that in Primary Two.
'Outside, kids,' I said and waited until Penny pulled the door quietly shut behind her, hefting Shane in her other arm. 'What do you reckon with the tablet? E?'
'Could well be. We'll find out soon enough. Check with the family about drugs history. Check about epilepsy as well. If she'd never had a fit before, 'twould fairly much guarantee that it's drug- related in some way.'
I nodded. 'Still, this mention of someone small would seem to suggest Whitey McKelvey.'
'Looks that way, Benedict,' Costello agreed. 'I'll put out a description, see if we can't pick him up. Either that or hope the northerners get him before Cashell's extended family go out and buy more petrol.'
Chapter Three
Monday, 23rd December
On Monday morning I stopped off at the station early and was informed by Burgess, the Desk Sergeant, about Tommy Powell's father, who had reported seeing an intruder in his room at Finnside Nursing Home. Neither Burgess nor I felt it warranted much of an investigation: a seventy-five-year-old man, placed in a home because he suffers from dementia, claims someone was in his room, in a place where the nurses check on the patients every hour or so, night and day. It seemed like a no-brainer. On the other hand, Powell was not only very rich, but also influential, with a mouthy son who would think nothing of going to the local papers about how Garda carelessness left his poor father prone to intruders in his own bedroom. I told Burgess I would follow it up myself when I got the chance, just to keep Powell Jr quiet.
I phoned ahead to the cinema to make sure that Martin, the manager, was there, then drove round and took his statement, which simply confirmed all that Costello had told me. Martin knew the Cashell girls; he'd recognized Angela because of her blonde hair, and her two sisters – one older, one much younger. Better still, he was able to show me the CCTV recording for that afternoon.
We sat in the back office of the cinema, the building strange in daylight without the smell of heating popcorn. Martin fast- forwarded the video until 2.45 p.m. and we watched. A few minutes later a group entered the shot, coming into the cinema. But the girl who should have been Angela was not wearing the jeans and blue hooded top her father had described. In fact, she was wearing a short skirt and a red coat. It was difficult to identify her for certain because of the graininess of the shot, but Martin was convinced.
'That's them,' he said, pointing to the group.
'Are you sure? That's not what we were told she was wearing.'
He sighed and looked at me as though I had disappointed him. 'I'm telling you, that was them. I served them myself; I remember Angela Cashell. My wife calls that thing she's wearing a greyhound skirt.'
'Why?'
' 'Cause they're just behind the hare.' He laughed at his joke.
He forwarded further through the tape, seeming to know where to stop and I suspected that he had gone over it a few times already in preparation for a visit from the Guards. At 4.03 p.m. Angela Cashell walked out of the cinema with her sisters. Despite the graininess of the footage, I think she laughed as she spoke to the other girls. I hope she did.
'The younger one was the problem,' he explained: 'why we asked them to leave. The older two could watch the horror movie, but not the young girl. It would give her nightmares.'
I nodded and silently considered that the murder of her sister might have a more lasting impact on her than a horror film.
Before getting back into my car, I walked the few hundred yards from the cinema to the spot where Angela Cashell had been found. The grass was well-trodden now and some locals had left bunches of flowers lying just beyond the spot where she had lain. Blue and white crime-scene tape fluttered in the breeze and tangled in the branches of the old hawthorn tree to which it had been tied.
I went over to the bouquets at the base of the tree, reading the cards attached with grim curiosity. There was a bunch left by the Cashell girls. Sadie had left an old battered teddy bear with 'From Mummy and Daddy with love' written on a piece of foolscap tucked into the ribbon around its neck. The whole thing reminded me of the fairy trees people used to talk about in the west of Donegal. Locals would tie talismans of some sort around the tree and in return, the fairies would bless them. The base of this tree was covered with Mass cards and rosary beads, sympathy cards and flowers. Among them I saw a photograph, clearly taken decades earlier. In it, a young woman was sitting on a set of concrete steps. Behind her, I could see children playing on a beach. I assumed the woman was a grandmother of Angela's and replaced the photograph, tucking it behind a vine of ivy that snaked up around the hunk of the tree. I read a few more of the messages, laying each card gently onto the bed of damp moss at the tree's base.
Days later I would still feel saddened by the simplicity of Sadie's message; what else could adequately convey a parental emotion so instinctive it could barely be expressed?
When I arrived at her house, Sadie was sitting on a wooden kitchen chair on her front door-step, smoking a cigarette and talking to her neighbour, who leaned across the hedge that divided their two houses, The neighbour, Jim something-or-other, nodded towards me as I got out of the car and I heard him say, 'Hey Sadie, someone's brought home the bacon.'
I wanted to tell him to screw himself, but nodded politely and smiled. Sadie stood up as I approached and walked into the house, leaving the door open, which I took to be as close to a sign of hospitality as I was going to get.
The two younger daughters were sitting at the kitchen table, almost exactly as I had last seen them and, I noticed, in the same clothes. Both looked up from their play when I came in, then returned to their dolls. Sadie was standing at the stove, removing a fresh cigarette from the packet on the worktop beside her.
'Have I not enough to be bothering me? What do you want?'
She leaned over the stove, removing a pot from a gas ring and lighting her cigarette from the flame. She had to drag at it several times to get it lit, billows of smoke mingling with the steam from the pots which left her face damp and flushed.
'I've a few questions, Sadie. About Angela. If you're feeling up to it.'
'The fuck you care if I'm up to it. That bastard's gone and got himself nicked again. Two days shy of Christmas. What am I meant to do? Eh?' She sat down, a tacit recognition that, try as she might to blame me, she knew I was not the architect of her misfortunes. I sat opposite her, studying her face.
She had always been a fairly heavy woman, her chestnut brown hair tied back from her face. It had lost its lustre now, and the deep brown, which once had resembled a mare's mane, was streaked with white and dirty grey. Her skin was weathered as leather, peppered with burst blood vessels. In another life, with another husband perhaps, she could have been attractive in a way, but life with Johnny Cashell had taken its toll on her. She looked significantly older than her forty-seven years. I had never seen her look more dejected in my life. I opened my wallet and took out three 50 euro notes that I had withdrawn from the bank machine that morning in order to buy Debbie's Christmas present. Sadie watched me with open suspicion.
'Sadie, we had a whip-round at the station, seeing as all that's happened the past week to you. Take this to tide you over Christmas.'
Her initial response was indignation and anger, though I assured her that it was not charity as such, but simply a contribution to help her over a bad patch. Slowly, and without thanks, she took the money, folded the notes once and slipped them under the fruit bowl. Then she gestured towards me without discernible reason, which I assumed to be a sign of her assent to the interview. I looked at the two girls, not wishing to speak in front of them, but Sadie, wafting the smoke from in front of her face, said, 'It's okay. They don't understand anyway.'
'Sadie,' I began, still glancing at the girls uncomfortably, 'we think Angela took a fit of some kind-'
'Is that what killed her? A fit?'
'We don't know. We're fairly certain that at some time before she died she went into a seizure. Was she epileptic? Did she take Ills?'
'Never. But then, if she had a fit, she weren't murdered. A fit's not murder, is it?' For a moment a spark of hope seemed to flicker in her eyes, as though the means of Angela's death could somehow after the final
