Charlie

by Finn Óg

  Her little finger became smeared in her grandfather’s blood. In the distance, I could hear the distressed whoop of an emergency vehicle. Isla nodded to me. I turned to Mum.

  “This attack happened on the rocks. You were approached by some mugger who saw you guys alone. He stabbed Dad, and ran off. He didn’t get anything. Don’t let Isla out of your sight. Take her into the interview booth if you have to. Don’t let any plod talk to her on her own. She’s on holiday with you. Tell them you have called me and that I am on my way from Ireland.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I looked at Isla, but didn’t want to say anything that she could regurgitate in front of anyone. I whispered in Mum’s ear. “I need to deal with yer man,” I nodded below to the rocks. “He’s Irish, and he came far too close.”

  She just looked at me in stunned silence, and eventually nodded, and posed another question. “So, are we ok then, there’s nobody else to worry about?”

  She was asking whether the Counsellor was working alone, which was something I hadn’t considered. My instincts told me that he was flying solo.

  “Yes. How will I find you? Afterwards like?” I asked her.

  “There’s only one hospital round here,” she said. “We had to take your dad there last week for an ear infection.”

  Which explained why he hadn’t been swimming.

  “Ok, I’ll find it. Stay there till I join you. Have you money? You’ll need clothes.”

  “They’re in the bag down there,” she nodded to the cove. “I’ll ask the police to bring them to us, when they arrive.”

  I hugged Dad, whose breathing was steady-ish, and looked at the two women, in their swimsuits and the blood. I kissed Isla and told her not to tell anyone that she had seen me, and not to talk to the police, and then I leapt over the railing and hopped down the rocks once more.

  **

  Dragging the Counsellor into the sea was easy. He was still unconscious, and I worried that he might die. His breath was laboured, and as I rested his head against my chest to swim him out, I could feel the gristle and bone of skull fragments rub against my shirt. We swam tight to the rocks towards a jutting headland. I reckoned that it was so steep that it would be almost impossible for anyone to see us from above. There was virtually no wash, and I was thankful for the negligible tidal pull of the Mediterranean.

  Once we reached the outcrop, I found a small, shelved inlet. It was not quite a cave, but it was covered and impenetrable by land. I paddled us in, and used the Counsellor’s arms to wedge his mouth above water, Christ-like, his head hanging between his shoulders, his arms spread above. The water around us gradually filled with his blood, as I gently trod water, preserving as much energy as possible. I had a long haul ahead.

  When darkness was established, I swam out around the headland, and looked for a vessel of some sort. Of course, there was nothing. Well, save for a few hundred yachts and motor cruisers sitting elegantly in the marina. However, twenty feet beyond, their owners were cavorting merrily in the restaurants and bars which embroidered the harbour. The way my luck was going, I would be sure to steal a boat owned by someone within spitting distance of the theft. Regardless, I swam towards the lights.

  One option presented itself, so with reluctance, I took it. Lashed to the stanchions on the leeward side of a fifty-foot ketch, was a broad stand-up paddleboard. The long stock of its oar was within reach, tied to the toe-rail. I didn’t dare to stand up on it as I left the marina, shoving it instead, like a learner swimmer might push a float. Once out of the immediate sight of the revellers, I clambered on top. It wasn’t until I dipped the blade in the water that the penny finally dropped about how stupid I had been.

  Feet together, with the water gently lapping over my toes, I realised how the intruder had got on board our boat. There was no way the radar would have picked up the polystyrene core of a surfboard like the one beneath my feet, or indeed, the plastic paddle. I had seen SUPs being used a thousand times. Why it had never occurred to me before was a total mystery.

  I ducked under the shelf as I entered the cove, but I could see nothing. I knew where I’d left the Counsellor, crucifixional in the depth of the half-cave. I dropped to my knees, the blade under my groin, and paddled like a dog, hands immersed on either side of the board. It butted against the rocks, but the Counsellor was gone.

  I almost panicked. Worst-case scenario was that he had fallen forwards, and drowned. I dropped into the water, now breath-robbingly frigid, and thrashed about beneath the surface, but it was pointless. I couldn’t see anything. My head swam with the adverse scenarios his death posed. An Irishman, stabbed. Another Irishman washed up close by, with serious head wounds. A third Irishman, with a colourful career history, flies in before – not after – the stabbing, but claims to have arrived as a result of it. I had to find him.

  I got back on the board and paddled out of the cove again, imagining what the Counsellor was likely to have done, had he been able to escape. The gentle swell would not have prevented him turning either right, towards the marina, or left, towards the scene of the stabbing. He had no reason to swim to sea, and I assumed he had simply slipped beneath the surface and died. I hoped against hope that he had not.

  I reckoned he would hit for help and so I turned right, powering the paddle into the water and driving forward. I was surprised at the speed of the board, and used the reflection and illumination of the town’s lights to scour the rock face and the sea ahead, for signs of a swimmer. The paddle’s displacement made a plunge and ripple sound as it cut through the surface, gliding the board like a skimming stone, straight as an arrow. The noise helped me catch a break.

  “Help, please!” I heard a weak call to my right. There was still a mile between the town and me, and I couldn’t see anyone, but the voice seemed to come from the rock face. It was unmistakably Irish.

  “Ola?” I called, hoping he would guide me towards him.

  “Over here,” he called.

  I was upon him before I finally saw what was happening. The Counsellor was hanging like a gymnast from a rock, faced into the cliff, and unable to see me approach. He heard me though, because he kept muttering.

  “Here, please, por favour, over here.”

  The logistics of this were not ideal. I needed him compliant, but I needed him alive. I also needed to get him onto the board. Nothing easy about any of that, particularly given that he was hanging off a rock and was likely to go boogaloo when he saw his would-be saviour.

  I sat on my arse, my shins dangling in the water for stability, and manoeuvred the board parallel to the rock face. Then I placed my hand upon his shoulder.

  “Ok, ok, ok,” I said, reassuringly, then crooked my elbow around his throat and began to choke him. His thrashing did not begin immediately. He evidently thought he was being rescued, but when it did dawn upon him, he nearly capsized the board with his kicking.

  It took three full minutes of careful squeezing and release. I had to make sure the pressure was even, and just enough to knock him out without causing brain damage. It was the second time he’d been rendered unconscious that day, and I knew that I was very lucky not to have killed him on the previous occasion.

  I lumped him onto the board, face down in a jury-rigged recovery position. Placing one foot between his legs, and the other on the small of his back, I started digging deep with the paddle. His body made the board less predictable as it wobbled beneath me, but we had a long way to go, and I was out of alternatives.

  I estimated the Isles de Medes to be about one mile offshore. Everything I knew about them had come from an article I’d read on the in-flight magazine, and I’d been so distracted, that I didn’t remember much. The Medes Islands had been fortified at various times. I recalled mention of Napoleon, and of the fact that the Isles were now part of a protected nature reserve, which suited me just fine. What really interested me though was that the article had mentioned underwater caves.

  Almost an hour later I sculled
around to the southeast side of the rocks, the sheer height of which offered few opportunities for landing. I’d seen an image in the article of divers bobbing merrily just off an outcrop, but in the half-light, it took a bit of finding. Once there I dragged the board and the Counsellor up onto the hard ground, and laid him face down. Then I placed my head on the small of his back, and fell asleep, assured that he could not get away again without me knowing it.

  *****

  I have no idea how long I slept, but it was black dark when the Counsellor began to shift. I lifted my head and regarded his pathetic progress. He shuffled on the rock face, then moaned and sobbed, reaching around, trying to work out where he was. I let him scrabble for a while, deliberating on how to get from him what I needed. He wasn’t even aware of my presence until I spoke.

  “Scream if you want to, nobody can hear you. Might be best to get it out.”

  I heard him scuttle around on all fours, then halt, stock-still, like a lizard, his senses sharpened. I waited as his mind reeled. “Sam?” he said eventually.

  “Yes,” I said. “Although you’re not supposed to know my name, are you?”

  He grunted. I couldn’t make out his expression.

  “I know about the circle,” I began, “the Harvard Professor, the Heir, and your relationship with her.”

  He paused, computing. “How?”

  “The mirror. In your bathroom.”

  “What?” he spat, incredulous.

  “When we spoke in there. I ran the shower, to distort any listening devices.”

  “You bugged me?”

  “No. Do try to keep up,” I said, aiming to pile on the confusion and consolidate control. “The steam clung to the mirror. It showed me that her face had been pressed against it. Her scar, all down her face.”

  His breathing became silent. “You’ve met her, the Heir?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But the scar?” he was thinking hard, trying to work out how I knew.

  “You told me about it, without meaning to. You touched your face when you talked about her being cut. But the steamed mirror showed it to me. Your hand, beside her head. Your other one probably pressed against her skull. You behind her. All to yourself. No sick circle looking on. Just you. Raping her, abusing her.”

  “Not rape!” he spat, angrily, shuffling about and rising on his knees.

  In truth, it hadn’t clicked with me until I’d forced the Belgian’s face against his back door, his breath condensing on the glass.

  “You can call it what you like,” I told the Counsellor. “You probably think you’re in a relationship. Next thing, you’ll be telling me you love her.” I poured scorn into my delivery.

  “I do love her. She and I, we are together.”

  “That,” I said, “I do believe. You wanted to get her away from the others. You wanted them to stop raping her. You were jealous.”

  “No. I was protecting her.”

  “You’re not her counsellor, you’re her Keeper,” I said. “You’re one of the circle. You are its master of hounds. But you got jealous of them, having their twisted way with her.”

  “She loves me,” he said.

  “Have you never heard of Stockholm syndrome?”

  “She loves me. I was getting her out of it,” he repeated.

  ‘“After how many years of abusing her? ‘” I asked. ‘“She used you. And you, her jailer, saw a way to get her out. Through me.”

  I heard him roll off his knees and onto his arse.

  I looked in his direction. “It took a while to work out what you were up to. Why would one of the circle bring in a mercenary like me, to investigate the abuse?”

  “I love her,” was all he said.

  “You thought you could play me against them, didn’t you? You thought that you could persuade me that you were her shrink, nothing more, and that I would find them and kill them, and then you would take her as your own.”

  “You make it sound like I’m as bad as them.”

  “You’re no better. You fed me just enough information to lead me to the members of the Circle. The Boston barman. The old woman in Dublin. You killed her, too, didn’t you?”

  I took his silence as acceptance.

  “You calculated that I would kill them all, and that by telling them I was coming after them, you could get permission to move the Heir away, ready for your new life, your escape. Poor bloody woman.”

  “She needed someone to free her. There was no other way. Just, no other way,” he stressed.

  “But you were one of them from the start. You were an abuser, a rapist, a sick fanatic. Did you really think that you’d be able to sail off into the sunset with her? Your victim?”

  “I was trying to save her,” he said.

  “Were you trying to save her when you came for my family?” I asked.

  “It’s not that simple,” he said.

  “I know. You’re afraid of someone. Someone who has played you, who knows who all of you are, who can destroy your fantasy life with the Heir.”

  It was then that he began to sob. I kept on the heat. “Did you cut her too? Did you put that scar on her face? Did you skin her feet when she was small? Did you rape her as a child?”

  It was all I could do to stop myself from striking him again. I waited for a long time. “There is only one way you will ever see her again,” I told him.

  “How?” he asked, suspicious.

  “I need to know about the others. The Brit who has you so terrified. The hierarchy, the arrangements. I need to finish what you started.”

  He said nothing for a few minutes.

  And then he talked, and talked.

  And then I reminded myself that he had come to kill my daughter. And so he was introduced to an underwater cave, and I paddled ashore to see my dad.

  *****

  The going wasn’t easy. The key to my hire car had become saturated, so I took out the small, rear triangular window to unlock the back door manually. That triggered the alarm, which woke the locals at 7 a.m. The key in the ignition stopped the siren. There were three notices crammed behind the windshield wipers, all of which appeared to be parking fines. At least the wheel hadn’t been clamped.

  Contrary to what Mum had said, there seemed to be a dozen hospitals in the area. Most of them were small and privately owned, and it took far too long for me to realise that my definition of a hospital, and that of the Spanish, were totally different. Eventually I spotted an elderly man clutching a freshly baked baguette, who not only spoke English but was English. He told me that the nearest hospital with an emergency department was in Palamos, half an hour’s drive from L’Estartit.

  A nurse looked at me with suspicion. I was still damp in places, from the paddle, but at least the blood had washed away. I was salty, for sure, and must have looked pretty haggard. The nurse may have put it down to a long flight; I didn’t really care, until I saw Isla and my mum. My daughter’s little feet were brown, save from the straps of some beach shoes she must have been given. A blanket lay on the floor, and her little legs were curled up towards her chest, as her head lay across her Granny’s lap. My mum was dozing upright in a chair, not really asleep, but not awake either. Two feet away, Dad was propped up on pillows upon the ramp of a bed, a tube out of his nose, packing around his chest, a drip in his arm and a ventilator billowing away at his side. His heart was being monitored; it looked steady to my untrained eye.

  The room was private, and even had its own shower and toilet. Mum and Isla were dressed for the beach; the police had evidently retrieved their bag. I put one hand on Dad’s shoulder, and took his enormous paw in mine. He stirred, and his crusty eyes cracked open. When he saw me, he smiled, and then closed his eyes in peace for longer than was comfortable.

  Then he opened them again. His chest heaved with effort. “Ok pal,” was all he managed, the plastic mask steaming up as he spoke.

  “Hi Dad.”

  There was no point in asking how he was doing. I could see it all
. He was alive, and with the exception of infection, he ought to be ok.

  “She’s been so good,” my mum spoke from behind me. “Isla held his hand all night.”

  I turned to look at her, as her eyes welled up.

  “What does the doctor say?” I nodded towards Dad.

  “Punctured lung,” she said. “There was cardiac arrest last night, which was terrifying, but they got him back in the ambulance and he’s been stable since.”

  The guilt was enormous, but mum didn’t have time for recrimination. Everyone, including me, was ok, and that was good enough for her. “I’m not going to ask what this is all about,” she said. “But is it over?”

  I walked over and scooped up my daughter, and hugged her in tight. She stirred awake.

  “Almost,” I said. “Almost.”

  Twenty-Five

  Westminster is stunning, even to those with little regard for what happens inside. I’d been there before countless times, on close protection duty, which I hated. Perhaps that’s why I had no time for the people who occupied the green and red benches inside. Perhaps it was because of my pals, led by such fools, who had died in the dirt and the dust of distant lands.

  Of course, there had to be good among the bad, but I was searching for the latter. I had run through the scenarios time and again; the recce, the surveillance, the approach, the ending. In any event, none of it was necessary.

  I picked him up as he emerged from the Palace, no doubt having signed in for the day to claim his cash. Peers could take a daily allowance, money for nothing, if they so chose; the Brit couldn’t have spent more than an hour inside. He certainly couldn’t have taken his seat in the Lords’ chamber. Then he hopped in a private car, some up-market taxi, and took off. So I got on the phone. “Where’s he going?”

  “Lemme see,” said the Belgian, who I now had over a barrel. He had a vested interest in me ending the Circle, and a deep fear of its members finding out that he had talked. Between him and the bolshie twin, I had some pretty high-tech support. I listened to him type, as he scuttled around the Brit’s diary, held on some server inside the building I was staring at. “Is good news,” he said.