by Finn Óg
Sam lashed the men’s legs to the cargo hooks in the base of the vehicle to prevent them rolling to the window or managing to get out of the van to summon help. Not that he fancied their chances of finding anyone – Sam began to wonder if the place had suffered some economic shock or nuclear leak. Perhaps it was simply evacuated outside peak season.
He and Isla trudged down the sand hauling the RIB behind them and eventually pushed it afloat. It took less than thirty minutes, full plane at over twenty knots of speed, to get back to the little coastal church, during which time Sam worked out his next few moves. The wind had shifted nicely, which helped him make up his mind.
He lashed the boat to a rock and piggybacked Isla up to the church. “Run inside and see if anyone’s there. Don’t say anything, just have a look, and if there is someone inside, run back out again just like you were only playing.”
“Oh-kay,” she said, unsure but compliant. When she came back out she was adamant. “There’s nobody there.”
Sam walked in and pulled the confessional door. He found the woman with Sadiqah on her knee.
“How did those men come to be here? Who called them?”
“I do not know,” she said.
“Where is the man who was with you? The one I thought was your husband?”
“Is gone,” she spat.
“I don’t understand. How did the police know you were here?”
She shrugged.
“Where did he leave you?”
“He is driving boat to rocks. Then he take-ed what he want,” she stared down at her torn clothing, “and he go.”
Sam could see lace from a strap on her shoulder beneath the ragged cloth but he didn’t have time to get into that.
“So what did you do?”
“We come here,” she said, as if he were stupid.
“So how did the police come?”
“I do not know!” she hissed. “We are sleeping and then we are …” she motioned her arms out as if pushing back and forth, “and they here look-ink at us.”
This was as good as Sam could have hoped for.
“So they definitely don’t know you came here by boat?”
“No.” She shook her head confused why that might matter.
Sam was still struggling with the idea that she had been able to understand English all along never mind speak it understandably.
“Then why was the coastguard here?”
“I do not know,” she said, exhausted.
“Ok,” Sam said, “Isla and I are going to get the big boat. We are going to cast the small boat out to sea. It will drift off, slowly, then we will motor round from the harbour, pick up the small boat and come ashore and get you. Do you understand?”
“We can come now?”
“The big boat is out of the water on a crane getting repaired. I can’t have anyone else see you and Sadiqah. This is the safest way to get away without you being arrested.”
She thought for a moment. “There is police car outside.”
“Yes,” said Sam.
“Someone will see,” she said.
“Probably,” he conceded.
“We should go.”
“Then you will be seen. You look …”
“Arab. Muslim,” she said for him. “Filthy immigrant.”
That phrase had evidently been playing on her mind, Sam thought. She spoke with disdain, with hurt, with goading. Sam stared at her. He hadn’t the energy for massaging facts.
“Get us cloth-es,” she said. “Then we are look-ink norm-al.”
“Just walk off and find a shop?”
“Take police car,” she said. “Get it far from here.”
He began to follow her drift.
Habid’s sack nipped at the tuck the doctor had stitched into it. He’d been given baggy cotton trousers – a punishment for securing his continued inclusion in the racket. The fabric was of an alarmingly diaphanous quality, designed to embarrass, he suspected; Tassels’ last salvo before he had departed. Well, he’d suffer for it in the long run.
The crooked cop had, as Habid had intended, headed for the desert in pursuit of his idiot subordinate. He’d ordered the release of the rat before he’d set off clutching a package the size of a brick – cash to purchase the boat.
Habid hobbled and yelped like a small dog abandoned. Gradually he regulated the pain, blinking the tears from his eyes. He stank. He looked foul. He craved warm water and privacy to lick his wounds and begin again.
He had demanded cash from the doctor to see him through. A modest amount, enough to get him to where he needed to be. And so, like a dog returning to its vomit, he clicked and bumped up the steps of the Sofitel and made for reception. The young woman at the desk was perfectly squared away if somewhat lacking in modesty. Habid noticed her painted nails as she pulled her hands to her body in revulsion at the carcass that approached her.
“I was here last week,” he said to her, his gaze concealing the calculation behind his dead eyes. A week, he thought, no time, yet an ordeal for which people must pay.
“Really?” she said. “What is … eh, what is your name?”
“Get the manager,” Habid barked. “He will remember me.”
The woman sighed and with relief turned to the back office from which a man emerged a few moments later. His face morphed from curious to stricken in the course of two seconds.
“You made a mistake,” Habid stated. “Time to apologise.”
The manager snorted. “You made a mistake coming back,” he said as he lifted a phone handset.
“That’s right, make the call,” said Habid.
The manager stared at him and waited for his call to be answered. “This is …” he paused, not wanting to give his name in front of his visitor, “the Sofitel,” he opted for.
There was a pause during which the manager’s revolted expression turned to one of shame before the handset was replaced.
“How can we help you, sir? Would you like your previous suite?”
“After I receive a grovelling apology,” said Habid, smiling a cracked and leering smile. “It seems the mistake was all yours.”
This is mad, thought Sam, as he drove the little police car through the gates of the church and towards the town, Isla in the back. He was wearing a coastguard bib and had absolutely no idea whether the community he was driving into was tight-knit and talkative – and therefore dangerous – or as abandoned as the rest of the locale. Not that there was anybody to be seen, but he worried he might bump into a relation of the coastguard who could identify another man wearing his clothes. He was more worried, though, about alighting from a cop car with no high-vis or official-looking kit on, so he kept it on. The place may have been deserted but it was an tightly packed little town. The streets were narrow with windows overhead. He would have no idea if they were being watched.
“I can choose clothes for Sadiqah,” Isla chirped away merrily in the back, happy to have something to apply her mind to that didn’t involve tying people up or beating them over the head.
“Good woman,” Sam said distractedly as he passed a small shopping centre and craned his head around for somewhere to conceal the car. He turned right twice and parked it in a side street as far away from doors and windows as he could manage. He got out and spun around, opened the back door and beckoned Isla out onto the street. They marched quickly, turning a corner where Sam deposited the bib and coastguard jacket into a bin. Within two minutes they were in a shopping mall.
“What size is she?”
“Same as me,” said Isla.
“Not Sadiqah, her mammy.”
Isla thought for a moment then went quiet. It was a trigger. One that Sam hadn’t touched in a while. He winced.
“Same as my mammy,” she said quietly.
It was at such moments that Sam had to decide which way to go – talk about his wife, Isla’s mother, and face the pain, or try to airbrush Shannon from their thoughts. They were under time pressure but he refused to give in to
temptation.
“Ok, fourteen on top, twelve on the bottom,” he said. “What do you think mammy would choose then?”
“Sadiqah’s mam needs different colours than mammy liked.”
“Ok, well, you know I don’t know anything about clothes, wee love, so you tell me what we should buy.”
She tilted her head and hemmed for a while before chosing something utterly inappropriate.
“Oh-kay,” said Sam, lifting the flimsy vest top from the rack. “I think Sadiqah’s mammy would also like something longer that would keep her, like, warmer.”
“Ok,” Isla chirped, and pottered off with her hand touching the clothes as she passed.
Sam wandered towards the children’s rack where he felt confident. If it was good enough for Isla, it would be good enough for Sadiqah. He was loaded up with stuff when Isla returned with a tracksuit and a jacket. The stuff was cheap but roughly the size they had agreed upon, so he just bought the lot and they walked back towards the church.
Habid stared at the ceiling hatch. There was no way he could get up to it in his present state. Still, there was no immediate rush. He padded and punted himself back to the soft, sumptuous bed. He was in pain but also in a good place in his head. It’s all relative, he thought. The privations of the pharaohs, he imagined, compared to his surroundings must have been grim. In their day they’d been the richest and most elaborately cared for humans on the planet, yet they still defecated into fly-infested pits, and here he was dangling his damages into a porcelain potty with a flush and a fluffy hand towel. When he considered how his luck had turned in a matter of days, from the bacterial halls of one of the city’s prisons to the penthouse of the poshest hotel in Alexandria, he felt as though those who had abused him were currently building his tomb to take him off to the afterlife. And he would have all his money with him. Perhaps the drugs were still addling his mind?
He had work to do but he’d been through a lot and would savour, despite the pain, the cleanliness and decadence of the room. His sutures forbade him climbing over the rim of the tub to bathe his battered bits, but as soon as he was able to negotiate the manoeuvre he would be ready for the sands once more.
Never one to waste time, he put his mind to process, aided by a luxury unavailable in Libya. His fatherland was dry in more ways than one, and so the minibar offered him a new kind of pain relief and an imaginative journey into sleep during which he could plot and crystallise his next moves free from inhibition. The best ideas came with hard liquor. He would temper the most outlandish in the morning, not that anything was particularly out of reach now that these countries were hurtling deeper into lawlessness. The opportunities, he thought, were endless.
The church was empty.
“Maybe they ran away,” Isla suggested.
“Why would they run away?”
“Because you were scary.”
Sam couldn’t argue with that but he doubted the woman would have run off in her rags rather than take a chance to escape arrest.
“They are safe and well,” boomed a voice, accented, confident, unafraid.
Sam span to find a man in black chinos approaching him, his grandad shirt open at the neck.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Daddy!” Isla hissed, and Sam felt bad for swearing in front of her and in a church.
“I am the priest here temporarily.”
“Right, father,” Sam said, less startled. “Sorry about that. But where are the women?”
“Let us discuss who they are before we locate them, shall we?”
“Fair enough, father,” Sam said, deciding that if the priest couldn’t be reasoned with, perhaps God would understand if one of his representatives was tied up and gagged.
“Please, sit.”
Sam noted how so many religious people he had met appeared to share a serene superiority. Isla sat next to Sam, utterly prepared to accept the priest’s authority. Sam waivered and the priest noticed his indecision.
“You can talk to me with confidence,” he said in perfect English.
“How do I know you’re a priest?”
The man raised his eyes in surprise then drew a bendy white plastic blade from his pocket and snapped it into his collar, fastening the button at the front of his black shirt. He did look like a priest.
“What’s your name?” Sam pressed.
“Most people call me Father Luca.”
“Isla, give me the phone please.”
“And your name is?”
“He is Sam,” said Isla, handing the phone over.
Sam gave her a bloody hell, Isla look before typing Sicily Father Luca into Safari and waiting. He was sure the data allowance must be on the cusp of its monthly limit. The results petered through and he tapped ‘images’ and began to scroll. The load time was painful given the pressure Sam was under.
“You posed for a calendar?” he said eventually.
The priest laughed and shrugged. “There are many ways to help the afflicted.”
Sam glanced from the image on the phone to the man at his side. They were definitely one and the same except on-screen he was holding a Bible, presumably at some cathedral, looking suave, handsome and a little bit suggestive.
“The Church is not what it was.” Sam shook his head.
“You can trust me,” said the priest again.
“You found the women? In here?”
“Yes, I was in a rush, I had come to get my things – my robe and a Bible and so on. I had an emergency. They were asleep and did not wake, so I called the carabinieri. I assume you know this woman?”
“How did the coastguard end up here?”
“It is not so polite to answer a question with a question,” said the priest smiling.
Sam ignored it and pressed on. Time was ticking. “Father, why did the coastguard show up?”
“The police must have called them.” He shrugged.
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know,” said the priest, curious as to why Sam was so concerned about the coastguard when the police should represent a bigger threat.
“Where were you when the cops arrived?” Sam pressed.
“There was a young man dying in the village. He needed last rites and I could not wait. I was not here when they came.”
“Do you know where the women came from?” Sam tried to bottom out how much was known by the Sicilians.
“I think you need to tell me that.”
“So you did not speak to them – that’s why they don’t know that you saw them,” Sam thought aloud.
“Yes, but I think I should be asking the questions, do you not? Here you are in my church, from another country, the police are gone and the women are now silent. What has happened here?”
Sam stared at him, at the preacher, considering how to manage him, but he was running out of places to conceal people and out of time.
The priest seemed a little short on patience. “It is time you told me what is going on.”
“Not here,” he said, “in there.” Sam nodded to the confessional. “Isla, wait here a minute, I’m just going to talk to the priest in the box.”
“Why?” Isla asked.
“Not now, wee love.”
Isla looked fed up but the two men settled in on their designated sides and Sam began.
“Bless me, father, for I have sinned.”
The priest snorted, realising what Sam was up to, but had no choice.
“How long since your last confession?”
“Years, father, decades.”
In actual fact Sam had been reared on the other side of the Reformation but busked along anyway in the hope that the priest remained true to his oath.
Luca sighed. “Go on.”
“We rescued the women from the sea days and days ago.”
“Where?”
“Off the coast of Egypt.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Healing, father. My daughter and I, we’ve been th
rough it.”
“Tell me about that.”
“I don’t have time.”
“You should make time.”
“Father, I trust you will abide by the confessional. What I tell you here cannot be mentioned again?”
“Of course.”
“Well, father, I have the two policemen and the coastguard tied up in a van parked on a beach four miles north.”
“What—why?”
“They’re fine, father, honestly. They’re not hurt.”
“This is not going as I had expected,” said the priest, cool as an Irish breeze.
“I will need you to release them soon and to misdirect them for good reasons.”
The priest suppressed a little snort. “These good reasons being?”
“We need to get the women to safety – the Arab woman and her daughter.”
“They are safe here,” said the priest reassuringly.
“We both know they will be taken to a detention centre. My daughter, she is the girl’s friend, and, well, she hasn’t had a friend in a long time, and that’s my fault. And I let them down – the woman and her kid. I sent them ashore with a man who may have been … abusing them in some way.”
“In what way?” The priest bristled and stiffened on his timber stool.
“I don’t know, but I thought he was the woman’s husband, the kid’s father.”
The priest was confused behind the mesh. “I think you are going to have to start at the beginning.”
“There’s no time, father.”
“There is no choice,” said the priest firmly.
So Sam creaked the door open, located Isla and gave her the thumbs up. “Quick as I can, darlin’, ok?”
“Ok, Daddy,” she said sulkily, tapping uselessly on a pew.
The door closed.
“We were sailing at night,” Sam started.
“No, go back. What were you healing?”
“Look, father, I’m not getting into that.”
The priest summoned some seminarian authority and spoke without compromise. “I will help you if it is the right thing to do by God, but all I know so far is that you have kidnapped three men and possibly a woman and a child. You need to explain.”
