by Finn Óg
“Right at the harbour – framed the shot just like this one.”
“And have you, like …” Sam nearly said “blown it up”, then corrected himself, “enlarged it too?”
“Yeah. I didn’t enlarge the one of the bomb, like, obviously – just one of the shots from the day before. The police came and took all my hard drives. I’ve only the canvas now. Thankfully I had these off to the printers before they took my kit.”
“You don’t have it here, do you?”
“In the van. I’ve to hang the Portrush one next.”
“Mind if I have a look?”
“C’mon ahead,” said the man, as he nudged the hanging harbour on its new anchors.
“I can’t – my wee girl’s in the shower room. I don’t want to leave her.”
“Van’s only at the door here.”
Sam faltered for a moment.
“Look, never worry, you stand at the door and I’ll slide it out. You wanna see the Ballycastle one?”
“Please,” said Sam.
“Why?” said the man, suddenly curious.
“My dad was from Ballycastle,” Sam lied. “He might like a picture like that.”
The man shrugged and Sam held the door as the bloke gathered up his bits and went out. Sam could hear a van door slide open and wrestling and swearing followed before another ten-foot frame was dragged out. Sam placed his foot against the door and peered over a railing at the image.
“Don’t suppose you’d sell it, would you?”
“No bloody use to me now,” said the man. “Fifty quid, you can have it. They’re usually two hundred.”
“Can you take it off the frame and roll it?”
“Aye, it’s just stapled.”
Sam’s heart raced as he scanned the picture while the man pinged the fastenings off with a small penknife.
“You know what, mate?” the man said as he handed the roll over the railing and accepted Sam’s cash. “That’s the first bit of luck I’ve had in weeks. See the day after I took that shot – the day of the bomb? Some goon came up to me, tore the camera cards out of my Canon and bucked the whole lot in the harbour.” The man shook his head in wonder at the memory.
“Did you not try to stop him?” Sam asked, half expecting the answer he received.
“He wasn’t the sort of boy you’d argue with – fit as two trouts. Anyway, thanks for your help. Hope yer da likes the shot.”
Sam went back inside and called Isla to get out of the shower. He unrolled the canvas and scanned it again.
And then, confirmation of what he thought he’d seen on first inspection. There, as sure as he could possibly be, was someone he had once been deeply familiar with – a man he had followed by way of routine. Once a Charlie One, a mark, a person of interest, and here he was holding an ice cream in a seaside town just a day before the car behind him blew up.
Laurel and Hardy sat at a wonky desk in the grubby reception room, leafed through the files then looked up at the opso.
“So where’s the video?”
“What video?”
“You sent your teams in to watch Deirdre Rushe and you didn’t take video?”
Laurel had been sceptical before they’d started the conversation, and this revelation wasn’t helping.
“There was no need for video – it wasn’t an operation – it was just a check-in. See if she’s moving about and if so, to where. It was just for a file update.”
“And that’s what you were doing there? That day of all days.”
“Well, you can see from the file that we’ve been there plenty of days before. Nothing scheduled to it. Just good use of downtime. Practise as much as anything.”
Laurel kept reading and flicking while Hardy stared at the opso. “You’ll appreciate it’s a bit of a swallow.”
“Why? This is what we’re supposed to do – check known people.”
“Even if they’ve been out of the picture for years?”
The opso just shrugged.
“And when were you going to tell us you were in Ballycastle on that day?”
“We had no reason to. What we were doing wasn’t connected to the bombing.”
“But it’s not you that’s investigating the bombing, is it?” said Laurel, now angry. “That’s for us to work out.”
“Were you aware Deirdre Rushe was even living there?” the opso challenged the cop.
Laurel said nothing, which said everything.
The opso pressed on. “Look, if you think there’s a connection – we don’t see it, but you could lift her and see what shakes out of it.”
“And you’ve nothing else?”
“Can I just remind you both that you still haven’t volunteered what you have that placed us in Ballycastle.”
Hardy sharpened his stare and Laurel raised his head, a cunning look creeping across his face.
“We have a witness statement from a photographer who says he was attacked by a man shortly after the bomb went off.”
“So?” said the opso, his core contracting.
“So we wondered why someone would do that.”
“Attack a photographer?” said the opso.
“Destroy evidence.”
“What evidence? How?”
“By chucking it in the harbour.”
“They chucked him in the harbour?” said the opso, hoping to blow smoke around.
But Laurel hadn’t arrived in a bubble. “His kit.”
“Have you recovered it?”
“What?” asked Laurel, wily.
“His camera.”
“He’s still got his camera – or, rather, we now have his camera.”
The opso sighed impatiently. “Look, you’re going to have to elaborate, fellas.”
“You see it just as well as I see it,” said Laurel. “You were at the harbour.”
“What makes you think that?” said the opso, choosing his lack of outright denial carefully.
“Cos the boy that chucked the camera sounds just like one of your outfit – he had a gammy accent, a pair of gloves on him, was fit looking and because I know, same as you know, that you’re not telling me what I need to know,” said Laurel. As he stood he slapped the paper file against his leg and turned to leave.
The opso stared at the two cops’ backs and wished it had gone better.
The hull tapped twice and Isla’s eyes lit up with more excitement than Sam had expected.
“Knock knock!”
“Go and see who’s there,” Sam said to her.
“I know who it is, Daddy.” Her little trainers scampered up the companionway.
“Hello, me butty!” he heard Sinead say.
Sam whipped up the kettle, popped the whistler on the end and sparked the gas.
“Y’er welcome back,” he said, turning to meet her. They hugged, which wasn’t as awkward as it might have been, and he took her bag.
“So what’s the plan, skipper?”
“Well, the weather looks good to leave tomorrow morning if that suits you. How long before you have to go back to work?”
“I’ve got four whole days if I want them.”
“Come and see my stuff in my cabin.” Isla took Sinead’s arm, keen to show her how she had hung and arranged the gifts from Dublin.
“I’ll put on the dinner,” Sam said as they closed the door to him.
It was half an hour before they emerged. After dinner Sinead looked wrecked.
“Long drive?”
“Longer than I remember,” she said distractedly, bringing them both back to the bomb. “She seems to be doing really well, Sam.”
He could hear Isla’s iPad prattling away behind the cabin door. “We had a shaky moment earlier on, but, yeah, she seems pretty good to me. But, then, that’s a worry too, that she might be just bottling it up, you know?”
“I’ve been asking about a counsellor.”
“A sessional?”
“A what?”
“I told her I wanted her to see a professio
nal, and she asked me what a sessional was.”
Sinead laughed. “What did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything – she didn’t say no. So …”
“Well, the advice I’ve been given is to hold off. You can get into that stuff too soon and our people say kids need months to process trauma before counselling can be of use.”
“Ok, how many months?”
“I’ve got a meeting with someone next week. I’ll know more then.”
“Thanks a million.”
“What time do we cast off?”
“Five. Latest. You ladies lie on, though. I’ll start off.”
“You like the mornings.”
“I do. It’s peaceful. You’re wrecked.”
“I really am. I might go to the leaba.”
“Get her to turn off that iPad.”
“She’s grand,” Sinead said. “I could sleep through a hurricane tonight.”
Which was music to Sam’s ears.
An hour after that, and with no sound from inside the girls’ cabin, he lowered the little RIB into the water from the back of the big boat. He pushed off, paddled her for fifty feet and at the breakwater started the engine.
“Look, it went ok,” said Libby. “They got nothing, and they have nothing.”
“You think?” asked the opso. “It’s not one of your team who’s been reported for assault.”
“He didn’t say assault.”
“Could be criminal damage,” said the opso.
“If they had an image of your op, then we might have an issue, but it seems pretty clear to me that there is no image.”
“They’ll be crawling CCTV in the surrounding area trying to pick him out. They might find the bikes, or the other car – or worse.”
“Worse, how?”
“The Gazelle.”
Libby had thought of little else. Explaining the Gazelle’s presence in the airspace above Ballycastle would be difficult. She had relayed her concerns to her superior who had told her to keep him informed. “If they ask, tell them it was a comms check.”
“They’ll not buy that.”
“They’ll have to suck up whatever we tell them.” Libby hardened her resolve.
The opso shrugged. “Whatever you say, Libby.”
17
He didn’t really know what he was looking for but his gut told him it would be useful to go. He’d never been to Ballycastle before and so the large, silent Rathlin Island ferry confused him in the darkness – its outline didn’t look like a fishing boat. When he finally twigged what it was he gave it a wide berth in case there was CCTV on board to monitor passengers. Not that he intended to cause any trouble.
He took the little bruce anchor and wedged it among enormous rocks outside the harbour so that nobody would see his boat, and climbed onto the breakwater, stumbling and slipping his way onto the outer wall. He crouched to ensure he wouldn’t be skylined against the murky horizon – imagining customs would be alive to the prospect of arrivals, although there was nothing but the sound of slapping halyards against aluminium masts.
It had taken him two hours to get there from Glenarm – the tide was against him, and he knew that with two hours back he had little time to look around. He found the spot he reckoned the photographer had stood and looked at the harbour. Then he rotated slowly, taking everything in – the car park, the marina, the dark gaping hole where the bomb vehicle had once been.
Slowly and with more trepidation than he had expected of himself, he made his way towards the café. The odd tail of plastic police tape still stuck out from knots tugged tight. Sam drew an aluminium gate anchored in a heavy plastic bases towards him a little and stepped inside. Under foot there was still debris and he could just make out the remnants of forensic kit.
He turned behind one tipped-up table and looked to where the window had been. Slowly the impact of what had happened crept back into him. He felt he was standing where Molly had died, opposite her mother, beside her friend. He could see the crater left by the car, yet if he took one step to the left – where he imagined Isla had been, it was obscured by a cavity concrete wall. That’s why my child is still alive, he thought. The difference of two feet. He moved before his emotions could slow him, but as he did so he caught a flicker of blue light.
He immediately froze, knowing that movement in the dark was greater exposure than a silhouette. Then the light disappeared. He hunted for a way out of the café, assuming that someone had spotted him and called the police. He crept towards the kitchen and found a door – key still in the lock – to the backyard. There he hoisted himself easily over a seven-foot wall and dropped to the road outside.
The blue light was coming nowhere near him but he heard doors slamming and a commotion, so he walked uphill, curious. He watched reflections; glass was always a great way of betraying people, particularly where there were vehicles parked at all angles. Further into the town he caught sight of headlights – static, in the small window of a house door. He turned heel and made his way around the block, and within minutes he heard muttering, more doors closing then some sort of struggle. He rounded a corner, now looking downhill, before retreating again immediately. Three police cars, one armoured Land Rover and at least ten officers filled the top end of the street. He took ten steps into the unlit side of the street and watched from a distance as the cops – some dressed in tactical support kit, removed an old woman, an old man on oxygen, trundling his cylinder behind him, and then a middle-aged bloke from a house. There was hostility towards the police and Sam strained to hear, hoping they’d be read their rights in the street, but was quickly disappointed. The three were shoved into cars with more force than their age might have warranted – which made its own suggestion – and were driven off. The TSG team then set about conducting a search that Sam watched with interest, quietly crossing the road and taking in the house and its surroundings.
“There’s nothing of interest in there,” one of the gloved officers said to another. “She has no documentation apart from house insurance. None of them seems to even have phone bills – no sign of any mobiles, nothing.”
“Have you lifted the floorboards?”
“We can do if you want.”
“You know her background. If there’s bomb-making equipment, it’s not going to be sitting in a press in the living room, is it?”
“Sarge,” said the first officer, adequately berated.
Sam moved away, looked at his watch and realised he was out of time. He made his way back to the harbour, got in the RIB and started the two-hour haul back to Glenarm. The boat bucked and revved hard as it bounced and bashed over the waves of a growing sea, but with concentration he kept her upright.
When he got back to Siân he cut the engine and stepped quietly aboard, winding the RIB up onto the davits as quietly as he could. Then he crept across the cockpit, slid the hatch of the companionway and received a shock.
“Good morning.” Sinead was bundled up in a duvet waiting on him.
“Hi,” he said as brightly as he was able. “What are you doing up?”
“To be honest, I’m sitting here wondering whether I was invited on this trip as a friend, or whether I’m just here as a babysitter to allow you to do whatever you’ve been off doing.”
Her tone was as hard as he had ever heard her speak. His heart sank.
“No,” he said, although suddenly he wasn’t sure. “We asked you because we wanted you to come.”
“We wanted me to come, or you wanted me to come?”
“We did. I did. Both?” Sam struggled.
“Do you want me here?” Sinead asked.
“Of course,” he said. “I didn’t want you to leave last time.”
That seemed to take her by surprise and she softened. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Why didn’t you say?”
“I … fuck, Sinead, I don’t know. I’m not good at this stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Explainin
g things. Friendship, I guess.”
“Friendship,” she repeated, tired, frustrated.
“Relationships.”
“Is this a relationship, Sam?”
He just stared at her hopelessly, unable to get any further.
“You’re right, Sam, you’re really not good at this stuff.”
She turned with her duvet and went back to her cabin.
Sam didn’t know what to do. He debated whether Sinead might be more cross if he cast off and left, but she hadn’t said she wasn’t coming. The plan had been to leave at five o’clock and she hadn’t appeared. If she gets up and wants me to take her back, we’ll fight the tide and return, he thought. The option saddened him when he thought about it, so he stopped thinking about it and hoisted the mainsail.
Three hours later he was flagging. He’d watched Cushendall and the Glens of Antrim glow in the dawn then fall to the horizon as they pushed nautical miles under the waterline.
He’d not recognised the old couple or the younger man. They were geriatrics – the older couple, at least, yet there they were clearly being arrested in connection with the explosion. He checked his phone every few minutes that he had service to see if there were any news reports on the arrests, but it was still much too early for a solicitor to tip off a reporter. Eventually their identities would leak out, which might give him some time to try and repair the issue in front of him.
“Coffee?” Sinead was dressed, and apparently not surprised that they were offshore.
“Love one, please,” he said.
She nodded and disappeared again. A few minutes later he heard the whistle and prepared himself for whatever he was due. She came on deck and handed him his covered mug and took a sip from her own.
“How far have we gone?”
“Twenty miles-ish.”
“And how far is it to this wonderful restaurant?”
“Same again,” he said. “I was worried you might not want to go.”
“Were you really?” she said and looked straight at him.
“Yes.”
Then her face softened and something short of a smile crept in as she turned away. “I’d cross the Atlantic with you two,” she said, “never mind the Irish Sea.”