by Finn Óg
I stared at him, utterly incredulous. “You wanted the major to kill me, and then the members of the Circle?”
“Exactly,” he said. “You see, the Major is not entirely squeaky clean either, and as you have proven so difficult to contain, I rather imagined it would take someone with similar skills to yours, but perhaps better breeding and intelligence, to put an end to your prying.”
“And this is supposed to persuade me to protect you?”
“Not me, Sam, I am done for. As I say, time is tight. In fact, you have just moments to make your mind up. Agree to deal with these people quietly, and live with your child in blissful abandon upon the ocean wave.”
“Or what?”
“Or forever look over your shoulder. You see Sam, you’re not the only one with contingencies.”
I shook my head in utter bewilderment. He pressed on. “I need an answer, now.”
“Ok,” I said. He nodded, and took out his own phone, selected a contact, and spoke.
“You can stand down, no further action is necessary on the continent, understood?”
I couldn’t hear the answer, but I could hear that there was someone on the other end of the call. Then the Brit reached around his back. I tensed to pounce. He was astonishingly calm.
“It’s quite alright, Sam,” he said in his consistently condescending tone, “it’s merely a gift.” He handed me a folder of light cardboard, as if it had been taken from an old filing cabinet. The tab on the top was handwritten. “VISITORS,” it said.
Within minutes, the Brit was shaking, whatever he’d swallowed was making its mark. “They’ll all go quietly, just like me, if you manage it correctly.”
His final words, before the induced stroke erupted inside his head.
I lifted his wine glass and dropped it into the cardboard folder. He looked as if he was asleep. I imagined such a state was not uncommon in clubs like that, so I walked gently out, noting the absence of CCTV cameras. With my hat on my head, I took some comfort from the fact that anyone inquiring after the Brit’s lunch companion would consult the guest list, and then search for someone else. A Major in the Royal Navy no less, who was in fact dead in a nearby Church. All of that would pose quite a conundrum for any investigator, but by the time they worked it all out, if ever, I would be well offshore.
I didn’t open the file until I got back to the boat. Inside were the images and profiles of a dozen people. Taped to a piece of paper was a tiny computer memory drive, smaller than an SD card. Beside it was a scrawl.
“All sorts of compromising behaviour there, enough to achieve the goal.” A note from some sort of establishment-sponsored manipulator, to my former Major. Now my responsibility.
There was an A4 sheet with twelve photos. I gave it a glance. At least two were influential figures in Irish politics, back-roomers, the powerful ones. They were the type who had the clout to manipulate big decisions. I presumed the Brit had used his leverage to employ them to do his bidding. I’d heard enough about the brutality involved to give the rest of the file a miss, for now. I already knew what I would do with the information, but that could wait.
Notions of sending the videos to the press vanished. I felt, for the first time, that Isla and I had an opportunity. I feared becoming drawn in, of having our privacy compromised, of disrupting the peace I needed to build around her.
I peeled out of my suit, and layered up for a long haul. The windlass ground the anchor aboard, the donkey fired and the impeller hove water in to cool the engine. I set the autohelm and skipped on deck to unleash the sails. Then I sat at the navigation table and pulled out the almanac for information on the tides heading south. Biscay, Lisbon, Gibraltar, Valencia I reckoned. If I didn’t stop, and with good breeze, I might make it in eight days.
I never asked what was on the memory card. The twin made copies, the Belgian tracked down the addresses. Each was posted a copy of their compromising behaviour. I read the obituaries in the online sections of newspapers. Ten of the Circle, the Visitors as they called themselves, perished at their own instigation. The keeper made eleven, which left one. For the time being, I chose to let him worry, and run.
The Charity woman dealt with the heir. That poor woman’s location had formed the keeper’s last sentence. I passed it to Charity, outlined her circumstances, and didn’t ask any more. I knew the victim was in good hands. I had others to care for.
I picked them up in a small marina in Palamos on the east coast of Spain. Dad wasn’t Olympic, but for a seventy-something with a freshly punctured lung, he was in astonishing shape.
Isla was brilliant, just brilliant. Her little arms wrapped around my neck and we hugged for ten solid minutes before I swung her aboard, and gave her her orders. Like the salty little seabird she’d become, she fell into line, busying herself with the warps, as my mum and dad looked on with pride. Brown as a berry and steady as a rock, she leaned into me as the breeze took the cutter and healed her to lee. With the warm breeze on our necks and a glass in our paws, we left the coast of one country, and headed to another.
Afterword
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Review Charlie on Amazon UK
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If you’re interested in following the trilogy further, read on!
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the ladies, always. To my family and close friends who have kept secrets - and me going. To those who left reviews, those who edited and published and to my crackin’ wee curly crew for keeping us at sea. Most of all, thank you to the real Isla for the laughing, the roguery, the questions and the creativity with which you approach everything. May your pencil and bow never rest. I luff you with all my heart.
About the Author
Finn Óg lives in Ireland and is surrounded by rogues and the sea. ‘Charlie’, his first book, was followed by the ‘The Sea and the Sand’ in 2019, and ‘Too Close to Home’ in 2020. Each book in the trilogy features Sam and his daughter Isla. For more information or to sign up to receive new releases and short stories you can visit Finn’s website at:
www.finnog.com
The Sea and the Sand
Note from Finn
Free novellas and short stories are available at www.finnog.com where readers can sign up to receive advance copies of new books.
Also by Finn Óg
Charlie
Too Close to Home
A Half of Penitents
The Carbon Collective
The Watcher Girl
For the oul’ fella
1
The world is irritatingly small.
Sam stood on Grafton Street, watched the man go up in flames and cursed how approximate people have become. He sighed for a moment and watched the crowd part like a sea of red, the glow of the inferno flickering off their faces, horrifying and beguiling in almost equal measure. Sam shook his head, looked to the sky and stepped forward to douse the screams.
He’d grow to wish he’d let the man burn.
“Snap!”
Isla was cheating, as usual, in part due to a misunderstanding of the rules. At six years old the fun was more in beating her father to the draw than in stockpiling cards, and so she shouted before the face had even been flipped. It delighted Sam to watch how her little mind anticipated his hand movements, to see her excitement. It seemed like a normal, wholesome thing to do of an evening after all the wee woman had been through.
They were drifting, alone, across the Mediterranean in their fifty-four-foot home. Progress was deliberately slow, there’d been a lot of rebuilding to do and the work was far from finished. Sam wasn’t sure whether his daughter’s scars would ever properly heal but she was gradually becoming l
ess afraid of bedtime and the potential horror that sleep could bring.
He’d made resolutions, starting with how he made a living. He wouldn’t take on any more work that could possibly impact his daughter or his family. The last job he’d been embroiled in had done that and more. From here on in, Sam determined, any risks taken would be his alone, and even at that they would be minimal. He had a child to raise and she no longer had a mother to step into the breach.
“Daddy, you can have some of my cards,” she told him, sliding a frugal collection to his side of the chart table.
“Thank you, darlin’,” said Sam, the salt and the stubble tautening at a gentle reminder of his daughter’s provenance. Isla’s mother would never have seen anyone stuck; winning had never been Shannon’s priority.
“What story do you want tonight?”
“Aw-uh, is it bedtime already?”
“Not yet, little lady, but in a while.”
It had become part of the ritual to keep the imagery gentle: stories at night of normal life, of other girls, of school and excitement and toys and boys and the weird and horrible things they do. Sam’s plan was to encourage Isla to want such things again, to grow the appeal of ordinariness rather than the nomadic sea-gypsy style they’d become accustomed to. Although the perpetual sailing suited Sam, and for a while it had seemed the best way to make Isla feel safe, he knew the time would come when she would have to swim in the real world again, so their grift when the wind blew them west, was aimed at Ireland once more.
By night Sam plotted the charts and the future and occasionally sailed. It allowed Isla to keep watch while he dozed by day in the cockpit. She’d become quite the little sailor, careful and clipped on at all times above deck, and he trusted her. Mostly they anchored or found a marina at night but they’d ended up further east and south than he’d ever intended and luxuries like safe harbours were thin on the North African coast.
Occasionally, when the notion took him, he stood at the helm and allowed his own healing. The breeze peeled back his grief and the anonymity and privacy of the sea enabled him to let the stream roll down his cheeks. Such moments kept his pain from Isla, avoiding her interrogation and worry. He’d never allow her to see him weep – it would upset her too much. She understood how much he missed his wife, her mother, but it would never be the same as it was for her. Isla hadn’t just lost her mam, she’d held her hand as that beautiful life ebbed away. They’d spoken as she bled out. Isla had cuddled her and looked into the face of her killer, convinced she was next. Worse still, she’d believed it was all her fault.
Sam read to her until the flood and fall of her little body slowed, and curled his neck to make sure she was deep enough to extract his arm from under her. Then he waited for two full minutes, watching her eyelids for any sign of disturbance. Placated, he went on deck and indulged his maudlin currents, allowing himself to be swept back to better times and to lament his loss. That’s when the tears came. Eventually he’d snap out of it and sail the boat, but for a while he would purge. It brought an odd sort of pleasure – the wallowing, the reminiscence.
He was shocked when Isla’s little face appeared in the companionway; the yellow light breaking his night vision as she came up the steps.
“What was that, Daddy?” she said.
“What, wee lamb?” Sam replied, scraping the tears from the crevices in his face.
“The noise – the whistle.”
Sam turned his ears from the wind and stood stock-still but could catch nothing.
“There. Can you hear it, Daddy?”
“No, snugs, I think you better go back to sleep,” he said, pressing the autohelm into gear and checking the radar screen to make sure their course was clear.
He was lifting her into her bunk when she said it again.
“There it is, Daddy. Why can’t you hear that?”
“You’re dreaming, wee love. You’re still a bit asleep,” he told her, tucking her in, keen to get back to the helm.
“I’m not, Daddy. I’m really, really not,” she replied.
“Ok, I’ll go up and keep an ear out,” he said as he hugged her. He was worried she might not sleep now, and was anxious they were sailing with no watch above. “I love you so much,” he said, and returned to the cockpit.
And then came the sound: high-pitched – audible to younger ears at a distance, older ones when up close.
And it was close.
Amid one hundred thousand square miles of sea, Sam and Isla were no longer alone, and every resolution he had made went over the side.
2
“Wasters,” spat Habid, as he watched honest men haul nets out of the sea. The noise behind him was gradually increasing as the bumper-track of a city came to life with a relentless hammering upon horns. Not that Alexandria ever really slept, Habid was struggling to adjust to the relentless commotion.
His life had taken some curious turns in recent months. Habid had been a shepherd, of sorts, herding flocks through the sands of eastern Libya. Now he was amassing money hand over fist, more than he’d ever known. It made him rather pleased with himself – cocky, harder, less pleasant than his usual unpleasant self.
He wrapped up the bits and pieces, keen to get them cleared from the beach before the darkness disappeared entirely. But he afforded himself a few minutes to sneer at the fishermen as they stood thigh deep in their underpants and plucked the occasional wriggler from an otherwise empty net. What a lot of work for absolutely nothing, he thought. There were barely enough fish in their buckets to make a meal for each man’s family.
He looked into his little bag – well, it was his now, but a few hours ago it had belonged to someone else. It was filled with pawn, of a sort. For extras. Other travel providers were at it, he thought, so why not? Airlines, rail companies, intercontinental crossings weren’t cheap. Nothing was complimentary any more, even the basics came at a cost. Like water. Or sunscreen. Or a life jacket. Of course, his clients didn’t have any cash left, so he’d been generous to take alternatives.
Habid hadn’t a clue how long it took. He knew nothing about boats. He knew about dust and sand and living like a bloody Bedouin. The disruption in his own failed state had allowed him to abandon his post as a border guard for Gaddafi, but the sea was a mystery he had no notion of finding out about. That’s why he hadn’t gone himself. Not yet anyway.
“Get dressed and get your life jacket on,” Sam barked below at Isla.
“What’s wrong?” she shouted, reawakened from her sleep and instantly alarmed.
“I think there might be someone in the water,” he shouted back. “Pass me up the flashlight.”
Isla emerged from her cabin half dressed, reached for the lamp and handed it up to him as he worked the helm with his other hand.
“Now go and get warm clothes on and your harness and your life jacket.”
“Ok, Daddy.” She tore off.
Sam held the wheel and leaned as far outboard as he could, straining to hear the sound again, but it was gone on the building breeze. He must have passed it, whatever it was. He debated leaving it in his wake – it wasn’t his problem, then he saw Isla coming and she put paid to that.
“We can rescue them,” she said, excitement dancing in her eyes, and for a moment Sam saw her mother looking straight at him.
There was no question in Isla’s mind about what they ought to do. None. And there shouldn’t have been for Sam either, except that he didn’t want anyone else on his boat, near his kid, for what would inevitably be days at sea.
Perhaps one day Sam would learn to trust his instincts.
Habid fancied a treat. A nice place to put his head down before returning to the dust. It was a risk, he conceded, to check into the Sofitel Cecil but it looked so sumptuous after his filthy journey across the desert. He imagined a beautiful shower, a soft, clean bed, a toilet that flushed. He had enough money, but there was no concealing what he was: a sun-dried Libyan blown with the sand by a Spring that had uprooted countles
s thousands across North Africa.
Except he wasn’t seeking refuge from it – he was making his fortune from it, and he had a fake passport and a bag full of cash, so he strode in and acted like he owned the place.
“I can hear someone screaming!” called Isla from her vantage point above the spray hood. She was on tiptoes, peering into the dark, her little ears straining for sounds from the sea. The girth of the waves was increasing and the boat had begun to roll gently into them.
“What direction?” shouted Sam.
“What?” screamed Isla in return.
“Point to it!” he tried instead.
His little girl turned and gestured with absolute confidence. Sam turned the wheel and headed as she directed. Eventually he too heard the noise – a woman, he reckoned, yelling from the surface. He leaned over again, glancing at Isla to make sure she stayed well inboard. He painted the surface of the sea with the LED beam but detected nothing.
“We’re not close enough, Daddy. It’s over there,” shouted Isla above the thunking draw of the diesel’s pistons.
They carried forward. A high-pitched wail reached Sam from the starboard side, just as Isla had indicated, and he gently brought the boat around, conscious he could do more harm than good to anyone flailing around beneath them. He was also wary of any stricken vessel languishing in the sea. If he hit something, they would all end up in the water.
His beam caught something and he stroked the torch back to find it again, but it was gone in the swell. His mind reached for the image – a black-clad human with arms in the air. In that position they’d no doubt plummeted beneath the waves and perhaps hadn’t come up again. He coated the area again, hunting as much for a boat as a person. As always, his primary concern was his little girl; he wouldn’t let their home sink for anyone.