Border Angels by Anthony Quinn Page A

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