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.
Chapter Thirteen
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?'
'What if McKelvey wasn't the link. What if the message wasn't for McKelvey or Costello? What if it was meant for Johnny Cashell?'
'It's possible. Should we go see him?' Williams suggested.
'I guess we'd better,' I said.
We didn't get any further, though, for my own cellphone rang. It was Kathleen Boyle, Terry's mother, and she had received something unusual in the mail.
'I don't usually open my husband's mail,' she explained, sitting on the same sofa as she had the night her son had been murdered. 'Only at Christmas. Well, some people don't realize we're separated, you see. They still send cards to both of us, but in his name. You know, Mr and Mrs Seamus Boyle. I open them and send his on to him.'
'No need to explain, Mrs Boyle,' Williams said, impatient to find out what exactly had been sent.
'Well, I knew this was a Christmas card when it arrived today. I just thought it was late. But the card was blank you see – no message, nothing. Just this inside…' She held out a photograph, its subject unclear as the light shimmered with the shaking of her hand across the glossy finish.
When I took the picture from her, I was both surprised and strangely comforted to see the familiar image of Mary Knox, sitting on the steps, frozen in a moment that must have held significance for whoever had taken the
