Borderlands (21 page)
"What
happened to her?" I asked.
"Exactly
what I said. She disappeared one day. Vanished off the face of the Earth. New
Year's Eve 1978 to be precise."
"Inspector
Hendry, Sergeant Caroline Williams here, sir. You said 'presumed dead'.
Why?"
"Pleased
to meet you, Sergeant, so to speak. Call me Jim. We presume she's dead because
no one ever heard of her again; no bank accounts or savings touched, nothing.
Plus she lived a . . . salacious enough lifestyle, shall we say."
"Nicely
put, Jim," I said.
"I
said the lady could call me Jim, not you, Devlin," he replied, laughing.
He promised
to gather up whatever he could when he went back to work (another reminder that
we were eating into his day off) and hung up.
When we got
back, I dropped Williams off at her home and asked her to get Holmes to leave
the photograph from Angela Cashell's murder site in the station for me. Then I
went back home myself to leave the cake for Debbie. When I went in she was
baking fairy cakes with Penny, and Shane was sitting in his highchair, biting
on a plastic block. He smiled at me when I came in, holding aloft his arms to
be lifted.
"A
kiss for my favourite girls," I said, kissing them both on the foreheads,
before going over and lifting Shane, who clung to my shirt, giggling and
kicking his legs against my belly.
"How
was Donegal?" Debbie asked.
"Eventful,"
I replied and told her what we had discovered. "How was home?"
"Fine.
Pity we didn't have this cake two hours ago, though, when we had a visitor,
isn't that right, Penny?" Debbie said. But Penny had taken one of the
freshly baked buns over to Frank, whose bed had been set up in the kitchen. He
looked up and whimpered a little, though he snuffled down the bun in one
mouthful and wagged his tail limply, while Penny scratched the pink area
beneath his jaw. "Miriam Powell called," Debbie continued.
"Here?"
I asked.
She nodded
grimly. "We had a very interesting chat about all kinds of things: how
lucky I am, mostly; how shit her marriage is; how distant Thomas is; and so on
and so on."
"Did
she mention the other thing? The other night?"
"No.
She apologised for being drunk, though she smelt as bad this afternoon. She
wants you to call her about her father-in-law. I trust this time it won't
involve any physical contact."
That night
we all sat on the sofa and ate chocolate cake and watched films I had rented
from the video store. Penny fell asleep, curled up beside Debbie with her legs
stretched across my lap, and we wrapped her in a blanket and carried her to
bed. I stood at her window and watched as a group of gunmen - a smaller band
than the night before - trudged up past our house to Anderson's field in search
of the elusive sheepkiller, which I suspected was actually lying downstairs in
my kitchen.
Then Debbie
stretched across the sofa, her head on my lap, while I played with her hair and
stroked her neck and shoulder muscles. Debs fell asleep in minutes, so I sat in
the quiet and watched rubbish and enjoyed my home and forgot about Angela
Cashell, Terry Boyle, Ratsy Donaghey and Whitey McKelvey for a while.
At around
2.30 in the morning, I woke suddenly, having heard in my sleep the sound of
breaking glass. I lay in the semi-darkness for a moment, watching shadows and
orange light flicker and dance on the bedroom ceiling. Then I heard more sounds
of cracking, and the whine of metal, screeching like an injured beast, and I
realized what was causing the flickering orange light on the ceiling.
Downstairs,
I saw that someone had smeared dog excrement on the door and windows of the
house before throwing a lit petrol- bomb into my car. We managed to get the
children safely into the back garden, away from the blaze, when the petrol tank
exploded, blowing in all the windows at the front of the house and leaving
pools of flaming petrol on the lawn and dripping from the branches of the trees
surrounding our home.
It took
twenty minutes for the fire brigade to arrive. By then the car was no more than
a smouldering wreck and Debbie's parents had arrived to take her and the kids to
stay with them for the night. Several lads from the station arrived with odd
bits of wood and plastic to cover the windows until morning. Finally, Costello
himself arrived and made coffee with a nip of whiskey. He sat in the kitchen
with me and tried to figure out who had attacked my family.
"It's
a...
it's a bloody
disgrace is what it is," he said. "We'll hang the blackguards when we
get them."
"If
we get them," I said, knowing that if my car had been
bombed because of something to do with the Cashell case, then Costello himself
was a suspect. Not that I thought he would be standing in the middle of the
countryside at two in the morning, petrol-bombing cars. But that didn't mean he
couldn't get someone else to do it.
"So,
who do you reckon?" Costello asked.
"I'm
not sure, sir. Someone connected with the case, perhaps. Someone pissed off at
me for some reason. Mark Anderson, getting back at me for his sheep being
killed. Maybe the person Penny saw the other night. God only knows."
"Firebombing
smacks of Johnny Cashell," Costello suggested.
"Except
he's safely in jail in Strabane."
"Aye.
Maybe some of McKelvey's crowd," he replied. "Taking their anger out
on someone."
"Maybe."
Next
morning, the glaziers arrived to begin fixing the windows at the front of the
house. I helped the salvage crew clear the last twisted scraps of metal off my
driveway and hitched a lift with them to the station, where I picked up an
unmarked car to use until my insurance paid for a new one. Then I drove to
Strabane.
I passed
under the tin sculptures of musicians and dancers which dominate the local
skyline, standing some twenty feet tall. The winter sun was a lemon mist above
the hills to the east, twinkling weakly off the burnished metal of the
statues.
I went
first to the library. In addition to the books and CDs, internet access was
available, though even at this early hour it was booked solid. I asked for the
microfiche machine and copies of the
Strabane
Chronicle
from 1977 to 1979 and, fifteen minutes
later, started winding my way through the ribbons, one at a time, looking for
mention of Mary Knox. I went immediately for the first edition in 1979, which
was 4th January. The headline read, rather unimaginatively, "Woman
Missing", though at least it made my search easy.
Police are
appealing for information regarding the whereabouts of Strabane resident, Mary
Knox, who has been missing since New Year's Eve. Knox, in her early thirties,
is described as being of average height and build. She has dark brown hair and
brown eyes and was last seen wearing a floral print dress and black boots.
Anyone with information regarding Miss Knox's whereabouts is asked to contact
Strabane Police Station on 36756.
The
following edition, dated 11th January, provided more information, under the
heading "Fears for Missing Woman". More importantly, it included a
photograph showing a woman sitting on some steps leading to a beach. It was the
same photograph I had removed from Ratsy Donaghey's box of possessions:
Police are
still appealing for information about missing woman Mary Knox, who disappeared
on New Year's Eve. Miss Knox moved to the area three years ago, having lived in
Manchester, and has a pronounced English accent. She is described as being of
average build, with brown hair and eyes. Miss Knox was a well-known figure in
local circles and was last seen wearing a floral print dress and black
high-heeled shoes.
The change
of tense in the last sentence was conspicuous, perhaps an unintentional slip by
a copy-editor, perhaps a pragmatic acknowledgement that, after eleven days,
Mary Knox would not return. Over the following weeks the articles grew shorter
and shorter until, eventually, a week passed with no article at all and Mary
Knox was forgotten.
I had to go
back almost eight months before I found mention of her name again. Hendry's
comments about her lifestyle had made me suspicious, so I had looked at the
Court Report page in each edition, and sure enough, in April of 1978, her name
appeared: Mary Knox, of no fixed abode, had appeared before Strabane District
Court charged with soliciting and prostitution. She had pleaded guilty after
the court heard evidence from Sgt Gerry Willard, who stated that he had seen
the defendant provide sexual services in exchange for money in a lay-by on the
Leckpatrick Road. RM Edward Benning warned Miss Knox that she would face a
custodial sentence if she persevered in such behaviour. He stated that he had
spared her on this occasion because of her dependants.
As the
editions slid past me on the screen, Mary Knox's name appeared four more times:
twice for soliciting, twice for being drunk and disorderly. In one of the
soliciting cases, the officer giving evidence was identified as Constable
James Hendry. Knox's dependants were not mentioned again.
I phoned
Hendry and asked him to meet me for lunch, which, by the time he arrived,
consisted of sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, eaten on a park bench outside the
library. The sun was low in the sky and our shadows stretched along the
pavement.
"Anything
on Knox?" I asked, trying to eat and talk at the same time and doing
neither with any great success.
"Fairly
much what I told you yesterday."
"You
didn't tell me you arrested her."
"Did
I? I don't remember, but I'm sure I did arrest her. She was one of those
characters everyone in the town knew. Rumour was that she was piecing off a bit
of action to anyone in uniform who would give her a free pass." He added
quickly, "Not that I ever availed of the offer myself."
"Was
she working this side of the border or on the other?" I asked, wiping
mayonnaise from my mouth.
"Both,
I guess," replied Hendry. "She had quite a range of clients, all
things considered. If she'd been inclined to mediate, she'd have been a
one-woman peace process."
"No
thoughts on what happened to her?" I asked.
"She's
dead," Hendry said, in a matter-of-fact way, rolling his wax paper into a
ball and pitching it at the bin beside our seat. The paper hit the rim and
skittered onto the road. A woman walking past with her two children looked at
it, then at us, and scowled. "I'd say she's buried under a housing estate,
or in the woods, or under a beach or car-park somewhere," Hendry added.
"Who
did it?"
"Hard
to say, really. At the time, the IRA had 'disappeared' quite a few people:
informers, non-informers, people who spoke out against them in the local shops.
Disappeared and never seen again. Provos wouldn't admit it then, but it's
coming out now. Tortured them to find out what they'd said, then dumped the
bodies on building sites. So that was high up on our list. The other
possibility was some customer, unhappy with the services she provided. Maybe a
john she was blackmailing, threatening to tell his wife. Whoever did it
probably never killed again. She just vanished."
"The
newspapers talked about her 'dependants'. Who were they?" I asked,
lighting a cigarette and offering Hendry one.
"Two
kids. A boy and a girl. Damned if I know what age they were, though,"
Hendry said, drawing on the cigarette, then looking at the tip to ensure it had
lit fully. He blew the smoke out with an audible sigh, wiping crumbs from his
moustache as he pulled at it.
"What
happened to them?"
"I've
no idea. I'd nothing to do with the disappearance. I encountered her
occasionally. Knew her by reputation, really." He looked at his watch.
"I better go. Take it easy, you hear," he said, waving as he walked
off back to his station. Then he stopped and came back. "Thought you might
want to know. Johnny Cashell was up yesterday. Fined five grand. Got off light
all things considered, even if in some ways he did the community a
service!" he laughed.
After
picking up Hendry's discarded litter, I returned to the car. So Johnny Cashell
had been back in Lifford yesterday - shunting him right back to the top of the
list of suspects for burning my car. And also putting him nearer the top of the
list of people I had to speak to. First, I drove along the Derry Road to the
new council offices, where I asked for the registrar. The woman who came out to
help me was a heavyset, reticent lady, who seemed to whisper when she spoke. I
explained to her that I was looking for birth certificates for the two Knox
children, and gave her a general idea of the period in question. She took all
the details, then told me she would call me when she had copies.
Next, I
returned to Lifford, stopping off at the station to confirm what I already
knew to be the case: the photograph from the site where Angela's body was found
was the same as that taken from Ratsy's flat. Mary Knox. Williams had left a
note saying that she and Holmes had gone with a police artist to get a sketch
of the girl spotted with Terry Boyle the night he died. I headed straight for
Clipton Place to confront Johnny Cashell over the arson attack on my house. It
seemed, however, that he had been out the night before celebrating his release
and, slightly the worse for wear, was now in the pub, searching for the hair of
the dog.
