Borderlands (28 page)

"So
you think she killed Cashell and Boyle?" Hendry asked.

"Best
guess," I said. "We know the ring belonged to her mother. We know she
had a photograph of her mother wearing the ring. As a Garda officer she might
have had access to a stolen items list." I knew this point was weak, but
continued nonetheless. "She would have had a uniform. Angela Cashell was
apparently having an affair with her. My guess is she realized that Donaghey
had the ring. He's tortured and killed. Presumably he named the person or
people involved in killing Knox, including Johnny Cashell and Seamus Boyle.
Coyle befriends Cashell's daughter, who then ends up dead, wearing the ring
Whitey McKelvey stole and which he claimed he'd sold to a girl in a bar. And I
suspect our eyewitness who spotted Terry Boyle leaving the pub with a girl may
well have their memory refreshed if we can show them a photograph of
Coyle."

Forty
minutes later the uniforms returned to say that none of the neighbours had seen
Coyle in a week. In fact, the previous Tuesday was the last time she'd been
seen; the day I had visited her. One of the neighbours recalled seeing a car
which fitted the description of mine - minus the rust they described - around
lunchtime. They also recalled that, later that night, a blue car with a
southern registration had been parked outside Coyle's house until morning. The
witness didn't see the car leave, though, as she went to listen to
Today
on Radio 4 in her
'sun room' and when she looked out afterwards, the vehicle had gone.

"Best
we can do is put out a 'be on the lookout' bulletin to all officers, north and
south," Hendry said as we walked back out to our cars. "She can't
stay hidden forever. Unless, of course, she's done what she set out to do and
has vanished, like her mother,
into the
night!"
This last phrase he said in a mock
spooky voice and Williams laughed despite herself. Hendry flashed a grin at
her, then winked at me, his face sober and drawn. I felt my phone vibrating in
my pocket. Kathleen Boyle's number flashed on the screen. Her ex-husband had
arrived, and wanted to talk.

We were
sitting in Boyle's living room again, Seamus Boyle on a hard- backed chair, his
elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands. The man looked shattered.
His hair, ginger mixed with grey, was unkempt and straggled over his forehead.
His eyes were puffy and red, the whites bloodshot; his skin was sallow and
smelt of sweat and cigarettes. Throughout our conversation he stuttered and
stopped, catching his breath, swallowing back the pain that must have hit him
the moment his wife confronted him about the photograph - the one now sitting
on the coffee table in front of him. He must have suspected the identity of
the subject when his wife mentioned the photograph. One glance had confirmed
it, and he had erupted.

"I
can't ...
I can't believe he's not here,"
Boyle spluttered, incomprehension creasing his face. "And for this. For
one stupid fucking ..." He turned away from us and faced the window, head
tilted slightly, as if to stop his tears from running down his cheeks. He
sniffed heavily several times, rubbing at his face with the palms of his hands.

"We
know who she is, Mr Boyle," I said. "We need you to confirm what
happened to her."

"She's
dead," he said simply, still not looking at us. "She's dead and
buried somewhere - I don't know where."

"Did
you kill her, Mr Boyle?" Williams asked.

"I
might as well have done," he said, looking at us both. "For what it's
done. I might as well have."

It was
neither confirmation nor denial. We waited in silence, until he composed
himself and spoke again.

"I
wasn't the one, if that's what you mean. But I knew about it. They told me
afterwards. Got me to burn the clothes she was in."

"We
think we know who you mean, Mr Boyle, but we need you to give us their
names."

"Ratsy
and Johnny Cashell. Ratsy did it. Cashell helped him get rid of the body, I
think."

"Why did
they kill her?" Williams asked.

"Orders.
Someone paid them," he stated. "You see, Ratsy and us worked together
as bouncers, when I was wee, like - in my twenties. But Ratsy had other things
going on. We helped him out when he needed a bit of weight behind him. He was a
skittery wee shite. He got us work; we had to help him out. Once you're in, you
can't back out again. We were all responsible. Our Terry wasn't, though,"
he said, and we lost him again to whatever image of his son's last moments he
was replaying in his mind. His entire body shuddered with his sobs, his tears
spilling unchecked. Across the room from him, perched on the edge of an
armchair, Kathleen Boyle watched him with a mixture of pity and horror on her
face.

"Why
do you think he did it?" Williams asked.

"Someone
asked him to, I guess. Ratsy never did anything unless he was getting paid for
it."

"Who
do you think paid him?" I asked.

He shook
his head, then took deep breaths again until his tears subsided. "Could
have been anybody," he said, his lips bubbling.

"What's
Ratsy's connection with IID?" Williams asked.

Terry
Boyle's expression showed us that he had no idea what we were talking about.
"Could have been anybody," he repeated, stunned by the direction his
life had just taken.

Williams
dropped me at the station, which was by now almost in darkness. We pull the
blinds at night in the station but leave the lights on inside. That way, it
appears to all who pass that the Gardai are ever watchful, when the truth is
that we're usually all at home, bathing our kids or having a beer in front of
the midweek movie.

I popped
into our storeroom/office and lifted a pile of paperwork which had been left
for me. I noticed on top of it a fax which I assumed to be from Templemore.
There was also a note telling me that two officers from Sligo would be in the
station the next day to begin an investigation into the death of Whitey
McKelvey; I was to make myself available to be interviewed. I called Debbie and
grovelled my excuse for being late for dinner, patted my jacket to make sure I
had my gun, and locked up for the night.

As I turned
the key in the front door to engage the deadbolt, I became aware of a figure
standing watching me. The woman was heavy-set and squat, her blonde hair
straggled in rats' tails. She had her hands buried deep in the pockets of a
tweed overcoat which would have better suited a man.

"I
know your face," she said. "You're that detective."

I smiled a
little uncertainly and approached her. "That's right. Can I help
you?"

"My
name's McKelvey. Liam was my boy."

I stopped
walking, caught completely off-guard. "Mrs McKelvey, I'm so sorry.
I..."

"I saw
you on TV, saying you'd visited the families of them what died. How come you
didn't visit us? The travellers? Are we not good enough for you, officer?"
she said, emphasizing the last word disdainfully.

"No,
that's not true.
I...
I'd wanted to visit you.
I...
I felt guilty, I
suppose. I'm sorry."

I walked
towards her again, my arms outstretched, believing for a second that she would
take my hands and, in doing so, would help alleviate the guilt I felt.

Instead,
she coughed deep into her chest and spat a globule of phlegm at me before
turning and walking off. I could not allow myself to wipe the spit from my face
until I reached my car.

As I
fumbled in my pockets for my keys, I heard, too late, the rush and rustle of
clothing behind me. I spun into the blur of two male figures, arms raised,
bearing down on me. Red and green lights exploded in my field of vision with
the first blow and I fell forwards, face down, into the gutter. I could feel
the dirt and grit scrape my face, taste the mud in my mouth. My head thudded, a
sudden coldness spreading from the area where I had been hit. I put my hand to
the back of my head and examined it in the dullness, though I could feel the
stickiness of the blood without even looking. A glass bottle clattered to the
ground beside me and I tried to shield my face with my arms as boots thudded
off my trunk and legs. I felt one of the kicks connect with the back of my
head, where the skull and spine meet; I felt the bones grating against each
other and my stomach heaved. Eventually, the night sky started to spin, then
everything slid into darkness.

Tuesday, 31st December

I drifted in
and out of consciousness, and remembered seeing a pair of denim-clad legs
running away. I thought I saw an old blue car drive past. The streetlamps
danced about me, the snowfall, thick and oppressive, flickered on the edges of
my vision. I dry- heaved onto the street, spitting my mouth clean. Finally,
slipping and skidding off the pavement more than once, I managed to make it to
the nearest row of houses, built on the site of the old asylum at the end of
the road.

Forty
minutes later, I lay in the Community Hospital next to Finnside Nursing Home,
receiving medical attention for the second time that week. Not long after,
Debbie arrived and put her arms around me, scolding me because, though she knew
it was not my fault, she had no one else to scold.

The doctor
told me she thought I should stay in overnight, just in case I had suffered
concussion. I asked her for a dose of painkillers so I could go home.
Eventually she relented, wrapping a thick bandage around my ribs, which were
flowering with welts and bruises, reddish-purple like twilit snow clouds. As I
pressed tentatively at my wounds I was reminded of Johnny Cashell and wondered
whether the people who had left him in much the same condition were also
responsible for the attack on me. After all, my attackers had struck just as I
turned from McKelvey's mother. If they were indeed travellers, there would be
little prospect of my ever catching them. They would vanish into the fold; pack
up and shift to another site for a while. And in a way, I suppose, I believed
that I had deserved it. The Catholic in me needed to be punished and, perhaps,
now I could forgive myself.

Despite the
painkillers, I could not sleep again that night, and fears played continually
on my mind. I dozed uneasily until 3.30 a.m., waking several times to pull the
blankets up off the ground or from around my feet. Debbie lay curled beside me,
blissfully unaware. Even with the tablets, my head thudded dully when I lay
down, and my arms and legs ached as though fatigued. Eventually, I got up.

Shane's
breathing whistled slightly from the cot at the foot of the bed as he slept,
arms outstretched, his face turned to the side and his lips pursed. I stood and
watched him, wondering, not for the first time, how something so perfect and
beautiful could have been the result of any process in which I was involved.
And also not for the first time, I found myself resenting a job which kept me
away from him and Penny and Debs as often as it did. I wondered if I had chosen
the job precisely because it required me to immerse myself as much in it as in
real life.

Unwilling
to think too deeply about it, I took my cigarettes and lighter and went down to
the kitchen for a smoke. I sat in the darkness at the open doorway, trying to
blow my smoke outside, able to see clearly by the snow's reflected
luminescence. The flakes were falling thick and steady now, a continual,
hypnotic pattern.

When I was
done, I opened the window to clear the smell of smoke and lit a candle. Then,
for the want of anything else to do, I flicked through the documents I had
taken from the station.

Sometime
after my fourth excursion to the back door for a smoke and my second cup of
coffee, I read through the list of recruits who had joined Templemore Training
College in 1992. Of the 150 names, twenty-seven were women. In the midst of all
the names, Aoibhinn Knox's name appeared. It was not until I had scanned the
list a second time, through sheer boredom, that I recognized a second name on
the list and, all at once, I believed I knew for certain how Coyle had learned
about the stolen-items list, and I suspected 1 knew who had helped her kill
Donaghey and who had had sex with Cashell before dumping her body. And I
realized who had been the driver of the blue car seen at her house. One of Aoibhinn
Knox's colleagues in Templemore was Jason Holmes. And what did this mean for
Coyle's brother, 'Sean Knox'? Was he even involved? Or was Holmes her only
accomplice? Could Holmes be her brother? Was it an assumed surname - a biting
pun on his upbringing, perhaps? Or were such thoughts and plots the stuff of
crime novels?

As I
thought over the case, everything seemed to fall disconcertingly into place.
Holmes had had inside knowledge of the course our enquiries had taken. He had
identified McKelvey in the videotape, turning off the tape before the
'McKelvey' in question would be seen entering the female toilets. He had taken
statements from the bars. He had spent the night in the station when McKelvey
had supposedly taken an overdose. Indeed, through his involvement with the
drugs team in Dublin, I guessed, he'd have had access to the drugs which had
killed both Cashell and McKelvey. He had made a point of reminding me of my
assault on McKelvey and, in doing so, had implicated me in his own beating of the
boy. I recalled McKelvey's broken finger. What if Holmes had forced the boy to
take the Ecstasy tabs? Holmes was meant to have searched him, yet McKelvey
still, apparently, managed to get the Es into his holding-cell. Most
worryingly, Holmes had begun a relationship with Williams once he was removed
from the murder team, and had presumably asked her about our findings and
progress. He could have kept Coyle abreast of our every move, including the
fact that we knew the connection with her mother. Suddenly, what I had
considered to be poor police work on Holmes' part became more sinister.