‘Twenty-four in total,’ Karol explained. ‘Four families. One per bedroom and one for the living room.’
The girl looked from one to the other of us, her eyes wide and red, her face drawn in an expression that was as much fear as grief.
‘Please don’t be afraid,’ I said, crouching before her. I produced one of the flyers I’d had made, and folded it so that the picture of her husband was visible. ‘Is this your husband?’
She pointed to the picture and said something to Karol, then turned to me and nodded her head slowly, before breaking into fresh sobs.
‘Ask her when she last saw her husband.’
The two spoke briefly. ‘Last Friday,’ Karol explained to me eventually. ‘He went out looking for work.’
‘I thought he worked in a chip van,’ I said.
Another conversation ensued. While they spoke, I examined the woman’s face. Her hair was blonde and shoulder-length, though pulled back into a pony-tail that seemed to accentuate the sharpness of her features. One of her teeth, slightly crooked, bit her pale lower lip.
Karol turned to me. ‘He was fired. He asked for more money, so his boss fired him. He’d been looking for work for a few weeks now.’
‘Did she know he was going to rob a bank?’ I asked.
The word ‘bank’ must have registered for she shook her head violently and said something which sounded like ‘Naa ha’. She looked from Karol to me. ‘Naa . . . no, no,’ she said, blinking back her tears. I was unsure whether she was answering my question or vainly protesting her husband’s innocence.
‘Tell her I’m sorry, but we need her to identify her husband for us,’ I said. Any further questioning could be carried out in the station, after she’d had time to grieve a little for her husband. Though I couldn’t really see where the questions would lead us – the man had been living in desperate circumstances without a job and was unlucky enough to rob a bank the day half the Irish Army were standing outside.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Almurzayev,’ I said, looking her in the eyes. ‘I’m very sorry.’
I laid my hand on hers momentarily. Her hands were cold and light, the skin calloused. She looked at me, then withdrew her hand from mine.
As we drove to Letterkenny General to identify the body, Karol and I discussed the likely fates of the immigrants I had seen in the house. Mrs Almurzayev sat in the back of my car, looking out of the window.
‘I’m glad you got back to me,’ I said. ‘I’d never have found anyone else who could speak Chechen.’
‘A lot of refugees came into Poland in 2005. I volunteered in the Médecins sans Frontières camp in Warsaw for six months,’ he explained. ‘You have to learn fast there.’
‘I’d believe that,’ I said.
We stood beside Natalia Almurzayev while she viewed the dead man. She held his hand in her own and stopped the morgue attendant from pulling the green sheet over his face again until she had kissed him on the forehead. She cradled the side of his head in her hand and rubbed the greying hair at his sideburns with her thumb as she murmured to him words that required no translation.
Afterwards, Karol and Natalia sat in the cafeteria while I went to get three cups of coffee. When I came back, they were deep in conversation. They were an incongruous couple – he in a suit, she dressed in jeans and a hooded top.
‘She had no idea that her husband was going to rob a bank, Inspector,’ he said when I sat down. ‘She thought he was going looking for work.’
‘How long have they been here?’ I asked.
‘Five months,’ he answered without asking her, which suggested that he had already established some of the background details while I was buying the coffee.
‘Where did her husband get the false driving licence?’ I asked. Karol translated the question. Though she shrugged her shoulders in bewilderment, it was clear that she knew what I was talking about.
‘She doesn’t know about a driving licence,’ Karol said.
I took the licence from my pocket, still in an evidence bag, and placed it on the table. ‘Tell her she won’t get into trouble, if she’ll tell me now. If she doesn’t, I’ll have to report her to Immigration Services.’
Karol started to speak then stopped and looked at me quizzically.
‘Just say it, please,’ I said.
Reluctantly the girl told us the full story of how she and her husband had ended up in Ireland.
*
They had both worked in a steelworks in Chechnya for under €200 per month between them. Then Ruslan received word from his cousin who had moved to Ireland: the economy here was booming; it was a land of opportunity. They could earn in a week more than they had been earning in a month at home. They had no children, no dependents, nothing to stop them coming across. They did, however, have to pay €10,000 each for their transport and for a safe house and identity when they got here.
The man who would bring them over would let them pay in instalments when they arrived: half their wages each week, until the debt was cleared. Ruslan’s cousin organized the whole thing.
In March they met a group of thirty other people near the border with Ingushetia. They were bundled into the back of an articulated lorry. A thin wooden partition in the cargo area created a false wall behind which they crammed. They each had to pay €1,000 to the driver as a deposit. Then, packed together, they sat and waited to be delivered to Ireland.
They travelled for some time huddled in the dark. She wasn’t sure whether they went east to the Caspian or west to the Black Sea but, within a day of travelling, they reached the coast. They smelt the change in the lorry, the briny quality of the sea air. They heard, when they stopped, the crying of gulls.
Natalia could tell when the lorry had boarded a ship; so deep in the bowels of the vessel, crammed together, the pitch and roll effect exaggerated, many of those in the compartment, particularly the children, vomited for most of the journey. Five bottles of water and a loaf of bread had been left with the occupants. By the second day, the water tasted bitter with the taste of vomit. Natalia managed to refuse subsequent offers of a drink until the fourth morning, or so she estimated (there were no windows or lights in the compartment, so day and night became interchangeable). By that stage the lorry was back on solid ground.
They travelled by water once more, a journey of only an hour or two. Within a few more hours they finally arrived at their destination, more than five days after leaving their home.
She felt the truck stop. She heard the thud of the cab door as the driver got out, heard voices outside, heard the grating of the large back doors being opened. She and the others listened in darkness, whilst the cargo was shifted to one side. What if they had been caught? What if it was immigration officers?
When they first saw the man who appeared in the doorway, they were certain they had been caught, for he carried a gun in his hand. Some of the children screamed, until he raised it above his head and shouted to them in Russian that they had arrived in Ireland.
It was turning dark when they got out of the lorry and were led, one family at a time, to an old farmhouse. Natalia fell when she tried to walk, her muscles cramped and unaccustomed to use after sitting so long in one position. A man pointed to the gable wall of the house. Several small holes punctured the rendering, which was stained with a rust-coloured residue.
In the cottage a man spoke to her and her husband in Russian. He took their photographs with a digital camera, then directed them to wait in the kitchen area with the others. Chocolate bars were lying on a plate and they gorged themselves. When he returned, a few hours later, the man handed them each a forged driving licence and passport. Her husband’s new name was Joseph Mackey; hers was Anna McIlwee.
Fifteen minutes later they and three other families were collected in a convoy of cars. As they drove they were given instructions. They would be taken to their new home; they would remain there until they had paid their debt, collected each month with the rent for the house, which would be an addition
al £50 per week. They would be provided with jobs until their debt was paid, then they would have to find their own. If they complained, argued back or broke any of their conditions, they’d be dealt with severely. If they contacted the police, hospitals or government agencies while they were still paying their debts, they would be brought back to the cottage, where they would be stood against the gable wall they had all been shown earlier.
An hour later they were dropped at the house in Strabane. A middle-aged man with a pony-tail was waiting for them there. He had milk, bread, butter and eggs. The house had no furniture, no bedding. One of the men complained to him, said he had expected better. The man with the pony-tail and one of the drivers took him upstairs. The others cowered below as they listened to the thuds. They did not see the man again until the next day. He had never complained since.
The pony-tailed man said he’d call each month; he’d collect £400 from the Almurzayevs – £100 each towards the debt and £50 per week for the rent. Larger families were paying almost double that. Anyone who couldn’t earn enough, they’d find work for them. Even the children. So far, they’d all made sure they had their rent when he called, after 8 p.m. the first Friday of each month.
We listened in silence until she had finished her story. She asked me for a cigarette and went outside to smoke.
‘I can’t let this happen,’ I said to Karol. ‘I need to contact the PSNI.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘They’ll be deported.’
‘It would be better than what they’re doing at the moment.’
‘They’d kill anyone not caught by the police, Inspector. They’d assume someone had informed on them.’
‘I know someone with the PSNI – someone good. He’ll deal with it properly.’
‘You told her you wouldn’t report her, Inspector. You gave her your word.’
‘Better to let them be exploited by a bunch of thugs? Is that what you’re suggesting? The state will take care of them.’
‘You think they’d be any better off being looked after by the state? There are no safe houses for illegal immigrants. They won’t even get healthcare unless people like me treat them illegally. I’d be struck off, sent back to Poland, if they knew what I did. Your reporting them will change nothing. The people who brought them in will vanish into the woodwork and the only people to suffer will be Natalia and others like her. If you want to help her, actually help her.’
‘And how do you suggest I do that?’
‘Find out who brought them here. Because they’re going to want their money soon, and she has no way of earning it.’
We both looked out through the plate glass to where Natalia stood, hugging herself for warmth, dragging on the end of the butt of her smoke as if it were her final cigarette.
I sat that evening with Debbie, having put our two children to bed. She sat cross-legged on the sofa, a cushion clutched in front of her as she tried to watch a soap opera.
‘Either way, I feel culpable,’ I said. ‘If I do nothing, I’m letting whoever is fleecing these people get away with it. If I report it, I’ll be handing them over to be sent home. What would you do?’
‘Is there no way you can follow it up without actually reporting them? Trace who brought them in?’ she suggested, without averting her eyes from the screen.
‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ I said. ‘And I’m on my own with this.’ My partner, Caroline Williams, had left the force following a case we had worked on in which she had almost died. I had not since been given a new partner, partly, I suspected, because our new Super, Patterson, was happy to isolate me a little.
‘They must have contact with someone. How do they pay back their debt?’
‘Some guy comes to collect it on the first Friday of each month.’
‘That’s this Friday coming,’ Debbie concluded. ‘Why not call Jim Hendry and see what he can do?’
I had already considered it, but to do so would be to place Jim in an awkward position. And I wasn’t sure how far I could test our friendship.
I explained this to Debbie. ‘I’m stuck. I want to do what’s right for the woman, you know? I don’t want to help her out of one mess into another. Especially with what’s happened with her husband. I need to know I’ve done the right thing.’
Finally, sensing that I wouldn’t leave her in peace until she had given me a satisfactory response, she put the cushion she’d been hugging to one side, muted the TV and faced me.
‘In that case, speak to Patterson about it. You’re working the dead man’s case anyway – at least this way you’ll have shown you’ve worked out who he was,’ she said, raising her eyebrows, the remote control already pointed again at the TV.
Chapter Four
Tuesday, 3 October
I was first in to the station the following morning and brewed coffee in the kitchen while I collected my mail. I took my mug and the post out the back for a smoke. In the middle of the pile was a card from Caroline Williams, sent from Sligo. She wrote that she was fine, though her son, Peter, was going through a bad patch. She hoped everyone was well. She missed us all, she said. Obviously not enough to come back, I thought.
When Patterson arrived, I went into his office and explained all that I had done in tracing Ruslan Almurzayev, and about his widow’s predicament.
‘So we know who he was,’ Patterson said.
I nodded.
‘Good work, Devlin,’ he said. ‘The rest of this has nothing to do with us.’
‘But these people are—’ I began to protest, but he held up his hand to silence me.
‘These people have chosen to live in the North. Now, while I sympathize with their situation, it is not our responsibility. We’ve done our bit. Call your friend in the North, Hendrix or whatever he’s called, and tell him.’
‘They’ll deport them,’ I said, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible.
‘Listen,’ Patterson hissed. ‘Costello might have indulged your habits, but I won’t. We have Cathal Hagan coming here in a week’s time and you’re in charge. Now do the job you’re being fucking paid for and stop chasing cases out of your jurisdiction.’
‘He died over here,’ I said.
‘Past tense: died,’ Patterson repeated. ‘Dead and buried. Case closed. Drop it.’
I knew there was no further point in discussing it with him as he glared at me across his desk.
‘They’re moving that body from the mine today. Now why don’t you get out to Orcas and kiss Weston’s golden arse until it shines.’
I sat in the car near the border for ten minutes, staring across the river towards Strabane as if somehow it would reveal an answer. Finally, I phoned Hendry on my mobile. His line rang out. I had another smoke and redialled. Again, no answer. I got the impression someone was trying to tell me something.
*
I headed back to Orcas as directed. The traffic was heavier than I had expected and I realized that quite a bit of it was headed out to the camp that had been set up along the stream where Ted Coyle had found his nugget. Riled by Patterson’s concluding comments, and always happy to spend half an hour outdoors in weather like this, I pulled in to the camp rather than going directly to Orcas.
The number of cars parked in the area had significantly increased. The scent of fir trees had been thickened with the smells of burning wood and cooking food. The atmosphere under the canopy was carnivalesque. A few kids who should have been in school were playing soccer in a clearing, using the nearest trees as goalposts. A young girl was picking flowers from the woodland floor, in spots where the sun had managed to pierce the canopy.
Rock music played from one of the camper vans and a number of its occupants were sitting in the sunlight outside the open back doors, rolling cigarettes or drinking from beer cans. I noticed a few of those rolling smokes hastily hide them when they saw me getting out of my car. A man who was playing with a mongrel looked up, peered at me for a second as if in recognition, then turned his back and continued to fight
with the dog for possession of the stick it had clamped in its mouth. None of them, as far as I could see, was panning for gold.
I nodded over to them, then walked on down to the river, where the atmosphere was very different. I counted twenty-three straining rumps down by the water, each owner sifting through the grit they had gathered in the sieves and colanders they were using.
I recognized Patsy McCann, standing close to the far bank. The spell of dry weather had exposed part of this section of the riverbed, though a good night’s rain would soon change things. I was able to cross to him with some care and minimal soaking, stepping from stone to stone.
Patsy threw his sieve down in disgust on the near bank and flopped down beside it. Reclining on the grass, he shielded his eyes with his hand and looked up at me.
‘Any luck?’ I asked.
‘Bugger-all,’ he spat. ‘I’d be better off back pulling pints.’
‘Anyone found anything?’ I asked, a little surprised that McCann had given up his job to sift through river dirt.
‘Nobody, apart from yer man Coyle.’ He nodded upriver to where a stocky middle-aged man stood, trouser legs rolled up to his knees, pan in hand.
I noticed that a number of the other people spotted around the river were likewise watching him and, as he moved around, they followed him, at a distance, as if he possessed some unshared knowledge of the riverbed and its secrets. If he was aware of their gazes, he didn’t show it.
Suddenly, a child’s shout echoed along the river. A number of prospectors looked up quickly towards the source of the cry, their faces lit with expectation and envy in equal measure when they saw something glistening in his wet hands. Equally quickly they turned away, with palpable relief, when they realized that it was not gold he carried in his hands but a dead fish. He held its curled body on his upturned palms, as if in offering. Coyle alone went over to inspect it, like some tribal elder, prodding it with his finger then turning and wading upstream. One or two of the others, watching him, gathered their things and began to move too, until he turned and glared at them as if warning them to keep away.
Bleed a River Deep (Inspector Devlin Mystery 3) Page 4
