Hellbound: The Tally Man (17 page)

He knew he shouldn’t be thinking of Eva. She shouldn’t be having this effect on him. Obadiah wasn’t sure what he was doing. He felt stunned, unnerved. Surely she could sense his true being, his power. Yet she didn’t run from him, or fear him. He realised he was becoming blind to his true feelings. She was masking them, making it so he couldn’t set them free. She was threatening to him, but not physically.

An alien, crumpling feeling swept over him, forcing him to fall to his knees. His whole body shook as the intense fear of what was happening to him became a crushing realisation.

He stared up at Eva, his face one of wretched despondency. His eyes no longer seemed filled with hatred, their natural green seemingly searing away the dark. It was almost as though an idealised version of his soul were trying to shine through.

“Help me,” Obadiah pleaded. “Please help me.”

‘Of two equivalent theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred.’

William of Occam

Chapter Thirteen

September 30th
07:03

Denny Street, Tralee (Trá Lí)

County Kerry, Ireland

THE mere use of the word ‘conspiracy’ can set off an internal alarm bell causing people, educated or otherwise, to shield their minds in order to avoid the kind of dissonance and unpleasantness such a word generates. After all, the whole purpose to a conspiracy is to challenge our concepts and beliefs of how the world operates.

A conspiracy can alter the very course of history in the most destructive way, or plant doubt in the most incisive and rational mind. The driving force behind a conspiracy can be seen as either one individual with powers appearing to rival Satan himself, or a clandestine corporation, shrouded in mystery with an almost preternatural ability to manipulate the truth around them.

Whatever the motivation, the fact of the matter is that the very notion of a conspiracy acts like an event horizon, pulling in everything and everyone around it. Once inside, it will attempt to alter ones very thought processes, only the most ignorant of educated people would dismiss the evidence a conspiracy presents out of hand.

As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said; Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

* * *

Joe threw his bag on the desk, yawned and dropped into the chair, flicking the power button on the computer. His mind still reeled following yesterday’s meeting with Sabitch. The warden couldn’t have been more obvious he was hiding something than if he had been Rupert Murdoch being questioned about phone tapping. That meeting and the one that had occurred a few nights earlier with Peter Stamford had cemented the feeling he had been trying to shake. The feeling that something was being covered up about the night Obadiah Stark died. Recalling all the conversations he had had with the relatives of Obadiah’s victims and now prison officials, Joe realised they contained too many deflections, too many subtle micro-expressions to be just nerves or apprehension regarding the subject matter. Lies were being told about Obadiah Stark. Joe just didn’t know why. Yet.

He had left Absolom last night energized, experiencing the buzz a reporter gets when he knows he is on the cusp of something revelatory and, in this case, potentially volatile. When he had arrived back home, he’d put in a request with one of his former contacts at the port authority for a list of all boats leaving and arriving at the island the night Obadiah was executed. Joe didn’t know what he was expecting to find, but it had felt as though being aware of Obadiah’s final journey would provide him with a piece of the puzzle he was missing.

That same buzz had ultimately prompted him to ring Victoria and rearrange their meeting. After a few pleasantries, she had agreed to meet him at O’Shea’s. Joe had figured it was safer to pick someplace that catered for both drinkers and those simply desiring a quiet meal.

Tapping in his password, Joe opened up his emails and immediately noticed his request to the port authority had been actioned. He had received a file from the harbor master at Dunquin (Dún Chaoin), west of Dingle where all boats departed and arrived when visiting Absolom.

Double clicking on the attachment, Joe read something appearing to be straightforward and unexciting. Two boats made the journey to and from the prison on a daily basis, both generally only carrying provisions and staff. All the journey’s tended to take no more than an hour and a half, give or take a few minutes, with an extra, third boat, the Absol, sailing only when it had a prisoner to transport. On the night in question, Obadiah’s body.

Three boats had left for Absolom the day of the execution; the Aperion J29 at 05:02, Absol 17 at 18:06 and Vasel 45876 at 19:03. The document stated the Aperion and Vasel were the two main boats carrying shift staff to work, the Aperion retuning back at Dunquin at 06:48 and the Vasel at 20:24. But it was the time of return for the Absol that piqued Joe’s curiosity.

The e-mail stated the Absol had returned to Dunquin at 22:19 - a four hour time difference. Joe swiveled round in his chair as he contemplated the information. The journeys of both the Aperion and the Vasel had a travel time of around an hour and a half in total. If the Absol was the boat sent to transport Obadiah’s body back to the mainland, why had it taken over four hours to return?

Joe chewed thoughtfully on his pen, suddenly springing forward in his chair and picking up the phone. He flipped open his notepad and found the number for the harbor at Dunquin. It rang twice before he heard a rough brogue.

“Dunquin Harbor.”

“Hello. Sorry to bother you. My name’s Joe O’Connell. I work for The Daily Éire. I’m doing a follow up piece on the Stark execution. I need a small section on the port authority and yourselves, something emphasising the role you play in the transport of staff to and from the island, movement of prisoners etc, and I was wondering if you had any comments I could use.”

There was a slight pause. “Okay. What would ya like to know?”

“Any comments, anecdotes, anything at all about what you do would be really good. For example, the night of the Stark execution. Big media event, many of the world’s media at Absolom. The whole world watching. Did everything go smoothly? Any hiccups, problems, delays of any kind?”

Joe heard papers rustling, before the voice returned. “Well, transporting over your lot was a pain in the arse, I can tell ya that. Crammed in like sardines, they were. ‘Corse, we had all the prison staff travellin’ over for their shifts, so ya can imagine it was a little cozy. But, there were no real problems to speak of. Fars I know, everything went like clockwork.”

“And after the execution, the transportation of Stark’s body. No problems there?”

“No, the Absol left here, picked up his black hearted soul and brought him back here. That’s what I was told anyway.”

“Told?” Joe quizzed. “You weren’t there?”

“Well, I was here for the shift boat leaving, but an hour or so later, I was relieved. So, I picked up my stuff and went home. Nice to have an early night for once.” He ended with a chuckle.

Joe lifted his eyebrows. “I gather getting off early isn’t a frequent occurrence?”

“No. But I wasn’t gonna turn down the offer to get off early. You know what they say about that gift horse.”

“Yeah,” Joe said absentmindedly. “I do. Well, thank you for your time, Mr…?”

“Black. John Black”

“Thank you, Mr Black. Just one more thing. The Absol, carrying Stark’s body. What time do you have for it returning to Dunquin?”

“Erm…we have the Absol logged as returning at 22:19.”

“22:19,” Joe repeated slowly, emphasis the twenty-two.

“That’s right,” John confirmed cheerfully.

“Do you know why it took the Absol over four hours to make the journey? Were there any reported problems? I mean, isn’t it unusual for it to have taken so long.”

“Mr. O’Connell, I told ya, I went home. I’m just a minimum wage harbor master, not a security guard. I keep ma’self to ma’self. Yeah, it took a long time, but the reason for that’s none of my business. And to answer ya question…” He paused and Joe heard more papers rustling. “… nothing’s logged in regards to faults, so I don’t think so.”

“Okay, thank you for your time, Mr Black.”

Joe hung up and spun round in his chair again, only more slowly this time, tapping his pen on his chin.

Interesting.

He quickly logged on to Google’s weather report and checked the weather for the night of 7th September. Though his journey to and from the prison had been in fair conditions, it was prone to sudden changes around The Blasket’s. But no; scattered showers, visibility 18.72 km, wind SSW 9.72 km/h. No chance they ran afoul of bad weather which would account for the delay.

So, what was it doing for the extra two and a half hours?

Spotting Ciaran in his office, Joe bounced out the chair marched through his editor’s door without knocking, shutting the door behind him.

“Just come in, Joe. Don’t let the fact the door was closed bother you in anyway.”

Remaining standing, Joe suddenly felt like the whole room was watching him through the window.

“So, what is it, ya mannerless fecker?”

He considered what he was about to say before speaking. “I think I’ve got a problem.”

“I’ve known that for a long time. What is it? Alcoholic liver disease?”

Joe forced a pained smile. “You’re funny. But that’s not my problem. Well, not yet anyway.”

He took a deep breath. “I told you I received a phone call the other day from someone who works at Absolom, asking me to meet him. Not unusual, right. I covered Stark’s execution, therefore you’d expect someone would want to take a stab at getting their fifteen minutes. But this guy, he alluded to some… discrepancies.”

Ciaran’s chair moved forward quickly. “Discrepancies?”

“Yeah,” Joe confirmed solemnly. “Surrounding the execution.”

“Stark’s execution?”

Joe nodded.

“Okay, it’s not often I’m intrigued nowadays. What did he say?”

Joe leaned against the far wall, as though distancing himself from what he was about to share. Slowly losing his expressionless stare, he returned to the moment.

“He told me that certain procedural necessities that should be followed after an execution appeared to have been skipped or omitted.”

“Such as?” Ciaran said with genuine interest.

“Well, he told me infusion lines were removed against protocol and that there was an apparent omission in the pharmacy log concerning the drugs used. Assuming he’s telling the truth, you have to ask why would they remove the lines? What purpose would it serve unless to maybe hide something? Secondly, omissions in the pharmacy log. Maybe just a clerical error? It’s hard to imagine an establishment of Absolom’s reputation making clerical errors, but there’s always a human factor. So was the line removal and the drug omission an error that’s not been disclosed due to embarrassment, or something else?”

“Given the media attention surrounding Stark and his death, it would be understandable that if there had been mistakes made, they would want to keep them in-house. You know this better than anyone. Look at the media shit-storm the guy caused when he was alive,” Ciaran rationalised. “Is this source reliable?”

“He’s a senior guard from the prison.”

Ciaran pursed his lips in consideration. “What else have you got?”

“Two things; one, there exists a death certificate for Obadiah Stark.” Joe paused for effect.

“And…,” Ciaran pressed.

“And, according to my source, no documentation exists in the prison’s Master Execution File pertaining to his death. No after-action summary, no warrant of death. Yet he still has a death certificate. So I checked the prison’s Post Execution Standard Operation Procedure on line, and it states that within 72 hours the warden will conduct a critique of the execution, put it in the Master Execution File and then be issued with warrant of death. Only then is a ‘death certificate able to be forwarded to the country from which the inmate was under sentence of death’ - in this case, here. So why does he have a death certificate on public record if procedure wasn’t followed?”

Ciaran thought for a moment. “Maybe this source’ is just out to make some fast euros by pulling your chain. Come on Joe, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“I considered that, but he seemed too genuine. And he was afraid, as though what he was telling me was bigger than simple administration errors.”

“You know,” Ciaran said with a sympathetic smile. “Life isn’t always as mysterious as it seems, Joe. Sometimes things are just exactly as they are. What actual evidence do you have?”

He considered what he had. Nothing. No actual evidence at all, other than conversations with relatives that were ‘off’ somehow, a meeting with a prison guard who was paranoid and a conversation with Sabitch that had wholly consisted of deflection. He had seen the death certificate, but had no way of knowing that there was paperwork missing from the Execution File at Absolom other than what he had been told. That said, why would someone go to the effort of telling him about it unless there was credibility to the story.

“Joe, you’d better not be telling me all you have is a hunch?”

“Not a hunch so much as a strong journalistic instinct that something may be awry with Stark’s execution.”

“So a hunch then?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” He responded submissively. “But if it helps, my hunches always turn out to be right.”

Ciaran stared at Joe and sighed with frustration. “You said there were two things.”

Joe puffed out his cheeks and exhaled sharply. “After the lines have been crimped and disconnected, but left in situ to the body, an inmate is supposed to be washed and placed in a post-mortem bag ready for transfer to the contract mortuary.”

“Right…”

“Well, I did some checking. A boat left Absolom the night of the execution, the one carrying his body, and it took over four hours to reach the mainland.”

“So…?”

“So, don’t you think it’s weird that the boat carrying the dead body of the world’s most dangerous serial killer took four hours to make a journey that normally only takes an hour and a half? The harbor master logs have details of every boat that arrives to and from the prison; shift details, deliveries, visitors. All journeys take roughly an hour and a half. All except that one. So, where did it go for four hours?”

Ciaran paused before answering quietly. “I don’t know. Was there a storm that night…bad weather held it up, or it ran into trouble?”

Joe played with a pencil on the desk. “Nope, I checked. Pretty much clear skies and no record of the boat having encountered trouble.”

Ciaran’s expression became concerned. “I’m not sure I want to hear anymore. The man’s dead. Are you implying there’s some sort of conspiracy going on at Absolom regarding Obadiah Stark?”

“I never said conspiracy,” Joe interrupted. “I maybe implied cover-up.”

“Well, whatever you want to call it, I can’t think of a fuckin’ reason why there would be either. It’s one of the world’s most secure facilities with one of the most perfect records. Sabitch has had dinner with the Taoiseach for Christ’s sake. But I know you, and you’ve never been wrong yet, so I’ll tell you this, Joe. You damn well better have some fuckin’ evidence to back this one up, ‘cause if you don’t and this blows up in our faces, you’ll be all alone, pissing in the wind, I swear to Christ. You won’t be able to get a job for the fuckin’ Big Issue.”