by Finn Óg
But she couldn’t deny that it was exciting. That unpredictability.
How were Sam and Isla managing in this lockdown? she wondered. Would they just sail aimlessly? She knew in her heart that they could, and probably would. That was their way – they didn’t really need or want anybody else. Except, maybe, her. Maybe.
But if they did that, they would need to be stocked up, and she doubted Sam had had time to provision the boat before he’d left the north. He’d been running, and before that he’d been working every minute God sent.
So what would they do?
Sinead knew he had cash. The job he’d been involved in before he’d had to cut and run had been lucrative. Babysitting, she smiled at the memory of his withering description. She wondered about the father of the wealthy heiress he’d minded, John, who had become a confidante and one of Sam’s few friends; his supplier of kit.
Would he have contacted John?
She pulled out her phone to text Áine: Maybe try John if poss? Might have been in touch.
She walked over the Grand Canal, across the Dodder and up to the East Link, the last bridge to cross the Liffey. She stared out towards the port walls and beyond, into the Irish Sea, putting herself in Sam’s boots.
What would you do? Where would you go?
She thought about Europe, about Europol, about arrest warrants and international agreements. She thought about his escape, that he’d thought – probably still thought, that the police were on to him for murder. Quite a few murders, in fact.
Wherever he’s gone, she thought, it won’t be somewhere with an extradition agreement.
She turned her attention to the places he’d travelled before. Where had he said he’d liked? The realisation irritated her as it made Áine’s point strikingly relevant: I don’t know him at all.
She thought again about Isla – what she would need that she didn’t have on board. She drew out her phone and tapped again: Check his Amazon account. And check other harbours. He will have stopped. Please. Xx
“You shouldn’t use SMS to ask me questions.” Áine was irritable.
“Why?”
“Think about it. He thinks he’s on the run, right?”
“But we know they’re not looking for him.”
“We think they’re not looking for him.”
“So?”
“So if we’re wrong, they will be chasing down every lead. And what are you?”
“Not a lead, anyway. They won’t know about me.”
“You only think that.”
“Ok. Even if they do, they are technically in Britain and I’m in Ireland. They can’t bug my phone.”
“You can be bloody sure they will.”
“Serious?”
“Shit, Sinead. What world are you living in?”
Sinead slumped down. “Ok. I just didn’t think.”
“Three Scooby-Doo movies, craft videos, Horrible Histories.”
“What?”
“Downloads. Tonnes more.”
“How much more?”
“What does it matter?”
“If we know how much media he took with him, maybe we can guess how far he was planning to go.”
“Fair enough, but that’s not the real value in this.”
“What?”
“You didn’t ask where it was downloaded.”
“Right, so,” Sinead said, exasperated, “where was it downloaded?”
“A harbour on the east coast. Waterford.”
“Ok?”
“Some of it was sent to a Kindle from an Amazon Prime TV account in a false name and to a dodgy credit card. Did you know he had a credit card in someone else’s name?”
“I know he sometimes acquired cards from criminals.”
“Stole them, you mean.”
“Liberated, he said. But you’d think they’d have been cancelled by now.”
“Unless the criminals had stolen them, and the person they stole them off couldn’t report it for whatever reason.”
“Like they were stolen in a brothel – punters, you mean?”
“No, like dead, I mean,” Áine said.
Sinead bristled. “You have a very low opinion of him.”
“Well, how many people has he seen off in the last six months?”
Sinead couldn’t really argue with that. It did appear that Sam may well have dispatched quite a few people. “The police don’t think it was him.”
“But you know, and I know, sure as eggs are eggs, it was him.”
Sinead fell into silence while Áine typed.
“So you think these downloads are his?”
“I’m certain. Isla loves Scooby-Doo and Horrible Histories.”
“The BBC account was a fake too. He’d even jimmied the IP address so it thought he was in the UK. He’s got better at all this, hasn’t he?”
“Well, you showed him most of it. How did you find it?”
“You told me to check other harbours. There’s a Wi-Fi router that shut down because someone violated its fair usage. There were fourteen hours of programmes downloaded before he was locked out.”
“Isla’s Kindle wouldn’t have enough space.”
“Multiple devices – a laptop, an iPhone, all fairly secure bar the Wi-Fi, which he appears to have turned off as soon as he was shut down.”
“So just kids’ TV shows?”
“Hard to say. There was a large file from a site I don’t know. It will take me a while to work out what it was. It’s still mining away here.” Áine gestured to a buzzing tower on her right that had a fan pointed at it. “You told me to check Amazon, but I looked at all the main providers, and these are the only major media downloads in east or south coast harbours.”
Sinead thought for a moment. “Can you see if the credit card was used anywhere else?”
“What, you think they went for a meal?”
“I think they’ll have needed food and water.”
“Does the boat not have a water tank?”
“Yes, but he prefers to drink bottled water. There is a water maker, but it’s slow and it breaks down.”
“A water maker?”
“It does something to saltwater to make it drinkable.”
Áine scrolled. “The card was used in a shop in Dunmore East. It was declined twice for a four hundred euro spend, then it was cleared for three hundred.”
“What does that mean?”
“Bank must have put a daily limit on the spend. Maybe there was a purchase queued on the card or it just had a really low spending limit.”
“Whose name was the card in?”
“Mitcik Vistok.” Áine peered into the small data.
“Could be anyone.”
“Could be a dead man.” Áine all but snorted.
“Ok, can we leave out the constant comments about dead people?”
Áine said nothing.
“Can you see what he bought?”
“No, but it’s a supermarket, so groceries, I’d say.”
“Is there CCTV down there?”
“If there is, it’s not on a network, so I can’t get into it.”
“We can’t be certain it’s him, then?”
“If you’re not sure about the videos and stuff, then, no.”
“I’m sure.”
“Then that’s bad news,” Áine said as data appeared on a new screen.
“Why?” Sinead sounded alarmed.
“Cos that other payment detail says,” she paused as she read, “it was for weather modelling for the North Atlantic and charts of the Eastern Caribbean.”
3
Sinead looked miserably at the swirls and numbers of the isobars. She had little idea what they meant – her interest in the weather was limited to how it would impact people’s behaviour, and therefore what effect it would have on her clients. Sunny evenings and long warm weekends inevitably led to a surge in appeals for shelter on Sunday nights as vested rednecks beat their wives and girlfriends into that final decision: to get out
, to seek the help they had been too afraid to get caught asking for.
She tried to snap out of it – thinking about what Áine had said. She lifted her phone and called the convent.
“Tearmann,” a fraught voice answered.
“It’s Sinead,” she told her ageing colleague. “How are you, Grace?”
“Wrecked,” her friend said, with uncharacteristic frustration.
“You’re getting it tough?” Sinead said.
“Unbelievable. Ten calls a night. This bloody lockdown is bringing out the worst in people, it really is.” To hear even the hint of a swear word from this devoted, devout employee was telling in itself.
“Look, Grace, I’m coming back to work.”
“Ah, no, no, you’re not well. We’ll be fine, honestly. You just caught me at a bad moment. There’s a young one here – little more than a child, really, and she’s had it rough. Then there’s an older woman who has done nothing but complain and cause mayhem in the refuge in the few hours since she arrived. God, forgive me, but she’s an ungrateful wagon of a woman.”
That really was out of keeping with Grace’s normal patter.
“Listen, I’ll be back this evening. You can hand over all the open cases and then take a break. I’m sorry I haven’t been around.”
“Did you have the virus, Sinead? I know you took leave and then after, when we didn’t hear, I didn’t like to ask – but others have been pestering me and I didn’t know what to say.”
“No,” Sinead faltered, “it wasn’t the virus, Grace.”
“Oh, thanks be to God. That’s good, that’s good.”
Sinead could tell that Grace felt entitled to an explanation, but she knew the older woman would never ask for one. “So, it’s domestics mainly, is it?”
“Yeah. No sex workers, really. This lockdown seems to have put an end to prostitution. Dear knows what those poor women in the brothels are being subjected to now instead – probably the internet. I doubt their fine masters would suffer the loss of income.”
Sinead could imagine. “In a way, that’s safer for them, Grace.”
“I’m totally out of options because there’s no beds anywhere. Most of the houses are full or closing because of Covid, and there’s no admissions where there are spaces because people in there have symptoms. The women we have now are staying in the convent, but, sure, you know the age of the nuns – we could wipe out a whole Holy Order if we’re not careful. Honestly, it would be more humane to … God, forgive me …”
“What?” Sinead asked, genuinely interested in what Grace might be hinting at.
“To get your friend from the north to go round the women’s houses and sort their fellas out once and for all. At least then it would be them that deserves it heading for the hospitals rather than these women and probably a convent full of decrepit nuns.”
Sinead would have smiled at the suggestion were it not for the sadness it summoned in her. “He’s not around any more, I’m afraid.”
Grace was quiet for a moment, and for a split second Sinead wondered whether her kindly friend had been fishing as to the cause of her absence and was putting two and two together in the silence.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Sinead,” Grace said in a sympathetic but brusque tone, as if confirming to herself all that had been left unsaid.
“I’ll be in this evening, Grace. Then you can take a rest. Sounds like you need it.”
“I’m going back to work this evening,” Sinead said.
“Mmm hmm,” Áine hummed, without turning from the screen bank.
“Can you get me one of those letters?”
“I’ll get you a letter from the president if it means you come out of the doldrums. What do you want – critical worker, frontline staff? You’d probably even qualify as a delivery driver, to be honest, ferrying all those girls around.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“I am an antidote to self-pity.”
“Just get me the bloody pass so the cops don’t send me home.”
“Ok, boss. Oh, by the way – have you thought about what you’re going to do if we actually manage to find them?”
“What do you mean?”
“Sam and Isla.”
“I know. I mean—”
“Like, you can’t just travel to wherever they are, with the lockdown and the restrictions.”
“Obviously,” Sinead said, but in truth it was a question that had been rattling around her head without an obvious answer.
“The travel ban won’t last forever, but it could be for the rest of the year, couldn’t it?”
Sinead felt her heart sinking again, hurting even. “If that’s the antidote to depression, then you’d want to work on your chemistry.”
“Seriously, though. If I find them, you’ll be like a dog chasing a bike.”
“I was thinking you could find some way for me to talk to them.”
“Hmm, risky.”
“How?”
“Well, he’s on the run – or not on the run, depending on where that investigation is. You’ll be a target, or not, depending on how much they want him. So if I do find him, they’ll want to be listening in, won’t they?”
“But you designed a system for him when he had that business.”
“The Charlie thing won’t work.”
“But you were able to set up that encrypted yoke. You said that was for clients to get in touch with Charlie secretly.”
“That was three years ago, sis. That was before the Snoopers’ Charter came into force.”
“The what?”
“Investigatory Powers Act. It’s a British thing. It basically lets the government hoke into anyone’s system.”
“But we’re in Ireland and he’s – wherever he is.”
“It’s the Brits who want him, though, so if they’re still looking for him, it won’t stop them. It just means they won’t be able to use it in any sort of court case. Not that any court is going to concentrate on how law enforcement might have found him. They’ll not have some barrister asking, ‘And what means did you adopt to track the defendant?’” Áine affected a plummy English accent.
“So you’re saying that the old app you set up is no use?”
“Not if you want him to stay under the radar.”
“And the phone is out, I assume?”
“Phones are the easiest thing to rip, Sinead. They’ve been around so long that every workaround has been nailed.”
“Well, then, I don’t know,” Sinead said, frustrated. “I’m going to work. I’ll have a think. There must be a way.”
Carrier pigeon, thought Áine, but chose not to say so.
Sinead took a handover from Grace. There were nine women in the convent now but they had placed thirty-nine since the lockdown had begun. Hostels had stopped taking calls, never mind clients; they were more up against it than Sinead’s rescue charity.
“Perhaps …” Grace started, looking up at her boss with uncertainty.
“I’m not going to send some Conor McGregor round to beat the husbands into hospital.” Sinead smiled at Grace, hoping to warm her a little.
“No, no, not at all. That was a silly suggestion,” Grace said apologetically. “I was thinking, maybe I could take a few of them home with me?”
“You know the policy, Grace – four steps, nothing more. Take the calls, find a way to get the women out safely, place them in a refuge and then work on finding them an income.”
“I know, I know … but these aren’t normal circumstances and, sure, we all know that the benefits system is inundated with calls and emails just now. I haven’t been able to get through all week. I don’t know how the girls we’ve already placed are going to get by.”
“Calls, extraction, placement, benefits or asylum – the four strokes, Grace. We must stick to that otherwise our funding gets questioned and we have women in our spare rooms every night with men beating down our doors to get to our guests – and that’s a slippery slope.”
; “You’re right. The men can track us, but not them.” Grace repeated a mantra that had been drummed into the small staff a thousand times. Each of Sinead’s team had extra security measures at their homes to prevent them being used as leverage to find escaped women.
“You’ve done an amazing job, Grace. I’m really sorry I haven’t been here to help, but I’m back now and you need some rest, so I don’t expect to see you for at least two days. Ok?”
Grace reached out and rubbed Sinead’s arm. “You are ok, aren’t you? It’s not like you to miss a day’s work let alone a few months.”
“I am now, and glad to be back, Grace. Now get yourself home and get some sleep. And thanks for holding the fort.”
She took the file and began working her way around the rooms in the old adjacent convent. They were often still referred to as cells – and they looked every bit of it. Heavy solid-timber doors, the names of long-departed nuns still hanging from a hook on the outward-facing side. Sinead knocked heavily, waiting to be beckoned inside, but the doors were so thick and the stone walls so dense that she had to try the enormous handle and open each door a crack to announce her arrival.
The first cell had an ancient timber floor – the only warmth in an otherwise gloomy, sparse square. There was a table, a chair, a sink with no mirror and a metal bed with an ancient mattress covered in itchy blankets.
“Hello, I’m Sinead, I’m the manager. Can we have a chat?”
A middle-aged woman rose from a foetal position and sat on the bed, her fingers curled like the talons of a hunting bird around the edge of the mattress. “Thanks for coming to get me. I’d have been in Glasnevin if it wasn’t for ye.”