Recovering Commando Box Set

by Finn Óg

  The scrapbook was poor, on reflection, as a shrine to a son. Mounted with Pritt Stick and slapped in without structure, the barracks stood amid the mess. Bullet strikes and ricochet marks, stains on the tarmac – which his grandmother had claimed was her son’s blood draining into the street, but it was hard to tell in black and white.

  In truth Anthony had long since lost interest in the story. Where once it had served as inspiration of a sort, it was now just a pedigree to which he could cling. “My uncle died for Ireland” didn’t sound so good any more now that the war was over. His own motivation may have had its genesis in the event fifteen years before his birth, but it hadn’t stuck. He was more interested in not being just another skinny little bastard in a forgotten town with nothing to do.

  2

  Sinead had called twice. He’d watched the phone light up and Charity appear – the affectionate nickname he’d always intended to edit. Sam’s desire to answer was as strong as his determination not to. He hadn’t heard from Sinead in an age – since he’d called to tell her she was safe and he was ok. “Getting away from things” was how he’d said they’d be for a while. He expected people to understand. The fact that father and daughter had put to sea with no course set should have surprised nobody.

  Of course, he knew Sinead would find him if she needed to – her sister could see to that. That bolshie little bitch was good at her job, capable. In truth he liked the twin, in very small doses. She was testing. She had an opinion on everything and a mouth like a mower, churning up and cutting away at anything she disagreed with.

  On Sinead’s third attempt to get through Sam took the view that something was wrong – she was a sensitive type and not one to intrude on his time with Isla. Sam stared at the buzzing handset and decided that the time had come to take a call.

  Grim was content he’d done all he could: a change of clothes at Primark to dump any devices the spooks might have managed to place on him, a departure from rushed conversations in cars that they now knew were ripped to hell and a stroll in a forest amid creaking trees with great dollops of rain creeping through the canopy.

  He snapped and rustled for a full twenty minutes before anyone presented themselves. First came a man who in any other environment might have made an effective enough manager. They nodded at one another but said nothing; standing wiping the heavy droplets from their cheeks as they waited for the boss.

  He made them stiffen for a full hour under the swaying shelter. Then, from nowhere, came that slow gait; his slim build testament to time spent hungry in a cell smeared with his own shit. But the darkness was inescapable. How someone so pale could exude such black intent was baffling. His aura was pure menace, born of utter hatred.

  Nods all round then clipped conversation. There was a collective comfort, close to trust, in their shared experience at the pleasure of the queen. Their precautions, hard learned, felt impenetrable.

  And yet still, someone caught every word.

  “Ehm, how are things?”

  Sam knew immediately that she needed something. Their conversations were riddled with complexity, subtlety, caution. What was unsaid was often more important than what was actually discussed. Sinead was forcing herself to start with a pleasantry otherwise she would have opened with “I just wanted to see how you both are”.

  “Grand,” Sam replied. “You’re not, though, I’d say.” His tone urging her to cut to the chase.

  “That obvious? Sam, I could really do with some help.”

  He exhaled. “Smashing and bashing, no doubt.”

  “No, not really.”

  “Not really might not crack it, Sinead. You know I’m not wanting that kind of work any more – it’s too dangerous for Isla.”

  “This isn’t … it’s, well, it’s more straightforward – and it’s good money,” she added in a rush. “Cash job if you want it, and for you it’s as handy as it comes.”

  Sam had heard this type of talk before from others in his select bunch of ex-clients. Invariably the soft jobs had usually ended in bruising or bloodshed. Sinead, however, had been the first employer of his new career, and his most trustworthy. She was also the only one who knew about his circumstances – his daughter, their way of life, their bereavement.

  “Does it involve your sister?” he asked.

  Sinead suppressed something that on a better day might have become a giggle. She knew how the two of them locked horns yet suffered from mutual, but well-concealed, professional admiration.

  “Kind of. She’s appearing as an expert at a trial.”

  “Oh? What type of trial?”

  “The worst kind.”

  “So you want her minded.”

  “Not in a way that she would notice, if you follow me.”

  “That feisty little mare is well capable of looking after herself,” Sam said, baulking at the thought of spending long periods in Áine’s company.

  There was silence at the other end and Sam somehow knew he had gone too far. This was the sister of a good friend – a very good friend. That was as far as Sam could allow the description to go. For now.

  “Where’s the trial?” he asked softly.

  “Criminal Courts, here.”

  She meant Dublin, which was two hours from where he was and therefore a pain in the arse as Isla needed to be kept on the clock, no disturbances.

  “The family – the parents of the victim, they were looking for a consultant, and, well, you can guess the rest.”

  Sam’s shame dawned on him. Sinead’s sister was a tech genius. She worked for all the big companies in Ireland, from local start-ups to the west coast multinationals. Well, she had worked for them – until Sam had enlisted her help with a job and got her blacklisted.

  “Has Áine not worked since …” He didn’t want to say too much on the phone.

  “No,” Sinead replied, clipped and to the point.

  “So she’s, like, freelancing?”

  “This is her first job in months. She’s not impressed.”

  “But I thought she was in big demand?”

  “Sam, that last thing ruined her reputation with Silicon Valley. They closed her right down. She’s been going up the walls.”

  “She must hate me.”

  There was a pause, which was confirmation enough. “She wouldn’t want you looking out for her anyway,” Sinead said.

  “How did she get this job then?”

  “The family came to me looking for someone good, someone they could trust.”

  This was no surprise. Sinead had become the go-to person for the Irish media when it came to commentators on abuse, immigration, prostitution or the examples of online bullying that never seemed to go away. If he allowed himself to acknowledge it, her voice on the radio or appearance on the telly always made his mind wander into complicated territory.

  “How long is the trial due to last?” Sam asked.

  Sinead sensed the opening. “Three days. Starts next week but she’ll need someone sooner than that. The bastard just got bail.”

  Sam knew immediately what case she was referring to. “I’m with you now,” he said. “The bloke who groomed the special needs girl?”

  “Woman,” she corrected.

  “How did he get bail if he was up for murder?”

  “Haven’t you heard about the prison crisis?”

  “No.”

  “That fire in Portlaoise Prison led to some edict. Unless there’s a threat of flight or reoffending, even the worst criminals are tagged and sent home. There’s no space for scumbags in the cells.”

  “Would they not release a few thieves to find room for a murderer?”

  “He’s not a murderer yet. Innocent until—”

  “He’ll be found guilty, though, won’t he?”

  “I’d say so. The stuff Áine found was horrendous.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The cops weren’t doing much but the family knew the answer lay in her computer and phone. Áine was brought in by the witnes
s’s folks to do the Guards’ job for them. It was she who found all the messages hidden away in hard drives.”

  “Why couldn’t the cops find it?”

  “They said they couldn’t crack the security, and the big boys refused to help. They went to the cloud people in the States and got knocked back, so they gave up.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Didn’t take Áine long, as you can imagine.”

  Sam had seen Áine at work. Her personal workspace at home was like ground control at NASA.

  “But if the victim’s dead, who’s looking for protection – besides your sister?”

  “That would be the witness – another woman. He abused her as well but she didn’t say anything at the time. It was only when the dead woman’s body turned up that she came forward and her folks came to me. That led to Áine, and now he’s got bail and we’re all shitting ourselves.”

  “If the witness had told someone earlier, could he have gone to jail before he killed the other woman?”

  “Not that simple, Sam,” Sinead said, evidently exhausted at the male take on such matters. “Even if she had spoken up, nobody would have listened.”

  “Why?”

  “Cos the killer’s got a respectable enough job and she’s got, well, she’s got issues.”

  “What sort of issues?”

  “You’ll understand when you see her.”

  Sam noted how Sinead was subtly assuming he was going to take the job.

  “I think you’d better tell me the whole shebang now.”

  Sinead sighed. “She’s tricky – the witness. She behaves like a child but she’s in her thirties. There’s no official diagnosis – you know, she hasn’t officially got a lower mental age or anything. Her parents, they’re well got, if you know what I mean. I don’t think they’d want to think of her like that, you know, as having special needs. But she’s not a normal adult – not to my mind anyway. She’s like a really spoilt teenager.”

  “So how did he groom her? How did he get at her?”

  “Same as the dead woman – phone, chat room. That’s why Áine is key to the prosecution. She can draw direct comparisons between the dead woman he groomed and the surviving one.”

  “If she has special needs, what’s she doing with a phone and a computer?”

  “What planet are you on, Sam?” Sinead’s frustration broke through. “You think that because she’s got some mental health issues she’s not entitled to have the same gadgets as everyone else?”

  “Ok, sorry. I just don’t want to be doing this kind of work any more.”

  “Is that a no?”

  “Course not. I just don’t know what to do with Isla. She’s only started school and it’s tough for her. She’s two years behind and it’s a struggle.”

  “It’s only a week, Sam. Maybe …”

  Sam waited while Sinead wrestled with what she was about to say.

  “Maybe I could mind her for you? Take her to school and whatever. Might be fun.”

  Sam was taken aback. It would mean Sinead having to come and stay on the boat – their space and their sanctuary. He found it confusing, conflicting.

  Sinead filled the silence. “It’s a bad idea.”

  “No, no, Sinead, it’s not a bad idea. I just need to think about it if that’s ok?”

  “Of course, of course.” Sinead was now on the back foot.

  “And Sinead?”

  “Yes?”

  “If I do take this on, there’s not a chance I’ll be charging you, you know that.”

  “Well, I reckoned you’d be running low on funds, so I mentioned you to the father of the witness. It seemed to put him at ease and money’s no object – they’re worth megabucks.”

  The call ended and Sam stared at the floorboards that had once concealed his cash. The bilge of the boat was scarily empty.

  And at that moment he heard an almighty crash from the shoreline nearby.

  Anthony didn’t know Belfast. Not at all. He’d only been to the city a few times shopping with his mother as a nipper, and then once at Christmas for the turning on of the lights – the one and only treat he could remember. His grandmother had been there too. It had ended as quickly as it had begun with the rattle and shove of buggies and a herd of humans filling and emptying the streets in a frenzy. Mr Tumble had twatted about on stage, much to Anthony’s shame. At ten he was much too old for such entertainment. He’d been too short to see anything and too big to be hoisted aloft. A crap day, he had told his mother when they got home. Perhaps that’s why she’d never bothered to take him anywhere since.

  He got off the train at Central Station. It had been drilled into him that the address was a short walk from there, and he had been forced to memorise his instructions: cross the street, walk towards town, stop at the arch to the market, because nothing was to be written down. Not ever.

  Anthony managed the first set of directions. His gaze lifted beyond the green wrought-iron fence to the stone-carved lettering: “St George’s Market”. Inside was a bustling mania, and a stench. At the far end fish men in white wellies were pushing brush shafts with wide rubber blades, swashing guts and swill towards the drains. Closer to the gate well-dressed women in plimsolls were dismantling stalls and rolling up paintings and prints.

  Next set of directions: turn back the way you came, thirty feet, glass-fronted offices.

  He was nervous but determined not to make a mistake and so he marked it out like Jim Hawkins pacing the steps to buried treasure. Looks like nothing, he thought, but then he’d been told not to lift his head, to avoid the CCTV cameras, and the gaze from under his hoodie was furtive.

  His next job was to walk the route he would use to bring the car in, over and over. He had to walk it different ways from the motorway to the location in case of traffic or road closures or accidents. So he set to it.

  “What the …?”

  Sam had tried hard to stop swearing. They called it the “fuck tape” back in the Marines and talked about taking the tape out before they went home on leave. In truth, it was more than just their language they had to watch when dipping back into civilian life, and today was no exception.

  Sam marched straight at the man in the overalls and clutched him by the throat. “What were you thinking?”

  The bloke stared at Sam, terrified. At six feet and sixteen stone the man was no soft touch, but Sam had come ashore and up the beach at such speed that his fury blew ahead of him. The man’s rigger boots dangled off the ground as he choked out an apology.

  “Hydraulic failure,” was all he managed to grunt after Sam let him fall to examine the wreckage. Under a small boat lay the remains of his van. Isla’s booster seat was crushed and Sam’s throbbing temper gave him enough strength to wrench back a panel and retrieve her colouring books and blanket.

  “You twat,” he spat at the crane driver. “You’ve got a whole bloody yard to swing a boat and you decide to lift it over the only vehicle parked in the place.” His incredulity made his voice summit in register. It was all he could do not to lace the driver with a kicking. But Sam was in the process of trying to remove himself from such temptations – to be normal, more measured. He breathed deep and ground his teeth.

  “I’m really sorry, mate, I just didn’t think the crane would pack up.”

  “It’s knackered. What if my kid had been in that van?”

  The driver looked at the blanket in his arms and the colourful books and shook his head in despair. Sam reckoned he’d got the message.

  “Help me get this door open, I need the insurance docs.”

  3

  “How was your day?”

  “Really good.” She beamed.

  It was the first time he’d heard Isla say that.

  “Why have you got my bike?”

  “Cos we’re going to cycle back to the boat today, darlin’.”

  “It’s a long way, Daddy.”

  “Yes, but there’s been an accident with the van.”

  “Did y
ou have a crash?”

  “No, wee love. Some eejit dropped a boat on it.”

  “How did they lift a boat over the van?”

  “With a crane, darlin’.”

  “The great big crane?”

  “Yes, the massive one.”

  “Is the van being mended?”

  “No, darlin’, the van can’t be mended. It’s going to the scrapyard.”

  “To the dump?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But, Daddy, all my stuff is in the back!”

  “It’s ok, I took everything out, wee love, every last bit.”

  “Phew,” she said.

  They clambered onto the bikes and Sam took her aft quarter on the roads to force cars around her. Isla’s little knees hammered up and down like a fiddler’s elbow but she still needed a shove up the steeper inclines.

  “Have you got much homework?”

  Isla ignored the question as another popped into her head. “Can I go and play with Molly some day?”

  Sam had heard her talk about Molly – who seemed to have a tall imagination unless it was Isla who had the imagination and was attributing strange factoids to her pal.

  “We’ll see. Where does she live?”

  “Don’t know,” said Isla glumly.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “We’ll see means no.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Sam, trying to persuade himself that she was wrong.

  Isla pedalled silently and slowly. Sam felt the guilt.