Borderlands by Brian McGilloway Read Free Book Online

to our cells before this, might have had more than simple fatherly love for his
girl."
    "Especially
if she wasn't his girl," Costello said, nodding sagely, ha ppy to have made a contribution. "Though I would
never have ta ken Johnny Cashell for a
paedophile."
    " A couple more months and he wouldn't have been though, technically, would
he?" Holmes said, and smirked.
    I
saw a flash of something in Caroline Williams's eyes, and then her face
softened and became unreadable. "It's still his daughter, though.
Biological or not."
    "So,"
I said, "the questions are: where did she spend Thursday night? Who was
she with on Friday night? Who gave her the change of clothes? Where are they
now? Who gave her the ring? I don't think she bought it; it looked very good
quality, a family heir loom.
    Williams
spoke first. "Might be worth checking pawn shops, local second-hand
jewellers and so on to see if any of them sold it."
    "Check
lists of stolen goods too," I replied. "This might have been part of
a stash. Someone lifted it and gave it to her. It's a safe bet her boyfriend,
whoever he was, didn't buy it for her."
    "The
whole ring thing might be a little tenuous, Inspector," Costello suggested.
"Might be best to follow up the drugs angle too."
    "What
about clubs?" Holmes said. "If drugs were involved, she got them
somewhere. She was spotted clubbing on Thursday night; chances are she was out
again on Friday. Maybe we could find out who she was with."
    "Good,"
I said. "This is all good. If you each want to take your own suggestion
and follow it. Caroline, ask Burgess on the front desk to pull you up lists of
stolen goods for the past six months, say. Jason, start with the Strabane clubs
and move onto Letterkenny. We meet everyday at 9.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. to
review status. Okay?"
    Costello
wished us success from behind his desk, and then we were dispatched to our new
office. It was actually a storeroom whose contents - mostly cleaning products -
had been removed. Two desks had been set facing each other, each furnished with
a phone and a plastic chair. Behind one of the desks, a corkboard had been
nailed. I was busying myself with pinning up crime-scene photographs and a
timeline for the case when Burgess phoned through from the front desk, despite
the fact that it was only fifty feet away.
    "Detective
Devlin," he said, with a formality designed only to impress the public,
"there's a lady here to see you."
    I
stuck my head out the doorway of the office and saw, standing beyond Burgess's
desk, Miriam Powell, wife of Thomas Powell Jr. I said earlier that I had known
him when we were younger, but it was not the whole truth. I knew Powell
because, when we were eighteen, he had started dating Miriam Kelly, unbeknown
to me, despite the fact that I was her boyfriend at the time. In fact, they had
been dating for four months before she told me.
    We
were parked below the waterworks station, along the back road to Strabane,
lying on the back seat of my father's car. She had returned from holiday and
her skin was tanned. It seemed to radiate with heat and light, even in the
darkness of the car, and I could smell and taste coconut off her shoulders and
neck as I kissed t hem, pushing off her blouse and
fumbling with the clasp of her bra until she reached back and opened it for me.
She unbuttoned my shirt and ran her hand down my chest. Her breath fluttered in
my ear and tickled against the soft skin at the back of my neck, which affected
me in ways I could not express.
    Less
than ten minutes later we were driving out onto the main road again. She did
not look at me as I apologised for my lack of control. Nor, indeed, did she
look at me as she smoked the cigarette that I gave her and told me why she did
not wish to see me anymore and that she wanted me to run her home. As I
watched her walk up the driveway to her father's house, I was disturbed by the
notion that she had provided for me out of pity, a last charitable act which
caused her no more thought