fucking ground.'
'Where's your brother, Yvonne? Did he kill Emily Costello? Murder an old woman?'
I heard Kate whimper.
'Keep talking, Inspector,' Yvonne said, 'and I'll shoot this useless bitch anyway.' Again she prodded Kate with her gun. The girl's eyes flashed with panic, her face drawn in terror.
'You've got the wrong person, Yvonne,' I said, as I walked slowly towards her. 'The rest of the station is outside now.' I could make out Powell's outline, shaking his head. 'You got the wrong person. Costello didn't kill your mother. I'm guessing Donaghey told you that, but he lied.'
'Then you have the chance to put the record straight, Inspector. One of these two has to die for what was done. You choose. You choose who should live.'
'I can't do that, Yvonne,' I said, reaching slowly into my coat pocket for my pistol. 'You know I can't do that.'
'Throw your gun on the floor, Inspector,' Yvonne said. Then I heard her click the barrel of her gun into place and Kate Costello screamed. I took out my gun and threw it away from me, my hands raised in appeasement.
'It was Costello,' Powell shouted suddenly. 'My father told me. We're family, for fuck's sake,' he said, his voice cracking into sobs.
'That's not true,' I said. 'I don't know who did it, Yvonne. Don't you think enough people have died already?'
She moved towards me a little, the gun still held in her hand. 'Why would Powell have killed my mother? How do you know it wasn't this…' she gestured towards Costello, unable to sum up a word vicious enough to describe her or her father.
'Your mother knew about some fraud he was running on these big companies he was bringing into Donegal. She went to the police. Donaghey worked for Powell. Donaghey lied to you, though. You can't believe anything he said. Yvonne, where's your brother? Please.'
'He's finishing things off. Going to see our father.'
And then I knew. 'It's fucking Harvey, isn't it?' I said, desperately.
She did not answer. The room lit up as if caught in the flash of a camera, and a sound like ice cracking in my eardrum echoed through the building. In that moment of intense light, Powell's face was lit up and I saw his expression of disbelief as a single horsetail of blood spurted from his body onto the wall behind.
Kate Costello screamed hysterically now, while Coyle struggled to keep hold of her.
I scrambled over to the slumped body, smelt the foulness under the cordite. The wetness of the carpet soaked up through my knees. But Powell was beyond help. 'Please stop this, Yvonne.' I managed to stutter.
She released Kate now, who huddled against the wall, trying to make herself as small as possible, her body heaving with sobs.
'I'm sorry you got involved, Inspector – really I am.' Yvonne's voice assumed a singsong quality, as if removed from the squalor and the dead bodies surrounding her. 'You remind me of my husband, you know. He's dead, too.'
I nodded. 'I know, Yvonne. Look, it's not too late. We can sort something out.' I knew, though, as I spoke, that my words were meaningless, born from desperation.
'Can we?' She smiled at me, squatting with her gun inches from my skull, her fingers lightly brushing my face and lips. 'I don't think so,' she said, with the melancholy of a departing lover. 'Much as I'd like to leave you here alive, Inspector, I know that you wouldn't let it go. Would you?'
'My name's Benedict,' I said. 'Ben.'
I wanted to say more to her, to tell her that at some level I understood what she had done. I wanted to tell her that things could be salvaged, even though I knew that they were far beyond that point. 'I spoke to Sister Perpetua,' I said, a little too late.
We both heard the sound of voices approaching along one of the darkened corridors. I thought I recognized Williams's voice, as ephemeral as those inside your head you when you are on the cusp of sleep. Coyle turned suddenly and strode over to where Kate Costello lay in a ball on the floor. I heard another sharp crack of the pistol, while I scrabbled about for my own weapon. As the shot hit Costello, I heard a soft grunting, then the sucking noise her body made as she tried to breathe.
I heard Williams shouting now, and other voices, getting nearer. I tried to call out, but my mouth was dry and seized and the words died in my throat. Yvonne Coyle stood above me, her gun in her hands.
'I'm sorry, Inspector,' she said, then raised the gun.
I would like to say that I looked death squarely in the face. I would like to say that I faced it bravely. But I did not. Instead I squeezed my eyes tight shut, already flinching as I waited for the shot, the searing heat of the bullet entering my body. In that last moment, it was not my life that flashed before my eyes, despite what people popularly claim. Rather, I grew intensely sad at the thought that I would never again see Penny smile, nor ever feel the softness of my son's hand as he touched my face while I bottle-fed him. I would not see again my wife, my rock, Debbie, whose touch alone conveyed more generosity of spirit than I could ever express. I felt tears burst from me, and then I heard the shot.
When I opened my eyes, Williams and three uniforms were running up the corridor towards us, torchlights bouncing along the walls and ceiling. Beside me, her face as close as a lover's, her final breath dying on her lips like a parting kiss, lay Yvonne Coyle, her short blonde hair matted with her blood, her body still twitching. Part of her temple was missing, the white bone of her skull just visible amongst the blood. For a second I saw the ghost of something tug at the corners of her mouth, nothing more than a fleeting shadow, and then all was still.
I reached over and placed my fingers against her face. Her skin was still warm and soft. I laid the palm of my hand flat against her cheek and whispered an Act of Contrition for her soul. In spite of myself, in sympathy for all that had happened to drive her to this, I leaned over and placed a single, light kiss on her forehead. Her skin yielded under my touch even as her colour faded.
Chapter Sixteen
Tuesday, 31st December
Tommy Powell Sr had never really been in danger. Harvey had simply gone to Finnside to deliver the photograph of his mother. Unaware that everything was unravelling in the Three Rivers, he had quietly slipped out again. By then, Williams had left a note on his windshield telling him she had gone to the hotel to provide backup. Needless to say, he did not follow – if he had, he would only have seen his sister being carried out of the derelict building in a black body-bag, like the one Angela Cashell had been wrapped in just a fortnight previous. It was assumed that he had fled across the border, and patrols were set up, north and south.
It transpired that I could have learnt his identity earlier that day from Armstrong. He had told me the IID file had recently been requested. If I had only asked, I would have been told that it was Harvey who had requested it and I could have warned Williams to arrest him when she saw him going into Finnside. On the other hand, had that happened, she would not have made it to the Three Rivers – and how different things might have been then.
Kate Costello was taken to hospital in Letterkenny where she underwent emergency surgery. Jason Holmes reappeared just after one o'clock and was immediately arrested, though by that time I already knew that he had nothing to do with Yvonne Coyle or the killings. He did, however, confess to having a girlfriend over the border, with whom he had spent the night; someone he had met during one of his official canvassing visits to the clubs in Strabane. It transpired that he had been seeing her for almost the duration of his relationship with Caroline Williams. Williams sat in the interview room opposite him, listened to his confession silently, then went home.
Yet again, I found myself in hospital being attended by the same harried registrar who had treated me the night before. This time she insisted that I stay in overnight, and Debbie agreed. Reluctantly, I sat alone and waited while Debbie went home to get me an overnight bag and to collect the kids from her mother.
By 7.30 p.m. she had still not returned. I phoned the house several times and got no reply. I lifted my clothes, which were still dirty and damp, and checked that my pistol was in my coat, having retrieved it from the Three Rivers when the SOCO team had finished. Then, as unobtrusively as possible, I sneaked out, avoiding the nurses who were under orders to keep me confined to bed.
