Borderlands (23 page)

She said
she'd heard there were men in Lifford who liked to dance with single women. She
told him she was alone. Then she took out her cigarettes and lit one. He told
her she was not allowed to smoke in a Garda car and she smiled at him with her
eyes. She asked him if he smoked and he said, "Sometimes". She took
the cigarette from her lips, her lipstick thick around the brown filter, and
extended it towards him. He resisted as it touched his mouth, then dragged from
it, smiling at her as he exhaled.

She lit
another cigarette for herself and told him of her children, a boy named Sean
and a girl called Aoibhinn. She spoke of how worried they would be when she did
not come home that night. Finally she suggested to Costello that if he let her
go home, instead of arresting her, she would perform an act on him which he'd
enjoy.

He sat in
the front of the car, suddenly cold and warm, excited and scared and unable to
reach a decision that would calm the rush of adrenaline he felt. And for a few
moments, all thoughts of his wife and children left him and he convinced
himself that he deserved some fun in life. He told himself that Emily would
never know and so would not be hurt.

He started
the engine and drove to the area of waste ground where the old asylum used to
stand. He sat in the darkness while she climbed between the two seats and sat
beside him. He turned his face away from the streetlamps and closed his eyes
and thought only of his breaths that quickened and shallowed until he swore he
would hyperventilate. When she was finished, he opened his eyes again and
started the ignition, while she put on her seatbelt and fixed her make-up in
the vanity mirror. Then he drove her the quarter mile to the border and let her
out of the car. She thanked him, and he almost reciprocated. Then she closed
the door, waved in at him sadly through the side window, and turned and walked
into the shadow of the Camel's Hump, the massive British Army checkpoint which
had dominated the area for most of the Troubles.

Costello
returned to the station where he went to the toilet and washed himself several
times and strained until he forced himself to urinate. He looked at himself in
the mirror, water dripping off the fringes of his hair and off his nose and for
a moment he thought he would vomit. But the wave of nausea passed, or he
swallowed it down; he smoothed his hair back on his scalp, replaced his cap and
walked home, allowing the breeze which was rising off the river to cool the
redness in his cheeks.

Costello
woke the following morning early and sat at his kitchen table in silence while
the air around him lightened. He took a walk into Lifford town just after 8.00
a.m. and bought fresh bread and orange juice and a bunch of cut flowers from a
bucket outside the local supermarket. He made Emily breakfast in bed and
laughed a little too loudly at her jokes. He studied her face carefully and
reminded himself of all the things about her which he loved, all the reasons he
had married her.

Two weeks
later, when he could stand no more, he sat in his car at the customs point and
flicked through his notebook until he found Mary Knox's name and address. He
wore plain clothes so he could cross the border. He sat outside her house on
Canal View, watching the windows for what seemed an eternity. Finally, he went
over and knocked on the door. Butterflies fluttered around his insides. A knot
thick as a fist caught in the centre of his gut. The door was opened and she
was looking at him, standing on her doorstep, his hair brushed, a bunch of
flowers bought from the same bucket as his wife's clasped so tightly in his
sweating hand that the green paper was staining his skin.

Later, as
he left the house, he placed a twenty pound note on the phone table in the
hall, while she dressed quietly in the living room.

Over the
following months he visited Mary Knox with increasing frequency. Their routine
did not change. He sat and waited in his car until she was ready for him. He
stood at her door like a child approaching an adult, fear and excitement
tightening inside him. He always brought her flowers, even when those from the
night before were still fresh.

At
Christmas he bought Mary Knox a gold chain which cost more than the gift he
bought for his wife. He bought the Knox children a train set and a doll, but
was not allowed to present them personally. She bought him nothing and he
thought she might give him a free turn, but as he crept out the front door that
night she called him back and asked him had he forgotten something. He was so
angry he swore he would never go back to her, but he returned four nights
later.

One night
he saw a figure - another customer - emerge from her door, glancing furtively
up and down the street, the orange lamplight glistening off his wedding ring.
Costello could do nothing and Knox made no apology.

On his way
home he picked up a drunk who was staggering over the bridge towards Lifford
and beat him so severely with his nightstick that when the man left the
drunk-tank the following morning, his ribs and back were ribboned with purple
and red welts, though he could not recall how he had received them.

More and
more often, Costello found himself waiting until a man left Mary Knox's house
before he could enter. Finally, on one such night in May, as the evening
freshened and the last blue faded from the sky, he hit on the idea of a trip to
Donegal. He would take her away for the weekend, spend two whole days with her,
with no distractions - no other men, no Emily, no twenty-pound payment. He
could say he had to attend a conference. He could book under the name Smith, as
he had seen it done in the movies. For the first time in months, he felt again
the nauseating wave of nerves and excitement return.

It took
three weeks to convince Mary Knox. He promised to pay for everything if she
would come. He promised to arrange it so no one would know. Finally he promised
to buy her something to compensate for the loss of earnings she would suffer
over one weekend. She smiled and allowed him to kiss her and agreed. She said
she would leave her children with a neighbour; they had an understanding.

It was on
that trip that Costello bought Mary Knox the ring which I now held. And, he
believed, it was that trip which had signalled the start of the end of their
relationship: perhaps because Mary Knox realized how possessive he had become.

As autumn
darkened the nights around him, he saw her less frequently. Several nights her
house stood in darkness all night. When he did see her, she seemed distant. Her
clothes looked more expensive and, though she still wore his ring, it was
supplemented now with other items of jewellery. One night when he called, he
watched her going out of her house and getting into a black southern-
registered car, driven by a Lifford man named Anthony Donaghey. He was tall and
thin in an ungainly way, his hair shorn close to his scalp. He wore drainpipe
jeans rolled up on his shins and high-laced Doctor Marten boots. Yet, he held
the door open for Mary Knox as if he were her chauffeur, and she sat in the
back while he drove.

Without any
regard for his dignity, Costello followed them back across the border and out
to the Three Rivers Hotel that squatted on the Letterkenny Road. He sat in the
shadows of the car park for three hours, running his car battery low by
listening to the radio, waiting for Mary Knox to reappear. Shortly after one in
the morning, she swayed drunkenly out through the front door. Donaghey got out
of a waiting car, helped her in and drove her home.

When
Costello asked her about the incident several days later she told him he was
pathetic, sitting in the darkness watching her. She told him she didn't need a
jealous lover. She told him she had someone more important than a policeman to
take care of her. He shouted at her so loudly her daughter upstairs began to
cry. Mary Knox slapped him on the face and called him a lunatic. His face stung
and burned where the print of her hand had already started to turn red.
Blindly, he grabbed at the earthenware jug of flowers and threatened her with
it. For the tiniest second something like fear flickered in her eyes, then she
laughed at him, laughed so hard that tears began to leak down her face. Her
laughter followed him out onto the street and all the way home.

He did not
see Mary Knox again. Several weeks later, on New Year's Eve, she and her
children vanished.

We were
sitting now in the lay-by halfway across the bridge between Lifford and
Strabane. Traffic drifted past us. Below, where the Foyle began its final
journey to Lough Foyle and on to the Atlantic, a lone heron waded in the
shallows, dipping its beak curiously into the murk, but was having no success
finding food.

"So,
that's the whole story, Benedict. Why did I not tell you this before? Hardly my
finest moment, was it?"

I said
nothing, but ground the cigarette I was smoking into the car ashtray. I wound
down the window to let the smoke escape and watched as the heron gave up its
search, stretched its wings and lifted itself from the water. "What has
this got to do with Angela Cashell?" I asked finally.

"I
don't know, Benedict. Honestly. If I thought there was a connection, I'd have
told you before now."

"There,
must be a connection," I said with irritation. "Ratsy

Donaghey
reports stolen the ring of a woman who disappeared twenty-odd years ago; Whitey
McKelvey gets hold of it, tries to flog it, claims he sold it to a woman in a
disco, and it ends up on the finger of an almost naked dead girl, the daughter
of a local hood. Coincidence is one thing, sir, but this is just a little
much."

"I
could call the NCIB in. Get some fresh minds on the case. Of course that means
that everything will be in the open. Everything."

Regardless
of the implicit threat that my attack on Whitey McKelvey would surface once
more, I was reluctant anyway to hand things over to the National Criminal
Investigation Bureau. My handling of the case had hardly been exemplary, but I
felt I was at last on the right track.

"The
first question is, how did Ratsy Donaghey end up with the ring?" I said,
trying to ignore his comment.

"Well,
either Mary gave it to him or he took it from her," Costello said.
"And she may not have cared for me, but she cared for that ring. It cost a
fortune."

I started
the engine and indicated to turn back towards Lifford. "Where are we
going?" Costello said.

I looked at
him but could not answer.

Monday, 30th December

At 9.30 on
Monday morning, I met Williams in our storeroom office. She and Holmes had
secured an artist's impression of the girl with whom Terry Boyle had been
spotted on the night he died. Unfortunately, for all that effort, the picture
could have been of any teenaged girl: small, fair hair, attractive; no
eye-colour, no distinctive tattoos or piercing. The e-fit would be released to
the press, but even Williams admitted that she didn't hold out much hope.
Holmes was continuing his suspension at home, watching daytime TV and phoning
suspects whose names had been bandied about in connection with Boyle. It was a
thankless task, but he was using a Garda cellphone, so it wasn't costing him
anything.

"She
looks like somebody I know," I said, turning my head to one side, as
though looking from a different angle might help me see more clearly.

"She
looks like
anybody
I know," Williams said. "That's the problem. How's
the Cashell case moving?"

I told her
all that Costello had told me. When I finished she shook her head in disbelief,
then said, "I guess you were right when you said the ring was a message.
Do you think it was meant for Costello?"

"Maybe.
It's something we'll have to consider. First we figure out what Ratsy Donaghey
had to do with all this. I have a feeling that, if he's involved, Mary Knox
didn't voluntarily give that ring away."

"Well,
I have two bits of news," Williams said. "First off, I checked that
video again. Bad news is there was no sign of Whitey McKelvey."

"But
we saw her going in with him."

"No,"
she replied, raising a finger in the air in a way that reminded me of one of my
old school teachers. "We saw someone going in with Cashell, whom we
assumed to be Whitey. Remember, the guy with the short blond hair and jeans.
White shirt?"

"I
remember," I said. "What about him?"

"He
appears again later. Going to the toilet. I had to go and check in the bar
myself last night. He went into the girls' toilet. He was a she."

"Are
you sure?" I asked, though I knew it was a stupid question.

"As
best I can be. It's hard to tell. The white shirt is kind of baggy. A
small-breasted woman, short hair? Yeah, could be a woman. Maybe Whitey McKelvey
was telling the truth. He doesn't appear anywhere on the video."

"If he
was telling the truth about that, maybe he did sell the ring," I said.

"Let's
say he did. How did it end up on Cashell's finger? Unless someone bought the
ring specifically for that purpose. Which would have meant tracking down
Whitey. Which meant they knew the ring had been stolen. Or maybe Ratsy told
them it had been stolen. Maybe that's why he had cigarette burns all over his
arms. Maybe they tortured him until he told them about it. They trace it back
to McKelvey and buy it from him," Williams added. "Then plant it on
his girlfriend's body to make it look like he did it. But why?"