Border Angels (7 page)

On his way to his ex-wife’s house in the city, Daly stopped at a florist’s and bought two dozen freshly cut daffodils. He hoped they would remind Anna of the spring they had met, when the flowers bloomed in wild profusion along the banks of the river Lagan.

A young man opened the front door with a fixed smile and blank blue eyes.

“Hello,” said Daly. “I’m Anna’s ex-husband.”

“Oh, yes. She’s expecting you.”

“Brian is it?”

“No, Tom.”

“What happened to Brian? You change so often.”

“Anna’s needs are very complex.” There was a slight hint of reproach in his voice.

“I’m well aware of her needs,” said Daly coldly.

“You’ll find her in the living room.”

Anna had just had a massage. She lay on a bed in the middle of the room. The smell of lavender oil hung in the air. She was asleep. Daly placed the flowers in a vase and peeked at the rest of the house. The walls had been painted white and the blinds removed from the windows. Most of their furniture was gone. He wondered how she could live in such a blank space. The layout of the rooms had also changed. She had installed a bathroom downstairs and lowered the worktops in the kitchen. Anna had reorganized her life completely. He glanced into the study, which had been formerly his refuge, the place where in the evenings after getting back from work he would stretch out on the sofa and play his music. She had converted the room to a laundry. The cozy house in which they had spent ten years of married life and whose walls contained many happy memories was gone forever.

He went through the other rooms of the house, his eyes scanning every horizontal surface and corner as if he was searching for a clue, or a missing household object. All the time his mind raced through his memories. He was about to climb into the attic and start loading up his boxes when he heard her stir. By the time he came back down the stairs, Tom had brought in a wheelchair and was positioning her for a lift. He slung her arm around his neck and swiveled her to the edge of the bed. Daly tried to help but next to Tom’s expert movements, his efforts were blundering, inexperienced. His hands grasped at her lower back, but she brushed him away.

“Tom’s the nurse, not you. I can manage without your help.”

“Of course you can,” he replied. He noticed that her hair had been cut short, spiky at the top. Her clothes were different, too. More casual and tight-fitting, the high sleeves of her blouse revealing her toned muscular arms. She noticed his gaze and touched her hair self-consciously as if trying to smooth it down. He suspected her new image was a way of making a fresh start, as if she had to adopt a disguise to escape the pain of the past.

She wheeled herself into the kitchen and began putting away the dishes and pots from the dishwasher. She swung the wheelchair about the room with a determined vitality as though making a show of how well she could cope. She had convinced herself that apart from the assistance of the nurses, she was competent and independent. And he had done the same. It was a game they had played, to delude themselves into believing that nothing had changed after the car crash. But, of course, everything had changed. When she learned she would never walk again, she built a barrier of privacy around herself, one that was breached only by medical professionals. He thought her disability would make her more vulnerable, but the loss of her legs had hardened her heart. Six months after coming home from the hospital, she became the executioner of their troubled marriage.

“We need to be apart more than we need to be together,” she had told him. “I can’t stop blaming you for the accident.”

“I blame myself.”

He had tried to save their marriage, making all sorts of promises. He told her he would apply for a part-time position in the police force, but she rejected his offers. He feared the accident had changed her personality or induced some sort of emotional amnesia. Their marriage may not have been perfect, but it wasn’t a disaster zone either.

“Having you at my side makes me think of the time I could walk, and that’s my past, not my future,” she said. “Every time you touch me I feel like a foreigner in my own body.”

The pain of their physical separation burned within him, but deep down he felt grateful. That was the paradox. The more time he spent with her, the more he chewed himself up with guilt.

After the nurse had left, he went into the attic and began bringing down the boxes. He lifted out a silver leaf plaque, an award for dedication that he had received at the start of his police career. It was still in pristine condition, unlike most things from that period of his life. Downstairs he handed it to her.

“What’s this?”

“A gift.” He felt like a man alone on the deck of a sinking ship handing over all the last of his precious cargo.

Reluctantly, she took it and placed it on the worktop.

“I’m glad you’re doing this. The house feels lighter already.”

He stared at his feet, reasoning that he should not feel so bad.

“Do you need anything? Some shopping? Any odd jobs about the house?”

“I have everything under control.” She took a tray from the fridge. On it were two freshly poured glasses of champagne. She handed him one, sipped the other. He downed the contents of the glass as quickly as he could.

“Is this it?” he said, his voice flat. “Is this good-bye?”

“No,” she replied. “Good-bye you should only have to say once. I just wanted to mark the occasion, that’s all.”

“Shall I leave now?”

“Yes.”

The low winter fog shrouded the motorway as Daly drove home, hunched over the steering wheel. The boxes touched the roof of his car, blocking his vision through the rearview mirror. He found the effect disconcerting. Police officers in Northern Ireland took an unwritten oath to keep a wary eye fixed on the road behind when traveling through border country. However, on this occasion, it was not dissident terrorists but the ghosts of the past that made him anxious.

He was half an hour from his cottage when he pulled off the motorway and delved deeper into the labyrinth of byroads crisscrossing the border. Armagh’s crooked, introverted little lanes were as familiar to him as the processes of his own mind. Thorn trees leaned out of the fog, their branches sweeping over the road, twigs scraping the car as he took flight from the city and his troubled past.

A dark valley swallowed up the road. He drove as though hell-bent, descending into an underworld to escape the convoluted feelings of guilt and loss that were crippling his libido. Soon the car wheels bit into the loose stones of a lane. He stopped and switched on the headlights. The bulk of a dilapidated farmhouse appeared in the mist like an unsteady reflection on water. He killed the lights and waited for a while, his breath forming a cloud against the windshield. He was back at the border brothel. He had returned because he felt a need to reacquaint himself with its shadows, to find out more about the women imprisoned there, where they came from, and why they had been unable to escape even when they knew their pimp was dead. Sometimes, the bonds of cruelty were just as hard to untangle as those of love.

He got out and stretched his legs. The house and outbuildings were a collection of gray fragments in the mist, the air still enough for a frost. At the bottom of the garden a pile of tree trunks, knotted with brambles, caught his attention. Their branches loomed out of the fog, smooth and sleek, like a gleaming jumble of female bodies, limbs floundering as if turning over in sleep. Then he noticed the smell, a faint scent wafting slowly through the darkening air from the shadows around the farmhouse. Daly recognized it instantly. The perfume on the photograph. The smell of roses and soap, female flesh and promised sex. He stood still and studied the silent house. He had not noticed the scent when he first got out of the car. He shifted his weight slowly and moved off the gravel path onto grass. It took less than a few seconds to scoot along the garden to the rear of the house. He peered through the windows, but the broken panes were sheets of blackness. The back door hung slightly ajar. He eased through it, half expecting a hand to grab him out of the darkness. He listened carefully and heard the sound of a foot slowly pressing onto broken glass.

Something brushed the side of his head with a clacking noise. His heart leaped in his chest, as he instinctively dove for cover. A dark bird, like a crow, gave an angry caw and flapped into the mist.

When he looked up, the pale face of Lena Novak hovered above him.

“Don’t you know?” she said. “Birds hate being trapped. They like to take off in any direction they choose.”

For a moment, Daly thought she was going to disappear, too, but instead she stood and watched while he dragged himself back to his feet.

“My name is Inspector Celcius Daly,” he said. “I’m a police officer.”

“Welcome to Club Paradise, Inspector Daly,” she replied, melting back into the darkness of the house.

Lena’s voice floated through the dark interior. “Watch you don’t trip, Inspector. This place is a mess.”

Daly switched on his torch and followed her into the cramped rooms. His light swung over her for an instant. She was wearing a short fur coat, jeans, and black boots. Her long hair had been cut roughly. Although she was too young and fresh faced to have worry lines, he saw the tension beneath her skin, the instinctive distrust that pulled at her facial muscles, and the practiced gaze of her eyes, the intensifying of the pupils, which suggested she had seen a lot, and not all of it pleasant.

“I’m investigating the death of Sergei Kriich,” said Daly.

“I’m glad to hear he’s dead,” she replied. “He was a piece of shit.”

“I didn’t think the news would leave you choked.”

“No one should give a damn for people like him.”

“Someone has to, though, Ms. Novak. Law and order have to be upheld.”

She sat down at the edge of a sofa. Daly placed the torch on a low table so that it lit up the wall opposite. A flurry of shadows rolled over a set of hooks and dressing gowns. Lena looked at Daly. Her gaze was challenging, bleak.

“I’ve met policemen in this country. They’re not so different from the policemen back home.”

“People are the same wherever you go.”

“In my experience they do the same things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Who are we talking about?”

“The policemen here.”

She pulled a face. “What all men do who visit places like this. They’re crazy. Sex crazy.”

She had raised the question of sex. Exploited sex. The thought of it left him feeling tired.

“You were with Sergei in the car. What happened that night?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She gripped her arms against the chill in the air. “Are you going to arrest me now?”

It was not really a question. More a challenge.

“I want to help you.”

“That’s a line I heard before.” She reached down and slipped off her boots. She rubbed her stockinged toes, flexed them on the carpet.

“Chilblains,” she said. “What you get for running barefoot in the snow.”

“Why have you come back to this place?”

“I had to collect personal things.” She held up a small rag doll. “My grandmother gave me this. She said I should keep it with me always.”

“Is it meant to bring you good luck?”

“If I take care of it. Yes.”

“What about taking care of yourself?”

“I patch myself up best I can.”

Daly thought he understood why she had returned for the doll. It was a type of blessing. A reminder of happier times to pit against the darkness of her current predicament. Her life was in danger and she needed whatever sense of comfort the past provided.

“If I can stay as quiet as her, I shall be safe,” said Lena.

“I want you to know you have nothing to fear. We have everything ready for you.”

“What do you have ready?”

“A safe place. A refuge run by women. We don’t want anything to happen to you until we find out who murdered Kriich and what happened to Jack Fowler. You can stay there until the investigation is over.”

“That sounds cozy. What happens afterward?”

“If you committed no crime, then a visit to immigration and a short flight home. Back to your country.”

He saw the guard drop from her face, and a range of vulnerable emotions spread themselves out on hopeful display. He saw anticipation and homesickness, fear and relief, and what might have been tears in her eyes. Somehow, her beauty exaggerated her need for reassurance. Daly felt as though he were about to be cajoled into granting a favor.

“And what if there was a crime? What will happen to me then?”

“I’m a policeman. I would have to arrest you.”

“I have no passport, no visa. That makes me an illegal immigrant. Why don’t you arrest me right now?”

“That’s a matter for another department. I’m a detective. I want to know what happened the night of Kriich’s murder.”

She did not answer.

“Perhaps you acted in self-defense?” suggested Daly. “Did he threaten you? Was your life in danger?”

“I didn’t like the cologne he was wearing.”

She stood up and made toward the door as if to flee. Daly did not move. She stopped and gave him a backward glance.

“Let me ask you a question,” she said from the doorway. “Have you ever feared for your life? Not in a split second, but on a daily basis? With a person whose violent threats are as common as talk about the weather?” She paused and stared at his silent face. “I didn’t think you had. Look around you at this place. This is not a part of the country or the life you know. This farmhouse belongs to a different world. You’re the foreigner here, not me. Let that shed some light on your investigation.”

She looked fatigued. Dark rings marked her eyes. The shadows of the house had worn away at her.

“What about Jack Fowler?”

She shrugged. “He saved me from this hell.”

“He was found drowned at his home.”

“I know nothing about that.”

“You must have some idea why he died. Your photograph was left at the scene.”

“Jack told me he was going to leave his wife. He wanted me to run away with him, but I couldn’t.”

“Run away where?”

“Malaga, first. Then Croatia. I don’t know where after that. He didn’t know himself. But I couldn’t leave immediately. I had things to get.”

“What things?”

“A passport. And some souvenirs.”

“Souvenirs?”

“Yes. Presents for my younger sister and brother at home. I wanted them to think my trip to Ireland was happy and fruitful.”

Daly felt drawn to the cold glitter of her eyes. Her pain was something dangerous and formidable, a weapon he could never disarm. Instinctively, he felt he had come to a threshold, a point of no return, over which men like Fowler had crossed. Travelers drawn to a fire that would never warm them.

“Poor Jack,” she continued. “He was deluded. I did not love him in that way. Not enough to run away with him.”

“I find your story interesting.”

“What are you saying? That you would like to be in my shoes?”

“I didn’t say that.”

She sat down on the sofa beside him. Daly shifted uncomfortably. He began to fear their conversation had drawn them closer not only in understanding but also in complicity. Much closer than he wanted to be. She sat turned slightly away from him. Her fur coat slipped, revealing a long slender neck where her dark hair had been brutally shorn. She was a strange creature, he thought, wary and suspicious one moment, trusting and intimate the next. He stared at her pale neck. The memory of his wife’s new hairstyle swam into his consciousness. For several moments, his thoughts ran awry, and the image of Anna’s face rose before him, so radiant with sadness he wanted to reach out and hold her.

Lena turned to him and gave a start, as though something in his face had frightened her. He placed his hand on her shoulder to reassure her, but the tendons of her elongated neck tightened. She sat up quickly, pulling her fur coat around her shoulders. He spoke, called her Anna by mistake, and cursed under his breath. She hurried out of the house.

“Lena!” he shouted, running after her into the night. His voice hung in the cold air, but she was gone, her running figure scooped up by the mist. He shouted her name again, this time with hoarse vehemence. From deep in the forest, he heard a brief shriek. He ran into the fog, the blurred branches of trees ghosting by his face. In a dense thicket, he found the rag doll dangling from a bramble, like a crumpled miniature version of Lena, its costume torn by thorns.

He called her name again, this time less aggressively. He wondered if she hiding somewhere close by. The fog lifted, drifting off through the trees. After a moment’s hesitation, he floundered deeper into the forest, stumbling over ditches, sudden hollows, and fallen branches, but there was no sign of her. She had dissolved like a fragment of mist.

The sodden undergrowth penetrated his clothes, and he felt a chill come over him. What a miserable shelter the forest would make against the coldness of the night, he thought. He worried that if she did not get help, she might succumb to hypothermia.

“I only want you to be safe!” he shouted, cupping his hands so that his voice would travel farther. He listened carefully, thinking he could hear the rustle of her departing footsteps fade into the depths of the night.

He returned to his car, half hoping she would be standing there, waiting, ready to be taken to the warmth of the police station, ready to sit opposite him and communicate, if only with those mysterious blue eyes.

There was no sign of her when he returned. He slammed the car door shut, annoyed. He had spent too much of their conversation trying to foster a sense of trust. He should have cut to the chase and demanded information. The names of the gang that had trafficked her and the other women, for a start, as well as Jack Fowler’s movements in the days before his death.

He drove the car slowly down the lane, still hoping to pick out her figure in the headlights. He resolved not to tell his colleagues about their encounter. He could hardly report the conversation they had without raising doubts over his effectiveness as a detective. After all, how many suspects in a murder case managed to escape after challenging a police officer to arrest them?