Before: Sam Ireland Thriller Book 4 (Sam Ireland Thriller Series)

by Finn Óg

  Yours sincerely,

  Ms McKracken,

  School Principal

  “Well, that’s hopeful,” Sinead muttered.

  “Hopeful how?”

  “There’s no mention of the police.”

  “The police won’t search for a kid who’s bunking off school.”

  “No, but the headmistress would surely have mentioned if the police had come looking for information about them.”

  “Ah, right, so you reckon that means they’re not searching for him?”

  “Hopefully, but you could find out for me.”

  “And I will. I just need to time it right.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the cops will do routine maintenance on servers and push out software updates, and when they do there might be an opening for me to get in without triggering any alarm bells.”

  Sinead said nothing but there was a fuzzy logic to what she was being told.

  “There were other emails – just generic school information.”

  “No follow-ups?”

  “None, which is weird. Why would the principal not try him again?”

  The two women looked at one another.

  “Surely the school would try more than once to get an explanation?”

  “The virus,” Áine said suddenly.

  “Of course! The school’s closed, so they don’t know who’s in and who’s not.”

  “You could disappear at the moment and nobody would know.”

  Áine’s comment hung between them for a moment, as if there was something else in that realisation, then they returned to the search.

  “What other emails were there?”

  “Round robins from the headmistress to all parents.” Áine scrolled. “Updates, advice, yada yada. He didn’t open them.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “They’re sent using a provider.”

  “A what?”

  “You’ve heard of Mailchimp?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  “Well, like that except another version. It tracks who has opened and who hasn’t, and he hasn’t.”

  “I see.”

  “So because he hasn’t opened them we’ve no location from the email server. We can’t use this to track him.”

  “Ok.”

  “There are notes,” Áine said, reading.

  “Notes?”

  “The principal’s correspondence with … EA?”

  “Education Authority?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Áine said.

  “And?”

  “And she says she has tried to call him but the phone is switched off.”

  “Probably at the bottom of the Atlantic.”

  “If he has any sense.”

  Sinead suddenly found herself pushing back tears, the whiskey making her maudlin. “That reminds me,” she said weakly, fishing in her pocket. “A woman ran from the refuge last night. She left her phone. Can you find out where she lives and I’ll send it back to her?”

  Áine looked at the device, turned it over and selected a cable to place into its only socket. A window opened, requesting a passcode, but instead Áine opened a piece of software with a skull-and-crossbones icon and sat back.

  “We’ll need to crack the nut,” she said.

  “Fine,” Sinead said.

  It took less than one pour of golden liquid to supply results.

  “Where do you want to start?”

  “Contacts, I suppose.”

  Áine scrolled. A mixture of foreign and suggestive names appeared. There were fewer than twenty stored. “Bit weird,” Áine mumbled.

  “Try emails.”

  “Wow,” Áine said when the subject titles appeared. “She likes the smut.”

  Sinead watched the constant feed of filthy references pass up the screen. Many were reviews.

  “Ah, no,” Sinead said.

  “She’s a prostitute,” Áine said.

  “Seems so.”

  “The obvious next place to look is in photos.”

  “Ok.” Sinead shrugged.

  The images that appeared were a grim reflection of Ireland’s underbelly. Multiple men and women had been captured – there were even videos.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Áine said, turning to her sister.

  “Yeah, she wasn’t a prostitute. She was a madam.”

  “Oh, right. That wasn’t what I was thinking.”

  “We should send this to the police. She could be in danger. She’d had a tattoo – it was bleeding badly. Maybe it had been forced on her. Judging by some of the photos and the nationalities in them, I’d say she might be involved in gangs. Triads maybe.”

  “Or,” Áine rolled the “r” around her mouth, posing an alternative.

  “Or what?”

  “Well, this is a pay-as-you-go phone and it’s got two hundred euros on it.

  “So?”

  “So if you want to make contact with anyone – who may or may not be on the run – this might be a smart way to do it.”

  Sinead looked at her sister, temptation tingling up her spine. “We should give it to the police.”

  “Only you could be worried about the well-being of some oul wagon who runs hookers.”

  “What if she’s being coerced?”

  “Will the cops even look at it?”

  Sinead thought about the phone call with the guard a few hours previously. “Probably not.”

  “Then, what’s the harm? She’s probably a nasty bitch who is happy to run a bunch of young ones to men and take the money. You need a clean way of communicating with lover boy and – here, one has landed on your lap.”

  “I dunno, sis.”

  “I’ve got the GPS and Wi-Fi disabled, so there’s virtually nothing to trace that phone to this apartment apart from you bringing it here in the first place, and this is a big block in a city centre. It’s as clean a way as any.”

  “But we don’t know where they are, and Sam isn’t likely to have a phone, is he?”

  “I doubt it – he’s a cute hoor. But if we find him you will need some way of making contact. Oh, and I checked the father of the heiress.”

  “Well?” Sinead piped up, expectant.

  “Don’t get excited – there’s nothing.”

  Sinead slumped, her mouth pressed closed. She had an overwhelming urge to cry.

  “Look, sis – we have a clean phone for you to talk to him if we do find them. At least we have one end sorted. It’s a start.”

  5

  Sinead lay awake for the third night in a row. She knew she was exhausted, irritable and very probably on the cusp of becoming unreasonable. She also knew that there would be a hangover to deal with in due course, so she gave up, got up and went for a walk. To hell with the curfew, she thought.

  Her mind numbed by inebriation, she took the Beckett Bridge and padded into the northside, where life changed considerably. Once the home of native working Dubliners, the north-east of the inner city was increasingly mixed with migrants, and she knew that those on the streets at this time of night could well be up to no good, or forcing said migrants into it. Local gangsters exploited foreign arrivals, but the more confident and brutal of those arrivals managed to scare the shit out of the native scumbags and were confident enough in their brutality to do their own thing. Her hurt was giving way to anger – she knew it, and in that moment she was content that it should be so.

  Sinead ignored the fancy banking quarter, preferring to skirt the Royal Canal, drawn somehow to the water. She thought of him then, beckoning her, and her refusal. An incredible reaction given all that had gone before.

  She moved east, her way impeded by her own poorly placed feet and a propensity to bump off the walls of unfinished monstrosities, ill-fitting with what Dublin was supposed to be. Nude glass cages, see-through buildings, exposed, just like the seediness of the city with its gang murders and drug wars, prostitution rackets and subjection of women.

  Her mind ranted without
an audience and she knew it and enjoyed it; imagining revenge for all but Skibbereen and lamenting the loss of the one person she knew who was prepared to satisfy a lust for justice. He had sailed away, with his one true love, and she had declined the offer to go with them. Her choice – possibly the second worst of her life.

  Before she knew it she was standing at the end of Alexandra, no road left between her and the Irish Sea. “I am pissed,” she said aloud to herself, immediately deciding that the sea looked appealing. Three steps later and she was over the rocks and slipping into the water, wading to her waist without so much as a gasp – determined to crush the hurt in her head and her heart and to just swim a little.

  “Ah, c’mon, sweetheart!” She heard splashing from behind and felt a heavy pant of smoky breath on her cheek as someone landed on her, forcing her under for a split second and drawing the air from her lungs in shock at the cold. There was a luminous flash and a stocky arm flipped her onto her back and was dragging her back to the rocks. “Look, darlin’, it really canny be as bad as all that,” the man panted. Sinead thrashed around and caught sight of “Stena” emblazoned across the man’s jacket.

  “No!” she tried not to shout. “I’m not, this isn’t—”

  She felt the rocks on her legs and struggled to her feet, her clothes stuck to the outline of her body.

  “Why do youse always choose here, aye?”

  “You’re … Scottish?”

  “Aye,” he said.

  “I wasn’t trying to—”

  “Aye,” he said again, knowing better.

  “Really, I was just—”

  “Having a wee dip? I know.”

  Sinead gave up.

  And then she realised what she had overlooked.

  “What the actual fuck?”

  Áine stared at her, damp and dishevelled. She had left without her key fob and the buzzer had gone unanswered for a full half hour. Sinead knew that her sister was lying in bed hoping she would be the one to get up and answer the door – unaware that it was Sinead pressing the button. It had been bad enough waking the doorman to let her in off the street.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Are you … wet?”

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  “You got an idea – in the rain?”

  “Sam had this friend – Mini, Min.”

  “I remember. You met him in Scotland. His bessie.”

  “Yeah, him. And, yeah, he’s Scottish. So he might know where Sam’s gone.”

  “He’d have told Min – why?”

  “No, he wouldn’t have told him – in case it compromised him, but Min might know instinctively, like, because they served together. They know each other inside out. If Sam’s gone somewhere, he might be able to guess where.”

  “That’s what you went walking in the rain for? That’s the best you could come up with?”

  Sinead suddenly realised the uselessness of what she was saying, the shedding fug of drink exposing a brutal realisation. The indestructability of the inebriated was no longer with her.

  Áine reached out and placed her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Come in, sweetheart, and get dried off. I’ll make some coffee.”

  “But if I wanted you to, could you?” Sinead tried desperately.

  “Wanted me to what?”

  “Find Min?”

  “This is the marine, right? The fella who’s still in the forces?”

  “Yeah. He’s based in Scotland. I forget the name of it.”

  “I’d say Google would be enough to find him.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, it’s better than trying to crack into some MOD frame. All I need is his real name.”

  Sinead looked at her sister, despondency and desperation dripping off her with the residue of Dublin Bay. She didn’t need to say anything.

  “D’ye know his rank even?”

  Sinead shook her head and tears joined the dampness of her cheek.

  “Ok, I’ll see what I can find. You do the caffeine.” Áine swaggered off towards her tech room. Sinead squelched towards the shower.

  With a percolator pot in one hand and two mugs in the other, Sinead sheepishly peered into Áine’s office. The screens were full of camouflage fatigues.

  “Ready for coffee?”

  Áine ignored her. “There seems to be two options. Faslane Naval base on the West coast – that’s a bunch of marines protecting nuclear submarines. They’re fit.” She nodded at a screen packed full of young men, some shirtless, on exercise in a jungle.

  “Maybe. That’s not far from where Sam took me and Isla a few times,” Sinead traced the map on the screen, “but I got the impression that Min had come from further away.”

  “Well, there’s a base called Condor. It’s on the east coast of Scotland. It has a crowd called thirty commando.”

  “Thirty?”

  “From what I can gather they might say three zero, cos that’s what they say with other units – like four five or four three, but this thirty bunch are a different type of thing altogether.”

  “How?”

  “Their job is called ‘information exploitation’, and they have a group, and you’ll never guess who set it up.”

  “Min?”

  “Not in 1943 he didn’t.”

  “Right.” Sinead sighed, realising that she was going to have to listen to the full explanation. “Who, then?”

  “Ian Fleming.”

  “Who is?”

  “Yer man who wrote James Bond.”

  Sinead looked puzzled, although something here seemed to fit. “Really? He wasn’t just a writer?”

  “This crowd stole the Enigma machine during the Second World War – thirty commando, or IX, or so it says.”

  “Go way.”

  “They’re an intelligence unit. IX is the information exploitation bit. Thirty IX, I think.”

  “That’s it!” Sinead shouted, then tried to calm herself. “Sure, it was Min who Sam asked to sweep the boat when I first met him.”

  “Sweep?”

  “For bugs – or a tracker, or whatever. Remember those bastards were always able to find him?”

  “That paedophile ring?”

  “Yeah, they knew every move he made. Sam couldn’t work out how, so he brought Min in to give his boat the once-over.”

  “Right, yeah,” Áine said, recalling the difficult period. She wondered how different things might have been if she had just forced her sister’s hand back then and refused to help. It might have prevented all the hurt that followed. Back then Sam had just been a kind of contractor for Sinead, rescuing hookers from brothels for money. He was little more than paid muscle. Áine never imagined they would develop a relationship – if that, indeed, was what they had kindled.

  “Sam asked Min to find out whether they were following him through his GPS on the boat.”

  “He didn’t do much of a job of it, though, did he?” Áine muttered scornfully.

  “Well, Min had one of his blokes sweep the boat while he and Sam went off for lunch, but the boat keys with the tracker were in his pocket.”

  “Well, if this intelligence commando crowd do know what they’re doing, we’ll have to be careful.”

  “This is the right unit – I’m sure of it. What’s it called again?”

  “30 Commando IX Group.”

  “I never heard the name,” said Sinead, looking again at the screen, “but all that tech and surveillance stuff fits the bill. You want to see the big speedboat he had. Apparently it could, like, mask itself.”

  “Like the Klingons?”

  “What?”

  “Cloaked. Stealth mode.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sounds like Star Trek.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, and have some coffee.”

  Sinead cradled her mug.

  Áine paused, spreading her hands out flat on the keyboard.

  “It’s not raining,” she said, chewing her lip, as if terrified of the
statement.

  “No.”

  “It … hasn’t been … raining.”

  “No,” said Sinead again, fixing her stare at the screens.

  “You’re scaring me,” Áine said, blunt and to the point.

  “I’m not back in that place, Áine.”

  Neither looked at the other for a long time, until Áine could contain it no longer.

  “Sinead, did you jump in the Liffey?” she blurted out, a whisper short of anger.

  “No,” Sinead said, turning her head slowly. “I told you, it’s not like before.”

  “Because if this prick is going to drag you backwards, I’ll fucking—”

  “You’ll what?”

  “I’ll kill him.”

  Sinead stared at Áine for a long moment, then placed her hand on her twin’s. “I can’t explain something I don’t really understand myself, but I know you don’t hate him – I think you might even like him, even if you hate some of the things he’s done. I honestly know that he’s a good man, despite how everything seems. And, Áine, I made a mistake, and I need to fix that, and I need to tell him.”

  For the first time since childhood that Sinead could recall, Áine’s eyes welled. Her hand turned beneath her sister’s and gripped it tight. They had been one half of each other forever. “I just don’t want another—”

  “I know, but he’s not, Áine. I know he’s not.”

  Áine nodded – a comfort to herself as much as her sister. “But if he is, I will kill him.”

  “I know, and thank you.”

  Áine shook herself like a wet dog. “Right so, make the call.”

  “What?”

  “Call the base. There’s the number.” She pointed at a screen.

  “And say what?” Sinead was astonished.

  “Ask for your man – the little marine fella.”

  “What?”

  Áine’s uncharacteristic softness was pushed aside. “For fuck’s sake, Sinead, shove over that phone.”

  “You can’t use a phone!”

  “It’s grand for the likes of this. It’s an IP phone and it’s VPN’d all over the planet.”

  “I dunno what you just said.” Sinead pushed the cradle towards her and looked on as Áine dialled.