Borderlands

by Brian McGilloway

  At 2.30 a.m. we were woken by Penny's screaming. Crossing the gallery to go to the bathroom, she had happened to glance downstairs towards the front door of our house, she said. Someone had been looking back in at her. She saw the door handle twitching, she said. He looked evil, she said.

  We told her that she had had a nightmare, that she must have still been half asleep. Then I went out to the front of the house to check, while Debbie took Penny into our bed. I had to refill the kettle with water three times to completely wash away the muddy footprints from our doorstep in case Penny should see them the following morning.

  Chapter Nine

  Thursday, 26th December

  Boxing Day broke with spectacular blue skies and an explosion of a sunrise on the mountains behind the house. I had not slept again, keeping watch all night, until the sky turned to grey and the remaining puddles from the previous evening's rain froze and sparkled under the first rays of the morning sun. There was no wind, only a sharp chill that would keep the grass stiff until afternoon, so that it crunched beneath your feet as you walked. I told myself that it was a new day and tried to dismiss from mind our late-night visitor.

  At 7.15 a.m. I threw warm water on the windows of the car to defrost them, then left the engine idling while I gathered my notes for the meeting with Williams and Costello. By the time I came back out to the car, the water on the windscreen had frozen again. Inside, my breath condensed and froze to ice on the interior of the glass. I sat in the car, letting the engine warm up, and smoked a cigarette. The details of the case had bubbled inside my head all night. Having gathered all the evidence the day before to prove that Whitey McKelvey had killed Angela Cashell, I now had to start proving that he hadn't.

  I reached the station twenty minutes early, but Costello was already there and Williams arrived soon after me. Just before 8.00 a.m., a blue van pulled up outside. Several minutes later, a smaller white van with a radio antenna on the roof wound its way around the bend in the street and slid to a halt against the concrete posts outside the front doors.

  A young woman, wrapped tightly in a sheepskin jacket and wearing gloves and a scarf, picked her way carefully along the pavement and into the reception area of the station. We heard her introduce herself as a radio news reporter for 108 FM, a local independent station. I had heard her once or twice before on the news, though she was much younger than her voice suggested. She was wondering if we would like to comment on either the death in custody of William McKelvey or the attack on livestock the previous night by the "Wild Cat of Lifford".

  I wandered up to the reception desk and listened in. Mark Anderson had contacted the radio station that morning to say that one of his sheep had been mauled the night before and its innards removed from its body. He had told the receptionist at 108 FM that he had asked twice for assistance from Gardai, and both times nothing had been done.

  I was hoping to hear more details, but Costello cut the discussion short, telling the young lady that he would be making a statement later and there would be no comment until then.

  Our meeting was brief. First, Costello informed us that ballistics had found a match on the gun used to murder Terry Boyle. Apparently it had been used in a filling-station robbery in Bundoran a year or so previously.

  Costello then turned his attention to Angela Cashell and the fallout from McKelvey's death. He had decided to run with McKelvey as our killer for now, while we checked background details again. If another party entered the frame, in his words, we would deal with the McKelvey fiasco as necessary. If our investigation yielded nothing, we were to fold it quietly away and McKelvey would, to all intents and purposes, remain Angela Cashell's murderer.

  I asked him about the ring which McKelvey claimed to have sold.

  "Forget about bloody rings, Benedict. I want a quick result. Don't ignore the obvious just because it is obvious!"

  Williams and I returned to the murder room with the files. We worked through the morning, examining the anomalies and loose ends which hung over the initial investigation. I became increasingly convinced that the ring which Angela Cashell had been wearing was somehow central to the whole thing.

  "Why?"

  "She was stripped naked; her clothes were kept or destroyed; someone washed her body; used a condom. Everything seems to have been done to reduce the possibilities of forensic evidence. Everything was removed, except her pants and this ring. Why leave her pants?"

  "Well, the panties suggest some form of respect. Some residual affection or liking for the girl. Someone wanted her to have some dignity."

  "Her father?"

  "Maybe. Worth looking at again, certainly. Or a woman," she suggested.

  "Why?"

  "I dunno. It just seems like something a woman would do. It was a conscious decision to put her underwear back on her. I don't think a man would do that. In fact, you'd think if sex was involved somewhere, he'd want to keep something as intimate as that - a trophy, you know?"

  It made sense. "What about the ring? It has some significance. None of her family or friends knew about it."

  "Whitey McKelvey did. Maybe he did give it to her."

  "More likely than him selling it to someone who then came back and killed her," I said.

  "So, he steals it from Ratsy Donaghey, gives it to Angela Cashell, and she gets killed wearing it."

  "Do you think it's worth killing over?"

  "I dunno. Maybe we should get it valued."

  "But if it was worth anything, surely whoever killed Angela would have taken it," I pointed out.

  "True. So, it's a message."

  "To whom?"

  "I don't know. But you're right. We'll follow it up."

  I asked Williams whether she had had any luck contacting the Garda in Bundoran who had dealt with Donaghey's murder.

  "Not yet. He's off until tomorrow, I'm told. I need to speak to him about the gun used to kill Terry Boyle, too. What do you think is the Donaghey connection with Cashell? Drugs?"

  "Maybe," I said, "But he was a different generation. More of an age with Johnny Cashell than Angela. Follow it up anyway. Get that video of the bar again as well. McKelvey denied being with Angela that night. Let's recheck it and see if he was lying or not. In the meantime, I'm going to a wake."

  "Whose?"

  "Angela Cashell's. Her body was brought back on Christmas Eve. She's to be buried tomorrow. I want to see Sadie Cashell before that."

  "Is it not a bit early? It's only just gone ten?"

  "Morning's the best time for us; less chance of a fight brewing." I lifted my keys. "Do you want to come?"

  "Are you kidding?" she said, grabbing her coat.

  A wake is a long-held tradition in Ireland. The body is laid out for two nights before the burial. Neighbours and friends congregate - ostensibly to pay their respects, but on occasions the wake becomes a party. Mourners comment on how well the deceased looks, as though he or she were not dead. Plates of cigarettes are passed around like sandwiches. At some stage the whiskey is opened and passed among the mourners; someone produces a tin whistle or a fiddle and a full-scale ceilidh breaks out, with people jigging and reeling around the coffin and resting their empty glasses on the white satin lining.

  The following morning, the wake-house smells like a pub that has been left unaired. Tea-stained cups are gathered and washed; sandwiches are made in preparation for the next night, which promises to be even bigger than the previous.

  Sadie Cashell was sitting by her daughter's coffin when we entered the house and, despite the early hour, three neighbours sat with her. I gave her the Mass card I had had signed by Father Brennan on the way in, offered my condolences, and stood beside her at the coffin and prayed three Hail Marys for the redemption of the soul of Angela Cashell. Sadie leaned over the coffin, pushed a wisp of Angela's blonde hair back from her face and arranged the ruffle at the throat of the shroud she was wearing. I finished my prayers and laid my hand gently on Angela's, which were joined in front of her, intertwined w
ith a rosary. Her skin was cold and hard, almost like wax. Her expression was one of serenity: angelic. It was an appearance certainly preferable to my last sight of her, lying on a bed of leaves and damp moss, the empty winter sky reflected in her unblinking eyes.

  I sat beside Sadie on one of the hard wooden chairs which a neighbour must have lent her and passed her a half-bottle of Bushmills that I had bought in McElroy's Bar out of hours.

  She held my hand in both of hers, which were shaking slightly, and rubbed the back of my hand with her thumb. She told me that Johnny had not been released for the wake, but hoped to be back for the funeral. She told me how the other girls had taken it. Muire had run away the day before, but was found by a neighbour walking to Strabane. Then she asked if we knew who had taken her daughter from her, and I told her that I thought we did and that, if she believed in God, he would be facing justice. She smiled and gripped my hand tighter.

  "Sadie," I said. "I want to ask you a favour. About the ring Angela was wearing. Do you have it?"

  "Why?"

  "Listen, Sadie, I know it wasn't hers, but I don't care. Keep it if you want. But I'd like to borrow it for a day or two. I think it might have something to do with what happened to her."

  She seemed initially unwilling, but eventually agreed and, with some reluctance, turned away from her daughter's coffin and left the room. I heard her going up the stairs and moving about above us. Half a minute later she returned with the ring, still sealed in the plastic evidence bag in which the pathologist had placed it. She handed it to me without a word and sat again beside her daughter.

  "Have you touched this, Sadie? I asked. "Since you got it back. I need to know - for fingerprints."

  She looked at me and shook her head, once.

  "I'm sorry, Sadie," I said. "I had to ask." I told her that we had to leave and she stood to walk us out to the door.

  "Johnny was angry at me, you know. For taking that money," she said. "He told me we don't need a copper's charity."

  "We all need a little help sometimes. Johnny's just raw over Angela. It's understandable."

  "She was his favourite, you know. In a strange way, she was his favourite. He treated her as if she were his own daughter."

  I took her hand in mine and looked her in the eyes. "She was his daughter, Sadie, and I'll not let anyone say any different."

  She pulled me close to her quickly, gripping my arms in her hands, and muttered something into the nape of my neck. I felt the wetness of her tears against my skin.

  By the time we arrived back at the station a fairly large group of reporters had gathered across the road in front of the visitors centre. Someone was holding court before them. He was too slim to be Costello. For some reason I was not wholly surprised when I realized that the figure in the dark suit decrying Garda incompetence was Thomas Powell, attempting to assume the mantle his father had passed to him. It was perhaps no accident that he had chosen the road in front of the old courthouse, from whose roof eighteenth-century recidivists were hung in front of crowds of thousands, to give his lecture on crime and justice in Lifford.

  "In the past weeks, three young people have died, one while in Garda custody, and yet nothing seems to have been done. Livestock is being slaughtered by a wild animal of some sort, but again nothing has been done." He scanned the group as he spoke, making eye-contact with as many of them as possible, perhaps trying to remember faces for future press conferences. Then, his eye caught mine and I swear he smiled. "Instead, we have officers following personal agendas while we suffer the effects of their incompetence." He pointed in my direction. "Perhaps Inspector Devlin here would elucidate further on what Gardai are doing to clean up this mess?" He turned to the cameras, dictaphones and microphones, clearly assuming that I would stick to Costello's "no comment" dictate. "My father campaigned tirelessly against Gardai incompetence and I regret that I seem to have to do the same and represent the people of Donegal with an impartial voice."

  "Let's take the fight to him, shall we?" I said to Williams, and walked over to stand beside him in front of the reporters. I felt Williams tug at my jacket, saw the panic register on her face; then she stepped back, away from the glare of the lights.

  Powell was alerted to my presence by the radio reporter I had met earlier. "Inspector, any comment on these claims?"

  I raised my hand and waited until the gaggle quietened a little. I spoke slowly and clearly, without looking at Powell, who stood beside me, his arms folded, "I've just returned from visiting one of three houses on both sides of the border, where a family has spent Christmas in mourning for the loss of a child. I think perhaps we should respect that, rather than using their coffins as soap boxes from which to electioneer, don't you?" I smiled sweetly, then turned and walked into the station. Costello glared at me from his office door, having watched the performance from between the slats of his drawn blinds.

  I asked Williams to take the ring to Patsy McLaughlin, one of our oldest forensics experts, a man known for his care in lifting evidence.

  While he checked the ring for fingerprints, I phoned my father, the man Powell Sr had described as the "furniture man". My father has worked with antiques all his life and, consequently, knows most of the older and more knowledgeable antique dealers in the area. I didn't know if the ring was an antique, but it looked old enough to at least be worth checking. I also wanted some indication of its value, for it seemed no more plausible that such an object should belong to a drug dealer like Ratsy Donaghey than to Angela Cashell.

  My father said he would phone me back in five minutes. Half- an-hour later, he got back to me to say that he had found a man in Derry, Ciaran O'Donnell, who would look at the ring. I arranged to meet them at O'Donnell's shop on Spencer Road at 5.00 p.m., by which time I hoped Pat McLaughlin would be finished with it. As it transpired, he was done with it much sooner, for an hour later he and Williams arrived at the murder room with the news that they had found nothing, which didn't explain why the two of them seemed so happy. McLaughlin explained.

  "I laughed when she brought it. Do you know how many sets of prints you get off something like a ring? But there was nothing. Do you realize what that means?"

  "Obviously not, or I'd be smiling like you two. Astound me," I said.

  "Think about it, Detective. Your prints aren't there, are they?"

  "Of course they're not. I didn't touch it..." I said impatiently

  "What about the pathologist? Her prints aren't on it either."

  "Because she wears gloves when she's working," I said, my excitement rising fast as I reached the clear conclusion.

  "Exactly. And so did whoever put the ring on the girl's finger, because she clearly didn't do it herself. Someone was very careful about putting this ring on her."

  At five o'clock we met Ciaran O'Donnell and my father outside his shop, an old unit built on a slope off Spencer Road in Derry. The slope runs down to the River Foyle, which splits the city in half.

  Having been closed for Christmas, the shop was bitterly cold, making my fingers so stiff and blue that I pulled my coat sleeves down over my hands and balled them into fists. The air was musty and damp underneath the sweet smell of furniture polish that pervaded every surface.

  O'Donnell was an old man, bent slightly from the mid-section of his spine. His hair grew symmetrically on both sides of his bald dome in wisps of grey and white. He wore thick-lensed glasses, which he removed to examine the ring, putting a jeweller's loupe in his right eye. He sat at an old oak desk and flicked on a tiny desk-lamp and examined the ring in minute detail for a few minutes, turning it in various directions, brushing it lightly with a tool that resembled a tiny toothbrush. Then he set it down and lifted a green book from the bookcase in the corner of the room. He carried the book to the desk, put the glass in his eye again, and examined the ring with his left eye shut, then perused the book with his right eye shut. Finally satisfied, he put everything on the desk in front of him and called us over.

  "An interesti
ng piece," he began. "The ring is eighteen-carat gold with a moonstone insert, surrounded by twelve rose-cut diamonds. What's interesting about this is - well, two things, really - one of the diamonds has been replaced. It's a very neat piece of work, but it's sourced differently from the others: there's a slightly pinkish tint to it under this light. The second thing, which isn't really interesting, is that this is not an antique. I'd say it's thirty years old at most."

  "Any idea about where it came from?" Williams asked.

  "Well, there's good news on that front," he said. "It was made in Donegal. By Hendershot & Sons to be precise. They were very exclusive jewellers during the '70s and '80s, though they've disappeared into the woodwork recently, so to speak"

  "How can you tell that?" I asked, while my father smiled and nodded his head.

  "Very simple, really. They stamped the ring with their own mark beside the gold mark."

  "What about the engraving, the 'AC'?" I asked.

  "No idea. Except I think it was engraved when the ring was made; the inside surface of the engraving is as dulled as the rest of the ring. More recent work would leave a slightly shinier surface."

  "What would you recommend we do now?" I said, glancing at Williams.

  "Well, you're the policemen - police officers - so I wouldn't want to say. But I'd contact Hendershot & Sons and see what they can tell you."

  "I thought you said they'd vanished into the woodwork," Williams said.

  "Yes," he said. "In terms of market share and so on, they have. But they're still open. It was a side street off from the Atlantic last time I was there, but that was some years ago and they may have moved. Check the phonebook."

  We thanked Mr O'Donnell for his help and I promised my father we would visit him and my mother soon. "Do," he said. "And give the kids a hug from me." I promised I would. Then Williams and I drove home.