Border Angels (10 page)

Before Daly left Mooney, he asked, “Did it occur to you that Fowler may have been murdered?”

“Why would I think that?”

“Just asking.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“You should be careful about even whispering that word.”

“Which word?”

“
Murder
. Unless you have firm evidence. A lot of reputations could be damaged or questioned by the media if there’s any suggestion of foul play or dirty tricks. Jack came to a sorry end by his own hand, and that’s all there is to it.”

“That’s for this investigation to decide, Mr. Mooney,” said Daly.

Ashe had forgotten how cold it got this far north in spring. After his first night back in Ireland, he felt stiff and sore. He stamped some life back into his feet and blew on his fingers, then he crept through the trees and watched where he had parked his rented Jeep. The sun was already a ball of orange rising through the forest. He wanted to make sure that no one was following him or keeping an eye on his vehicle.

Earlier, he had carefully packed his tent, scattered the traces of the fire he had lit the previous night, and picked over the ground for any litter he might have dropped. The good thing about sleeping outdoors was he did not have to worry about wiping down the site for fingerprints. Mother Nature didn’t do smooth surfaces, and anyway, her dumb detectives would be nosing through his campsite now, the countless wild animals of the forest, picking up his scent, rummaging through his traces, destroying any evidence of his presence.

When he was convinced the coast was clear, he climbed into the Jeep and headed into the town of Armagh. He drove carefully, wanting to draw as little attention as possible. In a way, he was a fugitive like Lena Novak. He understood the gravity of her situation and its demands better than anyone else, the suspicion and constant vigilance that haunts the pursued, the fight against losing control, and, behind it all, the anxiety of waking up some morning surrounded by enemies, the dread that somehow you might have betrayed yourself in a dream while sleeping.

What made it harder was the fact that as a trafficked woman, she was a human being without an identity. All he had was a photograph and the assumption that Lena Novak was her real name. She had no history in this country, no family contacts, no obvious hiding places, and no clear escape routes. It was easy for her to succumb to her own invisibility. In that regard, she had passed beyond the borderlands of being human; she was more like a wild animal.

He knew that he had to get her moving. He wanted to force her from the shadows because a moving person was easier to find than one who had gone to ground. To do that he would have to pull off a stunt that would set the ground beneath her feet quaking. He had already checked the address given to him by Michael Mooney. As expected, the apartment had yielded no clues, only unrelated fragments of the life Lena had been living and her relationship with Fowler. The police had been unsuccessful in tracing her movements, too. If she had been staying in a hotel or B&B, they would have found her by now. They would have also checked the border brothels and meeting places for her compatriots.

He stopped at a glass bottle recycling point on the outskirts of Armagh. He broke the lock on one of the bottle banks and picked out several crates’ worth of empty vodka bottles, which he stowed in the back of the Jeep.

His mobile phone rang. A local number—there was only one person it could be.

“Hello, Michael,” he said.

“Where are you?” asked Mooney.

“I’m in Armagh.”

“I’ve called to tell you the latest developments. Do you have time to listen?”

“I’ve all the time in the world,” said Ashe.

“We’ve been chasing up a reported sighting of Lena Novak. Two days ago a taxi driver took her to Fowler’s mansion and then into Armagh. She called at a cleaning company called Home Sweet Home, and then boarded an express bus for Dublin. We posted someone at the central bus station in Dublin to wait for the bus to arrive, but she never showed. She must have made the bus driver stop somewhere en route. Since then she’s managed to make herself invisible.”

“A disappearing act like that is hard to maintain,” remarked Ashe. “Sooner or later she’ll have to go back to her old haunts.”

“There’s word going round town that a contract has been placed on her head by Jozef Mikolajek, a smuggler and people trafficker. Time is running out. We need this situation resolved as soon as possible.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got my own plan.”

“It had better be good,” said Mooney. “A police detective came snooping by this morning.”

“What did he want to know?”

“He’s digging into Fowler’s financial dealings. The very thought of it is giving me a headache.”

“Fowler ripped off the community organization. What else is there to find out?”

Mooney’s voice was defensive. “I’ve nothing to hide from the police, but the less they know the better.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about.”

“True.”

“Time to leave you in peace, then.”

The early morning lights of Armagh faded behind Ashe. Traffic on the way south thinned out. He drove into the border hills, passing abandoned military observation towers overgrown with vegetation, like shards of shrapnel trapped in old wounds. Rattling with the crates of empty bottles, his Jeep bounced through a bleak countryside crisscrossed with streams and muddy lanes. He saw innumerable opportunities for ambush: culverts where the road dipped, high hedges, and rocky outcrops casting dark shadows.

He tried to concentrate on the road, but in his head he could hear the echoing sound of bombs and shootings. He kept well within the speed limit, but it was difficult to relax when you worried you were constantly within range of enemy fire. His instinct made him stop every now and again and check the road behind from concealed vantage points.

In the hill villages, he passed fortified police stations, decommissioned now as part of the peace process and standing derelict, surrounded by housing developments. In the staunchly Republican town of Crossmaglen he stopped for supplies. Fresh slogans and murals supporting dissident Republicans decorated the gable ends of houses. He sensed bitterness in the air, the bitterness of a disputed peace.

Closer to the border, he found himself driving through a series of looping lanes and dirt roads, through forests and steep valleys dotted with ruined farms. If anyone were on the lookout, they would see him now. The tires of lorries skulking across the border at night had plowed the roadside verges—the telltale tracks left by fuel smugglers, a lawless herd of modern-day highwaymen dodging the main roads and police patrols. Although the lanes had been busy during the night, they were now empty of traffic. He stopped several times and switched off the ignition. All he heard was silence and the restless sound of the wind nosing through the hedgerows.

The smell of diesel filled the car when he pulled up at a lane blackened by thorn trees. He got out of the vehicle. The cold air was laden with the stench of fuel. A set of sprawling outbuildings lay at the end of the lane, the remnants of an abandoned farm. He hung back for a while. Images of men in berets and balaclavas with Armalites came back to him as he surveyed the outbuildings with a pair of binoculars. A fuel lorry sat next to an overgrown hedge, fresh mud obscuring its number plate. In the yard stood a Portakabin surrounded by several vehicles—vans, pickups, and a sports car, positioned for a quick getaway. At the far end, half submerged in the gloom, were the hulks of two forty-foot trailers, gaping like beached whales. Next to them was the dismantled carcass of another fuel lorry, entangled in pipes and tubing.

His tip-off had been correct; he had managed to find the smugglers’ lair. Housed somewhere in the farm buildings was a makeshift chemical lab, built to extract the dye from agricultural diesel bought in the Republic, which was then sold at a higher price as commercial fuel in the North. It was the one part of the terrorist apparatus that had escaped decommissioning. At one time during the Troubles, fuel-laundering plants were the staple industry of border country; now they had been taken over by dissident Republicans with links to criminal gangs from Eastern Europe. Ashe was also able to tell from the stacks of empty bottles that the gang was running a counterfeit alcohol-bottling plant as a sideline.

He waited for a while. He scrutinized the farm again. He spotted a dingy caravan in the corner of a field with a washing line. When he was satisfied that the only signs of life came from the Portakabin, he started the Jeep and drove up the lane.

He kept the engine ticking over outside the Portakabin and sounded the horn. A packet of cigarettes and the butt of a rifle sat in the window. The gun slipped from view. A moment later a bleary-eyed youth stood in the doorway, cradling the rifle.

Ashe rolled down the window and grinned. “I’ve a load of empty vodka bottles.”

The youth walked carefully around the Jeep, squeamish of the mud that caked his white trainers.

“We’re not taking any deliveries this afternoon.”

“What’s the problem,” snapped Ashe. “Has there been one already?”

The boy looked down at the piece of paper he had pulled from a pocket. He clutched it next to the rifle.

“I don’t see any mention of one here.”

“They didn’t tell you I was coming?”

The boy stared at him. He put the rifle down and took out a mobile phone. “I’ll have to call Mr. Mikolajek and check with him.”

Ashe leaned across the window. “Are you going to ask him why he forgot to say I was coming? Rather you than me.”

The boy hesitated. Ashe noticed the hand holding the phone was shaking slightly.

“You can ask me as many questions as you like, son,” said Ashe, “and if you don’t have any, just tell me what I’m meant to do with this load of empty bottles.”

The boy shuffled his feet, suddenly anxious to get back to the warmth of the Portakabin.

“Do you know where to go?”

“Don’t worry, I can take care of things from here. It’s good to see you’re so vigilant.” He winked. “I’ll put in a good word with Mr. Mikolajek.”

Ashe drove into the yard and took out his gun, a Glock 17. The workers were here, he guessed, somewhere in the outbuildings. He inspected the buildings one by one. All he found in the first two were rusting farm implements stained with bird shit, and fusty bales of hay. Everything was dark and cold.

The next shed was the largest, wide and high roofed. The only lighting came from Perspex panels in the ceiling. The smell of cheap spirits mingling with the stench of diesel almost overwhelmed him as he stepped inside. It took a moment or two for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The cement floor was scored with plastic piping and wiring that connected a bank of whirring machines. Next to the machinery sat two containers of cat litter, one fresh and clean, and the other stained with red dye. Beyond the laundering paraphernalia he made out the silhouettes of three women sitting in chairs and filling glass bottles with a liquid that, in the shadows, seemed to light the bottles from within.

They sat up abruptly when they became aware of Ashe’s presence. A set of bottles fell to the ground and rolled across the cement. Something about the way Ashe stood silhouetted against the door told them he was not meant to be there. The older of the women attempted to move and let out a cry, but Ashe grabbed her by her tracksuit top and pushed her back to the ground. She let out a dull groan.

“Don’t worry, you haven’t broken anything,” said Ashe.

They crouched before him.

“There’s no one to help you now,” he told them. “You should have disappeared like Lena Novak and found yourselves the darkest hiding place in border country.”

When he raised the gun to their faces, they did not resist. Instead, a detached look fell across their faces. Moving quickly, he tied them up with rope, placed hoods over their heads, and bundled them into the back of the Jeep. He had many questions to ask them, about their compatriot Lena Novak and their boss, Jozef Mikolajek, but the time for questioning would come later.

The electronic alarm counted down the seconds as Daly fumbled in the dark for the control panel. He punched in the numbers, and the hall was silent.

“Shall we go in?” He turned to Irwin, but the Special Branch detective had already pushed open the door to the apartment.

Daly surveyed the solid wood floors and lavish furniture of Jack Fowler’s love nest and wondered not for the first time how Lena Novak had managed to fly so swiftly from the farmhouse brothel to such luxury, from one world to another, from the unwanted attentions of men who degraded and abused to those who pampered and indulged.

“How much do we know about this woman?” asked Irwin.

“Only what one photo can tell, and what we see before us,” said Daly, trying to collect his first impressions.

A rictus of a smile formed on Irwin’s lips. “I can tell you she had a good sex life, and that her livelihood was her sex life. Fowler must have showered her with money and presents. Look at this place.”

Boxes of perfume and ornaments and piles of designer clothing spilled from the sofa and coffee table to the two bedrooms. It was an overloaded apartment. Overloaded with luxury and gifts. Slowly and objectively, Daly surveyed the interior and allowed everything to filter through his mind along with what he knew so far about Lena Novak. Somewhere among the jumbled possessions he thought he might find a lead, but all he got was the impression of a woman who suddenly possessed luxury in abundance, and did not quite know how to accommodate it.

Irwin interrupted his train of thought. “Fowler tried to save her from her past, then he dies mysteriously and she goes missing. Along with several million pounds. If I were a betting man, I’d say she murdered him and stole the money.”

Daly nodded. Lena’s life seemed to be an epic marathon of escapes, betrayals, and conspiracies with sex at the throbbing heart of everything. In contrast, his own life had the tedium of a monk’s.

He walked into the master bedroom, which bore a carpet thick enough for a decadent rock star. He examined her bed. There was an indentation on the pillow. It felt cold, the warmth of her body long gone. He stared at where she had slept and then across at the ransacked wardrobe. He breathed in the scent of perfume. He wondered how long her scent had lingered in the air. Perhaps the same length of time it took for a set of footprints to melt in the snow. Long enough to snag the interest of a detective who had been excluded for too long from the small and comforting intimacies of sharing a room with a woman.

When he opened the door of the en suite bathroom, the curtains blew into the bedroom, upsetting an ornament on the windowsill.

“Who’s there?” He turned, startled, but it was no one.

Inside the bathroom, which was as big as his own bedroom, he stood stranded in an ocean of marble and ceramic. He checked his appearance in the mirror, ran a hand through his hair, fixed the collar of his shirt. He noticed the look of exhaustion that enshrouded his features. In his eyes, he saw a hungry light, a glaring need for some sort of comfort. He sighed. It was not just stuff and meaningless possessions that messed up people’s lives. Sometimes the thoughts and memories in one’s head were more than enough to keep one in turmoil.

In the kitchen sink, he found what appeared to be a wig floating in water. He poked it. The hair was real.

“Next time we see Lena, her hair will be cropped,” he said.

“Why did she cut it?”

“An attempt to disguise herself. Perhaps she thought she could cut off the past.”

“All those lovely locks gone.”

“This tells us she’s a woman who faces up to things. Discarding what she has to, even parts of her identity.”

If Fowler was a man of lust and greed, thought Daly, Lena Novak was a woman of intrigue and invention. Who had seduced whom? he wondered.

Irwin beckoned him. He had switched on the TV. The two detectives watched as gray CCTV images flickered across the screen. They were from outside the apartment block.

“This is live footage,” murmured Irwin.

“Constant vigilance,” replied Daly. “That’s the price you pay when you’re in the pocket of men like Jack Fowler.”

Irwin ejected a CCTV tape from the recorder, examined it, put it back in, and pressed rewind. The camera had a side view of the building’s entrance door, as well as the approach road. They played through the tape, to that morning and then during the night. At first, they didn’t notice the figure transfixed in the upper left corner of the screen, a lean shape wholly fused with the darkness. Then a car drove by, its lights sweeping the front of the apartment block. Shadows jumped out from their hiding places and fell back. In a corner of the building, where the grainy light briefly spilled into a pool, Daly spied the silhouette of a man standing very still. They spooled forward. The clock showed that an hour and a half had passed. The light cast by two cars loomed across the building and briefly picked out the shape of the man, standing in the same spot, before returning him to darkness.

“Who do we have here?” asked Irwin. “A member of Insomniacs Anonymous?”

They scrutinized the footage, watched the figure remain motionless each time a set of headlights rippled across the building. Disturbingly motionless. Daly watched with bated breath. It was the stillness that made the figure’s presence meaningful and menacing. Nighttime was a moving forest of shadows, but the figure was so still he appeared to be staring constantly at a fixed point.

The pattern of light and dark on the TV screen flickered but remained the same until dawn. The two detectives watched transfixed, as the rising sun gradually revealed the front of the building. However, by then the figure had disappeared. They spooled through the rest of the tapes but found nothing. Irwin placed the tapes in an evidence bag.

They went back to searching the flat for any clue to Lena’s current whereabouts. Daly could find no sign of ID, but he had not been expecting any. What he did discover were credit card receipts. He jotted down the details, intending to put out an alert for the cards. Apart from that, they found nothing more suspicious than the ordinary intrigue of a mistress’s apartment. No evidence at all of the void that had sucked away the life of Jack Fowler and threatened to do the same to Lena Novak.

The doorbell rang and there was a pregnant moment as Daly and Irwin stopped in their tracks and stared at each other. The bell sounded again, impatient. Daly flicked on the TV monitor. He swallowed when he saw the figure on the doorstep.