Charlie

by Finn Óg

  My concentration lapsed again, what sort of mind had conjured up this dreadful fantasy?

  “I didn’t believe her at first,” said the Counsellor, “just as you don’t believe me now.” He started staring again. I had rallied somewhat, and managed to match him. “But you will believe me.”

  I found myself concentrating upon the man telling the tale, as opposed to what he was saying. I was vaguely aware of some outlandish claims about how the group controlled the woman, and what they had made her do, but I’d had enough.

  “What do you need me for?” I felt a sudden need for clarity on what this was all about.

  “To keep her safe of course,” he said, as if that was obvious.

  “Charlie is not a bodyguard service,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “But you could help root out this circle.”

  If such people existed, I thought I could take a certain amount of pride in rooting them out.

  He continued, “I’ve been walking down streets with this woman when thugs came towards us, and tried to take her away from me. So long as there is a semblance of good, there is no chance that harm can come to her. I and six others stayed with her over Beltane to protect her.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about at that stage, so I stopped listening. I gazed at his jeans, and his sandals. I looked at his counselling couch, at his shelves, at his smug face, and I got up and left. I drove straight to my parents’ house, collected Isla, took her to the boat, and cuddled her to sleep. I didn’t let her go until morning.

  Eighteen

  Jerusalem

  I thought about it non-stop. How I would approach her when I saw her again? What would I say, what would I do? I thought about it more than I thought about anything else. I must have, because for an entire fortnight I ignored any sensible notion that entered my head. I rehearsed it, refined it, adopted different scenarios. I built conversations designed to provoke the correct opportunity. In the end, I made a proper bollocks of it.

  Of course, the first problem was finding her again. It crossed my mind that she could so easily have stroked me. She had perfect deniability; if I got caught killing the paedophile, no story I could plausibly tell could possibly make her complicit. I wasn’t supposed to be in Jerusalem, I had to deny having been in Gaza. As far as anyone anywhere was concerned, she and I had never met.

  In any event, the name of the charity was all I needed. On Abu Taleb, not far from the dusty court gates, I found a clunky little café which sold internet time for a few shekels. I looked up the humanitarian outfit, wrote down the landline number for its office in Gaza, and then called it from a pay phone with a stinking handset. The greeting was male, and in Arabic. “Is Shannon there please?”

  The line rattled like a drum as the receiver was dropped. I could hear sandals slap off down a hall. “Hello?” she said, eventually. The gentle rise of her voice in query sent a shudder through me, and my planned words warped as I reverted, introverted, to type.

  “It’s done,” I said.

  She didn’t miss a beat, no matter how disturbing the message must have been. I could feel her thinking, but there was no pause, no panic.

  “Are you ok?” That took me aback. She sounded so gentle.

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  As the years rolled past, her endless concern for others would never cease to amaze me, but in that moment, I loved her, and I needed her.

  “You could… you….” I paused. Then I threw my risk at the wall and said it. “Would you like to come and see me, before I have to go?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank fuck for that,” I blurted, and she giggled; a cheeky, involuntary, roguish little laugh.

  Then there was silence. And it was a beautiful silence. I closed my eyes. I could hear her breathing, and it was calm, and I was calm, and our silence was in sync. There was no awkwardness, just a relief, and an incredible peace, born of incredible violence.

  *****

  “Tell me about it,” she said.

  “No.”

  She paused. “Yes. I want to know.”

  I looked at her, lying, cradled in the crook of my arm, her incredible eyes upturned to me. “Why?”

  I hadn’t expected to be asked to recount the detail. “Because it’s on me,” she said. She wasn’t revelling in the man’s demise, she was taking responsibility for it.

  “It was rough.” I had no intention of telling her everything. Back then I was relatively good at boxing up the bad stuff, and stacking it away. I didn’t want to go over it again myself, never mind making her go through it too.

  “I insist, Sam.”

  She used my name. Nobody ever used my name. In the Corps, in the Service, I was always just “Irish,” or “Ireland,” which suited me fine. Shannon always took a different tack. I lay still for a long time, but she sensed she didn’t have to press any further. She knew the story would come, and I knew that somehow, every story would come. It was the start of her easing my conscience, becoming my counsellor, my cure.

  “I found him easily enough, and I tailed him a little and got to know his ways. I saw what you saw, his desire for kids.”

  She shifted uneasily, so I paused. Then she ran her hand over my bare chest and squeezed gently; go on.

  “I did it at his flat. That night. The night I caught him with the kid. He was with a young fella.” I didn’t elaborate on what had happened on the heath. “His place had a low veranda, like a balcony, except smaller. I went back to my hotel and waited till the city was silent. I pinched a ruler from reception on the way back out, and when I got there I swung up onto his patio thing, and cracked the door with the plastic ruler.”

  I paused to look at her, but all I could see was the parting of her hair, the short mane now straggled by exertion. Her hand betrayed her where her eyes could not. Her fingers gently crabbed my skin as the detail was delivered.

  “He fought hard. He was lying down when I entered his room, but he was awake, no covers, no clothes. Makes it hard. To get a grip.”

  It can actually be tougher to deal with someone prostate than upright, and the paedo had been as slippery as a mackerel. “He rolled away as I reached for him, and used his feet. His legs were surprisingly strong, and it took a while to grapple him.”

  I hadn’t wanted his blood on me. I didn’t trust his blood, his likely infection.

  “I took his foot and used my weight to turn it, snapped his ankle and then had to get to his head because of the screaming and the pain. He writhed and fought and shouted and I had to get it done, but he was strong enough and it took a few blows to pacify him long enough to get to his neck. Then it was over and he was dead, covered from head to toe in my DNA.”

  She spoke then, out of concern for me. “Can you be traced?”

  “Probably. I had very little time to clean him. He made a serious racket, and I needed to get out of that flat. There was no blood so I washed him with a cloth best I could. I don’t know if it was enough.”

  She lay tense against me. “Can the Israelis trace the DNA? To link it to you?”

  “Is my DNA on record you mean?”

  “Yeah, can they, like, subpoena it or something, from the Brits?”

  “Well, it’s on record, in the Navy somewhere. They’ve got my blood and samples and stuff. Bound to have, I’ve spent a bit of time in the infirmary.”

  “No shit,” she said, as she traced an unsightly scar across my abdomen.

  “But I doubt the British would share that kind of information, and anyway, how would the Israelis know I’d been there?”

  “They know,” she said. “They know who’s been in and out of their country. If they didn’t lift you, then they were playing with you. Watching you, or tracking you.”

  She spoke with conviction. Israel was a small country, with a big army, and a serious dedication to its own protection. I had no reason to doubt her sincerity, but it did rather make me question my ability to act cove
rtly. I let it slide. To argue would have been petulant, and pompous; she was probably correct. Anyway, she was lying naked beside me and I’d opened up further than I had ever done, and it didn’t feel at all uncomfortable. I sensed she felt she had gone far enough, and she closed it down.

  “He’s gone now, and kids are safer. That’s all that matters.”

  We never spoke of it again. She never knew about the terrible bludgeoning it took to kill the man, the horrific, skull-crushing blows I’d had to deliver to extinguish him. The way he’d suffered, and lashed around in agony. Yes, the world was a tiny bit safer for some kids, but only a few. I filed it away, and pulled Shannon tighter against me.

  *****

  If getting into Israel had been hard, getting out of the place was nearly bloody impossible. My inclination was, as ever, to go coastal. I’d only been in Jerusalem a wet weekend, but I quickly got twitchy at the stale dryness, and my inability to see the sea. Wherever I have lived, I have been able to look upon an ocean, or a lough, or an inlet of some sort, every day. I don’t go inland if I can avoid it.

  Shannon had borrowed a car. She drove me to Tel Aviv, and gave me enough shekels to allow me to spend a few nights in the most disgusting hostel I have ever seen. It was a needle-infested pit, with blood on the sheet-less bed, so I slept on the beach. As dawn broke I went in search of a boat, in the hope that a skipper might agree to take me to sea. But the doubt that Shannon had placed in my head about my DNA, and the extension of the logic around what capture would mean, made me opt for caution. The Navy would throw me to the wolves if I got picked up by the IDF, or Israeli police.

  The creeping daylight brought a dose of reality, that my planned escape was daft. I reasoned that a brutal-looking bloke trying to hitch a lift from fishermen, or offering to crew a sailing boat, would raise considerable suspicion. I decided therefore, to steal a yacht and head in whatever direction the charts on board would take me.

  And therein lay the first of my problems. Tel Aviv’s main marina was incredibly small. I swam into it to get beyond the security fence with minimal fuss. I quickly realised though, how much of a challenge the theft of a boat would pose. Of the dozens of yachts that I broke into, there were precious few that had charts which mapped an area beyond the immediate vicinity. It made me realise the extent to which Israel was surrounded by hostile countries. There was no point in a sailor buying charts for day cruises – there was nowhere safe for them to travel to. To embark upon anything other than a pretty serious voyage, skippers would inevitably find themselves in Arab, or Muslim terrain.

  I found one chart, far less detailed than I would have liked. It had Cyprus on it, and the Israeli coast, so I settled on Larnaca as my destination. It was about one hundred and eighty nautical miles away. Too far for a slow, beamy yacht. And so, I gave up on my second bright idea of the day, and tinkered my thinking in another direction.

  In a corner of a car park was a bundle of sailing dinghies, and a few racing boats with more substantial lifting keels. These were attractive to me because they were plainly suffering from under-use. The ropes and sheets were gently greening, but the rigs appeared to be in good shape. There was a shed nearby. Through a crazed window I could see sets of sails. One boat was particularly appealing; I didn’t recognise the make, but it had a compass, an open transom, and a retractable bowsprit. It was about 20 feet long, and substantially built. I estimated it was capable of between six and sixteen knots, which, with a favourable breeze, could get me to Cyprus in less than twenty-four hours. More importantly, nobody would expect a yoke like that to sail to Cyprus. No customs officer at the other end would imagine it had come from another country, and so would likely ignore it. If I left at night, it could get me well off shore before anyone knew it was gone.

  I used what money I had to buy a breakfast, and to stock up on water, energy bars and sunscreen. I buried my provisions in the sand beneath me on the beach, and settled in for a day’s dozing, ahead of the trip.

  *****

  “You are one lucky bastard.” My superior was snarling at me, as he spat out the findings.

  “Discontinued in the interests of public justice.”

  Utter disgust.

  I had known that I was looking at dismissal from her majesty’s service. On top of that, a hefty fine was likely, plus up to a year in prison. So, I had to agree, I was a lucky bastard. Lieutenant Commanders who appear before military courts don’t normally escape lightly, unless charged with some sort of assault. That is almost encouraged. Those up on fraud charges are ushered away into oblivion and never heard of again, in the hope that the press doesn’t get wind of what goes on with missing MoD kit. But for absence, and negligence to my team, which was all they could prove with regard to what I had done, I could have been in very, very deep water.

  I was due to be listed simply by rank and as belonging to the Royal Navy. I was as amazed as anyone when the charges were kicked out. Only then did it become evident that the nature of Operation Charlie was so sensitive, that my bosses had taken the view that no detail should be given out, even in the comparatively closed environment of a court martial.

  That didn’t mean I could remain in the Special Boat Service though. My belligerent refusal to go into any detail about what I had been doing infuriated my Major. Despite not having managed to get me convicted, he ensured that the brass busted me back to the Marine Corps.

  He was a petulant man, the Major. He was tough enough, and had apparently been a particularly good rugby player in his youth. He’d certainly retained the build. His attitude however, was straight out of Tory central office, and his education had insisted that his compassion was limited to those within his own tax code. Even though I was an officer, he treated me as a grunt, and his men were expendable and distasteful in equal measure. They were his fodder, and I was their well-trained collie.

  Part of me wanted to take the hit on the chin. I may have made questionable decisions, but I’d met the love of my life. Provided I wasn’t going to prison, a promising new passage lay ahead of me. But the work that had gone into becoming an elite naval officer had been gargantuan. The physical and mental sacrifice took more than a piece of me, and although I didn’t fully appreciate the extent of that toll at the time, I had loved being a member of the Special Forces. We got no thanks for what we did, we could never have successful operations acknowledged, but I knew I was at the very top of my game. I knew that few could ever be asked to do the things I did, and I knew I’d miss that terribly. At the age of 35, I was a Marine once more.

  Two months after the case collapsed, I got on with things. Shannon and I married in the garden of my folks’ house, by the sea, on a sunny day in May. Her family came north, and mixed easily with my own. There were some tough enough cookies there from my rise through the ranks, and all my pals from home. There were no politics, and gallons of rum, and we danced and sang all night as guitars and banjos were handed around. Everyone took their turn to perform, a proper Irish affair. It makes me choke now to think of that day, at the top of the tide. Given how I earned a quid, I never imagined that Shannon’s travels would end before mine.

  Nineteen

  One month after his visit, I checked on the resting place of the man who had come to our boat to kill me. To go there at night was impossible, as torchlight stood a very good chance of being spotted from the mainland. During the day, anyone with binoculars might watch me bump my dinghy up the stony beach, and track much of my progress across the rabbit hole-ridden surface. There was cover, of sorts, in making it look as though I was exercising my dad’s dog, because I refused to take Isla to that particular island anymore.

  The deep shuck I’d deposited the man into was reasonably well hidden. It was hollowed into the centre of the island, and covered in overgrowth and briars. I counted on the local wildlife, rats and birds, to assist with the decomposition. When I got to the grave, I was pleased to find that there was absolutely no detectable sign of the corpse. It had sunk well at the time, and
even the dog showed little interest in investigating. The body’s exposure to humid, moist air would help strip it back quickly, but it would take another month to make life properly difficult for a forensics team.

  I scoured the press every day for stories about a missing man, but there was absolutely nothing from any part of Ireland that fitted his description. I found that curious; surely someone, somewhere, would miss a hulk like him? I roasted the man’s clothing, and I was confident that once the final rashers of flesh were eventually gnawed back, the corpse and I could not be connected.

  That didn’t solve my issue though, and it certainly didn’t mean that Isla was safe. We had sailed to Scotland after I disposed of the intruder, and spent an edgy fortnight, dropping anchor at various points up the Clyde. No matter how secluded the bay I chose, sleep eluded me. Whoever had sent the man had managed to find me, despite our nomadic and unpredictable existence. My destination was the Gare Lough, not far from the Port of Glasgow.

  At Helensburgh, I made a call. The company, 43 Commando, was stationed just a few miles north at Faslane naval base. The Fleet Protection Unit was a crack squad of Marines, deployed to protect the nuclear submarines, which slipped in and out of those beautiful waters like enormous black seals. It sounds stupid to say it, but the knowledge that five hundred Marines were based just a few miles away gave me comfort. Commando friendships are hard to maintain in an ordinary sense. We are often solitary people, content to live without dependence. Yet bonds are forged that cannot be forgotten, even after discharge. I hadn’t kept in touch with anyone since I’d left, save for a copy-and-paste exercise in response to the sympathy e-mails that had come my way. All the same, I knew that there would be help, provided my buddy was not on leave.

  He responded to my request within hours. At five feet four, we’d nicknamed him Mini Marine, and when he appeared on the pontoon beside our boat, I could barely see him over the top of the dodgers. Mini was a formidable and fearless leader though, and the men in his unit would have done anything he asked of them. I’d often heard his Glaswegian accent barking at his team, and too many times I’d heard him counsel them with astonishing softness, following the loss of their friends. He was a signals expert. There was very little he didn’t know about comms. We were seconded together to the SRU, the reconnaissance unit, and he and that job fit like a pair of old jeans.