CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

 

Monotonous daytime television played out in the background as Dan sipped at his coffee in Clements Cafe on the Lisburn Road in Belfast. He kept his head down and his back to the door, not wanting to engage with the locals and regulars who frequented it.

This was his first attempt at socializing for six months. Six months of sobriety and a gruelling self-enforced training regime which had transformed his body from flabby to fit. His body felt better but his mind was lagging behind and this was his first real foray back into civilisation since the incident at Carter International Logistics.

It wasn't going to plan.

"Well, Danny? I heard what happened to you love, and it's a disgrace. I can hardly believe it. You know....."

Dan let Jude ramble on with her heartfelt sympathy. The woman was only trying her best, in her own way, to make him feel better. But Dan felt awful. He couldn't sleep. Eating was a real effort. And socialising was out of the question. Dan had tried hard to come to terms with what had happened, but none of it made sense and the more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

He felt his heartbeat quicken and an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia swept over him as the heat in the café increased to an unbearable level and the noise from within it became deafening. He reached for his coffee and missed the cup by an inch, knocking it to the floor to smash at his feet. His sense of perception and the judging of distance had not yet returned – it maybe never would.

"...don't worry about that. These things have to be expected in a man with your condition. And is your head still sore? I'm sure you'll get used to it. You know, my cousin lost a leg one time and..."

Dan stood up from the table and brushed past Jude, almost knocking her down. He raced for the door and ran outside into the crisp autumnal morning.

A light breeze swept leaves up the street, the weather promising rain later that day. He sucked in lungfuls of fresh moist air and prodded absently at the hole in his face where his left eye had once been.

He turned to examine his reflection in the window; his face, as always, appeared alien. Angry red scars ran down from his hairline and across to where his eye had once been. The surface of the skin was rough to his touch and the damn thing itched continually. Forever reminding him of what used to there.

From behind the glass, a mother and small child stared back at him. The child, maybe three or four years old, gaped in horror, frozen to the spot. Then she ran to her mother who held her close, soothing the child. He read her lips, 'It's OK', he heard her say, 'It's OK'.

It wasn't OK.

Dan drove his hands into his pockets and made his way home. He avoided the inquisitive gaze of passers-by who stared at his face and the damage that had been caused. It steeled him and fired up a hatred and anger that he had been suppressing for months. But what could he do?

When he arrived at the door of his apartment, he reached into the pocket of his jacket for the key and as he placed it in the lock he looked up to the small hole in the woodwork dead centre on the door. Right at eye level - even he couldn't miss it.

The hole had been created by a nail, on which had hung his wallet and a small empty plastic bag. The bag that had once contained tiger bone. It had been placed there for him to find, on his return from hospital. It had been placed there to warn him that they knew where he lived. Placed there by the man that had struck with a crowbar. The blow that had knocked him out cold, fracturing his skull and eye socket and irreparably damaging his eye. The blow that had lost him his job and aided the police in successfully prosecuting him for a racially aggravated assault and burglary.

He pushed the door open and entered his home, slamming the door and its constant reminder behind him as he went. A red light flashed on his answering machine indicating a new message and he pressed the button to listen as he passed through the hall towards the kitchen. Dirty dishes crowded the sink and worktops, like they had done for weeks, and Dan's anger released itself in a scream. With a sweep of his arm he knocked the dishes to the floor, where they smashed and rolled, spilling what was left of their contents all over his already cluttered and filthy kitchen.

The voice of John Cunningham, his ex-wife's dogged solicitor, sounded out from the answering machine in the hall as Dan sat down at the table contemplating the mess that was his home and his life.

"Hello? Hello? This is a message for Mr Daniel Harpur. It's John Cunningham here, from Cunningham and Sons, Solicitors. I am still waiting for your last three months payments, and to be honest, I'm sick of this constant game of cat and mouse! Since you clearly don't intend co-operating in the payment plan we agreed upon, I have gone back to the court to demand payment in full! You will be receiving a letter forthwith!"

The machine clicked off and Dan was left staring once more at his messy kitchen floor. Was there no end to it? He'd lost his eye, his career and his whole bloody life for the ground down bones of a tiger!

The answering machine then automatically played the remainder of the messages it had stored. Messages that Dan had chosen to ignore. One played out from his mother, promising to call round to visit. Two more were from Kelly Ross. She didn't leave much in the way of a message; just enough to twist the knife into Dan further still.

"Danny? Are you OK? It's Kelly Ross... Have you any news?"

After a few moments to gather his thoughts and quell the anger that rose within him, Dan grabbed his laptop from the table and moved out of the kitchen to the living room. He switched it on and vowed to leave it that way, until he had found out everything he could about tigers, tiger bones and who was involved with them.

The people involved had murdered his friend and destroyed Dan's life.

He would not stop until he had done the same to them.

# # #

The weather in London was cold, grey and dismal in comparison to the warm Indian climate Heather had only just returned from. As she looked out of the window from her small dingy office at the WIA Headquarters, she felt that it matched her mood well.

On her return from the Panna Tiger Reserve, having spectacularly failed in her bid to capture Kojo Selassie, she had been greeted with paperwork and bills demanding eye watering amounts of money for equipment and services used in her expedition. No commiserations from her authorities or encouragement to try again. Only grim faces and complaints. The head of the WIA, Peter Blackthorn, summed it up when he called her in for a debriefing.

"We had a lot riding on your endeavours , Heather. Perhaps I didn't emphasise the importance, or maybe I should have sent someone else instead? Not only did you allow Selassie to escape, but you allowed him to escape with one of the last breeding females on the reserve and her cubs! It's been a calamity, Heather. Too risky from the very beginning. I should never have let you talk me into it in the first place."

"That's unfair, Peter! You said it yourself. The only way to stop the poachers is to follow the chain to the top. To the dealers! Selassie and whoever he works with are the ones we were after. We agreed that a tiger must be sacrificed in order to follow it, did we not?"

"We did. But you've lost that tiger, Heather! It's been two days now and we've heard nothing."

"We're so restricted, Peter! I had to play everything by the book and my hands were tied. What we need to fight these people is free rein and a strong arm internationally. Selassie is greasing the palms of officials all over Africa and Asia, and crossing borders at will. Following that tiger out of Indian jurisdiction and into Nepal, Bhutan or China, or possibly all bloody three would have been a nightmare!"

"Which is precisely why we needed to catch him in India! Get back to your office and compile a report on the matter. I have to apply for more funding in the near future, and God only knows, without results the Wildlife Investigation Agency itself could become as endangered as the animals we're trying to protect! We rely on charity, Heather. A high profile arrest such as Selassie would have produced interest and funding from all angles. But now...well..."

"I was close, Peter. It boiled down to a matter of luck. We also rely on good luck and sparse information from oppressed and frightened people. If we had some muscle! Some way of fighting these criminals that would hit them hard!"

"Look, your efforts are appreciated, but we have few enough resources and manpower as it is. We operate within the law. We're not mercenaries. Anyway, there are perhaps more manageable projects we could look at – African elephants, illegal logging in the Amazon, plastic in the oceans. A depressingly endless list."

"But, Peter, we're so close to catching Selassie! Just give me a little longer..."

He lifted his phone to make a call and waved her away. Heather left his office deflated and frustrated. She racked her brains for any other way she could have played it, but it always boiled down to the same thing. Luck.

If she had had her way, Heather would have marched into the village of the poachers and knocked some heads together. She would have locked them up and beat them until the whereabouts of Selassie and the tiger had been told.

Every single person in the village to which they had tracked the trail had remained silent. The rangers knew who the poachers were, and the poachers knew Selassie. It wasn't rocket science, but all were so infuriatingly intertwined and the area so vast and isolated, that it made life very difficult indeed. Within minutes of arriving in the village, the tiger, if it was one, must have been whisked away in the back of a vehicle to join the scores of others heading for China. The trail had gone cold just like that. Needles and haystacks sprang to mind.

She averted her gaze from the window and back to the papers, as the phone on her desk began to ring.

"Hello. Wildlife Investigation Agency. Heather Walsh speaking."

"Hello. I'd like to speak to someone about tigers?"

Thinking it a prank from someone in the building, at her expense, Heather wasn't amused.

"Is this a joke? I really don't have time for this..."

"My name is Daniel Harpur. I found your details on the internet. I believe you head up investigations into endangered tigers in Asia and their sale on the black market? I have information that could be of use to you. But it's a two way thing. I want information in return."

"What information do you have, Mr Harpur?"

"Three Chinese gangsters killed my friend, over a tiny bag of tiger bone in Laohu's Traditional Chinese Medicine Shop in Belfast. I found the men at Carter International Logistics Headquarters in Belfast Harbour. You'll not be surprised to hear that we don't have tigers in Northern Ireland, so I'm guessing it was shipped into there from somewhere else."

"Are you a police officer?"

"No. They don't seem to be very interested in this case."

"There's not a lot of solid information there, Mr Harpur, but I can look into it. With regards to exchanging information...well...it really would need to be first class intelligence for anything like that to happen."

"I understand... what if I could find out more? What exactly is it that you need to make it first class information ?"

"I need to know what quantities are involved. Criminals move tiger bone all over the world, as powder, in wine, meat for restaurants, decoration. You may have just stumbled across the end product. To be honest, I need the supplier, not the street dealer or the user, and I need to trace the powder back to wherever it originated so I can try to stop it. Look, Mr Harpur, dangerous criminals are involved in this business. It is mostly the Chinese who demand these products, so the triads will be heavily involved. They are well organised and very dangerous. You should leave any investigations to your local authorities."

"They don't want to know. It's been six months since my friend was murdered and the police are no further on in their investigation. His killer is still walking free."

"You said you wanted to know more. What is it you need to know?"

"Everything."