"Hard luck," I said to the man from Raphoe, who smiled slightly.
"Time to go home I think, partner," he said, shouldering his shotgun and picking his way carefully back down the field, while others ran to see what had happened.
I walked back down the road to the house about half an hour later and went around the back of the house to check that the shed was locked. I rattled the padlock on the bolt and was turning to go into the house when I heard a soft whimpering from inside the shed. I unlocked the door and went in.
Frank lay in the corner, curled up, blood congealing on the floor of the shed beneath him. He raised his head an inch and looked at me, but his usually bloodshot eyes were pale and dull. He licked ineffectually at the area on his flank where the shot had skinned him, and I noticed that his right ear, which before had hung almost to the ground, was tattered and torn, the surface bloody and dark. His snow-white chest was pink and red with blood, though I could not tell if he was bleeding there or if this had come from the wound to his ear.
He yelped weakly when I lifted him and carried him out to the car. I set him on the back seat with a picnic blanket under him, working quickly lest some of the farmers wandering down the field, disappointed with the night's hunt, should see him and realize what had happened. I quickly ran up the stairs to Debbie, who was sitting up in bed reading a magazine. She had heard the shots earlier and was interested to hear what had happened. I told her to call the emergency vet in Strabane, as I was afraid if we took him to a Donegal vet, word would eventually filter back to Anderson.
I had to wait outside the surgery for twenty minutes until the vet arrived and she helped me carry Frank onto the steel table in the surgery. There, she gave him a shot that knocked him out in seconds, before washing his wounds. I told her half of the story, saying that I had been shooting at a fox and that the dog had run into the line of fire.
"Oh, right," she said, "I thought maybe it had to do with the cat hunt over there." She brushed one of her bangs back from her face with a bloody, gloved hand and smiled before returning to cleaning the wounds.
The shot had skinned Frank's leg but there were no deeper injuries. His ear was badly torn and was about half its original length, which meant that part of his ear, a scrap of bloodstained velvet, was lying in Anderson's field. She bandaged his ear, tying it up behind his head, and put a dressing over the thick white ointment on his leg. Then she went into the storeroom and brought out a bottle of pills, antibiotics to reduce infection.
Finally she checked his eyes and teeth and helped me carry him back out to the car.
"I hope you weren't shot by accident, too," she said, nodding at the dressing on my hand, while I manoeuvred Frank onto the back seat.
"No, I was bitten."
"By him?" she said, looking concerned.
"Oh, no," I said. "By a person," I closed the back door of the car while she looked at me, now more concerned about my mental wellbeing than my physical health.
"Figures," she shrugged finally, taking the money I offered her.
Chapter Ten
Friday, 27th December
I left the house at 7.30 the following morning and drove to Williams's house, a two bedroom bungalow in Ballindrait. As I approached, a blue Sierra drove past, the windows misted and icy, but I was almost certain that the man hunched over the steering wheel, looking like he had been hurried out of bed, was Jason Holmes.
I did not ask Williams about it until we passed through Ballybofey twenty minutes later. "Did I see Holmes leaving your house this morning?" I asked in as innocuous a manner as I could.
"Yes, Father, you did," she said, looking out the side window. "He slept on the sofa," she added, turning to look at me.
"Hey, I didn't ask. Nothing to do with me," I said, holding one hand up off the steering wheel in mock placation.
"I know," she said. "And I'd keep it that way, unless you want to end up like your dog."
"Fair enough. I was only going to ask how he's doing. With the McKelvey affair."
"Fine, I think," she said. "He doesn't say much. By the way, he thinks he may have a hit on the Terry Boyle thing. A barman remembered seeing him leave some nightclub in Raphoe with a girl on the night he died. Small girl – brown hair. He's going there today to get a description, maybe do up an e-fit." She rolled down the window and dropped out the gum she had been chewing.
"That's littering," I protested.
"As I was saying," she continued, ignoring my comment, "I think he's alright with it. So long as he thinks McKelvey is guilty."
"Did you tell him where we were going?"
"Yeah, though I said we were following a lead on McKelvey, tying up loose ends, checking out the ring. He wanted to know what he was missing. You know?"
"Understandable," I said.
We arrived on the outskirts of Donegal around an hour later. We called first at Hendershot amp; Sons Jewellers which was, indeed, still beside the Atlantic restaurant. From outside, it looked quite rundown: the woodwork around the door and the sign above the window were sun-faded and blistered. The windows were dusty and the shop appeared so dim inside that at first we thought it was closed. Inside, the style was old-fashioned with a lot of mahogany cases brimming with gold and diamonds which glittered under the spotlights embedded in the ceiling. The shop smelt of air-freshener, perhaps used in an attempt to disguise the deeper smell of tobacco.
The manager was a young man with wavy brown hair and an expensive smile that glittered like the stone in his tie-pin. We explained our visit and showed him the ring. He examined it and suggested that we leave it with him for an hour while he contacted his father, who had made most of the jewellery they had sold during the '60s and '70s.
So we drove on to Bundoran, forty minutes towards the coast. For years Bundoran would have passed for a 1950s coastal village: bleached cottages, rundown shops with curling yellowed sunscreens on the windows, the Atlantic buffeting the coastline even on calm days. Recently, however, it has transformed itself, with amusement arcades and surfing shops, flickering neon signs, restaurants with Wild West facades, and bars crammed with old Irish paraphernalia. In the early mornings, the streets are littered with broken beer bottles and vomit. By lunchtime, however, the town again presents its family-friendly face.
We parked outside the Garda station and went in to meet Sergeant Bill Daly. The window in reception was so low that you had to bend slightly to address the man behind it. It was almost like a taxi office. Williams introduced us both and asked for Daly.
Soon we were buzzed through and welcomed by a middle-aged man, whose black hair was greying at the temples. His skin was tanned like leather, with wrinkles deeply etched around his eyes, and he squinted slightly in the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. He took us to an interview room.
Daly excused himself and returned after a few moments carrying a small cardboard box on which he balanced three cups of coffee and a thin green folder. He set down the box and sat opposite us, blowing on the surface of his coffee and squinting at Williams.