Borderlands (6 page)
Then,
one night Caroline and her young son, Peter, arrived in the station and slept
in the holding cell to escape Simon's latest rage. Costello visited him the next
morning and, though no one knows what passed between them, by the following
weekend Simon Williams had left Lifford and moved to Galway.
The
second assignee was Jason Holmes, an officer who had moved to Letterkenny from
Dublin about eighteen months earlier. In Dublin he had been involved with the
drugs squad and had gained considerable kudos for helping bring down a dealer
whose name was linked with the murder of a leading lawyer. Holmes moved from
Dublin soon after, partly for his protection from reprisals and also, as he
told me later, because he had grown sick of city living. It was a fair enough
reason. Holmes was quiet, bringing a reputation from Dublin which circumstance
had not allowed him to cement. Again, Costello had a reason for including Holmes:
following the discovery of the tablet in Angela's stomach, his knowledge of
drugs might be useful.
Costello
called the two of them into his office and asked me to bring them up to date on
what we had gathered so far. It was useful to reconsider what we had learned
as I jotted down key times and events on the small easel blackboard Costello
had had placed in the corner of the room.
"So,
Angela is seen in the company of Whitey McKelvey, known petty criminal. On
Thursday, she has an argument with her father, when she accuses him, I think,
of spying on her getting undressed.
She
leaves home on Thursday, and stays somewhere overnight where she gets a change
of clothes. Both those clothes and the clothes she wore on Thursday are still
unaccounted for." Williams nodded.
"Friday
afternoon," I continued, "she takes her sisters to the c
inema.
Leaves just after four. Probably at the bus stop
by
4.15
p.m., f
rom
where, I think, she is going to meet someone, possibly a boyfriend. At some
point late that night, we think, she suffers a
seizure
and dies - possibly after taking drugs. Her body is dumped behind the cinema
that night and is discovered the next morning.
She
is wearing only her underwear, inside out, and a gold ring
which
I suspect her family didn't know she owned.
McKelvey has been linked with her, but I don't take him for a murderer. In his
fa
vour,
so to speak, the drugs link would seem to
suggest him, as
would
his size in terms of being
small enough to kneel on her chest. On the other hand, if this was a sexual
crime - which it seems to ha
ve
been, to some
extent - we know that her father, no stranger to our
cells
before this, might have had more than simple fatherly love for his
girl."
"Especially
if she wasn't his girl," Costello said, nodding sagely, ha
ppy
to have made a contribution. "Though I would
never have ta
ken
Johnny Cashell for a
paedophile."
"
A
couple more months and he wouldn't have been though, technically, would
he?" Holmes said, and smirked.
I
saw a flash of something in Caroline Williams's eyes, and then her face
softened and became unreadable. "It's still his daughter, though.
Biological or not."
"So,"
I said, "the questions are: where did she spend Thursday night? Who was
she with on Friday night? Who gave her the change of clothes? Where are they
now? Who gave her the ring? I don't think she bought it; it looked very good
quality, a family heir
loom.
Williams
spoke first. "Might be worth checking pawn shops, local second-hand
jewellers and so on to see if any of them sold it."
"Check
lists of stolen goods too," I replied. "This might have been part of
a stash. Someone lifted it and gave it to her. It's a safe bet her boyfriend,
whoever he was, didn't
buy
it for her."
"The
whole ring thing might be a little tenuous, Inspector," Costello suggested.
"Might be best to follow up the drugs angle too."
"What
about clubs?" Holmes said. "If drugs were involved, she got them
somewhere. She was spotted clubbing on Thursday night; chances are she was out
again on Friday. Maybe we could find out who she was with."
"Good,"
I said. "This is all good. If you each want to take your own suggestion
and follow it. Caroline, ask Burgess on the front desk to pull you up lists of
stolen goods for the past six months, say. Jason, start with the Strabane clubs
and move onto Letterkenny. We meet everyday at 9.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. to
review status. Okay?"
Costello
wished us success from behind his desk, and then we were dispatched to our new
office. It was actually a storeroom whose contents - mostly cleaning products -
had been removed. Two desks had been set facing each other, each furnished with
a phone and a plastic chair. Behind one of the desks, a corkboard had been
nailed. I was busying myself with pinning up crime-scene photographs and a
timeline for the case when Burgess phoned through from the front desk, despite
the fact that it was only fifty feet away.
"Detective
Devlin," he said, with a formality designed only to impress the public,
"there's a lady here to see you."
I
stuck my head out the doorway of the office and saw, standing beyond Burgess's
desk, Miriam Powell, wife of Thomas Powell Jr. I said earlier that I had known
him when we were younger, but it was not the whole truth. I knew Powell
because, when we were eighteen, he had started dating Miriam Kelly, unbeknown
to me, despite the fact that I was her boyfriend at the time. In fact, they had
been dating for four months before she told me.
We
were parked below the waterworks station, along the back road to Strabane,
lying on the back seat of my father's car. She had returned from holiday and
her skin was tanned. It seemed to radiate with heat and light, even in the
darkness of the car, and I could smell and taste coconut off her shoulders and
neck as I kissed t
hem,
pushing off her blouse and
fumbling with the clasp of her bra until she reached back and opened it for me.
She unbuttoned my shirt and ran her hand down my chest. Her breath fluttered in
my ear and tickled against the soft skin at the back of my neck, which affected
me in ways I could not express.
Less
than ten minutes later we were driving out onto the main road again. She did
not look at me as I apologised for my lack of control. Nor, indeed, did she
look at me as she smoked the cigarette that I gave her and told me why she did
not wish to see me anymore and that she wanted me to run her home. As I
watched her walk up the driveway to her father's house, I was disturbed by the
notion that she had provided for me out of pity, a last charitable act which
caused her no more thought than the cigarette butt she flicked onto the
driveway.
Three
nights later, at a local dance that my brothers had forced me to attend, I
watched her dance close to Thomas Powell with an ease that only intimacy can
achieve. She pressed her stomach against him while they swayed under the
flashing lights, and I watched her hand slide into his pocket as his slid onto
her buttocks. She whispered something to Powell and he looked over at me
watching them. Then, the two of them laughed at a shared secret, which I was
sure involved me and the incident in the back seat of the car. Consequently, I
can never meet Powell without seeing his smiling face in my memory. Likewise,
I can never see his wife without the same, overshadowed by the memory of the
urgency of her breath, hot against my neck, and the scent of coconut from
sun-kissed skin.
Burgess
pointed to me and I watched her now walk down towards our storeroom office,
deftly swaying from side to side to avoid the corners of desks and filing
cabinets which cluttered up th
e
main working area
of the station. She wore a linen suit to accentuate a tan achieved despite the
fact that it would be Christmas in two days. Her brown hair was cut short and
slightly spiked. She held a small handbag under her arm and held out a perfectly
manicured hand to me. Unsure whether to kiss it or shake it, I opted for the
latter and invited her to sit. She did so and crossed her legs in a languid
manner, straightening the right leg of her trousers to ensure the crease fell
properly. She wore sandals even though it was freezing outside. I noticed she
had a tiny gold ring on her little toe.
"Benedict.
Lovely to see you. How's ... your wife?" Miriam had attended college with
Debbie and they had lived together for a year, around the time when Debbie and
I started dating. Although she still invited us for drinks every so often and
sincerely promised to meet soon for dinner when we bumped into each other
coming out of Mass on an occasional Sunday morning, we all knew that the polite
invitations were just that, formalities which both sides hoped the other would
not insist upon honouring. "Deborah, that's right."
"Debbie's
great, Miriam. It's good to see you, too. How can I help you?" I tried to
avoid eye contact, but I believe that Miriam sensed my discomfort.
"Thomas
told me that he saw you at Mass yesterday. I believe he behaved deplorably
towards you, Benedict, and I wish to apologise. He's very upset about his
father, you see. Sometimes Thomas has difficulty in telling his friends from
..." She faltered mid-sentence, flicking open her handbag as though it
might contain the words she wanted.
"His
enemies?"
She
laughed gaily, dismissing the word with the slightest wave of her hand.
"We're all terribly worried about Tommy Senior, Benedict. Especially after
this scare, when he saw someone in his room."
"What
do you want from me, Miriam?"
"Thomas
is afraid that, after his behaviour yesterday, there might be some... animosity
between you that would hamper your willingness to investigate what happened
with his father. That's a
ll."
She paused, but
when it became clear that I was not going to speak, she continued. "Tommy
Senior did a lot for this county. He was a great TD in his time. A great
advocate for this area. Thomas wants to ensure that his father is afforded the
best treatment he can get. In all things."
Tommy
Powell Sr had indeed been a TD, a member of the Dail, the Irish government,
right through the worst of the Troubles. He had remained resolutely independent,
switching allegiances between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, depending on which
promised him most for Donegal. He had secured a number of large textile
lactones for the area, bringing with them several hundred jobs and a boost to
the economy. On the negative side, most of them set up along rivers and pumped
effluent into the water, leading to some high-profile environmental protests.
In every case Tommy Powell Sr appeared in the local media and decried the types
of liberals who would put fish before people and seaweed before food on the
table. His earthy, common-man rhetoric made him immensely popular, and even
those who personally disliked the man - and there were many - had to admire the
charisma he brought to the job. He had retired two years earlier, after
suffering a minor stroke, and rumours were circulating that, in the next
election, Thomas Powell Jr would follow in his father's footsteps and enter the
world of politics. Certainly he had the wealth and media savvy to undertake
such a venture as a vanity project, regardless of his sincerity or likely
success.
"I'll
see what I can do, Miriam," I said, and smiled, I hoped sincerely. She
toyed with the top button of her linen jacket, perhaps inadvertently drawing my
vision to the lace decorating the top of the white satin camisole she wore
underneath. Perhaps. She looked down at it, then looked quickly at me,
following my gaze away from it, a smile dancing on her lips.
"We'd
appreciate anything you can do, Benedict, what with this terrible business
about the young girl. Say, why don't you and
Debbie
call for drinks over Christmas? We could catch up on old times; recall our wild
youth." As she spoke, she widened her eyes in mock promise for a second
and smiled lightly.
I
returned the smile. "Perhaps we will, Miriam, but with the baby and so on,
it's difficult to get out."
She
stood. "Merry Christmas then," she said and leaned toward me, placing
her hand lightly on my shoulder and offering her cheek, which I kissed
awkwardly, feeling all the more clumsy as she kissed the air beside my own
cheek. I caught the scent of coconut and it would linger in my memory almost as
long as the sensation of her cheek on mine, her breath fluttering against my
skin.
I
watched her as she walked back through the main room of the station and out
past Burgess, noticing that a number of the other male staff in the room were
doing likewise.
Caroline
Williams's face appeared in my line of vision. "Your wife is on the phone,
sir. Shall I tell her you're busy?" she asked, and walked away before I
could answer.
Strabane
and Lifford straddle the banks of two rivers, the Finn and the Mourne, which
join the Foyle midway between the town in the North and our village in the
South, which are separated by a distance of half a mile. The Foyle then flows
for miles through Derry and on to Lough Foyle, where it joins the Atlantic. A
bridge spans the point where the three rivers meet and, traditionally, lies in
unclaimed territory, several hundred yards from where the British Army
checkpoint used to be during the Troubles and several hundred yards before the
Irish customs post. It was in this area of the borderlands that Angela Cashell
was found. Just at the customs hut, a sharp left turn brings you to Lifford
Community Hospital and, tucked behind but separate from it, Finnside Nursing
Home.
