The Lornea Island Detective Club

by Gregg Dunnett

  Still I stare. I realize my mouth’s open, but I don’t feel able to shut it.

  "Come on Bill… You wouldn’t believe it, but I got the idea from you. You were going on about that other boat, the Blue Lady? That's never gonna happen. I don't have no accounts that a bank can analyze and decide if I'm a good investment. But this Carter’s place. They're not so concerned about that. If you can put up something. And I’ve got a bit saved – and Tucker’s got this jewelry - well, they make allowances. You know? They’ll charge a bit more in interest. But we reckon we can earn that back. If we get a good run." He puts his hand through his hair again.

  "I can't believe you thought I'd... thought I'd try and rob somewhere."

  I'm silent for a few moments, and Dad is too. You can actually hear the clock ticking on the wall.

  "But what about Tucker?" I protest suddenly. "Everything I found out about him. The fake name? The robbery in Hounds Beach? That was real. The security guard died."

  "That's..." Dad begins, but then he stops. He turns to Tucker, who hasn't made a sound since spitting out his beer. "Tucker? What is that about?"

  Tucker doesn't reply, but his eyes are running from side to side. Like he's trying to see a way out of here.

  "Tuck? Tell Billy what that's all about. How you had nothing to do with – whatever that is."

  Still he doesn't reply, and after a few moments Dad turns right around so he's facing him.

  Still Tucker doesn't reply. And then Dad shakes his head.

  "Aw shit." Dad says.

  "Tucker. What the fuck have you done?"

  Fifty-One

  "I didn't shoot the guy." Tucker says.

  “Aw shit!” Dad drops his head into his hands.

  "I didn't. You don't know me well enough I wouldn't shoot anyone?"

  "But you were there?"

  Tucker is still for a long while, before finally he nods.

  "Yeah. I was there."

  Dad groans again. He screws up his eyes and presses them with his thumbs.

  "Go on," he says finally.

  For a while Tucker doesn't, but then he begins speaking in a voice stripped of expression.

  "I was working out at Granville, in the steel plant. And that was going alright. But then they made a bunch of us redundant. Aand one of the guys, who I worked with, he kept going on at me that he had this job we could do, real simple." He stops for a second. “You remember Vincent? Vincent McDonald.”

  Dad stares. “Tell me you’re fucking kidding?”

  "I didn't want to do it. Not after I went inside, there was no way I wanted to go back. But Vinny was real insistent. Persuasive. And I had nothing else. I had bills to pay. A guy's gotta live."

  "Inside?" Dad pulls him up. "You went to jail?”

  “It was nothing. Just a couple of months.”

  “Why? What the hell d’ya do?”

  Tucker hesitates. “I held up a liquor store. Or tried to. Look I needed the money.”

  "You fucking idiot! Oh man…”

  They’re both silent for a few seconds.

  “Why didn't you tell me?" Dad asks in the end.

  Then suddenly Tucker gets real mad. "Tell you? Fucking tell you? How the fuck am I gonna tell you? When you've disappeared into thin air like a fucking ghost?"

  Dad opens his mouth. Closes it again.

  "You know I had to do that. I had to protect my family... What was left of my family."

  "And I wasn't family? Fuck you man..."

  For a long moment they both just stare at each other, both of them breathing hard.

  "You left me man. I drove you across the country and you fucking left me. And what’s worse? You left me because you didn't fucking trust me."

  Tucker's breathing now like he's just finished a running race. "So maybe that's why I didn't keep you up to date on everything that happened in my fucked-up life."

  He turns away. Dad stares at the back of his head, and after a while he speaks. But now he's calmed down. He sounds defeated.

  "So what's it about? This business in Hounds beach? What happened."

  Tucker turns back. He rubs a hand on his face.

  "I told you. I had bills to pay. And Vinny, he made out how he'd found this security guard in a little family jeweler’s store out there. Came across him by accident but then began watching him. You see, security guards have to take breaks. They eat sandwiches. They have to go to the bathroom. But what they're supposed to do is vary when they do it. You know, one day go at ten, then next day at twelve, the next day don't go at all. Never get into a pattern. But this guard was lazy. He loved his routine. He always took a fifteen minute break at ten thirty. Like clockwork. I went and watched, just to check for myself. And it was just like Vinny said. Ten thirty, he was out the door, leaving this old dear behind the counter, all alone.”

  Dad’s face is expressionless.

  “All we had to do was go in there, wave a gun about, and we could walk out with enough gold so as we wouldn’t have to worry about finding work for a while.”

  Tucker falls quiet, and Dad gets up. He paces to the sink and runs himself a glass of water. He holds it in the air but doesn't drink any.

  "Gold? Am I right in thinking that the this gold is what we're gonna put up as security on our loan tomorrow?"

  Tucker doesn't answer at first. Then he nods.

  Dad takes a sip of the water.

  “So when you told me it was left you by your aunt. That was just a crock of shit?”

  It’s only a tiny movement of his head, but Tucker nods again. Dad rolls his jaw around, like someone’s punched it. Then he goes on.

  "So what went wrong? In the store?"

  Tucker rubs his face with his tattooed hand.

  "This guy, Vinny. He’s… well, you know what he’s like. I thought he’d changed. I thought he was OK. But it turns out he ain’t changed at all.”

  He stops. He can’t even look at Dad now.

  “Look, we talked it through beforehand. I told him I wasn't interested unless he specifically promised there'd be no violence. I didn’t even want to go with guns, but he said we needed to have them, just for show.” His tone changes. “Then, once we got in there, he..."

  "He what Tucker? What exactly did he do?"

  Slowly Tucker shakes his head.

  "Everything was going just fine. We got to the store, and just like we planned. There’s just the old lady there. The security guy is already away on his break. So we’ve got fifteen minutes – plenty of time. We get to it. We get the old girl away from the counter, so she can’t go pressing any panic buttons. Vinny covers her with the gun. I fill the bags. It’s good stuff – gold chains, rings, watches – you’ve seen it. We work fast, and it’s going great. We’re gonna be in and out in five minutes. But then the guard just walks right back in. I think he must be fucking short-sighted or something because he just walks right in, on top of us, ten minutes before he’s supposed to be there. And he’s fucking whistling, like it’s the best day of his life... I dunno. Maybe he got served in the sandwich shop easier than normal. I don’t know what the hell happened."

  "And then what?" Dad asks.

  Tucker gives a haunted laugh. “It’s such a fucking shame, you know? Even when that guard turned up, you could tell he didn’t want no trouble. He wasn’t the hero type. He put his hands up the moment he finally saw what was going on. But Vinny freaked out anyway. He started talking how he was gonna execute him. I thought he was bluffing, I was telling him we had to get out of there. And then Vinny shot him. Like it was a game. Like it was nothing."

  There's silence for a few moments, and I wonder who's going to speak next. In the end it's Dad.

  "Then what?"

  "I panicked. I ran. I went outside and jumped in the car. I swear to God I thought Vinny was there with me. But then I saw he was still inside the goddamn building. Still waving his fucking gun about like he's in a movie. So I just drove. I just got the fuck out of there. It was only later I realized I was st
ill holding the fucking bag I'd been filling.

  "And then I came here."

  Fifty-Two

  "What a mess." Dad says what seems an age later. "What a fucking mess."

  He flicks through my dossier, on the kitchen table. He comes to the bit about Tucker’s fake name. All my research into possible Peter Smiths.

  “So how about this? How come you got a false ID?”

  Tucker sighs before he answers.

  “I don’t.”

  Dad starts to hold up the dossier, but Tucker goes on.

  “I don’t. It ain’t a false ID, I swear it.”

  “Well you wanna explain why Billy says you do?”

  Tucker takes an age to answer.

  “I don’t have it anymore. I tossed it away. In a trash can in town.”

  “OK. You tossed it away, but how come you had it in the first place?”

  Tucker sighs again and looks down at his feet. Then he lifts he head and looks straight at Dad.

  “I stole it. After the robbery. I had nothing on me. No ID, no cash. Just a bag of gold fucking chains that I didn’t know what to do with. And I couldn’t go home. I didn’t know who might be waiting for me there, Vinny or the cops. So I just took a long walk. Tried to figure everything out. That’s when I decided to come here. To look you up. But I couldn’t get here with no cash. Then I came across this restaurant, this little sidewalk café with tables outside and this asshole sitting there. He’s real loud, on his cell phone shouting about some deal. I guess I realized he looked a little like me, even at the time.” Tucker gives a rueful smile.

  “Anyway, he’s sitting there, drinking his frappucchino bullshit, and he’s so fucking distracted with his conversation he doesn’t notice he’s got his wallet just sitting there on the table. I just slid it off and kept walking.” Tucker stops.

  “Look, I ain’t proud of it. I ain’t proud of any of it. But I had no choice. You understand that? Don’t you?” Dad doesn’t reply, so Tucker goes on.

  “There was a few hundred bucks in it. Enough to get me here. And there was a driver’s license. Look I’m not saying we were separated at birth, nothing like that. But it was enough that I could pass for him if I had too. So I kept it. I thought it might be useful. But then I changed my mind, after you let me stay here. So I tossed it in the trash, like I said.”

  Still Dad doesn’t say anything, but he looks at me, and down then at the dossiers, the three of them, spread across the kitchen table and the countertop. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I can’t get over how I’ve got it wrong. Everything in them is wrong. Again. Then Tucker goes on.

  "You know we can still do it," he says quietly.

  "Still do what?"

  "We can still go ahead. Buy the boat. Start afresh. They're never gonna come looking all the way out here."

  "That's what I thought," Dad replies, not looking at him. "When I came." There's a silence for a while.

  "And it worked didn't it?" Tucker says. "They never did find you out here. Not until all the shit happened with that missing girl. And that was just..." He shrugs. "Bad luck?"

  Dad doesn't answer. I don't know what he's thinking.

  "Who's not?" he says in the end. I see the flicker of confusion in Tucker’s eyes.

  "Who's not what?"

  "Who's not going to come looking?"

  Tucker doesn't seem to want to answer this, but Dad’s staring at him, so he has no choice.

  "The cops. They ain't looking for me. It'll be Vinny they're interested in."

  I think back to when I put Tucker’s SIM card into my phone. To to try and alert them to where he was hiding. Then Tucker goes on.

  "There ain't no one who knows I'm here. And the jewelry's clean. I been researching it, there's nothing that can be traced. I don't see why we can't just go on like we planned. Turn it into cash and put it down on a boat. Like we always planned. Like none of this ever happened."

  Dad's silent for a while, but in the end he turns to me. "We had this dream," he says. "When we were kids. Tucker and me, we used to sit for hours talking about it. Neither of us had any money. So we used to bait up the crab pots for the fishermen. We'd sit there, slicing up fish heads or smashing up mussel shells, and we'd talk about how one day this is what we'd do for our own boat. We'd catch crab and we'd surf and we wouldn't have to worry about nothing." A smile breaks out on his face.

  “I guess I got caught up in that, these last few weeks. I thought here was a chance. My old buddy turns up unexpected, and like a miracle, he's got this jewelry. Some kind of inheritance. I didn't ask the details, because of this even bigger miracle. He wants to buy the boat with it. With me. I thought this is how it was always meant to be. A second chance." Dad shakes his head slowly.

  "But there ain't no such thing as second chances." He looks at Tucker.

  "Are there Tuck?"

  Tucker sounds anxious when he replies. "I told you. We don't have to change anything. We can still go ahead..."

  "No we can't. We never could."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The jewelry. I never really believed you, when you told me it came from some aunt I’d never even heard of before. I just didn't care. I thought if I don't know the truth, then it don’t even matter where it really came from. But that's not right. It does matter."

  "Why? The store’s insured. Probably. So no one loses out. And we're going to build something with it. We're gonna invest it..."

  "Because it's against the law. And because someone got killed when you stole it."

  There's another long silence, then Tucker tries again.

  "They ain't gonna come, the cops ain't gonna come all the way out here. They're looking for Vinny. And he don't know where I am, thank fuck..."

  Suddenly Dad picks up one of the dossiers from the table. He flicks through it for a moment then turns to me.

  "Billy, did you say you spoke to this Vinny guy?"

  I feel both of them looking at me.

  "You did. You said you wondered if he might be Tucker's probation officer, but he sounded more like a gangster. What did you mean by that?"

  I have to tell them.

  "When Tucker threw his phone off the cliff, I climbed down and rescued it. I wanted to know what he was hiding. And then I took the SIM card out, and I put it in my phone." I glance up, wondering if I need to explain how phones work, but it doesn't look like I do.

  "And then when all these text messages from Vinny came in, we replied to them." I stop. I didn't mean to say 'we'.

  But Dad doesn't seem to notice.

  "Go on," he says.

  "And I thought he'd maybe just text back, and explain who he was, and why Tucker was hiding from him. But instead he phoned."

  "And you answered the call?" Dad asks.

  I hesitate. I don't want to explain about how I was thinking it was actually Dad ringing, and how that made me happy because he hadn't rung me the whole time he'd been out on the boat. In the end I nod.

  "What did he say?"

  I take a deep breath before I answer. "He seemed... He seemed to be trying to find out where Tucker was."

  There's a moment of silence after I say this. Tucker gets up. He walks to the window and glances out. It's dark outside, I don't know what he's looking for.

  "I didn't tell him," I go on quickly, but I can’t not think about what happened with the radio. “But there was…” I stop, swallow.

  "What?" Dad says at once. "What happened?"

  I have to go on. I have to tell them, so I explain how I wasn’t sure if I got to the radio in time, before the presenter said 'Good Morning Lornea Island' in that funny way.

  "Oh fucking Jesus," Tucker says, looking out again.

  "When was this?" Dad asks.

  "About a week ago. Before the thing with the school."

  Dad looks at Tucker. He's running his hands through his hair, one after the other.

  “Who is this Vinny?” I ask, since neither of them are speaking.

  They
look at each other. Finally Dad turns to me.

  "He's an old acquaintance. We knew him in high school. Never had much to do with him mind, even then it was obvious he was a goddamn psychopath."

  He glares at Tucker, who won’t meet his eye.

  "Who were you running away from? You came right the way out here. Were you running from the cops or from Vinny?

  "I dunno, I wasn't necessarily running..."

  "Bullshit. You come all the way out here to start a new life. You throw your phone off the cliff. Who were you most scared of? The cops or Vinny?"

  "I don't see it matters. Vinny ain't gonna come looking all the way out here anymore than the cops are."

  "Then why is he pumping Billy for information on your whereabouts?"

  Tucker doesn't have an answer to this.

  "Man you drove away from a robbery without him. You left him there. You don't think that makes you someone he's gonna want to get even with?"

  Tucker gives a half shrug then a little shake of his head.

  "But there ain't no way. I mean, even if he heard the name of the island, there's still no way he's ever gonna find me here. No one on the mainland ever even heard of Lornea Island, least not until that girl..."

  "Not until that girl went missing, and the whole goddamn country heard about how they were blaming it on me. Think about it. He knows you and me were friends. He knows I disappeared to hide on Lornea Island? How long until he puts it together? Huh? Even Vincent McDonald’s gonna work that one out."

  There's a long silence.

  "Oh fuck." Tucker says at last.

  Fifty-Three

  A few moments later Dad roots around in the kitchen cupboard and pulls out a flashlight. He checks the batteries work, then turns to Tucker.

  "Stay here with Billy." Dad says, and moves towards the door.

  But Tucker blocks him. "Stop," he says. "Don't."

  Dad looks surprised. "What are you doing? I'm gonna go check the yard."