Before: Sam Ireland Thriller Book 4 (Sam Ireland Thriller Series)

by Finn Óg

  “Where?”

  “What?”

  “What country?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I dunno,” he said.

  “Uganda.”

  “LRA?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long did they have her?”

  “Five months.”

  “I see,” he said softly. He needed to say no more.

  “She’s carried all that damage for a long time. That’s why she does what she does for work, and why she’s so good at it. You know she was top of her year at Trinity in law? She could be coining it at the Four Courts, and instead she’s immersed in this salacious shit trying to scrape by on a charity wage.”

  “Why? Why with all that damage would she surround herself with other damaged folks?”

  “Cos she can help them, I guess. It takes one to know one and all that. It’s all the stuff she’s good at – empathy, sympathy, emotional intelligence. All the things that were confined to her side of the womb.”

  Min could tell that wasn’t the first time Áine had considered their genetic distribution.

  “Maybe it helps her too, in a way?”

  “Maybe. It’s like a vocation or something. It … gives her purpose.”

  Min’s right eyebrow dropped in query. “Purpose?”

  “She had none. For a long time after she got back. They broke her will to live.” Áine’s tears welled again and she looked up at the roof.

  “I see,” Min said. “I think I understand.”

  “So Sam bloody Ireland better have something for her when he gets back, cos I don’t know how much a person can take, Min. If she gets out of this, she’s going to need minding, and I don’t know if I’m able for that again. If they lay a finger on her, they might just destroy her.”

  23

  Min’s phone buzzed on the wide desk and Áine gathered herself before rising.

  “I’ll put on the breakfast if you’re not going to sleep. Empty sack won’t stand.”

  He nodded as he lifted the handset.

  She raided the fridge for the stuff she ate that Sinead didn’t – the sausages, the pudding, the rashers. The noise of the pan and the smell that rose from it overwhelmed her with a sudden hunger – a desire to get on with the day and get stuck in, and for the first time in ages she realised that her physical pain was abating.

  The plates were on the table, the sauces laid out and the coffee mugs steaming by the time Min emerged from her control room. “I’ve somethin’ tae tell ye,” he said, in a tone that for him probably passed for urgent.

  “What is it?” she said, panicked but eager.

  And then the intercom buzzed, and buzzed again. Áine looked at Min. “What is it?” she said again as she moved to the door.

  “Get that and I’ll explain.”

  Áine took the phone from its wall cradle. “Yes?”

  There was a murmur. She scowled. “You just let them through?”

  Min immediately moved towards the door, assuming the worst. Áine held up her hand, and replaced the handset. “It’s ok, it’s just the cops. Get into my room. That dickhead on the door already let them into the lift. Quick!”

  Her bedroom door closed as the front door knocked. She rolled her shoulders, sought composure and opened it a crack.

  “Garda McKenna and Garda Kowalczyk,” the man said. Áine recognised the voice from last time. “Don’t suppose we will be allowed in this time?” She also recognised his sarcasm.

  “Have you got ID?” The Polish name had been unexpected.

  “Yes, very thorough,” the male officer said, handing through his plastic credentials. Áine looked at it closely, although she knew this was the same police officer she’d spoken to previously. “Come in, so,” she said, opening the door but standing instinctively behind it. She kept her back to them as she pushed it into its frame.

  The two officers entered the wide hallway, evidently taken with the spaciousness of the penthouse. “Eh, what is it you said you do for work, Áine – do you mind if I call you Áine?”

  “You can call me what you like so long as you get your bloody finger out this time and find my sister,” she replied tersely.

  The guard turned to her and his face darkened when he saw the state of hers. “That explains why you wouldn’t open the door last time.”

  “Yeah,” she said. The woman Garda cast her eyes over Áine’s damaged face in an inscrutable manner.

  “Sorry to disturb your breakfast,” the impertinent policeman sniffed the air as he invited himself to venture further into the apartment. He stood with the kitchen to his left and gazed over the river to the North Wall Quay. “Some pad,” he said absently. “Just the two of you living here, yes?”

  “Yeah. Have you turned anything up?” Áine said irritably.

  “Your work,” Garda McKenna said. “You didn’t say—”

  “Cos I don’t see how that helps, to be honest. You know what Sinead does, that’s relevant.”

  “And I know you either have a large appetite or you’ve done a breakfast for me,” he replied with a sly smile. Áine hadn’t even seen him glance at the table, the two plates laid out neatly. The implication was clear: you can’t be too worried if you’re still on your food and you have someone here who shouldn’t be. The lockdown indiscretion hung between them. The female guard said nothing – following the conversation in what was not, presumably, her native tongue.

  “Garda McKenna, have you made any progress or not?” she found herself formalising the uncomfortable encounter.

  “This isn’t even a missing person.”

  “Five days she’s been gone!”

  “Four, technically.” He smiled. “Your sister is a grown woman who was caught robbing controlled drugs from a convent. Now, that seems to us cause enough to take yourself off for a while, doesn’t it, Lena?”

  The woman guard nodded. “Yes, perhaps,” she agreed, cautiously, with only a light hint of an accent.

  Áine suppressed her rising temper. “Robbing? She’s never stolen a thing in her life. Those drugs were for this!” She pointed to her own face.

  “Perhaps you should have told me that last time we were here.”

  “Look, I told you already that I think she’s been abducted. I think that the people who attacked me may have taken her.”

  “Who attacked you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Áine struggled to fathom the thinly veiled hostility of this chippy little police officer.

  “Maybe whoever was waiting on the drugs being handed over?”

  “Excuse me?” Áine’s face crumpled in disgust.

  “Or are you sure it wasn’t your sister, maybe the worse for wear?”

  “What!” Áine said. “What are you asking me?”

  “She was stealing drugs, maybe she has a dependency problem?”

  “Am I going insane here?” was all Áine could manage.

  “Look at it from where I’m standing. We have one woman, badly beaten and yet to tell us how. The same woman didn’t mention this beating when she failed to open the door when we first called, amid all the pressures of dealing with a global pandemic. We have a missing woman – or not, who was caught stealing drugs from her workplace and has since disappeared. Now we have the badly beaten woman asking us back for help. She apparently lives alone with her missing sister but evidence suggests there’s someone else here, which is against current government guidelines. And we have a record of the missing woman being recovered twice from attempts on her own life.”

  Which was when Áine flipped, despite knowing Min would hear everything. “You are not here to help me, and when this is over I will make sure you pay for this.”

  The guard spoke over her, looking at his colleague. “Did you hear that, Lena? Threatening a—”

  “You came here with one thought in your head!” Áine was s
houting now. “You decided drugs and self-harm and you aren’t prepared to listen.”

  “Not just self-harm,” the guard said, nodding at Áine and gesturing to her face. “You still haven’t explained that.”

  “Neither will I to a gobshite like you!” she all but screamed.

  “Lots of families are struggling with the lockdown,” he said. “The number of domestics we’ve dealt with …” He shook his head and looked at the nodding Lena.

  “How is this a bloody domestic?”

  “You were beaten here,” he stated, not a question.

  “How do you know that?”

  “There’s blood in the grout of those lovely tiles in the hall. There’s the remnants of a smashed plant pot or maybe a vase swept under that table, and there’s what is probably blood smeared on the headrest of that sofa. There is someone else here, but I have no warrant to look. And you have told me very little that is true since your first call.”

  Áine glanced around and her thoughts reeled. How had he seen all of that at a sweep, and why would he not put that intellect to proper use?

  “Which makes me wonder,” he continued, “who is here with you? Who is squirrelled away waiting for their breakfast?”

  “Get out!”

  Lena at least had the decency to look awkward. McKenna simply shrugged. “Complainant asked us to leave,” he said as he pulled out a small notebook and pencil, jotting down the words he had just uttered.

  Áine marched to the door and hauled it open, rage in her eyes.

  “You’ve been wasting our time since you first called,” McKenna said just before he left.

  “I certainly wasted my own thinking you would help,” she snarled.

  His colleague moved ahead, out of earshot, and he dropped to a whisper. “Just shows you, money can’t buy honesty.”

  Áine slammed the door behind him and picked up the phone to the front desk. “Joe, unless someone has a search warrant, do not ever let anyone up here again without asking me first.” The phone was then thrown at the wall, off which it clattered before dangling down and bouncing on its flex.

  24

  Min emerged from Áine’s room. Saying nothing, he looked at her and moved to the wall, sweeping up the strangled handset and replacing it on its hook.

  “I don’t get it,” was all Áine could manage at first.

  Min just looked at her.

  “Why won’t they help?” she tried, ashamed of her own reaction.

  “We could have done with them,” he said quietly.

  She felt gently admonished. “You think I lost my temper?”

  “There’s nothing better than boots on the ground. The plods have plenty of those, and comms, a network and vehicles. All we have is you, me and your control room.”

  Áine tried hard not to take offence at what he was suggesting. “You think I should have poured the tea and offered him your rashers?”

  “Probably,” he said, without emotion. Just matter of fact, straightforward. She hated it, and yet she found herself drawn to it. Nobody had ever really taken her to task before – they had all been too afraid.

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “We are where we are,” he said, shrugging. “We can forget the cops for now. Maybe they’ll do more than we think they will, but they left with precious little useful information.”

  Áine’s eyes welled again. She looked for a distraction. “Your breakfast,” she said, bustling forward, wiping the corner of her eyes as soon as her back was to him. She poured coffee and they sat. After a while staring at the plate, arms motionless, she looked up, desperate to move on. “You said you had something to tell me?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know for sure what it means.”

  “What is it?”

  “You know I’ve had someone in my team looking into the madam’s phone? He’s a right techie, this man. Former signals, before he saw the light. Nightmare.”

  “Why’s he a nightmare?”

  “No, that’s his name. I’ll never understand how he managed to get through CTC.”

  “Through what?”

  “The commando training course. He shifted from another unit and went through it all to become a Royal Marine.”

  “Oh. Why Nightmare?”

  “Cos he’s tall as a tree and thin as a twig and he eats nothing but dust. Started as ‘Sniper’s’ – ‘Sniper’s nightmare’, but he’s smart as a fox and can find ways around firewalls and fencing like I’ve never seen. Till I met you.”

  “Thank you, I think. I wouldn’t mind being as thin as a twig.”

  Min looked up suddenly. “Don’t be daft,” was all he said, and again something pulsed in her. She waited, struck teenage dumb. “Anyway,” he said between shovels of sausage, “this boy says he was hunting the phone around signal masts but had no joy. Then he tries pinging any in-store Wi-Fi – McDonald’s cloud bubbles and the like, and the only one he gets, besides when you used it, is on a bus, believe it or not.”

  “The madam’s phone used Wi-Fi on a bus?”

  “A coach, I’d say – like one that does airport runs. This one,” he said, “was Belfast to Dublin.”

  “Ok,” Áine looked outside, “so their trade is cross-border? What do you think that tells us?”

  “I don’t think that’s important.” Min gulped down some coffee.

  “So what’s the big deal?”

  “While he was smashing up the VPN to get the IP pings on the phone, he stumbled across a match.”

  “A match to what?”

  “To his search. You’ll know more about all this than me probably, but he says it’s all confused by this bloody data matching going on with the contact tracing apps. Basically they’re hauling data they’re no’ supposed to be from these applications.”

  “Who are?”

  “The spooks, I’d guess. They’re no gonnae miss a chance like this, to dip into a whole pile of information that people are freely giving the government for other purposes.”

  “The Covid tracing apps?”

  “Aye. If you think about the amount of people who’ve downloaded those apps all across Europe and are dancing about the place freely giving away their information, it’s a pot of gold.”

  “Would they do that?”

  “Download the apps?”

  “No – the spooks, would they exploit the information?”

  “Sure, that’s their job, that’s what they’re paid to do.”

  “I know that,” Áine bristled. “I’m not naive about what they do.”

  “Then you’ll know what they can achieve better than me – you build these things.”

  “Not really …” But Áine had built phone apps in the past, and she knew how they offered a window into data that few people understood unless they read every word in the user agreement. “I haven’t looked at the Covid apps.”

  “What do you think, though – could they be useful?”

  “Anything that allows location gathering is useful,” she said, “but it depends on the app’s security functions whether someone hacking would find it beneficial to spend a lot of time using the access for other things.”

  “These apps were built in a hurry but even locations would help build up an intelligence picture. I’d say that’s not what they’ll be doing, though.”

  “Anyone with anything to hide isn’t going to download these apps, surely? No terrorist or insurgent is going to take a risk like that.”

  “Course not,” said Min. “Which is what’s funny about this.”

  “What?” Áine said, increasingly ill-tempered at her own inability to grasp what was being suggested.

  “Nightmare tells me they’re looking for this phone through the Covid apps. They know this phone is out there – they’re hunting for it, for whatever reason. The way they’ve chosen to do that is to scan the Covid tracing data to see if they can find a close contact with the madam’s phone so they can place it.”

  “But that’s pointless unless the app was downl
oaded to the madam’s phone?”

  “Well, they obviously don’t think so.”

  “You reckon they’ve manipulated the software on the apps?”

  “Nightmare reckons they don’t need to. A proximity signal can register whether it’s collected or not. Only those with the apps will get a notification and all other data is demolished, binned. But it could still be collected, he thinks, by anyone with the know-how.”

  “And you think the spooks or whatever would do that?”

  “Wouldn’t you if you were them?”

  Áine thought for a moment. “So whoever is looking for the phone, would, in theory, be able to place it here if we hadn’t closed down its data?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure if it would need to have Bluetooth or location on to match it to another device, but they’ll probably have an easy way around that too. Then again, they’re maybe just shooting in the dark. Maybe they’ve been asked to look for it without a full briefing about why. They might just be going through the usual motions, more in hope than expectation.”

  “So it’s neither here nor there?”

  “Well, d’ye no’ think it’s interesting that somebody, maybe even a government agency, is looking for a phone that’s sitting in this apartment?”

  “I think it’s more worrying than interesting.”

  “Aye. Maybe. But so long as your kit is up to snuff—”

  “It is,” she replied immediately.

  “Then there’s no issue for us. But it’s weird that it’s suddenly on somebody’s radar, aye?”

  “So what agency is looking for it?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Can you find out?”

  “Naw.” Min shook his head. His plate had been cleared completely – she hadn’t even noticed him eating.

  “How come?”

  “Look, my unit is focused on military-type intelligence, not civilian. We are set up tae gather information on an immediate enemy – targets we can sometimes see moving around in front of us. Our comms intercepting stuff is great and everything, but there’s other wings that looks in tae all that data hacking and intel mapping. If ye want a picture of a target compound modelled in 3D in advance of an attack, we’re your boys. All this other stuff, that’s another branch altogether.”