The force of the blows shattered her nose. She screamed, while one of the other women jumped on Pony Tail’s back. He punched Natalia in the face, knocking her to the floor, then slammed his back against the wall, badly winding the woman who had helped her. As two of the men in the house rounded on Pony Tail, his accomplice entered with a baseball bat. He barked at the men in Polish, raising the bat. When they had backed off he grabbed Natalia by the hair, dragging her into the kitchen while Pony Tail dealt with the two men.
She understood some of what the man said to her. He wanted to know what she had told the police. She told him she hadn’t spoken to the police and he ripped the front of her dress. He lifted a knife from the counter and, grabbing her by the hair, pressed it against her throat. He asked her again, and again she denied involving the police. Finally he pressed the knife against her windpipe, working the tip gently until it just pierced the skin. Then he began to push it deeper. Natalia had screamed and told him she would tell him everything. It was because of her husband, she shouted. He’d died and the police had come.
The man pulled away from her. He seemed to consider something. Then Pony Tail came into the kitchen, a mobile phone in his hand. He spoke to the younger man, seeming to give him an order. The younger man looked at her, his gaze lingering on the swell of her chest, which was spattered with blood. He seemed reluctant to leave, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. Pony Tail spoke again, more sharply, and his partner stomped out of the room.
Five minutes later a white transit van pulled into the driveway. The residents were loaded into the back. Natalia stood waiting to join her countrymen, but Pony Tail gripped her upper arm and jostled her down the driveway towards their car. He opened the back door, forced her in, pushing down her head to avoid hitting the car roof.
The younger man was sitting in the driving seat. He winked at her when she got in. He spoke again in Polish. She was going to earn her rent, he said. He pushed out his cheek with his tongue. The red scar that ran down the side of his skull was livid in the car’s interior light.
She had not seen her friends since, nor, it seemed, did she know that their old house had been burnt down. She was driven somewhere in the car. They travelled for about thirty minutes before pulling into the driveway of an old red-brick house, hidden from the roadway by mature trees along the perimeter of the garden. Pony Tail and the scarred man led her inside the house. It was fairly well furnished inside, better than Natalia’s previous house. While Pony Tail made a phone call, the scarred man had taken her to an upstairs room where he tore her dress from her. Then he forced her on to the floor.
The story broke there, both because Natalia herself was so upset and because Karol Walshyk asked to be given a break. His face was drawn, his eyes wet with tears. Gilmore, though reluctant to stop the tapes, agreed to a break and sent out for a woman officer.
I stood to stretch my legs, and joined Gilmore at the door of the interview room.
‘I know who the scarred man is,’ I said.
He squinted at me slightly. ‘Who?’
‘His name’s Pol Strandmann. He sells stuff at the market outside Derry on a Sunday.’
‘That’s good to know,’ he said, turning from me again. Something about his reaction worried me.
‘You’re not going to lift him, are you?’ I asked.
‘There are other things going on here, Inspector Devlin. We’ll get to him in due course.’
‘He raped her. He can be charged with that,’ I said, placing my hand on his arm.
He looked down at my hand. ‘You’re here on a limited welcome; remember that.’
‘He raped her,’ I repeated forcefully, trying to keep my voice calm.
‘Could you step outside?’ Gilmore asked through gritted teeth, opening the door and stepping out onto the corridor.
‘Why—’ I began, but Gilmore stopped me short, stabbing a finger against my shoulder.
‘Let’s get something straight here, Devlin. You can’t come up here, mouthing off to my team, and then tell me what to do—’
‘You’re not going to arrest him, are you?’
‘One thug rapes a prostitute. So what? I’m sorry for her, really I am. You’re not the only one with feelings, you know. But there are other women involved here. We believe this guy with the pony-tail is involved in several brothels between here and Strabane, all involving eastern Europeans. If we can get him – and whoever is behind him, more importantly – we’ll achieve a hell of a lot more than picking up one rapist.’
It sickened me to the stomach, but I had to concede that Gilmore was making a sound operational judgement. That didn’t make it any less unpalatable. I would catch up with Pol down the line, of that there was no doubt.
I nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
Gilmore looked at me a moment. ‘Forget about it. We’d best get back in there.’
*
The atmosphere in the room darkened even further as the interview resumed. Gilmore asked about the man with the ponytail; had he mentioned any names, given any indication of who he worked for? Natalia listened to Karol’s translation of his questions, then shook her head.
‘What happened after you were attacked?’ he asked.
Again, Natalia watched Karol as he relayed the question to her, her gaze on his mouth, as if lip-reading. Then she began to speak, her words tumbling together.
‘She was forced to prostitute,’ Karol said, looking between Natalia and Gilmore. ‘In order to pay her debt.’
‘Did you ever see anyone you thought was in charge?’
She shook her head. ‘Only the man with the pony-tail and the one with the scar,’ Karol translated.
‘Tell her we need her to look at mug shots. To see if she can identify the pony-tailed man for us.’
Karol translated and she nodded.
‘What about Strandmann?’ I asked. ‘We have a lead on him. His car was spotted outside the house where Natalia was originally based. It’s enough to bring him in.’
‘I’ve told you already – we’ll follow it up,’ Gilmore said.
I sat in the station until past midnight, while Natalia sat flicking through several lever-arch files of photographs, but without success. Karol Walshyk sat beside me, a cup of tea, long since grown cold, untouched in his hands.
‘This is a horrible country,’ he stated.
‘Sometimes,’ I agreed. ‘Sometimes it’s not so bad.’
‘This story that Natalia told. You hear that often?’
‘We do cruel things to each other,’ I said. ‘You must have seen similar in Poland.’
‘It is so . . .’ he struggled to find the right word, ‘thoughtless.’
I nodded, without looking at him.
‘It must be hard not to become thoughtless too. To become used to it,’ Karol continued, gesturing towards where Burke stood behind Natalia. ‘Like him.’
I looked up at Burke, who was joking with the other members of his team. I missed Caroline Williams. I missed having someone I could rely on in a case. And I questioned why I was sitting in a draughty police station in Omagh in the early hours of a Friday morning, when I wasn’t even supposed to be working.
Gilmore approached us. ‘She doesn’t recognize anyone,’ he said. ‘We’ll keep an eye on this scarred fella you say works the markets, see if we can make a connection there. For now, we need to find her somewhere safe to stay. We’ve tried the Women’s Centre but it’s full. The duty social worker’s not answering his fucking phone. We can get her placed tomorrow. Somewhere safe, until we can pick up this Pony Tail guy. All we need is for her to give us a positive ID on him.’
‘She can stay with us for the night,’ I said. ‘My wife is at home.’
Behind Gilmore’s shoulder Natalia sat at the desk alone, worrying the nail of her thumb with her small teeth.
I brought Natalia home with me and left her sitting in our kitchen while I went up to wake Debbie and explain the situation.
She was still
groggy after I roused her and it took several attempts to explain why an eastern European woman was sitting in our kitchen.
‘You brought a prostitute to our house?’ she repeated for the third time.
‘She has nowhere else to go,’ I explained. ‘She doesn’t know anyone else.’
‘What about Social Services?’
‘They can’t contact them.’
‘So we’re taking her instead?’
I smiled grimly, as if sharing in her exasperation.
‘It’s not funny, Ben. I don’t want her in my house. Find somewhere else for her.’
‘You can’t throw her out on the street, Debs. She’s nowhere else to go.’
‘I’m not throwing her anywhere. You do it. What are you thinking, offering our home to prostitutes?’
‘I had no choice.’
‘How come no one else took her? Why did it have to be you? This is my home. We have children here, Ben, who don’t need to share their home with a fucking prostitute.’
I tried to think of a reply, but Debbie got out of bed and brushed past me to get her dressing gown.
We went downstairs together. Debbie smiled stiffly at Natalia when she went into the kitchen.
‘I’ll make tea,’ she said, twisting the tap so angrily the water sprayed out at force, on to both the kettle and the window behind the sink. Natalia smiled at me with embarrassment, then gestured around the room. She angled her head to catch Debbie’s eye. ‘S’nice,’ she managed. ‘Nice.’
Debbie thanked her, then finished making tea in silence. I brought the cups and milk and sugar to the table while Debbie carried over the teapot. She sat down opposite Natalia, smiling at her, attempting to engage her in conversation of some sort, though with little response.
Finally, glaring at me, she suggested that she take Natalia up to her room. I heard her explain to Natalia the whereabouts of the toilet and the fact that the children were sleeping in the next room. When she came back down, I was standing at the back door having a final smoke before going to bed.
‘Thanks, Debs,’ I said. ‘She’s a nice girl.’
‘I still want her out of here in the morning,’ she said, placing the dishes in the sink.
I continued smoking in silence, hoping to ride out her reaction.
Finally she asked, ‘What happened to her?’
‘She was raped.’
Debbie stopped what she was doing for a second and stared at me.
‘And I think it was my fault,’ I said, flicking the smouldering butt out on to the back path and closing the door.
Chapter Nineteen
Friday, 20 October
The temperature dropped overnight and our lawn was dusted with frost when I woke. Though past 7 a.m., it was still dark out and the house was silent. Something had disturbed me. Fearing that Natalia had absconded, I crept across the gallery and listened outside her bedroom door. From inside I could hear her gentle murmuring in her sleep.
I checked on the children, then returned to my bedroom. It was then that I noticed the light on my mobile phone, which was sitting on the dresser. I had missed a call from Jim Hendry.
‘Wakey, wakey,’ he said on answering his phone when I called him back.
‘I’m meant to be off work, you know,’ I said.
‘Not so as anyone would notice,’ he retorted.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘Karl Moore is – since last night,’ he said. ‘He’s ready to talk.’
‘Any chance I can speak to him?’ I asked.
‘Not a hope,’ Hendry said. ‘Though we’re all in Ward Two, Room C, in Altnagelvin, if you fancy dropping by for a wee visit.’
After the chill of the morning, the heat in the hospital was oppressive. The ward was loud with the clatter of plates and the activity of the nurses. In Karl Moore’s room, two PSNI officers stood with a young female duty solicitor. I knocked on the door and Jim Hendry turned and beckoned me in. He introduced me to the others in the room and explained to the solicitor, Alex Kerlin, that I was present as part of a cross-border investigation into a crime in which we believed Moore was involved. One of the uniformed PSNI men went outside and took up position in front of the now closed door, to stop anyone from coming in and interrupting the interview.
Karl Moore lay back on his bed. His skin was the same green as his hospital gown and his dull eyes were sunken in their sockets.
Hendry had set up a tape recorder beside the bed and, having turned it on, introduced himself, the other officer in the room, Ms Kerlin and myself. He then advised Karl Moore of his rights. Moore waved his hand as a sign that he understood and accepted the advice given, a gesture that Hendry described.
‘You understand why you are being questioned?’ Hendry said.
Moore nodded his head.
‘You are aware that your wife, Janet Moore, is dead?’
Again Moore nodded. He attempted to speak, but seemed to have difficulty in doing so and swallowed hard instead. Hendry added that Moore had nodded in response to the question.
‘Were you responsible for your wife’s death, Mr Moore?’ Hendry asked.
The hospital ward seemed to have gone silent as Moore gathered his strength to speak.
He smacked his lips drily several times, then nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, finally.
The noise began again and somewhere outside the room someone dropped a pan, the clatter echoing up the corridor.
‘Can you repeat that, Mr Moore?’ Hendry asked.
‘My client has answered the question, Inspector,’ Kerlin protested. ‘Can we move on?’
‘I just want to verify beyond all doubt that Mr Moore is accepting full responsibility for the killing of his wife.’
‘My client isn’t contesting that fact. Can we move on, please?’ she insisted.
‘Perhaps you can describe to us the events that led to your wife’s death, Mr Moore. In your own words,’ Hendry suggested.
What followed was one of the most painful things I have witnessed in my time as a Garda officer. Karl Moore did not attempt to hide his guilt, or transfer responsibility to anyone else. He struggled to speak and frequently whatever he was attempting to piece together seemed to die in his throat. His eyes glistened as he spoke. At points his hands gripped at the bedclothes, though without strength.
‘I asked her if she was having an affair,’ he said. ‘She was. She told me she was. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t stop. She was shouting at me about him. About Bradley.’ He stopped and swallowed hard. Alex Kerlin handed him a plastic tumbler of water from his bedside cabinet and he sipped from it. In the close heat of the room, the foulness of his breath seemed to grow increasingly strong.
‘I told her to stop. I . . . my hands were on her. I couldn’t stop. I . . . I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop.’ His eyes welled up and his mouth tightened as he attempted to hold back his tears.
‘How did you know she was having an affair?’ Hendry spoke softly. Karl Moore was admitting everything; there was no need for forcefulness.
‘She mentioned “Leon” a lot. Kept getting calls from him. Then someone confirmed it.’
‘Harry Patterson?’ I asked, earning glances from those in the room to whom this information came as a surprise.
Moore nodded. ‘He told me at the football . . . “Watch your wife,” he said. “She’s making a fool of you . . . Her and Leon Bradley.” She’d got him a ticket for something, said it was for me.’
I nodded. Patterson’s actions were inhuman and unprofessional at best, and quite possibly criminal. Whether he had foreseen the eventual outcome was irrelevant. Moore had, however, moved on to a topic in which I was even more interested.
‘I asked her when I got home and she denied it . . . So I wanted to ask Bradley. I sent him a message from Janet’s phone . . . the next day, asking to meet, so he’d think it was her . . . I hid her phone all day . . . so he wouldn’t call her and find out it wasn’t.’
‘What happened when you met Leon Bradley?�
� Hendry asked, pre-empting a further interruption from me. I nodded my head to let him know I appreciated the question.
Moore’s eyes rolled backwards and closed, and for a moment I thought he had passed out. Then he swallowed drily and exhaled noisily. ‘He denied it. Said they were doing some story on pollution. I said I didn’t believe him . . . Told him I knew he’d been at that goldmine with her when it opened. He said they’d thought the mine was to blame, that’s why they’d been there . . . Said they’d been wrong. They were working together, he said. That was all.’
He coughed, the sound rattling in his throat. Taking a sip of water, he continued, ‘When Janet came back from Belfast I told her I’d seen him. She went mad . . . Then she admitted it. She said I was pathetic . . . I wasn’t worth lying to. She was proud of it. . . She didn’t even think I was worth a lie. Not even worth a lie.’ He continued to mutter to himself, his face turned slightly from us, his gaze starting to lose focus. He was regressing to somewhere inside his own mind, reflecting on some unspoken thought or memory.
I couldn’t let Leon drop. ‘If he denied it, why did you kill him?’ I asked.
He looked at me in bewilderment. He glanced at each of the people assembled in his room as if noticing their presence for the first time.
‘I didn’t kill him,’ he stated, simply.
I found it hard not to believe him. Having already confessed to killing his wife, there was little to be gained by his denying killing Leon.
‘He was found the day after you met him in the River Carrowcreel. Someone shot him,’ I said.
Alex Kerlin stood up from her seat. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of this.’
Hendry raised his hand in a placatory fashion. ‘When I introduced Inspector Devlin I explained that he was investigating a cross-border element to this. Janet Moore’s lover was also found dead last weekend. By his own admission, your client arranged a meeting with him. The last person to see someone alive is generally the person who killed them.’
‘Trite, Inspector Hendry,’ Kerlin retorted with more ire than I’d expected from her. ‘But Mr Moore hasn’t admitted to being the last person to see this Leon Bradley alive. He simply said he had met him.’
Bleed a River Deep (Inspector Devlin Mystery 3) Page 14
