Border Angels (4 page)

During the summer, the swimming pool belonged to the children with their army of inflatable toys and floats, but after the long cold winter, its murky waters had a ransacked feel, the toys long gone, the wind churning a mass of dead leaves on the surface, the rotting dregs slowly sinking to the bottom.

Jack Fowler had allowed himself the luxury of a silk dressing gown and a double gin as he took a final tour of the pool and garden. A knot of nostalgia for happier times tightened in his stomach. He surveyed the mansion and its grounds hacked from the surrounding moorland—a landscape of impoverished-looking gorse and thorn bushes that formed a groping backdrop to his landscaped gardens. Even a week ago, a similar walk to the white-tiled pool edge would have made him feel like a king staring across at a battlefield of vanquished enemies.

He could hear noises from the kitchen where his wife was getting their four children ready for school. Somehow he had to get through the morning routine, survive the first hour of the day, and escape his children’s questioning gaze. Then, afterward, he might be able to think through a plan of action.

He raised the shivering meniscus of his drink to his lips and sucked greedily, but not even the numbing effect of alcohol could lighten the dread weight of the financial and legal disaster that burdened him. The previous day, an officer from the Fraud Squad had delivered the news he feared the most. The shock of the words had almost made his body bend in double.

He looked up suddenly, blinked, and raised his arm in self-defense. A ragged flock of crows fell around his head. He tried to brush the swooping wings away, but the birds dove at him with such insistence that he feared God had finally unleashed his anger. Surely, he was being punished now for his greed and his ill-advised affair with the Croatian prostitute. He thought ruefully about Lena Novak. The unattainable Lena with her mysterious eyes. Rescuing her from that brothel a month ago was the one selfless act he had done in his entire life. It was also the most stupid decision he had ever made, he thought bitterly. No wonder it had led to the unraveling of his private and public life.

Greta, his wife, had just finished helping the children put on their school uniforms when she glanced through the French doors. She was surprised to see her husband standing by the pool on such a cold morning, his dressing gown fluttering against his bare body. A flock of crows flapped around his hunched shoulders, the birds gathering and dispersing as though an invisible web had entangled them in his arms.

Seeing him like that, when normally he would have been showered and dressed in a smart suit, made her feel uneasy. Carefully, she opened the doors, and was surprised once again—this time by the sound of his voice praying. She had assumed he had forgotten how to do so. To her knowledge, he had not uttered a single holy word since they’d moved into their new house. The fervent tone of his voice heightened her uneasiness. She would have stepped back into the house had he not chosen that moment to turn round. He stopped praying and beckoned at her.

“What is it with these bloody crows?” he complained when she drew close. “Look at them, they won’t rest. Their beaks have picked the thorn hedges clean but still they’re not happy. What drives them on and on?”

A swell of mountain air lifted the birds high above the pool and then dropped them back toward her husband. Their caws were like gashes in the restless wind. Greta clapped her hands sharply and the flock disintegrated, the crows flying off at low angles.

“That’s enough!” she shouted at him. “Stop talking about the bloody birds. Have you gone mad?”

He turned toward her, and for a second she saw the desperation in his face. He ran his hands though his heavy black hair as though he wanted to uproot it. His feet were blue with the cold, and the belt of his dressing gown trailed in the pool. She feared he might follow it in at any moment.

“I can’t live with you if you’re going to behave like this,” she said.

It was then that he revealed the disaster that had found a shortcut into their lives, the contagion that traveled through their bank accounts and their portfolio of properties and investments as quickly as disease or death itself. The alcohol and her soothing presence loosened his tongue and softened the frozen grimace of his face. He told her his fear of ending up bankrupt had turned him into an empty shell. His heart was broken and he was unable to stop himself going mad. If only they could go back to their old life, to all that was familiar and dear to them.

“There’ll be a police investigation,” he said finally, the breath squeezing from his chest. “They might charge me with fraud and embezzlement.”

She saw a look of terror in his eyes and wanted to comfort him, but the children were waiting in the car. The youngest would start wailing soon.

“We’ll survive this,” she told him. “Let’s get away from here. We’ll book a hotel for the weekend, leave the children with my brother.”

He lowered himself into a deck chair and poured another glass of gin.

“Just treat all that money as if it didn’t exist in the first place,” she urged. “We’ve been through so much together. They can’t take everything from us.”

He emptied the glass, dropped it beside the chair. “How are the children?”

“They’re fine. They’re so busy with homework they don’t notice what’s going on.”

“And Luke, too?”

He was their youngest, the only boy.

“Luke, too.”

“I can’t bear the thought of him visiting me in prison.”

“Don’t tell me anything more. I’ve already seen the letters and answered the telephone calls. I know too much already.”

She walked off without glancing behind even though she knew he was waiting for her to do so. She knew that if she looked back, his misery and fear would cling to her, too, and drag her down with him.

Where had all the money gone?
she wondered. Not so long ago, her husband had been one of the richest men in the country, vaulting from business deal to business deal so successfully he had moved in the most powerful political circles in the land.

Greta managed to rally herself by the time she returned from the school run. These days everyone in the country was anxious about money, she reasoned. They were not the only family facing financial annihilation because of the depressed property market.

She rushed into the garden feeling a surge of the love she had for him in spite of his recent transgressions. Those faithful feelings were unchanged in the face of his infidelity and the deplorable state of their finances.
We’ll be all right,
she wanted to reassure him. However, by the time she reached the swimming pool, it was too late. A more brutal tragedy had swept into their lives. She was forty-two years old, had given birth to four children, suffered two miscarriages, and seen the deaths of both her parents, but nothing could prepare her for the sight of her drowned husband’s body floating in the wind-ruffled waters of their swimming pool.

“These people don’t just live in the asshole of nowhere, they have their faces shoved right up it,” said Irwin as Daly pulled the car up to the brand-new electronic gates. He was right. The bog had been the drowned man’s nearest neighbor. Jack Fowler had been a millionaire several times over when he built his three-story mansion at the end of a turf-cutter’s road, on a clearing in the wilderness, an expanse of mountain moorland that was as desolate as a rough sea. The harshness of the setting added to the precarious solidity of the house, its wide, triple-glazed windows reflecting an unstable panorama of storm clouds rushing in from the west. Only a thin hedge of laurel separated the manicured lawns from a hundred square miles of mountain and bog.

A house sign welcomed them to Tara na Naomh, hill of the saints. Daly recognized it as a reference to the Mass rock in a nearby wild glen and the anonymous hordes of pilgrims that congregated there during times of religious persecution. He studied Fowler’s house as they approached, imagining the expensive things inside, the furniture, the paintings, the statues, the latest playthings for adults and children all piled amid the ruined emotional lives of a family who had just lost their father.

Daly could not help but feel a twinge of distaste at such ostentatious signs of wealth. The mountain’s reputation for sanctity had been diluted by the early twenty-first-century race toward prosperity by men like Fowler. Three hundred years ago, in a nearby glen, persecuted Catholics prayed in secret amid the holy thorns—nowadays their descendants built mansions with swimming pools on the tops of hills and holidayed in second homes from Portugal to Dubai.

They parked the car and walked up a set of garden steps to the back of the house, where a group of paramedics had gathered at the edge of the pool. Opera music reverberated through a set of French doors, adding a manic edge to the mountain breezes and the muted flight of several curious crows.

They took in the scene. The landscaped grounds, the patio tiles, the brick barbecue, and the children’s play area with its wooden swings and climbing frames. A deck chair was positioned next to the pool, an empty glass and a half-smoked cigar sitting on the tiles. A folded parasol hung over the nearby table like the remnant of a summer dream. Something was missing from the scene, however, something else had been wiped from the poolside with a dreadful finality.

The two detectives stepped to the side of the pool and stared at the floating body with its bloated silk dressing gown. No one spoke. Even in death, Jack Fowler looked like a man who knew what he wanted. He had put on the perfect dressing gown, selected the perfect cigar, put on his perfect piece of music, at just the right volume so that it would emanate through the windows, which held the perfect view of the swimming pool and the backdrop of mountain and moor. The only thing out of place was the ugly bruise on the front of his head, the wound enveloping the hair in a halo of flowing blood.
The scene has been orchestrated like a play,
thought Daly. One that was over barely before it had begun.

He looked back at the cold shell of the house, its windows streaked with rain, and then to the pool as the paramedics dragged the body out of the water, the dressing gown entangling the arms like a straitjacket, water and rotting leaves seeping from the sleeves. He wondered if the drowning had simply been a case of Fowler slipping on a wet tile. How else could he have so casually left behind his glass and cigar, the mansion and family of young children, a life overflowing with abundance?

“Looks like his garden parties are over for good now,” said Irwin.

A doctor stepped up to examine the body. His stethoscope fluttered across the pearlescent chest, then rested on the sternum. The ripple of urgency dissipated from his hands. He removed the earpieces and felt along the side of the neck. The dead man did not resist. The doctor took his face by the chin and using a pen torch examined first his mouth, then his unblinking eyes. Finally he looked at the head wound, gingerly pulling the skin and hair back. He glanced back at the assembled team of paramedics and detectives.

“I’m on shaky ground here,” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked Irwin.

“Medically speaking. I’m a GP, not a pathologist, but I believe the deceased was struck on the head before he drowned. However, that’s for other professionals to decide. All I can certify is that Mr. Fowler is dead.”

At this point, the laurel hedge began to rustle and a man burst through to the garden. He stopped, collected himself, and gave the detectives an uncertain salute.

Daly introduced himself. “This is the scene of a police investigation,” he said sharply. “What are you doing here?”

The man’s face was a blank. Not a tremor or a blink or a tightening anywhere.

“I’m his brother-in-law,” he replied, staring at the drowned body.

“That may be the case, but I want to know your name and what you were doing in the hedge.”

The man nodded. “My name is Frank Cassidy. Greta asked me to come down and look for their pet dog. He’s been missing since this morning.”

Daly raised an eyebrow.

“Tell me about your brother-in-law.”

“He is—was—a businessman,” said Cassidy.

“What sort?”

He grinned, revealing a gap in his teeth. “One of those who threw money at houses like there was no Gomorrah.”

“A property developer?”

“Yes. But he had other strings to his bow, too. He was the director of Gortin Regeneration Partnership, a community group.” He spat on the tiles. “God knows what skeletons you’re going to unearth if you pick over Jack’s life. You know, a long time ago, he was a crew member on
Samra Africa
?”

Daly had no idea what he was talking about. Cassidy explained that the
Samra Africa
was a boat that had set off from Malta in 1991 with a ten-ton cargo of AK-47 assault rifles and Semtex, courtesy of Colonel Gadaffi’s Libyan government, bound for the IRA. However, the Spanish customs seized the boat close to Gibraltar. It was one of the biggest arms seizures in the history of the Troubles.

“The six-man crew, including Jack, spent four years in a Malaga jail,” said Cassidy. “The Spanish thought they were so dangerous they kept them in solitary confinement in a concrete bunker.”

Daly looked around him, finding it difficult to resolve Fowler’s past with the opulence of his family home.

“How well did you know his private life?”

“Well enough to know he was having an affair with a Croatian girl.” Cassidy produced a photograph of a woman from his jacket. “Greta found this on the deck chair by the pool. She asked me to remove it. It’s a photograph of his mistress.”

Daly took the photo, catching a scent of perfume. He examined it with interest. What he saw was a picture of an attractive young woman, dressed in a man’s jacket, lying sprawled across a sofa.
She has the kind of body that would look good in anything,
thought Daly. No matter how shapeless the clothing, everything found its fit. He looked again at her pretty face. Although she was smiling, he thought he detected a hungry loss in her eyes, as though she had just fled a war or massacre, her body forcibly resettled to that sofa, seeking refuge in the shapeless jacket that sagged so fetchingly for the camera.

“My sister phoned at the weekend,” said Cassidy. “She wanted me to take her to the priest for advice. She’d just discovered what Jack was up to.”

“Wouldn’t a decent solicitor have been more useful?”

“My sister wanted to save her marriage, not end it. Besides, Jack was not the sort of man to have his personal life dragged through the courts.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“He didn’t have much time for the law of the land. Everything had to be done his way.”

Daly nodded. His interest in Fowler’s personal life had been piqued, but it was too early in the investigation to pry into the dead man’s past. There were set routines that had to be adhered to, procedures that had to be completed before the investigation went any deeper.

“That’s all for now, Mr. Cassidy,” he said, putting the photo of the mistress in his wallet. “In the meantime, keep an eye on your sister. We want to talk to her later this afternoon.”

“What do you mean? Is her life in danger, too?”

“Just don’t leave her alone with her sleeping pills.”

“Thanks for the concern.”

“I just want her fit for questioning, that’s all.”

“Come on. You’re not suggesting she did this to Jack?”

“A scorned wife is just about the worst thing for an errant husband to run into.”

Cassidy turned and stared at Irwin, who introduced himself as a Special Branch detective.

“Why is Special Branch interested in Jack’s death?” asked Cassidy cautiously.

“A few days ago, the Fraud Squad was due to question Mr. Fowler over his financial dealings,” explained Irwin. “Unfortunately, he didn’t show up at the arranged time. Technically, when he walked out here this morning in his silk dressing gown, he was a fugitive from the law. That’s why we have a professional interest in finding out how he died.”

Cassidy shook his head. “So he cheated on more than his wife?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” replied Irwin.

The wind leaked out a whimper, the sound of a dog yelping in distress. Cassidy remembered the task he had been assigned by his sister and made off briskly. A front of cold rain pushed Daly and Irwin away from the comfortless poolside toward the shelter of the house.

“The possibility that someone murdered Fowler doesn’t make sense to me,” said Irwin. “He finds out that his financial affairs are under police scrutiny and his wife discovers his affair. Then he walks out to the pool in his dressing gown on a cold morning, leaving behind a photograph of his mistress. That suggests suicide to me. Not murder.”

Daly did not answer. It was certainly the plot, the set, and the location for a suicide, and the photograph suggested the events leading up to Fowler’s death had been high on emotional drama.

“We need to find out if there’s anything else that might suggest he took his own life,” said Daly. “A suicide note, a history of depression, previous attempts, but for now, we’ll keep an open mind.”

“If he was murdered, what was the photograph doing at the scene?”

Daly pondered the question. “Maybe his killer wanted to announce Fowler’s infidelity to the world. Or throw us off the scent.”

They retraced their steps around the house and then back down the steps to the car. Irwin surveyed the bleak landscape. “Pity there’s no neighbors to call upon.”

“We’ll have to rely on the autopsy report and his wife’s statement,” said Daly.

“You’re forgetting the woman in the photograph. A man will tell his mistress things he would never tell his wife.”

They ran into an officer who had been searching Fowler’s house.

“It looks like Mr. Fowler was planning a romantic break,” the officer said, holding up a large brown envelope.

Inside it were Fowler’s passport and two plane tickets for a flight the following Saturday to Malaga. One of the tickets was made out to Fowler; the other bore the name of Lena Novak.

Daly heard the name echo inside his head. He was surprised. The prostitute had found her knight in shining armor, he realized. Unfortunately, Jack Fowler had failed to sweep the missing woman off her feet. Instead, he had left her with one foot in a fairy tale, the other at the center of a crime scene.