Border Angels (8 page)

Daly sat with Irwin in the interview suite. Little of what the woman said was easy for him to follow. He leaned forward, straining to hear, to understand. He poured some water from the jug and swallowed a scant measure. The tang of cleaning chemicals soured his mouth. He tried to weave her narrative into the events of the night before, his conversation with Lena in the grim farmhouse, her abrupt departure and flight through the trees, and then her scream and the doll caught on the briar.

“Go slowly,” he said. “Give us a chance to get this straight.”

“I was driving along the Mullybracken Road,” the woman began again.

“What time?”

“About eight p.m. I almost ran over her. She came rushing out of the forest into the path of my headlights. I rolled down the window, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She was foreign. I tried to calm her down, coax her into the car, but she was too frightened. Her blouse was torn as if someone had tried to rip it off her. There were scratch marks on her arms. Then I heard a man shouting her name. I think it was Lena.”

Daly flinched. He swallowed and breathed deeply.

“Are you sure about the name?”

“I could hear his voice clearly. It wasn’t foreign. The woman looked very frightened.”

“What happened next?”

“She ran off.”

“What did you do then?”

“I waited for a while, hoping she would reappear. Then I got scared. I thought whoever was chasing her might attack me if they found me there.”

When Irwin showed her the photo of Lena Novak, she nodded in recognition. “That’s her. Except her hair was shorter.”

The two detectives left the interview room.

“It sounds like it was Lena Novak,” said Irwin. He stared at Daly. “Shall we organize a full-scale search around the farmhouse?”

“I don’t know. This doesn’t add up.” He found it difficult to merge the woman’s account with his own recollection of what had happened.

Irwin did not reply. He looked strangely at Daly. “What do you think this woman saw then? A lovers’ tiff? A game of hide-and-seek?”

“It’s very vague. She couldn’t even understand what the woman was saying. I don’t think she’s a reliable witness, but we’ll send out some officers to search the area anyway.”

Irwin frowned at him. “You look like a man who’s seen a ghost. How much sleep did you get last night?” Daly saw his eyes glide over the scratch marks on the back of his hands. Irwin was quiet.

“Am I free to go now?” asked the woman when they went back into the interview room.

“You can leave anytime you like,” said Daly, before taking down her details.

As Daly drifted off to sleep that night, the crow of a rooster jolted him awake. His father’s hens, he remembered. He had been so distracted he had forgotten to feed them that evening, and now they were hungry and cross. The flock was part of his inherited smallholding, a brood of leghorns that his father had kept for company and the odd egg.

The rooster’s protests stopped when he threw in a bucket of meal. He swung his flashlight at them and was annoyed to see the rooster bully the hens away from the food. It scratched and strutted through the grain with its feet as the rest of the trampled flock recoiled into the coop. Daly watched it gobble up the food and preen its glossy black feathers. A quiver of anger ran through his chest. He thought suddenly about killing the bird or at least releasing it into the night where a fox might snatch it.
You’re little more than a bully,
he thought,
and a noisy one at that.
He was sick of its cranky abuse in the hour before dawn, hauling him too early from sleep when he still felt dazed by his dreams. He reached in through the wire enclosure, but his scrabbling attempts at capture sent the rooster into a frenzy of aggression, its wings beating in violent rhythms. Only exhaustion and the imagined rebuke of his father prevented Daly from trying again. He threw the rooster a glance as if to say its number was up. The bird gave him a sideways glance and flapped its wings. Daly walked back to the cottage, wondering who was really in charge of the smallholding, himself or the rooster? He got into bed just as a rainstorm broke.

During the night, rain fell so heavily it flooded the makeshift smoking shelters erected behind Armagh’s sprawling pubs and discos, and it filled the streets with so much running water it threatened to join them with the river Callan. By the time the downpour eased, the crowds of drunken revelers had disappeared, leaving a watery silence wedged in the town’s gullet. Empty food cartons floated in a ragged wake down side streets as narrow as canals. A few police patrol cars swished by on wings of water. The pubs were as dead as their reflections in the puddles, and even the taxi companies had their shutters pulled by midnight.

It was a relaxed morning for the police officers in Armagh station. When Daly walked into the control room, all the desks were empty. The officers on duty had few alcohol-related crimes to investigate, and it was payday. Irwin had gathered a group in the canteen, and they were discussing where to go out drinking that weekend. Daly avoided them and made for his office. He had stayed up late the night before placing basins around the house to collect the water dripping from holes in the roof.

He checked his messages. One interesting fact had emerged from the search of Fowler’s house. The painstaking examination uncovered only one set of fingerprints that could not be accounted for. They were on the cover of the opera CD that was playing when Fowler’s body was hauled from the pool. Daly stared at a photograph of the album cover. It was Verdi’s
La Traviata
. He wondered who had selected the opera, and what did it reveal about his or her state of mind?

There was also a message from the pathologist, Ruari Butler. Daly leaned back in his chair and called him.

“We have some preliminary results through on Jack Fowler,” said Butler. “Unfortunately, we’re having trouble determining the thing you most want to know.”

“Whether or not he committed suicide?”

“Correct. To sum up, Fowler had enough alcohol in his system to put him twice over the legal drink-drive limit. His head injury may have been due to a fall against the side of a table or the edge of the tiles, or even a blow from a blunt object, but the immediate cause of his death was drowning.”

“So no murder yet.”

“I’ll fax you the details so far.”

Daly had just sat down to study the report when a voice interrupted him.

“Can I speak to you, Inspector?”

Susie Brooke’s tread had been light on the carpet. He looked up in surprise. She was standing at arm’s length, the smell of her perfume wafting under his nose.

“Can’t you talk to someone else?” he said, a little offhandedly. “I have two important investigations to deal with.”

“This is important, too.” She smiled at him. She was good at that—just holding back on being pushy, confident that her charm would draw people to her instead.

“You’re the only person in the station who can answer my questions,” she added.

“Okay, then. Fire away.”

He offered her a seat, but she remained standing. Something about the sudden intensity of her gaze made Daly feel uneasy. She looked like a girl about to take a walk down a dangerous street. He didn’t know whether to reassure her or warn her off.

“Have you read the court pages recently?” She placed a pile of local newspapers before him.

Daly glanced at them and looked back at her. She had come prepared.

“No,” he said.

“Nearly every drink-drive story is about an Eastern European motorist. I’m worried that this kind of distorted coverage will stir up racist feelings.”

“Editors will always print whatever they think sells newspapers. We can’t be held accountable for that.”

“But I’ve been studying the latest drink-drive figures. Two hundred fifty motorists were convicted in the past year in the local district, one hundred sixty-two of them from Eastern Europe, and thirty-four from the Republic of Ireland. The newspaper editors aren’t biased in their coverage. Your officers seem to have an obsessive interest in catching drunken foreign nationals.”

“What do you mean?”

“The figures suggest they are targeting foreign drivers more than locals. The drink-driving laws shouldn’t be used as a tool to punish one section of the community.”

“Let’s stick to the facts,” said Daly, grimacing as he fought to keep his temper under control. “Police officers don’t just pull over a motorist because he looks like an Eastern European. Read the drink-drive reports. You’ll find they usually begin with an officer noticing a vehicle being driven dangerously or the suspect staggering out of a pub before he gets behind the wheel. Breathalyzers don’t tell lies. Nor are they racist.”

“That’s what gets reported. Things happen that are never written down.”

Daly noticed that she did not flinch under his heavy stare. He leaned forward and flicked through the newspapers.

“I think you should be treating this as an education issue,” he said, keeping his tone even. “We need to reach out to these communities and make them aware of the law, and not just their rights. Many of these people come from countries with more relaxed drink-driving laws, or at least from a culture with a more relaxed attitude to drink-driving.”

“These people?”

“Yes. These people.”

“Put it this way. If seventy percent of convicted drink-drivers were Catholic, wouldn’t you suspect your officers of being sectarian?”

He blinked. “I don’t understand why you’re bringing this issue up. Policing is about catching criminals, not worrying about what the newspapers report. If an Eastern European is caught breaking the law, it’s his own drunken fault, and not because my officers are racist.”

“It’s not just your officers who might be racist.”

He stared at her.

“What do you mean? Are you calling me a racist, too?”

“It’s widely acknowledged that racism is a general problem within the police force that needs to be tackled.”

“So all police officers are racist then?”

“Some more than others.”

“This might surprise you, but I think I know my staff a little more than you do. When I leave this station tonight, I’ll do so confident in the knowledge that in my absence a bunch of racist police officers won’t be spilling across town, sirens flashing on the hunt for Eastern Europeans.”

“Fine. I’ll be around. Call me when one of your officers plans to arrest another drink-driver.”

The police radio beside him crackled. “You’ll be the first to know,” he said, his mouth sour.

The racist accusation had troubled Daly deeply. He left the police station and drove into Armagh. He drove with apparent purpose, but in reality, he was aimlessly patrolling the disorganized streets around the local meat factories. The redbrick terraces narrowed in—cramped houses rented out to Eastern European families. The anger had settled into his chest, to be replaced by something else, doubt, and the grim knowledge that police officers were human after all, liable to expect the worst in strangers and prone to fear, the fear of the unknown.

Daly surveyed the bleak streets. Ten years ago, this place was a Republican stronghold, with its own brand of political unrest, riots and carjackings, defiant murals, and standoffs with the police. Now families from different lands had taken their place to weave new tales of discrimination and alienation.

Two thousand immigrants arrived in one year. Three thousand the next. Life was different here. You could see it in the cars, cheap-looking imports from Eastern Europe with blackened windows. The same vehicles driving up and down the street all evening.
Motorized loitering,
he thought to himself.

But mostly you saw the difference in the people walking the streets. A siren sounded a change of shift in the nearby chicken-processing factory, and the pace and number of pedestrians changed—ranks of men and women, hardworking and tenacious, all of them under forty, many of them dressed in army-style jackets, a forceful wave of labor, walking as though in convoy toward the open gates of the factory.

Daly knew that immigrants took the jobs that no one else wanted. They worked the longest shifts, in the most grinding of conditions, were docked pay even for toilet breaks, and then went home to sleep in overcrowded houses, climbing into beds that had just been vacated by workers on different shift patterns. They spent their nights and weekends anesthetized by physical exhaustion and alcohol. It was a new model of democratic calm for this part of Northern Ireland, he thought, civil stability of a sort.

He pulled up at an off-license and waited behind the wheel. After about fifteen minutes, a man stumbled out of the shop. He leaned against a black Lada and raised a bottle of spirits to his lips, knocking back a slug with the practiced disregard of a circus performer swallowing a sword. Climbing into the driver’s seat, he tilted the bottle again, this time taking a deeper swallow. The sound of children playing football in a nearby street arced through the air. Daly felt anger balloon inside. He waited until the man started the engine.

The driver looked up when Daly tapped the window. An angular face with gray stubble. For a second, he looked at Daly, his eyes brightening as though they might share a past, were second cousins or neighbors from a different town, a different country.

Daly banged on the glass and flashed his ID.

“I’m a police officer. Open the door.”

The look of recognition rapidly faded. The driver replaced the lid on the bottle and slid it between his knees. He was like a man woken abruptly from a dream.

Daly informed him of his rights and that he was arresting him on the suspicion of drink-driving.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes.” The man fished out a creased Croatian driving license. He balled his fists and looked Daly in the eye. The look of sadness in his face was deep and total.

“I have money in my house. Money for you. I am sorry for the trouble.” His voice was clotted with alcohol and guilt, and thickly accented. Daly guessed that he had not been in the country for very long.

“You take my money. Yes? No? For the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble to me,” said Daly. “Get out of the car. I’m taking you down to the station for a breathalyzer test. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I not drink anymore,” he protested. “I give you my word.” He shook his head profoundly.

Daly walked him to his car and helped him into the back.

“I make a stupid mistake,” he told Daly. “I live a mile away. Needed cigarettes and vodka.”

“Why didn’t you just walk to the off-license?”

“No reason.”

His stubbled face flushed. “I lose my job now.”

“Not my problem. You should have considered that before drinking.” Daly started up the engine.

“No, I lose my job. Today. Boss say no work anymore.” He sighed heavily and flashed Daly a look so grim, the detective feared he was going to open up his heart and reveal his deepest worries, the dashing of his hopes and dreams.

Instead, the Croatian rubbed his dry lips and stared down. He grunted suddenly. Daly watched him in the rearview mirror. The Croatian rubbed his eyes as though he had seen a ghost. Daly turned round. The man was holding Lena’s doll. Daly had forgotten it was there.

“Who owns this?” asked the Croatian.

“A woman. Someone I’m trying to find.”

“Her name is Lena Novak?”

Daly stopped the vehicle, looked him in the eye.

“How do you know that name?” he asked the Croatian.

Ten minutes later, Daly had gathered from their halting conversation that Josef Mikolajek had placed a price on Lena’s head. He had sent a picture of her around the Croatian community, and a description of the rag doll she had in her possession, one dressed in the national costume of their country.

“This doll, I think he is afraid of it,” said the man. “Maybe he’s superstitious. He wanted Lena caught or killed, it didn’t matter. But what he really wanted was this doll.” The Croatian laughed. “When Mikolajek feels threatened by anyone, he has them shot or stabbed. But a doll? You can’t kill a doll.”

Daly handed the man over at the police station and drove home. He was going to have to work out why the doll was so important to Lena Novak and Mikolajek. It was the key to a dangerous secret, and he needed to know what it was.

Back in the bedroom of his cottage the ceiling was still dripping rain. He emptied the pots and basins that had been collecting the water. During the night he awoke with a start to a loud splashing noise. For a second he thought the Lough had flooded and burst through the cottage walls. Bits of plaster lay on his blanket. In the moonlight, he saw that a part of the ceiling had fallen into one of the basins.