Sabbathman

by Hurley, Graham

  Kingdom heard a soft laugh behind him, then the rustle of coins as someone looked for small change. Kingdom frowned, leaning back from the console, feeling a hand settle on his shoulder.

  At the same time, a voice he knew, an inch from his left ear, rich, mischievous, amused: ‘Beaten? Already?’

  Kingdom turned round. The woman behind him was holding out a twenty-pence coin. The long scarlet coat was open, and he recognised the black woollen one-piece underneath. Last time he’d seen it was a fortnight ago, draped carefully over the back of a chair. Belfast again. One of the nights he wasn’t playing Streetfighter 2. Kingdom grinned, for once caught off-balance.

  ‘You,’ he said.

  Annie Meredith kissed him lightly on the cheek, then leaned forward, easing the coin into the slot. ‘My turn,’ she said, reaching for the buttons.

  FOUR

  ‘Your fault,’ she giggled, ‘not my idea.’

  Kingdom sat in front of the mirror in the hotel bedroom, a towel draped over his naked shoulders, examining the worst of the damage. Fourteen months’ growth of hair littered the carpet around his ankles, and she was still cutting. He reached for one of the glasses they’d looted from the bathroom. The first bottle of Rioja lay upended in the wastepaper bin, the second was nearly empty, and a third was still in the plastic carrier bag by the bed.

  ‘What’s the time?’ Kingdom said.

  Annie glanced at her watch. As usual, it was the one item she hadn’t taken off. ‘Twenty-past eight,’ she said. ‘Am I keeping you?’

  Kingdom grunted, turning his head left and right, trying to find an angle that softened the brutality of what she’d done. She’d been at it now for nearly half an hour, hacking away. She cut hair like she tackled more or less everything else in her life, with cheerful optimism and a ruthless self-belief. No prisoners. No apologies. Not a single moment wasted on wondering whether she really knew what she was doing.

  Kingdom swallowed another mouthful of the wine. It didn’t change the image in the mirror, but it helped.

  ‘So why aren’t you telling me it looks great?’ he said. ‘Isn’t it all about psychology? Keeping the customer happy?’

  ‘It looks bloody awful.’

  ‘So why don’t you stop?’

  ‘How can I? You’ll get arrested looking like this.’

  She stepped back a minute and Kingdom watched her in the mirror as she pondered the next cut. He’d always thought she had a lovely body: small, neat breasts, flat belly, silky, muscled legs still pinked from the bath they’d shared earlier. Coming to the hotel had been her idea. She had a room booked for the night and saw no point wasting it.

  Now she looked up, scissors raised. She had tiny, delicate hands, beautifully shaped nails, and she always started the day with a fresh coat of varnish. The varnish was the colour of arterial blood, a bold scarlet, and it suited her personality exactly. She had a tattoo, as well, a tiny rose between her breasts, blue and red, very delicate, and the tattoo was equally characteristic, wholly in keeping with the person she was determined to be: independent, unconventional, in tune with no one’s music but her own. Kingdom had often asked her about the tattoo, why she’d had it done, what it meant, but so far she’d never told him. Their whole relationship, as Kingdom had realised early on, had been conducted this way, Annie in charge of the map, deciding which bits were safe, deciding exactly where to put the No Trespassing signs.

  Kingdom offered to top up her glass.

  She shook her head. ‘Maybe I’ll just take the lot off,’ she said. ‘Do you ever wear hats at all?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Pity.’

  The scissors descended on a tuft above his left ear, and Kingdom abandoned the bottle and reached up, catching her wrist. She was much stronger than she looked and she resisted for a moment or two before sliding onto his lap. He whispered in her ear, watching her face in the mirror as she grinned and nodded, anticipating his next suggestion. As ever, she was ahead of the game.

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘It’s the least I owe you.’

  She led him to the bed, removed the towel, and made him lie face down on the rumpled sheets. She retrieved the bottles of body oil she always kept in her travelling bag and laid them carefully in a line across the pillow beside his face.

  ‘You choose,’ she said. ‘Your treat.’

  Kingdom’s eyes remained shut. ‘Coconut,’ he murmured.

  She picked up one of the bottles and began to dribble the oil down his back. Kingdom could smell the heavy fragrance and the memories stirred him. Other rooms. Other cities. Nearly a year of the best lovemaking he could ever remember.

  Annie capped the bottle and then got on the bed, straddling Kingdom’s long body, her head towards his feet. She began to work along the bottom of his spine, her weight on her flattened hands, pushing outwards from the knobbly line of bones, kneading the muscle between each rib with her thumbs, and Kingdom felt himself drifting away, rafting slowly down some delicious river, the taste of the wine, the smell of the oil, the taunt of Annie’s fingertips as they brushed across his buttocks and danced between his open thighs.

  He turned over, smiling, reaching up for her, pulling her back towards him, turning her round until she was sitting on his face, settling herself to the shape of his mouth, his tongue lapping and lapping, his eyes open now, looking up at the tilt of her breasts as she began to gyrate. When she was ready, she eased herself free and kissed him on the lips, sliding herself back down his body, fitting him into her, supporting her weight in a low squat, lifting herself up and down, slowly, slowly, tiny movements, taunting him, taking him to the very edge, then tipping him over as she sank onto him, her mouth sucking his nipples, one after the other, her body still pumping and pumping, emptying him of everything.

  She was still asleep, half an hour later, when Kingdom’s hand found the phone. He dialled Allder’s private number, reaching for a pen from Annie’s bag. Allder answered almost at once, gruff as ever. The missing Sabbathman communiqués, he said, had been delivered to the Yard two hours earlier. They’d be public knowledge by breakfast time but it would be nice if Kingdom got a head start. He began to read them at dictation speed, while Kingdom scribbled across the back of a room service menu. When he’d finished, Allder described the scene at the Yard. One of The Citizen’s senior executives had brought the material over personally. He’d been boasting about the impending media storm, and predicted an upward leap in the parent group’s share price. He’d also, said Allder in disgust, been pissed.

  ‘Not driving, I hope, sir,’ Kingdom murmured, still trying to decipher his own writing.

  Allder grunted. ‘Seen your friend yet?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Productive?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Very.’

  ‘Good,’ he grunted again, ‘just don’t get us screwed too, OK?’

  Allder hung up and Kingdom permitted himself a small, private smile. Annie was awake now, her body curled around Kingdom’s, her skin still flecked with small black hairs. She looked up at him, sleepy, content, the one moment in their relationship when she always seemed – to Kingdom – to be truly relaxed.

  ‘My Guv’nor,’ Kingdom said, nodding at the phone. ‘He thinks we’ve been at it.’

  Annie ran a finger round the line of his mouth. ‘Outrageous,’ she whispered. ‘What else did he say?’

  She got up on one elbow and peered at Kingdom’s scribble. ‘Are you going to tell me?’ she said. ‘Or do I wait for tomorrow’s paper?’

  Kingdom studied her a moment. So far, they’d barely talked about the Carpenter killing but it was inconceivable that Annie hadn’t been fully briefed. She’d know as much as he did. Probably more.

  ‘You serious?’ he said. ‘You don’t know about this guy?’

  ‘Mr Sabbathman?’ She shook her head. ‘Not the latest.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘OK.’ She shrugged, and her hands went upwards, exploring his ravaged scalp. ‘Ever
thought of the Foreign Legion?’

  Kingdom said nothing, leaning back against the bedhead, reaching for a cigarette. MI5 were the biggest players in the information game, always had been. On the back of a couple of hundred Home Office warrants a year, they were routinely installing tens of thousands of telephone taps. Mail intercepts, surveillance, and a small army of freelance agents brought them the other bits of the jigsaw. Once Downing Street had sounded the alarm about Sabbathman, The Citizen would have become a priority target. They’d be monitoring the mail flows in and out of the building. They’d have identified and bugged the key telephones. They’d have their fingers on the pulse of the place, they’d know exactly what was going on. And Annie would be part of it all. Had to be. Kingdom glanced down at her now, her cheek nestled against his chest. She looked sweetly innocent.

  ‘Well?’ she said, fingering the room service menu, ‘You going to tell me or what?’

  Kingdom shrugged. If it was a game she wanted, so be it. ‘Which one first?’

  ‘Bairstow, please.’

  ‘OK.’ Kingdom peered again at the back of the menu, picking his way through the lines of hasty scribble. ‘Bairstow had dandruff and a skin problem,’ he read, ‘you could see it on the back of his neck. Probably acne in adolescence, poor bastard. But what’s a guy like him doing with a season ticket to Zurich? Wasn’t Andy Cole enough for him? All that excitement at St James’ Park?’

  Annie yawned and stretched, her hands beginning to wander again. ‘Andy Cole?’

  ‘Newcastle number nine,’ Kingdom said, ‘find of the season.’

  ‘And Zurich?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue.’ He glanced down at her. ‘I thought you might know.’

  ‘No.’ Annie shook her head. ‘What about the other one? Our MP friend?’

  Kingdom was watching her, his eyes back on the tattoo, her souvenir from some previous life, and she touched him again, walking her fingertips up and down, moistening her lips with her tongue.

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ Kingdom said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You definitely want me to carry on?’

  ‘Yes’ – she ducked beneath the sheet and planted a line of kisses down Kingdom’s belly – ‘please.’

  ‘OK.’ He shrugged. ‘Here we go. Adieu Max Carpenter. Off to the big party meeting in the sky. No more freebies in Abu Dhabi. No more nonsense about omelettes and eggs. Guy got what he deserved. Like Blanche. And our friend on the terraces. His tart wears Chanel, by the way. And the sheets were blue. When will they ever learn, these guys? How many Sundays can I spare?’

  Kingdom put the menu down, amused by the final phrase, its air of faint exasperation. Aside from the carefully placed bona fides – the perfume, the colour of the sheets – he loved the way the man wrote, how direct he was, the lightness of his touch. Nothing could be further from the dour two-line statements the Provos put out. There was nothing here about ‘the armed struggle’ or ‘final victory’. On the contrary, Sabbathman appeared to be enjoying himself, choosing his targets with some care, spicing their deaths with cheerful comments about football and trips abroad. The key, once again, was motive. Why choose these men? Why go to the trouble of killing them? Where on earth was the connection? What was the point of spilling so much blood?

  Kingdom let the menu fall to the floor, aroused again. He could see Annie’s head bobbing slowly up and down beneath the duvet. Finally he reached down for her, pulling her back up the bed.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘we ought to talk about this.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s what you said earlier.’

  ‘I know.’ She picked a hair from the end of her tongue. ‘But what is there to talk about?’

  ‘We’re supposed to be liaising.’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Seriously.’ Kingdom frowned. ‘You think this is some kind of joke?’

  Annie was back up on her elbow again, gazing at his haircut, trying not to laugh. ‘Well?’ she said, ‘Isn’t it?’

  Kingdom shook his head, feeling himself being backed up the usual cul-de-sac. Despite the physical closeness of their relationship, its warmth, its humour, there were certain kinds of intimacy Annie refused to share. She hated sentimentality. She loathed cosiness and she’d always refused point blank to discuss anything to do with their respective jobs. Partly, Kingdom suspected, because she was a great deal more senior than she’d want him to know. The older woman. With the bigger desk.

  ‘It matters,’ Kingdom said slowly, ‘that we talk.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk. I want to screw again.’

  ‘I know. But we ought to get one or two things straight.’

  ‘My thought entirely.’ Annie disappeared beneath the duvet.

  ‘Listen to me. Behave yourself.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘No. How about …?’

  Kingdom missed the rest of the sentence, her voice lost amongst the bedclothes. He reached down for the second time, easing her head away from his crotch, peeling back the sheet, exposing her body. She lay quite still for a moment, her eyes closed, then she sat up in the bed. There were parts of her that no amount of sex, no amount of wine, could ever reach. In certain moods, she could be truly frightening. It was one of the many reasons Kingdom thought he loved her. Unlike most of the women he’d met, she could never be entirely his.

  ‘We’re supposed to be swopping notes,’ he said, ‘we’re supposed to have formal meetings, keep minutes, report back, all that. It’s in the job description. I’ve read the script.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So when do we make a start?’

  Annie was out of bed now. Kingdom could hear her in the bathroom, running the shower, maximum boost. When she reappeared, her hair was plastered against her skull, a tight blonde cap. She began to towel herself dry, twisting sideways, examining her back in the mirror.

  ‘Bloody hair,’ she said, ‘everywhere.’

  ‘We going to talk?’

  ‘Of course, if that’s what you really want. I just didn’t realise that’s what this was about.’ She glanced round, nodding at the bed. ‘Sorry, my mistake, won’t happen again.’

  She reached for her clothes and began to put them on. Kingdom watched her without comment. The wine was giving him a headache. Bad sign. He pulled back the blanket and patted the sheet beside him.

  ‘Come here,’ he said.

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘No …’ He found himself frowning again. ‘Please.’

  Annie wriggled into the black one-piece and did up the buttons at the top. Then she ran a comb through her hair, opened the window, and settled in the armchair beside the television. She had a small, thin mouth and when she was angry it puckered slightly at one corner.

  ‘You’re pissed off,’ Kingdom said.

  ‘No. Just paying attention. The way you like it.’

  ‘Have I ever said that?’

  ‘No. That’s why I’m surprised. I thought’ – she shrugged – ‘we’d got things pretty well organised, that’s all. We’ve had some nice times. Why spoil them?’

  ‘Had?’ Kingdom blinked.

  ‘Yeah. Had.’ She nodded, hooking her bag towards her with her foot. ‘So where do you want to start? Carpenter? Bairstow? The other guy? Do we have a plan here? Some kind of agenda? Only that matters …’ she smiled thinly, eyeing the semi-circle of hair on the carpet in front of the mirror, ‘… to us working girls.’

  Kingdom closed his eyes a moment. Then he swung out of bed and went into the bathroom. The remains of his cigarette made a small, sizzling noise as he dropped it in the lavatory. For a second or two he examined himself in the mirror. He looked half-crazy, a lost soul from the asylum, some demented fool who’d given the nurses the slip and made it over the wire. He fingered the worst of the damage, semi-bald spots patterned randomly over his scalp, and he thought suddenly of his father, poor Ernie, sitting in the darkness, nursing his precious briefcase. Then he sh
ook his head, and doused his face in cold water. What mattered, what really mattered, was Annie. This thing they had between them, raw and strange and lop-sided though it undoubtedly was, had kept him sane for the best part of a year. It had come from nowhere, a frank exchange of glances in one of the interminable RUC liaison meetings, and it had taken hold of both their lives, an insatiable urge for each other, a physical journey without end. In the space between two busy lives, they’d created a small pocket of warmth, a refuge, that he knew he didn’t want to lose. Not now. Not ever.

  Kingdom squeezed the flannel dry and laid it carefully over the side of the basin. Then he returned to the bedroom. Annie was lighting one of his cigarettes, the first time he’d ever seen her smoke, and it shook him because it was so obviously something she did often, in some other life. He sat on the edge of the bed, a towel around his waist. He held out a hand. She didn’t respond.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. This isn’t as serious as it sounds.’

  She looked at him a moment, then ducked her head behind a cloud of smoke. ‘Isn’t there someone else they could have found?’ she said bitterly. ‘Isn’t it a bit obvious sending you along?’

  Kingdom awoke in total darkness. The digital clock on the bedside table read 04.37. He could feel a presence beside him, someone bending over him, and for a second he didn’t know who it was.