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
