He sat alone in the Ristorante A Capella swigging his second Peroni and staring at the Samsung, stroking the blank screen with one thumb, in case by magic she might materialise and be sitting opposite him. They would laugh about the bizarre sequence of events, but now everything was fine; everything had an explanation. Panic over. It was a funny story they would promise to live off for years to come and they could carry on where they left off.
“Menu for the Signore?” said the waiter handing him a leather-bound book and jolting him back to reality. The electronic device in his hand was the only piece of her he had and if he hadn’t found it, he could easily have convinced himself it had all been a bad dream. He was still angry and upset at the deception, but more than anything else he was worried.
There could be no doubt it was her phone; it was the number Mr and Mrs Angry had given him, but there was no way to prove it. He’d spent the afternoon on the internet finding out how to get round the password and once he had, steeled himself to look at her personal data, photos, music, emails and the plethora of e-activity that everyone, including him, had on their own devices. He’d been reluctant to hack into it. By any measure, it was a gross invasion of privacy and no business but hers. Most of all, he feared he’d find something so hideously personal he’d never be able to look her in the eye, even though the likelihood he’d see her again was remote. He’d run the risk of her memory being tarnished irrevocably, even more than it was now.
He’d left her phone on the coffee table and paced the floor of the cottage thinking through the options. Had she lost it accidentally and if so, try to call it from somewhere else or maybe use Find My to try to locate it? He dismissed it. The chances of accidentally losing a phone in someone’s wheelie-bin was stretching credibility to extremes. Unless she lost it in the house and accidentally threw it out with the trash? Maybe it was stolen and discarded? But then, why would anyone take the trouble to steal a phone and then chuck it away – and in the owner’s bin? Maybe it malfunctioned and she couldn’t be bothered to get it fixed? It looks brand new Jack and it’s working perfectly. She hadn’t even powered it off and that made no sense at all.
There was only one real explanation; she’d thrown it away deliberately to cut herself off, avoid anyone who might be able to contact her. He consoled himself with the notion that that precluded him, because he didn’t have her number in the first place. But she’d given it to Mr and Mrs Angry and would assume they’d give it to him when he turned up looking for her.
She’d told them of a family emergency, but you don’t discard your means of contacting people in those circumstances. And her “cousins”? He couldn’t imagine who they were or what they looked like, but it just didn’t ring true. Maybe because she never answered her phone, they came to tell her of the family emergency in person? Then why had she already left? He couldn’t rationalise it, but it had a bad smell, and he couldn’t shake off the feeling the unexpected appearance of two Irishmen had sinister connotations and might be the reason she ran off.
His anger and frustration had turned to worry and fear; worry that she was in trouble and fear for her safety. That tipped the balance, providing him the justification he needed to pry into her personal life and look at the contents of her phone. He’d find someone in her address book he could call. He’d simply tell them he’d found her phone and he wanted to get it back to her. Someone would know where she lived. Even if he did nothing, the phone was bound to ring eventually. What would he do then? Ignore it?
He needn’t have worried. The phone was virtually empty. There were no photos, no email accounts and no contacts. There were three text messages from an unknown number, all dated the previous night which he could tell were from Mrs Angry berating her for walking out. The call log contained three missed calls the previous evening from the same number and two more this morning, followed by five missed calls from his own number timed this morning and another five at various times from the 121 answering service.
There was nothing in her diary, no stored files and no additional apps. There wasn’t even a user in the phone settings, so he still had no clue of her real name. If there had ever been anything else there, she’d found time to delete it and reinitialise the device before binning it, and given the timing of the texts, that had to be sometime after 5 p.m. yesterday. The sim card was intact, but it was most likely pay-as-you-go. It added to the mystery and exacerbated the worry. But the technician in him was undaunted. He hadn’t brought his laptop with him because he couldn’t see a need, but he had data recovery software installed on it and when he got back to Milton, he’d use it to analyse the phone and restore the history. There was no guarantee there’d be anything, but if there were, it might be retrievable.
He put the phone back in his pocket and opened the menu, glanced briefly at the main courses and made a decision. He let his eyes wander around the restaurant. They landed on two men sitting at a table near the swing doors into the kitchen. They wore black leather jackets over black polo-neck sweaters and black jeans, had short, cropped hair, five o’clock shadows, almost a uniform of sorts. There the resemblance ended. The older of the two was fifty plus, short and squat and he leaned forward, resting his arms on the table, cupping his leathery hands like a friendly vicar. His partner was younger, thinner and taller. Not your typical restaurant couple out on a social event, he thought. They were in muted conversation, nursing two glasses of beer but unsmiling and otherwise inanimate. A waiter appeared and attempted to hand them menus but was waved away.
The waiter approached Jack’s table.
“Signore?”
“I’ll have the ravioli.”
“Perfetto.” He took the menu and wandered into the kitchen.
He checked Siobhán’s phone again in case he’d missed anything, but it was as if straight out of the box. He was torn between rushing home to unlock its secrets and staying on the island in case she was still here. His guess was she’d come from the mainland and had probably already returned but he had no evidence for that, other than if she wanted to hide, she’d be better away from the island. He had to consider she might be hiding from him, but it didn’t make any sense. She knew most if not all the gory details about his life and despite that, had still agreed to meet him. If she had changed her mind, there were easier ways of breaking a date than binning her phone and running away. Something had happened yesterday, something important, something that caused her to disappear in a flash. He risked tormenting himself thinking of the possibilities.
His food came and he poked around at the plate unenthusiastically. Almost immediately, the two men in black got up, tossed a note on the table and left. It was strange they hadn’t eaten anything, but there was no law that said they should.
***
It took him ten minutes to walk back to the cottage. He’d briefly considered dropping into The Fisherman’s for a nightcap, but he wasn’t in the mood. Better to get packed up and have an early night. He’d go online and try to change his ferry ticket for an earlier departure.
He reached the garden gate and stopped to look up and down the street, most of it taken up with parked cars, including his Range Rover. The pathway to the front door of the cottage was lit by an array of solar-powered lights mounted on short metal poles, but the cottage itself was dark, just as he’d left it. The wrought iron gate creaked as he opened it, the grating sound followed by that of car doors closing. He turned and saw two men in black approaching from the across the road. They stood on the pavement by his gate. He recognised them immediately and could feel in his bones they were Irish. He was right.
“How’s it goin’?” said the older and shorter. He made an effort to smile and appear polite, but he clearly needed more practice, and his younger, taller partner was even less skilled.
“Can I help you gentlemen?”
“I certainly hope so. We won’t be keepin’ you long. We’re actually lookin’ for a friend of ours and wondered whether you might be able to help.” The sing-song inflexion of the Derry accent was unmistakeable, but the guy remained expressionless, observing and watchful. Jack looked him in the eye. These were the guys from the restaurant; her “cousins”. They’d been to the timber-clad house looking for her a couple of hours before him. They’d seen him leave and followed him, first to the cottage and then to the restaurant, in the hope she would turn up, and when they realised he was eating alone, went back to the cottage to wait. Better to conduct any conversation in private, especially if persuasion were needed. He had no doubt they were bad news and he fought to keep in check the red mist that was beginning to descend. He was tired, worried, pissed off and he’d had a drink. He put his hands in his jacket pockets and tried to sound as friendly as possible but couldn’t help being provocative.
“I’ll help if I can. This friend of yours. What’s his name?”
The older man’s face hardened and the younger one shifted his weight. The die was cast. “Oh, I think you know very well who we’re talkin’ about.”
Jack shook his head. “Nope. I’m afraid you’ll have to explain. Starting with a name.”
“Caitlín McConnell. The woman you’ve been seein’.”
“Never heard of her.”
“That’s probably because she gave you a different name.”
“Well, that’s no help to me.”
“Look, we’re reasonable people. We know you’ve been to the house and spent time with her. All we want to know is if she told you where she was goin’.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Family business. None of your concern.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.” He was fishing. Whatever they knew about Siobhán/Sinéad/Caitlín it was more than he did, so any scrap of information was useful. He now had a name although there was no guarantee it was any more real than the others. But he’d implied he had something to trade, and he was content to prolong the conversation and see what else he could discover.
“As I said, it’s personal.” The younger one shifted his weight back to his other leg and put both hands on his hips, spreading his jacket wide. If he had a gun it would be tucked in his trouser belt in the small of his back making it easy to hide and easier to retrieve.
“Well, if you don’t tell me why, then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
They stared at each other for a few seconds before the older one spoke again. “She stole somethin’ from us and we want it back. That’s the long and short of it. Now tell us what you know, and we’ll leave you in peace.”
“Well… the trouble is, I actually don’t know anything.”
“You’ve got her phone. We saw you with it.” Jack hadn’t expected that, and it disrupted his train of thought, but he didn’t have time to work through the possibilities. “I suggest you give it to me.” The Irishman stepped forward onto the path and held out his hand. There was no way he would part with the phone and he knew then, this was not going to end well. He spoke in slow measured terms as if to a toddler or a foreigner with a poor grasp of English.
“I don’t know who she is, what her real name is or where she is now. But I can tell you this. Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell a couple of thick ugly Paddies like you.” The older one’s expression turned to a snarl and he took another step forward, pointing a finger straight at Jack’s face.
“You have no idea what you’re dealin’ with.”
Jack Fleming had never been one to look for a fight. He’d spent most of his life trying to avoid conflict despite his boyhood instinct to join the armed forces; mediation was always better. He’d made many friends in Ireland, North and South and had been struck by their hospitality and good humour, recalling many a night in the pubs of Derry and Belfast, downing far too many pints and laughing until his face hurt. But he was getting tired of this. He’d met an extraordinary Irish woman who’d pressed all the right buttons and now he was being harassed by two Irish thugs who were pressing all the wrong ones. He’d already made his assessment. They were clearly up to no good and played the hard men of Ulster well, but they weren’t Provos. They were miles off home turf, there were no balaclavas, no attempts at kidnap or abduction and there would be no shooting on the doorstep and running away. Whatever they might try to imply, they weren’t IRA or even UDA; they were just good old-fashioned thugs, and he was profoundly annoyed by their intrusion. Jack the mediator urged himself to stay calm, then casually ignored his own advice.
He shot out his left hand and grabbed the guy’s finger, bending it back sharply. It snapped instantly and as he let out a scream of agony, Jack smashed his fist into the contorted face. It sent him staggering backwards to collide with his younger partner who fought to retain his balance, bouncing off him like a punchball to meet a second blow in the same place. This time they both fell backwards through the gate and onto the pavement, landing in a heap. Jack stepped briskly forward and swung a heavy kick to the younger one’s middle, flipping him over and onto the road. The older one got to his knees and Jack lifted him by the collar of his jacket and rammed him head-first into the back of the Range Rover before returning his attention to the younger one, who was writhing on the ground, gasping for breath and clutching his midriff.
He saw Jack coming and desperately tried to crawl away, but Jack put a knee on his neck and pulled up the back of his jacket. No gun. The guy grunted and he flipped him over, checking for a shoulder holster. There was none. He got up and kicked him again for good measure, then stepped over the older one who was still on the ground, moaning. He saw curtains twitch across the road; at least one neighbour had heard a commotion. He wondered whether they’d call the police or stay out of it.
The men in black got unsteadily to their feet and supported each other, the older one wiping blood from a broken nose with his good hand, the other hanging limp by his side. The words were distorted but the meaning clear.
“You’ll be seein’ us again, so you will.”
They hauled their battered bodies into a dark BMW and drove off at speed.
***
He made some strong coffee and threw his things into his soft leather holdall. It was highly unlikely they’d be back tonight, with or without reinforcements but he wouldn’t sleep anyway and decided the best course of action was to get back to the ferry terminal and wait there. He could sleep in the car until his turn came.
He checked the cottage again and then locked the door, leaving the key under the flowerpot as instructed. Within thirty minutes, he was in Fishbourne, but the ferry terminal had closed for the night and iron gates barred the entrance to the car park. He drove around for a while, found a residential street half a mile away and parked the Range Rover under a sycamore tree. He reclined his seat and lay back, closing his eyes to try to sleep, but his mind was still whirring and now more than ever.
Siobhán, Sinéad, Caitlín or perhaps none of these. Whatever her real name, she was in trouble. Two hard men of Ulster didn’t travel to the Isle of Wight to threaten and intimidate a complete stranger just to tidy up family affairs. When he’d first met her, there had been no indication whatsoever she felt vulnerable. Quite the opposite. She came across as strong willed, independent and strident and if she’d had something to hide or be afraid of, she would never have invited a stranger into the house or had dinner with him.
She’d behaved strangely in the restaurant, suspicious of other people and nervous of her surroundings and he now knew why. But afterwards, she’d agreed to have lunch with him, so she could not possibly have known then she wouldn’t be there to keep the date. She would have merely declined and that would have been the end of it; he’d never have seen her again. Yet she’d disappeared without warning and within hours, two thugs from Derry were banging on the door. She must have known or had a tip-off at the last minute. It was pure luck he’d found her discarded phone and she must have thought wiping it would make her impossible to find, unless of course there really was nothing on it. The sooner he got back to Milton and found out, the better.