Charlie

by Finn Óg

  I looked back at her. “I genuinely haven’t a clue,” I said, “keep it running, maybe it’ll become clear.” She tapped the arrow.

  “The Keeper described him as a kind of mercenary, a freelancer if you will, rescuing women from pimps,” said the Professor. “But the Keeper didn’t know anything about his background.”

  “I still don’t follow how that fits our picture,” said the Brit. “But we can’t have him vanishing.” He appeared to address the investigator. “We will need to know where he is. At all times.”

  “Is possible. Lemme see what we can do.”

  “That’s all for you, for now.”

  The investigator’s image left the screen. The Brit and the Professor kept talking. The Brit looked deeply concerned. “Could the Heir have contacted a charity?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Professor, “I doubt it.”

  The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. This seemed to confirm the Counsellor’s story, that the Heir had come to him for help. I looked at the Brit, and imagined that I was staring at the leader of the abuse ring.

  The professor turned even more sheepish. “The Keeper suspects we have a breach.”

  “There has never, ever, been a breach,” said the Brit.

  “I know,” said the Professor. “A breach would be unthinkable.”

  *****

  It was bizarre, listening to these people piecing together a picture which I had been trying to build for weeks. I wanted to watch the other videos, but Charity needed clarity.

  “So they think I engaged you, to help this “Heir” person?”

  “Who is the Heir?” screamed the twin, from the back.

  I exhaled, then reeled back in the hope that the three stories would somehow become one. “About a month ago, I got a request for work, through the website you set up for me.”

  “Yeah,” said the twin. “I know, I checked.”

  I let that pass without comment. “So, I went to see the bloke who had this job. He told me this cock-and-bull story about a woman who was being abused. It was grim stuff, and involved the seasons and all sorts of crazy stuff. He called her “the Heir.”

  I looked to Charity for a reaction, but got none. “I assumed you had referred this bloke to me.”

  She shook her head. “Other than Fran, I only ever sent one fella to you, a counsellor from Dublin.”

  “A psychologist?”

  “Maybe. He told me he was a counsellor. He was sort of – elusive or something.”

  I looked back at the road. “Well, that’s when it all started. I didn’t believe the Counsellor bloke at all. But then someone came to the boat one night. I don’t know how he got aboard, but anyway he came to kill me…”

  “Sweet and gentle…” the sister began in the back, but I cut across her.

  “And after that I came to you looking for someone who might explain what was going on. And you put me in touch with the old woman from the convent.”

  “Who’s now dead,” said Charity.

  “What?” I said.

  “Yeah. She got killed during a burglary. What had she got to do with anything?”

  “It’s complicated,” I said, my mind racing. “She knew about a cover-up of an abuse ring. It seems to me now that it’s the same ring that the Professor and the Brit seem to run.”

  “Right,” said the twin. “So they’re killers. They think my sister tipped you off about some “Heir” person, and now they’ve got a failsafe way to get to you.”

  “What?” I turned to face her. “What way to get to me?”

  “Well Sam,” said Charity, “apparently, you have a daughter.”

  *****

  Alarm is mental, yes, but it can also be physical. Fear had never made me sick before, never. But I threw open the car door and vomited hard, my darkest fear realised. There are times when deep tiredness and panic can mix to help you focus concentration on one thing, and block out all else.

  The third recording drew my mind in so tight, that I managed to finally zone out the fractious twin on the back seat, and work through what was happening. I listened intently. Every word spoken took on a fresh importance.

  The investigator recounted my recent movements. He told them that I’d flown from Dublin to New York. He said that I appeared to be following some undefined lead, and that he’d been cracking my phones from time to time, but that I was discarding them. He said I was headed northeast, and then the Professor chipped in. “I know where he’s going,” he said, “he’s going to Boston.”

  The Professor obviously didn’t want to elaborate on how he’d been compromised by one of his students, in a Long Island library. “I can get our people to deal with him there,” he said with confidence.

  “We thought that when we sent someone to his boat didn’t we?” said the Brit.

  “Well,” said the Professor, “we still don’t know for sure what happened there. The man we sent didn’t actually…”

  “I know!” yelled the Brit. “He bloody vanished, like this bloody Commando keeps disappearing.”

  Charity looked at me. I shook my head. It wasn’t the time to get into more explanations.

  “Well,” offered the investigator, “you could wait for him to collect his daughter.”

  I tried not to pant, but my chest heaved at the mention of Isla.

  The Brit placed his face in his hands, and exhaled loudly. “His daughter? Why am I only hearing about a daughter now?”

  “His wife, she is dead. He has a young girl,” said the investigator.

  The Brit huffed and puffed in exasperation. “And where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Belgian, and I breathed in, with relief. “But I can find out.”

  “Then do it.” The Brit was over-elaborately calm, containing himself. “If this bloody Commando disappears again, things will get very uncomfortable you.”

  “I will deal with it,” said the investigator.

  “Get off the line,” barked the Brit, and the investigator vanished.

  “If he gets away in Boston,” the Brit addressed the Professor, “I need you to get the rest of the circle, travel to Ireland and tidy things up. Immediately.”

  “But what about the Keeper?” said the Professor, “he’s not authorised to allow anyone near the Heir between Beltane and Samhain.”

  I looked at Charity, who paused the recording, and lifted her shoulders to indicate she had no idea.

  “It’s Pagan shit,” the twin broke in, reading from her iPhone. “The first one’s about fertility, the second one’s about… death and stuff.” Charity cut her off by pressing play.

  “Leave the Keeper to me,” the Brit said. “I have a job for him. I’ll make sure he’s not around.”

  The Professor wasn’t happy. “The Irish police – how do we navigate that?”

  “We have people where we need them. You know that. You just get done what needs to be done.” The Professor nodded, and the recording finished.

  My heart hammered like a mortar drop.

  *****

  The Charity woman looked at me. “Is your daughter safe?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “When did your wife die?”

  “Just before I met you,” I told her.

  “You never said,” her delivery was gentle now, his sister’s less so.

  “Umm, sorry to butt in like, but, we have an issue here. There was a new recording cracked, remember? So maybe we should, like, watch it?”

  Charity came-to. She fumbled around, bringing up the fresh film. It had a real sense of urgency. The Brit was shouting. “So where is he now?”

  “He’s leaving my office building,” the Professor replied. He was deferential. Little wonder, given the eruption his response had conjured from the Brit.

  “To go where?” the Brit screamed, the sound distorting.

  We appeared to be watching the video call the professor had made immediately after I had confronted him in New York.

  “I do
n’t know,” the professor began to shake his head in panic.

  “Well, hadn’t you better find out?” boomed the Brit, top right.

  “Is OK,” interjected the investigator. “We can pick him up, is no problem.”

  “But I thought you said he was dumping his phones?” the Brit blurted out in frustration.

  “Oh, I am not watching his cell phone,” shrugged the French-sounding bloke. “Phones are good, but not reliable, really. They are sometimes discarded, or, broken, and many people know they are compromised.” There was flippancy to his delivery, which suggested complete confidence in his ability to find me.

  “So how can you be sure you can track him?” asked the professor.

  “Same as before,” said the European, “he has one thing with him always.”

  “Which is?” yelled the Brit.

  The European snorted. “Look, I do not ask who you are or what you do. I provide this service, and track the persons of interest to you. You have no need to know how I do this.”

  The Brit was silent for a moment. He had the tremor of an incendiary on the cusp of detonation. Then, his face loomed large in the screen, as he leaned in.

  “Listen to me, you little Belgian bastard,” he spat. “Do you think we can’t find people ourselves? The only reason we chose you is because we don’t have anyone in Ireland. We know everything about you. Your little rental home on Achill Island. Where your wife works, where your children go to school. You are not indispensable, you little shit.”

  The Belgian’s eyes were wide. He was completely blindsided.

  The Brit’s voice gathered volume. “If you cross me, we will fuck-you-up. Do you understand that, or shall I speak more slowly!”

  The Belgian sat still for a moment, evidently dumbfounded that he had been rumbled on the tech front.

  “Now. What is it? The thing that the commando has with him all of the time?” The Brit paced his delivery, making each word crystal clear.

  The Belgian’s eyes fell. “He has the key to his boat,” he replied, softly.

  I felt the sister’s head hit the back of my car seat as the charity woman paused the recording, and turned to face me. The twin groaned from the rear. Now I knew why Mini Marine’s boffin hadn’t detected anything. I had walked off the marina pontoon for lunch, with the tracker in my trousers.

  “Tell me it’s not in your pocket now, Sam,” said the twin.

  It was in my pocket.

  “Ok,” said the charity woman. “We need to get out of here.”

  “We need to get away from him,” said the twin, incredulous.

  “I need to know what else is on those recordings,” I said.

  “Eh, yeah,” said the twin sarcastically, “that’s the priority, yeah. Not that a bunch of – who knows what – looking to kill us.”

  I worked through the sequencing, and realised that they’d lost me in New York, because my boat keys had been bundled in my kit and flown home by Federal Express. But I’d picked the keys up again just that morning, and as such I’d handed them my whereabouts again.

  I looked up. We were sitting in the part of the car park where articulated lorry drivers hauled in to get some sleep. Nobody was looking at us; they were all trying to appease their tachometers by lying in their curtained bunks. I watched a small dog pad over, a fluffy little yoke. In the distance two children swung a dog lead and played in the grass. The little pooch began to piddle against the rear wheel. I gently opened the door, and held out my hand. The dog came over and licked it. I grabbed it by the scruff and hauled it into the car. Then I took the boat keys, both the padlock key and the plastic-encased engine isolator, and rammed them down the dog’s gullet. It yelped and whined, and I could see the children turn in the distance. The dog coughed a little, then struggled to get away from me. Satisfied that it was down and staying down, I let the dog out the door. The Belgian would have fun tracking that.

  The twin was obviously working through the logic of the recordings too. I could see her shaking her head. “You actually met this bloke?” she said. “This Professor?”

  “Two days ago. In Manhattan,” I said.

  “So, we need to go to the police, in the north maybe, get him picked up?” said the sister.

  “Afraid not,” I said. “He’s dead.”

  It was now plain how monumental an indulgence killing the Professor had been. I’d missed an opportunity to round up his group at that bloody apartment in Belfast. I doubted anyone would go near it now, in the middle of a police investigation.

  “Eh, what?” The sister was struggling with news of his death, and was shouting.

  “He killed himself. Long story.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “How long until the next recording is cracked?” I asked her.

  “Depends on how long it is,” she said.

  If the Belgian was looking for Isla, I needed to find the Belgian. I started the car, and began to pull off.

  “Oh, so we’re going with you now, are we?” the sister said, her voice thick with Dublin attitude.

  “We need to get to Achill Island,” I said.

  “We’re safer with him for the moment Sis, honestly.” The charity woman had her head turned to the back seat. “I’ve seen him working, we’re probably better off with him.”

  “I’m not going to the West of Ireland with ye,” barked the sister. “You can let me out now.”

  I swerved to the hard shoulder; I’d had enough of her.

  “No, no, no, Sis, we stay together,” said Charity. “They know who we are and probably where we live. The only way to sort it is to deal with them. Sam can deal with them.”

  “The Guards can deal with them!” yelled the twin.

  “You heard the man, the cops are ‘on board.’ Let’s get away from here. If they’ve tracked him this far, we need to keep moving.”

  I looked in the rear-view mirror. “Get out if you’re getting out. Otherwise the next stop is Achill Island,” I said to the twin.

  She slumped down petulantly, her arms folded across her chest. I took that as confirmation, pulled into the traffic, and headed West.

  *****

  Some people love barren, but it’s not for me. Bogland represents one long, turgid reminder of freezing, wet nights yomping across vacuous countryside, the mud clinging to my boots, the earth trying to lay premature claim to my sodden, aching, carcass. Those months of training for the Marines, and then the SBS, were far from fun. Nor was the drive to County Mayo. I was tailgating, speeding, and hurtling ahead, despite the swearing and gasps from my passengers, who clearly thought that I was destined to cause their deliverance. We swept through the flat, black gorse brush, Heaney’s turf, where Ireland’s brutal history was embalmed, and concealed.

  In the past, I’d sailed by Achill Island, but I’d never been on it. Neither had my passengers. The twin, with her Google maps and her iPhone, became my consultant. At least it gave her purpose beyond criticising my driving.

  “There’s not much there,” she said, “there’s like some villages and a good few pubs, mostly holiday cottages. And a beach.”

  “What about access?” I asked. I hadn’t a clue whether getting to the island involved a ferry.

  “Well, far as I can see there’s one bridge, but that’s all. It looks pretty tight.” She looped her phone around the headrest and I glanced at it, then she made the image bigger. I grunted. That seemed like good news.

  “See where the broadband connection is best,” I scrabbled around for ideas about how to locate the Belgian. I reckoned he’d need pretty good bandwidth in his line of work. She began tapping away.

  “Seems ok in the villages,” she said. “But I’d say he’s not hard-wired – that’s too volatile. I’d say he uses a dish out there, for when the electric goes down in winter.”

  The twin may have been a pain in the arse, but her reasoning and skills were on the money. We passed a small supermarket close to the bridge, and I decided there was no point in wasting ti
me. I pulled over, and turned to Charity.

  “Can you take a screen shot of the Belgian from the iPad, and enlarge it?” She shook her head to indicate her technical incompetence.

  “Here, give it to me,” said the twin, and I heard the sound of a camera shutter. She handed the iPad into the front again, job done.

  “Right,” I said to Charity, reasoning that she was the most likely to get the desired response. “Can you go inside and ask where he lives?”

  “I can try,” she said. “But they’ll think I’m a cop.”

  I didn’t care what they thought. They could either tell her nicely, or have me wreck the place.

  She returned fifteen minutes later, during which time I had twice considered the strangulation of her sister, as she banged on about the mess I had dragged them into.

  “Sorry, took a bit of plamasing.”

  I looked at her quizzically.

  “Sweet-talking,” explained her know-it-all sister.

  “He lives in Keel, up a hill. I have rough directions but they only go so far.”

  There’s windswept, and there’s ravaged, and I couldn’t work out whether the village was beautiful, or battered. We tore around the place, up lanes and roads, until the place we were looking for presented itself. At the back of one falling-down house loomed a dish NASA would have been proud of. I wondered what the locals thought the little Belgian was up to in there. I didn’t bother with a soft approach. I parked hard, wedging his Jeep in, told the women to stay put, and didn’t break stride as my shoulder hit his front door. The whole frame gave way.

  Inside there was a scuffling as someone took off, but it was useless. He could tear into the surrounding terrain, but it was home away from home for me, and he wouldn’t get away. I caught him wrestling with a broken PVC door at the back, and used my forearm to pin his face against the glass, and to raise his feet off the floor. His lips slabbered the windowpane, his heavy panting condensed against it, and in that moment, something came to me. It was as if I’d taken a round in the trunk, it nearly took the legs from me, but I had to remain standing. I had to see this part through, before I reasoned out the rest.

  “You’ve been looking for me,” I whispered into his ear. “So, hi. Here I am.”