family of Mary Knox.'
Duffy nodded, her bun tottering on her head. 'Mary, God rest her. Have you found her? Is that it?' She leaned forward a little in her seat as an indication of concern.
'No, Ms Duffy,' I said. 'We're re-examining her case. Do you have any idea what happened to her?'
'Oh, Mary's dead,' Duffy said in a matter-of-fact tone. 'Mary was dead the day she disappeared. I've always known that.'
'How?' Williams asked, smiling uncertainly.
'You just do. We were very good friends. I would watch her children for her when she was… you know, when she was working.' She broke the tip off her cigarette and laid the unsmoked half in the ashtray beside her. 'Would you like to see her?' she asked, standing up before we had a chance to answer. She went over to a heavy mahogany cabinet in the corner of the room and opened it to reveal shelves packed with books and photo albums. Duffy flicked through one or two, then located the picture she wanted, removed it from the album and gave it to Williams, who looked at it and passed it to me. 'That's her and the children,' Duffy said, standing above me, her head tilted to see the picture in my hand.
The picture was clearly from the same batch as the one we had already seen. In the background, grey clouds had massed, but it did not detract from the sunny disposition of the three figures. Mary Knox was still sitting on the concrete steps to the beach, but in this shot her children were on either side of her. She had obviously been an attractive woman. A black swimsuit was visible through the large white T-shirt she wore. Her hands rested demurely on her bare knees, which were pressed together. Clearly visible on her left hand was the moonstone ring.
To her left was a boy of about eight, his blonde hair cut bowlfashion. He wore nothing but green shorts. His ribs stood out a little through his skin, and he was grinning so much that his eyes were little more than slits. He had one arm around his mother's neck, the other jauntily resting on his hip. Small bruises were visible on his legs and shins.
On the other side of Mary Knox sat her daughter. She too smiled into the camera, but her body was closed, her hands clasped in front of her. She retained a tiny distance from her mother. Her face was thin and her skin light, contrasting with the darkness of her hair, which hung in curls around her face and shoulders. She was wearing a blue swimsuit with a beach towel around her shoulders like a shawl. Something about her expression was familiar and strangely sad. Perhaps it was just that I knew how this family would turn out.
'When was this taken?' I asked.
'Should be written on the back,' Duffy replied. 'Around Halloween, before she disappeared. The weather was beautiful for so late in the year and we all went to Bundoran for a day out. We had a great day.' The dates certainly fitted with Costello's buying the ring.
'That's a nice ring she's wearing,' I said. 'Looks expensive.'
'It was. Didn't stop it breaking, though. In fact on the way home that night she noticed one of the stones had fallen out. Had to send it back to be fixed.'
'Where did she get it?' I asked, trying to make the question sound as casual as possible. Still Duffy viewed me with suspicion.
Finally she decided to answer. 'I suppose you know anyway. Mary had a lot of men. Made a bit for herself on the back of it. One of her men bought it for her.'
'Do you know who?' Williams asked.
'Someone with money. Someone important. One of the important people.'
'What do you mean, 'one of?' I asked.
'There were several,' Duffy replied, and smiled coyly, as if to suggest she had gone as far as she could.
'Who were they?' Williams asked, reading my thoughts.
'I don't remember names. Some businessmen, important people. The owner of the Three Rivers Hotel was the biggest of them, though.'
'Who was that?' I asked. The Three Rivers was derelict now, and had been for as long as I could recall.
'I don't remember,' Duffy said, averting her eyes from my mine. 'As for the children, I haven't seen them in twenty-five years.'
'Do you know what happened to them?' Williams asked. Duffy looked at her and her face reddened. Her eyes began to moisten and she bit lightly at her lip in a vain attempt to stop the tears.
'I took them,' she said, finally, as she wiped carefully at her tears. 'I know it was wrong, but I took them to Dublin. Left them in an orphanage in South Circular Road – St Augustine's. I gave them a photograph each of their mother from that same batch you're looking at.'
'That was it? You just decided to take them away, for no reason?' I asked incredulously. 'What if she'd come back?'
'Someone told me to do it – someone who was very fond of Mary. He gave me money to take them. Gave me a hundred punts to give to them. He told me to do it.'
'This man told you to give someone else's children away to an orphanage and you did it?' Williams's voice rose so quickly it cracked and she had to swallow back her last words.
'Yes. He told me she wouldn't be back. Said it would be better for the children if they were kept away from Strabane for a while. I thought they might be in some danger. I couldn't look after two children. I did what he said. It wasn't my fault,' she said.
'Who was he, Ms Duffy? We need a name.'
'I can't tell you.'
'Ms Duffy,' I said, as reasonably as possible. 'Whoever told you to take those children away probably knows what happened to their mother. In fact, he may have been responsible for what happened to her. Now, please, who told you to take them?'
She looked from Williams to me and back again. Then she looked at her hands, clasped in her lap, and finally back at me, a note of defiance clear in her voice and in her eyes. 'Costello, his name was,' she said, then preened herself slightly in vindication at her reluctance to speak, as we struggled to make sense of what she had told us.
On the journey home, we tried to examine all the pieces of the case as objectively as possible. Costello had been having an affair with a prostitute with two children. She vanishes and he pays a neighbour to have the children taken to Dublin and left in an orphanage. Twenty-five years later a hood's daughter is killed and her body is dumped wearing the ring Costello had given to the prostitute.
'Costello seems to be fitting the frame more and more,' Williams said grimly, though neither of us wanted to consider what would happen if we proved decisively that he was responsible for Knox's disappearance.
'It looks that way,' I said resignedly, and decided on one final stalling measure. 'The best thing for us to do is to try to locate those children: it's the only solution.'
'Are you going to speak to him about this?' Williams asked, as we drove through Porthall, approaching Lifford from the east.
'Not yet,' I said, though I knew that eventually I would have to face Costello, as surely as I would have to deal with Frank and the attacks on Anderson's livestock. 'What are you doing now?' I asked.
The sky was darkening, although it was only just after four o'clock. The moon hung low in the sky, still little more than a sliver of ice. Three or four stars stood out in the navy sky; a bulkhead of cloud building in the west promised snow by morning. We had already overtaken a number of the local farmers out spreading salt on the minor roads.
'No plans. I'm meeting Jason later for dinner. In fact, he's cooking.'
'Fancy doing one last thing for us before you shoot home? Check out who owned the Three Rivers when Knox was about. I'll try this St Augustine's place and see what I can find.'
The only St Augustine's in the book was a church, though the priest was able to give me a number for a nun named Sister Perpetua, who had worked in the orphanage until 1995 when it had closed down. Sister Perpetua, or Sister P as she announced herself on the phone, was a northerner and proved to be as voluble as her memory was remarkable.
'I remember the Knox children, Inspector, yes,' she said, her Fermanagh accent mixed with just a hint of the shorter Dublin twang. 'Sean and Aoibhinn.' She pronounced the girl's name Eveen. 'A sad case. They arrived with
