I nodded my head, unsure of the significance of this piece of information, but unwilling to disappoint the woman, who was clearly pleased at knowing it.
‘So, anything else I can help you with?’ she asked.
‘Can you tell me the name of the man who was carrying it?’ I joked. ‘Or where to find his family?’
‘Try the Migrant Workers’ Information Centre,’ she answered, seriously. ‘Of course, the only difficulty with that will be, if he is Chechen, he’s here illegally.’
*
The man I spoke to in the Migrant’s Centre, Pol, was Polish. He wore dark blue drainpipe jeans and a loose Ireland football shirt. His black hair had been shaved tight, revealing a ragged red scar across the right side of his skull, running from his temple to just below his ear.
He read the prayer card quickly, shrugging non-committally when I said I thought it was Chechen.
‘I don’t speak it,’ he explained. Neither could he suggest where I might start looking for the man’s family.
‘If he’s using a stolen identity card and he’s Chechen, he’s an illegal immigrant. To be honest, illegals wouldn’t really come in here; the migrants who use us are here legally and looking for legal employment.’
‘Any ideas where I might start to look for information about him?’
‘A lot of migrants do their shopping at the local car-boot sales and markets. There’s a new Polish food store opened on Main Street; they might be able to help you. The Weekly News is running a Polish column each week now – maybe put something out through there. There’s a migrant Mass in the cathedral once a month. And, of course, we can put up a notice.’
I thanked him and turned to leave, then thought better of it.
‘You must know something about illegal immigrants – off the record. Where they live, how they get into the country in the first place?’
Pol held my stare. ‘They’re brought in by Irish gangsters who charge them several thousand euros each. They bring them in the back of freight lorries. Provide them with stolen identities, charge them massive rent, then force them into cheap labour. They can’t go to the police or they’ll be deported. Can’t complain to the people who bring them in or they’ll be killed.’
‘Then why come here at all?’
‘Because it’s better than what they’re leaving behind. The Celtic Tiger is known all over Europe. Everyone wants a share of the wealth. Some of us can come in legally – other countries are not so fortunate yet. In this case, I suspect he’s escaping the killing. The Chechen war may be over, Inspector, but as with Northern Ireland, the killing can continue.’
‘What brought you here?’
‘Work. The chance to earn some money to send back to my wife.’
‘You left your wife in Poland?’
‘And our two children. I work here for two years, earn enough to cover ten years’ work in Poland.’
‘But you must miss your family. Your children must miss their father.’
‘It will keep them off the poverty line – it’s a small sacrifice for me to make for them, to provide for them like a father should. A man needs to have some pride for his children.’
I gestured to the scarring at the side of his head. ‘Did that happen here or there?’
‘Here. Just after I came over. I was working in a food-packaging factory for minimum wage. One night I was jumped. Told to stay away the next day. My type weren’t welcome. They told me they’d kill me if I came back.’
‘What did you do?’
‘What would you do, Inspector?’ he asked me defiantly.
I nodded my head. ‘Thanks for your help,’ I said.
By the time I got home that evening, the children were already in bed. Debbie had kept my dinner for me and while I waited for it to heat in the microwave I presented her with the box from Orcas.
‘A gift,’ I explained when she raised her eyebrows at the box. ‘From John Weston.’
She opened the case, already half smiling, then made a silent O with her mouth when she saw the necklace. ‘Jesus, Ben,’ she whispered. ‘It’s beautiful.’
Unable to fully share her enthusiasm, I simply nodded my head.
‘What’s it for?’ she asked.
‘Putting round your neck,’ I answered, earning a slap on the arm.
‘You know what I meant,’ she said gaily, unhooking the clasp and lifting the piece from the box, cupping the weight of it in her hand.
‘I’m wondering that myself,’ I said. ‘Should we keep it?’
Debbie looked at me, her eyebrows arched, as if daring me to try to take it back.
‘Why shouldn’t we? How many perks do you get?’ she said, holding it around her throat. ‘Now hook me up.’
I fixed the clasp at the back of her neck. She’d had her hair cut up short, exposing the slender line of her nape. My fingers trailed along the curve of her skin after I’d fixed the clasp. She reached up and patted my hand with her own, then moved in front of the mirror in our hallway to better see the necklace.
‘Beautiful,’ she whispered reverently.
‘And the necklace isn’t bad either,’ I added.
She turned, smiling, and looked at me in a manner that required no further conversation.
Chapter Three
Saturday, 30 September – Monday, 2 October
I spent Saturday morning in a meeting with Patterson to discuss the security arrangements for Cathal Hagan’s visit. Patterson emphasized several times the importance of the visit and the need for the force to do itself proud. He would coordinate with the other divisions involved if I would take control of all local arrangements.
Following the meeting, I passed an hour wording an appeal for information about the dead Chechen. I eventually traced Marie Collins on Saturday, having contacted the Principal of the Tech to get her phone number. She translated the brief message into Polish, Russian and Chechen, spelling each version out for me letter by letter over the phone. The message made clear that no one was being investigated for illegal entry to the country but that we were attempting to find any relatives of the man in question. It did not mention the fact that he was dead.
I contacted all the local hospitals and PSNI and Garda stations. I guessed that, had the man any living relatives in the area, they would contact some external agency eventually in an attempt to find him. I left a message that anyone doing so be given my number.
On Saturday afternoon I headed back out to Orcas to see how things were progressing with the bog body. The numbers of Guards from the previous day had dropped to one, who sat in his car at the entrance to the mine, his feet on the dashboard and his cap over his face, an unfinished crossword lying beside him. I parped the car horn long enough to wake him up, then waved and drove on up to the site, where a blue tarpaulin had been erected above the scene to protect the body from the elements.
An archaeological pathologist, who had been drafted in from the National Museum in Dublin, was busy at work when I arrived. She wore a white paper forensics suit, though I suspected it was as much to keep herself clean as to reduce contamination. She leant over the remains in the pit, brushing gently at the leg muscles with a thick paintbrush, clearing away the loose soil.
The body itself had been completely exposed now. The form was recognizably female, though her breasts were no more than flaps pressed tight against her chest. Her hair was cropped short, her shoulders hunched up so they touched her lower jaw. Her arms lay at her sides, the musculature depleted.
The pathologist stood up when I arrived and came towards me, hand outstretched. Removing her surgical mask, she introduced herself as Linda Campbell. She brushed the fringe of her brown hair back from her face and squinted against the sunlight as we spoke.
‘How are you getting on?’ I asked.
She smiled warmly. ‘Fantastic,’ she said. ‘The body’s so well preserved.’ Though she had come up from Dublin, I could discern a light Northern lilt to her accent.
‘A woman, I see,’ I
said, gesturing towards the body.
‘Yes,’ she said, looking back at the corpse with something akin to admiration. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’
‘She’s not really my type.’
‘She’s quite a find,’ Linda Campbell continued, with a forbearing smile. ‘The bogland here fully preserved her.’
‘How?’ I asked, knowing she would be eager to tell me.
‘The water in bogland contains a lot of organic acids and aldehydes, which act almost like embalming fluid. More importantly, it stops bacteria growing. The body ages without ever decomposing; the skin toughens so much it becomes like tanned leather. It’s really rather incredible. And very rare for a woman to be found. Most bog bodies are male.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I said. ‘Any ideas on how she died? Or when?’
‘The when, I can’t really say yet. I suspect Iron Age probably, but I’ll need to take her into the lab. The how is easy; I’ll show you.’
I followed her under the tarpaulin again and she lowered herself gently into the pit where the body was lying. I knelt at the side and looked down.
Linda used a small metal rod to tug lightly at something around the corpse’s neck. Peering closely I could see some type of twine tied around her throat and looped at the back around a piece of wood.
‘Is that a garrotte?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely,’ she said, smiling and blowing at a stray lock of hair which hung in front of her eyes.
‘So she was murdered?’
‘Executed,’ she corrected. ‘Or sacrificed.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘If she is Iron Age, she should have been cremated. As far as we know, they only buried those who were very important, or who had been sacrificed.’
‘Why would she be sacrificed?’ I asked.
‘Every year, someone would be sacrificed to one of the gods. The god of the bog, the god of the harvest, the god of spring. Much like the ancient Greeks and Romans. You have different gods for different things. Some criminals, instead of being executed, would be sacrificed instead, and would be buried rather than burnt. It would be quite an honour for her, you’d imagine.’
‘I’d imagine she might be a little pissed off, actually.’
‘The well-being of her whole community depended on her sacrifice, Inspector,’ Linda said with a serious edge to her tone. ‘It would absolve her and her family from her crimes, whatever they were.’
‘I understand,’ I said, sorry that I seemed to have offended her. ‘I don’t need to start a murder file, though.’
‘Unless you spot a four-thousand-year-old man wandering around, I think you’re fairly free of this one, Inspector.’
On Sunday, I returned my attention to the more recently deceased. I went to the car-boot sales in Lifford and Letterkenny with a number of uniformed officers to canvass for information about the Chechen’s death. We distributed the flyers I’d had translated to anyone interested and asked them to spread the information. Jim Hendry, my counterpart north of the border, had promised to do likewise around Strabane. Our efforts, however, garnered no further information.
In the afternoon I went to the large market held on the outskirts of Derry. I stopped at various stalls selling eastern European foodstuffs, but no one was able to help me. As I was making my way along the final stretch of the market, I recognized someone working out of the back of one of the white vans parked against the perimeter fence.
Pol from the Migrant Workers’ Information Centre was handing bags of toilet rolls to a heavy-set woman. Beside him stood another man, leaning against the side of the van, rolling a cigarette. He was wiry and sharp-featured, with a thin moustache.
‘You really are a migrant worker,’ I said to Pol when he was finished serving the woman. He looked at me sharply, as if searching for the insult in what I had said.
‘I mean, two jobs,’ I explained. ‘You’ll be putting the rest of us lazy buggers to shame.’
‘Work is work,’ he explained. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m still looking for information on him,’ I said, handing Pol a flyer. ‘Will you display it on your table?’
‘This is my boss, Vinnie,’ he said, gesturing towards the other man. ‘Best ask him.’
Vincent stepped away from the van and took the leaflet from me.
‘What’s he done?’ he asked.
‘He’s got himself shot,’ I answered. ‘We need to find his family, if he has one.’
‘Any leads?’ Vinnie asked.
‘Not a one,’ I replied, suddenly eager to end the conversation.
Vinnie bit the end of his rolled cigarette and spat on to the ground. ‘We’ll put up the poster and keep an eye out,’ he said.
The breakthrough, when it came, did so from an unexpected source. I had begun taking panic attacks a while back and my GP, John Mulronney, had prescribed beta-blockers. On Monday morning I had a check-up with him to get a new prescription. As I waited for him to sign the script he asked about the dead man.
‘Any luck with an identity?’
‘None. It seems he’s an illegal immigrant – Chechen, apparently. But we can’t find anyone who’ll come forward to identify him.’
‘No family?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’ve tried the car-boot sales and markets, and the Migrant Workers’ Information Centre. The problem is, if he’s an illegal, he’s not going to register on any systems.’
‘Are you sure he’s illegal?’ he asked.
‘Fairly certain,’ I said. ‘Why?’
Mulronney seemed to consider something, then stood up and handed me the script. ‘I didn’t tell you this, Ben. There’s a locum doctor does the evening emergency surgery in Strabane sometimes – a Polish fella. Apparently he sees illegals requiring medical help during the night surgeries on the sly – doesn’t charge them. He’d be fired if it were officially known, but no one on the ground cares. End of the day, the Health Service is meant to be helping people. If anyone knows your man, it’ll be him.’
‘Does it not piss the Irish doctors off – a Pole taking their work? Would someone not report him?’
‘He’s happy to work the graveyard shift no one else wants to do, and for a third of the cost. No one really cares who he treats at three in the morning, if he’s happy enough to get out of his bed to do it.’
I don’t know which I found more offensive: that the Polish doctor was being paid a fraction of the going wage, or that it was clearly preferable to whatever the man had been earning in his home country.
*
It took a phone call to Jim Hendry to get the man’s name: Karol Walshyk. As he lived in the North, Hendry told me he’d accompany me to the man’s house in Sion Mills.
It was the neatest in a row of five terraced houses. Lace curtains covered the windows and the woodwork had been freshly painted. When Walshyk answered the door, a waft of warm air escaped, heavy with the smell of spices. The man himself, in his forties with a neat grey beard, stood in the doorway wearing an apron over his clothes.
His initial response upon seeing us was to ask if something had happened to his parents in Poland. Reassured on this point, he invited us in with an offer of lunch. Finally he asked us what exactly was wrong.
When we explained why we were there, he was, understandably, wary of helping us. He denied knowing anything about illegal workers in the area, and claimed not to recognize the man whose picture I showed him. It was clear that he was holding back on us, and I began to suspect that the presence of Jim Hendry was the reason. No immigrant, legitimate or otherwise, is going to admit to illegal activity, even of the most justifiable kind, in front of a police officer. I, on the other hand, being out of my jurisdiction, represented no threat to him. I thanked him for his help and left him my card, in case he should think of anything useful.
Sure enough, an hour later he called and told me to come alone to meet him and he would take me to the family of the dead man.
*
/> I was surprised to learn that the dead man’s residence was in a new housing development along the Urney Road. On our way there, Karol, as he told me to call him, explained the family’s background to me. The man had come to the surgery with his wife one evening several months back. She had been in the early months of pregnancy and had suffered a miscarriage. Karol had wanted her to go to the hospital, but she refused. Instead, he had visited her at home each day for a few weeks, until she had recovered. At the time, her husband, one Ruslan Almurzayev, had been working in a local chip van. Karol had not seen either him or his wife, Natalia, since.
I remembered when these houses had been on the market. Despite their size and the paucity of ground around them, they’d had a hefty price tag.
‘How the hell can they afford to live here?’ I asked.
‘You’ll see. Wait.’
When we arrived at the house, Karol offered to prepare the occupants before bringing me in. I sat in the car, smoking and waiting for his signal.
I had just stubbed out my cigarette when Karol appeared at the doorway and beckoned me in.
Once inside, I began to understand. The interior was almost empty of furnishing; seating in the kitchen took the form of an old patio set. The living area was furnished with beanbags and an old coffee table. In the corner was a battered black-and-white TV, in front of which sprawled several children of varying ages. A pot of something steamed on the cooker in the kitchen. Upstairs I could hear the wailing of a woman and the shouts of others.
Karol led us up the uncarpeted steps. A crowd of women blocked the entrance to one of the three bedrooms. Peering between them I could discern a woman sitting on the edge of a camp bed, sobbing, while another woman comforted her.
Karol spoke to the group, presumably in Chechen, for they began to part as we pushed through. He led us into the room and spoke again, and within a minute only we two and the girl were left.
‘Are they your friends?’ My question was for the woman, though I directed it to Karol.
‘They live here,’ he replied without speaking to the girl.
‘All of them?’ I asked incredulously, for there were at least a dozen I had seen, not counting the children downstairs.
Bleed a River Deep (Inspector Devlin Mystery 3) Page 3