Border Angels

by Anthony Quinn

  “Perhaps he was trying to salve his guilt?”

  “Maybe. In the days before his death, I saw a change in him. He looked preoccupied, haunted. That girl, the foreign national, would be waiting for him in the foyer of our offices. Sometimes they left holding hands. It was very much in everyone’s face. Except his wife’s, of course.”

  “What did you think about their relationship?”

  Mooney shrugged. “I heard she’d been a prostitute. Fowler rescued her from a violent pimp.”

  “What does that tell you about his state of mind?”

  “Like you say. Perhaps he was salving his guilt.”

  “Parading her in front of colleagues. Does that not strike you as a strange way to ease one’s conscience?”

  “No, you’re right. It was pure stupidity. In terms of his reputation as a community leader, it was a mistake. On a personal level, I was disgusted. I knew his wife well. But his marital infidelity turned out to be only the tip of the iceberg.”

  “Tell me about your last conversation with him.”

  “It was the day of the regeneration association’s annual general meeting. We were scheduled to go over the financial report. It was a very unpleasant meeting. I could see immediately that he was edgy. He kept fiddling with his mobile phone and checking it for messages. All his charm had left him. My working life had been based upon indulging his excesses and different personas. It was a reckless form of loyalty, but I believed he was a leader of talent and his commitment to the local community was second to none. However, on this occasion I couldn’t give in to his demands.”

  “What were they?”

  “He wanted me to tidy up the financial report, make it more convincing. As though it was the script of a play with a dodgy plot.”

  “What was dodgy about it?”

  “I had uncovered a series of transactions he had made using the regeneration association’s headed notepaper, but with his own home address.”

  “He was working from home?”

  “In the worst possible sense.”

  Daly studied Mooney’s expression, but the face gave nothing away.

  “I accused him of treating the peace funds as if they were his own money, but he defended himself. He denied any wrongdoing. He’d parked the money in property, he told me. Bricks and mortar. An asset you can touch and see. You know the clichés. Even if it did go down in value it would soon go up again.”

  “How did you react?”

  “I couldn’t believe my ears. It was like attending a children’s pantomime and being urged to look the other way by the villain. When he realized I wasn’t going to go along with his deception, he just stared at me, then he rubbed his hands over his face. ‘What am I going to do?’ he asked me. ‘We can’t throw everything away. All our years of hard work.’ I told him that things weren’t happening the way he thought, but they were happening, whether he liked it or not. The whereabouts of all this money would have to be presented to the board, and the funding authorities. His face crumpled at that. ‘Is this how it’s going to end, Michael?’ he asked me. He talked about how we had fought the Brits for the right to control our destiny and had built up our communities. Secured good jobs and housing. The property market was on our side, he kept promising me. It had brought wealth and employment in abundance. ‘We can’t let it come back and terrorize us,’ he pleaded. ‘It will destroy everything we thought we had won.’ I realized there was no point continuing the conversation. ‘I’m going to start praying now, Michael,’ he said as I left. ‘I’m going to pray very hard.’ Those were his last words.”

  “And that was the final time you spoke to him?”

  “Yes. He sent me numerous texts and left phone messages that evening. But by then, I was speaking to the Fraud Squad.”

  “Did he know he would face a criminal investigation?”

  “Of course. That was why he was so upset. He knew he was trapped.”

  “Upset enough to take his own life?”

  “I believe so.”

  Some progress, thought Daly. Suicide seemed a likely course of action for a man in Fowler’s position. After speaking to Mooney, he must have felt he was walking powerless into an engulfing storm. He had lost money in quantities that were impossible to imagine. Millions that did not belong to him. And all he left to show for it was a collection of derelict houses and a few thorny fields. Barely a brick had been laid, or a sod of earth turned, and all that money gone. That night he must have gone to bed hoping that by morning his life would resume its natural course, and the events of the previous day would be forgotten as an aberration. But the next morning, it was the other way around. The aberration was the unlivable new reality, and he was a condemned man. Words and prayers would have been of little comfort.

  Before Daly left Mooney, he asked, “Did it occur to you that Fowler may have been murdered?”

  “Why would I think that?”

  “Just asking.”

  “Who would do such a thing?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “You should be careful about even whispering that word.”

  “Which word?”

  “Murder. Unless you have firm evidence. A lot of reputations could be damaged or questioned by the media if there’s any suggestion of foul play or dirty tricks. Jack came to a sorry end by his own hand, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “That’s for this investigation to decide, Mr. Mooney,” said Daly.

  17

  Ashe had forgotten how cold it got this far north in spring. After his first night back in Ireland, he felt stiff and sore. He stamped some life back into his feet and blew on his fingers, then he crept through the trees and watched where he had parked his rented Jeep. The sun was already a ball of orange rising through the forest. He wanted to make sure that no one was following him or keeping an eye on his vehicle.

  Earlier, he had carefully packed his tent, scattered the traces of the fire he had lit the previous night, and picked over the ground for any litter he might have dropped. The good thing about sleeping outdoors was he did not have to worry about wiping down the site for fingerprints. Mother Nature didn’t do smooth surfaces, and anyway, her dumb detectives would be nosing through his campsite now, the countless wild animals of the forest, picking up his scent, rummaging through his traces, destroying any evidence of his presence.

  When he was convinced the coast was clear, he climbed into the Jeep and headed into the town of Armagh. He drove carefully, wanting to draw as little attention as possible. In a way, he was a fugitive like Lena Novak. He understood the gravity of her situation and its demands better than anyone else, the suspicion and constant vigilance that haunts the pursued, the fight against losing control, and, behind it all, the anxiety of waking up some morning surrounded by enemies, the dread that somehow you might have betrayed yourself in a dream while sleeping.

  What made it harder was the fact that as a trafficked woman, she was a human being without an identity. All he had was a photograph and the assumption that Lena Novak was her real name. She had no history in this country, no family contacts, no obvious hiding places, and no clear escape routes. It was easy for her to succumb to her own invisibility. In that regard, she had passed beyond the borderlands of being human; she was more like a wild animal.

  He knew that he had to get her moving. He wanted to force her from the shadows because a moving person was easier to find than one who had gone to ground. To do that he would have to pull off a stunt that would set the ground beneath her feet quaking. He had already checked the address given to him by Michael Mooney. As expected, the apartment had yielded no clues, only unrelated fragments of the life Lena had been living and her relationship with Fowler. The police had been unsuccessful in tracing her movements, too. If she had been staying in a hotel or B&B, they would have found her by now. They would have also checked the
border brothels and meeting places for her compatriots.

  He stopped at a glass bottle recycling point on the outskirts of Armagh. He broke the lock on one of the bottle banks and picked out several crates’ worth of empty vodka bottles, which he stowed in the back of the Jeep.

  His mobile phone rang. A local number—there was only one person it could be.

  “Hello, Michael,” he said.

  “Where are you?” asked Mooney.

  “I’m in Armagh.”

  “I’ve called to tell you the latest developments. Do you have time to listen?”

  “I’ve all the time in the world,” said Ashe.

  “We’ve been chasing up a reported sighting of Lena Novak. Two days ago a taxi driver took her to Fowler’s mansion and then into Armagh. She called at a cleaning company called Home Sweet Home, and then boarded an express bus for Dublin. We posted someone at the central bus station in Dublin to wait for the bus to arrive, but she never showed. She must have made the bus driver stop somewhere en route. Since then she’s managed to make herself invisible.”

  “A disappearing act like that is hard to maintain,” remarked Ashe. “Sooner or later she’ll have to go back to her old haunts.”

  “There’s word going round town that a contract has been placed on her head by Jozef Mikolajek, a smuggler and people trafficker. Time is running out. We need this situation resolved as soon as possible.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got my own plan.”

  “It had better be good,” said Mooney. “A police detective came snooping by this morning.”

  “What did he want to know?”

  “He’s digging into Fowler’s financial dealings. The very thought of it is giving me a headache.”

  “Fowler ripped off the community organization. What else is there to find out?”

  Mooney’s voice was defensive. “I’ve nothing to hide from the police, but the less they know the better.”

  “Then you have nothing to worry about.”

  “True.”

  “Time to leave you in peace, then.”

  The early morning lights of Armagh faded behind Ashe. Traffic on the way south thinned out. He drove into the border hills, passing abandoned military observation towers overgrown with vegetation, like shards of shrapnel trapped in old wounds. Rattling with the crates of empty bottles, his Jeep bounced through a bleak countryside crisscrossed with streams and muddy lanes. He saw innumerable opportunities for ambush: culverts where the road dipped, high hedges, and rocky outcrops casting dark shadows.

  He tried to concentrate on the road, but in his head he could hear the echoing sound of bombs and shootings. He kept well within the speed limit, but it was difficult to relax when you worried you were constantly within range of enemy fire. His instinct made him stop every now and again and check the road behind from concealed vantage points.

  In the hill villages, he passed fortified police stations, decommissioned now as part of the peace process and standing derelict, surrounded by housing developments. In the staunchly Republican town of Crossmaglen he stopped for supplies. Fresh slogans and murals supporting dissident Republicans decorated the gable ends of houses. He sensed bitterness in the air, the bitterness of a disputed peace.

  Closer to the border, he found himself driving through a series of looping lanes and dirt roads, through forests and steep valleys dotted­ with ruined farms. If anyone were on the lookout, they would see him now. The tires of lorries skulking across the border at night had plowed the roadside verges—the telltale tracks left by fuel smugglers, a lawless herd of modern-day highwaymen dodging the main roads and police patrols. Although the lanes had been busy during the night, they were now empty of traffic. He stopped several times and switched off the ignition. All he heard was silence and the restless sound of the wind nosing through the hedgerows.

  The smell of diesel filled the car when he pulled up at a lane blackened by thorn trees. He got out of the vehicle. The cold air was laden with the stench of fuel. A set of sprawling outbuildings lay at the end of the lane, the remnants of an abandoned farm. He hung back for a while. Images of men in berets and balaclavas with Armalites came back to him as he surveyed the outbuildings with a pair of binoculars. A fuel lorry sat next to an overgrown hedge, fresh mud obscuring its number plate. In the yard stood a Portakabin surrounded by several vehicles—vans, pickups, and a sports car, positioned for a quick getaway. At the far end, half submerged in the gloom, were the hulks of two forty-foot trailers, gaping like beached whales. Next to them was the dismantled carcass of another fuel lorry, entangled in pipes and tubing.

  His tip-off had been correct; he had managed to find the smugglers’ lair. Housed somewhere in the farm buildings was a makeshift chemical lab, built to extract the dye from agricultural diesel bought in the Republic, which was then sold at a higher price as commercial fuel in the North. It was the one part of the terrorist apparatus that had escaped decommissioning. At one time during the Troubles, fuel-laundering plants were the staple industry of border country; now they had been taken over by dissident Republicans with links to criminal gangs from Eastern Europe. Ashe was also able to tell from the stacks of empty bottles that the gang was running a counterfeit alcohol-bottling plant as a sideline.

  He waited for a while. He scrutinized the farm again. He spotted a dingy caravan in the corner of a field with a washing line. When he was satisfied that the only signs of life came from the Portakabin, he started the Jeep and drove up the lane.

  He kept the engine ticking over outside the Portakabin and sounded the horn. A packet of cigarettes and the butt of a rifle sat in the window. The gun slipped from view. A moment later a bleary-eyed youth stood in the doorway, cradling the rifle.

  Ashe rolled down the window and grinned. “I’ve a load of empty vodka bottles.”

  The youth walked carefully around the Jeep, squeamish of the mud that caked his white trainers.

  “We’re not taking any deliveries this afternoon.”

  “What’s the problem,” snapped Ashe. “Has there been one already?”

  The boy looked down at the piece of paper he had pulled from a pocket. He clutched it next to the rifle.

  “I don’t see any mention of one here.”

  “They didn’t tell you I was coming?”

  The boy stared at him. He put the rifle down and took out a mobile phone. “I’ll have to call Mr. Mikolajek and check with him.”

  Ashe leaned across the window. “Are you going to ask him why he forgot to say I was coming? Rather you than me.”

  The boy hesitated. Ashe noticed the hand holding the phone was shaking slightly.

  “You can ask me as many questions as you like, son,” said Ashe, “and if you don’t have any, just tell me what I’m meant to do with this load of empty bottles.”

  The boy shuffled his feet, suddenly anxious to get back to the warmth of the Portakabin.

  “Do you know where to go?”

  “Don’t worry, I can take care of things from here. It’s good to see you’re so vigilant.” He winked. “I’ll put in a good word with Mr. Mikolajek.”

  Ashe drove into the yard and took out his gun, a Glock 17. The workers were here, he guessed, somewhere in the outbuildings. He inspected the buildings one by one. All he found in the first two were rusting farm implements stained with bird shit, and fusty bales of hay. Everything was dark and cold.

  The next shed was the largest, wide and high roofed. The only lighting came from Perspex panels in the ceiling. The smell of cheap spirits mingling with the stench of diesel almost overwhelmed him as he stepped inside. It took a moment or two for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The cement floor was scored with plastic piping and wiring that connected a bank of whirring machines. Next to the machinery sat two containers of cat litter, one fresh and clean, and the other stained with red dye. Beyond the laundering paraphernalia he m
ade out the silhouettes of three women sitting in chairs and filling glass bottles with a liquid that, in the shadows, seemed to light the bottles from within.

  They sat up abruptly when they became aware of Ashe’s presence. A set of bottles fell to the ground and rolled across the cement. Something about the way Ashe stood silhouetted against the door told them he was not meant to be there. The older of the women attempted to move and let out a cry, but Ashe grabbed her by her tracksuit top and pushed her back to the ground. She let out a dull groan.

  “Don’t worry, you haven’t broken anything,” said Ashe.

  They crouched before him.

  “There’s no one to help you now,” he told them. “You should have disappeared like Lena Novak and found yourselves the darkest hiding place in border country.”

  When he raised the gun to their faces, they did not resist. Instead, a detached look fell across their faces. Moving quickly, he tied them up with rope, placed hoods over their heads, and bundled them into the back of the Jeep. He had many questions to ask them, about their compatriot Lena Novak and their boss, Jozef Mikolajek, but the time for questioning would come later.

  18

  The electronic alarm counted down the seconds as Daly fumbled in the dark for the control panel. He punched in the numbers, and the hall was silent.

  “Shall we go in?” He turned to Irwin, but the Special Branch detective had already pushed open the door to the apartment.

  Daly surveyed the solid wood floors and lavish furniture of Jack Fowler’s love nest and wondered not for the first time how Lena Novak had managed to fly so swiftly from the farmhouse brothel to such luxury, from one world to another, from the unwanted attentions of men who degraded and abused to those who pampered and indulged.

  “How much do we know about this woman?” asked Irwin.

  “Only what one photo can tell, and what we see before us,” said Daly, trying to collect his first impressions.