Border Angels (23 page)

The days afterward felt like a weightless vacuum as Daly waited for Commander Boyd to conduct an internal investigation into his handling of the case. He had already answered all Boyd’s questions honestly, but the commander had shaken his head as though they shed little light on what had really happened. Daly completed his own report and added it to the fat folder of growing paperwork the case had produced. Boyd took his time, scrutinizing the evidence closely, determined to cover all aspects of the investigation, from Sergei Kriich’s murder at the start to the kidnapping of the trafficked women and the arrest of Jozef Mikolajek.

In the meantime, Mikolajek remained in custody, the evidence stacking against him. His fingerprints matched the ones left on the CD cover found at Fowler’s mansion. In addition, Martha Havel and her van driver had turned up at a police station, declaring that they were prepared to testify against Mikolajek. The Croatian crime boss might have been ruthless, cunning, and ambitious, but he had been stopped by the efforts of a village girl left to her own devices in border country.

Daly spent the next few days at home. One warm spring afternoon, he opened all the doors and windows of his cottage. He took out the boxes he had moved from Anna’s house and set light to what he no longer needed in a bonfire at the bottom of the garden. When the flames dwindled, he walked down the lane to the lough shore. Bees buzzed in the blossoming hedgerows. A tractor hugged the curves of a plowed field. Through the thorn trees, he watched rabbits scamper over the crests of rolling hills. He felt that all the jigsaw pieces of a settled happy life might lie within his reach, ready to be assembled.

Then, at the lough shore, the swell of restless waves broke the spell. The stony shore was full of surging sounds. He was reminded that the inner torment of the mind could never be soothed completely. Removing the picture of Lena from his wallet, he let it fall into the churning waves.

He toiled back up the lane to the cottage. Wanting to make himself invisible, he jumped into his car and headed south. He weaved in and out of the narrow roads that crisscrossed the border until he pulled up at the entrance to the ghost estate at Foxborough Mews. The rows of empty houses had proved such an effective refuge for people with unresolved lives.

Two men in safety helmets and high-visibility vests stood in front of the estate, poring over a map. One of them was Michael Mooney. He looked pleased to see Daly. Grinning, he walked over and shook hands with the detective.

“Your investigation was very valuable to us, Inspector,” he said. “Thanks to you, the regeneration association will be able to continue in spite of the harm Jack did.”

“How come?”

“Jack was the unfortunate victim of a blackmail plot organized by a gang of ruthless Croatians. He compromised his position of trust and misused peace funds, but he was a desperate man forced into a corner. That’s the story I’ll be reporting to the auditors. Greta Fowler is an important witness.”

“Sounds like an exercise in damage limitation.”

“The association will escape without too much discredit, which will be very disappointing to some, I’m sure. Unionist politicians would have seized on the story like dogs jumping on a prize bone. There’s a new round of peace funding in September. We have our application submitted already.”

“And what will you do with the money? Build more homes to be peopled by ghosts?”

“Who knows? Young men need to be kept busy; otherwise they’ll turn to guns and bombs. Don’t you know that the devil makes use of idle hands?”

A thundering roar interrupted their conversation. Before them, a gray haze shimmered over the houses. Not fog but the dust of collapsed buildings. A line of bulldozers devoured the first row of unfinished houses, plowing them back into the boggy earth.

“What’s happening?” asked Daly.

“These bulldozers are rescuing the housing market,” said Mooney without a trace of sarcasm. “The country has thousands more houses than it could ever fill in twenty years. When homes aren’t being built, the economy goes into free fall. This destruction is the price that has to be paid for prosperity and stability.”

“It seems scandalous.”

“These are scandalous times.”

A bulldozer surged over a fresh mound of rubble. Daly took a last look at the homes, all clean and freshly painted and hopeful, but with little to offer prospective buyers other than crippling debt and a lifetime of worry. Ireland was a country where everything had grown out of proportion, even greed. The bricks and mortar of Foxborough Mews formed part of a straggling fault line that ran the length of the country, north and south, through scattered villages, moribund towns, and along new dual carriageways empty of traffic. A line of ghost estates that stretched like a yawning crack, threatening to drag the entire nation’s finances under the surface.

“Please God, let us never see empty houses like these again,” Mooney said with a sigh.

“These houses will always exist,” replied Daly. “They’ll haunt people’s dreams for a hundred years.”

A cloud of bluebottles rose from the ruptured sewers, buzzing a final farewell in their faces.

I thank my agent, Paul Feldstein, as well as Otto Penzler and Rob Hart at MysteriousPress.com, all the folks at Open Road Integrated Media, and the Northern Ireland Arts Council for its support and funding.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 Anthony Quinn

Cover design by Mauricio Díaz

978-1-4804-3601-5

Published in 2013 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com
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Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.

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