And now fifteen years on, Peter lived in a gated mansion in Cheshire. His kids went to private school and did pony club on the weekends. No one would ever think that Peter Caruthers was the Scousers’ Chief Operating Officer, handling millions of pounds of drug imports and money laundering.
Connor lined the ball onto the tee. He took the Big Bertha out of his bag and practised the shot, carefully copying his friend.
This time it was for real. Swinging back, he gave it an almighty thump.
The ball sliced out of bounds over into the trees lining the edge of the fairway.
Pete gave Connor a patient smile. He knew how much Irish hated golf.
“Why bring me all the way out here?”
“I needed space around us. Clothes that aren’t bugged.”
He gave his friend a sarcastic stare. Peter had picked them out for him. Left for him at the reception desk. A pink golfing polo shirt, lemon diamond-knit sweater and light grey trousers. He’d done it on purpose. Chosen the colours to wind him up. Only Pete was allowed to do that.
Everything Irish had with him, phones included, had been left in the locker room.
He stared at his friend.
“Why? What’s up?”
“I think our operation’s been compromised. The second Dutch container was raided yesterday. Could be a coincidence, but, put it this way… one raid’s unusual. But two in a row?”
“How much?”
“Ten million.”
“Jees.”
Irish felt a little queasy as they started walking up the fairway towards the first ball. His. It was only money. But still.
“Look, are you sayin’ we got another leak? Or are we being bugged?”
“That’s the thing, Irish. I put a different team on the second consignment.”
“So?”
“I think the NCA’s monitoring our phones.”
“What, the Encrochat? Thought you said it was safe?”
“I did… but I don’t wanna take any risks. We need to go back to old school.”
That meant meetups like this one. More feckin’ golf. It meant regularly swapped burner phones and using different dark web chat rooms. It was a blag and it would slow them down. How could the National Crime Agency have found their devices?
Irish sniffed.
“Sion Edwards.”
“‘Scuse me?”
“Sion Edwards… He had one of the Encrochat phones. He’s an NCA operative. They’ve used it to hack us.”
The hitman was screwing with the whole operation.
Wherever he was, Irish vowed he’d never rest until Sion Edwards was his. Hanging from a hook.
???
The traffic was easing as Shaun headed over the spectacular Auckland flyovers. Hugging the coast, wending his way north in the black BMW estate that he’d been given.
It was winter here, but New Zealand was still warm; the vegetation, a lush chlorophyllic green.
He’d chosen this country because Claire had told him that she’d wanted to visit it someday. Her father was a Kiwi. Not that she’d ever met him.
He’d no idea what the place would be like. He’d been clutching at straws trying to cling onto the futile hope that he might meet up with her again, even though he knew he never could. But, simply being here he felt a little more connected to her.
And he’d made a good choice. New Zealand was stunningly beautiful.
He drove off the highway into a pretty little town and onwards down to the beach road to drink a can of coke and eat the takeaway pie that he’d bought in the garage a few miles back.
He hadn’t been sure about the beef in gravy with cheese combo, but the pie tasted surprisingly good after a day and night of airline food.
Scrunching up the paper and foil, he got out of the car and headed for the litter bin he’d spotted, then continued down to the white sand cove below the road.
A few hundred metres in front of the empty beach, bursting out from the calm aquamarine ocean was a small clump of land, a tiny uninhabited island crammed full of thick bushes and trees.
For some reason, seeing the lush little piece of land sprouting from the sea made him feel even more alone.
Not that many people would miss him. His mother overdosed when he was twenty-one and his dad had left when he was a kid. Told them he was going away to work on the oil rigs out in Saudi. He’d heard years later that his dad had been shacked up twenty miles away with another woman the whole time and that they’d had a kid together. Good luck to them, he thought bitterly. He hoped he’d been a better dad the second time around.
The only family he’d ever known had been the army, and his brothers in arms, Jac and Jason. Jac had moved out of the cottage where they’d both been staying. He was a proper Welsh sheep farmer now, living in the farmhouse with Maureen’s daughter, Annie. And Jason had swapped flying helicopters in and out of Helmand for huge passenger airliners in and out of Singapore. And now, Shaun had lost his special forces brothers too.
The landscape was becoming more and more rural the further north he drove. And the traffic was thinning out with only the odd lorry and car sharing the road.
He passed through steep valleys covered in huge tree ferns and straight-trunked trees that seemed to stretch infinitely into the sky.
He wouldn’t be surprised to see a pterodactyl flying above him or a dinosaur popping out from the dense, prehistoric bush surrounding him.
And then the landscape changed again. And now he was driving through rolling, volcanic, dairy pastures littered with hundreds of ginger cows.
Shaun rubbed his neck to ease the stiffness and pain that was starting to set in as he carried on driving west past a small town declaring itself to be the sweet potato capital of the world.
And then on to Dargarei, a sprawling agricultural town on the banks of a mighty muddy river. Passing tractor dealerships and farmers’ merchants on the outskirts, he pushed on to the centre and parked up on the main street.
Boxy shops scruffily lined this long, one-street, one-horse town. Colonial clapperboard frontages popped out from behind modern signage as if a Hollywood western had been shot here and they’d hastily covered over the set. And at the bottom of the main drag, a Victorian heap of a hotel claimed itself to be the town's sports bar. The place felt like an outpost that was never quite tamed and was now overlooked in favour of the prettier east coast.
Shaun was still thinking about how he’d landed in the Wild West as he picked up a sleeping bag and took it over to the counter in the camping and fishing shop.
The check-shirted man behind the desk raised an eyebrow as he scanned the label on the sleeping bag.
“That it?”
Shaun signalled an acknowledgement. The beds wouldn’t be aired, but he didn’t think he’d be slumming it.
“Not fishing, then?”
“No.”
“Good as gold.”
The man appraised Shaun carefully.
“Goin’ camping?”
“Something like that.”
“Weekend away in the bush, eh?”
“Hmm.”
“Where you planning on heading?”
Shaun scratched the back of his head and sighed to himself resignedly. This dude wasn’t giving up.
“Look, do you know this place?”
He held out his phone for the shopkeeper to read the address.
“Lake Lodge?”
He took in the store owner’s blank face and switched the map app on for him.
“Ahh, okay… I see… it looks like Jake’s Place.”
“Jake? Does someone live there?”
“No. Not now. No one’s lived there since... well... since he passed.”
Before Shaun could ask more, the man cut the conversation dead, then disappeared underneath the counter to rummage through boxes of stock.
His dishevelled head re-emerged a few seconds later and he clanked a large hunting knife onto the sales desk in front of them.
; Shaun stared hard at the long sheathed knife, then looked intently at the man.
“What’s that for?”
The store owner shrugged but met him square in the eye.
“Might come in handy up there.”
Shaun had heard of upselling. A cake with a coffee, chocolates at the till, but this was the oddest thing he’d ever been offered.
“Nah, you’re fine.”
“You sure?”
Shaun nodded.
The knife disappeared back into the box below the counter.
“Your call, mate.”
“So…” Shaun tried again, “This Lake Lodge, or uh, Jake’s Place? What’s it like?”
“Middle of the wop wops. By the lake.”
The store owner ended the conversation brusquely and Shaun handed over his new bank card.
The man smiled a little more kindly at him as he processed the payment.