A rictus of a smile formed on Irwin’s lips. “I can tell you she had a good sex life, and that her livelihood was her sex life. Fowler must have showered her with money and presents. Look at this place.”
Boxes of perfume and ornaments and piles of designer clothing spilled from the sofa and coffee table to the two bedrooms. It was an overloaded apartment. Overloaded with luxury and gifts. Slowly and objectively, Daly surveyed the interior and allowed everything to filter through his mind along with what he knew so far about Lena Novak. Somewhere among the jumbled possessions he thought he might find a lead, but all he got was the impression of a woman who suddenly possessed luxury in abundance, and did not quite know how to accommodate it.
Irwin interrupted his train of thought. “Fowler tried to save her from her past, then he dies mysteriously and she goes missing. Along with several million pounds. If I were a betting man, I’d say she murdered him and stole the money.”
Daly nodded. Lena’s life seemed to be an epic marathon of escapes, betrayals, and conspiracies with sex at the throbbing heart of everything. In contrast, his own life had the tedium of a monk’s.
He walked into the master bedroom, which bore a carpet thick enough for a decadent rock star. He examined her bed. There was an indentation on the pillow. It felt cold, the warmth of her body long gone. He stared at where she had slept and then across at the ransacked wardrobe. He breathed in the scent of perfume. He wondered how long her scent had lingered in the air. Perhaps the same length of time it took for a set of footprints to melt in the snow. Long enough to snag the interest of a detective who had been excluded for too long from the small and comforting intimacies of sharing a room with a woman.
When he opened the door of the en suite bathroom, the curtains blew into the bedroom, upsetting an ornament on the windowsill.
“Who’s there?” He turned, startled, but it was no one.
Inside the bathroom, which was as big as his own bedroom, he stood stranded in an ocean of marble and ceramic. He checked his appearance in the mirror, ran a hand through his hair, fixed the collar of his shirt. He noticed the look of exhaustion that enshrouded his features. In his eyes, he saw a hungry light, a glaring need for some sort of comfort. He sighed. It was not just stuff and meaningless possessions that messed up people’s lives. Sometimes the thoughts and memories in one’s head were more than enough to keep one in turmoil.
In the kitchen sink, he found what appeared to be a wig floating in water. He poked it. The hair was real.
“Next time we see Lena, her hair will be cropped,” he said.
“Why did she cut it?”
“An attempt to disguise herself. Perhaps she thought she could cut off the past.”
“All those lovely locks gone.”
“This tells us she’s a woman who faces up to things. Discarding what she has to, even parts of her identity.”
If Fowler was a man of lust and greed, thought Daly, Lena Novak was a woman of intrigue and invention. Who had seduced whom? he wondered.
Irwin beckoned him. He had switched on the TV. The two detectives watched as gray CCTV images flickered across the screen. They were from outside the apartment block.
“This is live footage,” murmured Irwin.
“Constant vigilance,” replied Daly. “That’s the price you pay when you’re in the pocket of men like Jack Fowler.”
Irwin ejected a CCTV tape from the recorder, examined it, put it back in, and pressed rewind. The camera had a side view of the building’s entrance door, as well as the approach road. They played through the tape, to that morning and then during the night. At first, they didn’t notice the figure transfixed in the upper left corner of the screen, a lean shape wholly fused with the darkness. Then a car drove by, its lights sweeping the front of the apartment block. Shadows jumped out from their hiding places and fell back. In a corner of the building, where the grainy light briefly spilled into a pool, Daly spied the silhouette of a man standing very still. They spooled forward. The clock showed that an hour and a half had passed. The light cast by two cars loomed across the building and briefly picked out the shape of the man, standing in the same spot, before returning him to darkness.
“Who do we have here?” asked Irwin. “A member of Insomniacs Anonymous?”
They scrutinized the footage, watched the figure remain motionless each time a set of headlights rippled across the building. Disturbingly motionless. Daly watched with bated breath. It was the stillness that made the figure’s presence meaningful and menacing. Nighttime was a moving forest of shadows, but the figure was so still he appeared to be staring constantly at a fixed point.
The pattern of light and dark on the TV screen flickered but remained the same until dawn. The two detectives watched transfixed, as the rising sun gradually revealed the front of the building. However, by then the figure had disappeared. They spooled through the rest of the tapes but found nothing. Irwin placed the tapes in an evidence bag.
They went back to searching the flat for any clue to Lena’s current whereabouts. Daly could find no sign of ID, but he had not been expecting any. What he did discover were credit card receipts. He jotted down the details, intending to put out an alert for the cards. Apart from that, they found nothing more suspicious than the ordinary intrigue of a mistress’s apartment. No evidence at all of the void that had sucked away the life of Jack Fowler and threatened to do the same to Lena Novak.
The doorbell rang and there was a pregnant moment as Daly and Irwin stopped in their tracks and stared at each other. The bell sounded again, impatient. Daly flicked on the TV monitor. He swallowed when he saw the figure on the doorstep.
19
“Who’s there?” asked Daly as he flicked on the intercom button.
“I’m a friend of Lena Novak,” said the caller after a pause.
Daly looked at the monitor. Outside it was a brilliant day, clear and sunny, but a man’s dark figure crowded the doorway. It was the same figure from the night before. In daylight, he looked amorphous, like a sack of coal. Irwin leaned closely over the monitor as though he was peering into a nest or cave, the lair of a dangerous animal.
“What do you want?”
“I want to see Lena.”
“A lot of people want to see Lena right now.”
“This is important.”
“She’s away at the moment.”
The intercom was so quiet, Daly thought the man might have gone, but the CCTV showed he was still on the doorstep. He had the equanimity of a statue. He looked up slowly and gave the camera a blank stare. His skin was tanned, his head shaved. He looked like a man who had spent a lot of time in a sunnier climate.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Can’t say,” replied Daly. “Leave your number and name. I’ll pass them on to her.”
“Why won’t you answer my question?”
Daly paused. There was a tenacity in the caller’s voice that suggested he was a man who liked to be in control.
“Because there was a stranger outside this building last night. He looked like he was stalking Lena Novak. He looked like you.”
The figure was unperturbed under the eye of the camera.
“Why do you want Lena?” asked Daly.
“She’s my special subject.”
“Lena’s my special subject, too.”
“Why are you interested in her?”
Daly tried to hook his curiosity. “A week ago, a man died suddenly. He was Lena’s boyfriend. When something like that happens, people like Lena have to answer questions.”
“Who is this?”
“Why don’t you come up and see?”
Daly glanced back at the monitor but the man had disappeared. And we were just getting to know each other, he thought.
The detective ran out of the apartment and down the stairs. As his feet pounded the concrete
steps, he heard the sound of a vehicle accelerating noisily. He burst through the front door in time to see a black Jeep pull away from a nearby car park. He ran toward it. The Jeep stopped, reversed with meticulous care, and drove toward Daly at speed.
For a moment, he stood insolently in its path, then he turned and ran back to the door. He heard the snarl and whine of the engine forced to its outer limit. He did his flesh-and-blood best to outrun the vehicle, but it gained ground, bearing down upon him. The roar of the engine sounded murderous in its ferocity. Light-headed and heavy-footed, he fell to the ground, bracing against the impact, but at the last moment, the vehicle swooped to the left, away from his hunched figure, toward some other target of which Daly knew nothing. He crept toward safety, gulping deep breaths. The noises of evening life surrounded him, the bark of dogs, children playing, a door banging shut, and, amid it all, the fading screech of the Jeep’s tires as it disappeared down the road.
Daly looked up at Irwin’s annoyed face.
“You should be relieved, not looking so upset,” panted Daly. “He nearly ran me over.”
“I couldn’t make out the registration,” explained Irwin. “Why do you think he wanted Lena?”
“Whatever the reason, he must have decided it wasn’t worth killing me for.”
“But it was a close decision,” said Irwin.
“We must make whatever details we have on Ms. Novak public,” said Daly, after getting his breath back. “And release a description of her mysterious caller to the press. No hiding place is safe for her now.”
Daly slid into his car, clunking the door shut. He gripped the steering wheel. Raindrops twinkling in the streetlights filled the windshield. The weather had changed in the fickle way it does over the gruesome bogs and gurgling ditches of South Armagh. He switched on the engine and flicked the wipers. He wondered why the caller had gifted him with his life at the last moment. The conflicting emotions of anger and relief caused a heaviness in his mind as he drove north toward Lough Neagh and his cottage.
When he got home, he felt restless, unable to settle in the cramped living room. Outside the air was turbulent. The wind raked through the wild garden, fluttering through the dead thistles and nettles. The hens fussed and beat their wings in their wire enclosure, and in the distance, waves surged against the darkening lough shore. The movements and noises of entrapment were everywhere. Even the tall trees at the bottom of the garden tossed as if held back by a long leash. Daly stood at the threshold of his door listening keenly before jumping a stone wall and running off across his father’s hummocky fields.
20
Lena needed to think. She needed to use all her time for thinking now, because to stop thinking meant certain death. She was no longer a victim, but to carry out her plan she had to keep up the pretense of being a victim. She knew that in every hunt there were times to shiver and run, and then there was a time to stay calm and rooted to the spot.
She came early to the café and picked a seat by the window. It was afternoon, and the café filled with single men hungry for food and some form of communal ritual. She stirred her coffee and lit a cigarette. A TV in the corner showed news footage of an illegal bottling factory that police had raided after a tip-off. According to the newsreader, three Croatian women had been reported as missing, but no one was paying attention to the report.
Lena wore a black dress so tight it was molded to her body, and her eyes were heavy with makeup. Every time she shifted in her seat, the male diners glanced up automatically, taking in her figure, indulging themselves half consciously between forkfuls as her long legs rearranged themselves.
Her eyes kept roving hungrily to the door, waiting for her client’s arrival. When a waitress asked her to put out the cigarette, she speared it into a half-eaten sandwich. The restaurant had been one of her old haunts when she worked for Mikolajek, and she had been relying on the cigarette to hide her agitation.
“It’s nothing personal,” said the waitress, walking off.
There was a tapping at the window. Looking up, she saw the tall figure of a middle-aged man standing in the rain. His shaved head made him look like a Buddhist monk. She raised her hand in a half greeting.
The man entered the restaurant with a gust of wind and sat opposite her. This was how prostitution worked, she thought. It was as easy as sitting next to a window in a half-empty café. Her looks and behavior advertised that she was still on the game, no matter how hard she tried to switch off her charms.
“Hello,” he said.
She didn’t look at him. She stirred her coffee in an offhand manner, but her tension was visible. Her olive skin had turned pale.
“I just want to talk,” he said. “Nothing else.”
She nodded. Another lonely soul looking for company.
“Do you want to order something?” He leaned closer to her.
“Are you buying?”
“If you want me to.”
“It’s okay. I’m not hungry.” Her eyelashes moved up.
“My Jeep is outside. Do you want to come now?”
Her throat tightened as she gulped down a mouthful of coffee.
“What if we wait here? For a while.”
He looked around. “It’s a little drab. Anywhere’s more cheerful than here.” There was an edge of anticipation in his voice.
She got up and insisted on paying for the coffee and sandwich. The man watched as she handed the cashier a credit card. He seemed to find it hard to drag his eyes away from her.
When she turned back to face him, she hesitated for a moment. She stared at his tall frame silhouetted in the door frame and blinked, uncertain of her next move. If this were a fairy tale, she would have reached for her grandmother’s doll. She would have given it a squeeze and its little voice would have whispered in her ear, revealing the true identity of the enemy, and how to avoid capture, but she was on her own. All she had left were her instincts to guide her at every turn in the path.
The man stood in the doorway. He might be a phantom from her past, a pimp or a drug dealer, perhaps even a murderer, she thought. She tried to ignore her distrust and followed his limping gait out to his Jeep. She had seen the look of desire in his eyes. It was the sap that gave her life. Without it, she feared she might vanish forever.
21
She was just out of hearing, a secret thing hidden in the wild depths of the blackthorn hedge, but somehow Daly knew she was there. It was almost nightfall when he caught sight of the hen’s feathers in the hedge that formed the final boundary between his father’s land and the bog. He expected her to take off, but she stayed still, crouching in the darkness like a ghost of herself. She had a surprise in store for him.
Daly had not seen the hen for weeks and assumed a fox had taken her. Since his father’s death, the flock of fowl had been flighty and cross, withdrawn at times, unable or unwilling to lay eggs. The oldest hen, an Andalucian blue, kept escaping, finding holes in the wire enclosure, which Daly repeatedly mended. Now he knew the reason for her recurring flights.
Her feathers had changed in tone, darkened, as though she was in mourning. Her beady eyes were alert and suspicious. He nudged her back until a mound of white eggs and broken shells became visible. Several blue-gray chicks, cheeping feebly, emerged from the warmth of her plumage. Daly held his breath and felt the remaining eggs. Unfortunately, they were as cold as stones. He gathered up the hen and her fluffy chicks and placed them in a snug nesting box.
When he had them settled in the hen coop, he returned to the hedge and searched for any chicks he might have missed. He rummaged through the hedge and heard a faint cheeping. He stopped, listening carefully. The sound was strained, muffled. He knew the chick would not survive long on its own. It was like a tiny leaf clinging to a dead branch. Abruptly, it stopped.
He stood without moving. The thorn trees ached in the wind, and the winter grass rustled in the
fields. The noise began again. This time it was wincing, urgent, closer. The chick was trapped somewhere. He stared at the unhatched eggs, and, to his surprise, saw one of them shake slightly. The chick was still inside, he realized, struggling to crack open the shell. Lifting the egg in the palm of his hands, he gently pressed the shell with his thumb and watched as the chick’s wet head poked free, its eyes veiled with blindness. It scrambled out, beak trembling, wings dangling behind, drinking in its tiny freedom from the cradle of broken shell.
An exhilaration took hold of him. He ran back to the hen coop, clutching the chick close to his chest, as though it were the prize of his life. He offered the frail bundle back to its mother, who was squawking angrily. He was relieved to see she did not reject her newest arrival.
When he returned to the nest in the hedge, he heard more cheeping. This time the cries were weaker. He found another egg, cracked slightly where the chick was trying to break free. He separated the shell, and the chick slithered out, pained and stiff, a greasy, half-digested thing. He blew over it and tried to warm it gently with his hands, as he hurried back to the nest. He tucked the struggling chick under the hen’s feathers and went back into the cottage. He salvaged some turf from the dwindling pile his father had gathered in the summer before his death. He lit a fire and waited for its slow heat to warm his sodden feet. In the green and yellow flickering light, he stared at his hands and arms. Blood prickled from where thorns had raked his skin.
When he had dried his feet, he went out and gave the mother hen some food and changed her water. Discreetly, he removed the dead body of the final chick he had rescued from the hedge. The hen had tried to hide it under some straw as though it were a piece of dirt.
Afterward, he surveyed the familiar folds of his father’s fields. For the first time since moving in after his death, Daly no longer felt like an alien dropped in from outer space. The grass still brimmed with weeds and the hedges were a tangle of brambles and thorns, but at least he had helped bring new life to the smallholding.
Border Angels Page 11
