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

by Finn Óg

  “I know, DNA,” Sam said.

  “—all over the bloody place. I suggest you let whatever is gonnie happen to that body just take its course, let the dust settle and then just sort the rest out when it’s all gone away.”

  Sam grunted. Sinead began to shake.

  “It’ll only be for a wee while this time. I promise, Sinead, I promise.”

  “And that poor wee bugger,” Min said nodding at the phone, “needs to be told about his lovely wagon.”

  “I’ll make it good for him,” Sam said, as Min leaned over to open the line to Fran. “I have some cash,” he said as the speakers shuddered with the ringtone.

  “It’s some job, no’ be cheap,” Min warned.

  But Fran had other problems. “Lads,” he answered, “I’m being pulled over.”

  41

  “A checkpoint?” Min’s knuckled tightened on the wheel.

  “No, a Garda car. It’s been tailing me for two minutes. I’ll be in the shit, but I had to keep them moving cos you gobshites cut the call.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I sped up a bit. If you can’t see the blues and twos, turn off. I’m pulling in now to face the music.”

  “What will you say?”

  “Hang up,” Fran commanded.

  Sam reached forward and did as they’d been told. “If anyone can talk his way out of it, he can.”

  Min took a left and they headed west, the tip of the sun occasionally appearing in the wing mirrors.

  “Will he be ok?” Min asked.

  “I’ll find a way to make it right,” Sam said. “Mind you, I remember he used to get migrants to take his penalty points.”

  Min laughed at the roguery of the little Dubliner.

  “Can I call Áine?” Sinead said quietly.

  The two men were silent for a second before Min answered her query.

  “You’d be better not tae, to be honest. She could have those cops with her in the apartment, and until we get him and me clear,” he gestured to Sam, “it would be better if you could wait.”

  Sinead said nothing.

  Sam found a road atlas wedged in the passenger door pocket and used what light there was to direct Min south through Duleek and then west again, before following the coast road south through Balbriggan and Malahide.

  “We could do with some traffic,” Min muttered. “We’re a big white van on the road on our own.”

  As they neared Dublin Min got his wish. It wasn’t heavy but even light congestion left them less exposed.

  “D’ye know where the bin lorries come to your apartment block?” Min asked.

  Sinead stirred, realising the question had been directed at her. “By the car park barrier.”

  “Sorry, darlin’, but I think we leave you there.”

  She didn’t reply. Sam spoke into her ear. “I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

  “Will you?” she turned to him, not pleading, not needy, simply seasoned to his form, gently but self-assuredly unconvinced.

  He sat back and looked forward. He couldn’t fault her for her scepticism, and he felt even more unable than normal to elaborate with Min at his side.

  The phone rang as they crossed the Liffey onto the south side of the city centre.

  “You ok?” Min asked Fran.

  “Ah, yeah. Told them I was charging the bike’s battery with a run while there was no traffic. They nearly did me for speed but they weren’t that interested. I think they were looking for someone else.”

  “Did they ask you for your driving licence or ID?” Min was working through the connections that could lead back to the lock-up.

  “Yeah, yeah, but when I reached for it they even didn’t bother to look. He was happy enough. Nice lad.”

  Min swung around the apartment block and saw a police vehicle now parked up at the front door. He wondered whether there might be another in the car park.

  “Look, pal,” Min told Fran, “we have problems back at the digs. We’re gonnie have tae drop the passenger and get offski quick.”

  “Ok,” Fran said. “Well, you could go back to where we got that nice vehicle you’re in.”

  “Aye,” Min said gravely, “we’ll need tae talk about that.”

  “Park it up.” Fran remained oblivious. “I have just what you need.”

  Min turned to Sam, who nodded.

  “See you there,” Min said, as he pulled into the loading bay at the apartment block.

  Sinead put her hand on the door handle. Min turned his head right to look away into an empty grille window leading onto the block’s car park. He wanted to be anywhere but at the side of his best friend at that very moment. He felt movement on the bench seat to his left.

  “This is it, then,” Sinead said. “Again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sam didn’t know what else to say. “It won’t be for long this time.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said, then paused, “but you came for me.” She nodded and reached up to lay her palm against his face, a thought occurring to her. “When did you leave?”

  “I’ve lost track,” he shrugged. “More than two weeks ago, anyway.”

  “So … you didn’t get my letter?”

  “I did get your letter. I replied to it—”

  “No,” she hushed him, “the one,” she dropped to a whisper and looked down, “about Uganda.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  She looked up again to search his eyes for a moment. A door slammed on a vehicle behind them and she shook herself. “What will I say? To the guards?”

  “Tell them nothing,” Sam said firmly. “They have no right to hold you for anything. You just… needed time to yourself.”

  Sinead thought for a moment. “I know what I need to say,” she said, then shimmied over Sam, placing her hand on his shoulder as she passed. She pushed the door and stepped down to the road, closing the door gently and resting her hand against it for a moment. She glanced up at him through the window and walked past the front of the van, around the car park barrier, and didn’t turn again before she disappeared into the gloom.

  Sam felt like he had just been hit in the stomach and watched the darkness in bafflement.

  Min stayed silent and pulled gently into the road, looking above for signs of any cameras at the rear of the building, but he already knew there were none on the internal CCTV system, which triggered two unanswered questions and allowed him to crack the heavy air hanging in the cab.

  “How did you know we were at the lock-up?”

  “What?” Sam shook himself from his distraction.

  “At the lock-up – the first time?”

  Sam peered at his friend and took a long breath. “They had three coverts at the perimeter of the estate.”

  “Must have been good ones – I didn’t see them.”

  Sam felt Min’s pain. There was a time when their job had been to help install such hidden cameras, masked by mobile phone masts or TV satellite dishes.

  “You know what they were doing in there, don’t you?”

  “I have a fair idea and don’t want to know any more,” Min said.

  “Well, they wanted to have a heads-up in case the police started sniffing around so they could shift their customers in a hurry. That’s why the cameras were so far from the building. None close, though. They didn’t want any record of their own team coming and going. They were tricked out,” Sam mused. “Great toys in that building, or at least they had.”

  “I take it you smashed it up?”

  “There was a contained fire,” Sam replied.

  “Who were they?”

  “It was run by an English bloke. Small enough team, some Irish, some foreign. They were trying to muscle in on the local organised crime scene. When they lost that bloody phone, the boss got fed up with their constant failure to locate it and came over to read the riot act, but I met him at the ferry terminal and he told me enough to make excuses.”

  “You took his place?”

  “No
, they knew the boss. I told them there’d been a last-minute change and he’d sent me instead.”

  “And they didn’t check that with him?”

  “That would have been challenging,” Sam said. Min took that to mean that the boss had, indeed, been greeted with a bang on the head, or fallen in the dock. Probably both.

  “So they just took you back to the lock-up?”

  “My story had the unexpected advantage of me not being properly briefed on what was going on because it was all changed last minute. I said I was there to advise and make sure they didn’t make a bollocks of it again, and they sucked it up. They didn’t have much choice – they were all terrified of this boss bloke.”

  “So you advised them?”

  “When the phone came to life, they located it and I told them to recce it.”

  “Recce what?”

  “The marina. Glad to see your desk job hasn’t left you completely unfit.”

  Min shook his head. “You saw the whole thing?”

  “I wasn’t expecting you to come out of that wreck of a boat. That made me smile alright.” Sam was shaking off Sinead’s departure with the recollection.

  “And you followed me into the town?”

  “Not far. How did you find the lock-up?” Sam asked.

  “Mixture of things – taxi the men took and some bizarre idea of Áine’s. She’s some smart cookie.”

  “Completely.”

  “But,” Min was confused, “you said there were no cameras on the building itself, so you couldn’t have seen me in the dark, then, at the door?”

  “No, but when the alarms on the cars outside went off, I knew you’d be there. I needed you to know I was inside and I didn’t want you coming in. Sinead wasn’t in the building and I still had to work out where she was being held. Besides, I had the Covid cover plan worked out for the gang and I really didn’t want a bloodbath – which is what it would have turned into if you’d come inside.”

  “Ok,” Min said. “Bit of a gamble that I wouldn’t push in, aye?”

  “I was confident enough you’d get it,” Sam said, “once I stood in the light from the doorway and you could see my face.”

  There was peace for a short while as the van made its way north yet again, both men wary of the potential for police interest.

  “We looked at the camera recordings from inside the apartment building, from when Áine was attacked,” Min said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Weird thing. The people who beat her up, they went into the car park first.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering.”

  “Is there no camera in the car park?”

  “Not one that could show what they were doing.”

  Sam thought for a moment. “They had a lump in their kit.”

  “A tracker?”

  “Yeah. They were probably looking for Sinead’s car. I don’t know if Áine has a car.”

  “She doesn’t drive.”

  “So we should tell Sinead to look for a lump.”

  “Her car wasn’t there,” Min said. “No harm in double-checking, but when they went in tae the car park, she was at the convent. That’s where they grabbed her.”

  Sam nodded grimly.

  Min looked over at him. “D’ye think you’ll really be able to hang about with all the mess left behind?”

  “They’ll get next to nothing from the lock-up – all cards and hard drives are destroyed. Far as the authorities are concerned, it’s a Covid situation, so there will be a deep clean – probably hefty chemicals – and I’m reasonably happy with that.”

  “And the house in Drogheda?”

  “They were melting a man in a bath. It was fucking disgusting. I just can’t see how they’d want to attract any attention there. Two bad bitches live to fight another day, but they’re going to have to clean up to save themselves.”

  “Is there risk for Áine and Sinead from England?”

  “There would have been if there was any trail to Áine, but that was done through the boss, and he’s all at sea. That’s two of them floating around the Irish Sea with no real boating traffic to pick them up.”

  Min nodded. “They’ll likely sink first.”

  “Hopefully. You’re right though. The outstanding problem is this van. I’ll need to get Fran to destroy it.”

  Min shuffled uneasily. “The cops might pay a visit to his house at some stage.”

  “Why?”

  “Speeding, mainly.”

  “They’ll not be searching the place, then?”

  “No. But we should drop this into his garage, explain and then clear out ASAP.”

  “Agreed,” Sam said. “Poor fecker, this really is a nice van.”

  42

  Sam looked at the envelope, camouflaged with airmail stickers, and thought about whether to call Sinead before opening it. Their calls were laboured, though, he felt. Something was wrong.

  They’d been using the channel, which he had thought was as good a means as any. From his point of view there had been more contact between them than ever before, and he knew she wouldn’t blame him that he couldn’t travel to see her – or her to him. The cross-border lockdown had seriously begun to grip; new variants and people using the normally lax security to exploit loopholes in the restrictions had resulted in increased patrols on both sides of the invisible line. Plus she knew there was a potential trail from his actions to finding her. A lot of people had died, which could trigger an investigation, and getting picked up for something silly could bring all sorts of unintended consequences – police computer checks, finger printing, maybe even DNA sampling. He couldn’t afford questions about why he’d crossed the border and who he was going to see.

  So he’d called on the channel. Immediately, in fact, to check how she was. To his surprise he’d found Áine remarkably friendly. Sinead had been sleeping on the first two occasions he’d tapped up the app, and on the third he knew all was not right.

  Later he’d tried to inquire of Áine if there was a lingering issue, if the Guards had become difficult, but she’d insisted they had lost all interest after Sinead had turned up safe and well. Sinead had offered nothing of her ordeal to the police, but Áine and she had discussed everything, or so Áine claimed, and Sam could detect no particular concern from Sinead’s twin.

  Yet the calls had been factual, perfunctory almost. She had inquired after Isla, after him, asked what they had been doing, but there was a coolness, and it disturbed him in a way he couldn’t remember having felt before.

  He looked again at the letter. It must, he knew, contain something important. The mention of an unanswered letter had changed their parting in the van completely. Even Min had noticed it – he’d asked about it when they got back to Belfast on two of Fran’s motorbikes. Everything ok with you two? Min’s tone had said it all. Sam had just shaken his head gently. I’m not sure.

  Of course, she had been abducted and held captive for two weeks. It went without saying that life had changed. Yet, and all, there was something else. So Sam looked at the envelope, on which the various journeys of the letter were betrayed: Ireland, Jamaica, Dominica, Barbados, Belfast.

  He worked his way through the various redirected incarnations, each envelope larger than the last, like Russian dolls. Finally he tore, gently, along the top of the original, and began to read.

  Dear Sinead,

  That sounds very formal, but it’s nice to finally put your name on a letter. A letter, it seems, might be the best way to get some things out, really, because the other channel clearly isn’t working. So, I thought, given this was going quite well before, let’s try it again. Maybe I’ll be able to find the words if they’re on paper, because I sure as hell can’t seem to find them on the phone.

  I got it, at last. Your letter. The one you mentioned in the van, about Uganda. Daniel sent it on. It has taken long enough to find its way back, but then it probably took two moons by camel to find its way there in the first place.
But I’ve got it now and that’s what matters. So here it is – my response. I hope, sincerely (how formal), that this comes out the way I mean it.

  I’ll start by answering your questions. Yes, I’ve been to Uganda, and, yes, it was with work. I know a little bit about the Lord’s Resistance Army. I was briefed, once, but we weren’t involved in anything to do with them – we were just there training in the bush and on the rapids from Lake Victoria.

  So much for letter writing working better – now I’m stuck for words, but I meant it when I said that if you wanted to go there, I’d go with you.

  What do you say to something like that? What you wrote, I mean. Well, in a nutshell, I am so, so sorry that you had to go through that – that they put you through that. I’m gutted you suffered at all. I’m gutted you suffered in that way. I can’t honestly say that it came as a complete shock, but what is incredible is the way you have somehow managed to deal with it. That you are so strong, that you are still fighting for people who cannot fight for themselves. It made me so sad and angry to begin with, then it made me so proud, if that makes any sense. It makes me so proud of you. I mean, I was proud of you to begin with – really and truly, I have always completely admired what you do and the way you do it. Asking no thanks, seeking virtually no help, just digging in and getting on with it. Maybe that wasn’t clear before. That you’ve been through all that and survived and came out as strong – well, that’s probably one of the most impressive things I’ve ever heard.

  Full disclosure here: it made me completely mad. It made me think the way I used to. I started thinking about what I could do, but gradually I realised that what I was doing was pure selfish, typical of the way I used to be – see a problem, knock it over. So I’m sorry that I immediately reacted like that. But it’s fair for you to know that that’s a part of me that I haven’t managed to shake yet. Who is waffling now?

  Few people could have experienced that and come through it. I know you will have suffered terribly at the time. I also know you’ll have suffered afterwards. Maybe you still are. Of course you will be, at times. I get that. I understand that. Honestly, Sinead, I really, deeply understand that. Maybe not the violation, that’s beyond horrific. I’m … it’s, I don’t know if you want to talk about that or for me to talk about that. We can work that out.