by Finn Óg
“You’re not making any sense.”
“No, I don’t suppose I am, really.”
“What do you want?”
“May I see her?”
Sam noted the woman’s manner of speech: refined, pronounced, educated.
“Who?”
“The little tart with the chewing gum.”
The woman rotated her head to find Sam with another stare. It took him aback – she was clearly loopy loo.
“I’m not going to let you see her.” Sam looked at her, baffled.
“Why?” asked the woman, genuinely surprised.
“Because you’re married to the man who groomed her,” said Sam.
“Oh, I don’t want a conversation.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I want to warn her.”
“I think she already knows how dangerous he is,” said Sam, bordering on incredulous.
“But I don’t want to warn her to stay safe,” said the woman. “I want to tell the little bitch to stay away from him.”
The chat with the mother kept Anthony awake. Could he really live in a cell if this all went wrong? Maybe that’s what had made her son such a weirdo skulking about the place in his slippers. Anthony looked at the four walls of the bedroom and decided to break the rules and open a curtain. He needed to look at something, and it was dark after all. Who would notice at four o’clock in the morning?
He drew the heavy material back a little and then pulled the bed over towards the window to allow him to rest his arse on the mattress and his elbows on the moist windowsill. It was pretty dark, just as it had been when he arrived, but as to where he was, he still didn’t know what town he was in.
Anthony cracked the window open a fraction and could hear the sea. He could smell it, he thought, on the breeze. He rested his face on his folded wrists and listened to the waves wash up, his eyes smarting a little from the salty wind. And then he heard the front door ease open and closed below him. He froze for a second, afraid that shutting the window and curtains would betray him. He watched as a body padded down the short path to the little gate and sat back instinctively, somehow convinced that the person would look up and see him watching.
There were houses on either side of the wide road, but the lighting was poor and it was hard to tell. By the time Anthony eventually mustered the courage to lean forward a little, he had lost track of the person’s progress. Then he caught sight of a single red light down the road to his left, as if a driver had touched their car’s brake light. The light illuminated the walker in the gloom and, bent at the hip, they appeared to talk to someone in the vehicle before the back door of the car was opened. No interior light came on, though, preventing any view of the occupants.
Shit-scared, Anthony reached up and quietly pulled the window handle towards him, silently slicing off the sea breeze. He gently drew the curtain back across the window, but fear made him leave his bed where it was. A few minutes later he heard the gate open and shut, then the front door. Alert but with his eyes crushed closed, he lay and listened as he half heard half imagined the weight on the stairs and the shuffle past his bedroom door.
Sam propelled the wife into the street, her mouth open and angry before a calm descended over her and she moulded her glare into a menacing smile. She turned slowly and began an overly dignified walk into the shadows. Sam watched until she vanished; her soft, sensible shoes giving no clue as to her progress.
He returned to the armchair and found himself reluctant to open the curtains again. The woman’s manner had been singularly unsettling. Bombed out of her mind, he thought – yet alert and smart and deliberately provocative. Sam wished the husband, Delaney, had come instead – then at least he could have bust his head. The woman, though, was either a clever ruse or a jealous foray by a scorned wife. Perhaps she had chosen to take her husband’s infidelity out on the other woman? What was clear was that Loopy Loo was evidently not all there, and the bits that remained were the scary bits. Sam reckoned she was potentially as dangerous as her husband.
He decided that he’d talk it through with the father in the morning. Even when the husband went to jail, she could still pose a risk. The old man’s wealth might be put to good use in securing a minder for the heiress. If he got her a bodyguard, Sam could get back north with a clean conscience.
The boss smiled at the irony as he clocked his shadow. He knew it was her because he knew the town and he knew she didn’t live in it. She was well-turned-out this time: deep-purple woollen skirt, suede boots, grey top. She drank her tea and steadfastly refused to look his way. They had known he was coming, of course, because they had a rip in his house. They had heard him arrange to meet his wife there and, sure, it gave him an interest to watch them watching him. It was easy really. He was so well known that everyone glanced guiltily at him. He was used to that. Fame – or notoriety, perhaps. His name and bad things were twisted together like the wreckage of an air strike. But the ones who didn’t steal scared looks in his direction were those who weren’t afraid. They were the reconnaissance unit – or whatever that regiment was called this week. They didn’t fear him – they hated him, and they were properly trained, and they were carrying.
He ordered a coffee from a terrified waitress and he sat still and composed – as he had learned to do in his cell. The fifty-something drew out her teapot for as long as she could before having to order more. And they danced together, she and he, without touching, or looking, but intimate and knowing nonetheless.
Sam glanced across the court at Loopy Loo dressed just as she had been the night before, hair unwashed and bunched in a bun. She sat passive in the gallery, looking like she’d got more sleep than he had. After a few moments she seemed to sense him looking at her and she turned her head towards him. There was no acknowledgement. Her expression reminded him of a film he’d seen about the liberation of Belsen – she was there, but not there at all. Sam wrote it off as pharmaceutical.
The heiress was called to the stand, where she affirmed rather than swore.
Sam turned his attention to the accused. Delaney was looking with interest at the heiress, as if curious. Slowly and deliberately he stretched out an arm and gripped the wooden banister before him. He looked relaxed, confident even, as he performed an almost-silent drum roll with the fingers of his right hand and the timber. The heiress looked straight up at him before the barrister held court.
“Could you please explain how you met Mr Delaney?”
“Online.”
“The internet is a big place. Could you be, perhaps, a little more specific?”
“No.”
Nobody spoke, yet there was noise as people shifted in their seats and shuffled in surprise. Sam felt Áine stiffen to his left. In the row in front the mother shot a look at the father.
“Ehm … it would be most useful if you told us where exactly you met the accused. Was it a chat room?”
“Leading, judge,” the defence interrupted.
“Quite,” said the judge.
The barrister nodded his acquiescence. “Please, in your own words, describe the online relationship.”
“No,” she said, turning to look at the accused.
Delaney smiled, Loopy Loo looked spaced out, the barrister looked stunned. The heiress’ mother shook her head in bewilderment and her father just stared straight ahead as if this sort of disruptive behaviour didn’t come as a complete shock.
“This is somewhat irregular,” the barrister bumbled – more for the jury than the witness. “We need to know how and when you met. Could you please characterise your relationship with Mr Delaney for the court?”
The brief turned to the gathered with his hands held out and a quizzical look on his face as if to say, Not my fault. Not what we planned.
“It’s none of the court’s business,” said the heiress evenly, without affectation or emotion.
“You are a witness called by the prosecution, young woman,” the judge piped up. “Please answer the quest
ions posed.”
“You can fuck off,” said the heiress to the judge.
Sam caught Delaney smirking, the judge reeling and then a whole series of events led to the heiress being found in contempt of court. Journalists bustled out of their overcrowded press box to file copy on the extraordinary turn of events, and the hearing was adjourned.
Grim answered the knock at the door to a scabby teenager with a face like a painter’s radio.
“Call for you,” he said, then turned away.
Grim was immediately agitated. He followed the youth out onto the road and across to a house in the next block. Inside, a phone sat on the edge of a sofa. Grim had an arrangement with the teenager’s mum – monthly payments to keep the landline connected.
“Hello?” he said. It could only be one of a small clutch of people.
“My money’s about to run out. Ye’ll have to call me back.”
Grim looked around and clicked his fingers impatiently at the youth; air scribbling a gesture that resulted in an IKEA pencil being produced. No paper, so he wrote on the door frame. The woman rattled out a number. Grim hung up and dialled back.
“There are next to no call boxes left, you know,” she began.
“Where are ye?” he said, concerned about being compromised.
“Don’t worry, I took the train to Coleraine.”
“You’re in a call box?”
“Aye.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s been three weeks. I want to know what’s happening.”
“It could be another three weeks. You know how this works.”
The woman bristled at being admonished by a younger man – for whom she was doing a favour.
“What you need to understand is that this will not be another three weeks. He’s a strange one. I don’t like him.”
Grim wondered who the strange one really was.
“You said he can’t leave the house, and he can’t even come down to watch the telly during the day cos the curtains are open. I’m fed up having a stranger in the house, so you need to hurry up.”
“Doesn’t work like that.”
“Well, you may find him somewhere else, then.”
“Look, there is nowhere else. I’ll see what’s happening, but you might have to hang on for a while more.”
“Look, son, your card’s marked. Get on with it or get him out.”
Grim threw the handset onto the sofa and was about to leave when impulsiveness took over. He snatched the phone up again and walked to the adjoining kitchen door to find the youth standing by the sink.
“Get yourself out for fifteen minutes. Anyone else in the house?”
“Nah,” he said, making to leave through the back door.
Grim dialled a number from memory. A few estates away, a similar process had begun. A woman answered, Grim told her to go and get him and then there was a long wait. Fifteen minutes later, the boss came on the line.
“Yes,” he said, so quietly that Grim wasn’t absolutely sure it was actually him.
“Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, but I’ve a problem with the digs for the young fella. How much longer do you think?”
“You rang me about accommodation issues?” If anything, the boss’s register had fallen.
“I don’t want to be bothering you with my end—”
“Yet you are.”
“I’m in danger of losing goodwill here – these people are hard to find.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Nothing, it’s just, she’s wondering about timing. You know, how much longer?”
“And she expects us to tell her that?”
“It would be useful, you know, in keeping her on board.”
“You need to find a way to ensure she stays on board.”
“Aye, ok.” Grim wilted under the menace. “Sorry.”
Áine stepped into the breach.
Sam watched her sassy walk to the witness box as the barrister outlined to the judge how he had been compelled to “reassess the prosecution schedule in light of unforeseen events”.
The judge didn’t seem to give a bollocks.
Áine affirmed and confirmed her details and the brief got stuck in.
“Could you please tell the court what your area of expertise is?”
“You could say I’m a software engineer but I have a background in counter invasive cybercrime – or hacking, to you, and database interrogation and taxonomy security for blue-chip companies. I’ve worked for many of the Californian and West Coast multinationals.”
“Can you explain what happened on the night of the seventeenth of November last?”
“I was approached through a third party to examine a tablet and smartphone to see whether I could establish if its owner had been in contact with Mr Delaney, the accused.”
Áine was momentarily distracted by the defence lawyers who began whispering between themselves and sharing pages from lever arch files.
“And who owned the devices you examined?”
“Ann Seeley.”
“Now deceased. And were you able to determine if Ann Seeley had been in contact with Mr Delaney?”
“I was,” said Áine, with a stern countenance.
“Tell us what you found, please.”
“I found some of the sickest conversations I’ve ever read.”
“Objection,” said the defence barrister.
The judge leaned forward. “Please just stick to the facts. There is no requirement for opinion. The jury will disregard that last statement.”
“Sorry,” said Áine, although Sam suspected she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Please outline who the contact was between and what the content of the discussions were.”
“The conversations had been deleted, but deletion only goes so far. If you think about it as a series of steps, it’s like walking through the countryside - you can go back and scrub out your footprints, but a sniffer dog can easily follow where you went.”
“In this case you were the sniffer dog.” The brief was plunging off script, he apparently couldn’t resist.
Áine didn’t seem to like that. “Well, I found the stuff.”
“Which was?”
“All the messages between Delaney and Ann Seeley.”
“Were they encrypted?”
“No, just deleted. If they’d been accessed through any other means – like an external device, they would have had end-to-end, but not on the device from which they were sent or received, which was what I had.”
“End-to-end?”
“Encryption. So, like, if the Guards were trying to crack the conversations remotely, they would have struggled. The likes of the NSA in America or GCHQ in Cheltenham, England, could probably decipher it all pretty quickly, but I don’t know if the skills are here in Ireland in the public sector.”
“But they exist in the private sector?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Teenagers in bedrooms with enough time on their hands could pick it apart eventually. But, sure, I didn’t have to – I was handed the devices. And once I cracked the logins and passwords … it was all pretty straightforward.”
The barrister looked mildly distracted and Sam noticed the defence team bristling with excitement as they flipped through pages, looking for something. The prosecution brief became more unnerved by their commotion as he continued.
“Tell us about the conversations – without, if you don’t mind, your opinion on what was said.”
“Sure,” said Áine, composing herself. “Well, the accused – Mr Delaney – he began politely in a chat room back in the June sort of reaching out to Ann Seeley and getting to know her.”
The prosecution pushed a button on a laptop somewhere and large screens either side of the judge glowed in ignition as the messages were pumped up in pixels. Each juror had a screen of their own.
“Pause, if you will, while the court reads what was written.”
/>
Áine sat passively as everyone in the room read.
Hello. How are you? My name is Laney.
Hi, Laney. I’m Ann. Where are you?
Ireland. You?
Yay. I’m in Ireland too. Close to Lough Derg, Co. Tipperary.
Why are you here on this site?
Felling low. Like most people. Thinking about the future. Thinking about no future. You know the score.
I do, Ann.
The brief eventually broke the silence. “What sort of a chat room was this?”
“It’s a suicide site,” Áine said, “for those thinking about ending their lives.”
Suddenly there was no noise in the courtroom. For the first time Delaney sat stony-faced and stared straight ahead.
“Please continue with what you found.”
“Well, that’s it for the first contact, which is confusing because the conversation didn’t come to a natural end – nor was there any direction to move it to another platform.”
“Another platform?”
“Like, a different provider – to get off the chat room and onto a commercial messaging app.”
“Yet you did find the pair on such a provider later?”
“Yes,” said Áine.
The screens flicked between pieces of evidence as a more mainstream interface appeared.
“So this is a messenger-type system where messages are supposed to vanish as soon as they are read and the conversation is closed down.”
“But you have been able to access it?”
“Yes. I used to work for the company that made it, so I’m familiar with the code and its back doors.”
“Back doors?”
“Yeah, like, no system is totally foolproof. Every keystroke on every computer is most likely traceable if you know how to go about it. I’m not saying that it applies everywhere, all the time, but on this interface there is a way to get into the back end.”
“And what did you find there?”
“Well, there was a conversation between Ann Seeley and Delaney and in it he’s talking about chaining her up and raping her.”