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“Granted, it’s a bit of a stretch, we figured you might need it to get work.”
“But I joined the army at sixteen?”
He’d promised himself that there’d be no more lies.
“Then, you’ve probably done a degree’s worth of training and fitness.”
That was true. But still, it didn’t sit right with him. He wanted to live his new life honestly.
Shaun produced another set of papers. This time, it was a land registry map stapled to the top of another document.
“The deeds to a house?”
Shaun flicked through the pages.
“And there’s land with it too?”
The consulate official shrugged.
“Call it a severance payment from Her Majesty. We don’t use it anymore.”
He added hastily, “Anyway, it’s been decided. It’s all yours, and I don’t mind telling you that you’ve landed yourself quite a bargain.”
Shaun studied the documentation. He’d never dropped lucky in his life before. An embassy residence. That sounded pretty fancy.
He pictured a large, white-washed colonial mansion with a wrap-around porch and a sweet-smelling climbing rose around the door. He imagined himself sitting on a swing seat with a bottle of cold beer watching the sunset between snow-capped New Zealand mountain peaks.
And there was land too. The map outlined a large parcel of ground stretching back behind the property. It didn’t show any detail but something like that must surely be worth a few pennies.
The civil servant was right though, it was the least they could do, under the circumstances. After all, he’d helped them clear the most notorious of all the Albanian gangs out of London. And thanks to him, a good chunk of the Scouser network that had moved onto the patch afterwards had been convicted. He’d passed on vital information about their logistics and how the Scousers used encrypted phones and sites on the dark web so that all their future communications could be hacked too. It was dynamite intel on England’s most sophisticated gang.
All in all quite a coup for the National Crime Agency. And he’d risked everything to give it to them. The Scousers were an unforgiving bunch of psychos. Sitting here on the other side of the world, Sion was paying the price. And Claire was too.
Claire. He felt an unfamiliar pang deep within him when he thought about her. He was gutted that she’d gone. Forever, she’d be thinking that he’d murdered Glyn Evans. Her friend Annie’s father. That hurt worse than any jab in the gut.
He’d gladly hand it all back to see Claire again. She’d made it clear that she didn’t want anything more to do with him. But, for some reason, even though they could never meet or speak again, convincing Claire that he was innocent mattered to him more than anything else.
“To get to the property, you’ll need to head north out of Auckland. Then pick up a few supplies in Dargarei on the way through. It’s your last town before you hit the forest. There’s been no one living in the property for a while so you’ll have to make do for a night or two until you get settled.”
“No problem for an old soldier like me,” Shaun joked. “I’m used to bushcraft and surviving in the wilderness.”
The civil servant coughed nervously.
“Good.”
“And what about work?”
The civil servant drained his coffee and shifted in his seat, making ready to leave.
“We’ve fixed you up with something part-time in a school further north, up the coast. It’ll get you started. Give them a call once you’ve settled in. The details are on the phone.”
“But, I’m not a teacher.”
“It’ll be helping out, that kind of thing. Don’t worry.”
Great. The only thing he knew about kids was that he was one himself once. And a pretty messed up one, at that. He’d never much attended any of the three different high schools he’d been signed up for. His social worker had called him ‘schoolphobic’. At the time, he thought they’d made the term up.
Still, a job was a job and it would do until he found something else. Building work, plumbing or joinery perhaps? He’d done lots of that before.
Shaun rolled the keys in his hand. With a consulate residency in the middle of paradise, who cared? He’d do anything as long as he could have some time outdoors biking, kayaking, climbing.
The security services had told him from the off that they didn’t want to know about his undercover earnings, and his off-shore account had more money in it than he could ever imagine spending. So he wasn’t going to sweat about the school thing.
As he slid the documents back into the envelope he noticed a glossy photographic paper stuck to the inside.
“Who’s this?”
He put the photograph between them on the table. It showed a freckled, dark-haired man with a snub nose. Mid-thirties, he’d guess. The photo had been snapped of him in front of a pub. He had a cigarette in his fingertips and he was talking into a mobile phone.
“Ah! You’ve found him. That’s Connor O’Dwyer. Known on the street as Irish.”
Shaun bristled.
“Irish?”
It was the name of his Scouser contact. The contact that had tried to trap him before.
Seeing his face for the first time was strange. Irish looked quite ordinary. Hardly the ruthless sociopath he’d heard him to be. And it was obvious he’d never been arrested if this was the best photograph they had of him. That meant he was super-smart too.
“Why the picture?”
Shaun watched the pen-pusher squirming. There was something he was holding out on.
“It’s a precaution, that’s all. So you’ll recognise him.”
“Why do I need to?”
The civil servant sighed.
“He’s extended the contract on you. He’s made it international.”
Shaun weighed it up. He was far enough away not to be worried about that. He drained his coffee in one gulp.
“I promise, if I hear a scouse accent within a hundred feet of me, I’ll run.”
“We think it’s unlikely that he’ll leave the UK. But be warned, there are several criminal gangs over here and in Australia too who’d be very interested if they got wind of you popping up on their patch.”
Getting up to leave, the civil servant put his arms through his jacket sleeves, then reached for his soft leather briefcase.
“It should be safe enough out here. But, have your wits about you, Cobain. With global connectivity, witness protection isn’t what it was. O’Dwyer’s brother’s facing a ten-year stretch because of you. He’s a bitter man. You’ve hurt his family and he wants you dead.”
Chapter 3
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“So, you’ve got me dressed like a total nob-head. Made me spend a fortune on these sticks. What’s so important that you’ve had to drag me out here?”
Irish’s long-time friend and business partner Peter set the golf ball onto the tee.
“They’re cl
ubs.”
“What?”
Peter selected the driver from the bag.
“The sticks? They’re called clubs.”
Settling his feet square to the ball Peter practised his swing moving his hips fluidly as the driver arched into the air.
He squared himself up and then did it again. This time for real. It was how Peter Caruthers played everything in life. Precise with no margin for error.
Irish’s eyes followed the ball as it was sent in a perfect trajectory towards the flag on the far green.
“Not bad.”
The two of them had started their operation up as students. He had met Peter on his first day at university.
He’d booked a room in the halls of residence even though he lived a few miles up the road. The idea had been to get a bit of space from who he really was. Make a fresh start at university. Turned out, he’d been put into an accommodation block with a complete bunch of wankers who’d all been on gap years, jollying it up in Thailand and Bali. Hooray Henrys from posh private schools.
He’d nearly jacked it all in there and then. Business and Economics. His school had pushed him into it. What was he doing? The boy from Bootle who lived in a terraced house near the docks. The boy whose dad was spoken about in hushed tones.
And there, next door to his room, sitting on his immaculately-made up bed was Peter. Quiet and well-spoken, he’d smiled at Connor and asked him if he wanted to go with him to the Student Union that evening for a pint.
And that was that. By the end of the month Connor was sourcing and selling weed and blow to all the Hoorays, and posh-boy Peter was investing their cash into a diverse portfolio of start-ups and stocks. They were cleaning up. Big time.
It was in their second year that they cooked up their business model. County lines they’d called it. It was essentially a supply chain that got their drugs right across the country using dealer hubs, drug mules and text messaging. Simple, but no one had ever taken the street deal into carefully planned logistics before. And with their combined skill sets and Connor’s connections, they knew they could swing it.
