Borderlands

Chapter Ten

Friday, 27th December

I left the house at 7.30 the following morning and drove to Williams's house, a two bedroom bungalow in Ballindrait. As I approached, a blue Sierra drove past, the windows misted and icy, but I was almost certain that the man hunched over the steering wheel, looking like he had been hurried out of bed, was Jason Holmes.

I did not ask Williams about it until we passed through Ballybofey twenty minutes later. "Did I see Holmes leaving your house this morning?" I asked in as innocuous a manner as I could.

"Yes, Father, you did," she said, looking out the side window. "He slept on the sofa," she added, turning to look at me.

"Hey, I didn't ask. Nothing to do with me," I said, holding one hand up off the steering wheel in mock placation.

"I know," she said. "And I'd keep it that way, unless you want to end up like your dog."

"Fair enough. I was only going to ask how he's doing. With the McKelvey affair."

"Fine, I think," she said. "He doesn't say much. By the way, he thinks he may have a hit on the Terry Boyle thing. A barman remembered seeing him leave some nightclub in Raphoe with a girl on the night he died. Small girl – brown hair. He's going there today to get a description, maybe do up an e-fit." She rolled down the window and dropped out the gum she had been chewing.

"That's littering," I protested.

"As I was saying," she continued, ignoring my comment, "I think he's alright with it. So long as he thinks McKelvey is guilty."

"Did you tell him where we were going?"

"Yeah, though I said we were following a lead on McKelvey, tying up loose ends, checking out the ring. He wanted to know what he was missing. You know?"

"Understandable," I said.

We arrived on the outskirts of Donegal around an hour later. We called first at Hendershot amp; Sons Jewellers which was, indeed, still beside the Atlantic restaurant. From outside, it looked quite rundown: the woodwork around the door and the sign above the window were sun-faded and blistered. The windows were dusty and the shop appeared so dim inside that at first we thought it was closed. Inside, the style was old-fashioned with a lot of mahogany cases brimming with gold and diamonds which glittered under the spotlights embedded in the ceiling. The shop smelt of air-freshener, perhaps used in an attempt to disguise the deeper smell of tobacco.

The manager was a young man with wavy brown hair and an expensive smile that glittered like the stone in his tie-pin. We explained our visit and showed him the ring. He examined it and suggested that we leave it with him for an hour while he contacted his father, who had made most of the jewellery they had sold during the '60s and '70s.

So we drove on to Bundoran, forty minutes towards the coast. For years Bundoran would have passed for a 1950s coastal village: bleached cottages, rundown shops with curling yellowed sunscreens on the windows, the Atlantic buffeting the coastline even on calm days. Recently, however, it has transformed itself, with amusement arcades and surfing shops, flickering neon signs, restaurants with Wild West facades, and bars crammed with old Irish paraphernalia. In the early mornings, the streets are littered with broken beer bottles and vomit. By lunchtime, however, the town again presents its family-friendly face.

We parked outside the Garda station and went in to meet Sergeant Bill Daly. The window in reception was so low that you had to bend slightly to address the man behind it. It was almost like a taxi office. Williams introduced us both and asked for Daly.

Soon we were buzzed through and welcomed by a middle-aged man, whose black hair was greying at the temples. His skin was tanned like leather, with wrinkles deeply etched around his eyes, and he squinted slightly in the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. He took us to an interview room.

Daly excused himself and returned after a few moments carrying a small cardboard box on which he balanced three cups of coffee and a thin green folder. He set down the box and sat opposite us, blowing on the surface of his coffee and squinting at Williams.

"So, you're here about Ratsy. Take a look; ask anything you like," he said, gesturing towards the green folder.

Williams opened it and placed it between us on the desk. The notes were brief and concise.

Ratsy Donaghey had been found in his flat overlooking the local playgrounds and swimming pool on 5th November, tied to a chair, his mouth gagged. His arms were covered with cigarette burns. Ultimately, his killer had slit Donaghey's wrists and left him to watch while his blood poured down his hands and dripped off his fingers onto the ground. Vital reaction indicators around the wounds suggested that he lived for perhaps another twenty-five to thirty minutes as he watched the life drip out of him, struggling against his restraints with such violence that he cracked three ribs.

"Any leads?" Williams asked when we finished reading.

"None," Daly said, draining his coffee and beginning to fold down the lip of the paper cup.

"Nothing?" I asked.

"Nope. Not a thing. Ratsy Donaghey was murdered by someone, but we don't know who and, to tell you the truth, we don't really give a shit."

I was not wholly surprised: Donaghey was a career criminal who had made his money selling drugs for years. No policeman was going to waste effort on the likes of Donaghey when the crime rate was rising and police recruitment numbers dropping.

"Let me tell you a story about Ratsy Donaghey. He bought his little pimp-pad here fifteen years ago, as well as one in Letterkenny and two others in Sligo and Cork. He gave free samples of drugs to youngsters of twelve, then got them to steal cars for him; he took out the radio, they got a free joyride. When they dumped it, Ratsy stuck syringes used by some HIV hypo up through the driver's seat. Some poor bastard in a uniform finds this stolen car, gets in to check it out or drive it back to the station, gets a dirty needle in the ass and Aids for nothing. That's Ratsy Donaghey."

Aids again. Why did everybody talk about Aids all the time? I'd never noticed it before. I reminded myself that I'd been given the all clear. Then an inner voice reminded me that I had three months to wait to know for sure.

"It's still a crime," Williams said, though without conviction. It took me a moment to process the conversation and work out what she was talking about.

"The only crime involved in this would be wasting tax payers' money investigating the fact that someone did us a favour. And while you're defending him, you might be interested to know about the ballistics match you asked about – we never got anyone for that, but Ratsy Donaghey was our number one suspect. Held up a sixty-year- old man locking up a filling station; fired a warning shot above his head when he refused to hand over his cash; guy had a heart attack. He survived, though, or we'd have had a murder case on our hands. Ratsy Donaghey was a piece of shit and good riddance to him."

"There'll be other Ratsy Donagheys," I said.

"There already are. But while they keep taking each other out, they save us the hassle."

"Do you think that's what happened here?" I asked.

"Probably," he replied. "Could be an unhappy customer, new competition, a Provo punishment. Honestly, I don't give a shit. So long as Ratsy suffered a lot before he went."

"Did you find cigarette butts or any physical evidence?" I asked.

"Oh, no. Everything was washed and cleaned and left tidy. No prints, no fibres, nothing. Whoever did it was a pro."

"Fair enough."

"Now, what's the connection with your case?" he asked, leaning back in the chair and stretching.

"None, maybe. A piece of jewellery turned up on a list of items stolen from Donaghey's flat in Letterkenny. It's connected with a case we have ongoing."

"That's it? Hell, it must be quiet in Lifford."

"It is," said Williams smiling. "His gun was used in a murder a few days ago. Though, presumably, Ratsy didn't use it himself."

"Maybe he sold it. Maybe it was stolen along with this ring you're talking about."

"Maybe," I conceded. "Any chance we could see Donaghey's flat?"

"Not a hope. Day after he died the council came in and fumigated the place. They moved a Romanian family in last Monday. Didn't tell them the history. Just hoped they don't see the bloody big stains all over the floor. Everything he owns that wasn't auctioned by the state is in that box."

While Williams continued, I opened the box and flicked through some of the contents: a packet of cigarettes, a set of keys, a bundle of letters, and photographs. Absentmindedly flicking through the bundle of pictures, I found one I recognized. It took me a moment to place it or, rather, when I had last seen it. A woman sat on a flight of steps on a beach. It was the same photograph I had seen tucked behind a vine of ivy on the tree where Angela Cashell had died.

"Who's this?" I asked Daly, holding the photograph up.

"His mother?" Daly guessed. "If he had one."

"I'll hold on to this, if you don't mind," I said, impatient to get back to Lifford to Angela Cashell's murder site to confirm that the pictures matched.

"Nothing you can think of as odd? Nothing that marked this out from a normal drugs kill?" Williams asked, suspecting, perhaps, that the journey had been a waste of time.

"Nothing. Apart from the cigarette-burns torture thing. I only hope whoever did Ratsy videotaped it. Now that I'd pay to see."

We stopped for lunch at a chippy while I explained to Williams about the photograph. She offered to phone Holmes and ask him to pick up the picture for us, just so we'd know it was secure. Then we headed back to Donegal town to the jewellers, stopping on the way so I could buy a chocolate cake for Debbie. I hoped that the ring would yield some answers. Instead, it raised more questions.

We arrived back at the jewellers around 3.30 p.m. to be introduced to Charles Hendershot, an old man with white hair and a thick handlebar moustache. He was small and stooped, his movements considered and careful. His fingers were tapered and feminine, his skin as fragile as aged paper. He sat behind the main sales desk on an antique chair cushioned with red velvet, his feet crossed at the ankles. The ring and a tattered red leather-bound ledger sat in front of him. His head shook ever so slightly as he spoke.

"I remember this ring," he said softly, after we had sat down with him at the back of the shop. "I remember every piece I make. Each is different. Each is a piece of art." He raised a slender finger towards us, speaking mostly to Williams, who sat turned towards him, her hand resting lightly on the arm of his chair. "You know, I was asked to make a piece for the Pope in 1979, when he came to Drogheda. I was asked to make a cross by the President himself."

"Really?" Williams said and he smiled at her in a way that was almost boyish.

"1978 I made this piece. June 1978.1 found it here in the ledger. I changed my styles each year. That year I did rose-cuts. They're an antique cut, but I did them then, and again in '85 and then in 1991, but never again with moonstones."

"How did you remember it was June?" Williams asked, and I believe she fluttered her eyelids at him.

"Easy, my pet," he said, patting her hand lightly with his own. "The moonstone. It's the birthstone for June: that and pearl. So June 1978. I remembered it and I was right," he said as he leaned forward slowly and tapped the ledger. "It's right there."

"What about the 'AC', Mr Hendershot?" I asked. "Did you engrave that?"

"Yes. It should have read 'From AC'. Too much on a piece like this. So they settled for 'AC'."

'"From AC', not' For AC'?" Williams asked.

"Yes. Odd that. Really, it's the lady's initials that should go on a piece. You remember that, young man, when you buy this lovely girl a ring," he said, pointing at me in a way that reminded me of my grandmother. Williams smiled at me expansively, probably because he had called her a girl, as well as lovely. "But it was' From AC'. I checked."

He opened the ledger and, licking the tips of his fingers, flipped the pages slowly, while I tried to curb my impatience, tapping my open palm against my thigh. He looked deliberately at my hand and stared directly at me before returning his attention to the book, turning the pages even more slowly until he found what he wanted.

"A Mr A. Costello from Letterkenny. I can't remember the face. Faces escape me."

"A. Costello," Williams said jokingly; "surely not the Superintendent."

"No," I said. "He's Oily – Oliver."

Hendershot was still reading through the ledger. "Yes, Mr Alphonsus Costello," he said. In that terrible moment, while my vision spun and my thoughts struggled to make sense, Williams's joke suddenly wasn't funny anymore.

"Who was the girl? His wife?" Williams asked.

"I don't think she was his wife" the old man said, pursing his lips and shaking his head slightly. "But, you see, you're in luck here. One of the diamonds has been replaced."

"Yes, we were told."

He turned and looked at me sharply, like a chiding schoolmaster, then spoke exclusively to Williams for the rest of the conversation, even when replying to questions which I asked. "Anyway, pet, I noticed one of these diamonds is different from the rest. A pink diamond. You see, the lady who was given the ring returned it to us in November of that year, saying one of the diamonds had fallen out and had been misplaced. That never convinces me. Some people would actually take out the stones and sell them, then come back and say the stone was lost. However, this piece cost quite a bit and so I replaced it with another rose cut. I had to send the piece back to her."

"Do you have an address?" I asked.

He looked at his book, then back at Williams. "Her name was Mary Knox. She lived in Canal View in Strabane."

Williams looked at me and smiled in a shy, concealed way. We had driven to Donegal to discover that a ring, which had been deliberately placed on the finger of a murdered girl, had been bought twenty-six years earlier by our own Superintendent for a woman who was not his wife. And we were both keenly aware that he must have recognized the ring when he saw it and yet said nothing. And we had to wonder how the same ring ended up in the possession of a drug-trafficking miscreant like Ratsy Donaghey, only to be stolen in the month prior to his own death. I suspected that Mary Knox, whoever she was, was the only person who could answer any of these questions.

As Knox had given an address in Strabane, and as Costello was clearly involved with her in some way, we decided it would be best to ask Hendry in the North for information. We could have asked Burgess, but he was unlikely to complete the task without Costello getting wind of what he was doing.

I called Hendry on his mobile and when he answered he was slightly out of breath, his voice fractured.

"I hope I didn't interrupt something, Inspector," I said.

"Only my day off, Devlin. What is it now?" he said, in a tone which I hoped was mock exasperation. "I tell you, I should have taken this case myself, 'cause I've ended up doing most of the work anyway."

"I need some info on a lead we've run up on the Cashell murder. Mary Knox."

"As in Half-Hung McNaughten," he laughed.

"Same name, two hundred years on. Lived in Canal View in Strabane twenty-six years ago, if that's any help."

There was silence on the other end of the line and Williams and I looked at each other. Williams shrugged and was about to speak when Hendry's voice crackled over the speaker again. "Give me ten minutes and I'll call you back," he said, all trace of humour gone. Then the line clicked and went dead.

It was almost half an hour later when he phoned, by which stage we were approaching Lifford.

"I needed to check something, but I was right," he said cryptically. "You'll not have much luck with Mary Knox. She disappeared in 1978, presumed dead."

"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.