Border Angels (15 page)

In spite of the half-dozen pints, Daly believed he was in good enough order when he staggered onto the street. He had decided to leave Irwin to his own devices after seeing him take to the center of the dance floor and clear a space like Bambi on ice.

The cloying reek of oil and meat from the nearby fast-food outlets coated the night air. Farther up the street, a snatch of melody floated from a bar where a folk session was in full swing. Daly made his way toward the center of the town. The mood changed dramatically in the square. Chanting from a group of Poland supporters had attracted a rival group of local youths, who began shouting their own songs, peppered with swearing. Young men with grim, pale faces taunting one another. Meat factory workers with the kind of faces that do not wake up expecting sunshine. Daly had seen the inside of the places where they worked. He knew the sheer scale and awesome vacuum of the factory floors, the endless conveyor belts carrying meat carcasses imported from all over the world. He detected something mechanical and automatic in their violent shouting and the way they lined up in front of one another. A few of them had rolled back their shirtsleeves, revealing muscled biceps covered in tattoos.

Perhaps they were motivated by pride in their team, or some kind of patriotism, thought Daly, or perhaps they had gathered in the square because it was difficult to stay sober and rational in the hours of darkness. To express something through their bodies and voices, no matter how meaningless and violent, was the crucial thing.

Daly looked anxiously for a police patrol but saw none. Without warning, a bottle crashed on the pavement in front of him, showering his clothes with glass. He peered at the grim spectacle of youths spoiling for a fight. A few of them turned in his direction. He expected the thrower of the bottle to step forward, but instead another bottle came sailing through the darkness, smashing against the wall above him. This time, the fragments of glass rained down upon his head. It was too close to have been an accident, and the bottle flew too fast to have been thrown with drunken abandon. Daly was convinced it had been aimed straight at him.

He lurched down a side alleyway, blundering against a couple in a furtive embrace. The chanting of the youths turned to roars and shouts, rising into the night air with sudden violence. The sounds of a window smashing added glee and excitement to the drunken voices. He clambered over a low wall and ran along a series of dark alleys filled with bins. Only the noise of the mob gave him any sense of direction. There were further sounds of windows breaking and running footsteps. He caught a glimpse of a lit street, a car slowly moving sideways and then heaving over, and a column of young men clambering on top.

Ten minutes later, he emerged from the warren of alleyways onto a quiet street. He tried to flag down a taxi, but none of them stopped. Relief at having escaped the drunken crowd was undercut by anxiety as to how he was going to get home. He was no longer protected by his detective’s ID; in fact, it made him a vulnerable target. He passed walls covered in crude graffiti and racist slogans. He felt stranded in a town dreaming of violence. He was on his own now, too drunk to know where he was going, too disheveled to attract a passing taxi. A car pulled up in front of him and a passenger door opened. It was a private car, not a taxi. Daly thought of clambering in, but hesitated. An arm waved at him urgently.

“What happened to your head, Daly? You’re covered in blood,” said a voice from the passenger seat. It was Irwin. The Special Branch detective had managed to cadge a lift with the three Polish women.

Daly breathed a sigh of relief and clambered into the back. He sank into the warm seat beside one of the women. Irwin was drunkenly entertaining them with stories about the police.

“What’s it like being a detective?” asked the woman driving.

“Murder,” replied Irwin and they all laughed

“Honestly, it is hell though,” said Irwin. “Don’t ever think of joining.”

“Tell me something I’ve always wondered. Is it a crime to go missing, to disappear?” asked the driver a few minutes later.

“What do you mean?”

“I just want to know is it a crime? To leave behind everything, all your responsibilities and relationships. Can you be punished for that?”

“If it is, we haven’t done anyone for it yet. How can you arrest someone who has disappeared? It would be like trying to punish a ghost.”

“Poor ghosts,” she said, and the others laughed again.

When they dropped Daly off at his cottage, he made his way to the bathroom and stared into the scrubby mirror. He tore small pieces of tissue paper and stuck them with blood onto the scratches on his forehead. When he was satisfied with the blood stanching, he examined his coat. The material was full of tiny glass shards. It glittered like a fish tail. He picked out the bigger pieces and shook the coat at the threshold of the front door. He felt relieved. Bar the few scratches, he had survived his drunken jaunt with Irwin. He drank a pint of water and crawled carefully into his bed as though he were slipping into a dark pool.

That night, Lena appeared in a nightmare, only this time their roles were reversed and she was pursuing him. He dreamed he was fishing the river Blackwater in a rowing boat, the currents pulling him deeper into border country, the banks growing wilder, tangled with winter thorns. There was just enough moonlight to make out the shapes of two horsemen searching the undergrowth in opposite directions. One of them, astride a white horse, was Jack Fowler, while the one on the black horse resembled the man who had tried to kidnap Lena.

His fishing line snagged and then jolted fiercely, almost capsizing the boat. He had hooked something from the depths of the river. He reeled in the line, and to his surprise the black-haired head of a woman broke through the waters. Then in a splash, her arms and torso appeared.

It was Lena Novak. She rose, loose limbed as a runner, from the churning water, wrenching herself free from his fishing line. The boat rocked violently, and he struggled to keep it afloat. When he looked back, her face had aged, her cheekbones grown sharper, her skin paler.

Suddenly it was Anna, rising out of the water, her bare feet tangled in weeds, her legs riding the swell of the river toward him. His impulse was to flee. He rowed to the bank as if his life depended on it. Then he took off into the forest, but no matter how hard he ran, he was unable to shake her off. Everywhere he turned, he saw the elongated shadows of Lena’s running body followed by the galloping horses, but it was Anna’s voice that he heard echoing in the forest, calling his name repeatedly.

He ran until he reached his cottage. He had just managed to shut the door tightly when it began to crack. It shook and fell apart, and in she stumbled, falling in a tumble across the stone-flag floor, her limbs entangling with upended furniture. The wet shroud of her dress was sodden and twisted, mud and river creatures spilling onto the floor. When he lifted the strands of black hair that had wrapped themselves across her features, he fell back in surprise. The face of a skeletal old woman stared back at him.

He woke up, breathing hard. For a few moments, he was afraid he had completely lost control of his thoughts. He got up and took comfort from the unchanged position of his furniture, the table and chairs, and the solid presence of the locked door. The cottage’s nooks and corners looked reassuringly familiar in the moonlight streaming through the small windows. He stood for a while in the middle of the room. A bird scrabbled on the roof. He tried to recall the precise details of his nightmare, to clutch at some clues it might offer as to what was going on inside his head. He wanted to know where the images of the dream had come from. Was it his subconscious trying to work through the mystery of Lena’s flight, or a signal of something darker from within? The first dim light of dawn crept through the window. A lough wind swept against the glass pane, and the rooster began to crow.

He made himself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table. He was worried that six months into his divorce, after months of self-control and enforced celibacy, some pressure in his psyche was beginning to show signs of eruption. The catalyst had been Lena, he realized. This woman with whom he had snatched only a few minutes of conversation, and whose brief touch had set alarm bells ringing deep within; this woman who had been accused of orchestrating a blackmail plot, and who might even have the blood of two men on her hands.

There were certain people who slipped through the nets of society, he thought. Women like Lena. Women weighed down by disaster. No one wanted to know them. No one said good-bye to them. They were the people a detective should not sympathize too strongly with, because the danger was they could pull you down into the depths with them, and leave you with no way back to the surface.

In the early morning light, the ghost estate belonged to another dimension; an unfinished, shadowy version of the happily populated estate depicted on the advertising billboards.

In the ground-floor bedroom of number 62, Lena woke from a shallow sleep, thinking she had heard a cry, female and frightened, from one of the houses opposite—but it might have been just a dream. The sound of doors banging shut and keys turning in locks had haunted her mind all night.

She climbed out of bed and got dressed, picking her way round an empty wine bottle and a glass. After checking that no one was watching, she stepped out the back door and into a field overgrown with brambles. There were no hedges or fences separating the houses. From the back door, she stepped directly into a thorny wilderness. In the weak sunshine, she recognized the tiny cream flowers filling the bushes as blackberry blossoms from the thickets that bordered her village back in Croatia. The weather in this country changed so frequently it left her unsure about the time of the year, but she knew it was not yet the season for picking blackberries. When that time came, she hoped to be back with her family in the forests of Velebit. That would be her goal, she decided, to climb the slopes of the mountains, free of fear, and crush the ripe fat berries with her bare feet. She would no longer be an exile from the season of berry picking.

She caught a bus into town and spent the morning in the library. You could spend as much time as you liked there, as long as you were quiet. She scanned the local newspapers for stories of prostitution, smuggling, and fraud. She checked the court reports and police briefings to the press, but found herself wading through page after page of stories about motoring offenses committed by Eastern European drivers. She wondered if it was a policy of the papers to report every single crime and misdemeanor committed by a foreign national. She wondered how any reader would even venture out in a car. The news coverage gave the impression that the border roads were plagued with apocalyptic lawlessness.

She tried to match the names of perpetrators and victims with the names of the trafficked women from the farmhouse brothel. It proved difficult since the journalists often spelled names incorrectly or confused surnames with first names. In addition, she kept coming across the names of famous characters from Croatian literature and history. She suspected that some of her compatriots had provided the police with false information.

A male librarian took an interest in what she was doing. He helped her locate backdated issues and track court stories that had been heard in different jurisdictions. At one point, he leaned close to her and stared into her eyes. Then he let his gaze travel down the length of her body to the shiny leather of her boots. Though he was in his late thirties, his chin had only managed to sprout an unconvincing goatee of fine brown hair. The way in which he pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose to frame his expressionless eyes triggered an unpleasant image in Lena’s memory.

“Where have I seen you before?” he whispered.

She sighed. Sometimes it was easier when people pretended she did not exist. She spoke clearly, breaking up the words with pauses, as though delivering an announcement to the entire library, which was filling up with pensioners, young mothers, and a few stray schoolchildren.

“The last time we met,” she said, “I was in the prostitute business.”

The librarian hurried away from her with such indecent haste he almost knocked over a shelf of hardbacks.

She flicked through the newspapers for another hour, but there was no sign of the name she wanted to find, even though she was alert to all its misspellings. It was the name of a man responsible for a hundred crimes, but none of them had been reported. The man who had abused her soul more cruelly than the men who ravaged her body. The only clue to his presence was a story about a twenty-six-year-old Croatian woman charged with prostitution and released on bail paid by a cousin. Her name was Dinah. According to the report, the cousin had agreed to keep her at an address on Altmore Drive.

Lena chose her time carefully. It was late evening when she slipped into the shadows of the bus shelter on Altmore Drive and waited for Dinah to show. It was important that she would have no advance warning of their encounter.

Shortly after 11:00 p.m., a taxi pulled up at a house. Lena watched a woman struggle out of the vehicle, laden with plastic bags that clinked as she staggered along the pavement. It was Dinah, all right, a pale, dark-eyed version of the fresh-faced girl Lena remembered. It had only been a month since she had said good-bye to her in the farmhouse brothel, but the girl looked as though she had spent the intervening period living on the doorstep of an off-license.

Lena slipped quietly into the house behind her. When Dinah saw the dark figure standing in the hall, her legs almost gave way. She bumped against furniture, unsure what to do. There was a strong whiff of alcohol from her breath. When she had gathered herself, she sat down on the sofa, slowly entwining her fingers with her scarf. The lid of her left eye was swollen, and an ugly bruise had mushroomed under her cheekbone.

“Why are you here, Lena?” she asked, her voice squeezed in her throat.

Lena didn’t answer. She went into the kitchen, made two cups of tea, and placed one beside Dinah. She resisted the impulse to reach out and stroke her swollen cheek. Her face was a raw lump of flesh that Lena wanted to shape back to its former beauty.

“Why are you staring at me?” said Dinah.

“No reason.”

“The night you were to escape from the farmhouse, I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight. I was so worried about you.”

“So worried you told Sergei about my plans?”

“It wasn’t me, Lena. I swear.” She was frantic in her denial, but her eyes darted about the room, as though there was an incriminating image in her head she was trying to avoid.

Lena felt herself flush with anger.

“What are you doing now?” she asked, keeping her tone even.

“I’ve a job in a nightclub. The pay is good.”

Lena watched as a silent shadow fell across Dinah’s exhausted face. Her eyes were empty.

“It’s not too late for you, Lena,” she said, imploring. “You can still come back. Jozef will find work for you.” She seemed convinced that Lena would want to return to her old life.

“I’d rather die than go back.”

“But Jozef will find you if you don’t. He has people everywhere. He’s stronger than you. He’ll win in the end.”

“What do you mean by win?”

“He’ll kill you.” The features of her face grew loose with fear, as she tried to hold back the tears.

“I have to go in a moment,” said Lena. “Do you remember the doll I gave you? There was a piece of paper inside it with a telephone number and the names of the others. I need it now.”

“I have it somewhere.” Dinah got up and rummaged in a drawer. She handed Lena a crumpled sheet of paper.

Finally, Lena had the information she needed to set her plan in motion. She placed it carefully in her handbag. Help was only a telephone number away. Her head felt clear and bright, as though a dark cloud had suddenly dissolved. Staring at Dinah’s anxious face, she felt a little guilty at the feeling of elation rising in her chest.

“Where’s Mikolajek now?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

A look came over Dinah’s face as though she was suffering from an attack of cramp.

“I’m sorry, I need a drink,” she mumbled and went into the kitchen. Lena waited for a moment and then followed her. She found her standing over the sink with a mobile phone pressed to her ear. She was muttering in Croatian. When she saw Lena, she gave a guilty start.

“You have to run now, Lena,” she said, stuffing the phone into a bag. She looked weak and forlorn, unable to return Lena’s gaze.

“Who did you call?” Lena took the phone from her.

Dinah began to cry. “I had to tell Jozef. Otherwise he’d hurt me. He paid my bail. Without him, I’d be still in jail. He told me that himself.”

Lena forgave her immediately. It wasn’t her fault that Mikolajek still held her in the grip of terror. She looked in the girl’s eyes and saw her past.

“I can save you, Dinah, if you come with me now.”

“I can’t. I have to work.” Her voice was dull.

“You still have your life ahead of you. You have to choose whether you want to stay like this or take a risk and find your freedom.”

Before Dinah could answer, the phone in Lena’s hand started to ring. She should have ignored it and made her exit. After all, she had everything to lose and nothing to gain, but she reasoned she had already set herself on the road that would take her back to Jozef Mikolajek. There was no turning now. She pressed the answer button.

“Hello?” she said.

The caller sighed. “Lena.”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

“Lena? I know you’re there. I hear you’re looking for me. What’s the matter? Need someone to help pack your suitcase?”

“I have things to do,” she replied, prompted into speech by his sarcasm. “I’m not planning on leaving any time soon.”

“You’re not going anywhere, Lena. That’s your problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve watched women like you before. You’ve left the game and now you’re in the first flush of excitement. You think you’ve escaped to some sort of paradise, but the chances are that feeling won’t last. Have you thought of what you’re going to do for money? Do you fancy cleaning floors or working in a meat factory?”

“I don’t need to work. Jack said he was leaving me money. Enough to set me up for life.”

“The IRA bastard told you that?” Violence poked through his voice like a nasty cough.

“He set up a bank account in my name. It was our contingency plan.”

“Then why haven’t you taken the money and run?”

“I need a passport to withdraw it. A form of ID. Jack was trying to get me one before he . . .”

Mikolajek cut her off. “How much money is in this account?”

“About £1 million.”

He gave a low whistle and was silent. When he spoke again, his voice was tinged with sardonic respect.

“What if I give you a passport?”

“I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“But let’s play if,” he persisted. “Here you are with a fortune at your fingertips but no way to access it. Here I am, falling over with enthusiasm to help you. You know I kept your old passport as a souvenir. It’s a bit dog-eared but I’m sure it will do.”

“And what do you get out of this deal?” Lena knew that Mikolajek had no more intention of letting her take the money and disappear than he had of joining a flower-arranging class.

“I’m just a plain businessman at heart. Give me a share of the money. Say fifty percent. It’s not as much as I took when you were working for me, but then you’re in a stronger bargaining position now.”

Lena said nothing.

“I’ll send a car round to collect you now. Before the banks close today, you’ll have your hands on your little nest egg.” She could hear the impatience rise in his voice.

“You murdered Jack. Why should I trust you?”

Mikolajek sneered. “It was suicide. The police will never prove otherwise. By the way, you know what his last request was that morning? He wanted to listen to a piece of opera music. He said it reminded him of you. How pathetic was that?”

“I never believed it.”

“Believed what?”

“That you were so full of evil. Otherwise, I never would have persuaded him to rescue me. I never would have risked myself. Or him.”

“If you believe that, then why are you talking to me now?”

“Because I’m not afraid. I’ve been through everything bad a woman my age can experience.”

“What about death?”

“I’m not afraid of that, either, but I have one thing left to do. And that is visit Jack’s grave to tell him I’ve avenged his murder. To do that I have to find you. I have to wait for you to make your move. And when you do, I promise to cling to you and drag you all the way down to the gates of hell.”