Borderlands

Chapter Five

Tuesday, 24th December

I answered the phone on the second ring at 3.30 a.m. that morning, having had difficulty sleeping. Debbie lay beside me, hunched away from me so that, even in sleep, her resentment over the re- emergence of Miriam Powell in our lives was clear. She stirred with the ringing of the phone, but I answered it before it woke the children. It was Costello. A body had been found in a burned-out car on Gallows Lane by a local farmer, Petey Cuthins.

Gallows Lane was so called because, several hundred years ago, before the courthouse was built, this was where local criminals were executed, left hanging from the branches of three massive chestnut trees on the approach into the town, a warning to all visitors. On a good day it provided a panoramic view of Counties Donegal, Derry and Tyrone.

The fire had abated by the time I arrived, a hoar of mist sizzling lightly off the scorched bodywork of the car. Costello had already arrived on the scene with two uniforms whom I recognized but couldn't name, their faces pale, eyes red-rimmed, working silently through their tiredness. Petey Cuthins was standing against his gate, several hundred yards away from the wreckage, trying to keep his pipe smouldering. He nodded a greeting when I got out of the car and muttered "Merry Christmas" through teeth still clenched on the pipe-stem. His face was dark under the hood he wore. I nodded over at Costello, who was telling the uniforms where to place the crime-scene tape. I took a quick glance inside the car, thought better of looking more closely, and went back over to Petey to wait for my stomach to settle.

"Heard the bang – must've been the petrol tank. Nearly sent my cattle haywire." He gestured with a slight nod of his head towards the charred body in the car. "Nothing I could do, Ben. Couldn't carry much in a bucket from the house. By the time I got here there wasn't much sense in getting the fire brigade out: fire was almost dead. Weren't gonna do him no good anyhow."

The registration plate, though damaged, had not been destroyed, the raised numerals revealing that it was a new car – a Nissan Primera, as far as I could tell. The driver was alone; from the size I guessed it was a man, but the body was so badly burned I couldn't be sure.

Costello sent the two officers about their business then approached us. The female officer smiled sadly as she passed with a roll of blue and white tape which she tied onto the hedge behind us and began to unwind.

"Do you think it crashed?" Cuthins called, reluctant to go any closer to the car. To the right of the driver's side I could see a pool of vomit in the grass – presumably Petey had seen more than enough already.

"I don't think so," Costello said, patting me on the back as a gesture of greeting. I guessed he was right: there was no sign of denting on the bodywork, no signs of impact on the area around where the car had stopped. I peered in at the body of the driver, the smell of burnt flesh thick in my mouth and nostrils. "The handbrake is on," Costello pointed out. "And the ignition is turned off." Which meant the car was parked when whatever happened to it had occurred. Costello shook his head slowly, "An awful business, boys. An awful business."

I stepped away from the car and spat the taste from my mouth as Costello took out his phone and called Burgess who had reached the station, giving him the registration number to trace. "Best get a doctor up here. And a few more pairs of hands. It's going to be a long night."

The SOCO officers had to go over to Strabane first to borrow arc lights and a generator from the PSNI. Occasional needles of sleet darted now through the mist, trapped in a fluorescent glare, just as the first gash of red cracked on the horizon. Burgess called back, having run the registration number through Garda Central Communications. The charred remains still strapped inside the car now had a probable name – Terry Boyle, an accountancy student from Dublin, whose parents lived in Letterkenny. Costello asked me to break the news to the family, sending female officer, Jane Long, with me. Just as we were about to leave, I saw John Mulrooney struggling up Gallows Lane towards us to fulfil the slightly ridiculous task, as medical examiner, of pronouncing dead something which was little more than skeleton and pulp.

"Jesus, Ben, it's Christmas Eve," he said, stopping beside us and stubbing out his cigarette, which he had held clamped in his mouth as he'd slipped plastic galoshes over his shoes. I noticed that he was still wearing his pyjamas under his corduroy trousers, the paisley material creeping out over his shoes. "What have we got?" he asked, gesturing towards the car.

"Spontaneous combustion?" I suggested.

Mulrooney steeled himself and went over to the car, holding his breath against the smell. I watched him take a biro from his pocket and use it to poke at the skull, angling it slightly for a clearer view.

He stepped back and spat, much as I had done earlier. It's on just such occasions that you regret knowing that all smells are particulate.

"Looks like a simple shooting," he said, and it took me a moment to realize he wasn't being flippant.

"What?"

"Look," he said, indicating with his pen. "Entry wound here; exit wound presumably out the other side. Two murders in a week. You know that might make Lifford the killing capital of Ireland."

"Very funny," I said.

"Any ideas about when it might have happened?" Costello asked, shifting closer to the car.

"None. But to cross the 't's and that – for what it's worth – he's dead."

Terry Boyle's mother, Kathleen, clutched a used Kleenex in her hand, her face raw, her eyes red and puffy. Jane Long's eyes were not much better. She shifted in the seat and put her arms around the older woman's shoulders. I crouched in front of Mrs Boyle, though she seemed to look through me.

"I'm very sorry, Mrs Boyle," I said, realizing not for the first time the inadequacy of the expression. I took her hand in mine and sat with her as she cried some more.

"Mr Boyle?" I said.

The woman shook her head. "Lives in Glasgow."

"Best get someone to check on him," I said to Long, the implication being that she should both break the news and ascertain his whereabouts.

"Shall I make some tea?" Long suggested, reaching for her radio as she headed out of the room, grateful, probably, to escape the stultifying grief for a few minutes.

"Jesus," Kathleen Boyle repeated over and over, her body shuddering.

And, with that, I found myself both questioning His existence and praying all the harder that He would transcend time and space and bring comfort both to this woman and to her son, who surely did not deserve to die in such a manner.

"Any ideas who might have a slight against your son, Mrs Boyle? Someone maybe he had a falling out with?"

She shook her head, her tissue clamped to her face. "He's only just home," she snuffled. "Back from university. Went out to some disco."

"What about a girlfriend, Mrs Boyle?"

She nodded, but did not, or could not, speak.

"Was he with her last night?"

A shake of the head this time. "She lives in Dublin. He said he was just going out for a drink. Not meeting anybody. Are you sure it's him?" The words tumbled out together.

"We're fairly certain, Mrs Boyle."

"Do I need to identify him or something? Can I see him?" she asked, her expression lightening a little, as if by grace of her seeing the body she might somehow will her son back to life again and forget this terrible night as no more substantial than a nightmare.

"No, Mrs Boyle. We'll identify him," I said, not wishing to explain that her son was now beyond even her recognition. Before we left the house I would have to find something from which a DNA sample could be taken for comparison should dental or doctor's records prove inconclusive.

While Kathleen Boyle wept, Long and I sat in that room, drank tea and did not speak. We could not leave her – not as police officers, not as fellow human beings.

Her sister arrived at around eight o'clock and convinced her to try to get some sleep. Long and I finally made our way back to the station after requesting that should Mrs Boyle think of anything useful – anything at all – she should contact us, day or night. I sat in the car and lit a cigarette, and could think of nothing but my tiredness and the cold which seemed to have permeated my very bones.

The murder team met on Tuesday morning at 9.30 to report on progress in the Cashell case, though we had all spent the night on the Gallows Lane incident. On the way in, Costello called me to one side. "How's things?" he asked. "At home, I mean."

"Fine," I said a little taken aback at his sudden avuncular manner. "Why?"

"We got a call from Mark Anderson this morning."

"Oh."

"He says your dog has been worrying his sheep and you don't care.

"The only thing likely to worry his sheep is his pervert son. Does he not think we have enough bothering us without him phoning in about a bloody dog?"

"Well, that's what I said. In not so many words."

"You?"

"Oh, aye. He went straight to the top. Why speak to the monkey when you could be speaking to the organ grinder, eh?" He laughed without humour and went into the office where we were meeting. I followed him, cursing Mark Anderson and his sheep.

Before we discussed the progress on Angela Cashell's murder, Costello gave us the low-down on the death of Terry Boyle. The state pathologist was conducting the post mortem as we spoke, and hoped to have a report with us later in the day. A forensics team were working on the car to see what could be found, but the fact that it had been set alight meant they would have difficulties finding anything of much value.

"Why burn it?" Holmes said. "I mean, you've shot the poor bastard. Why burn the car then. It's like a 'fuck you', isn't it?"

"Maybe there was something in the car?" Williams suggested.

"Maybe there was someone in the car," I said. "Would explain what he was doing parked up there in the middle of the night. Maybe the killer was in the car with him and burnt the car to destroy any evidence."

Costello brought us back to Cashell again. "We'll wait to see these reports. Caroline, I'd like you and Jason to follow up the Boyle inquiry. Report back to Inspector Devlin here, daily. Inspector," he said, referring to me by rank rather than name, thereby making it all official, "I'd like you to continue pushing the Cashell case until McKelvey's found. Let's see if we can get one case tied up at least."

Holmes and Williams nodded their agreement. Holmes looked exhausted, due in part to his visiting many of the local bars and clubs to see if anyone recognized Angela Cashell from a photograph he had got from Sadie. He had felt obliged to partake of a number of complimentary Christmas drinks in each pub and had arrived on site in the middle of the night a little the worse for wear. He told us that Sadie had informed him that Johnny had been refused Christmas bail as a flight risk and would be up before Strabane magistrates on Friday 27th.

As well as speaking to local publicans, Holmes had visited the nightclub in Strabane which Angela had reportedly attended on Thursday night with someone fitting the description of Whitey McKelvey. The club owner didn't remember her, but had provided a tape of his security camera footage for that night, which Holmes placed on Costello's desk.

Williams had contacted most of the local jewellers and secondhand shops, both in Strabane and Lifford, but no one remembered having seen or been offered the ring. She told us she was planning on trying Derry shops later that day. She had asked two of the secretaries in the station to go through the stolen items list which Burgess had printed out for her late on the previous afternoon. The list ran to 112 pages for the past six months.

Costello then provided us with the full report from the state pathologist, including toxicological findings. And we discovered just how Angela Cashell had died.

At some time, probably after seven o'clock on Friday night, Angela Cashell had eaten a cheeseburger and chips and drunk Diet Coke. She smoked several joints through the rest of the evening and drank vodka – again, probably, with Diet Coke. At some point she took what she may have believed to be an Ecstasy tablet, no bigger than a one cent coin and speckled yellow and brown. The tablet was of very low purity and had been cut with, amongst other things, talc, rat poison, DDT, nutmeg and strychnine.

Shortly after taking the tablet, and perhaps even as a consequence of it, she began to have sex with someone who wore a condom, as we had been told earlier. Perhaps during the act itself, the compound of chemicals she had taken caused something in her brain to misfire; her synapses sparked with electrical currents which eventually sent her into an epileptic seizure. The strychnine was probably responsible for spasms which tore her leg muscles from their ligaments. In addition, her lungs began to slow and enter paralysis, though whoever was with her may not have realized this, for they knelt on her chest and covered her mouth with a cotton cloth until she stopped breathing. Perhaps they realized that the drug would kill her, but wished to speed the process along. Or perhaps they simply put her out of her misery.

After she had died her body was washed and her pants were put back on, inside out. Then two people – for she would have been prohibitively heavy for a person small enough to kneel on her to be capable also of carrying her – must have put her into a car. They drove her to behind Lifford Cineplex several hours after she died and threw her body down to the spot where we discovered it.

We waited until everyone had finished reading, Williams going over the report more slowly than the rest of us. "So," said Costello finally, "it fairly much confirms what we knew already, with a few more details thrown in. Especially the drug thing."

"Yeah," said Holmes. "Not uncommon to get low-grade drugs, especially E tabs. Though in saying that, I haven't heard of any of these substances being found before."

"I have," said Costello and I saw Williams nod slightly, as though in agreement. "Read this and see if it sounds familiar."

He handed each of us a copy of a letter dated September 1996, the paper still warm from the photocopier. The letter read:

Dear Student

As you are aware, An Garda work closely with your school to develop drugs awareness programmes to educate you about the dangers of drugs and ensure that none of you get caught in the cycle of criminal activity which drugs use can cause.

However, we are also aware that some of you may be using drugs or have been tempted to experiment with them. Therefore I write to you in particular to be vigilant over the coming weeks.

It has come to our attention that a batch of highly dangerous Ecstasy tablets has appeared on the Irish drugs scene and, while none has reached Donegal to date, it has been decided that all students in all schools in the area be made aware of this danger. The tablets, which are round, are about one centimetre in diameter. They have a yellow/brown speckled appearance and might taste slightly bitter. The Customs Office in Dublin has informed us that these drugs, which originated in Holland, will not have the effect of an Ecstasy tablet, but in fact contain a number of deadly chemicals and poisons, including rat- and flea-killer. The tablets can cause a range of symptoms, including breathing difficulties, convulsions, brain damage, and could cause death.

If someone offers you one of these tablets – or if you are suspicious of anything you are offered – DO NOT TAKE IT.

You can contact Letterkenny Garda station in confidence on 074 55584, or else contact your local Garda station or tell a member of your school staff. You will not get in any trouble and you might help save lives.

The letter was signed by Costello, with a further reminder to avoid the drugs completely. I vaguely remembered the letters being distributed by schools, though at the time I was working in Sligo on a breaking-and-entering team who were targeting local hotels and hostels.

"Sound like the same things," Holmes said, putting the letter down on the table.

"I'm surprised you don't remember it," Williams said, "working with the drugs squad in Dublin."

"Before my time," Holmes replied, then smiled good humouredly. "I'm still a young buck, me."

"God help us all," Williams said and hid her face behind the A4 sheet she held.

"Well, it's probably the same." I said. "So, we need to find out who gave it to her. Was it the same person that she was sleeping with?"

"And did they intend for her to be killed by the tablet or was it accidental?" Costello added.

"Yep. So, Jason, I want you to start bringing in the local drug dealers. Ask about, check bars and clubs again, Strabane and Letterkenny. See if anyone's selling this stuff. While you're there, flash about the photo of Terry Boyle too, maybe find out where he was last night."

"They're not connected though, are they?" Holmes asked.

"Not as far as I know," I said, "but if we can kill two birds with one stone…"

"There's no one else, Jason," Costello explained. "I've requested extra help from Letterkenny, but you seem to know the pubs and that. Might have more success than most."

"I'll phone Hendry, just so there's no jurisdiction nonsense about going over the border," I said. "Caroline, keep following up on that gold ring. I'll see if I can speak to Johnny Cashell, though he's looking unlikely; I can't see him drugging and abusing his own daughter. Besides," I added, "I don't think this was a sexual attack."

"Pathologist's report suggests consensual, Inspector; that doesn't necessarily mean it was consensual," said Williams.

"True. But all the same. Size, drugs, eye witnesses – everything seems to be pointing to Whitey McKelvey."

"If the wee bugger would show his face," Williams added.

"Maybe he has though, eh?" Holmes retorted, tapping on the CCTV videotape lying in front of us.

We set up the video and TV in the conference room at the back of the station and played the tape from the start. The tape began at 6 p.m. on Thursday 19th December, the time and date appearing in white lettering at the bottom of the screen. The images jumped from one view to the next every twenty seconds.

Williams leaned forward and fast-forwarded the tape until customers began to appear around 7.20 p.m. With each new arrival we paused the tape, looking for Angela and the person who had accompanied her – whom we assumed to have been Whitey McKelvey.

By 9.30 p.m. the bar was filling up and they still had not appeared, though we had noticed that a young man with a shaved head and a shoulder bag who had gone into the male toilets at 8.50 p.m. had yet to emerge. Holmes concluded that he was either a drug dealer or a homosexual. "Either way, we'll bust him if we see him this side of the border," he added.

As the tape progressed, the lights in the bar dimmed. Then the screen cut to the doorway and I caught of glimpse of a girl with blonde hair passing underneath the camera. She was dressed in jeans and a blue top, as Cashell had described Angela's outfit that night. Slightly behind her, again half-disappearing from view under the camera, was a thin figure with short, almost peroxide- blond hair, clad in jeans and a white top. The figure did not look up at the camera and so we could only see the top of the head and the bright hair. Holmes paused the shot and we all leaned a little closer to the screen.

"Is that him?" Williams asked, squinting at the screen.

"I think so," I said.

Holmes tapped the screen with his knuckles; "Ladies and gentlemen, Whitey McKelvey, I believe."

It was not as clear a shot as any of us wanted, but it seemed a reasonable assumption to make. We watched a further hour's worth of tape and saw Angela several times: in the queue for the bar, dancing, chatting to a group of girls by the toilets. That shot had almost passed when I saw a face I recognized and everything seemed to fall into place. The clothes were different, obviously, the pink uniform replaced with a tight satin grey top that accentuated every curve. She wore make-up and looked older, but there was no mistaking her – it was Yvonne Coyle, the girl who had been feeding Tommy Powell in his room the day before. At the same time, it suddenly came to me where I had seen her face before. It was with her cheek pressed against Angela Cashell's in a strip of passport photographs, placed carefully between the leaves of an unfinished romantic novel lying under the dead girl's bed.

I phoned Finnside almost immediately, while Holmes and Williams set about the tasks we had agreed earlier that morning. Mrs McGowan told me, with some annoyance, that Coyle had phoned in sick, having left early the day before.

"Are you sure she's alright to have here?" Mrs MacGowan asked. "You know, I'd rather not have staff involved with Gardai."

"As far as I know, Mrs MacGowan, Yvonne Coyle has done nothing wrong. I want to speak to her about something completely innocuous," I lied. "She witnessed an accident."

"I'll tell her to contact you if she returns tomorrow-"

"Thanks Mrs MacGowan."

"Though if she doesn't, she needn't bother…"

I put the receiver down quickly to avoid hearing the rest. Picking it up again, I phoned Strabane PSNI station and asked to be transferred to Inspector Hendry.

As I had expected, Hendry didn't care about our people going across the border to question bar owners, though it was technically not allowed. Some policemen on both sides of the border could be sticky about it, but generally we all knew that we were chasing the same people. The bad old days, when collusion and suspicion had prohibited any contact, were passing, if not yet past. Hendry also agreed to the more unusual request that I interview Cashell in the PSNI holding-cell – so long as I was a silent partner, technically off-duty, and Hendry asked the questions on my behalf. Finally, I asked him if Whitey McKelvey had been spotted yet, though I knew that, if he had, Hendry would have phoned us to boast about the efficiency of the northern police in comparison with their sleepy southern counterparts.

"No sign here," he said, "though I hear rumours from the travelling community that he's over your side. Apparently a branch of his family has set up camp outside of Ballybofey."

"I've heard nothing about that," I said, a little rankled at having not received this information myself.

"That's because I haven't told you until now. I'm telling you: British Intelligence, best in the world!" he laughed.

"See you in an hour," I said, and hung up. I immediately rang through to Ballybofey Station and was transferred to a Sergeant Moore, who promised to investigate the tip about Whitey McKelvey being in their area after I had given him a description and some background on the boy. I cautioned him to keep it low-key; I didn't want the boy running again.

I had decided not to ask Hendry for Yvonne Coyle's address; the cost of having to listen to more crowing about Intelligence was too high for such basic information. I decided instead to do some rudimentary detective work and checked a northern phonebook someone had 'borrowed' from a phone box just over the border a few years earlier. There were no Coyles listed for Glennside. I tried Mrs McGowan again, suitably apologetic for my earlier abruptness. She gave me the address immediately, with commensurate curtness. I decided to visit Yvonne before seeing Johnny Cashell, on the off- chance that Angela might have mentioned her father to her friend at some stage.

I had to ring the doorbell three times before I heard the thud of someone running down stairs and the clunk of the deadbolt. Then Yvonne Coyle answered the door in a pink dressing-gown one would expect to see on a child, with a teddy-bear embroidered on the breast. Her hair was quite short and, being wet, appeared dark. Her skin still sparkled with moisture, smelling unmistakably of shampoo and soap.

"Oh… I… Can I help you?" she said, gripping the lapels of her gown in one fist, the other hand holding the door ajar.

I introduced myself and added, "I'd like to speak to you, Miss Coyle, if you don't mind," smiling to seem less threatening.

"About Mr Powell?" she said, affecting an appearance of boredom.

"I think you know what about?" I said.

"Well, I can't help you. The bitch fired me, so it's not my problem anymore."

"Mrs MacGowan fired you. Why?"

"Thanks to you, I guess. She's only just off the phone. Said I was bringing her establishment into disrepute." As she spoke she mimicked her former employer's voice with a fair degree of accuracy. Certainly enough to make us both laugh.

"Sorry, Miss Coyle; I told her you hadn't done anything wrong. I… Look, can I come in for a few minutes? I have some questions about Angela Cashell."

She tried to pretend to be surprised at the mention of Angela's name, but gave it up as a bad job and swung the door open. "Ten minutes. Give me a chance to get changed first. I'm only out of the shower," she said, pointing to her wet hair, which was dripping water onto the floor. "Though I suppose you already worked that out, you being a policeman and all. Go in and sit down; I won't be a minute."

I went into the room towards which she had gestured. It was a small living room, with a brown sofa and two mismatched easy chairs arranged around a TV set and an electric fire. A CD player and a stack of CDs sat by one of the chairs. I glanced down the spines of the discs and noticed a few Divine Comedy albums, which reminded me of the one I had seen in Angela's bedroom. I suspected I knew now where she had got it. An ashtray full of butts rested on the arm of the sofa, so I sat beside it and took out my cigarettes. "Do you mind if I smoke?" I called up the stairs.

"Long as you can give me one; I'm all out," she replied, coming downstairs, "and I'm too lazy to go to the shop." Yvonne came in and sat in one of the easy chairs. She had not changed out of her dressing-gown, but had wrapped a towel around her hair turban- style. The gown had loosened very slightly, so that the flushed skin at the base of her throat and the top of her chest was visible. She leaned forward and took the cigarette which I offered her, and I could see the swell of her breasts as the gown fell slightly open. 1 looked away, but she had already caught me looking and smiled slightly as she rearranged her gown. I began to regret not asking Caroline Williams to accompany me.

"I'm out of matches too," she said, and leaned forward again. I battled with myself to look her in the eyes as she lit her cigarette off my Zippo, and in so doing, I noticed that her eyes were two different colours: one green and one almost grey. Seeing her now, without make-up, I also realized that she was not as young as she had seemed when I had seen her at Finnside. I guessed she was in her late twenties. Her skin was smooth and well-toned, but had begun to wrinkle around her eyes.

"So, you're off sick," I said. "Hope it's nothing serious."

"Nothing more than a hangover. Still, I'm not sick anymore: I'm unemployed."

"Sorry about that. I-"

"Don't worry about it. It was a shit job anyway – feeding old gits like Tommy Powell his stewed apples, while his prick of a son tried to look up my skirt. Good riddance."

"Thomas Powell? The son was trying to…" I gestured in the general vicinity of her legs.

"Oh, aye. All the time. Thinks he's flash. A bit too old for my taste."

"He's the same age as me," I said, half-pretending to be offended.

"Oh," she replied, and smiled at me. I knew I would be interpreting that all the way back to the station. Time to move on, I thought.

"So, what can you tell me about Angela Cashell, Miss Coyle?" I asked.

"Please, call me Yvonne. What do you want to know about Angela?" she replied. This wasn't going particularly well.

"When did you last see her?" I asked, fairly sure I knew the answer.

"Friday morning. She stayed here on Thursday night. She left the house at the same time as me. I was in work at lunchtime. I gave her a lift over to Lifford. She was meeting her sisters at the cinema."

"What was she wearing?"

She thought for a second. "A red top and a skirt she borrowed from me. She didn't have a change of clothes, so she took some of mine."

"What about the clothes she had been wearing?"

"They're upstairs. I was going to keep them – as a reminder, you know. Guess that sounds kind of stupid. Do you need them back? Only I've washed them – you know, if you're looking for evidence or anything. Sorry," she said, wincing exaggeratedly at her actions.

"I shouldn't think so," I said; they would serve little forensic purpose if Angela hadn't been wearing them at the time of her death. "Did she say where she was going after the cinema?"

She paused slightly. "Home, I think."

"Are you sure?"

"I think so."

I decided to approach it from a different angle. "Why did she stay with you on Thursday?"

"I'm… I was her friend. Why wouldn't she have stayed with me?"

"Why Thursday? Why didn't she stay at home?"

"She was at a club in Strabane; handier for her to stay here."

"Did she go to the club with you? Or did you meet her there?"

"I met her."

"Who did she come in with?"

Another pause. "I don't know."

"Are you sure?"

"She had a lot of friends. Angela wasn't shy that way."

"Who was it?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "It might have been one of the travellers, but I don't know. He doesn't come near me. Angela wouldn't tell me if she was with him."

"Why not?"

"'Cause she knows I don't like him."

"Why not?"

"'Cause he was using her."

"In what way?"

Nothing.

"In what way, Yvonne?"

"She… I don't want to say. It's not fair on her."

"Yvonne. Angela was murdered by someone. I need to know everything about her – good and bad – if I'm going to find out who did it."

She thought about it, taking two drags on the cigarette in quick succession, before leaning over and grinding it out in the ashtray. She sat back in the chair and pulled her bare legs up under her, wrapping one arm around her knees.

"She let him do things. To her. Sex and stuff."

"Why?"

"For money. So she could buy things."

"What kind of things?"

"Drugs, usually. She got into drugs kind of recently, after she met McKelvey. He met her in a club in Strabane. Gave her something for free, got her drugs for a while when she had money; when she didn't, she paid for them in different ways." She blushed slightly. "She never mentioned him in front of me."

"What kind of drugs?"

"Es mostly. McKelvey got her them, or gave her money to buy them off someone else."

"Was she with McKelvey on Friday night?"

"I don't know. Might have been. She said she had a date. Wanted something nice to wear; she took my red jacket. I'd only worn it once myself. Still, it looked better on her."

"Could she have been meeting someone other than McKelvey on Friday?"

"She might have been. McKelvey wasn't her only one. She had a lot of friends, like I said."

"Did you see McKelvey on Thursday with her?"

"I thought I saw him, but I can't be sure."

The conversation was flowing fairly easily, so I decided to return to Johnny Cashell. "Did she tell you what she and her father had rowed about on Thursday? The night she stayed with you?"

A pause, while she weighed up her options. In the end she decided to be honest. "The usual. He was spying on her dressing. Used to do it all the time. She said that one time she was in the shower; when she came out he was in the bathroom, cleaning his teeth or something. Acting as if there was nothing wrong with it. She said he gave her the creeps. If you ask me, McKelvey is no better, mind you."

"Did Angela's father ever do anything to her? Anything he shouldn't?" I asked, struggling to make the question direct without being crass. "Did he touch her or anything?"

"I don't think so. I think he just liked to watch her."

"Why didn't you tell us this when she died? Why keep it to yourself? It could help."

"I guess I didn't want to get involved. Plus, John Cashell might be a dirty old man, but I couldn't believe he'd be a murderer. Liam McKelvey is a different matter."

"Did she tell you who gave her the ring?"

"What ring?"

"The ring she was wearing. The gold ring with the stones; her initials on it."

Yvonne looked confused. "Angela didn't wear a gold ring. She wore nothing but silver. Can I have another cigarette?"

She leaned forward again and took the cigarette. I held out my lighter for her and she steadied my hand in both of hers, though it was not shaking. Her hands were hard from work, but warm. The touch of her skin made my guts contract as if someone had winded me. She held my hand a little longer than necessary, then slowly let go, the tips of her fingers running across the backs of mine, catching slightly on my wedding ring.

Johnny Cashell was sitting in Interview Room One in Strabane police station. It was like every other interview room I had ever seen: a single wooden desk against one wall, the surface engraved with initials and scarred with cigarette burns and rings where hot mugs of tea had whitened the wood. The walls were painted institutional green and covered in scrawls and obscenities, and beside the desk someone had left burn marks from a lighter flame. The room smelt of sweat and smoke, both emanating in copious quantities from Johnny, who shifted continually in the straightbacked wooden chair he had been given, oblivious to the fact that such rooms are designed to ensure maximum discomfort. In fact, it was rumoured that the old RUC used to cut an inch off the front legs of these chairs so that those sitting on them kept slipping forward and could not get settled.

Cashell prodded at his stomach and the bulging around his abdomen under his T-shirt showed that he was still wearing a dressing for the knife wound he'd received. He looked unkempt, his stubble a dirty grey in contrast with the redness of his hair. His T-shirt seemed to be annoying him, and he tugged at it, pulling it off his chest throughout the interview.

I had given Hendry a list of the questions I wanted asked and had filled him in on events while we had waited for Cashell to be brought up to the interview room. Consequently, I was content enough to sit and listen. We had decided to keep things informal.

"So, Johnny, you told Inspector Devlin here that you last saw your daughter last Thursday, the 19th of December. Is that right?" Hendry said.

"What? Aye. That's right. Thursday."

"Was there a reason why she didn't come home that night?"

"Staying with friends, probably."

"Any reason she was staying with friends?"

"Jesus Christ, do you need a reason to stay with a friend? Maybe she was with a boyfriend and didn't want us to know. What the fuck is this about?"

"Did you have a row with Angela on Thursday, Mr Cashell?"

Johnny looked up and peered at Hendry more cautiously, alerted by the use of his full name, sensing a change in tone – a change in direction. "Might have done; can't remember."

"Did you? Yes or no?"

"Well, if you're asking, you know I did. So just get to the point."

"What did you row about?"

"Family stuff."

Hendry laughed. "Oh it was family stuff alright." Then, so quietly that I wasn't even sure he actually said it, he muttered, "You're a smoker, Johnny. Do you like to roll your own?"

"What?"

"Did your daughter accuse you of spying on her getting dressed?"

Cashell exploded, getting to his feet, "You fucking…! Devlin? What the fuck's going on?"

A constable who had been standing at the door behind Cashell – another feature designed to cause discomfort – moved forward and placed a hand on Cashell's shoulder, forcing him back onto his seat.

"Did she accuse you of watching her getting dressed?" Hendry persisted.

Cashell did not immediately reply; instead he glared at me, his chest heaving, his breathing laboured and nasal. Finally, he exhaled slowly; "I… I stumbled in on her, by accident."

"That's not what we hear. Apparently this wasn't the first time, was it, Mr Cashell? You watched her take a shower one day too, we're told. Were you attracted to your daughter, Mr Cashell?"

"You fucker!" he spat, then turned to me as if I represented in some way the last voice of reason. "Devlin? What the fuck's going on here? You don't seriously think I-"

"Did you fancy your daughter Johnny? It's nothing to be ashamed of. She was a good-looking girl. Wouldn't even really have been incest anyway, would it, Johnny? 'Cause she wasn't yours anyway. Isn't that right?" Hendry seemed to take some pleasure from the last comment and the effect it had on Cashell.

Johnny's mouth opened and closed, struggling to respond like a fish gasping for breath, but his brain wouldn't function. Tears welled in his eyes as he stared, as though in a trance, through me and beyond the walls of the room to wherever he stored his memories of his girl. Again I saw her lying exposed in a field, without dignity. No one spoke as a single tear escaped from the corner of Cashell's eye, then he quickly rubbed at his face with the palms of his hands and lifted a cigarette and lit it. He stretched his mouth like an animal yawning, attempting to swallow back his tears.

"Did you kill her, Johnny?" Hendry said, his voice warm with camaraderie, but Cashell simply shook his head.

"Did you ever have sex with her? Or try to have sex with her?"

Again he shook his head and did not speak, as though afraid of the words he might use and what they might say about him.

"Did you want to?" Hendry asked.

Cashell looked at him again, defiance flaring in his red-ringed eyes. "I didn't kill my daughter."

"Why did you go after Whitey McKelvey, then? Jealousy? He was having sex with your girl."

"No. I… he… I found drugs in her trouser pockets. E tabs, I think. One of my other girls said Angela was spending a lot of time with him. I… I put two and two together. Thought maybe he'd drugged her or something. Raped her. She wouldn't have slept with that piece of shit by choice."

"Why him? It could have been anyone," I said, waving a pardon at Hendry for the interruption.

"Muire told me Angela took her to the cinema on Friday, and then was going to meet her boyfriend. He was the only boy I knew she was seeing. People in the village talk. I heard she'd been with him on Thursday night. I just… I just assumed she was with him on Friday night, too."

"Did he give her the ring?" I asked.

"What ring?"

"Angela was wearing a ring with the initials AC on it; some kind of moonstone with diamonds around it. A gold ring. Did McKelvey give it to her?"

Johnny Cashell's face blanched and he smacked his lips and tongue several times as though thirsty, again looking at some unspecified point just beyond me. "A ring?" he asked, almost to himself.

"Yes. Does it mean anything to you? Could he have bought it for her?"

"I don't know nothing about no ring." While he said it with finality, he seemed distracted. I could see that he was thinking about something, but I didn't know what else to ask.

A few minutes later Hendry wound the interview to a close. As he was being led to the door of the room Cashell looked at me and said, "Oi, Devlin? Whip-round, my arse. Since when did Gardai have a whip-round for the likes of me?" Then he shuffled out of the room, his shoulders slumped, and I couldn't work out whether what he had said had been an expression of gratitude or contempt. Hendry looked at me quizzically, but said nothing.

I returned to my own station after the interview and phoned Ballybofey, only to be told that Moore was out of the station. I left a message for him to contact me as soon as he came in.

Jason Holmes was in the interview room with one of our local characters, a thirty-four-year-old named Lorcan Hutton, who had spent several years in detention centres and jail for drugs offences but still continued to sell in the town. He was the antithesis of what you'd expect of a dealer. His parents were very wealthy, both doctors in the North. He had blond curly hair and an athletic physique. Despite his periods in prison and rehabilitation centres, he was a regular in the dark areas of bars and clubs, where teenagers – his acolytes – gathered around him, hoping for the free hit that would never come.

In fact, an IRA punishment beating, which had left him with two smashed ankles and puncture marks over his legs and arms from baseball bats studded with nails, had not stopped him, though it had driven his family out of Strabane and into Lifford in the mistaken belief that the IRA wouldn't come across the border.

Holmes announced for the benefit of the tape recording that I had entered the room and then suggested a break. Hutton shrugged, while his solicitor, a Strabane man called Brown, earnestly asked him whether he had been treated badly and what questions he had been asked.

Holmes and I stepped out of the room. "How's it going?" I asked.

Holmes shook his head. "Nothing. Knows nothing about E tabs. Never even seen one before. Shut tighter than a virg-" He stopped short as Williams approached.

"Did I miss a famous Holmes simile?" she asked, smiling.

"Nearly. You're just in time."

"What's up?" she said, waving a sheet of paper in her left hand.

"Nothing. Lorcan Hutton has joined us for a chat. Brought his lawyer."

"What?"

"Yep. I invited him to the station; he picks up his mobile and phones. The fucking lawyer was here before we were."

"Jesus." She allowed a respectful pause before telling us of her success. "Guess what? We got a hit on the ring. Two hits, actually."

"Great. What?"

"I kept phoning round jewellers and that, and this morning got a woman in Stranorlar who recognized the description of the ring."

"Any names come up?" I asked impatiently. Williams looked a little hurt at my lack of appreciation for her storytelling and continued.

"I couldn't find any of you, so I went on myself. Seems that about a month ago, a young traveller boy tried selling her a number of items, including the ring. She remembered the ring in particular because she has a moonstone ring herself. Said it was very unusual. Offered him twenty euros for it, thinking he wouldn't know the value. Told her to go fuck herself and left the shop. She thought he was playing hard to get, that he'd be back for the money, but she never saw him again."

"Is she sure it was a traveller?"

"Oh yes. Made a big deal out of showing me the can of air freshener she said she'd had to spray after he went. A blond boy, she said. Hair almost white. Big ears."

"Whitey McKelvey. Jesus! Good work, Caroline," Holmes said.

"Thank you." She smiled warmly. "Anyway – here's the interesting bit. She said she told the other Garda who had asked."

"What other Garda?" I asked.

"She said that a Guard had called into the shop one day, just out of the blue, and asked her about the ring. Had a sketch of it. She said she told him then; gave a full description of the boy. A young Guard."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know. I've contacted Letterkenny and they're to get back to me about it," Williams said. "But I figured that it meant the ring must have been stolen, not bought. Guess what?"

"What?" I said.

"It was. Stolen, I mean. In Letterkenny, a few weeks earlier."

"Makes sense." Holmes said.

"What does?" I asked.

"McKelvey steals it from Letterkenny, tries to shift it, doesn't get the money he expected and so gives it to his girlfriend in return for…" He looked at Williams. "For you know what."

"I suppose," I agreed a little reluctantly. "Who reported it stolen?"

"Someone called Anthony Donaghey. Said it was a family heirloom, belonged to his mother."

"Anthony Donaghey. The Anthony Donaghey?" I asked in amusement.

"I don't know. An Anthony Donaghey, certainly," Williams said, annoyed at my tone. "Why? Who's Anthony Donaghey?"

"Ratsy Donaghey," I said, looking to Holmes for agreement.

"Right, right. The drug dealer. Right."

"More than a drug dealer. Fulltime asshole. If that ring belonged to his mother, I'll… I don't know what I'll do. But it's not his mother's. She spent her days cleaning the local primary school; she didn't buy gold-and-diamond rings."

"Maybe she ran a sideline, same as her son," Holmes said, laughing.

"Maybe we should have a talk with Mr Donaghey," Williams suggested, pointedly ignoring the previous remark.

"You'll have a hard time doing that," a voice behind us said. We all turned to see the oily face of Mr Gerard Brown, lawyer to Lorcan Hutton, about whom we had completely forgotten.

"Why?" asked Holmes.

"He was found dead in Bundoran last month."

"Client of yours, too, was he?" Williams asked, smirking.

"Occasionally," Brown replied, without a hint of irony. "I take it my present client is free to go now."

I nodded at Holmes. "Try him one last time. Make it clear," I said, as much for Brown as for Holmes, "that we will ignore any admission of knowledge about drugs in the area, if Mr Hutton reveals such while giving us information which pertains to this murder inquiry."

"I'm sure my client will do his best to help the Garda," Brown said. Then he and Holmes went back into the interview room.

"So, what do you think, guvnor?" Williams said, stressing the last word.

"I think Holmes is right." Her face fell slightly. "That was bloody good work, Caroline."

She blushed. "What about Donaghey?" she said.

"Check where he died. Contact the station involved and see what they say about his death."

"Do you think there's a connection?" she asked.

"I don't see how there could be, but best check, eh? Meantime, we wait to see if McKelvey turns up in Ballybofey."

"Why Ballybofey?" she asked, and I filled her in on all that I had learned that morning. Then Williams went to her desk, while I began to work through some of the many message sheets that had gathered on my desk since Angela Cashell had died.

The top pile related to Terry Boyle. Apparently he had been seen in three different pubs on the evening he died, though no one remembered him leaving with anyone. Someone had run a standard record check on him the previous night and had reported that he was charged with possession of marijuana in Dublin when a first-year student. He got off with a fine and community service. An appeal for information had just started to filter out through the media – by tomorrow, I expected my messages pile to have grown considerably. I read and was able to scrap immediately the note from Williams, saying that she had got a possible hit with the ring in a second-hand jewellers' in Stranorlar, and couldn't wait for me to return. She added that Holmes had gone out to pick up Lorcan Hutton.

Burgess had left two notes that morning to say that Thomas Powell had phoned enquiring about the state of inquiries regarding his father's intruder. Burgess had spelt both words correctly, though had used them the wrong way around.

On Saturday night, five cars along Coneyburrow Road had had their wing mirrors smashed off by a drunken man seen staggering along the road. The following day, all five owners had phoned to say that the culprit, a local schoolteacher celebrating the Christmas holidays, had called on each that morning and apologized before offering to pay for all damages.

That same night, four bottles of gin were stolen from an offsales office at the back of the local pub. The thief had tried to escape out of the toilet window, dropping and smashing three of the bottles in the process.

On Sunday morning, a Derry man phoned to report seeing a wild cat along the main Lifford road the previous night as he returned home in a taxi following a wedding. He was unable to describe colour or size – only that it was dark and bigger than a normal cat.

Finally, while I was sitting there, the pathologist's report was left on my desk by Burgess. Terry Boyle's identification had been confirmed using hospital notes which mentioned two breakages in his femur from childhood accidents. Cause of death was attributed to a single gunshot wound to the head, delivered at point-blank range from a handgun. He had certainly been dead before his car was set alight. Stomach contents revealed he had drunk in excess of the legal drink-driving limit, which made me wonder whether he had stopped in the lay-by where he was killed to sleep off the drink. There was no sign of the drug which had been found in Angela Cashell's stomach, which further convinced me that the two killings were linked by nothing more than geography.

An hour and three coffees later, I became aware of a figure standing before me and looked up to see Garda officer John Harvey, a young uniform with light brown hair and glasses, holding his cap in his hand.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" he said.

"Did I?" I asked.

"Yes. Sergeant Williams said I was to see you about the stolen ring. I was the one called to the jewellers about it."

I invited Harvey to sit, and he did, carefully, as though attending an interview. Harvey was a part-timer, but clearly loved the work and compensated for a limited intellect by being fastidious and deferential to all the full-timers in the station, especially detectives.

"I brought my notes, sir. And a copy of the report I wrote." He smiled as he offered me the two typed A4 sheets and his notebook, in which he had recorded the interview in longhand. The notes confirmed exactly what Williams had told us, with a vague description of the boy, as provided by the jeweller in Stranorlar.

"Could it be this Whitey McKelvey, sir?" Harvey said, eagerly.

"Could be. Why did you go to the jewellers in the first place?"

"Sergeant Fallon asks some of us part-timers if we'd go around local second-hand shops every so often with stolen-goods lists. I wasn't doing anything that day, so I volunteered. I don't know if he followed it up, though."

I figured Fallon probably hadn't. Stolen rings were low priority; simply by sending someone like Harvey out to check, Fallon had covered himself should anyone make a fuss that their loss wasn't being treated seriously. In reality, we all accepted that stolen goods generally stayed lost. I could also understand why Fallon picked people like Harvey to do the job: he had clearly approached it with the same seriousness as he would a murder inquiry. In fact, I decided to follow Fallon's lead.

"John, perhaps you could help me with something else. Tommy Powell in Finnside Nursing Home claims he had an intruder in his room last week. I promised we'd send someone out to check. Would you take a run out, if you get a chance?"

He nodded eagerly. "I'd love to," he said.

"Thanks," I replied, looking back to my paperwork in the hope he'd take the hint and leave. He didn't.

"My pleasure, sir. If there's anything I can do to help with the Cashell case. You know, I could…" He didn't get any further, as Burgess shouted that Costello wanted to see me.

When I went into his office, he was speaking to someone on the phone and had a copy of the Belfast Telegraph on the desk in front of him. He spun the paper round to face me while he agreed with whatever was being said to him on the other end of the line. Then he pointed at an article on the front page, apparently a story concerning the latest UN debate over the efficacy of Hans Blix's Inspection Team, and the inevitability of a war in Iraq. I failed to see the relevance of the story and shrugged my bewilderment. Costello frowned and stabbed a finger at the bottom of the page, without interrupting his conversation. I sat down when I saw the short piece to which he had pointed, under the heading, "Puma on Prowl in Donegal?"

The story told, in sensational detail, how sheep in the area of Lifford were being terrorised nightly by an unidentified creature. It also quoted an eyewitness, the Derry man who had spotted the creature on the way home from a wedding, giving a much fuller description than the one he had provided for our desk sergeant when he had phoned that weekend. He had, he said, contacted the local Garda, but felt that his complaint was not taken seriously. Now poor animals were suffering due to Garda reluctance or inefficiency. As a side-bar to the story, the paper had included a table of facts about pumas and what to do if you encountered one, including the suggestion that, when face-to-face with a puma, it is best not to panic, but rather pretend that it is not there.

By the time I had stopped reading and put the paper down, Costello was holding the phone in his hand, the mouthpiece covered. "Do you know anything about this?" he said, lifting the paper, as though to check whether the story was still there, then throwing it across his desk. It skimmed across the polished surface and slid onto the floor. I picked it up.

"A bit. The Derry man left a message. I only got it today. I thought we had more important issues."

"Well, this might explain Anderson's complaints about his sheep."

"Possibly," I agreed.

"Except we look like spare pricks at a funeral not doing anything about it. RTE have been on the phone. Again."

"Twice in one week. We've hit the big time."

"Three times," Costello corrected me. "You got the pathologist's report, I take it?" I nodded. "What do you think?"

I recounted my thoughts on reading it, including my view that perhaps Terry Boyle had parked at Gallows Lane to sleep off the effects of overdrinking. Costello let me speak, then passed me a booklet of typed sheets.

"Forensics' report," he said. "Bloody detailed. I've one of those forensics boyos on the phone, except he's put me on hold. Car was parked and the engine was off when he was killed, they say." With that, we both heard a tinny voice over the phone line. Costello listened for a few seconds before announcing that he was putting the phone onto speakers, which took rather longer than it might have. Eventually, I was introduced to Sergeant Michael Doherty, who had written the report.

"We discovered a fair bit from the car, Inspector," Doherty began. "The victim was likely shot by someone standing outside the car. On the driver's side. We recovered the bullet from the bodywork behind the passenger seat. Ballistics tests are being carried out at the moment. I'll say this – it must have been a scare for whoever was sitting next to him."

"Was there a passenger?"

"Almost definitely. You see, blood spattering is a definite science, Inspector. When your victim was shot, his blood should have spattered all over the inside of the car. But around the passenger seat, there's significantly less blood than there should be. My guess is that someone was sitting beside him – someone who was covered in blood when they got out of the car. Now, their seats were pushed right back and, though your victim's clothes were badly burned, we can tell his trousers were unbuttoned and unzipped when he was killed, so I'd say he was up for some hanky-panky." Doherty laughed in a vaguely embarrassed way and continued, "The important thing is that your victim's window was wound down. Obviously the glass was blown out in the fire, but the mechanism was down near the bottom of the door."

"His window was open?" Costello interrupted. "So what?"

"The weather wasn't great that night. I don't know about you, but if I'm about to strip off for a bit of action in the back of the car, the last thing I'd do in the middle of winter is wind down my window. A bit chilly round the nether regions, eh?" His laugh rattled from the speaker again. "No, my guess would be-"

"That he opened the window to his killer," I said.

"Just so," Doherty agreed.

"Why not just shoot him through the window?" I asked, as much thinking aloud as seeking a response.

"Maybe whoever did it wanted to be sure that they had the right person. Or wanted to see his face. Or wanted to make sure they didn't hit whoever was sitting beside him in the car."

"Maybe," I agreed.

Doherty made a few final observations, then hung up. Costello had listened grimly to the whole conversation without speaking. He sat opposite me, his hands clasped. "So," he said finally. "What do you think?"

"Seems like forensics have done the thinking for us: he picks someone up – or is picked up by someone – parks in the lay-by for a bit of sex; there's a tap on the door, opens the window and bang."

"What about the person in the car with him? An accomplice?"

"Hard to see it otherwise. How did his killer know where to find him, unless he followed him? Why not kill the passenger too? And why burn the car, unless they were scared that the passenger had left some evidence. Either that, or it was some poor innocent out for a night's fun who's wandering around Lifford in shock, covered in blood."

"Jesus, Ben, we need to clear up some of this quick. Two killings in a week. We'll start to look incompetent."

When I came out of the office, Harvey was still sitting opposite my desk. He stood when I approached, his cap held in his hand.

"Everything alright, sir?" he asked.

I nodded. "Can I help you with something else?" I asked, lifting some of the paperwork from my desk.

"Sergeant Burgess asked me to tell you that Officer Moore from Ballybofey was on the phone, sir," he said. "He said it was important."

Ten minutes later we were on our way to pick up Whitey McKelvey.