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for me. He had located Kielty’s girlfriend, in Plumbridge.

Chapter Four
     
    I met Jim Hendry and a young female officer, whom he introduced as WPC Tara Carson, just over the border. He had offered to take me to Plumbridge, a small village a few miles out of Strabane. Patterson had initially been reluctant for me to go. Finally he relented, sensing that I felt I should be the one to see Kielty’s partner, having been witness to his death. Before leaving, I contacted Burgess in the station and asked him to send one of our uniforms, Paul Black, to come to the barn to assist the Scene of Crime team.
    On the way to Plumbridge, Hendry, having asked in his own gruff way about the fire and my injury, filled me in on all he had learned about Kielty.
    ‘Drugs Squad know him fairly well. He’s a low-grade dealer. Or he was. Word is he was trying to make a name for himself. Operated mostly over here until the paramilitaries warned him off. He’s done time twice – first for aggravated assault when he was eighteen, then for burglary when he was twenty-two. He broke into an old woman’s house outside Donemana. Threatened her with a syringe full of his own blood. Took over four hundred pounds she had in her mattress. The woman was so terrified she wouldn’t leave the house again. She died from heart failure a few months after, though they could never link it to Kielty’s break-in. He’s stayed out of trouble since then.’
    ‘Until now,’ I said.
    Kielty’s girlfriend’s house was at the end of a row of terraced houses. A lone hydrangea bush, its spiky branches bare of leaves, sat in the centre of the small front lawn, the thin skin of the petals translucent in the weak sunlight.
    From inside the house I could hear the raised voices of an American daytime chat show. The front door was white PVC with two narrow panels of frosted glass, through which we could see someone moving about. Hendry rang the doorbell then stepped back. We could see a figure approach the door, heard the grate of the key in the lock.
    The girl who answered looked around eighteen. She was soft-featured, with a rounded face framed by brown hair cut in a long bob. Her eyes were clear and bright green, her nose thin and her full lips parted, as if she were expecting someone else. She smiled quizzically as she shifted the weight of the baby girl she held in her arms from her left to her right shoulder. The baby must have been no more than a few months old.
    ‘Yes?’ she said. A question, not the statement of greeting common in the North. I thought I could discern an English accent.
    ‘My name is Detective Inspector Jim Hendry,’ Hendry said. ‘We’d like to speak to you about Martin Kielty.’
    Her expression remained one of mild bemusement.
    ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, then shushed the baby who had stirred at the sound of her voice.
    ‘Might be best if we come inside,’ Hendry said, nodding gently towards the house next door. An elderly woman’s face peered at us through the front window, without even a pretence of subtlety.
    I smiled at her and she scowled in return.
    Kielty’s girlfriend introduced herself as Elena McEvoy. She brought us into the living room and invited us to sit as she laid the baby in a Moses basket. She wore a dress patterned with roses, and as she sat she swept her hand beneath her to ensure the dress covered her legs. There was a sense of dignity and decorum to the gesture which made me reassess my original assessment of her age. She rested one hand on the edge of the basket, which she rocked gently as we spoke.
    ‘What’s she called?’ Tara Carson asked, looking in at the infant.
    ‘Anna.’
    ‘She’s beautiful. What age is she?’
    ‘Three months,’ Elena McEvoy replied, smiling at her with pride.
    Hendry looked at me and winked.
    ‘So, is something wrong?’ McEvoy asked. Clearly she was used to policemen calling at her home. Her question also told me something about the body in the barn. If it was her