by Finn Óg
BEFORE
FINN ÓG
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Afterword
For my curly crew. You’re deadly.
1
“I will never understand why you did it.”
Áine was tiring of the lockdown. Three weeks in and there had been no lift in mood. “You should get yourself listed as critical,” she said.
“Is that a joke?” It was the first time Sinead had spoken all morning.
“No.”
“Don’t be so stupid. I’m sad, not critically ill.”
“What? Get a grip. I mean, you need to be working. Get yourself a pass as a critical worker – a frontliner. I’m sure plenty of women out there need your help, even more so with this craziness. Domestic abuse must be through the roof – people cooped up all the time.”
“Maybe.”
“You might not be a nurse, but sure the Pope in Rome knows that what you do is important.”
Such backhanded compliments were as much as her twin could generally manage, and were frequently followed by …
“And, sure, if you don’t get out of my face soon, you’ll have me as depressed as you.” Áine attempted a cheeky grin, hoping for an involuntary chuckle, but such suppressed smiles had vanished, along with the two people Sinead pined for, into the Irish Sea.
“Don’t, Áine,” Sinead said, guilty at taking her sadness out on her sister but unable to shake the hurt.
“Look,” Áine said sighing, “there’s no point living in a place as tricked out as this if we don’t put it to good use. If you’re really not going to get over that gobshite, maybe the best thing I can do is try and help you find him.”
“He’s not a gobshite.” Sinead stirred and looked up. “You do know that, don’t you?”
Áine relented a little, but it was not in her nature to allow concessions without a jag. “I know he’s got a hell of a body count,” she said, “but, yeah, I know you think he’s a good man.”
Sinead stared at her sister. “I need to know that you really do see that, Áine. I really think I need that right now. And don’t lie, and don’t bloody joke. Tell me, am I insane?”
Áine walked barefoot over the deep-pile carpet to the enormous window. She surveyed the Liffey, considering what to say. No boats stirred on the river; there were no cars on the normally gridlocked quay. The conference centre to her left had been shut down – the financial quarter from which she had finally started drawing a handsome wage once more, was like a ghost town.
“You’re not insane,” Áine said softly. “And he’s a mad, bad influence on you, but he is a good guy – despite it all.”
“For real?”
“Sure, you only need to see him with that child.” She paused, placing her hands against the glass. “With you,” she almost whispered.
Sinead managed a sad smile for the first time since her world, and everyone else’s, had ground to a halt.
“Are you sure, now?” Áine said, not looking at her sister but staring up into the bank of screens.
“What do you think?” Sinead replied.
“I think this is going to take time because he’s no dope. And time is money. I’m one of the few people making cash during this crisis, so if you’re still doubting yourself …”
“Áine, I didn’t doubt myself,” Sinead said, confused.
“Then, what did you do?”
“I just couldn’t go right then.”
“What? Why?”
“Loads of reasons,” she said, knowing that she sounded like a child.
“Like what?”
“Like work.” Sinead shook her head, baffled that she should have to explain.
“The work you haven’t done for the two months since they left?”
“We couldn’t have predicted the pandemic.”
“You were off work long before lockdown.”
“Will you stop.”
“So that’s it – you didn’t go with them cos of your job. The thing you’ve been wanting more than anything else these past few years, and you stayed because of work.”
“What do you mean, wanting more than anything else these past few years?”
“Ah, sis, anyone could see it. Even when you couldn’t.”
Sinead tried not to let her eyes well.
“Don’t go soft on me now,” Áine continued. “I need you on the ball.”
“I didn’t realise it was so obvious.”
“You know who knew?”
“The Pope in Rome.” Sinead sighed. “Well, I’m transparent, so.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” Áine softened. “People know where they are with you, which is more than you ever knew when you were with him.”
“I did know, eventually.”
“I kind of gathered that, but you never explained.”
“We talked. Finally, we talked.”
“Did he say it?”
“What?”
“Did. He. Say. It?”
Sinead just stared at the screens.
“Shit, Sinead. Are you sure you’re sure about this?”
“I don’t know if he’s able to.”
“What?”
“Say. It.”
“Why?”
“Because of before.”
“What before?”
“His wife. Her death. His work – well, he’d already told me a bit about his work.”
“What did he say?”
“I can’t tell you.” Sinead frowned apologetically.
Áine exhaled her frustration in a long breath. “Murky, so.”
“Difficult,” Sinead said.
“And before that? What about his, I dunno, his childhood?”
Sinead’s eyebrows raised a little, her lips pursed. Her head shook gently, involuntarily.
“Nothing?” Áine tried to suppress her incredulity.
“It never came up! I know him now. That’s what’s important.”
“Well, where did he grow up?”
“In the north.”
“Northern Ireland?”
“Yeah – well, hardly northern England?”
“You never know with these army types.”
“He’s not army. He’s not from a military family, I don’t think.”
“You don’t think? Do you even know what county he lived in?”
Sinead said nothing.
“Where did he go to school? Did he go to college?”
Sinead stared hard ahead, avoiding her sister’s eye contact
.
“What did he do before he joined the military? Does he have—”
“Áine, I don’t know,” Sinead snapped, frustrated at herself as much as her sister. “You never know when to just let up, do you? Can you never just read the signs to take it bloody easy?”
Sinead was standing now, but Áine was bristling at the uncharacteristic outburst.
“This is where you tell me I have no emotional intelligence, is it?”
Sinead resisted the urge to nod.
“Well,” Áine filled the awkward silence, “I’d say it’s not me is lacking in emotional intelligence. When a man you love – and have loved for years, finally gets round to asking you to run away with him, you say yes, Sinead. You say yes. If you love him, you get on the feckin’ boat and you throw all else to the bloody wind. That’s emotional intelligence. But it seems to me you know less than you needed to about him, so that’s what held you back. Not work, and not leaving me on my own – even though you never said it I know you were thinking it, even though it is the stupidest of reasons. So, as the established emotionally intelligent one, I suggest you find out more about him – all that background stuff you’re pretending isn’t important, before you take the leap. Because something held you back, Sinead, and it wasn’t work, and it wasn’t me.”
Sinead sat heavily into one of the swivel chairs. The tears that came felt as big as rocks as they thundered down her cheeks and splashed onto one of the keyboards. “How am I supposed to find stuff out now? They’re gone, dear knows where to.”
“Well, then, aren’t you lucky you’re in Mission Control?” Áine said, guilty at her rant and desperate to insert some cheer into the fractious conversation. “And aren’t you doubly lucky that the other person who cares for you is a genius with such technology?” She swept her hand around the bank of servers and screens as an estate agent might show a reception room.
“Do you really think you can find him?” Sinead’s puffy face turned up to her sister, eyes red yet hopeful.
“I dunno, to be honest. He can be devious when he wants to be, and he’s been living under the radar for a long time. The problem is he thinks he’s on the run, doesn’t he? He’ll be watching his back.”
“Well, at least we’d be able to tell him he has nothing to worry about.”
“If he doesn’t,” Áine said wryly.
“I thought you said?”
“That was four weeks ago. Investigations progress – at least they’re supposed to.”
“Well, can you hack in again and see?”
“I can, but that’s dangerous craic, Sinead.”
Her twin looked at her pleadingly.
“Let’s see if we can find them first – try to make some sort of contact, then we can see. You seem to have forgotten what happened last time I cracked into a government system for that man.”
“I haven’t forgotten. But this isn’t for him, it’s for me,” Sinead said.
“Low,” Áine muttered, with the beginnings of a smile.
“Well, it was you who said I need to know more about him. If you find him, I can ask.”
“Just seems weird that you don’t know shit, yet he knows everything about you.”
Sinead froze, staring at her sister. “You didn’t tell him, did ye?” she said, eyes like frisbees.
“What?” Áine said, equally incredulous. “No! Course not. But surely you—”
“No.” Sinead shook her head vigorously.
“Go way.” Áine shook her head. They sat in silence for a few seconds. “So before is a place neither of you have been to.” Her eyebrows took a long time to fall.
2
They looked at the screens for a full minute, Áine’s fingers hovering above one of the three keyboards until Sinead said, “So how do you do this?”
“Normally I have some place to start,” Áine conceded. “Throw me a bone here.”
Sinead looked blank, slumping for a moment before her back straightened. “He left Dún Laoghaire Pier eight weeks ago – to the day,” she said brightly, suddenly hopeful.
“Right,” said Áine, hammering on the keyboard and hunting some code directory that had scrolled up on one of the screens. “Let’s have a look, then.”
The tapping and clicking continued for a few minutes and Sinead worked hard at keeping herself from asking questions. Instead she tried to guess which monitor she should be gazing at, and managed to remain silent until they all turned a greyish-white.
“What’s that?”
“Exactly,” said Áine.
“Have you been detected? Is this some sort of shutdown?”
“Not unless their security is incredible. This is the CCTV from Dún Laoghaire on that day.”
“What?”
“It’s weird – the system seems a good spec, so the images shouldn’t be poor at all.”
“Ah, no,” Sinead said, the answer dawning on her.
“What?”
“It’s fog.”
“It was foggy?”
“It was unbelievable. Seriously, I’ve never seen fog like it.”
Áine’s fingers danced over the keys again as she peered up at data and specifications. “The cameras in the harbour are pretty good – they’ve got Smart IR and Defog.”
“What does that mean in the human world?” Sinead said. “And how are you even able to see them?”
“Anything on a wireless system is vulnerable – even high-end systems like this. And what it means is that we should be able to access improved images. So long as they kept a file of the defogged version. No point in them having it if they don’t use it. I’m just working out how …”
“You know the time frame to look at?”
“Yeah, I remember you leaving with Isla to meet him, and I remember you coming back without her.”
Sinead’s brow tightened at the thought.
“Here, look.” Áine swirled a stylus on a trackpad, as if reeling in a fish. Sinead stared hard as the greyness of the pier loomed out of the white static.
“That’s too close to the end of the harbour. You need to move right.”
“This is cool. It’s a layered file, like photoshop. Right is what direction – north, south, which?”
Sinead closed her eyes. “East, I think. Kind of south-east.” Áine moved the pen again. “There’s the ice cream kiosk!” Sinead shouted.
“Alright, alright.”
“That’s where Isla got down onto the boat, and some local fella was there.”
“Who?”
“Doesn’t matter. But that’s the right place.”
Áine swirled a little more until a pole emerged against the grey.
“That’s a mast,” Sinead said excitedly.
“Get you, Sailor Sue.”
“Go down a bit, to the water.”
The image tilted to reveal a bold white structure with a flash of orange at the back.
“That’s it! That’s Sian.”
“Who’s Sian?”
“Sian’s the boat.”
“Right. You’re thinking of living on that boat?” Áine said, baffled.
“It’s lovely inside, actually. Loads of room.”
“It’s the size of a caravan.”
Sinead ignored the quip. “There, she’s moving.” Sinead watched, her throat suddenly swelling to a throb as the boat turned from the harbour wall and left the shot.
“He didn’t hang about.”
“No,” Sinead said, remembering the exchange.
“Can’t have said much, so.”
Sinead ignored the implication. “Can you follow it?”
“I need to find another camera.” Áine pummelled the keyboard until eventually another grainy image was offered and she began to swirl again. Sian was leaving the harbour and turned right. Sinead could just make out the large figure of Sam at the helm, and Isla tucked under his arm, hugging his hip. The tears came again.
“So that’s like south-east, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Sine
ad’s tone had fallen.
“Well, it’s a start, isn’t it? He has navigation instruments on board. We might be able to—”
“He turns them off at the best of times,” Sinead said dismissively.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Sneaky beaky bollocks,” Áine muttered. “So how does he know where he is?”
“He seems to use the compass, and paper maps and charts. He can tell by the depth, I think. He’s got funny double rulers and a spikey yoke with legs that he walks across the chart. I dunno. I watched him a few times when he was showing Isla how to do it, but I didn’t, like, want to get in the way.”
“Worth a go, though, isn’t it, in case he did use electronics in the fog?”
“Yeah, but he’s—”
“I know. Private. I’ll try to ping his phone too.”
“He won’t … he didn’t …”
“What?”
“He didn’t have it on.”
“You tried to ring him?”
Her tears ran heavily now and she just nodded slowly.
“You changed your mind?” Áine said, as gently as she was able.
Sinead shrugged, then covered her face with two hands. “I just wanted him to know, even though I couldn’t go. I wanted him to know.”
Áine rolled her chair over to her sister and gave her a hug.
Sinead took herself off for a lonely walk – her one authorised exercise of the day. She could see families on the North Wall coping with scooters and small bicycles. The traffic was so light because of the curfew that she could also hear the cries of the children from all the way across the river as they tumbled and jumped. Before the lockdown she wouldn’t even have been able to hear a car horn from the other side. Inevitably, the sounds of little people made her think of Isla. Sinead berated herself for having imagined they could, perhaps, have forged a family from the wreckage of Sam’s life. Or from her own. It had been a stupid, fanciful notion. He was not built for that kind of conformity. She knew he would always crave closeness to some edge – that he was unable to sit still and be content. He could be so rational and calm, yet somehow felt drawn to reckless, hopeless situations; like there was a need in him that could only be addressed through extreme actions. It was impossible. It would be impossible to live with. Wouldn’t it?
