'1883,' replied one of ours. 'And he was hung!'
'Rightly bloody so,' agreed another northerner.
'Oh, there's been more since,' I said. 'We just haven't found all the bodies yet.'
Hendry laughed. 'We'll help any way we can, Devlin, but you're the lead on this.' He looked at Angela one last time. 'She was a lovely-looking girl. I'd hate to have to tell her parents.'
'Jesus, don't talk,' I replied. 'You don't know her father, Johnny Cashell.'
'Oh, I know enough,' Hendry replied darkly and winked. 'British Intelligence isn't totally down the drain yet.' With that, we shook hands and he walked off towards his own side, steadying himself against the thick buffets of air carrying the smell of the water across the borderlands.
Johnny Cashell was known to all the Gardai in Lifford on a firstname basis, having spent many nights in the holding cell of the small police station in the centre, of our village. In fact, when the county council recently gave the whole village a facelift, putting new lamps and hanging-baskets all around the cobbled square and benches along the main roads, we named the bench outside the station 'Sadie's', in recognition of the amount of time spent on it by Cashell's wife while she waited for him to be released in the morning from the drunk-tank.
Johnny Cashell was an obdurate man with a chip against anyone better educated than himself. He would hold court in the local bars, boasting of all he had achieved despite having left school at fourteen. In reality, he was a petty criminal, stealing from phone boxes and charity tins, and pissing it against the wall of the Military Post as he staggered past on his way home.
No matter how low Johnny sank, Sadie was always waiting for him, even when he stole his mother-in-law's pension book. However, we all had to reconsider Sadie's loyalty to Johnny when he got out after serving nine months for that. Three months later she gave birth to a baby girl, the only member of the Cashell family who didn't have Johnny's bright copper colouring but a head washed in wisps of white-blonde. They called the girl Angela, and Johnny cared for her as if she were his own, as far as anyone knew never questioning her parentage. We all suspected that secretly it hurt him – the bright blonde so obviously at odds with the fiery reds of her siblings. In weaker moments, when Johnny shouted profanities from the holding cells until we couldn't take it any more, we taunted him about his blonde-haired daughter and how she was the prettiest of the bunch. The slightest comment was enough to silence him and ensure a full night's sleep for whoever was stuck on duty because of him.
The snow ceased as the assistant state pathologist arrived, black medical bag in hand. I stood by the river as she worked, wondering what to say to Johnny Cashell, and watched the sun exploding low over the horizon, turning the ribs of the clouds first pink, then purple and orange.
Cashell was a barrel-chested, red-faced man with thick, curly red hair that he kept tied back in a ponytail. He dressed as if from a charity shop and his clothes had a musty, damp odour. He was more particular about his feet, and I never met him wearing the same pair of trainers twice: they were always new and always a brand label. When you spoke to him he looked at the ground, scrunching up his toes so you could see the movements through the white leather of his shoes. When he spoke it was not to your face but to a spot just to the left, as though someone else waited at your shoulder for his words. All his children had developed the same habit, which their social worker had thought of as rude until she got to know them.
As we stood at his doorway, he stared at his shoes while I told him of his daughter's death and invited him to identify her. Then he looked past me, his eyes flickering with grief or anger. He exhaled a breath which he seemed to have been holding since I arrived, and I thought I could smell drink under the cigarette smoke.
'It's her,' he said. 'I know it's her. Sh'ain't been home these two days. Went out to Strabane on Thursday.' He leaned back a little, as though steadying himself against the door jamb, the sunlight burnishing to gold the red curls on the back of his hands.
Sadie Cashell appeared behind him, face ashen, seemingly having overheard our conversation. She was drying her hands on a dishcloth. 'What is it, Johnny?' she asked with suspicion.
'They've gone and found Angela. They think she's dead, Ma!' he said. And with that his lips softened and his face crumpled.
He spluttered rather than cried, spit and tears dribbling down his chin. His eyes stopped flickering as the final rays of sunlight stole from the sky and the world darkened almost imperceptibly.
'How?' Sadie demanded, her jaw muscles quivering.
'We… we don't know yet, Sadie,' I said. 'We think someone has killed her, I'm afraid.'
'There's been some mistake,' she said, her voice rising hysterically, her grip tightening on her husband's arm until her knuckles whitened. 'You're wrong.'
'I'm sorry, Sadie,' I said. 'I'll… we'll do what we can. I promise.' She stared at me, as if waiting for me to say something else, then turned and went inside.
Johnny Cashell snuffed through his nose, his face turned towards Strabane. I guessed that Sadie had broken the news to their children, for I could hear the cries of girls begin from inside the house, the sound building quickly to a crescendo.
'We need you to come to the morgue, Mr Cashell. To identify her. If you don't mind.'
'She needn't be there now. Bring her home,' he said.
'Mr Cashell, we have things we have to do, sir, to find out what happened to her. You mightn't get her back for a day or two, I'm afraid.'
He took a tin from his pocket and removed a rolled cigarette from it, put it in his mouth and lit it. Then he spat a piece of tobacco from his tongue and looked once more in my direction, just beyond my shoulder. 'I know what happened to her. I'll deal with it,' he said.
'What do you mean? What do you think happened, Mr Cashell?' I asked.
'Never mind,' he said, still not looking at me.
His wife reappeared at the door. 'Where's my girl, John?' she asked her husband. He pointed to me with his thumb.
'He says we can't have her yet. She ain't ready to come home, he says.'
'Who did it?' she demanded.
'I… we don't know, Mrs Cashell,' I said, glancing at her husband. 'We're working on it.'
'You're fast enough to pick up on innocent people in the street, maybe has a drink. Now you're slow all of a sudden. Some rich girl, you'd be faster, I'd say.'
'Mrs Cashell,' I said, 'I promise we will deal with this as quickly as possible. Can I speak with your other daughters, please?'
Sadie looked first at me, then at her husband, who shrugged his shoulders and walked away from the door, still smoking. Then she allowed me in.
Angela's three sisters were seated around a table in the kitchen. They looked remarkably similar. A baby, dressed only in a nappy, clung to the chest of one of them, bunching up her white blouse in his fist.
I sat at the table and took out my cigarettes.
'No smoking around my wee'un,' said the young mother, tapping her own cigarette ash onto the linoleum floor.
I did not put the cigarette away, nor did I light it. The youngest daughter was still crying, but the other girls stared at me, one redeyed, one vaguely defiant, as if unwilling to show emotions in front of a Guard.
'I need some help in finding out what happened to Angela,' I said. 'Perhaps you could tell me people she was with, boyfriends, that sort of thing.'
The youngest girl opened her mouth as though to speak but was interrupted by the one holding the baby, whose name I seemed to remember was Christine.
'We don't know nothing, Inspector.' She pronounced each syllable of the title deliberately and with as much disdain as she could muster. I noticed that she alone, of all the sisters, had not cried since she had heard the news. Her eyes were clear and white. Aware of my gaze, she looked down at her baby instead, her head tilted slightly to one side.
I turned to the youngest girl. 'Were you going to tell me something?' I said. 'To help me?'
She glanced furtively at her sister, then lowered her head and stared at her hands, which were joined in her lap. She looked undernourished, her bony pink hands like baby birds in a nest.
Christine spoke again. 'Like I already told you', she said, 'we don't know nothing.' With that, she lifted her baby's bottle and began to feed him, holding the cigarette in her mouth and squinting through the smoke.
I asked Sadie if I could see Angela's room. She led me up the stairs in silence, pushed open one of the
