by Finn Óg
“Well, there’s more than one post office.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a mail service at Stormont, you know. Like a courier within the estate.”
Grim didn’t know that but it made sense. Stormont housed the local government assembly as well as a sprawling complex of civil service offices and thousands of staff.
“But this stuff is sensitive,” Grim reasoned. “The Brits aren’t going to let local politicians know about any of this until they’re sure it won’t be damaging to Downing Street?”
The manager sighed. “Correct. But it’s not just local politicians inside Stormont Estate, is it?”
The penny dropped. “The NIO.”
“The NIO,” repeated the manager.
The Northern Ireland Office was the official residence of the Secretary of State, a member of the British Cabinet, who was a keeper of secrets and often at odds with local politicians. The secretary was privy to security information in a way that local politicians weren’t. It was the secretary who was supposed to approve the bugging of suspects, who was briefed by Box – MI5, and military intelligence.
“So the boss has got someone in the NIO?”
“Dunno,” said the manager. “But he somehow got information or saw documents out of the NIO. My guess is that he’s just done the usual – had someone lift letters or something, some unassuming civilian who maybe gets them copied or whatever and puts them back. Or just steals them. Sure, post goes missing all the time.”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Grim.
“Then maybe it just goes unanswered. I haven’t a clue. But the point is – he knows, and he thinks taking out this office will leave a mark on the Brits.”
“I’d say he’s right,” said Grim.
Sam had two people to mind, two locations, two problems. How could he look after Áine – who knew him by sight, and another woman he hadn’t yet met without being in two places at once? Instead he focused on the threat, and for two days kept an eye on the accused from the driver’s seat of a loaned Subaru with two hundred and eighty brake horsepower.
The man was called Delaney and his image was plastered all over the digital versions of the Irish papers. Sinead supplied the address and Sam simply sat outside his house – which the accused refused to leave. Sam saw his bathroom light go on, go off, the blinds go up and down, the TV flicker and the bins go out. Other than that, nobody came and nobody went. Sam reckoned he was probably afraid of a public backlash.
On the morning of the trial he finally felt able to abandon his vigil, got a shower at a swimming pool and walked the perimeter of the court, which backed onto Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Nothing about this job was straightforward: the thoroughfare out the front was busy, there was a lot of traffic, four ways in and the tram stopped nearby. The footfall was substantial, and it would be hard for one man to keep all approaches covered. Sam didn’t really consider the job to be high-risk, but then he didn’t know a great deal about the accused. Despite a few secondments to various units during his time in the Special Boat Service, close protection had not been one.
He strolled past the foyer of the courthouse and through the doors into a massive marble atrium. The security detail at the door looked rough enough, but not necessarily sparkling. Big blokes with tools were fine for the wrestling matches that the courts inevitably witnessed – rival gangs descending on tiny rooms for cases of murder and assault, and heavies were also required to keep the travellers apart. Sam knew well that traveller gangs had unusually high levels of pain tolerance – they played with hatchets, chains and sawn-off shotguns and held a grudge like a baby on a balcony.
The space was enormous. The sight lines were good, but, as ever, the risks lay not in the public spaces but in the wings. Sam wandered slowly to the allocated courtroom and took a look inside. Standard, surprisingly so for such a modern building. The seats were typically hard and built from timber and the bench looked traditional. There were two doors for the public, one for a jury and another for witnesses. Behind the bench was the door to the judge’s chambers. Five entrances in all: a pain in the arse.
Then he went outside to look at the toilets. This had been his biggest concern. Assuming that the accused was able to groom and persuade women to do whatever he wanted, Sam reckoned that the risk was likely to come from a woman. There was no guessing how many others he’d manipulated – and what lengths such a person might go to to quell a witness statement being made. Sam’s darker imaginings had a brainwashed devotee waiting in the jacks for Áine to powder her nose before attacking her. Áine was feisty, for sure, but there are few defences against a committed assassin with a knife or a needle. Any woman’s handbag contained half a dozen instruments that could be used to kill or wound a person – all of which would be waved through security. On top of that, the accused would be sitting in the courtroom apparently unconnected to any such assault. No witness means no conviction.
Sam looked at his watch. One hour to go until the case was due to be called. He lifted his phone.
Poor reception.
“Hello,” Sinead answered, dropping in and out.
“Hi, how are you both?”
“Grand, grand. Isla went off ok. She was happy. I can’t get the light on in the main cabin, though.”
The phone signal was rubbish, so he cut to it.
“I’ll text you instructions, but, listen, I’m not happy about this. The place is exposed. We’re going to have to tell Áine that I’m here to look after her. I need to stay close to her otherwise, well, it’s too risky.”
“She’s never going to go for that, Sam.”
“I’m not trying to worry you but this place isn’t great.”
“She thinks you’re there to look after the other witness. I’ll call her and see if I can get her to sit with them. I’ll ring her now. I’ll have to make it work.”
He fired off three instructional texts to Sinead before she called him back.
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her you’d be there for Kaitlin.”
“This is the heiress?”
“What?”
“The one who was groomed but survived.”
“The heiress, yeah. Like I’m Charity.”
Sam reddened. He hadn’t realised Sinead had known his nickname for her. “That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before we became …”
The silence was excruciating. There was no adequate description for what they had become. Sinead dug him out of his hole.
“Áine’s not happy. I’ll leave it at that.”
“Ok,” said Sam. “And Sinead?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell her to go to the toilet before she gets here and not to use the jacks in the court.”
“Weird but ok.”
They might have been twins but the fact that they’d shared a womb was the only similarity Sam could detect in Sinead and Áine. The former was caring, considerate, compassionate and fair; the latter was aggressive, abrasive, argumentative and alert. Always alert, like she was fully charged and never used up her reserves. He saw her arrive – her chin pulled back, her neck straight, ready for a ruck. Her walk was busy, her stride long; she was fizzing.
Sinead had obviously told her that Sam would be around for a few days.
“Áine.” He nodded at her as she strode straight past him.
She declined to say anything. She had brought no notes and no folder. Everything she needed was probably stored in her mind. She was nothing if not smart. Sam would have considered her a genius were it not that she was such a bloody dose.
He turned to follow her at a distance.
“She’s inside,” Áine snapped over her shoulder. “I’d say you’d want to go and introduce yourself.”
Lifts were shuttling up and down inside the atrium as the scales of justice began to swing for the day. Sam followed Áine’s arse towards a small group of well-turned-out folk. There was a couple in thei
r late sixties: he a pinstriped distracted sort, she a manicured fragrant type. They stood either side of a younger woman who chewed gum with her mouth open.
“John, this is Sam, your, well, heavy beef, I suppose,” said Áine.
“Ah, yes, how are you?” the man said, offering his hand and gripping Sam as hard as he was able. “This is my wife, Julianne.”
“How do you do?” she said, pure D4 – over-pronounced and presentational. She failed to proffer her paw, as if he was nought but an oily rag.
“And this is my daughter, Kaitlin.”
Kaitlin looked every inch the heiress – too cool for school despite being in her thirties. Her mouth churned like a cow on grass while she stared at him.
Sam turned to the other suit. “I assume you’re the brief?” he asked.
“Ehm, well, yes, I’m the state counsel, actually.”
Sam never had much time for barristers, so he let the suit excuse himself and set about extracting some information from his employers.
“I know what Delaney looks like, but is there anything beyond the obvious to suggest that he might want to upset things? Has he been in touch?”
The father wanted to field the questions. “Kaitlin has been receiving messages from someone but we don’t know who.”
Sam turned to Áine as if to say, Can you not find out who?
He got a snort and a look away in response.
“Text messages?” Sam asked.
“Snaps,” said Kaitlin.
“But you need to accept a friend request to receive a message on Snapchat, don’t you?”
Áine leaned in and in a patronising tone said, “He can barely use a toaster, I’m afraid. Not very technical.” She over-enunciated her consonants to let the family know she thought Sam was a nuisance.
“I accept the requests, then I realise it’s him, then I get rid.”
“You need to get rid of that phone,” said her father.
“You can fuck off,” she retorted.
“Kaitlin!” the mother hissed through clenched front teeth, the tendons on her neck making her look like a turkey.
“I’ll need to see the messages,” Sam said.
“They’re all gone,” she replied, with a look that said, What are you going to do about it?
“Well, what did they say?”
“Nuttin’ much.” Kaitlin cracked the gum between her palate and tongue.
“Are you sure they’re from him?”
“Who else?” she said, her eyebrows raised in adolescent petulance.
Sam had been prepared for this, yet still found it disconcerting. She had the figure, the dress sense and laughter lines of a rich woman in her thirties, but she acted with less maturity than his seven-year-old.
“Here he comes,” said Áine from his right.
Sam turned to see a familiar figure enter the foyer, with, presumably, his wife on his arm. He looked like he’d just been through an ordeal and Sam imagined the press photographers outside had tracked him all the way to the door. The man was dazed, probably from the flashbulbs, and the look on his face further exaggerated when he caught sight of Kaitlin and her family.
“Bastard!” the heiress shouted suddenly.
Sam noticed how her stare was more aimed at the woman at Delaney’s side.
“Bastard! Fucker!”
Sam wondered if she had Tourette’s.
“Kaitlin,” her mother scolded again in a stage whisper. “You were warned not to do that!”
Security guards hustled over immediately and ushered the group towards a family room. The language out of the daughter on the way there was salty. When they sat down Sam laid out some ground rules.
“I’ll be here at court with you each day.”
“I’m sure you feel safer already, Kaitlin.” Áine’s head wobbled in sarcasm.
“If you get messages from the accused, you must tell me, and obviously report that to the court,” he said. “You don’t go anywhere without letting me know, and your mother can accompany you to the bathroom or anywhere I can’t be with you.”
Kaitlin looked at him slyly, and Sam imagined she was thinking of ways to test him as a pupil might test a new teacher.
“Thank you, Sam, for coming all the way from Belfast,” said the father. “You come highly recommended.” He looked to Áine, who raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
“Well, if you do what I say, hopefully there’ll be no drama.”
The door opened. “Court is about to sit,” said an usher.
4
“Mark leaving Green 12, headed west, country bound.”
The big white van had hooked up a fertiliser spreader in broad daylight. The team following the van knew it had been stolen from a remote farm in rural County Fermanagh. They had tracked the van across competing jurisdictions but when it had left the towns the Gazelle helicopter kicked in and followed it at a height beyond hearing range. Occasionally vehicles rotated in and out checking progress as directed from above until the van came to a stop. A single operator watched at a distance as the spreader was lifted into the back of the van by two men, the vehicle’s open doors revealing a mechanical grinder and what looked like sandbags. The operator called in what she had seen, the helicopter confirmed receipt and the van was topped and tailed all the way to Donegal.
“They’re baking a cake,” the operator said.
“Stealing the ingredients,” confirmed the Gazelle.
“Contrary to what you may have read in the papers or seen in the media,” the brief – now attired in ridiculous headwear pontificated – “the accused is not a wholesome family man with a fine job and a love of country sports. We shall show, over the coming days, how his pleasures are derived from altogether more darker pursuits. How he has, in fact, used a genial persona to manipulate vulnerable women to engage in,” he paused for effect, “unusual sexual activity with elements of dominance and coercion and that he did – in the case of Anne Seeley – a vulnerable woman – take the very life from her.”
Sam watched the jury hang on every word the barrister said and boggled at his persistent use of impenetrable language. It struck him that the court system was full of such parodies – the unwashed sitting in conscripted judgement of facts delivered by over-educated buffoons who have little sense of how real lives are lived. He had once witnessed the sentencing of a street alcoholic for theft. The judge had leaned forward in his robe and wig and told the man how he must in future limit his drinking to a sherry before lunch. Sam had actually laughed aloud. The homeless bloke had wrinkled his arterial tributary of a nose.
The state counsel continued to baffle the jury with long sentences.
“We shall endeavour to demonstrate how the accused harnessed the power of information technology to captivate his victims, ingratiate himself on wholly false pretences and upon the premise of assisting his victims in their ailments discharge the most heinous and gruesome fantasies upon them.”
Sam looked to his left. The heiress and her parents appeared every bit as gripped by the performance as the jury. Beyond them at least Áine had the wit to wear an expression of incredulity. She somehow sensed his gaze and turned. For the briefest of moments they shared a look that conveyed that they were both on the same page about the court’s charade before Áine remembered she detested Sam and turned back to the counsel’s theatrics. Still, it was a moment – a gentle sanding of the rough edges.
Sam zoned out a little. The barrister reminded him of some of the worst officers he had encountered overseas. He had been a marine, which was one thing, and the Marines had its fair share of arseholes, for sure, but for the most part the brass were solid, well-meaning and tough leaders with a bit of sense. He couldn’t say the same of his experience of army officers. Their sense of entitlement, their basking in superiority and their insistence on recognition of rank at every opportunity had irritated Sam and got him into trouble. Nearly. The barrister made him think about a regimental arsehole he’d met in Iraq in a makeshift officers’
mess. It was before he’d been disciplined, and as such he was still SBS without a uniform and operating largely at will. His unit had shuffled in under darkness and all he had wanted for his men was a bit of kip and to stock up on water. If they came across a bit of extra ammunition, Sam wasn’t averse to pilfering from the regulars who tended to spray most of it up walls in any case.
He’d heard the army captain blustering orders around the little camp, which was poorly secured and badly kept: do this, do that, don’t be so silly. The usual piffle of poor leadership. The officer hadn’t even introduced himself to Sam’s ragtag of unwashed arrivals. Sam had quietly suggested to his team that they get their heads down wherever they could, but was overheard by the captain, a man of a similar age to Sam. He had evidently deduced from Sam not barking his orders that he was an NCO, a non-commissioned officer, at best. He’d probably also heard the Northern Ireland accent. When the two men crossed paths twenty minutes later, the captain immediately turned to Sam with a demand.
“Make a cup of tea, there. Two sugars.”
As introductions went, it wasn’t ideal. If the captain had even said please, the situation could have been markedly different.
“Try that again,” Sam had said, knowing in his heart that things had already gone too far. His little unit had been working days and nights on end. They were exhausted and he wasn’t best disposed to such demands, even when well-rested.
“Tea,” the captain had said slowly, using his tongue, teeth and a widened mouth to enunciate as clearly as possible. Theatrical – like the barrister.
Sam responded in kind – clear and concise. “Away and fuck yourself.”
“Well, haven’t you just made an enormous mistake,” sang the captain, who rose to approach Sam.
“Sit down, son,” Sam said, not even looking at the man but knowing how it was all going to end.
“Son?” said the captain. “How dare you!”
Sam knew exactly how close the Rupert was without even looking at him. He decided he’d give the man one more chance but hoped he wouldn’t take it.
