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.'
