He stepped back and spat, much as I had done earlier. It's on just such occasions that you regret knowing that all smells are particulate.
"Looks like a simple shooting," he said, and it took me a moment to realize he wasn't being flippant.
"What?"
"Look," he said, indicating with his pen. "Entry wound here; exit wound presumably out the other side. Two murders in a week. You know that might make Lifford the killing capital of Ireland."
"Very funny," I said.
"Any ideas about when it might have happened?" Costello asked, shifting closer to the car.
"None. But to cross the 't's and that – for what it's worth – he's dead."
Terry Boyle's mother, Kathleen, clutched a used Kleenex in her hand, her face raw, her eyes red and puffy. Jane Long's eyes were not much better. She shifted in the seat and put her arms around the older woman's shoulders. I crouched in front of Mrs Boyle, though she seemed to look through me.
"I'm very sorry, Mrs Boyle," I said, realizing not for the first time the inadequacy of the expression. I took her hand in mine and sat with her as she cried some more.
"Mr Boyle?" I said.
The woman shook her head. "Lives in Glasgow."
"Best get someone to check on him," I said to Long, the implication being that she should both break the news and ascertain his whereabouts.
"Shall I make some tea?" Long suggested, reaching for her radio as she headed out of the room, grateful, probably, to escape the stultifying grief for a few minutes.
"Jesus," Kathleen Boyle repeated over and over, her body shuddering.
And, with that, I found myself both questioning His existence and praying all the harder that He would transcend time and space and bring comfort both to this woman and to her son, who surely did not deserve to die in such a manner.
"Any ideas who might have a slight against your son, Mrs Boyle? Someone maybe he had a falling out with?"
She shook her head, her tissue clamped to her face. "He's only just home," she snuffled. "Back from university. Went out to some disco."
"What about a girlfriend, Mrs Boyle?"
She nodded, but did not, or could not, speak.
"Was he with her last night?"
A shake of the head this time. "She lives in Dublin. He said he was just going out for a drink. Not meeting anybody. Are you sure it's him?" The words tumbled out together.
"We're fairly certain, Mrs Boyle."
"Do I need to identify him or something? Can I see him?" she asked, her expression lightening a little, as if by grace of her seeing the body she might somehow will her son back to life again and forget this terrible night as no more substantial than a nightmare.
"No, Mrs Boyle. We'll identify him," I said, not wishing to explain that her son was now beyond even her recognition. Before we left the house I would have to find something from which a DNA sample could be taken for comparison should dental or doctor's records prove inconclusive.
While Kathleen Boyle wept, Long and I sat in that room, drank tea and did not speak. We could not leave her – not as police officers, not as fellow human beings.
Her sister arrived at around eight o'clock and convinced her to try to get some sleep. Long and I finally made our way back to the station after requesting that should Mrs Boyle think of anything useful – anything at all – she should contact us, day or night. I sat in the car and lit a cigarette, and could think of nothing but my tiredness and the cold which seemed to have permeated my very bones.
The murder team met on Tuesday morning at 9.30 to report on progress in the Cashell case, though we had all spent the night on the Gallows Lane incident. On the way in, Costello called me to one side. "How's things?" he asked. "At home, I mean."
"Fine," I said a little taken aback at his sudden avuncular manner. "Why?"
"We got a call from Mark Anderson this morning."
"Oh."
"He says your dog has been worrying his sheep and you don't care.
"The only thing likely to worry his sheep is his pervert son. Does he not think we have enough bothering us without him phoning in about a bloody dog?"
"Well, that's what I said. In not so many words."
"You?"
"Oh, aye. He went straight to the top. Why speak to the monkey when you could be speaking to the organ grinder, eh?" He laughed without humour and went into the office where we were meeting. I followed him, cursing Mark Anderson and his sheep.
Before we discussed the progress on Angela Cashell's murder, Costello gave us the low-down on the death of Terry Boyle. The state pathologist was conducting the post mortem as we spoke, and hoped to have a report with us later in the day. A forensics team were working on the car to see what could be found, but the fact that it had been set alight meant they would have difficulties finding anything of much value.
"Why burn it?" Holmes said. "I mean, you've shot the poor bastard. Why burn the car then. It's like a 'fuck you', isn't it?"
"Maybe there was something in the car?" Williams suggested.
"Maybe there was someone in the car," I said. "Would explain what he was doing parked up there in the middle of the night. Maybe the killer was in the car with him and burnt the car to destroy any evidence."
Costello brought us back to Cashell again. "We'll wait to see these reports. Caroline, I'd like you and Jason to follow up the Boyle inquiry. Report back to Inspector Devlin here, daily. Inspector," he said, referring to me by rank rather than name, thereby making it all official, "I'd like you to continue pushing the Cashell case until McKelvey's found. Let's see if we can get one case tied up at least."
Holmes and Williams nodded their agreement. Holmes looked exhausted, due in part to his visiting many of the local bars and clubs to see if anyone recognized Angela Cashell from a photograph he had got from Sadie. He had felt obliged to partake of a number of complimentary Christmas drinks in each pub and had arrived on site in the middle of the night a little the worse for wear. He told us that Sadie had informed him that Johnny had been refused Christmas bail as a flight risk and would be up before Strabane magistrates on Friday 27th.
As well as speaking to local publicans, Holmes had visited the nightclub in Strabane which Angela had reportedly attended on Thursday night with someone fitting the description of Whitey McKelvey. The club owner didn't remember her, but had provided a tape of his security camera footage for that night, which Holmes placed on Costello's desk.
Williams had contacted most of the local jewellers and secondhand shops, both in Strabane and Lifford, but no one remembered having seen or been offered the ring. She told us she was planning on trying Derry shops later that day. She had asked two of the secretaries in the station to go through the stolen items list which Burgess had printed out for her late on the previous afternoon. The list ran to 112 pages for the past six months.
Costello then provided us with the full report from the state pathologist, including toxicological findings. And we discovered just how Angela Cashell had died.
At some time, probably after seven o'clock on Friday night, Angela Cashell had eaten a cheeseburger and chips and drunk Diet Coke. She smoked several joints through the rest of the evening and drank vodka – again, probably, with Diet Coke. At some point she took what she may have believed to be an Ecstasy tablet, no bigger than a one cent coin and speckled yellow and brown. The tablet was of very low purity and had been cut with, amongst other things, talc, rat poison, DDT, nutmeg and strychnine.
Shortly after taking the tablet, and perhaps even as a consequence of it, she began to have sex with someone who wore a condom, as we had been told earlier. Perhaps during the act itself, the compound of chemicals she had taken caused something in her brain to misfire; her synapses sparked with electrical currents which eventually sent her into an epileptic seizure. The strychnine was probably responsible for spasms which tore her leg muscles from their ligaments. In addition, her lungs began to slow and enter paralysis, though whoever was with her may not have realized this, for they knelt on her chest and covered her mouth with a cotton cloth until she stopped breathing. Perhaps they realized that the drug would kill her, but wished to speed the process along. Or perhaps they simply put her out of her misery.