Chapter Twelve
Sunday, 29th December
I awoke at four in the morning with an irresistible need for food. I settled for coffee and a cigarette, which I smoked at the back door as Frank lay in his basket, watching me with critical eyes. I went out into the garden, which was frozen under a clear night sky. The stars were bright and numerous. The moon was almost new and as thin and curved as a curl of lemon rind. I inspected the outside of Frank's shed while I walked to keep myself warm. At the back, hidden under the branches of the fir hedge, I finally found where the boards had rotted and broken and Frank had been squeezing in and out. Inside the shed, the hole was hidden behind bags of cloths that we had used to cover furniture when we had painted the house. I saw, too, the stain of blood on the floor from the night of the hunt and knew, though I had tried not to think on it, that if Frank were killing livestock, sooner or later he would have to be put down.
I lay on the sofa that night, unable to dispel the thought that whoever had attacked my home would do so again. I sat awake till dawn. Then, having turned on early morning TV, I must have fallen asleep. I woke cramped and uncomfortable, my face hot and stubbly. My eyes were dry and sore and my skin smelt of salt and sweat. Penny stood looking at me, her head bent to one side.
"Did you and Mommy fight?" she asked, with a matter-of-factness that I found disconcerting in my five-year-old daughter.
"No, pet. I couldn't sleep, so I came down here," I said, trying to smile, while I stretched the crick out of my neck.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because I couldn't sleep and didn't want to wake anyone else."
"Okay," she said. "Can you move, please? I want to watch television." Then she sat down at the end of the sofa, having given me just enough time to lift my head out of the way.
As I showered, I ran over the dream of the night before and resolved to face the thing I dreaded: confronting Costello over Mary Knox.
For the second time in a week, I found myself walking up Costello's tarmac driveway, my innards constricted. The morning sky was a brilliant blue, the white shreds of cloud contrasting all the more strongly. The sun shone low in the sky, struggling to clear the mountains in the east. However, the temperature had dropped again overnight and a skin of ice was forming on the water in the concrete birdbath in the centre of the Costellos' front lawn.
Emily answered the door and smiled in a confused way. "Is something wrong, Benedict? You look terrible."
I could not look her in the eyes, holding in my pocket the diamond ring that her husband had given to a prostitute twenty-six years earlier. The eldest Costello child was thirty-five.
The Super appeared behind her, tucking his striped shirt into his voluminous brown corduroy trousers. "Benedict," he said, smiling. "Come in." He had not yet shaved and his hair stood slightly on end.
"I'd like a word, sir. If you don't mind," I said, refusing to cross the threshold into their home out of respect for Emily.
He looked a little startled, but nodded and lifted a heavy quilted coat off the hooks beside the door and followed me out to the car. "What's up, Benedict? Is this about McKelvey again?"
I took the ring out of my pocket and held it up between my thumb and forefinger.
"Cashell's ring," he said. "So what?" Then he saw the photograph which I took from my pocket and he said simply, "Ah."
"Who was Mary Knox?" I asked, making it sound more personal than I had intended.
"Let's go for a drive," he said.
In 1976, Ollie Costello was a sergeant with Lifford Garda. He had been married for ten years. On a June night, when the sky was royal blue and the moon was white and low above the hills, he was passing the Coachman Inn nearly an hour after closing time and noticed lights shining from the gap under the closed doors.
He hammered on the double doors and was finally admitted. As the noise of the revellers died around him, he saw a group of men crowded around the edge of a platform which doubled as a stage for the local auctions. None of the group had noticed Costello yet, for their attention was fixed on a woman who stood on the stage above them in the process of peeling her petticoat and underwear from her sweating body. The men cheered as inch after inch of white flesh was exposed, while the woman writhed and wriggled to some silent music that pounded in her head. It was a spectacle both ridiculous and strangely sensual.
"Right, madam, that's enough," Costello said finally, banging on the wooden platform with his truncheon as the gathered spectators hastily dispersed.
"Ain't never been called a madam before," she said, winking down at him while she continued to gyrate, almost naked. He climbed onto the stage, struggling to shift his weight sufficiently to pull himself up, then removed his jacket and put it around her, suddenly conscious of the half-moon of sweat which had darkened the underarms of his shirt.
She wrapped his jacket around her, holding it closed with her hands, and swayed slightly, dizzy as a result of both her dancing and the drink she had taken. Costello put his arms around her to steady her, and took her to the Ladies, where he stood guard while she got dressed. Then he led her out to his car before returning to the bar and cautioning the owner, Harry Toland, for his breach of license.
When he got back to his car, the woman who had said her name was Mary, was sprawled in the back seat, pulling the foot of her tights down slightly to shift the hole in them from her big toe to one of the smaller ones. The car smelt of cigarette smoke and drink and sweat and feet and worn stockings. Costello wound down the window and took out his notebook. He flicked on the light in the car and asked the woman for details. He cautioned her that she could be charged with lewd behaviour and asked if she had someone she wanted to contact. As he did so, he watched her in the rear- view mirror, suddenly aware that the beads of perspiration clinging to her face and chest were making him vaguely excited.
She said she'd heard there were men in Lifford who liked to dance with single women. She told him she was alone. Then she took out her cigarettes and lit one. He told her she was not allowed to smoke in a Garda car and she smiled at him with her eyes. She asked him if he smoked and he said, "Sometimes". She took the cigarette from her lips, her lipstick thick around the brown filter, and extended it towards him. He resisted as it touched his mouth, then dragged from it, smiling at her as he exhaled.
She lit another cigarette for herself and told him of her children, a boy named Sean and a girl called Aoibhinn. She spoke of how worried they would be when she did not come home that night. Finally she suggested to Costello that if he let her go home, instead of arresting her, she would perform an act on him which he'd enjoy.
He sat in the front of the car, suddenly cold and warm, excited and scared and unable to reach a decision that would calm the rush of adrenaline he felt. And for a few moments, all thoughts of his wife and children left him and he convinced himself that he deserved some fun in life. He told himself that Emily would never know and so would not be hurt.
He started the engine and drove to the area of waste ground where the old asylum used to stand. He sat in the darkness while she climbed between the two seats and sat beside him. He turned his face away from the streetlamps and closed his eyes and thought only of his breaths that quickened and shallowed until he swore he would hyperventilate. When she was finished, he opened his eyes again and started the ignition, while she put on her seatbelt and fixed her make-up in the vanity mirror. Then he drove her the quarter mile to the border and let her out of the car. She thanked him, and he almost reciprocated. Then she closed the door, waved in at him sadly through the side window, and turned and walked into the shadow of the Camel's Hump, the massive British Army checkpoint which had dominated the area for most of the Troubles.