Shaun: I’m Shaun Cobain now
Jason: Cobain? As in Nirvana?
Shaun: I’m living in NZ
Jason: North or south?
Shaun: Way up north
Jason: Awesome! Oranges and beaches
Shaun: Something like that.
Jason: I’ll come out and see you one day
Shaun: Any time, mate. I’ve got a place by a lake. Real peaceful. I’m loving it here. How’s Jac and everyone?
Jason: They’re good. Jac, Annie and Claire came down to London. Claire’s great, by the way
Shaun’s heart sank.
Shaun: Where’s she now?
Jason: She’s gone travelling but we’re in touch quite often
Shaun: Oh
There was a pause and Shaun could see Jason typing. After a few seconds, the words appeared.
Jason: Not like that, you idiot. That’s never gonna happen
Shaun: Sorry, Jase
He should never have thought that. It was an unwritten code. None of his friends would ever move in on another’s girl. She wasn’t exactly his girl. But it wasn’t Jason’s style. Thinking about it, Shaun had never met any of Jason’s girlfriends.
He smirked to himself, not that the airline pilot would ever be short of female company.
Jason: Claire’s gone travelling. She’s in Crete for the summer, working in a café. She’s messaged me a few times
Shaun: Has she got over the attack?
Jason: It shook her up for a good while, but she’s trying to move on with her life
Shaun: Has she said anything about me?
The typing paused. Jason was considering carefully what to say next. Not a good sign, Shaun concluded.
Jason: She really likes you, but she’s confused about your past
Shaun rubbed his eyes. He bitterly regretted the last few years, but it was what it was. He couldn’t change it.
Shaun: I’m out of all that now
Jason: Hang on in there, mate. I’ll talk to her if you like, tell her where you are, see if she’ll go see you
Shaun: No, it’s too risky. There might be people watching her
Jason: Then, you’ll need to think of another way
Shaun: Thanks, Brains. If you have any bright ideas, let me know
Claire still liked him. Shaun thought about nothing else all night.
But how could he reach out to her, get her to come to New Zealand without making her feel like he was entrapping her?
As he lay in the master bedroom in his new king-size bed, the curtains open, he looked out onto the silvery calm moonlit lake and contemplated it some more.
???
Irish tapped his unlit cigarette angrily against the packet. It was nearing September now and the trail was cold. Even with the huge reward, he’d not had a sniff. Not even a false sighting.
He swiped his phone and looked at the blurry picture that he had of him. It was the only one, a black and white CCTV image looking down from the ceiling into the pub corridor where they’d ambushed him.
He was around six foot in height, athletic. His hair he guessed was a sandy brown, kind of fair but not especially so. His face? There were no discernible features; a straight nose, no scars. Sion Edwards was instantly forgettable.
And that was the problem.
He sparked the lighter and lit his cigarette.
No. The only way to get to him was through the girl.
Claire Edwards had gone travelling. And having a good time, judging by her posts. The Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Trevi fountain in Rome; she’d headed through Italy.
The last two posts she’d put up were a month apart. He studied them carefully. It was the same place. He tapped and re-sized the photo. She was wearing an apron around her waist. On the umbrella in the background, he could make out a name. Cafe Elounda.
He googled the name and found it immediately. It was in Crete.
He scrolled through his phone contacts until he got to Mac O’Shea, an old family friend and sometime buyer, though he’d not worked in England recently.
He was onto a far better thing now. He spent his summers in Greece and his winters in the Caribbean. Not bad for a Bootle boy, Irish thought with some admiration.
Mac was a nimble operator. Every spring he bought his party drugs out of Spain and then spent the summers working the Greek Islands. Moving from resort to resort on his yacht, he dropped the gear discreetly with the young Brits he met in bars, the types who needed to earn a little extra on the side in the clubs, selling pills and powder.
It was working out well for him. No one ever suspected the unassuming leather-skinned Englishman who sat reading British papers in the bar by his anchored yacht.
“Mac? How you doin’? It’s Irish… that’s right, Connor O’Dwyer… yeah, Irish Eoin’s lad…. Yeah, still raining here in Liverpool, you lucky sod... Listen, Mac, are you anywhere near Crete? I need a favour.”
???
“Efharisto.”
I thank the Greek couple and take the money they’ve left on the table for their coffees. Sweeping my hair over my shoulder I cover my neck self-consciously as I clear up after them. The man checks back at me and I can sense that they’re talking about my scar.
The days are colder now that it’s October and the place has quietened down. Over across from Plaka in the Bay of Elounda, the evening sunlight is catching the island of Spinalonga. It lights up the side of the sandstone fort. Tiny black impenetrable windows pepper the sheer golden walls that sweep into the sea. It’s the perfect light for a sensational photograph, it’s a shame that my camera’s back in my room.
The island was used as a leper colony. Even though it’s less than a mile away from the mainland, when the sick people were shipped off there in the rowing boat they never saw their families again.
I take the empty coffee cups to the kitchen and go back out to reset the table. It’s been a busy few weeks of work but gazing out at the island every day I find myself thinking more and more of Sion. Where is he now? What’s he doing? I wish I could shake myself free of his memory, but I can’t.
I video chat to Jason sometimes. He’s keeping mad hours, flying in and out of Singapore. When I tell him I’ve been thinking about Sion, he gives me a strange look.
Don’t let the past control the future, he says to me. See things as they are now and let yourself make a fresh start.
I’ve thought about that a lot. And I agree with Jason. I need to move on.
Chapter 8
---------?---------
Shaun felt about twelve years old as he sat waiting outside the School Principal’s office.
The secretary had smiled kindly at him and asked him if he wanted a cup of tea when he arrived, but Shaun had been far too nervous to accept.
This was ridiculous, he told himself. He’d got himself and five of his men out of a fox hole covered by enemy snipers in Afghanistan. In Iraq, he’d coolly broken into a desert compound and rescued two journalists about to be beheade
d by Isis jihadis, and yet here he was sitting outside a headteacher’s office and he was a total wreck.
He put it down to his past. School had never been a happy place for him. So why had he bothered coming?
When he’d called, the secretary had told him that school was rural, and she wasn’t lying. It had taken him a good hour in his car to reach this place, far up in the north on the other side of the vast kauri forests.
And truth be told, when he arrived he very nearly hadn’t got out of the car. But then, he’d seen the school, perched above the pristine sands in the bay. Carved totem poles were dotted around the front, and alongside the school sat an intricately-carved wooden house which made him curious. It didn’t look like any school he’d ever been to before.
“Mr Cobain, good to meet you at last.”
A tall, olive-skinned man took his hand and shook it firmly.
“I’m John. John Kara, the principal.
Shaun had been practising pronouncing the greeting in the car.
“Kia Ora, John. I’m Shaun.”
John Kara’s face cracked into a broad smile.
“Kia Ora.”
He guided Shaun through to his office, an unassuming space with walls covered in photographs of students. Sports teams, dramas, boys and girls in traditional dress.
Fastening himself behind his desk, the principal scanned through the printed email on his desk.
“So… back in July, we agreed with the Ministry that you could fill our classroom assistant vacancy. Bit unusual, but they gave us your paperwork and asked us to do them a favour.”
Shaun nodded a little sheepishly. He had instantly got a warm feeling about John Kara, but there was no denying it, it was now October. He’d left it very late to get this job.
“Yeah, well. We’re usually struggling to get staff up here, but the thing is, Shaun,” he said, looking up from the paper, “A teacher who used to work here, they moved back home and so I’m afraid we’ve filled the space.”
“Oh...Well...”
Shaun got up to leave, stretching his hand towards the principal.