by Finn Óg
Then the power play was set aside as another major problem presented itself.
He couldn’t wait any longer. He dialled Sal and closed his eyes in the hope that she would answer.
“Hi, Sam,” she chattered happily. “Unfortunately the girls have just gone for ice cream. They’re having a ball.”
“Ah, that’s great. What’s the weather been like?”
“Good, good, you know Northern Ireland, but it’s grand for autumn and they have their wee wetsuits and the sun’s out. There’s not a lot of heat in it, though – sure, you know yourself. How are things … there?”
Sal had never inquired as to where Sam was headed. What he looked like often deterred people from asking.
“Aye, no bother,” he said. “Is she behaving?”
“She’s great. A lovely young woman, honestly. They’re getting along well together, they really are.”
“Right, well, that’s grand. I’ll maybe try later, then – or tomorrow?”
“Any time, Sam, any time at all. They’ll be back in about twenty minutes if you want to give it a go then?”
Sam looked up and saw the heiress’s two friends walk out of their hotel. The heiress was nowhere to be seen.
“It might have to be later if that’s ok?”
“That’s grand, Sam. After dinner will be fine.”
“Thanks a million, Sal.” Sam drifted off a little as the call ended and he wondered where the women were going and where the heiress was.
He picked up his phone and logged into the web hosting service that the camera in her room was feeding to. There was an inevitable delay. He could see there was sixty per cent left on the battery assembly, which would get him through tonight and the next before he would need to replace anything. The image came through in moments and he was moderately alarmed to find there was nobody in the heiress’s room. He could see that the bathroom door was closed, so he kept the image up for a few minutes hoping she would emerge.
Worried, he popped the phone in his pocket and decided to take a stroll through the hotel lobby in case she was having a drink there, but a quick tour proved fruitless. He went back outside and waited for the 4G to send and receive, and relaxed, momentarily, as steam bellowed from the now ajar bathroom door, and the heiress in a towel and turban pottered around the room. He protected her dignity, stuffed the phone away and took a walk.
“Get two bikes on the road.”
The compromised trooper had already been told to extract. The motorcycles were fitted with cameras and bikers never looked out of place on the north coast of Northern Ireland.
“What about the heli?” Libby asked. It wasn’t her call to deploy hardware but she had a plummeting feeling about how things had gone.
“We can follow the manager on overt cameras. He’s probably just going home,” said the operations officer.
“Maybe we should lift him – before he can tell anyone else?”
“Send the plods in?”
Libby thought for a moment. She would need authorisation for that.
The opso was strangely reassuring. “He’s experienced. He’ll not do anything on the phone – he’ll not want to place himself there. We’ve got breathing space because he’ll want to relay any message face to face.”
“We’ve only got eyes on the suspect vehicle now and nothing on the safe house.”
The opso hesitated. “What are your concerns around the safe house?”
“I don’t know – but then I wasn’t aware Deirdre Rushe lived there.”
“Right,” said the opso. “Put the Gazelle up.”
An alarm sounded and an analyst went through the motions of sending coordinates to the pilots. Five minutes later they heard the Gazelle’s blades begin to turn and Libby relaxed just a fraction. She knew the heli would be overhead in a matter of minutes.
“Where are you sending it?”
“Harbour, ideally, then I’ll release the car to the safe house.”
“Ok.”
It made sense. Even though the heli could operate effectively above hearing distance, it did no harm to keep it coastal where a helicopter was more likely to circle rather than a residential address.
“Coffee,” barked the opso. “And get some food in here, please.”
Libby agreed they were in for a long haul. The manager’s arrival had unnerved everyone.
Ten minutes later a camera operator wearing a headset confirmed he was getting images from the Gazelle. He punched them up onto the screen on the left. The aerial view began to settle, and the opso ordered the car at the harbour to move towards the safe house for a drive-by and then circle back for a lay-up. Libby watched the car manoeuvre out of the spot it had been in for a few hours and tracked with it up the hill at a slow speed. As it passed the address she had reason to swear.
The door to the safe house opened and the young man stumbled out – not as if he’d been pushed but certainly as if he’d been told to clear off. He looked behind him in anger just short of defiance, stepped over the gate and stomped off.
“Get round again and pick him up,” the opso ordered. “And where are the bloody bikes?”
“ETA fifteen minutes,” came a cool head from the computer monitors.
“You’re making me nervous,” the opso whispered to Libby.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “Just feels wrong.”
“It does,” was all he said back under his breath.
11
Sam sauntered back towards the hotel after half an hour, which was an hour too early. Eventually he flicked on the camera feed to find the heiress sweeping up a clutch bag, assessing her paintwork in the mirror and making for the door. Must be a special night, he thought, and readied himself for a follow to wherever she was planning to meet her friends.
The other women had headed left in the general direction of the Excelsior Hotel – their chosen holiday haunt, but the heiress emerged and crossed the road to a swanky-looking restaurant at the water’s edge. Sam assumed her friends would join her in due course.
The location, however, was problematic. There were shrubs and bushes along the roadside that prevented him getting a sense of where she was sitting. The only clear view, in fact, was from the water, but he had no boat. He decided to wait for her friends to come back and then realised that she hadn’t been carrying her tiny shiny handbag, which meant she no longer carried the tracker. Deprived of the means to find her if she did go AWOL, he looked around for height to try to get eyes on what she was doing, but aside from her own Hotel Riviera there was nothing overlooking the restaurant.
So Sam walked straight into the lobby and up the stairs, looking for a way to get onto a second-floor balcony that overlooked the street. The little veranda was empty, and he reckoned the worst that could happen was that a waiter would appear and ask him what he wanted to drink. Once in position he relaxed when he found the back of her head and shoulders lounging against wicker outdoor furniture. She was sucking a tall cocktail through a straw two hundred metres away. Not ideal, but as close as Sam could manage.
It took another half hour of waiting, but eventually the heiress was joined at her table. Her arms extended upwards, hands out-turned in delight, as Ann Seeley’s killer bent down to give her a kiss.
“Where is he?” Libby whispered.
The bikes were snarling around the streets hunting for the kid and the images were being relayed back with break up to the monitors in the ops room. The Gazelle was transmitting the harbour view with the car park and the roof of the suspect car clearly visible.
“Standby,” came a muffled voice on the radio network. One of the bike ops could be heard but he was moving too fast for his image to get through consistently. And then it popped up in pixelated boxes, a young man with his back to the camera. “That him?” the same voice asked over the net.
“Affirmative,” said Libby. “Is he walking funny?”
“He does seem to be,” said the opso. “Lactic acid build-up maybe? How
long’s he been cooped up in there?”
Libby knew the opso was fishing for information she hadn’t yet volunteered, so she opted to say nothing. They watched him gradually iron out the stiffness in his limbs as he hammered around the town aimlessly. Various camera angles were offered between the two bikes that moved around him.
“Is he talking to himself?” the opso asked.
“He’s muttering. Looks raging,” Libby replied.
“I don’t think he knows what to do. She’s obviously chucked him out, and the manager’s just scarpered.”
“Seems that way,” Libby said, deep in thought.
“If he’s as cross as he looks, he could be ripe for turning. Maybe bring him in, be nice to him for a while, get him to tell us what’s going on?”
The thought had crossed Libby’s mind. Any informer was an asset, but that wasn’t her decision to make.
The opso was suddenly full of helpful suggestions. “We could secure the car, hand it over to the engineers and it would still be a success. We get a tout, a major find, and everyone stays safe.”
“Let me make a call,” Libby said.
Sam could make out lobster. The pink shells were tilted in display by two waiting staff as they approached the table, all part of some opulent act to make everyone feel special.
He had no choice but to sit still. If he waded in and split them up, there would be claws everywhere and the heiress’s father would be compromised as a snooper. Sam wrestled with the notion of calling her father to fill him in but decided that things might get messy and the fewer people who knew about the presence of a murderer on a Venetian island the better.
Where Delaney had sprung from Sam had no idea, but it was obviously all part of some well-plotted plan. Though how she had coaxed her friends into becoming complicit in the deceit was confusing. Surely no proper friend would support a dirty weekend with a murderer?
Drinks were delivered with incredible regularity and there was dessert with sparklers, then they strolled twenty feet to the railings to look out over Venice as the sun set. He could see their heads coming together often – kissing like teenagers. Sam watched with resignation. He should have realised this encounter was a possibility – and he wondered whether the father had guessed as much. Why send Sam to mind his kid if there was no real risk?
Eventually the pair rose and arm in arm they bundled out of the open-air restaurant into the street where they had a long, lingering kiss and seemed to settle on a destination. He watched as Delaney steered the heiress towards a restaurant pontoon and shouted to one of the sleek white river taxis.
Sam sprang to his feet and bounded round into the hallway and down the stairs. He crossed a small roundabout and blasted over another road just in time to see the varnished transom of the boat dip into the water as the driver opened the throttle. He hunted around for another taxi to follow but the dock was silent. The only noise came from the street behind him and the boat that was streaking into the distance.
Anthony swore the old bitch up and down every street he walked. She said she’d demanded Grim come and see him and Grim had obviously refused. He’d lay on a bed for almost a month and nobody had given a bollocks. He’d done what had been asked of him and still it wasn’t enough. That old woman was a hard, wrinkled witch, he thought.
Worse still, he was embarrassed. Treated like a child, thrown out, just as his mother had done a few times. “If you can’t live by my rules, you can live somewhere else.” He’d always gone back to his mum – he’d had no choice, no money, no friends worth talking about, no options. But there was no way he was going to go back to that old tart.
He had believed in Grim – that the man would help him rise through the ranks. All hope and respect was gone now. Anthony’s loyalty turned to deeper hatred with every step. He wanted to hurt Grim but had no idea where to start. He hunted for signs to tell him where the hell he was ambling about, growing angrier. And then the first pang of despair came as he realised it was late in the day and he had nowhere to sleep, no money for a taxi or a bus, no food and no water.
And then he remembered that he did have one thing.
Sam ran beyond the ferry terminal. He had no idea where Delaney was staying, no idea where the river taxi was taking them, no idea what to do next. He watched the stern light on the taxi fade among the thousands of lights now illuminating San Marco until eventually a boat stuttered past and he yelled at it to come in.
“Taxi?” the smoking helmsman inquired.
“Yes, taxi,” said Sam, incredulous. “What did you think I wanted?”
He kicked the gunwale away from the pontoon just before he stepped aboard and turned to the driver. “I need you to go as fast as you can. I will pay, ok?”
“Ok,” said the driver, moderately amused by Sam’s urgency.
“See that light? Of another taxi? I need you to go there, fast, ok? Flat out.”
“Ok.” The driver shrugged but seemed in no hurry to turn the boat and make pursuit.
“Look, hurry up, this is serious. I need you to go quickly.” Sam’s voice fell and the driver seemed to get the message, gunning reverse and revving the engine into forward as the stern wave caught her.
“Faster, please,” Sam said.
“I not see this light,” shouted the driver over the drone of the engine, shaking his head as if Sam’s request was pointless.
In truth, Sam couldn’t see it any more either.
Libby used the secure line and was met with a bark.
“What is it?”
“I need to make you aware of developments.”
“Well?”
“At 1600 a known head turned up in the town just metres from the suspect vehicle.”
“Who?”
“Paul Hagan.”
There was a silence for a moment.
“Hagan, the manager?”
“Yes.”
“Ok.”
Libby could imagine the wheels turning.
“That all?”
“No. Hagan approached the safe house, but before he got there a woman came out to him.”
“From the safe house?” Her superior sounded mildly alarmed.
“Yes.”
“Did you … identify this woman?”
“Yes,” said Libby proudly. “She is Deirdre Rushe, a former Provisional IRA member who—”
“I know who Deirdre Rushe is!” snapped her superior.
“Sorry,” she said softly.
“Do others in the DET know her identity?”
“Yes,” she said, confused. She sensed this was not good news.
“So what happened between the manager and Rushe?”
“They had an argument and he tried to persuade her to keep the kid in the safe house, but she was livid and threw him out.”
“Threw the kid out?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he now then?”
“Just walking around the town talking to himself.”
“Not good, Libby.”
She waited for direction, but all she could hear was a hand tapping a desk. To fill the silence she resorted to desperation. “We could capitalise on this maybe? Lift him – turn him? Send in the engineers? That would be a result, wouldn’t it?” she ventured, clutching at someone else’s ideas despite her reservations.
“Not the smartest suggestion I’ve ever heard,” he said, and her heart sank.
She was always worried that one bad move could lead to her judgement being questioned and an end to her progress.
“Stay on the kid and keep me in the loop. Every turn. I may want patched in at some point.”
Libby left the call utterly despondent, convinced her career was over.
Her superior lifted a different phone.
They docked in San Marco, Sam dispensing notes like confetti upon the taxi driver. He stepped ashore tempted to start running but reminded himself to assess, to put himself in their shoes. They were drunk, they were evidently amorous and carefree. Where would the
y go? Sam assumed it would be to Delaney’s hotel – wherever that was, but perhaps they’d decided on another drink. Maybe he wanted her so pissed that he could do whatever he wanted.
Sam walked around the open-air bars, combing each for a drunk Irish couple. It was still warm, so he looked outside along the entire length of the quay – which took exactly one hundred minutes, then he started scouting indoors. Three hours after he’d lost them, and now deeply concerned, he stood by the water’s edge and closed his eyes.
What would Delaney do? Sam struggled to put his head in the space of a psychopath. If Delaney wanted to do sick shit, he’d hardly do it in his own hotel room, Sam reasoned. A dead woman in his own room? No, if he was going to kill her, Sam bet he’d take her someplace with no association to him. The easiest way would be to make sure there was no body found. Plenty of water in Venice – maybe he was going to drown her. Then, of course, maybe he didn’t want to kill her at all.
Sam looked at his watch. Three hours twenty minutes. “Think,” he said aloud, trying to calm his mind. “Think.”
Then, with urgency, he produced his phone and patched into the web host, entering his password. And there she was lying back on her own bed, in her own hotel room, elbows angled, head propped up at the shoulders staring at Delaney – whose back was to the camera. His hand was raised, like he was taking the oath of office. She was transfixed, as if it was some kind of ceremony.
And Sam was miles away, on the wrong island, separated from his charge by water.
Anthony turned suddenly, a moderate warmth creeping into him. He still didn’t know where he was, but he knew where he was going.
Libby and the opso watched his about-turn.
“What’s he at?” she said to nobody, knowing in her heart exactly where he was going.
“Get one of the bikes to the bottom of the town ready to pick him up,” ordered the opso.
