They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

60 26 September 2011

I’d only met Adam le Seelleur twice before: once when he’d come to the apartment to do business with Nicos and once at his boat in St Helier harbour. On both occasions, even though it was summer, he wore a white bobble hat, oilskin jacket, gum boots and a face that displayed not an iota of humour or friendliness. Taciturn was the most favourable description I could apply to him.

I could understand his reasons for doing business outside of his trade, which was lobster fishing. He told me the first time I met him that a decade earlier he’d pull up sixty lobsters on a normal night, now it was down to ten, and his cut from the middlemen averaged £5 each.

With his grizzled seadog face and heavy beard he could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy. And he could have featured in one of those television commercials for frozen fish fingers, except the old seadogs in those kinds of commercials were always smiling and jolly, whereas Adam le Seelleur had not smiled on either occasion. He’d looked at Nicos and at me with a kind of disdain.

Whether it was simply because he was a true-born Jersey bean and we were newbies, parvenues, or whether there was an element of judgement of us, a sort of disgust at what Nicos did — although he was happy to take the money, far more than he could earn in months of hard work at sea — I didn’t know. And I didn’t care. In a strange way, by making it plain he didn’t really like either of us, I saw a certain honesty there. I felt I could trust him.

Which was why when he had said 11.30 p.m., very firmly, I was confident he would be there. He’d told me earlier this evening, after Nicos had left, that the shipping forecast was for it to have clouded over by then and there would be no moonlight to show us up.

Twenty thousand pounds had bought his loyalty, a deal I’d arranged before going to England to collect that suitcase, and now I had the money to pay him. And it did make me smile to think Nicos was paying for the trip! Paying out of the £1.2 million he now thought he had with him on the Bolt-Hole.

Maybe I had just one regret — that I wasn’t on the Bolt-Hole to see the bastard’s face when he opened the case. But I suspected it wouldn’t be pretty.

I checked my watch. It was just gone 11.10 p.m. and I was in the back of the taxi, an old and bumpy people-carrier thing, with Bruno, fast asleep, leaning against me. All of our possessions were in the back, in two suitcases, and my trusty fake Louis Vuitton holdall, still with the £20,000 in cash sewn into the bottom, that had been there for the past four years, on the floor between my legs. Plus I’d added a further thirty thousand pilfered — although I prefer to say borrowed — from the suitcase. A decent enough nest egg. Four days’ supply of my methadone was also sewn into there. For now, it was working and although it wasn’t easy being off the heroin, I was determined to make it work. No way I was going back to my drug-addicted life.

Hasta la vista, baby. To the dirty drugs and to evil, manipulative Nicos.

As we wound down the steep, twisty and beautiful hill of Bouley Bay, I felt the faintest twinge of nostalgia. I’d walked down here and up again, and cycled it a few times, and it’s a tough bastard, I can tell you. But in daylight the view of the bay at the bottom is worth it. So many great views here in this beautiful island. I’m going to miss a lot of things. Pretty much everything except Nicos.

A few hundred yards before we reached the bottom of the hill, the taxi driver, whose name I saw on his badge was Toby McMichael, turned into the entranceway of the low-rise apartment block, which was the address I’d given him. I paid the meter fare of £15 with a twenty and told him to keep the tip.

He offered to carry the bags in and up to my apartment, but I thanked him, told him we were fine, then stood with Bruno in the warm night air laced with salt from the sea below and exhaust fumes from the departing cab, watching the tail lights, waiting for them to disappear on up the hill.

‘I’m hungry, Mama,’ Bruno said.

He was always hungry. Or tired. So I always kept a stash of whatever his current favourite snack was in my handbag and pockets. At the moment it was Crunchies. I gave him a mini one. The moon was breaking through and there was just enough light to see. I picked up all the bags, and with Bruno absorbed in unwrapping his treat, we walked on down the hill, past the creepy edifice of the long closed-down Bouley Bay Hotel — which felt like something from a horror movie — and on towards the jetty.

I checked my watch again. It was 11.20 p.m. The bay was quiet, the only sound the steady wash of the sea against the pebble beach. Ten minutes to go. Ten minutes to either Adam le Seelleur arriving or finding out he had double-crossed me. And if he had?

I hadn’t paid him a bean yet. He’d wanted the whole twenty thousand upfront. I told him he would get ten thousand when he arrived at the jetty and a further ten thousand when we arrived in France. So I had a pretty good feeling he would turn up.

But the closer it got to 11.30 p.m., the less good that feeling became.

We passed the wooden shack and outdoor tables of Mad Mary’s cafe and suddenly, almost on cue — just a little behind schedule — the sky clouded over.

I put down the bags, pulled out my phone and switched on the torch. Then, struggling with the bags and the torch, as Bruno was nearing the end of his chocolate bar, we walked along the stone pier, as instructed, and stopped several feet short of the end, with steps going down into the water. I stared out to sea. There was nothing, I thought, absolutely nothing so dark as the sea at night.

There was a bench at the end of the pier and we both sat down, and I fished another Crunchie out for Bruno.

It was starting to get chilly now, being right over the water. Bruno complained that he was cold and tired. I barely heard him, I just kept staring out into the blackness of the bay for any sight of a shadow moving. Listening for the sound of an engine. The thrust of a prow through waves.

But I couldn’t see anything. Or hear anything.

Don’t burn your bridges, the saying went.

But that was exactly what I had done.

Adam le Seelleur had suggested this bay as the safest place because there was zero radar coverage here. A few miles to the south there was a radar station that could detect up to six miles eastwards, just beyond the Minquiers group of islands. But by steering well to the north-east, we would avoid detection, he’d said.

The risk was when we approached the west coast of France, close to the port of Saint-Malo, we would probably be picked up on French radar. But it was unlikely anyone would show interest in a small fishing boat arriving in the port in the early hours of the morning. Just like a dozen others returning from a night’s commercial fishing that had forgotten to switch their transponders on — or had deliberately turned them off in order to poach undetected in the Channel Islands’ waters.

11.35.

11.40.

He wasn’t coming, was he? The bastard.

Then I felt my phone, in the back pocket of my jeans, vibrate, and at the same time heard the double pips signalling a text. Was it Nicos? I felt sudden panic. Bruno and I should be safely on our way to France now, not stuck here. Especially considering the frame of mind Nicos was going to be in after discovering what was in his suitcase.

I tugged it out and looked at the display, which was lit up. Relief surged through me. And joy! It was from Adam le Seelleur.

I replied instantly with a chequered flag emoji. Then I whispered to Bruno, ‘The boat’s here in a few minutes, darling.’

I don’t know why I was whispering. There was no one around; I could have shouted if I’d wanted. Bruno didn’t hear me, he was asleep.

Suddenly, I heard a rustling sound, like paper. And what sounded faintly, so faintly, like an engine. Then — or was it my imagination? — a shadow that seemed darker than the darkness it was moving through. Moving towards us.

Moments later, a torch beam shone in my face.