Border Angels (9 page)

Three days after Jack Fowler’s drowning, the offices of the Gortin Regeneration Partnership were so washed in blue siren lights that it was difficult for the staff that turned up that day to focus on their jobs. Although how much work was done with the Fraud Squad examining the organization’s entire financial history was anyone’s guess. A team of police officers as well as agents from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs entered the building shortly before 9:00 a.m. Contrary to appearances, it was not a kick-the-door-down style of investigation. The previous evening, they had been granted search warrants allowing them to examine computer hard drives, files, and records of e-mail that might reveal crimes committed against the 2006 Fraud Act. A police van waited outside an emergency exit door, ready to transport the evidence.

“Have you found the missing money yet?” A receptionist asked a senior officer as she clocked off for lunch.

“Not yet.” The expression on his face showed less than wholehearted enthusiasm for the task that lay ahead.

“If you do find it, let me know. I’m owed a month’s pay.”

“This place is going to be swamped by people owed money. Like flies to horseshit.”

She sighed. “That reminds me of a saying of his.”

“Who?”

“Jack Fowler. He used to say that anyone who couldn’t make money after the cease-fire couldn’t find flies in horseshit.”

He winked at her suddenly. “I’ll make a promise with you. If I find the missing money, I’ll split it with you and we can run away together.

She gave him a look, as though he were small change, and walked off.

In all, the police and HM staff spent eighteen hours over two days sifting through files for evidence. They loaded the police van with hard drives and account ledgers, to which they added bank statements from Fowler’s personal accounts and details of his credit card loans and property investments. They soon discovered that Fowler had not been living the dream so much as playing out a grand fantasy, and all with money that didn’t belong to him.

“ ‘Take as much prosperity as you can swallow’ was the message that boomed from London and Brussels,” Robert Bennett, a senior investigator with the Fraud Squad, said to Daly. He had brought the detective to the outskirts of Gortin village, which, in the evening light, looked empty of life, rubble spilling from dilapidated houses, the winding main street empty for as far as the eye could see. It reminded Daly of a village undergoing a security alert. He half expected to see a bomb disposal squad taking cover behind a crumbling wall. Bennett had brought him here to tell the tale of Gortin’s demise and how several fortunes had disappeared down the pockets of Jack Fowler.

“And that’s what Northern Ireland did,” continued Bennett. “Run-down villages like this and inner-city areas were meant to be the beneficiaries of the flood of capital. Unfortunately, no one rigorously checked what happened to the money one or two years down the line. We’ve investigated a whole range of behaviors from the careless to the downright criminal. Fowler’s business exploits come in firmly at the criminal end of the scale.”

All around them were shadows and gaping holes, chunks of crumbling concrete and flooded foundations sinking into the void left by greed and an overheated property market.

Bennett frowned. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that ex-paramilitaries like Fowler were tempted by the flow of peace money passing through their fingers.”

Daly regarded the investigator. Bennett was middle-aged and religious, a member of the Orange Order. It was clear that in his view God’s judgment had been passed on the predominantly Republican hill village. It was a morality tale straight out of the King James Bible.

“Of course,” replied Daly, “no reason why there shouldn’t be as many thieves in the former ranks of the IRA as in any other walk of life.”

They reached the once busy main street, which was now a sagging row of worn-out shop fronts enlivened by the odd terrorist mural. Daly remembered how his father had brought him here as a boy on Market Days. For one morning each month, the street became a depository of rusting farming implements and machinery, overrun with panicky livestock and fowl. However, even then, it had been plain to see that the village had fallen upon hard times; the market day the one remaining source of profitable activity for its inhabitants.

“I was sent by the government to track down peace funds that went missing after the collapse of the property market,” said Bennett. “The day before he died, Jack Fowler told the authorities he no longer knew the whereabouts of almost £3 million in funding from the European Peace Fund. According to him, the money had dissolved after it was transferred into the coffers of the regeneration group.”

“What do you think happened to it?”

“There is only one explanation possible. The money really did dissolve, as Fowler said.”

Daly stopped midstride to study Bennett’s face, trying to determine whether he had missed something.

There was a measured richness to Bennett’s voice as he held Daly’s attention.

“Speaking more precisely, the funds were stolen.”

“How? We’re not talking about a gang of armed robbers.”

Bennett squinted in the low sunlight. “I’ve already examined the accounts and collected a stream of anecdotes from the people who worked for Mr. Fowler. In the hours after the money arrived in the regeneration group’s bank account, there was a flurry of international transactions. The funds were first sent to an account in a Maltese bank, and then debited to Vestbank in Frankfurt. There the sum was converted back into Sterling and sent to the Marlborough bank in London. A day later, it was transferred to Maguire Holdings, a cover name for a property investment group with a large portfolio in Tyrone and Armagh.”

They had reached a terrace of ruined houses. Behind them, Daly could make out the thin green of broken fields patterned with thorn trees. Brambles trailed everywhere, ready to snare the heel of an unsuspecting property investor.

“You could say the money rolled like a set of dice flung by a desperate gambler until it came to rest here.”

They stared at the buildings. Some of the roofs were grassed over and full of holes. The gleam of the low sun caught shards of glass and spiderwebs haunting the darkness within.

“With the money, Maguire Holdings bought this row of buildings and most of the land lying behind the village.”

“For £3 million?”

Bennett grimaced. “The money really did dissolve. However, it was the sudden drop in house prices that brought about its dissolution.”

The picture became clearer in Daly’s head.

Bennett continued: “Fowler’s plan was to announce a major redevelopment of the village, promising jobs, business start-up funding, new shop fronts, a sports hall, and a health center. House prices would then shoot up, enabling him to sell this run-down terrace for a handsome profit.”

“Surely that’s breaking the law.”

“The plain fact is that no one in the governing bodies had any way of knowing whether or not the funds had been improperly used. When the homes were sold to new investors, Fowler intended to return the money to the regeneration company’s coffers.”

“I take it that when the economy went bust, the hammer of reality struck, and Fowler was left with a collection of ruins he couldn’t sell.”

“That’s correct. We suspect this type of fraud was perpetrated on a large scale ever since peace funds began flooding the country.”

“A system works according to the people running it,” said Daly.

“That’s the problem when you pour money into the pockets of former paramilitaries.”

“From what I read in the newspapers, a lot of people got greedy. Not all of them were former freedom fighters.”

“True. It wasn’t just the Jack Fowlers of this world who were up to no good. The banks were at it, too. And politicians. Even the financial watchdogs turned a blind eye.”

“Did Fowler confess to you?”

“I spoke to him before he died. He was adamant he had done nothing wrong. He’d used the funds to bolster the local economy, he claimed. It was not so much a crime as an error of timing. If the property crash had been delayed by a month or two, the houses would have been sold and no one would have been any wiser.”

They walked on to an abandoned building site. Metal fencing and fluorescent tape surrounded a set of flooded foundations. The place resembled a crime scene. Empty of life. It was hard to believe that the unraveling of one man’s greed was responsible for such dereliction.

“Fowler believed in property,” said Bennett.

“He owned more than most.”

“How relevant is all this to your investigation?”

“A soured business relationship may have led to his death.”

“I can provide you with a list of his known business associates.”

“Which of them would you recommend I talk to?”

“Michael Mooney, for a start. The two of them go right back to Long Kesh. Mooney was another former terrorist turned community developer. He’s still the treasurer of the regeneration group. And a member of the local policing partnership.”

Daly took down Mooney’s details.

“I have to warn you—this investigation is going to become more political than you can imagine,” said Bennett. “Fowler’s associates will already have made moves to protect themselves and their reputations. His death triggered minor tremors in the most powerful circles in the land. If it was murder, you’re going to have to uncover layer after layer of lies in your hunt for a killer.”

“Lies are what interest me. Especially the hidden ones.”

The two men looked back down the village. In the distance, they could hear a roaring and bellowing sound, like a set of flailing bagpipes about to burst. A herd of cows rushed abruptly round the corner, whacked by a grim-faced farmer and three young men. Daly guessed they were his sons. They all had the same dogged hunch, their blackthorn sticks lashing the animals’ rears. For a few moments, the street teemed with life and the ripe tang of dung. Urine sluiced down the side of the road. The men seemed in an anxious hurry to keep the cattle moving. They passed the pair of detectives as though they were ghostly inhabitants of a village that had lain in ruins for hundreds of years.

“What did you find out about Lena Novak?” asked Daly.

“His mistress?”

“Yes.”

“Fowler made her the director of his holding company. He took a big financial gamble on her, setting up accounts in her name and transferring funds to them.”

“Why do you think he did that?”

“My guess is that Fowler liked crossing borders. Metaphorical as well as physical. Miss Novak was a classic example of the risks he took in his personal and business life. Most men squirrel away cash and assets in their wives’ names; Fowler opted for a prostitute.”

“An unconventional choice.”

“It seems that he got his thrills crossing into the unknown, following his instincts rather than his head. Unfortunately, his relationship with Miss Novak turned out to be a delusion, like the countless others in his life.”

“He had others?”

“Look around,” said Bennett, waving a hand at the street’s dank frontage. “Imagine what one man’s fantasy, fueled by greed, could do to a place like this. Gortin was a Cinderella village, and Fowler was its Prince Charming. Instead of providing a fairy-tale ending, all he did was scatter broken dreams everywhere.”

They stood for a while. The sun had gone down, and the air was bleak and cold. The wind blew harder, making a hundred strange noises in the broken windows and collapsed roofs. To their ears, it was the sound of a fortune frittering away.

Daly awoke early on Saturday morning and decided his interview with Michael Mooney could not wait until Monday. While his coffee brewed, he rang the police station and checked on Mooney’s current address. He was still at an early stage in the investigation, and he felt the particular kind of apprehension that comes with the first forays into a dead person’s private life, like that of a balloonist adrift in a new landscape, not knowing where the winds might take you.

The officer working in the information section gave him a brief summary of Mooney’s past record, most notably his involvement with terrorist paramilitaries. Daly resisted the urge to make any hasty conclusions. Since his release from Long Kesh prison in 1983, Mooney appeared to have adjusted to civilian life with a measure of success. Republican paramilitaries had cast a wide and ragged net that entangled many young men and women during the Troubles, but since the cease-fire many of them had managed to slip through its holes back to a normal life within their own communities. Nevertheless, as he drove into the mountains of South Armagh, Daly felt a sense of foreboding, as though the investigation were about to enter a squall.

Michael Mooney lived at number 60 Foxborough Mews, a new-build development of mock-Georgian houses situated about a mile beyond the village of Keady. To the west, a pine forest threw out a sheltering arm from the prevailing winds, but in every other direction the estate lay exposed to the elements. There were no streetlights, only a forest of For Sale signs posted along the road. An advertising billboard at the unpaved entrance promised life in a luxury development for prices more expensive than real estate in Miami or LA. The steamy ad featured a leggy model draped over a kitchen counter with the tagline “Gorgeous Living Comes to Armagh.” Foxborough’s location at the edge of a mountain bog was not referred to anywhere on the billboard.

Daly was surprised to find that the house numbers began at 60. There was no number 58, or 50, or even 1. He parked beside a container full of rubble. It was Saturday morning, and Mooney looked to be the only one at home in the estate. Few of the other houses were occupied. Chances were they never would be. When the tide of cheap borrowing withdrew during the credit crunch, it had left behind estates like Foxborough Mews as a monument to the property madness that had engulfed the entire country. Now it was a so-called ghost estate. But there was nothing ghostly about the houses. Foxborough Mews belonged to one of the most extravagant realities of bricks and mortar the Irish countryside had ever witnessed.

The door of number 60 opened, and Daly got a whiff of foul air. When he introduced himself, the man in the dark hall said nothing. He moved a step closer to Daly, the daylight illuminating his face and exposing in detail his deformity. The skin of his face was scarred and deeply pitted as though someone had thrown a bucket of acid over him. Daly reached out to shake his hand and encountered a palm so smooth and fine it felt like a kind of compensation for the grotesque condition of his face.

Even though the man had not identified himself, Daly knew it was Mooney. He had heard about the former terrorist’s facial disfigurement, a legacy of his imprisonment in Long Kesh during the early 1980s. At the time, IRA inmates fought for recognition as political prisoners by smearing their cell walls with feces and refusing to wash. It was a dark time in the conflict, when the paramilitary leaders shifted the battle away from city streets and country lanes to the cramped cells of H-block. Instead of using Semtex and guns, the imprisoned paramilitaries launched attacks upon the prison wardens and ultimately upon their own bodies. Feces, urine, and starvation were the weapons of choice. It was a form of self-martyrdom. For more than a year of his jail term, Michael Mooney’s body became the IRA’s battleground against the British State.

The prison regime may have been harsh, but it was a skin infection, taking hold in the unkempt conditions, that had shown Mooney the least mercy, ravaging his face and nibbling away at his features. Of course, he got off lighter than the hunger strikers, the ten volunteers who starved themselves out of existence while the international media camped outside the prison side by side with family members reciting the rosary.

“I’ve come to talk to you about Jack Fowler,” announced Daly.

“Why do you want to talk about Jack? He’s dead.” Mooney’s voice had an unfriendly tone.

“My visit is part of a criminal investigation.”

“What sort of an investigation? I’ve already told everything I know to Inspector Bennett. I’ve cooperated fully.”

“The questions I need to ask are about Mr. Fowler’s social circle, and how he died.”

“He committed suicide.” There was a slight break in Mooney’s voice, a note of hesitation, even doubt. His eyes grew wary.

“You worked closely with Mr. Fowler. You must have thought a lot about his death.”

Mooney stared at him for a long while before stepping back and allowing Daly into the house.

An expensively upholstered seat served host to a tray on which sat a half-eaten meal and beside it a collection of remote control devices. A wash of newspapers had gathered around the leather sofa.

“I understand that the day before he died, Mr. Fowler tried repeatedly to get in touch with you,” said Daly.

Mooney said nothing. The scarring made his face a blank.

“Mr. Mooney?”

“What you said was a fact. Not a question.”

“You’re not denying it.”

“No.”

“Why was he so keen to talk to you?”

Mooney sighed. “Because he wanted me to prop up his pillar of lies.”

He got up and began clearing the tray and newspapers.

“You must forgive the mess. I’ve been in mourning.”

“For Mr. Fowler or your career?”

Mooney grunted. “Both.” He tried to bring some order to the newspapers piled on the floor but quickly gave up.

“Every time the phone or doorbell rings I think it’s going to be him. Trying to keep up the façade, paper over the cracks. Jack was a born charmer.”

“I’ve heard a lot of things said about Mr. Fowler in the past few days,” said Daly. “He came a long way from a solitary confinement cell in a Spanish prison.”

Mooney stared at Daly without nodding or frowning. His scarred face gave Daly the impression of emotional emptiness.

“I’ve heard a lot said myself,” said Mooney. He tried to change the topic. “You had no trouble finding this place?”

“No,” replied Daly. “I can see you don’t get much bother from the neighbors.”

Mooney gave a sad laugh. “It was Jack Fowler who persuaded me to buy this house. He was the developer behind the entire estate. Little did I know the place would end up worse than a coffin.” He eyed Daly with a vacant stare. “Or a prison cell.” His features moved in spasms, fragments without any connection to whatever thoughts and emotions worked their way through his brain. He walked to the kitchen window and pointed outside.

“At night it’s completely dark, and during the day, you don’t see as much as a dog or a car passing through. Look at all the windows. Not even a plant or a curtain up in any of them. Vandals have started smashing them. First, they targeted the houses closest to the road, then the ones next to those. Soon there’ll not be a window left in the entire estate.”

As he spoke, a large bluebottle toiled through the air and began dive-bombing the glass pane. Mooney opened the window, closing it again quickly to ward off a swarm of flies swooping outside.

“This house is the only light for about five miles,” said Mooney. “At night it attracts a plague of flies and moths.”

A whiff of something like raw sewage wafted through the air and hit Daly’s nostrils. Mooney appeared not to notice it and went on talking.

“I came a long way, too, like many IRA volunteers,” Mooney said with a sigh. “But life in its cruel way arranged that I would end up in solitary confinement once again, imprisoned by concrete. Only this time I’m paying a hefty mortgage for the pleasure.” He glanced at Daly. “You probably know that I spent two years in a fourteen-foot cell. All I had for company back then was a bible, a mattress, three blankets, and Jack Fowler. We were Republican soldiers, but the screws treated us worse than rapists. We joined in the Dirty Protest, like everyone else in H-block. We used our bodies as protest weapons. After a few months of smearing the walls with feces, the cell started to crawl with parasitic insects. We became living corpses. Can you imagine smelling your own body rot? At first, I thought it was my imagination playing tricks, but then I was relieved to learn that Jack could smell the same odor from his body. It was the smell of the body wasting away. The same smell you get when paying respects to the dead.”

Daly tried not to grimace as another foul-smelling wave overcame him. It couldn’t be his imagination, he reasoned. The kitchen smelled like an open sewer. This time Mooney noticed the look of protest on the detective’s face.

“Sorry. I’ve grown used to the smell.”

He opened the patio doors and showed Daly a gaping hole in the back garden where a set of sewage pipes protruded into the air. Pools of filthy water bubbled in the weak spring sunshine.

A look of torment twisted Mooney’s face. “This place really is Long Kesh circa 1981. About a month ago, the toilets and sinks started to overflow. When the plumbers came, they had to pull up all the pipes to find the obstruction. It turned out someone had poured concrete down a manhole. A disgruntled builder, I suspect, someone never paid for his work. They say it will cost thousands to repair. I’m still waiting for the insurance company to get back to me.”

“Tell me about Jack Fowler.”

Mooney sat down heavily. “In spite of what people are saying, there was a humane and sympathetic side to Jack. He never said no to raising funds or giving to charity. And you could see it was always his own money that he gave away.”

“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.