifted the teapot, then put it down and turned to face me, leaning against the cooker. "Did you not see it coming? Are you blind? Is this a man thing? I mean, for Christ's sake, Ben, could the signals have been any clearer?"

  "I'm sorry, Debs," I said, resisting the urge to excuse myself by pointing out that Miriam had started it.

  "I know you are, Ben. But that doesn't necessarily make it alright."

  "I know."

  "God, I'm so angry with you. Miriam bloody Powell. I'm warning you, Ben - keep that woman away from me or you'll be investigating another murder, I swear."

  I said no more, and eventually she sat beside me again and refilled our cups with hot tea.

  "You'll have to speak to Costello. Tell him the truth." It took me a second to realize that we were not still talking about Miriam Powell. Debbie continued, "Maybe you shouldn't have kicked him, but you're only human - I'd be surprised if you hadn't done something. But you need to tell Costello, in case he thinks you're involved more seriously. Holmes will tell him. You know that."

  "Maybe not," I argued, weakly.

  "Oh, come on. A uniform, starting out? Taking the heat for an Inspector? He'll rat you out first chance he gets to save his own skin."

  "That doesn't mean I should rat him out," I said.

  "I didn't say that. I said you have to tell Costello what you did. Let Holmes deal with his story. Costello has always dealt fairly with you. Square it with him."

  "What if they fire me?"

  "Then they fire you! We'll deal with it. Not telling Costello the truth is just going to make it worse. Drink your tea, have a smoke and then go and see him before this gets further out of hand."

  Costello lived on the road to St Johnston in a house which had once perfectly suited himself and his wife and four children, but which had become increasingly empty as, one by one, his children had left for college or to get married. The youngest, Kate, had gone to university in September. Now, Costello and his wife Emily shared the five-bedroom house and a silence broken only by the occasional echoing creak. The house had recently been whitewashed and the garden was carefully tended, the roses pruned for winter, the hedges carefully shaped.

  Costello did not look surprised to see me. He turned and walked back into the house, leaving the door ajar. I followed him in, slowly, closing the door behind me. Emily was standing at the door to the kitchen, a dishcloth in her hands. Behind her, sitting at the table in her nightdress, with a spoonful of cereal in her hand, was Costello's youngest daughter, Kate, presumably home for Christmas.

  "Hey, Ben," she called out, raising her spoon in a half-salute.

  "Hiya, Kate," I said, as Emily came forward and took my hand in hers.

  "Merry Christmas, Benedict. How are Debbie and the children?" she asked gently.

  "Fine, Emily. Merry Christmas to you, too," I replied, watching as Costello lumbered into the room which he called his office.

  "Tell them I send my love," Emily said, then ushered me towards the room with a kind smile I was unsure I deserved.

  I knocked on the oak-panelled door and went in. Costello was sitting at the roll-top desk which he had bought at an auction in Omagh and which I had helped him move into this room. He had on half-moon glasses and was read
ing an electricity bill.

  "What do you want, Benedict?" he said wearily, peering at me over the rim of his glasses before returning his full attention to the bill.

  "I need to tell you what happened; my involvement. I should have told you last night. I'm sorry." And for the second time that morning I recounted the events which had unfolded the previous night. Several times Costello stopped me for clarification.

  "So you hit him when he bit you?" he asked when I had finished.

  "Yes."

  "And he was alive and healthy when Harvey left?"

  I nodded.

  "And you didn't check in on him before you left?"

  I shook my head. It made little difference - he had died in any case on Holmes' watch.

  "Did you see Holmes search McKelvey when he lifted him?"

  Again, I shook my head. "I was out of it with the bite and that. I just assumed he had when they brought him in."

  "Do you know if Holmes did anything to the boy when he was in custody?"

  Neither of us spoke for a moment.

  "I thought so. Have you any cigarettes?" he asked.

  "I didn't know you smoked." In the five years I had known him I had never seen him do so.

  "Cigars sometimes, at night. But it's too early for a cigar. Use that for an ashtray," he said, emptying paper clips out of a ceramic finger-bowl sitting on the desk. He smoked, looking out the window, puffing the cigarette as though it were a cigar, while I smoked nervously beside him.

  "McKelvey was an animal, Benedict. In my opinion, he deserved everything he got. The death in custody thing is bad because we look stupid. He should have been searched thoroughly when he was brought in. Holmes should have kept an eye on him and his hands off him. There should have been more than one officer in the station overnight, for God's sake, Christmas Eve or not. Your bust-up with him should have been reported ... Jesus, every part of this thing is ballsed up." He ground the cigarette out, folding the filter down onto the tip to ensure it was extinguished.

  "But," he continued, "he killed that poor girl with those drugs. I hope the wee shite suffered before he went, because that's as much justice as Angela Cashell will get. It would've been better for all of us if Johnny had succeeded in burning the bastard alive last week. So, the question is, where do we go from here?"

  "Internal Affairs?"

  "Probably. I'll let Dublin decide that. In the meantime, whether it's right or not, we pin everything on McKelvey. I want that as the official line." As he spoke, he counted off each point on his fingers: "He was seen with the girl; we know he lied about seeing her on the Thursday night; we know from Coyle that he was providing her with drugs; we know they were sexually active; we found the drugs which killed Angela Cashell on his body when he died; physical description fits the size of the killer. Everything fits, so long as the post mortem shows an overdose of those rat-poison tablets as cause of death."

  "What about the bruising?"

  "My inclination would be resisting arrest. Holmes brought him in, didn't he? He's going to have to take some of the heat for this, whether he likes it or not. Probably best if he takes it for an over-enthusiastic arrest rather than criminal negligence."

  "Makes good PR," I said.

  "Well, that's how it is. We'll put Holmes on suspension for a week. With pay. He can work behind the scenes on the Boyle killing - long as he's not seen around the station. And McKelvey as a dead murderer rather than a dead victim will help. So, this is what you do, Benedict," he said, leaning towards me and tapping me on the knee. "Go into the station and collect your files. Then get this concluded. Put everything we have on McKelvey and leave no loose ends. If we can tie this up, we can focus on the Boyle boy. Today."

  The station was buzzing when I arrived, and I was able to get into the murder room and collect the blue lever-arch folder containing the notes on McKelvey without too many people noticing me.

  McKelvey's body had been moved and the cell lay empty, the floor marked with white chalk outlines where tablets and body had been found. I left through the back fire exit to avoid having to talk to anyone and drove home.

  Debbie was preparing dinner and the kids were playing in the living room, so I sat in the kitchen and reported all that had transpired with Costello. Debbie listened as she peeled potatoes and checked on the turkey in the oven, piercing the tender flesh to check if the juices ran clear. Then I set to work, drawing all the strands together and trying to fit McKelvey at the centre. The difficulty was that we did not have hard evidence: no smoking gun, no signed confession. But then, most detective work is circumstantial - fingerprints and DNA are useful only when a suspect has been arrested. But I did my best with what we had and tried to ignore the moral implication of the task I was performing. I knew that McKelvey probably had killed or contributed to the death of Angela Cashell, yet, as things were, I would never know for certain, and so I would always harbour doubts. I was bothered by the fact that I could not find any logical motive. As McKelvey had said himself, she was providing him with sex - why would he kill her?

  With breaks for dinner and family, I had the report finished for 8.30 p.m. and, after we put the kids to bed, I asked Debbie to read it through to see if everything made sense. She read it twice, both times looking bewildered, flicking between pages to double-check some piece of information.

  From her expression, I knew there was something that did not read right. "What is it, Debs?" I asked. As she replied, I realized what had been niggling me since Costello had run through the facts that morning.

  "Why was he wearing a condom?" Debbie asked. "McKelvey. Why would he wear a condom? According to this, he didn't care that his girlfriends got pregnant. In fact he seems kind of proud of it. Especially if he thought she was pregnant. Wearing a condom when you're already pregnant doesn't seem to make sense."

  Something cold shivered down my spine and settled deep inside me, causing me to shake involuntarily.

  "Unless maybe it was an AIDS thing. You know, an STD issue or something," Debbie suggested, but I knew now that was not the case.

  "No," I said. "It's been bothering me too. If he believed Cashell was pregnant, they'd obviously already had unprotected sex. Why would he suddenly worry about STDs that night?"

  "Maybe he didn't want to leave evidence, DNA, you know."

  I considered it, then shook my head resignedly. "Maybe. But that would mean he intended to kill her; that he had planned ahead and knew he would need to wear a condom to prevent being caught. It just doesn't fit. We had assumed it was an accident, a drug-trip that went wrong. At the end of the day, McKelvey didn't have cause to kill her. That's what that report doesn't say. He had no motive."

  "He thought she was pregnant. Maybe he was afraid she'd tell someone," Debbie suggested.

  "The same boy would've wanted her to tell someone. Another notch in his bedpost." I felt my back prickle with sweat and my face blazed. "McKelvey doesn't fit. We were following the wrong line all along. I've missed something." What I could not vocalize was the fact that, because of it, an innocent eighteen-year-old boy had died on a Christmas morning, while the rain washed the streets outside.

  I phoned Costello first and told him what I had concluded. He listened, cursed, then told me to leave it with him until morning so he could sleep on it. We arranged to meet at the station at 8 a.m. I asked about Holmes and was told that, as we had discussed, he had been suspended with pay pending an enquiry. Costello did not mention the beating to him, nor had Holmes told him about it.

  Next, I phoned Williams and started to tell her. In the background I could hear music playing, some kind of dinner jazz. She sounded a little tipsy and I could hear the rubbing of her hand on the receiver, as though she was covering it, to speak to someone.

  "Sorry, Caroline," I said. "Have you company?"

  "Kind of," she said, giggling in a way I had not heard her do before.

  "Someone I know?"

  "Maybe, Detective."

  "Is Holmes with you?" I aske
d, unable to suppress the surprise in my voice.

  "Uh huh," she said with a laugh.

  "How did he take the suspension?"

  "He's a little pissed off. He has to carry on doing the work, but nobody's allowed to know. Bit of a pisser. He'll get over it, though."

  "Listen, Caroline, this is important. I don't want you to tell Holmes what I'm about to say - if it turns out McKelvey was innocent, it'll hit him hard. His head could be on the block for this."

  Despite her earlier playful manner, she seemed to sober quickly and listened without interrupting. I asked her to meet me the following morning in the station.

  At bedtime, I went out to give Frank a dog biscuit and fresh water for the night. But when I opened the door of the shed where we kept him when the weather was bad, he wasn't there. I went back into the garden and called him several times, but to no avail. I called to Debbie for a torch and we set about searching the hedgerows and ditches near the house. I shone the torch briefly into the field where Anderson's sheep were grazing and was relieved not to find him there at least.

  Returning to the garden, I heard a familiar snuffling from the shed. Frank was lying inside, his head down, his tail wagging half-heartedly, waiting to ascertain my reaction to his absence. His coat was wet with rainwater from the long grass of the fields bordering our property and cuckoo spit hung off his ear. I tried to find how he had got out of the shed, shining the torch into the corners and behind the junk we had piled against one wall, but I couldn't see anything obvious. I ruffled the hair on the dome of his skull and locked up the shed behind me.

  Later, in our bedroom, I had to explain to Debbie why I had lifted my toothbrush away from the others in the bathroom, and why I was setting up the spare mattress. I cried as I told her my fears about Aids and whatever else McKelvey might have been carrying. She knelt down on the floor beside me and held my face in her hands. Kissing me softly, she promised me that everything would be alright - and I almost believed her.