Brian McGilloway - Borderlands

"Well, who else would have access to the stolen items lists?"

"Don't you read your email? Another new initiative – stolen item lists are being put on the local page of the Garda website. Someone somewhere hopes that the public will do our job for us. Anyone with Internet access could have seen those lists."

"True enough," I agreed reluctantly. "So someone sees the ring on a list; links it to Ratsy. Questions him; makes the connection with Whitey? How?"

"Luck? Grapevine? Sheer coincidence? Maybe Ratsy knew

McKelvey had done it. Must be easy enough to work out who's pawning stolen goods in Donegal," Williams said. "The more pertinent question is who would want to kill Mary Knox's killers – assuming she is actually dead?"

"She's dead. Who'd revenge her death? Someone close to her; someone who knew the ring; someone who knew her personally; someone who remembered her after twenty-five years."

"Costello?" Williams said, shrugging slightly as she said it.

"Possibly," I said, pretending it hadn't crossed my mind.

"Why kill Angela Cashell? Or Terry Boyle?" Williams said. "Why not kill the fathers? Why pick on their children?"

"Unless it's Mary Knox's child who is taking revenge. Maybe he'd kill the children of those responsible for his mother's death."

"Or she."

"What?"

"Knox had two children, a boy and a girl. Don't forget, we haven't ruled out a woman's involvement in Cashell's murder. The panties back on? And we know there were two people involved in Boyle's murder: the girl he left the pub with and the person who shot him."

"True," I said.

"So, what do we do now?" Williams asked.

"We'll speak to Cashell and see what he gives us. Have a chat with Boyle tomorrow, after the funeral. Meanwhile, let's see if we can connect Donaghey and Cashell to the Knox murder. And let's see if we can track down what has happened to the two Knox children."

Williams looked at me. "What if we find it's Costello?" she asked, biting hard at her bottom lip.

"Then we arrest him," I said, with more conviction than I felt.

We arrived at Cashell's home just as a TV crew pulled away. Johnny was talking over the hedge to his neighbour, Sadie beside him, smoking a cigarette.

The neighbour nodded in our direction and both the Cashells turned and watched us walking up the pathway to their house.

Johnny Cashell stood a little taller and tried to puff out his chest. The effect was diminished somewhat by the fact that he winced – his stomach wound was obviously still hurting him.

"Do I smell bacon?" his neighbour asked, obviously thinking a joke good enough to make once was worth repeating.

"Not over the smell of petrol," Johnny Cashell replied, turning and standing in his doorway, legs slightly apart, arms folded across his chest. "What do you want?" he sneered. "Here to make more accusations about a grieving father? I were just telling the telly people about you. Couldn't solve a fucking jigsaw, so you blame the family."

"I wanted to return this to Sadie," I said, walking towards him holding the ring out. "You'll recognize it, I think, Johnny. Though I dare say the last time you saw it Ratsy Donaghey was pulling it off the finger of a dead woman. Would I be right?"

Sadie stared incredulously, then turned to the neighbour, as if looking for him to share her sense of injustice. Johnny was not quite so blasй. He peered at the ring and a glimmer of recognition registered in his eyes. His tongue flicked nervously on his lips and he laughed just a little too loudly. "More bullshit, Devlin. There are no depths-"

"There's no statute of limitations, either, Johnny. Doesn't it bother you that Angela died for this? Or that Donaghey set you up, you ignorant bastard?" My voice was rising now and I could feel my muscles begin to hum. Williams curled her hand around my upper arm.

"Best we speak inside, Mr Cashell, don't you think?" she said, guiding the Cashells into their house while I followed. Sadie quizzed her husband in whispers about what I had said.

I placed the picture of Mary Knox on the table and stood facing the Cashells. "We know the ring belonged to Mary Knox, Johnny. We suspect that Tony Donaghey took it from her at the time she disappeared. The ring has resurfaced now, twenty-five years later, and Donaghey has paid the price for it. Someone caught up with him in Bundoran a few weeks ago."

I watched Johnny Cashell attempt to keep his poker face in place. "Someone tied him up Johnny," I continued, "burnt him with lit cigarettes, shoved rags down his throat, and then cut his arms open from the wrist to the elbow and probably made him watch his blood run down his legs along with his piss." If nothing else, I had got their attention. "Now you can sit with your 'Fuck the Guards' expression, Johnny," I went on, years of frustration at people as stupid and intractable as Johnny Cashell finally boiling over, "but at some point in all that, Ratsy lived up to his name and gave out yours and Seamus Boyle's to whoever did him in. Hey presto, two weeks later, your innocent daughter is lying cold in a field, while you sit in the pub talking about what a big man you are. I'm sure you're very proud of your husband, Sadie. You got a real catch."

I knew I had gone too far. Sadie's eyes had welled and were red, while Johnny stared at me ashen-faced, a cigarette suspended midway to his mouth. The eldest Cashell girl, Christine, was standing in the hallway, staring at me. I immediately regretted what I had said. A sweat broke on my forehead and the room became unbearably close.

"I think you better wait outside, Inspector," Williams said, glaring at me.

"I'm… I'm sorry, Sadie. Jesus, Johnny – I'm sorry."

Sadie looked up at me with eyes empty of any feeling. "You're the lowest bastard I've ever met. Get out of my home," she said. She wiped a tear from her cheek and stared across the table at Williams until I left the kitchen.

I stood in the tiny patch of garden at the front of the house and lit a cigarette, drawing as deeply as I could so that it would burn my lungs. I was aware of someone to my right and I turned to see Christine Cashell standing, her arms folded, a cigarette clenched in her right hand.

"Was there any need for that?" she asked, her face lacking the defiance she had presented when we last met. It was almost as though I had confirmed for her all that she believed. We may talk of equality and serving the community, but sometimes, despite ourselves, we treat people badly because we can, because we tell ourselves that we do it in the name of justice or virtue, or whatever excuse we use to hide the fact that we want to hurt someone, to get at them in any way we can to compensate for their total lack of respect for our job and all that we have sacrificed to do it.

"No," I said, seeing no point in sharing my thoughts with her. "I was out of line, Miss Cashell."

"Jesus, don't start calling me Miss Cashell. Christine'll do." She dragged on her cigarette and blew the smoke upwards, holding her face towards the strengthening sun. She sniffed. "Do you think it'll be enough for Mum to leave him?" she asked, without looking at me.

"Maybe. That wasn't my intention, Christine."

"I know. Still, clouds and silver linings, eh? You never know." She stood with one arm wrapped in front of her, the other one, which held her cigarette, hung at her side. She twisted the toe of one shoe into the grass. "Looks like you screwed up with McKelvey."

"Yep. Seems that way." I flicked my cigarette over the hedge in the vain hope that their nosey neighbour would still be lurking there.

"You were told she'd have nothing to do with him. She got into drugs. That was McKelvey's thing. They weren't going out."

"Who was she going out with, Christine?" I asked. "Muire mentioned Angela was going to see someone the night she died."