warned you.'
Penny, who had stopped watching the TV at the start of the conversation, now stared up at Anderson open-mouthed and panic-stricken.
'There's no need for threats, Mark. Frank's a good dog and I don't think he'd be annoying your sheep. I'm sure you're mistaken, but we'll keep an extra careful eye on him.' I winked at Penny conspiratorially. She tried to smile back, but did so without confidence.
'Well, don't say I didn't warn you. If that dog's in my field, I'll kill it,' he repeated, then nodded, as though we had had a conversation about the weather, and bade us a happy Christmas.
When he left, Penny sidled over to me and tugged on my trouser leg. 'Is he gonna hurt Frank, Daddy?' Her voice cracked as she spoke and her eyes reddened.
'No, sweetie,' Debbie said, and came over and lifted her in her arms. 'Daddy'll make sure that Frank stays inside every night, then nothing will happen to him. Isn't that right, Daddy?' she said, looking at me while hugging Penny into her and swaying lightly from side to side.
'That's right, sweetheart,' I said. 'Frank will be alright.'
Chapter Two
Sunday, 22nd December
The following morning I took Debbie and the children to early Mass, where Penny insisted we say a special prayer for Frank, and the entire congregation prayed for the repose of the soul of Angela Cashell and for comfort for her family in their tragedy. Yesterday's snow flurries had cleared and the sky was fresh as water, the wind sharp, the bright winter sun deceptively warm-looking as we sat in church, staring out. Strangely, the roses in the gardens at the front of the church were budding again despite the lateness of the year. As I stopped to admire them on our way out, Thomas Powell Jr approached me.
Powell was someone I had known when I was young, at school in Derry. He was my age, but where I was stocky and carrying extra weight around the gut, Powell was lean and tanned and carried only the aura of good health, achieved and maintained through prosperity. He was the husband of a girl I had also known when younger, and the only son of one of the richest men in Donegal, Thomas Sr. The old man had been a highly influential politician in his time, and rumour had it that the son would soon follow suit. It was about the father that Thomas wished to see me.
'Devlin. Anything on the old man?' he asked, shaking my hand in both of his, a gesture which was strikingly disingenuous.
'What old man?' I asked.
'My father, of course. I'd assumed you'd know.' He smiled with some bewilderment.
'Sorry, Thomas. Did something happen to your father?'
He seemed irritated. 'I thought they'd have told you. I phoned your station this morning. About the intruder.'
'I haven't heard, Thomas. Where was this?'
'His room in the home: Finnside. He woke in the middle of the night, Wednesday, and swore there was someone in his room. Look, we told the guy who answered the phone. He said it would be investigated.'
'I'm sure it will, Thomas. We're a bit up to our eyes with this Cashell girl's death. Was your father hurt?'
'No.'
'Was anything taken?'
'No. But that's not the point. Someone was in his room.'
I could see Powell beginning to get annoyed so, having promised to follow it up at the earliest opportunity, I excused myself.
As I turned to leave, I caught sight of his wife, Miriam, standing in the vestibule of the church, talking to Father Brennan but looking over at us, seemingly distracted. Her eyes caught mine and something shivered inside me and settled uneasily in my stomach. She smiled lightly and returned her attentions to the priest.
As there were only three days till Christmas, I had promised Penny a trip to Santa's grotto and I wanted to get on the road to Derry as soon as possible. The events of the day before had made me all the more resolved to spend time with my children; I couldn't help seeing their faces when I thought of Angela. Although it was my day off, I had my mobile phone with me and as we drove from the churchyard its urgent ringing startled me.
It was Jim Hendry. He was calling to tell me that Strabane police were holding Johnny Cashell for attempted murder. As I drove across the bridge to Strabane in the beautiful December sunshine, I was able to look down and see frogmen from both sides of the border taking turns at searching the murk for anything that might help us catch his daughter's killer.
On the northern side of the border, a local government agency, tired of traveller encampments clogging up car parks and industrial estates, decided to provide the travellers with their own area. The agency chose a site off the main road and miles away from any other housing developments and then, showing a severe lack of understanding of the term 'itinerant', built twenty houses for the traveller families to live in. Needless to say, the travellers parked outside the houses and lived in their caravans as they always had. However, someone systematically stripped the brand new houses of anything that could be sold, making a neat profit and leaving the estate looking like a terrorist training ground. For several months afterwards, the less reputable local builders made a huge and completely illegal profit, buying cut-price piping and slates and putting them into new houses.
It was unusual, Inspector Hendry told me, when I drove over to Strabane that morning, for the police to have to go into the camp – the travellers normally resolved disputes in their own ways. That morning had been different, apparently.
From what could be gleaned from various witnesses, it seemed that Johnny Cashell and his three brothers had walked from his home to Daly's Filling Station in Lifford at 11 p.m. the previous evening, just as the nightshift staff came on, and there they each filled tenlitre jerry cans with petrol. The four of them then sat in McElroy's Bar until 2.30 in the morning, drinking Guinness and Powers whiskey. While most of the other drinkers in the bar smelt the fumes coming off the four jerry cans in the corner, no one asked about them or reacted in any way to imply that such an occurrence was unusual; not even when Brendan Cashell went to the bar and bought a single packet of John Player cigarettes and four disposable lighters. Many of the regulars looked at Johnny with a mixture of pity and suspicion. No one mentioned Angela's name, though some patted him on the shoulder as they passed by, and a few, including the publican, stood him a drink. Others were more circumspect, perhaps wary of being seen to take sides, in case at a later date it transpired that Johnny himself had been involved in some way in the murder of the blonde-haired child.
The Cashell brothers walked the half-mile to Strabane from Lifford, each carrying a can of petrol, and were spotted around 3.30 a.m. crossing the bridge above the point where the rivers Finn and Mourne merge into the Foyle. What they did for the next hour is unclear, but they entered the traveller camp at 5 a.m., just as the first tendrils of grey crept into the pre-dawn sky.
Once there, they doused as many of the houses and caravans as they could with petrol, then they each took out cigarettes and disposable lighters, lit their smokes, and then the houses and caravans around them. The four brothers did not run away, but rather sat on the massive boulders which had been placed at the mouth of the encampment to prevent any more caravans from entering. Johnny listened dispassionately as screams began to shudder through the flimsy metal of the burning caravans.
A passing taxi driver radioed for the police and fire engines and watched while Johnny and his brothers cheered as one traveller family after another stumbled from the burning caravans, screaming and crying. Then Johnny spotted one person in particular – a thin boy who looked no more than twelve or thirteen, with hair so blond it was almost white. Johnny was seen shouting at him. Then he and his brothers ran after the boy, who scuttled like a rabbit through the bushes behind the encampment and across the fields beyond, his bare back luminous in the moonlight.
It was not clear who realized the Cashells' culpability first, but by the time the police arrived, someone had beaten Johnny's brothers so badly that they were unidentifiable. The youngest, Diarmuid, had been rushed to
