Free Borderlands by Brian McGilloway

Holmes said, putting the letter down on the table.
    "I'm
surprised you don't remember it," Williams said, "working with the
drugs squad in Dublin."
    "Before
my time," Holmes replied, then smiled good humouredly. "I'm still a
young buck, me."
    "God
help us all," Williams said and hid her face behind the A4 sheet she held.
    "Well,
it's probably the same." I said. "So, we need to find out who gave it
to her. Was it the same person that she was sleeping with?"
    "And
did they intend for her to be killed by the tablet or was it accidental?"
Costello added.
    "Yep.
So, Jason, I want you to start bringing in the local drug dealers. Ask about,
check bars and clubs again, Strabane and Letterkenny. See if anyone's selling
this stuff. While you're there, flash about the photo of Terry Boyle too, maybe
find out where he was last night."
    "They're
not connected though, are they?" Holmes asked.
    "Not
as far as I know," I said, "but if we can kill two birds with one
stone ..."
    "There's
no one else, Jason," Costello explained. "I've requested extra help
from Letterkenny, but you seem to know the pubs and that. Might have more
success than most."
    "I'll
phone Hendry, just so there's no jurisdiction nonsense about going over the
border," I said. "Caroline, keep following up on that gold ring. I'll
see if I can speak to Johnny Cashell, though he's looking unlikely; I can't see
him drugging and abusing his own daughter. Besides," I added, "I
don't think this was a sexual attack."
    "Pathologist's
report suggests consensual, Inspector; that
doesn't necessarily mean it was consensual," said Williams.
    "True.
But all the same. Size, drugs, eye witnesses - everything seems to be pointing
to Whitey McKelvey."
    "If
the wee bugger would show his face," Williams added.
    "Maybe
he has though, eh?" Holmes retorted, tapping on the CCTV videotape lying
in front of us.
     
    We
set up the video and TV in the conference room at the back of the station and played
the tape from the start. The tape began at 6 p.m. on Thursday 19th December,
the time and date appearing in white lettering at the bottom of the screen. The
images jumped from one view to the next every twenty seconds.
    Williams
leaned forward and fast-forwarded the tape until customers began to appear
around 7.20 p.m. With each new arrival we paused the tape, looking for Angela
and the person who had accompanied her - whom we assumed to have been Whitey
McKelvey.
    By
9.30 p.m. the bar was filling up and they still had not appeared, though we had
noticed that a young man with a shaved head and a shoulder bag who had gone
into the male toilets at 8.50 p.m. had yet to emerge. Holmes concluded that he
was either a drug dealer or a homosexual. "Either way, we'll bust him if
we see him this side of the border," he added.
    As
the tape progressed, the lights in the bar dimmed. Then the screen cut to the
doorway and I caught of glimpse of a girl with blonde hair passing underneath
the camera. She was dressed in jeans and a blue top, as Cashell had described
Angela's outfit that night. Slightly behind her, again half-disappearing from
view under the camera, was a thin figure with short, almost peroxide- blond
hair, clad in jeans and a white top. The figure did not look up at the camera
and so we could only see the top of the head and the bright hair. Holmes paused
the shot and we all leaned a little closer to the screen.
    "Is
that him?" Williams asked, squinting at the screen.
    "I
think so," I said.
    Holmes
tapped the screen with his knuckles; "Ladies and gentlemen, Whitey
McKelvey, I believe."
    It
was not as clear a shot as any of us wanted, but it seemed a reasonable
assumption to make. We watched a further hour's worth of tape and saw Angela
several times: in the queue for the bar, dancing, chatting to a group of girls
by the toilets. That shot had almost passed when I saw a face I recognized and
everything seemed to fall into place. The clothes were different, obviously,
the pink uniform replaced with a tight