Border Angels Page 12

  Back in the cottage, he was just about to sit down with a tumbler of whiskey when his mobile phone rang.

  “Are you free to speak, Celcius?” It was the duty inspector from the Armagh police station.

  “I’m always free to speak.”

  “We’ve got a lead on Lena Novak.”

  “What sort of lead?”

  “A report came through a few minutes ago. One of Jack Fowler’s missing credit cards was used in a café. A place called Jenny’s in Aughnacloy.”

  22

  When Daly drove into Aughnacloy, the border village was slowly sinking into darkness, like a ship falling to the seabed, its twinkling lights fading one by one. A few men gathered in the shadows of doorways, but Daly could see no sign of Lena. The café had already closed. The window shutters were down and there was no answer when he banged the door.

  He drove farther up the empty street. If Lena had used the credit card, she could not have gone very far, he reasoned. He scanned both sides of the road. Driving back up the street, he caught a glimpse of a man and a woman entering the darkness of a side street or alley. The effect was like watching a couple sink into deep water, with no one to raise the alarm or help them in any way. He braked and reversed quickly.

  When he ran down the alley, he found an abandoned building site. He picked his way across strewn rubble. He came upon the couple standing by a clogged-up cement mixer, with the air of two people negotiating a business deal. For a second, Daly regarded the half-lit tableau, the figures of a young woman dressed in black and a middle-aged man, surrounded by construction equipment and bags of cement stacked high. Behind them a roll of barbed wire covered a tower of cement blocks.

  Daly walked up to them, flashing his ID. Lena turned toward him, but the man remained motionless, his head turned slightly away, unwilling to draw attention to himself. Lena was instantly alert. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke in Daly’s direction with evident disregard.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said.

  “I keep telling you I want to help.”

  “This is none of your business. I’m trying to scrape out a living.”

  “There must be less dangerous ways of making ends meet.”

  “I trust my instinct. I survive. Most of the men I meet are harmless. They like to indulge themselves. Like my friend here.”

  Daly turned to the man.

  “I don’t want to waste your time, Inspector,” the man said from the shadows, his cadence smooth, soothing almost. He spread out his arms a little, as though opening himself for contrition. “This is the first time I’ve ever tried to do this, honestly. I saw this woman and stopped on impulse.”

  Daly did not believe him. His very presence indicated that he had already lost control of himself, was unraveling away from all that was decent and respectable, falling into border country, an exile from the tight-knit comforts of family life. As Daly advanced toward him, the man withdrew farther into the shadows cast by the construction equipment.

  “Have you considered what a criminal conviction might do for your job prospects?”

  The man sighed. His face was completely in darkness. “I’m a businessman. My wife and children would never forgive me if they found out.”

  Daly nodded wearily. Perhaps his judgment was wrong, and the man had made a thoughtless mistake. Daly tried to study his face. The sight of guilt and fear agitating the careworn features of a family man was not his favorite view, but something about the man’s hidden face made him feel wary, uncomfortable. It was as though his shadowy eyes were peering into Daly’s soul.

  “This woman is a victim of people trafficking,” said Daly. “You can’t see her chains, but that’s what she is. A slave.”

  “Like I said. This is my first time.” The man did not say anything more or make the slightest of gestures. Something about his voice sounded familiar. He watched Daly, absolutely still.

  Reluctantly, Daly realized he was going to have to arrest the two of them, if only to make sure he could talk to Lena and find out what had happened between her and Fowler. He could see that she needed a sharp dose of reality, and a police interrogation room was as good a place as any to supply it. Somehow, he had to convince her she was not safe touting for clients like this.

  Daly read the man his rights and asked for a form of identification. He had expected the man to beg him, to plead for an informal caution, swearing an arrest would destroy his life. Instead, the man allowed a silence to fall over Daly’s request. He stepped out of the shadows and examined the detective with particular interest.

  “What is it, Inspector,” the man said slowly, “that you want from this woman?”

  “Come again?”

  Too late, Daly recognized his voice, the stillness of his body. He had seen him before. On the CCTV footage from Lena’s apartment. It was the man who had almost run him over. Daly felt a quiver of fear freeze his heart.

  23

  The reflection of a single streetlight fell across black pools in the deserted construction site. The ragged edges of unfinished foundations surrounded the three figures. Nothing but dark holes and obstacles to negotiate if any of them decided to run for it.

  “I’m interested in finding out what your plans are for this woman,” the man said to Daly. “Do you mean to jail her or repatriate her? Or are your interests of a more personal nature?”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  “It’s very important to my business. My boss has a special interest in her.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  The question produced a cold light in the man’s eyes. An unpleasantness surfaced in his features. Daly knew that he had misread the exact nature of the man’s intentions. He had strayed into a more sinister encounter than that of a prostitute propositioning a client.

  Daly turned toward Lena, who was backing away with a look of fear widening her eyes. Everything revolved around her, he thought, even as she was trying to invent a distance between herself and her past. He realized he was not going to find out the man’s identity or that of his boss when the man’s considerable bulk knocked him to the ground. Very quickly, the stranger was on top of Daly, his knee pressed into the detective’s neck. Daly craned his head to see his attacker’s face. The man was slack jawed as though about to laugh or yawn, his facial muscles relaxing as he focused his energy on the task ahead.

  He took a length of rope from the inside of his jacket and, pointing a gun at Lena, made her tie Daly’s hands behind his back. The detective felt her hands work intimately at his back.

  “What are you going to do with her?” asked Daly.

  “I don’t know.” The stranger leveled his gun at her face. “It’s been a long time since I had the company of a beautiful woman. Perhaps I should buy her flowers and take her out for a meal.”

  The stranger’s calm voice and conversational tone made Daly’s heart pound with hope that there might be some means of escape for the two of them.

  The man leaned down and repositioned his knee against Daly’s neck. “You still haven’t answered my question?”

  “Which is what?” grunted Daly.

  “Why are you interested in this woman? Is it about sex?”

  “No.”

  The man grinned. “Have you a physical problem in that department?”

  “No. I’m not interested in her that way. Why are we talking about sex?”

  “Because this woman is a prostitute. Surely, you’ve worked out that piece of information for yourself.”

  He pressed his knee deeper against Daly’s windpipe. The detective thought about kicking and roaring at the top of his voice, but he reasoned that might prompt more violence from his assailant. He thought of a number of options, but the time for action was quickly slipping away. The last thing he remembered was the stranger’s face fixed at full effort, and the steadiness
of his eyes, like two dead knots of wood, weathering out Daly’s final struggles as he drifted into unconsciousness.

  Out of a blizzard of shadows, Lena appeared above Daly, her eyes the only clear shape in the swirling light and darkness, eyes without shadow, digging into his unconsciousness, dragging him back to the cold building site. Daly tried to raise his hands to his face, but they were bound tightly behind his back.

  “You wanted to talk to me,” she said.

  “Yes. But I had in mind somewhere more comfortable. What happened?”

  “I removed your gun while tying you up. When he tried to strangle you, I pressed it to the back of his head. He didn’t wait to see if I would fire it.”

  “That was smart of him.”

  “I need your car keys, Celcius.”

  “What do you mean?” The fact that she had used his first name seemed almost as significant as the request that preceded it. Was she running away or drawing closer to him?

  “You can talk to me later. On the phone. But for now, I need your keys.”

  “I can’t let you take my car. You must know that.”

  Her hands fished through his pockets and found what they were looking for.

  “Listen, Lena, you’re being very stupid. Stealing a police officer’s car is a serious offense. What I will do, if you release me, is drive you to wherever you have to go.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?” He tried to push himself up with his shoulders.

  “You have to catch me first,” she told him.

  “Can’t you see what happened here? That man was carrying rope to take you prisoner. He meant to harm you. He’ll find you again, before I will.”

  She was not listening. She ran her hands along his jacket. This time she removed his phone. She tore off the strip of paper cellotaped to the back. It was where he had written his number in case he forgot it.

  “If you do get to make a phone call,” he told her, “I suggest you ring a solicitor. A good one. Then have him call me. You’re going to need all the legal help you can get.”

  “I can lead you to Mikolajek,” she promised him. “When I get my personal life sorted out. Just give me time.”

  She squeezed his bound fingers quickly. Her touch set off a reflex of desire in his body. She stared into his eyes, again. For once, her face had lost its melancholy look. Daly saw what lay beneath—the gaze of a lost girl searching for a way back home. And then he saw the flash of something shrewder and more poised—the look of a predator who would do what was necessary to kill. His throat went dry, and a shiver of fear rippled through his arms and back. He felt the ligatures of an entanglement more awful and hopeless than the physical one he was enduring. She had perfected the art of intimacy, he realized, the dangerous, close-up exchange, the hurried caress. He felt an equal measure of excitement and discomfort from her close presence.

  “You’re teasing me,” he hissed between closed teeth, but she was already gone, leaving behind a barely discernible trace of her perfume. He listened to the sounds of his car sparking into life and accelerating away, then he lowered his face to the pavement, defeated, his cheeks flushed.

  Shortly afterward, he heard footsteps approach. Relieved, he shouted for help. An elderly man appeared out of the darkness. He helped Daly to his feet and untied his hands. He had the lively eyes of a man who had just stepped out of a pub.

  “Thanks,” said Daly.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “The village can be a dangerous place at night.” He flashed Daly a look of grandfatherly concern.

  “I was attacked from behind. Some men came out of nowhere.”

  “You should ring the police.”

  “I am the police.”

  The man squinted at him. “You’re the police?”

  Daly was aware of a chilly space growing between them. The old man regarded him with an angry stare of suspicion.

  “What were you doing here? Snooping?”

  “I was preventing a crime.”

  “You’re a nosy Protestant bastard.”

  “No,” Daly corrected him. “I’m a nosy Catholic bastard.”

  “That’s even worse.”

  Daly walked slowly back to the streetlights, feeling the man’s eyes prickling his back. After he had walked several hundred yards, he checked if he was being followed. The street was empty. He leaned against a wall and rubbed his neck. Rain started to fall, washing the caked mud from his shoes. He was going to be drenched by the time he got home.

  24

  Commander Ian Boyd did not shift from his seat when Daly walked into the room the following afternoon. Daly’s superior was as stiffly posed as a shop window dummy, one that had been positioned inside its exact plot of office space by the top brass in Belfast. He had a square chest, a smoothly combed head, and a face that stared down at a sheaf of papers with a look of impatient efficiency. Although the commander­ was only two months into the post, Daly had already decided he was little more than fifteen stone of form-filling muscle, the type of police officer who had been specially created for an atmosphere of stifling paperwork and protocols.

  “I’d like a word, sir,” requested Daly.

  The commander did not look up. A state-of-the-art paper shredder whirred in the corner next to him. He was feeding pages into the shredder as he read them, each page replacing the last with barely a moment in between. Daly watched the chief and the machine. There was a curious uniformity at work. They were like two parts of a contraption that shared the same controlling mechanism.

  “One moment, Inspector,” replied Boyd. He gathered up another array of papers and began reading and shredding them. Read and shred, thought Daly. The new Police Service of Northern Ireland was quick to promote competence in the reading and shredding department.

  Donaldson, the former chief, might have been the archetypal RUC commander, but at least he had dash and style, and a way of working that was completely indifferent to any directive from headquarters. When the shit hit the fan, as it invariably did, he would disappear from the station, usually because of a mysterious “something he couldn’t get out of,” and allow his senior detectives to make whatever decisions they thought best at the time.

  Boyd was a different animal altogether. He was more interested in protocols and policies, and managing budgets, and revealed as much about his personal life as an executioner standing next to a guillotine, albeit a paper guillotine that needed to be fed constantly.

  “I’m not interrupting something?”

  “Not at all,” said Boyd, disposing of the final sheet. “It’s my rule to keep the door open at all times. Even when a detective comes to tell me the bad news of their botched police work.”

  Daly flinched.

  Boyd fixed him with a stare. “I’ve read the report on the discovery of your stolen car. An empty bottle of vodka was found in the vehicle, along with cigarette stubs and scuff marks including the imprint of a woman’s boot on the dashboard. It seems that this woman took your car and had a party in it, Inspector Daly.”

  “If you’ve read the report, then you’ll also know she took the vehicle after I foiled an attempt to kidnap her. Her liberty and probably her life were under threat.”

  “You’re a chief inspector. How often do chief inspectors lose their cars to a missing person?”

  “I was knocked unconscious.” Daly shrugged. Whatever he said was going to sound like a lame excuse.

  Boyd looked him up and down. “Perhaps you need a break. You know you’re allowed to take some time off and recuperate.”

  “I’d rather progress the investigation.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” asked Boyd sharply.

  “I want a press release to help us trace this man with a limp, and also one for Mikolajek. Alert all the media channels and liaise with Interpol if necessary to find out their hi
stories and track them down. I also want to organize a search house by house, street by street, in certain parts of the town, until we have rounded up this gang and whoever else they are paying to do their dirty work.”

  Boyd frowned but said nothing.

  “Do I have your support in this?”

  The commander stared levelly at Daly. “You have my growing interest, but not my support.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we’re not going to do anything more in the search for your missing woman. At least for the time being.” Boyd leaned back in his seat.

  “How come?”

  “We can’t afford another cock-up. Last night you were lured into a trap, and Lena Novak was able to make off in your car. It suggests poor preparation and judgment on your part. It also suggests this woman’s a lot more resourceful than you gave her credit for. I think there’s less to this case than you make out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve read the reports so far from your team. There’s nothing solid or concrete there. The crime scenes are vague, and the links to Mikolajek tenuous. Nothing to hang a coat on, never mind a media campaign or an organized series of raids. You’re leading my officers down a blind alley.”

  “I know there are gaps but—”

  Boyd interrupted him. “Your plans will raise public alarm. People will wonder what sort of crazy foreigners we have living under our noses if you send out press releases and go in heavy-handed and raid all these houses. It’s not in the public interest to create anger and fear.”

  “What are you suggesting? That arresting Mikolajek could stir up racism?”

  “No. I’m saying that bumbling and clumsy police work will. You know this town better than I do. Parts of it are on the verge of a racial war. There are thugs walking the street right now looking for any excuse to petrol bomb their neighbors’ houses because of their nationalities.”

  “The life of a vulnerable young woman is at risk here.”