Single Obsession

by Des Ekin

  Shirley was still stirring her tea obsessively. The silver teaspoon went round and round inside the cup as she stared into the middle distance.

  ‘They were all good clients, too,’ she said regretfully. ‘Professional people, dependable payers, good tippers, never any trouble, known to be discreet. There was a doctor, a barrister, an accountant and a Dublin city councillor, among others.’

  ‘And you never found out why they stayed away?’

  Shirley shook her head. ‘Never. But Maura quit soon after. She told me she’d become too fond of her regulars, and she didn’t want to start building up a new client base with total strangers. Not in this risky day and age. I must say I sympathised, especially since she was getting a bit long in the tooth for this business anyhow. So I gave her a nice gold watch as a going-away present, and we parted on the best of terms.’

  Hunter wolfed down a third biscuit. He hadn’t realised how hungry he was. ‘What did she do after she left? I mean, did she get an ordinary job or something?’

  ‘She told me she was retiring. She’d inherited a cottage in Passage North – that’s where she was born – and she’d built up a bit of a nest-egg over the years. Nobody knew the truth about her there, so she figured she could live a quiet life, maybe even get married some day.’

  Hunted nodded. A busy escort girl could easily earn a couple of thousand tax-free in the course of a good week, so it was quite feasible that Maura Granby could have set herself up for life after a seven-year career. ‘And did she? Ever marry, I mean?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  Hunter tried to keep his voice steady as he asked the next question. ‘Shirley, I need to talk to this woman. Where can I reach her?’

  Shirley looked suitably sympathetic. ‘I know you do, chuck. That’s why I’ve been trying to get in touch with her again. Ever since Valentia laid down that ultimatum, I’ve been leaving messages on her mobile, but she never answers. At home, her phone just keeps on ringing and ringing as though the house is deserted. I hate to tell you this, Hunter, but Maura Granby seems to have joined your fake Mags Jackson and vanished off the face of the earth.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  HUNTER was in deep trouble. He was at the wheel of a car that was hurtling at high speed along a narrow, twisting country road. It was night-time, pitch-dark, and the car had no lights. The hedges and ditches were just vague shadows as they flashed by on either side. Staring out into the blackness ahead of him, he could only guess which way the road would twist and turn next.

  He could steer the runaway car, but he couldn’t slow it down and he couldn’t apply the brakes. Concrete pillars, barbed-wire fences and grass verges appeared from nowhere, filled his windscreen, and disappeared into his rear mirror as he missed them by inches. No sooner had he rounded one bend than the next silhouetted hedge or dry-stone wall would fly towards him. The car just got faster and faster, until it was all he could do to hold on to the twisting, bucking steering-wheel.

  He was going to crash. He knew it was inevitable. And that was terrifying enough. But what was most terrifying of all was the fact that he hadn’t the slightest idea how he’d got there.

  Hunter woke and sat bolt upright, his heart thumping uncontrollably. The sheets were twisted around his legs, and his pillow was soaked in sweat.

  He was awake now. He was all right, he told himself, as he gulped air and fought to control his panic. He was all right. But if he closed his eyes, even for a second, he could still see the nightmare landscape rushing past and re-experience that dreadful feeling he’d had in the dream.

  That feeling of being totally out of control.

  He looked around him. Even now, it seemed his nightmare wasn’t over: he appeared to be drifting in a vast abyss of blackness, with a huge rectangular object floating in the centre like a giant spaceship.

  Slowly, bit by bit, his senses came to the rescue. The rectangular object was a cinema screen and the black abyss was a room. The memories came flooding back, and he remembered that he had slept the night in the private VIP cinema of Shirley’s nightclub.

  Well, perhaps ‘night’ was the wrong word. It had been two in the morning before the credits had rolled on the last porn movie and Hunter had been allowed into the empty cinema to bed down across the back seats – which, by no coincidence, had been designed with lying down in mind.

  Provided with a pillow and a couple of sheets, he had made himself as comfortable as possible on the velveteen seating, trying to close his ears against the relentlessly thumping bass that pounded through the flimsy wall from the main nightclub until five or six in the morning.

  Now he rose reluctantly, switched on the fake Edwardian houselights, and helped himself to a mineral water from the private bar in the corner. The room was airless – so airless that he knew his thumping headache would disappear as soon as he got a breath of something fresher and less toxic than stale perfume, alcohol fumes and recycled cigarette smoke.

  In the tiny adjacent bathroom, with its marble fittings and gold-plated taps, he inspected his face in the mirror. The cut between his eyes was smaller than he’d imagined, and the black bruise hadn’t spread as much as he’d feared it would.

  He’d live; and, with a bit of luck, he wouldn’t have to wear a Phantom of the Opera mask.

  He washed himself as best he could, using water from the sink and soap from the dispenser, and then dried himself with squares of paper towel. He could shower and change properly later. It was Monday morning, just one day before Valentia’s deadline, and there wasn’t a minute to lose.

  HUNTER stood at the phone-rack in the railway station, dialled the number of Street Talk, and asked for Claire.

  ‘Claire? It’s me.’

  ‘Mr Andrews? Yes, we’ve located that back issue for you. We’ll mail it out to you as soon as possible.’

  ‘You can’t talk.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said in breezy-secretary tones. ‘You should get it in a day or so. Hold on just a moment.’

  There was a short silence. ‘Okay,’ Claire muttered in her normal voice. ‘He’s gone. He was standing right over me when you called.’

  ‘Addison?’

  ‘Who else? He said something about a meeting to discuss my future. I’ve a feeling my career is about to be terminated with extreme prejudice.’

  ‘But why?’ Hunter slammed his palm into the side of the phone unit in frustration. At the next phone, an elderly woman glanced across reprovingly and looked away again. ‘Okay, that’s a stupid question. I know why. I’m so sorry, Claire.’

  ‘Don’t be. I couldn’t have gone on working for that man for much longer, anyway.’ She sounded surprisingly upbeat. ‘Where are you phoning from?’

  ‘A phone box.’

  Hunter didn’t give any more details. He knew he could have made this call from the comfort of the office at the nightclub, but he didn’t want to take any chances. If the people who were following him were as sophisticated as he believed them to be, then it wasn’t beyond them to trace his calls. Until he knew for sure, he had to keep on the move and keep his phone calls short.

  ‘The police were here,’ Claire whispered urgently, as though she’d read his thoughts. ‘A detective sergeant. He asked me if I knew where you were. I told him the truth. I said I had no idea about your movements.’

  ‘Well, you’re right. I’m not even sure if I know myself.’

  ‘He had a warrant. He took all your things – everything in your desk and drawers. Hundreds of files and notebooks, all chucked into two black plastic bin-bags.’

  ‘How bloody apt.’

  ‘He asked for Mark Tobey, too,’ Claire said. ‘I told him that he’d taken a few days’ leave.’

  ‘Yes. He’s gone abroad.’

  ‘I know. He left a message on my mobile at four in the morning to say he’d arrived safely at … at his destination. Late Sunday night, local time. He’ll be grabbing a few hours’ sleep and then getting down to work first thing in the morning.
He asked me to let you know.’

  Hunter glanced at his watch. The call had already lasted three minutes, which was too long.

  ‘Listen, I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you later.’

  ‘Me too. I’m being paged. This could be the summons to execution.’ She paused to listen. ‘Yes, I’m to report to Simon Addison’s office right away.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  ‘Luck’s got nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Talk to you later.’

  Hunter crossed the station to a vending machine, bought himself a Mars bar for breakfast, and stood outside a newsagent’s shop glancing over the headlines on the morning papers. All the front pages splashed on Orla Byrne’s continuing efforts to form a government. The second-lead story was the police search for Hunter.

  As he stood staring at the headlines, he could see the entire station behind him, reflected in the glass window of the newsagency. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw four men stride quickly through the main entrance. One of them, a smaller man with a laptop computer, pointed towards the rack of phones and, as they came closer, towards the third phone from the right.

  Hunter finished his Mars bar and sneaked quietly off towards the far exit. As he hurried down the steps and into the street, he glanced over his shoulder. The faces of the three officers reflected their frustration as their eyes darted back and forth around the station, searching for something. Then one of them stared directly at Hunter and pointed.

  As Hunter body-surfed into the crowds of morning commuters, he could hear the vast station echo to the sound of shouts and clattering footsteps that were already breaking into a run.

  ‘HE’S still in Dublin. We know that for sure,’ said Inspector Bernard Sauvage.

  The woman in the black Rocha jacket said nothing. Her eyes were directed downwards towards her desk as she sifted through a pile of documents, examined them one by one, and occasionally added her signature.

  ‘We nearly located him this morning,’ said Sauvage, hearing his voice echo uncomfortably around the vastness of the office. ‘We missed him by a matter of minutes. He phoned the Street Talk building and we traced the call.’

  The woman looked up suddenly. Her clear blue eyes carried an inquiry, and also, unmistakeably, something of a warning.

  ‘Legally, of course,’ Sauvage hastened to assure her. ‘We had the appropriate authorisation.’

  The woman looked down again. She continued her work without a word.

  Sauvage felt like shouting at her. He’d been summoned to this office to justify himself over the Hunter affair, a standard surveillance operation that had degenerated into a fiasco. He could easily have made excuses. He could have told the truth and blamed the junior officer who’d let Hunter drive straight past him on his Vespa on Sunday morning. He could have explained how difficult it is to keep tabs on someone who has no home, no job, no car, no domestic phone, no mobile phone, no credit card, no bank account and no regular pattern of movement. Instead, he’d simply accepted all responsibility for the cock-up and explained what he intended to do about it.

  He’d talked for about fifteen minutes, giving an honest account of the operation without gloss or self-justification. And at the end of it all, he’d been greeted by total silence.

  He knew why, of course. If she said anything, anything at all, then she could be accused of giving the operation her personal approval. She could even be accused of directing it. As things stood, she was simply listening. And he was left standing there, staring at the top of her chestnut-dyed head.

  Sauvage studied the tight brown perm and wondered what was going on in the shrewd head underneath it. He knew better than to underestimate the intelligence of this woman, or, for that matter, her strength and tenacity. The political stage was littered with the corpses of people who had made that mistake, and Sauvage didn’t intend to be one of them. He could tell just by looking at her clear blue eyes, the straight, no-nonsense mouth and the determined thrust of her chin that this person would make a formidable enemy.

  ‘We’ve got officers at key points all over the city,’ he explained, with a confidence he didn’t feel. ‘We’ve a continuing presence at his home. But we don’t expect him to go back there. Not any more.’

  Silence. The pen continued to scratch across the paper.

  Sauvage took a deep breath and glanced around the office. On any other occasion, he would have admired the tastefulness of its decor, the beautiful Georgian cornices and ceiling rose, the hand-painted wallpaper, the stencilled shutters flanking the twelve-paned window that overlooked the fountain and the lawn. Was that an original portrait by Nathaniel Hone the Elder above the Adam fireplace? Sauvage didn’t doubt it for a minute.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I have every confidence that we’ll locate him before nightfall,’ he said.

  The woman looked up again. This time she simply nodded. It was a nod that acknowledged all he’d said, accepted his assurances, and dismissed him from the room, all in one economical and soundless gesture.

  Behind him, a door opened. Sauvage wondered whether the intrusion was coincidental, or whether it had been prompted by a hidden signal triggered from underneath the woman’s desk.

  A civil servant put his head through the opening.

  ‘I’ve got the British Prime Minister on the line,’ he said as Sauvage walked out. ‘But don’t forget you have to chair a Cabinet meeting in twenty-five minutes.’

  Taoiseach Orla Byrne, Prime Minister of the caretaker Government, and still the number-one politician in Ireland, thanked him and lifted the phone.

  HUNTER picked the busiest currency exchange booth he could find and used it to change his hundred-dollar note. Walking quickly away, he savoured the sensation of holding fresh new banknotes in his hand. This could be the last cash he’d see for a long time.

  He bought himself a T-shirt, socks and underwear in a chain store, then changed in a cubicle of the bathroom of a first-class hotel, and dumped his old gear in a litter-bin in the street outside. Keeping a tight rein on his budget, he treated himself to a surprisingly good bacon-and-egg breakfast in McDonald’s. The coffee was an eye-opener. It was superb. Shame they had to serve it in polystyrene, he thought as he swung on his suede jacket and walked out.

  He chose his next public phone with more caution. It was located on a concrete island in the middle of a pedestrian zone, and it had a clear view of hundreds of yards in either direction. There could be no high-speed approach by car, unless the driver wanted to run the risk of mowing down dozens of ambling pedestrians.

  ‘Naomi Scott, please,’ he told the operator at the Evening Report switchboard as he fed five coins into the slot and stacked five more on the top. He had to shout to make his voice heard above the street noise.

  ‘Certainly. Hold on, please.’

  He waited, drumming his fingers as the looped advertisement played over and over again.

  ‘Hello, Features?’

  A female voice. Not the right one.

  ‘Naomi Scott, please.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ The reply was a sigh of frustration. ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s not your fault, but you’re about the tenth person to phone looking for Naomi, and she’s not here, okay? She was due in at ten-thirty and she just hasn’t turned up, and we don’t know what’s happened.’ There was a muttered query from a male voice in the background. ‘You’re not Leonard, by any chance?’

  ‘No. My name is Hunter. Did she leave any message for me? A house address, for instance?’

  ‘No, it’s not her bloody boyfriend,’ the woman shouted back across the office. She came back to Hunter. ‘Message? No, I’ve just told you, she hasn’t been in and she’s not even answering her bloody phone at home. Okay? Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s mayhem in here, we have two blank pages to fill, and if you do happen to see Naomi, please tell her to contact the office right away. Thank you.’

  Hunter replaced the phone, lifted it again and dialled Naomi’s home number. There was no
answer.

  He tried again. Same result.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, a hand tapped his shoulder. He spun around, fists clenched, then exhaled with relief. It was only a schoolchild holding out a plastic bucket half-filled with coins. Hunter tossed his five stacked-up coins into the charity collection. The child thanked him and ran away.

  He rang the Street Talk office. ‘Claire?’

  ‘Oh, hello, Mr Goodall,’ said Claire. ‘Is it about your advert?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’m afraid I won’t be dealing with your query personally, Mr Goodall. As from this afternoon, I’ll no longer be employed by Street Talk magazine.’

  ‘Oh, Claire, I’m sorry. That’s tough.’

  ‘Never mind, Mr Goodall. I’ve just thought of something that might be helpful.’

  Hunter kept glancing up and down the street. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s hard to say right now, Mr Goodall. Why doesn’t our representative meet you at Joe 90’s at 11.00am precisely? And if he can’t make it, I’ll make sure he phones to cancel. At exactly eleven. Okay?’

  Hunter heard the sound of a police siren, perhaps half a mile away. It was growing louder and louder.

  ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Exactly eleven.’

  He turned his back on the flashing blue lights at the end of the street and melted into the crowds of shoppers in the nearest department store.

  Clever old Claire, he thought, checking his watch. She wasn’t just an academic egghead. She had plenty of street-smarts, as well.

  THE payphone in the lobby of Joe 90’s rang at exactly eleven. Hunter got to it first. It wasn’t hard. He was standing right beside it.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi. It’s me.’ Claire’s voice, breathless and excited. ‘I knew you’d get the hint.’

  ‘I did. Great idea. I take it you’re phoning from a callbox?’

  ‘Of course.’