Sabbathman

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘That’s what the blokes outside say.’

  ‘They’re probably right.’ Kingdom turned round. ‘You know Wolfe at all? Ever talk to him?’

  ‘Not really. We played backgammon a couple of times but the bastard was always cheating.’ He laughed. ‘Even for matchsticks he’d cheat. Pathetic, isn’t it?’

  ‘Was he popular?’

  ‘So, so. One or two of the guys would tap him up for financial advice and I gather he’d give them the odd tip. But he wasn’t a nice man. You’d know that, just by looking at him.’

  ‘And would that be enough …?’ Kingdom glanced back over his shoulder, nodding down at the bed.

  ‘To get his throat cut? Christ no, do me a favour. This is an open prison. Not Palermo. Jesus,’ he shook his head again, ‘no way.’

  ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘What do I think?’

  ‘Yes. You’re an intelligent man. You must read the papers in that library of yours. I expect you get to see a lot of television, listen to the radio. You’ve got time on your hands …’ He paused. ‘So what are we dealing with here? A lunatic? A terrorist? A psychopath? Or what?’

  Weymes shrugged, sitting with his back to the desk, one elbow shielding his pad. ‘Pass,’ he said. ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Because you’ve met him. You’ve seen him. You’re not telling me you haven’t thought about it since? You’re not telling me you haven’t got a theory or two?’

  Weymes was on the defensive now, his face wooden, the smile quite gone. ‘Pass,’ he said again. ‘I’m just glad he didn’t beat the shit out of me. That’s all. Saved the knife for fatso upstairs.’

  Kingdom looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘I gather Wolfe moved rooms last week. Something about a dust problem. Some allergy or other.’ He paused. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘No.’ Weymes looked blank. ‘Why should I?’

  Kingdom studied him a moment, then shrugged, a gesture of regret. ‘Just wondering,’ he said, picking up his mug and draining the last of the coffee.

  He crossed the room again, leaving the empty mug on Weymes’ desk. Weymes was watching him carefully. By the time Kingdom got to the door, he was frowning.

  ‘Is that all?’ he said. ‘No more questions?’

  Kingdom grinned, nodding at the pad on the desk. ‘Hate to interrupt a man when he’s working.’

  Kingdom was still in the prison library when Allder finally found him. He rapped at the door. Kingdom unlocked it, returning at once to the desk under the window where Weymes kept his paperwork.

  Allder stood in the doorway, his coat buttoned. ‘What’s this then?’ he said impatiently.

  Kingdom glanced up, explaining briefly about Weymes. The ledger he’d found recorded all loans, going back to the beginning of the year, a painstaking hand-written list of book titles with lenders’ details attached.

  ‘What does that give us?’ Allder demanded.

  ‘Names,’ Kingdom said, ‘and where each bloke is billeted.’

  ‘So?’

  Kingdom got up and took the ledger to the ancient photocopier. The machine was already switched on and there was a neat pile of photocopies beside it. Allder peered at them.

  ‘Still not with you,’ he said, ‘what’s this got to do with Wolfe?’

  Kingdom put the last page of the ledger under the photocopier and pressed the button on the side. An over-inked copy appeared almost at once. Kingdom held it at arm’s length. His fingers were black with toner.

  ‘Wolfe moved rooms last week,’ he said, ‘and Weymes told me he didn’t know. Wolfe made the move on Tuesday. That was the 28th.’ He stopped waving the photocopy and beckoned Allder closer. All the entries were in the same handwriting. Friday had been especially busy. The third title booked out had gone to Marcus Wolfe. Beside the name, in capital letters, Weymes had noted ‘A26’.

  Allder was frowning. ‘A26 is where Wolfe died,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly. A26 was his new room.’

  Allder looked up. ‘So what made you check?’

  Kingdom returned to the desk. A library book lay beside the ledger. He picked it up. ‘This was in Wolfe’s room. The SOCO had it down on his list. Wolfe had probably been reading it last night.’ He opened the back of the book and showed Allder the return-by stamp. ‘You can keep a book for three weeks. This one’s due back on 22nd October. That means Wolfe must have taken it out on Friday.’ He shrugged. ‘Weymes dug the hole. All I had to do was give him a nudge.’

  Allder nodded, pulling on his leather gloves. Despite the scowl, he was visibly impressed. ‘Clever,’ he muttered, ‘fucking clever.’

  It was late afternoon before Allder and Kingdom left the prison. Kingdom had assumed they’d be returning to London but when they got to the main east-west coast road, Allder told the driver to turn left. Kingdom peered at the first of the big green roadside signs. ‘A27,’ it read, ‘Portsmouth.’

  He glanced across at Allder. ‘Why Pompey?’ he asked.

  Allder was staring out of the window. ‘We’re going to Arthur’s place,’ he said vaguely, ‘we’re invited for tea.’

  Arthur Sperring’s house occupied a quarter-acre plot on a new executive mainland estate across the creek from Hayling Island. The site was still under development and contractor’s plant littered the end of the newly-surfaced cul-de-sac.

  Allder pointed out the house and told the driver to turn the Daimler round and wait. A note on the front door told callers that Sperring was in the garden at the back, and Kingdom followed Allder round the big two-car garage and along the strip of muddy concrete that edged the side of the house. Sperring was at the bottom of the garden, nailing a length of fencing to stout timber posts. He was wearing overalls and a greasy flat cap, and he had his back to the house. Allder picked his way carefully across the newly-laid turfs and tapped him lightly on the shoulder but Sperring finished driving in the nail before turning round.

  ‘Thank fuck for that,’ he said, ‘an excuse to bloody stop at last.’

  They had tea in the lounge that stretched the full width of the house at the back. Sperring occupied the biggest of the three wing armchairs, and Allder sat beside him on one end of the sofa, helping himself to ham sandwiches, telling the Hampshire DCS what had been happening along the coast at Ford. Before they’d left, easing their way through the cordon of media vans, the governor had agreed to keep an eye on Weymes. Allder wanted to know who his friends were, who he talked to, who he was phoning. The governor had also agreed to compile a complete list of prisoners with brief details on each. At first, weighing Allder’s request, he’d been less than eager but when Allder pointed out that the Home Office would be only too willing to oblige, he’d changed his mind. Already, according to the radio news, they’d caved in to pressure for a full inquiry. Clearly, it was in the governor’s interests to co-operate.

  Sperring listened to Allder’s account. At the first mention of the Home Office, he reached for a cigarette and Kingdom remembered the last time they’d met in the smoky, overheated office Sperring occupied at Havant Police Station. The Home Office were part of the conspiracy that had hatched the Sheehy Report. That made them enemy number one.

  ‘Wankers,’ Sperring growled when Allder had finished.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Home fucking Office.’ He tapped his cigarette into an ash-tray beside his foot. The new carpet around his chair was already cratered with small brown holes. ‘Weymes, then, is it?’

  Allder nodded. ‘For starters,’ he peeled the bread off another ham sandwich and spread on more mustard, ‘we’ll put a wire on his girlfriend’s phone. See what she has to say for herself. Tomorrow might be interesting, too.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Kingdom here thinks he’s sold his story to The Citizen. Our friend Willoughby Grant. We found their number on Weymes’ pad. He’d obviously been talking to the media blokes first thing. Soon as they arrived.’
/>   ‘But what’s he going to say?’

  ‘God knows. That’s what makes it interesting.’ He paused, demolishing the middle of the sandwich with a single bite. ‘Then there’s the usual. Our friend Mr S. Monday’s publication day for him too, another little billet doux. Assuming we’ve got it right. Assuming it was him.’

  Sperring looked up sharply. ‘No fucking doubt, is there?’

  ‘No, not that I can see.’

  Sperring grunted, reaching for his tea, brooding again. Beneath the bluster and the blasphemies, Kingdom was beginning to understand what a proud man he was. The lack of progress over the Carpenter murder, coupled with the enormous publicity, had wounded him deeply. Sabbathman’s only saving grace, in his eyes, was the fact that he kept on getting away with it. Every fresh killing made his own failure just a little easier to bear.

  Sperring sipped his tea. He was gazing at Allder again. ‘Your lad there had a theory. He tell you about that?’

  ‘Twyford Down?’ Allder shook his head, ‘Don’t see it.’

  Sperring looked briefly at Kingdom, realising the faux pas.

  ‘It’s not Twyford Down,’ Kingdom said quickly, ‘it’s something else.’

  Allder stared at him, the remains of the sandwich half-way to his mouth, his face beginning to darken. ‘What?’ he said.

  Kingdom glanced across at Sperring.

  Sperring was trying to mask a smile. ‘Listen,’ he began, ‘us country coppers …’

  ‘What? Allder said again, his eyes still locked on Kingdom.

  Kingdom shifted his long frame in the armchair. Sperring’s wife had reappeared with a plate of fresh scones. Allder’s passion for clotted cream was legendary. She put them carefully on the table beside him. Allder didn’t take his eyes off Kingdom.

  ‘What theory?’ he said.

  Kingdom was looking at the scones. He hadn’t had time for lunch at the prison and he realised he was starving.

  ‘I’ve been concentrating on the Carpenter hit,’ he said carefully, ‘as you know.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get a line on how chummy got off the island, how he got away. Turns out he went by boat. Rubber dinghy, to be exact. Probably one of those Zodiac things. Big outboard. Terrific performance.’

  Allder was frowning. ‘Impossible,’ he said, looking at Sperring. ‘You told me you had the harbour mouth covered.’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand.’

  Kingdom reached forward, helping himself to a couple of scones. They were open already and warm to the touch, melting the cream he spooned on top. Allder’s gaze wavered for a second, then he pulled at the crease in his trousers, a sure sign that he was losing his temper.

  ‘You’re saying this man escaped by sea?’

  Kingdom shook his head. ‘By boat.’

  ‘Same thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. You escape by sea, you go out through the harbour mouth. I’m saying he went the other way.’

  Allder looked blank. ‘Inland?’

  ‘Yes. Across the harbour. You need to see it. There’s miles of water until you hit the mainland, and even then there’s a creek that takes you round the top of Pompey. With the right boat, the right engine …’ Kingdom shrugged. ‘You could be the other side of Portsmouth in half an hour. I’ve walked the course. I’ve talked to the locals. Believe me, you could do it.’

  ‘But have you got evidence? Something concrete?’

  ‘Yes. Sinah Lane ends in a close of houses. I went back there. Bloke in number six thinks he may have heard something that Sunday morning. Around half-ten.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like an outboard.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Just down from his garden. Where the harbour starts. There’s plenty of water at high tide.’

  ‘You looked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You find anything?’

  ‘No,’ Kingdom shook his head, ‘but we’re talking a couple of weeks after the event.’

  ‘But what about at the time?’ Allder looked at Sperring. ‘Did your blokes talk to this witness? Whatever his name is?’

  Sperring, who’d clearly been anticipating the question, nodded. ‘Of course we talked to him. It’s on the computer. But he didn’t say bugger all.’

  ‘Nothing about an outboard?’

  ‘Nothing about anything.’

  Allder fell silent for a moment. When it came to exposing supposition or argument to the cold test of logic he had an unfailing instinct for the weakest point. It was one of the talents, Kingdom supposed, that had taken him to command of the Anti-Terrorist Squad.

  He was frowning now. ‘Big outboard, you say? Premium on speed?’

  Kingdom nodded. ‘No question.’

  ‘So how come your man never heard anything’ – he looked at Sperring – ‘at the first time of asking?’

  Sperring shrugged. ‘No idea,’ he said.

  Kingdom reached for another scone. They were delicious. ‘Outboards can be silenced,’ he said slowly, ‘even big ones you can muffle. Not completely. But enough to do the job.’

  ‘So how come your man had second thoughts?’

  ‘He has a dog. Big thing. Collie cross. He takes it out on the harbour sometimes, in his own dinghy. When he goes fishing.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That morning the dog went ape. Barked and barked.’ Kingdom paused. ‘Dogs have a different register to humans. They hear things we don’t. Like muffled outboards.’

  ‘So did he look out of the window? This bloke of yours? Did he see anything?’

  ‘Nothing. He was in bed. At the front of the house.’

  Allder nodded slowly, teasing the theory out, acknowledging for the first time the plate of scones.

  Kingdom passed the jam. ‘Getting hold of these engines,’ he said, ‘isn’t easy.’

  Allder reached for a scone. ‘So who do we look for?’ he said. ‘Who’d know where to find one?’

  Kingdom and Sperring exchanged glances. They’d been through most of this on the phone, though at greater length and with less precision.

  ‘Special forces,’ Kingdom murmured, taking the last scone, ‘SAS or Royal Marines.’

  Allder and Kingdom left Sperring’s house forty minutes later. Kingdom had been explaining the other conclusion he’d reached, his provisional answer to the question of access. How, exactly, had the killer got into Clare Baxter’s house? How come he’d found, or already possessed, a key? Kingdom had pondered these questions. Then, on his third visit to Sinah Lane, he’d stood beside Clare Baxter’s front door and made a list of all the houses with direct line of sight. In all, there were four. Inquiries at the first three drew a blank. The occupants had been here for years. They knew Clare Baxter well. They’d hardly be part of any conspiracy to kill their local MP.

  At the fourth house, though, Kingdom had drawn a very different response. The young couple who owned it had only just moved in. The house had been on the market for more than a year and for most of that time it had been empty. Upstairs, the smaller of the two front bedrooms offered a perfect view of the tiny bed of shrubs where Clare Baxter hid her key.

  Armed with the name of the selling agent, Kingdom had pursued the inquiry. One of the three partners in the agency had handled all dealings on the house. Because of the area, it had attracted a good deal of interest. Normally, inspections of the property were accompanied. Occasionally, when things got busy, prospective buyers were handed a key and invited to take a look for themselves. On these occasions, as a precaution, the agency took a covert note of the buyer’s vehicle registration number.

  In the case of the property in Sinah Lane, there’d been two such buyers. One of them, a young married executive from IBM, had used the place at lunchtimes to make love to his secretary. He’d done it twice before the agency cottoned on. The second buyer, a middle-aged woman, had spent an hour or so looking round and then returned with the key, explaining that it wasn�
��t quite what she’d expected.

  In the agency, Kingdom had asked for details. What was the woman’s name? When had this happened? Was there anywhere local where she could, if need be, get a key cut? The answer to the last question was straightforward. There were two shops which had the equipment, and both could supply spare keys within ten minutes. The woman’s name and address, though, were more problematic. Normally, this kind of information was kept on file for at least two years but the agency was in the process of moving to smaller premises and some of the paperwork, the agent confessed, was a mess. If the inquiry was important, she’d certainly have a root around but she couldn’t promise anything.

  Kingdom had thanked her, leaving Sperring’s name and the telephone number of the Havant Incident Room in case anything turned up. Twice since then he’d phoned the agency but both times he’d got no further than an embarrassed apology. Times were difficult, the agent had explained. Staff had been laid off. She’d have a proper look as soon as she could.

  Kingdom finished the story there, raising his shoulders in a shrug, offering an apology of his own. It had, he said, been a long shot. Maybe this woman had got herself a key cut. Maybe someone had been at the house – upstairs – on Sunday mornings. Maybe they’d kept Clare Baxter’s house under surveillance. Maybe they’d seen where she hid the key. He still didn’t know but there was certainly nothing in Sabbathman’s track record to discredit the thesis. Here was a man who evidently covered every angle, a guy with a real taste for the tiniest detail. To date, he’d probably killed five men and not once had he made a mistake. Given time, and patience, and money, there was no reason to think he couldn’t kill again. Indeed, he could conceivably go on and on until he either tired of it all or – less likely – he simply ran out of victims.

  At this, Allder reached for his coat. He had infinite respect for detailed detective work and none at all for long speeches. They were in the hall, looking at one of Mrs Sperring’s water-colours, when Sperring himself took Kingdom’s arm. The front door was already open, the police driver reaching for his ignition key.

  ‘She phoned back yesterday,’ Sperring said. ‘That’s why I invited you over.’