Border Angels (11 page)

“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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.