Brian McGilloway: Borderlands

Penny and Shane were granted a maternal dispensation to stay up past bedtime to watch Daddy on TV. They almost fell asleep, though, during the main report, which was on the US President's announcement that 50,000 troops were to be sent to supplement the 60,000 already stationed in the Middle East.

When the brief article on the Cashell murder was finally aired, it was sandwiched between a report on the rising price of housing and a story about a drug trafficker who had been murdered in Dublin. The newscasters expressed more sincere concern about the house prices than the death of the unnamed dealer.

As I placed Shane in his cot, I heard a knock on the door, and a few seconds later the sound of Debbie inviting a visitor in. I peered out through our bedroom window and saw our neighbour Mark Anderson's pick-up truck parked in the driveway. Mark actually lived over half a mile away, but he owned all the land bordering our house, fields in which he grazed his sheep and cattle. He was an odd, socially awkward man, and I was surprised to see him. The only time he had called on us before was to appeal for leniency after I arrested his son, Malachy, who had been caught peeping in Sharon Kennedy's bedroom window from the tree outside her house. Her husband had felled the tree that same evening.

When I came back downstairs Anderson was sitting in the living room, perched so close to the edge of the sofa he looked as though he would fall off. He stood up when I came in and I smiled and extended my hand. "Happy Christmas, Mark," I said. "Good to see you."

He did not reciprocate my smile or greeting but said simply, "Your dog's been annoying my sheep."

"Excuse me," I said, moving over to where Debbie was sitting.

"Your dog's been worrying my sheep. I saw it."

Our dog is a six-year-old basset-hound called Frank, which I bought for Debbie on our fifth wedding anniversary when it seemed we could not have children. Four months after we bought him, Debbie found out she was pregnant with Penny, and so Frank became very much my dog. Now that Penny was older, she too had become attached to him. At night we kept him locked in a shed we built for him, and I told Anderson as much.

"I know what I seen," he said. "Anything happens to any of my sheep, I'll put a bullet in the mutt. I've 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."

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.