Castle led Flynn along the quayside, saying a great deal with just his body language. Flynn, big man that he was, followed meekly and they went all the way around the harbour into one of the first-floor cafes in the mini commercial centre overlooking the marina. Flynn sat glumly whilst Castle ordered a couple of Cruzcampos and set the chilled beers down on the table.
‘Here, you’re going to need this.’
Flynn was parched but he took the bottle cautiously and sipped the wonderful brew, rather than pouring it all down his throat in one, which was his instinct.
‘Look boss,’ he said, ‘the guy went for me and I just reacted in self-defence. He’d been an arsehole all the charter; even his girlfriend was up to here with him.’ Hell, his throat was dry and he spoke croakily, but necking the beer still seemed a little inappropriate to the circumstances. He was shocked by what Castle had to say next.
‘I don’t really give a monkey’s about him, and I believe you, Steve — so as far as I’m concerned, there’s no problem there.’
‘Oh?’ Flynn’s eyebrows furrowed. ‘So what’s this about — the face and everything?’ He wrapped his right hand around the bottle and lifted it to his cracked lips, deciding that a long slurp — not too long to be rude — was now OK. The ice-cold beer spread gratifyingly down into his chest.
Castle looked very troubled. He was chewing his bottom lip and shaking his head sadly.
‘What is it, boss?’ Flynn liked the guy. He had been very good to Flynn when he’d landed penniless on the island almost five years before. Had given Flynn a job on a boat, and Flynn had repaid him by becoming the best sportfishing skip on the islands. Flynn had grafted, learned his trade and applied his instinctual knowledge of hunting down the big fish, something that was innate and something most of the other charter skippers didn’t have. Flynn also took out day safaris inland up into the mountains in the centre of the island and worked the doors of Castle’s two night clubs when necessary. He had a lot to be grateful for to Castle.
‘Don’t know how to say this, pal… credit crunch and all that.’
Flynn ingested the words and his insides went even icier than the beer.
He went on, ‘I’m a bit over-extended and I need to pull in the reins a bit, so I’ll be mothballing the boats for two months because we haven’t got one firm booking for that period and I can’t rely on walk-ons.’ He was referring to the ad-hoc customers who simply appeared at the boat, such as Hugo had done. ‘Especially if you knock them all out,’ he added lightly, but there was sadness in his voice. Castle had diverse business interests but particularly loved sportfishing. Flynn felt sorry for him.
‘Every boat?’ Flynn asked. There were half a dozen of them dotted around the Canaries.
‘I won’t lie to you — all but Orlando’s in Tenerife. Business isn’t quite as bad there, but everyone else will be out of the water.’
Flynn went hollow.
‘I know you’re ten times better than him, but Tenerife isn’t suffering as much as Gran Canaria and you’re here, not there. If it was the other way around…’ Castle left the words unsaid. ‘I’ll review the position at the end of January.’
‘So I’m out of a job?’
‘For the time being. If you want to try and find work with any of the other charters, I’ll understand.’
Flynn scrunched up his face. ‘What about Jose? He has a wife and kid to look after.’
Castle shrugged. Not as if to say ‘Whatever,’ but as though the whole thing was tearing him apart. ‘I’m closing down two of the bars, too. It’s like a ghost town on the Centre, but I’ll keep the Irish-themed bar ticking over. You can do the door there, if you like. And if I get any bookings for the jeep safaris you can take them out. I’m keeping the travel agency open.’
Flynn inhaled deeply and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘You going to tell Jose?’
Castle nodded, finished his beer and rose from the table. Flynn watched him wend his way back to the quayside, shoulders slumped, then head towards Faye 2. Flynn ordered another beer, this time in a glass, and sipped it slowly, his mind working the angles. So for at least the best part of two months he would be ashore and effectively out of work. Chances were the Irish wouldn’t open every day of the week and the money from doing the door would be spasmodic at best.
He mulled over the possibility of approaching another charter boat but could not convince himself it was a good idea. They were all struggling with a shortage of demand. Even the annual regulars weren’t re-booking. And he’d feel uncomfortable on another boat. He had a history with Faye 2. She had been his choice of vessel when the original Lady Faye went up in a ball of flame and exploding gas bottles. He had worked with the replacement and knew her intimately, her foibles, her strengths, her weaknesses. And he worked well with the Spanish curmudgeon that was Jose, even though their relationship was often fraught. So even if he could, he probably wouldn’t go to another boat.
The ice in the beer glass rose languidly to the surface. Flynn watched it as he also mulled over the financial aspects of the situation. He had very little money stashed, had recently moved to a small apartment which required him to fork out a nominal rent. Probably had about four months before he needed to start looking seriously for work, six before times would become desperate.
He uttered a short internal laugh and took a long draught of the beer. In spite of the circumstances he felt in reasonable spirits. Things weren’t half as bad as they had been five years earlier when he’d been effectively drummed out of the cops with a very black rain cloud hovering over his head, been thrown out by his wife who afterwards had shacked up with his best friend and prevented him from making any contact with their son Craig, then ten years old. Those had been bleak times and he had come through them, more or less, even if his past had managed to creep up on him in a most unpleasant way about a year ago.
Flynn wondered if the bleached bones of the two men would ever be discovered in that inaccessible gully near the Roque Nublo up in the mountains. He doubted it. He smiled grimly at the memory, then shrugged it off and thought that something would turn up.
He fished his mobile phone out of his pocket, switched it on and waited for it to find a signal. It bleeped, telling him he had received a voice message whilst the phone had been switched off. There was no number or name recorded but it did state it had come from an international number.
Flynn grinned with pleasure. He expected it would be a message from Craig. Following the events of the previous year, contact between the two had been re-established with the consent of Flynn’s ex-wife. Craig had even been allowed to come out to the island for two weeks over the summer holiday when they’d worked together on the boat. It had been a wonderful fortnight and he’d re-bonded with Craig. When the lad had returned to the UK, both had been heartbroken.
He dialled the answerphone service and waited for the connection, fully expecting to hear Craig’s still childlike voice.
But the voice he heard was not that of his son.
It was a thin, desperate-sounding female voice, one that Flynn recognized immediately.
‘Flynnie? Flynnie? It’s me… Cathy… hi, hope you’re OK, big guy.’ Flynn heard what he thought was a sob. ‘Sorry, sorry… look, Flynnie, can you give me a call? I’m… I don’t know what to do or who to turn to… God, it sounds so pathetic, but’ — another sob — ‘it’s just going all wrong, everything, please… gimme a bell… I know you’re two thousand miles away… need someone to talk to, to talk it out…’
The robotic voice of the answerphone lady came on. ‘End of messages. To play this message again, press one…’
Flynn pressed one and listened hard to the message again. The phone then beeped and the screen display told him another voice message had landed from the ether. He listened to the new one.
This time the voice was even more fraught. ‘Flynnie, it’s me again, Cathy, you’re probably getting sick of hearing me by now. God, this must be the eighth time of trying… need to see you, talk to you, mate… please, please call me.’
The message ended but before Flynn could do anything more, four more landed in quick succession.
THREE
Preston Crown Court. Court Number One. Shell-shocked and evidence weary, the jury of eight men and four
