Border Angels Read online

  “Shouldn’t we just kill him now?” asked Havel, removing a piece of tape that had stuck to her fingers.

  “Not yet,” replied a voice behind him.

  He did not have to strain his neck and look round to work out that it was Lena Novak. She placed a finger under his chin and swiveled his head toward her. There was a serene look in her blue eyes as she circled around him. He knew that death was close and this was why her eyes appeared so calm. She was ready to wreak her vengeance.

  “I learned this from you,” she said. “To control someone, just make them feel more afraid.”

  Havel lifted a bottle of champagne and a set of crystal glasses from the basket. He heard a pop as she opened the bottle and then the cool fizz of glasses filling. The women raised a toast to one another and knocked down the champagne, their faces tipped back in triumph. Then they drank another glass, a light shining in their eyes, like those of wild animals. When they had finished, they danced around him, their long dresses fluttering across his feet, their bodies writhing in gestures of beckoning and mock supplication. A slim hard hand struck him across his face. And then another, and another. He bowed his head. He was alone with a pack of vengeful women, gagged and tied to an unlit bonfire in the middle of a dark forest. There was nothing upon which he could base an escape.

  46

  It was midmorning by the time the helicopter crews located a fire burning in Slaney Forest, about a mile from the border.

  Daly ran through the trees. Spring had turned the forest into a fluttering, living thing, full of noises and scents. He dipped his head under branches and almost lost his balance several times. His police officer colleagues ran along paths on different levels of the slope, moving in and out of sight of each other. Behind him, the high-visibility jackets of a group of paramedics flashed through the spindly foliage.

  The black shape of a helicopter flapped in the sky above, directing them by radio to the site of the fire. A splash of yellow that might have been sunshine reflecting on water made him veer toward the left. He came upon the clearing suddenly.

  The fire had almost burned itself out, but smoke drifted in ghostly shapes through the damp air. He hesitated, smelling the stench of diesel. The site was exposed. He had no idea who might be there waiting for him. He tensed his body and tightened his hand on his gun.

  A half-burned log fell soundlessly into the remnants of the fire. A ghostly quiet pervaded. Daly sifted through the ashes with his boot, looking for the smoldering remains of something other than wood, but found nothing. He inspected a circle of mud surrounding the fire. He made out the shapes of different sets of footprints that had been engaged in some sort of wild dance, trampling the grass and breaking the hard ground. He found a pair of bare footprints, larger than the others, forming a trail that veered away from the circle. A heedless flight that left a tattered path, as though a man had shadowboxed his way through the trees and undergrowth.

  Daly broke off from his colleagues and followed the track of torn leaves and broken twigs. A blond wig flapped on a thorn branch. He advanced deeper into the darkness, expecting to see something or someone emerge at any moment from a hiding place. He could sense the person was close by. A sour stench of fear and diesel wafted in the air.

  The shadows rolled back and the trees parted. Daly emerged at the bank of a fast-flowing river. A man kneeling at the water’s edge turned to look up at him, his eyes bright with fear. His upper body was naked, his hands bound by thick wire behind his back, his face smeared with garish colors like a stage demon’s, smudges of bright blues and purplish red mingling with mud and ash. His lower half was so caked in mud and forest debris it was difficult to tell if he was wearing trousers or not. The man sized Daly up, then hunched his body and jumped into the river.

  “Stay where you are!” shouted Daly. He pulled out his gun, checked the safety, and then lowered it. The man, already shivering visibly from the cold, waded farther out. Daly realized it was a life ring he needed, not a gun.

  “You’re caught,” Daly called to him. “You’ve come to a dead end.”

  The man ignored him. The fast-moving water lapped around his shoulders as he pushed on to the opposite bank and the promise of freedom. It hardly made sense for Daly to risk his life, but a frantic desire to finish the story made him jump into the water after him. The river was shockingly cold. It pummeled his body. He shouted out, but the sudden immersion had sucked the air from his lungs.

  The man stopped in the middle of the river and turned back to check on Daly. The veins on his neck and tied arms stood out, taut as cables, as he swayed in the currents. Their pull was irresistible, dragging him toward whorls of dark water.

  “Fuck it! I don’t know where I’m going!” he shouted. Fear still burned in his eyes.

  “I’m a policeman,” said Daly. “You’ll get tired before I do. Better you come out with me now.”

  The man laughed and then winced. He seemed disoriented. He looked back at the quiet trees and grimaced as another spasm of pain ran through his body. The black water lapped against his hair.

  “Where are the women?” he asked.

  “What women?”

  “The women who organized that fucking picnic in the forest. I blacked out so many times I can’t remember how many were there.”

  “Was Lena Novak one of them?”

  “Yes,” he hissed between his chattering teeth. “She scared me half to death, but she didn’t have the guts to kill me.” His throat shook with a deep moan. It took Daly a moment to realize he was laughing.

  “Why did she want to kill you?”

  “Punishment. She singled me out to demonstrate her hatred of men. All men. You’d better be careful she doesn’t come looking for you.”

  Daly fought against the cold heavy water and reached out to grab him by the arm. The man did not resist.

  “I’m an asylum seeker,” he said. “I’m seeking refuge in your country. I have no passport. No identity.”

  “Your name is Jozef Mikolajek, and I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder and people trafficking.”

  Daly dragged him back to the bank. He did not have to worry about his suspect putting up a struggle. Lena had done a good job with her knots.

  47

  “The flight to Rome is on schedule,” the airport security guard told Daly as he led him into the observation room. A group of maintenance men working on the electrics behind the paneled wall stopped and regarded them with curiosity.

  “Lena Novak has booked a ticket in business class,” added the guard. “Her plane will leave in forty minutes from gate number twenty-eight.”

  Immediately after leaving the forest that morning, Daly had contacted the airports and ferry operators and asked them to check their passenger lists. They soon found evidence that Lena was planning to make the most of the newfound freedom her passport provided. As far as border country was concerned, she had reached the end of the road. He felt a slight sense of apprehension as he waited with the security officials, two of whom were younger men, eager to make an impression, while the third was middle-aged and carried the annoyed look of someone who had just been dragged from his bed.

  Daly spent some empty minutes staring through the one-way windows at the sweeping curves of an escalator ferrying passengers to their boarding gates. He felt completely detached from the hubbub of the airport. The soft noises from a nearby coffee machine were all that broke the silence. It struck him that the airport was a vaulted building of labyrinthine corridors and escalators, a dizzying shrine to the twenty-first-century’s insatiable desire to cross borders, and the ultimate escape route for people who wanted to disappear quickly.

  The oldest security guard unfolded a newspaper and began flicking through the pages. The others checked their watches as time passed, punctuated by the rhythm of departures and arrivals.

  Twenty minutes before the flight was due to ta
ke off, a ragged queue formed at the boarding gate. One by one, the passengers filed past the glass, behind which stood Daly, alert and out of sight. This time there were no shadows in which Lena could hide.

  Daly raised his hand when one of the younger guards checked his gun.

  “I only want to talk to this woman.”

  “I thought we were to arrest her.”

  “No. We’re here to make sure she still has her liberty, not take it away from her.”

  A few women of about Lena’s age walked by. Daly stepped toward the glass, scrutinizing them closely, but they were shadowy, dull versions of her, half ghosts already in transition to another border.

  He waited awhile after the last passenger boarded and the gate closed. The stairs were wheeled away from the plane as it prepared for takeoff. Daly was a detective, and the situation did not need much explaining. He suspected that Lena had never intended to catch that evening’s flight to Rome; she had booked the ticket as a means to distract his attention and that of anyone else still following her. He looked out at the runway. Time passed. The twilight sky filled with darkness and the exodus of thousands of lives, transported by planes to distant corners of the world, their jet trails hanging against the sky like the departing breath of lost souls.

  He drove home slowly. The events of the day had been remarkable, but they had not answered the questions he had been asking himself constantly. Why had Lena dragged him into her personal scheme for revenge? Had she meant to pin Mikolajek’s murder on him by using his stolen gun? And how had Mikolajek escaped? There were still questions he had to have answered.

  He took a call on his mobile phone after arriving back at the cottage.

  “Hello,” he said.

  He could hear breathing on the other end but no one answered.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s me, Celcius.” Her voice sounded nervous.

  “Lena? Where are you? Are you OK?”

  “I’m on my way home,” she said simply.

  “You weren’t on the flight to Rome.”

  “No. I booked myself onto another plane at the last minute. I thought you might still be looking for me.”

  “I was looking for you. For a while I thought you were going to end up in a body bag.” There was a note of anger in his voice.

  “I’m safe now.”

  Daly sighed. Then his relief sharpened into annoyance again.

  “Why did you use me like that?”

  “I didn’t use you, Celcius. You were my knight in shining armor; you more so than anyone else.”

  “I don’t understand. You kept me in the dark.” His voice was neutral, suspending judgment. “What about Ashe? What part did he play in your plans?”

  “Is this something the police need to know?” Her voice was deadpan.

  “It’s something I need to know.” He wondered if she had rung him just to tease his ignorance.

  He walked out to the porch as she explained what had happened from the beginning. He stood staring out at the waves of Lough Neagh, as if lost in another world.

  She described how Fowler had given her Ashe’s number to ring if she was ever in trouble. She had hidden the number in a rag doll along with the details of Mikolajek’s trafficking operations. Enough evidence to have him locked up for a long stretch, if she was ever brave enough to take to the witness stand. When she retrieved the number after Fowler’s death, she contacted Ashe and managed to persuade him to work for her, rather than Mooney and his Republican cronies.

  “I thought your life was in danger,” he told her. “I was as blind as a bat.”

  “I should have been more open with you from the start. But I was afraid you wouldn’t understand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I couldn’t expect you to bear the weight of my darkest feelings, my desire for revenge.”

  “What about Ashe? What did you tell him?”

  She hesitated. “Everything. He understood where I was coming from. We talked as if we were old friends. He told me about his travels, the horrible things he had done in the past, and his search for peace. He proposed some interesting ways to get my revenge on Mikolajek. We made out a plan to tear down his criminal empire, piece by piece. So, rather than fleeing to the city, I went back into border country. Not as a victim, but as an adventurer.”

  “You deceived me. There were numerous times when I thought Ashe was going to harm you.”

  She chose her words carefully. “Deep down, I wanted you to keep rescuing me, Celcius. Over and over again. I felt so corrupted by what had happened to me that I believed no honest man would ever want to save me. Your tenacity and endurance helped me regain my trust in men. Somehow, in all the turmoil, you never gave up. Each time you reached out to me, another piece of me was healed.”

  Perhaps she was right, thought Daly; he could never have understood her motivation, the secret desire for revenge she harbored.

  “That’s why I couldn’t kill Mikolajek,” she said. “It felt like I was forcing the cruelty upon you.”

  “Killing Mikolajek would have put me in a lot of trouble. Aiding and abetting a murderer for a start.”

  “You didn’t deserve that, Celcius. John Ashe became my friend, but he stirred up feelings of anger and revenge. He awoke the worst in me. You were a better friend. Thanks to you, I am returning home with a clear conscience.”

  Daly said nothing. He wanted to feign indifference, but, in reality, her words had touched him.

  “What about your bank account? What happened to the money Jack stashed away?”

  “There never was any money. Jack kept a tight rein on his funds. He set up joint accounts in my name, but they were just a paper trail to confuse the auditors. I knew if I kept up the pretense that I had a big payout coming, it would be easier to lure Mikolajek, but I was penniless all along.”

  “All that excitement the secret bank account caused was for nothing then.”

  “I’ve got to go now, Celcius. I’m running late.” He could hear the sound of an airplane in the background. He tried to visualize where she was standing, at a phone booth in some crowded airport, but the phone’s illusion of proximity made him think she was much closer at hand, still hiding somewhere out there in the shadows of border country.

  He had one final question to ask her. “Why did you shout my name at the roadside when Ashe’s Jeep arrived? I thought it was the cry of a woman in fear for her life.”

  Her voice was hushed. “I was warning you to stay back. I didn’t want to see you hurt.”

  Daly paused. “I take it you won’t be coming back to Ireland.”

  “I’ve taken all that I want from your country. My last memory will be of a phone conversation with a man who didn’t want to use or possess me in any way.”

  She hung up before either of them could say good-bye.

  On an emotional level, Daly felt vindicated. He had never been able to quell his wariness of her, but at least he had listened and tried to help her. He paced around the cottage and garden. He could feel blocks of frozen emotion melt and work their way through his system. He was relieved that she was free and, most importantly, safe, but another part of him yearned to have her back. In the past week, she had raised his life to a level of intensity, in spite of the nagging doubt and suspicions that had worked so negatively on his mind.

  She might not have realized it, but he had gained from their relationship, too. He had pursued her, not as a hunter, but as a naïve and love-hungry man searching for a guide, a light to plumb the darkest depths of his feelings. He had been slow to realize what she represented to him. She had been that little bit of death he needed to enfold his failed marriage and its mistakes, and bear them away to the bottom of a deep dark river. He no longer had any expectations or illusions that he would be able to restore his failed relationship with Anna. In his mind’s eye,
he saw what was left of their relationship sinking underwater, drifting out of sight.

  48

  The days afterward felt like a weightless vacuum as Daly waited for Commander Boyd to conduct an internal investigation into his handling of the case. He had already answered all Boyd’s questions honestly, but the commander had shaken his head as though they shed little light on what had really happened. Daly completed his own report and added it to the fat folder of growing paperwork the case had produced. Boyd took his time, scrutinizing the evidence closely, determined to cover all aspects of the investigation, from Sergei Kriich’s murder at the start to the kidnapping of the trafficked women and the arrest of Jozef Mikolajek.

  In the meantime, Mikolajek remained in custody, the evidence stacking against him. His fingerprints matched the ones left on the CD cover found at Fowler’s mansion. In addition, Martha Havel and her van driver had turned up at a police station, declaring that they were prepared to testify against Mikolajek. The Croatian crime boss might have been ruthless, cunning, and ambitious, but he had been stopped by the efforts of a village girl left to her own devices in border country.

  Daly spent the next few days at home. One warm spring afternoon, he opened all the doors and windows of his cottage. He took out the boxes he had moved from Anna’s house and set light to what he no longer needed in a bonfire at the bottom of the garden. When the flames dwindled, he walked down the lane to the lough shore. Bees buzzed in the blossoming hedgerows. A tractor hugged the curves of a plowed field. Through the thorn trees, he watched rabbits scamper over the crests of rolling hills. He felt that all the jigsaw pieces of a settled happy life might lie within his reach, ready to be assembled.