Border Angels

by Anthony Quinn

  Daly felt a shiver pass through him. “How?” he asked.

  The women grew edgy and started to argue with one another. The intensity of their voices changed, the words hurrying out, as though blown on by the wind.

  “It was the driver who forced them off the road. He dragged her into his Jeep. He had a limp. She was bleeding and her hair fell off.”

  Daly wanted to ask them more questions, but the women began to mumble fervently and raise their eyes to the ambulance roof.

  The translator turned to Daly. “You won’t get any more sense out of them. The shock has robbed them of their reason.”

  Some of the women began to weep.

  Irwin intervened. “We’ll decide how useful what they say is. You’ve been sent here to translate, not to comment or be involved in any way in the investigation.”

  “Of course,” said the translator. “I understand this is important. What else do you want me to ask them?”

  Irwin turned to Daly. “At least he learns fast.”

  “We need you to find out as much information as possible about the driver of the Jeep,” said Daly. “Take your time, if necessary.”

  They left the translator with the women and went back to the van.

  “Another kidnap,” said Daly. “First the attempted abduction of Lena Novak, then the women in the illegal bottling factory. And now Martha Havel. All of them Croatian. All of them linked to criminal activity.”

  “Who would want to hurt a vanload of cleaners, let alone kidnap one of them?” asked Irwin. “It doesn’t add up.”

  “You forget these women are treated as property,” replied Daly.

  “You’re suggesting the motive is theft.”

  “Possibly.”

  “There must be something more to it than that,” said Irwin. “What if we can’t work it out?”

  “We have to,” said Daly. “These people have been abducted with a specific aim in mind, for a specific reason.”

  “They were kidnapped once before. From their homelands. Perhaps they’re being abducted and trafficked elsewhere.”

  Daly stared at the crashed van and its mud-spattered sign. Home sweet home, he thought. Even misery became a kind of home, for people who expected no better. The wind rifled through the vehicle’s spilled contents, sending dustsheets and bin liners flapping through the branches of a thorn tree. He had the feeling he was still scurrying through the shadows of border country, chasing Lena Novak’s disappearing footsteps. The problem was he never knew exactly where he was going, blindly following a road that twisted and fell, pulled up by helping hands only for other hands to push him back down into darkness again.

  33

  The women in the houses next door to the Home Sweet Home Cleaning Company stepped out through their doors and stared up at the sky for a long time. The evening light was tinged with pink and blue. A look of surprise passed across their faces. A trail of smoke rising from one of the back gardens grew into a torrent of ash and sparks. Scraps of burning paper billowed over the slate roofs. Someone yelled and the women burst onto the street, jumping into the air, grabbing handfuls of smoldering ash.

  Dark clouds advanced and broke, but it was not rain that fell. When Daly and Irwin arrived on the street, looking for the injured driver of the van, the sky was drizzling burned money. At the first sign of swirling police lights, the neighbors, some of whom had collected thousands of pounds’ worth in scorched notes, ran back into the houses, slamming their front doors.

  Only the door of Home Sweet Home remained ajar. The two detectives walked quickly through the house and out the back.

  A young Croatian man was doing laps of the garden with a wheelbarrow, ferrying heaps of paper from a metal shed to a blazing bonfire. He had stripped to his waist, revealing an athletic build. A bandage, wrapped around his head like a sweatband, had slipped over a swollen, bloody eye.

  Burning paper and disintegrating ash filled the air, like bats fleeing a cave at dusk. One of the pieces swirled in front of Daly’s face. A glowing ember nibbled at the edge of the Queen’s face. It was a fifty-pound note.

  When the Croatian looked up and saw the two detectives approaching, he froze, the wheelbarrow poised to tip another load onto the fire.

  “That’s enough!” shouted Daly.

  He did not refuse Daly’s request. His broad face was suffused with weariness. He stared at Daly. A sharp racking cough took hold of him.

  “You’re injured. How can you run around a garden with a wheelbarrow?”

  “I have to do what the boss says.” His eyes clouded over as another coughing fit overtook him.

  “And then what are you going to do?”

  “Run.” He swatted at a burning ember.

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. You can’t stop me.” He tipped the contents of the barrow onto the fire. Another batch of notes left in a hurry, disintegrating into the spark-filled smoke.

  “You need a doctor.”

  The man scratched the bandage, blood soaking through to his fingertips. He swayed on his feet, surrounded by smoke and a circling wind of exhaustion. Then the light in his eyes went out, and he collapsed to the ground.

  It took two days for the police to finish questioning the injured driver and the women employed by the Home Sweet Home Cleaning Company. Officers compiled a draft report of their findings, which ran to more than fifty pages. The essence of the report was that the cleaning company, as well as operating as a brothel, had been used as a clearing house for counterfeit notes.

  Fearing that a police investigation into the crash would reveal the sordid extent of his activities, Mikolajek had ordered the injured driver to burn whatever counterfeit money was in the house and any other evidence that might link him to Home Sweet Home. However, Daly was confident that the outline of his criminal empire would still take shape before the courts and ensure that Mikolajek would be locked away for a lengthy sentence. They just had to apprehend him first.

  As well as ferrying the cleaners back and forth from their place of work, the Home Sweet Home van had operated two daily shifts as a mobile brothel, an early and a late, usually with two women on board. The van traveled everywhere, from agricultural shows to horse races and nightclub parking lots on weekends. The average number of clients per girl was six a shift. The women charged £60 for half an hour, and Mikolajek’s “petrol money” cut was £40, the standard two-thirds. The average weekly turnover of the van and its various employments amounted to no less than £5,000.

  Jozef Mikolajek knew how easy it was for police to shut up a brothel run from a house. From the back of a van was a different matter altogether. Police recovered several mobile phones from the vehicle. The scheme he had set up was simple to operate and easy to dodge police surveillance. The punter rang or texted one of a set of numbers that were advertised in the back of tabloid newspapers. “Is Olga available today” and “hv u a J-lo on yr blk” were two of the less obscene messages uncovered by police. The girls were then dispatched in the van with a description of the punter, to meet at a prearranged place. They were instructed to make the encounter look like a blind date and take him back to the van.

  “Mikolajek must be shitting like a rabbit,” said Irwin after he had read the report.

  “It doesn’t matter whether he flees the country or not, he’s finished,” said Daly.

  “And Martha Havel, too, wherever she is.”

  “She’s gone,” said Daly. “Like Lena Novak. And the other trafficked women. I’m beginning to doubt if we’ll ever find them.”

  34

  Daly heard the squawking of his hens through his sleep. For the past few days they had been breaking out of their enclosure and showing up in a ragged troupe at his front doorstep, which they used as target practice, spattering it with excrement.

  It took him a while to rouse himself. It was Sunday. He had spent th
e morning clearing weeds from the potato patch at the back of the house, and afterward, seated in an armchair, he had nodded off in front of a turf fire.

  The fire had dwindled to a few gray ashes when he awoke. He felt the raw cold creep under the drafty door. His body ached. He walked over to the window, still drugged from sleep, wondering what had disturbed the hens. To his surprise, he saw the figure of Irwin remonstrating with the upset flock, waving his arms in the air with as much dignity as a drunken man could muster.

  He opened the door and found the Special Branch detective covered in feathers.

  “You don’t need a doorbell with hens like these running about,” said Irwin.

  Daly did not reply, just backed away slightly, which Irwin took as an invitation to enter.

  “It’s a wonder I found you in the middle of all these twisting lanes and gable-ends of cottages,” said Irwin.

  He dipped his head at the lowness of the door and stumbled across the threshold.

  “I’ve finally located your nest,” he said, and then peering into the darkness, “or is it a cave. Where has all the bloody light gone?”

  “What brought you out here?” asked Daly.

  “Oh, this and that.”

  Daly stared at him. The Special Branch detective was being uncharacteristically evasive.

  Irwin sprawled across the small sofa, like a tired dog taking up too much room. “Now I know why you’re so introspective.” He surveyed the dim interior of the living room. “Can’t you at least switch on a few lights to kill the gloom?”

  Daly switched on a low lamp.

  “I had the day off,” explained Irwin. “So I thought I’d check out the scenery around the lough shore. You’ve mentioned it. Once or twice.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Are you seeing a new woman? Someone who lives nearby?”

  “No,” said Irwin with sudden bitterness. “There’s no one else.” He looked to be on the verge of tears. “In fact, I haven’t had sex for over a month.”

  He looked at Daly. “I know you’ve gone for longer without. What with your separation and all. But this is driving me crazy.” An agony of embarrassment filled his long features. “I still love Poppy. More than makes sense to me.”

  Daly went into the kitchen and brewed a fresh pot of tea.

  “The truth is I drove out here to visit you,” said Irwin as Daly handed him a cup.

  “All the way out here just to see me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought you’d understand what I’m going through.”

  Neither spoke for a long time.

  “Any cigarettes?” asked Irwin hopefully.

  When Daly returned to the living room with an unopened packet, he found Irwin busy searching the sofa, fishing behind the cushions with the expertise of someone searching for contraband.

  He grinned sheepishly at Daly. “Just curious as to what I might find.”

  “That was my father’s sofa,” said Daly. “The only things you’ll find down there are tobacco and old religious magazines.”

  Irwin lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Then he stubbed it out in the ashtray. He removed a can of beer from his coat pocket and opened it.

  “Poppy says we’re finished, Daly. It really is over. And now she’s taken Benjy.” He guzzled from the can.

  “Who’s Benjy?”

  “Our dog. I’ve spent more time with him than with any other living thing. Apart from Poppy, of course.” He was silent for a while. “It’s one thing to lose your girlfriend, but to have to say good-bye to your best friend as well—” He broke off to blow his nose. “She said Benjy doesn’t belong to me, but that’s not true. I know I’ve done bad things to Poppy, I know I’ve betrayed her—I admit it—but she can’t do this to me.”

  He placed the can of beer on the floor. “I don’t want to waste any more of your time, but I need a favor, Daly.” His voice was stretched, pleading. “I’ve some stuff to collect from her apartment. I could do with a hand.”

  Daly sighed. “You’re too drunk to drive. I’ll give you a lift.”

  It was raining when they went outside. Daly’s ten-year-old Renault spluttered in the downpour. Irwin sat quietly throughout the journey, biting the side of his thumbnail and nursing another can of beer. When they arrived at the apartment block, he pulled out a baseball cap from his pocket and pulled it low over his forehead. He checked his appearance in the sun visor mirror. The blood had drained from his face.

  “Keep the engine running, Daly. I’ll be in a hurry.”

  Daly waited, alert. Above the beat of the rain pounding the car he heard the sound of glass breaking, and an alarm going off. A few minutes later, Irwin appeared at the side of the car. He threw a large bag covering what looked to be a birdcage into the back and jumped in.

  “Let’s go!” he shouted. He was wearing a self-satisfied grin. “That was easier than I thought.”

  Daly glanced in the rearview mirror as he accelerated off. The bag shifted slightly. He looked again. The bag jerked, and something squawked from within.

  “What the hell’s in the bag?” he asked with alarm.

  “Alfie.”

  “Who?”

  “Poppy’s precious pet. He’s a parrot.” A vindictive grin split Irwin’s face. “She’s taken Benjy, so I grabbed Alfie.”

  “A parrot? It’ll smother in that plastic bag.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to look after it.”

  “You’ve lost it.”

  “Don’t say that. I already know I’ve lost it.” He gulped from the can of beer. “Tell me something different. Like how daring I am, or how great it is to pull one over on that bitch.”

  “Christ!”

  “You’re put out.”

  “How would I not be? You’ve just used me as an accessory to breaking and entry. Not to mention theft.”

  Irwin lifted the can to his mouth, but it was empty.

  “You told me you just wanted to collect some things. Why did you lie?”

  “Don’t give me grief, Daly. It was the need-to-know principle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The only people told my business are those who need to know. Anyway, I only went back to look for Benjy, but she’d taken him with her. You know she’s threatened to have him put down?”

  “Derek, this isn’t a game.” Daly tried to hold a note of patience in his voice. “With a criminal conviction for theft, you’ll be kicked off the force.”

  “Really?” His voice was sarcastic. “I think you’ll find, Daly, that this is technically a case of kidnapping. I’ve taken her parrot as ransom for my pet friend. My best friend.” He glared drunkenly at Daly. “If you think I’ve done wrong, then arrest me. You’re a policeman, remember. Or have you forgotten how to arrest lawbreakers?”

  Daly shook his head. “Someone will have seen my car and taken down the registration. Our colleagues at the station are probably doing a search on it right now.”

  “Tell them you were driving by and saw someone behaving suspiciously, and that you were just investigating. I’ll take my chances. If they track me down, I’ll just say I was sleepwalking.”

  Daly sighed. “You’ve thought of everything, I see.”

  “I told you I had it planned to a tee.”

  He leaned so close Daly could feel his alcoholic breath condense on his cheek. A question formed in Irwin’s mouth like sticky saliva. “What about your missing prostitute?”

  Daly said nothing.

  “I bet she’d make a hot date.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t seen her, have you?”

  “I’m just asking. Maybe she’d make an awful one, and then charge you £100 for the pleasure.”

  Irwin
rolled down the window and chucked the empty beer can into a hedge. Daly decided that he was not equipped to deal with the fallout from Irwin’s disintegrating love life. It was too risky and depressing a business for him to bear. He glanced at Irwin. It was difficult to decide how much self-destruction the younger detective was capable of wreaking on himself and those around him.

  A thought crossed Daly’s mind. He stared at the bag in the rearview mirror.

  “What’s the parrot going to do for food? Have you thought of that?”

  “Shit.” Irwin pulled a hand over his forehead and groaned.

  Twenty minutes later, Daly dropped the detective off at his mother’s house. Irwin’s shoulders slumped a little as he dragged out the bag. He walked up to the front door, head bowed, like a man retracing his steps, searching for a way to correct the fundamental error of his adulthood that had brought him back to his parents’ doorstep with a kidnapped parrot as baggage.

  Daly had just stepped through the door of his cottage when his mobile rang.

  “Hello.” He could hear breathing on the other end, but no one answered.

  “Hello. Who is this?” he demanded.

  Silence.

  “Is that you, Derek?” He looked at the caller display, but did not recognize the number.

  He was about to hang up, when a voice spoke.

  “Celcius, this is Lena.”

  He dropped into a chair in surprise.

  35

  “Lena, where are you?” asked Daly.

  “I’m staying in one of Jack’s properties,” she replied. “A house in Foxborough Mews.”

  The place rang a bell with him. It was the ghost estate where Mooney lived. He wondered how the former IRA man would feel knowing he had company at last.

  “You have to come down to the police station,” said Daly, his voice terse. “You’re a suspect in a conspiracy-to-blackmail case. No amount of running is going to change that. You’re also in grave danger. There’s a man with a limp who won’t rest until he finds you.”

  Lena took a deep breath. “I’ve seen him, again. At least signs of him and his Jeep. He’s always there, on the periphery. I think he’s been watching me for some time.”