Sabbathman

by Hurley, Graham

  It was late now, the bar beginning to empty. Kingdom was looking at Dermot, following every word. ‘You mean Annie?’ he said. ‘My Annie?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And you’re saying you expected someone else? Someone from the Branch? Me, for instance? Or my guv’nor?’

  ‘Not expected, no. We expected someone from Five. That’s the whole point of it. They’re hungry. They’re quick on the draw, like. You know what I mean?’

  Kingdom was still thinking of Annie, smiling for the first time. Quick on the draw was a nice phrase. It fitted her exactly. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know what you mean.’

  Dermot nodded. It was a shame, he said, that Special Branch, or CID, or some other representative from the police hadn’t got to Dublin first. The government had never been so co-operative. The opportunity had been there for the taking. The fact that one of Cousins’ people should have turned up first had simply confirmed what Harcourt Terrace had been suspecting for some time. That the battle for turf was over. That Five had won.

  Kingdom was looking at the bar. His glass was empty. ‘Who?’ he said numbly.

  ‘Five.’

  ‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘the name you mentioned.’

  ‘Ah,’ Dermot Reilly smiled, ‘Cousins. The famous Mr Hugh.’

  They took Kingdom to a French restaurant on the bay-front at Blackrock. Through the window, Kingdom could see the car ferry unloading under the big arc lights at Dun Laoghaire. When they asked him what he wanted to eat, he waved the offer away but when the woman insisted, he asked for fish and chips. The order made the waiter’s eyebrows rise but Kingdom didn’t care. Offered a choice between turbot and John Dory, he left it to the chef’s discretion. What happened with Annie? he kept asking. What did you tell her when she came across?

  Dermot took him through it. He explained about the cargo shed on the airport site, and the import/export firm. He outlined Dessie O’Keefe’s theory about the switch and he described the employee who’d abruptly gone missing. The man was rumoured to have come from the north. The dates he’d enrolled in the firm fitted Dessie’s theory. The story had been strong enough to get the Irish cabinet off the hook and everyone at Harcourt Terrace had agreed that the photo had been a fine stroke of luck.

  ‘Photo?’ Kingdom was picking at his bread roll, trying to remember what Allder had said about it. ‘What photo?’

  ‘The photo we gave to your girl, Annie.’

  Dermot explained about the photo. It included a mug shot of the missing employee. Nothing brilliant, mind, but OK. Good enough for enhancement. Good enough for Hugh Cousins.

  ‘And she took it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Back to England?’

  ‘Where else?’

  Kingdom nodded, remembering Annie in the flat last Saturday, her bag never far from her side, her insistence that she had to disappear again for a few hours. She’d had the photo, he thought. She’d had the photo and she was under orders to hand it over. Either that, or she thought she’d cracked it single-handed. Ambition, after all, was what had made her engine run.

  The waiter arrived with a bottle of Chablis. Kingdom asked for Guinness. He went away again.

  ‘This photo,’ he asked slowly, ‘where did it come from?’

  Dermot explained about a youth in the import/export company. He’d taken a whole roll of shots. Dermot had seen them all. So had Annie.

  ‘Where? Where did you see them?’

  ‘In a pub. In Drumcondra.’

  ‘And where’s the lad now?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘So how do I get to him? How do I lay hand on these pictures?’

  Dermot glanced at the woman. She was rummaging in her handbag. Eventually she produced a colour photograph. She gave it to Kingdom. It showed two big men. They looked very drunk, leering at the camera. Dermot leaned forward, indicating another face in the background. Kingdom peered at it. Thinning hair. A big, fleshy mouth. Funny eyes.

  ‘This him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Dermot nodded.

  ‘And can I keep it?’

  ‘Sure. You can have as many as you like.’

  ‘How come?’

  Dermot grinned, leaning back as the waiter returned with Kingdom’s Guinness. ‘I helped myself to the negatives,’ he said cheerfully, ‘the night we talked to the young lad.’

  Kingdom was back in London by early afternoon next day. Allder had told him to come straight to his office at New Scotland Yard, and he was waiting when Kingdom arrived. It was a Saturday and instead of the usual suit Allder was wearing corduroy trousers and a mustard yellow Pringle sweater. He must have been shopping on the way to the office because there was a plastic bag on the floor beside his chair. On the side it said ‘Wimbledon Seedlings’.

  ‘Gardening again, sir?’ Kingdom inquired, putting Reilly’s photo squarely on the desk and sinking into the waiting chair.

  Allder ignored the question, reaching at once for the photo. After a while, he looked up. ‘They gave you this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kingdom briefed Allder on the story and indicated the face in the background.

  Allder nodded, examining the photo again. ‘They know who he is?’

  ‘No, sir. Not that they’d say.’

  ‘Do you know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But it went to Cousins? Is that what you’re saying?’

  Kingdom nodded. He’d lain awake for most of the night in his Dublin hotel room, haunted by Cousins’ face. He’d been the man in the pub, the evening Annie had gone to the PYTHON meet at the Home Office. Kingdom had watched them together in the corner of the lounge bar, Annie leaning towards him across the table, the quicksilver smile, the gestures with the hands, the way she used her face and body to make the points that mattered. He’d seen her at this kind of game before. It meant that Cousins had something she wanted, something that she considered rightfully hers. Probably a seat at the top table, a job of some kind, more status, a bigger desk.

  Allder asked Kingdom whether he wanted a coffee. Kingdom was still thinking about the pub.

  ‘This Cousins bloke, he’s Controller now, isn’t he? “T” Branch?’

  ‘Controller-Designate,’ Allder said, ‘yet to be confirmed. The guy who used to run it has been put out to grass. Bloke called Wren. Old school. Clever bastard but very cautious. Not at all what they’re after now.’

  Kingdom nodded, remembering Annie mentioning the name. In the office they apparently called him Jenny but she’d got rather fond of him.

  ‘And Cousins?’ he said.

  ‘Younger. Smarter. Right pedigree, ex-SAS, all that Action Man bollocks.’

  ‘But any good?’

  ‘Yes, if you don’t look too hard at the small print.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  Kingdom let the question hang in the air, wanting to know more. Allder’s humiliation at the Fishguard press conference had done the rounds at the Yard, and it was clear from the expression on the little man’s face that he wasn’t in the business of forgiveness.

  ‘Connections,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s all down to connections. Who he’s lobbied, who he’s been talking to, who’s impressed by all that SAS shit. Know what I mean?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Kingdom said woodenly.

  Allder frowned, trying to mask his indignation. He reached for a paper clip, trying to unbend it in his tiny fingers. ‘High places,’ he said at last, ‘friends in high places.’

  ‘How high?’

  ‘Very high.’ He tossed the paperclip into the bin. ‘How do you think he landed the plum job? “T” Branch? The crown bloody jewels?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Kingdom shrugged.

  ‘Because it suits their purposes. That’s why.’

  ‘Whose purposes?’

  Allder gazed at him, more irritated than ever, not quite believing how slow he could be.

  Kingdom returned the stare, determined to get it out, to get it on the record. ‘Whose purposes?’ he said ag
ain.

  ‘The Home Office, of course. And Downing Street. They’ve been after Five forever, like every government there ever was. Cousins will give it to them on a plate, theirs for the asking, as long as they put him in charge.’ He offered Kingdom an icy smile. ‘The outlaws back in the corral, and no Mr Sheehy to raise the dust. Neat, don’t you think?’

  Kingdom nodded, reaching for the photo again. There were aspects of Allder’s paranoia that were frankly beyond him. Not because he couldn’t follow the logic but because he didn’t care. Politicians dealt in power. Power corrupted. If you believed anything else, you were a fool. Kingdom gazed at the face in the photo. The eyes. The startled expression. The slack, fleshy mouth.

  ‘So what was Annie doing in Belfast?’ Kingdom said after a while.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Have you asked?’

  ‘Of course I have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘No one’s talking. She was obviously there. I imagine she’d gone for a meet of some kind. Maybe our friend in the photo. Maybe someone else. Either way, I’m afraid she’s still dead.’

  ‘Yes, but who slotted her?’

  ‘I’d be guessing at this stage.’ Allder was frowning now, tapping the desktop with his pen. ‘Some Provo faction or other. Pro-talks, anti-talks. The peacemongers, the wild bunch … who knows?’

  ‘Sure,’ Kingdom said, ‘but there’s a procedure to these things. You have a meet, you take precautions. You don’t just step in. Not if you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘And she did? She knew the score? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kingdom said, ‘she was bloody good at it. She took the odd gamble, the odd risk, but nothing really silly, nothing that would explain …’ he broke off, turning away, the smell of bleach in his nostrils again, the sickening moment when the pathologist bent down with her scissors. ‘Someone fucked up,’ he said at last. ‘I know they did.’

  ‘Cousins would have sent her,’ Allder pointed out, ‘almost certainly.’

  Kingdom said nothing, looking at the photo again for the last time. Then he gave it back to Allder.

  ‘So how do I get hold of him,’ he said, ‘this Cousins?’

  ‘No idea. You could do what I do. You could try phoning Gower Street. But apart from that …’ He shrugged. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d like to talk to him, find out what happened.’

  ‘You think he’d tell you?’

  ‘I think he might.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Kingdom looked at him a moment, then shook his head, refusing to answer. The little man shrugged again, pulling open a drawer. Inside was a sheaf of transcripts. He slid it across the desk.

  ‘You ought to read this before we talk about Monday,’ he said, ‘before you go to Skye.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Phone transcripts. Faxed through this morning. Rob Scarman’s compliments.’

  ‘Ethne Feasey? More calls?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  Kingdom reached for the transcripts. Across the top, standard format, was the number of the tapped telephone: 0983 456734. Kingdom frowned. It was an Isle of Wight number but it didn’t belong to Ethne Feasey. He was sure of it. He began to read the transcript. It was the record of the call she’d made after the brief exchange he’d listened to in Rob Scarman’s office. The guy with the rough voice. The one who’d told her to call back. She’d gone out immediately afterwards. Scarman’s boys had followed her.

  Kingdom looked up. ‘The phone box on the sea-front?’

  Allder nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tapped?’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘For how long?’

  Allder smiled at last, leaning forward. ‘At least three months,’ he said, ‘according to the BT people.’

  Kingdom phoned for a mini-cab from his own desk. He’d been through Yellow Pages and he was certain he’d found the right firm. The dispatcher from Kingston Cabhire promised him a driver within half an hour, and Kingdom thanked her with a quiet smile, returning to the notes he’d made prior to Allder’s departure. Their conference had ended at three in the afternoon, the little man seizing his bargains from the garden centre and shepherding Kingdom towards the door. With luck, he mumbled, he’d have them in before nightfall. Providing, of course, the rain held off.

  Now, Kingdom studied his list of notes. Most of them were simply updates, more bits of the Sabbathman jigsaw. News from Tyneside about the Bairstow inquiry. A fax from the Devon and Cornwall CID boys establishing that Dave Gifford’s motor cruiser had recently visited the Torquay marina. Another conversation with the Aldershot adjutant confirming that Andy Gifford and the guy in Ford Open Prison who’d crippled Peter Weymes had been very close buddies in 3 Para. More and more bricks in the wall that would finally encircle Sabbathman,

  Allder, it now seemed, needed no more convincing that the serial killings were down to Dave Gifford and his son, and he’d therefore reinforced surveillance on the Scottish west coast landfalls from Skye. To his certain knowledge, both men were still on the island, weathered in at An Carraig. According to a phonecall from one of the Special Branch team at Kyle of Lochalsh, the whole area lay under a heavy blanket of cloud, with the winds gusting to sixty knots and the mountains largely invisible. Conditions like these, said Allder, were a blessing and the forecast was even better. Another deep depression was racing east, across the Atlantic. By Monday, the weather on Skye would be horrible.

  Kingdom sat back, pushing his list to one side. All of it was important, he knew it was, but what preoccupied him now was the news about the phone box on the Shanklin sea-front. It was more than possible that Ethne Feasey had been using it for some time to talk to Dave Gifford. For a man with a lot to hide, it would have been an obvious precaution, especially if he’d thought that Ethne Feasey’s own line might have been tapped. Her son, after all, had got himself involved with the Twyford Down people and Dave Gifford would have been experienced enough to suspect a tap on these grounds alone. So far, so good. But what Dave Gifford couldn’t have known was that the public phone box had also been bugged. Which meant that someone, somewhere would have a complete record of all calls on the sea-front number.

  Kingdom toyed with his pen, exploring the implications. Men as love-struck as Dave Gifford had loose tongues. If he was campaigning – killing – on Ethne Feasey’s behalf, he may well have shared the secret with her. God knows, they may even have been in it together, and if so, the transcripts of their conversations would have provided a blueprint for the entire campaign. So who had ordered the transcripts in the first place? And exactly how revealing had they been?

  Kingdom was still pondering the questions when the phone rang on his desk. The mini-cab had arrived from Kingston. It was waiting for him downstairs. Kingdom rode the lift to the ground floor, still thinking about the transcripts. The mini-cab was a dirty blue Datsun with 93,000 miles on the clock. The driver, a young Moroccan, was yawning behind the wheel. Kingdom got in beside him. The man looked half-asleep.

  ‘Kew,’ he confirmed, giving Annie’s address.

  They drove west, towards Hammersmith, the traffic heavy for a Saturday. By the time they’d crossed the river at Chiswick, Kingdom and the young driver had become friends, both overworked, both underpaid, both completely knackered. When they got to Annie’s turning, the driver began to indicate left. Kingdom reached across, cancelling the indicator. Then he nodded at the two-way radio under the dashboard, a constant stream of messages from the dispatcher.

  ‘Take me to your leader,’ he said, ‘change of plan.’

  Kingston Cabhire operated from premises behind the railway station. The dispatcher, a middle-aged woman, was too busy to answer Kingdom’s questions and told him to talk to the boss. The boss, just now, was having a snack in the Wimpy Bar round the corner. Kingdom found him at a table beside the deep fryer, a thick-set, middle-aged man with a day’s growth of beard and a collarless shirt, open at the neck. His ha
lf-pounder dripped with ketchup and after every mouthful he carefully wiped his chin with the back of his hand.

  Kingdom slipped into the seat opposite. He showed his ID long enough to register the look in the man’s eyes. Someone’s been here before, he thought. Someone’s told him to expect me.

  Kingdom helped himself to a chip. ‘Customer of yours from Kew,’ he said, ‘a woman called Annie Meredith.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Last Saturday. You’d have the records.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I want to know where she went. The address.’

  The man looked at Kingdom for a moment or two. The remains of the burger lay on his plate. Kingdom wondered briefly about ordering one himself, then thought better of it.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘shall we go back to the office?’

  ‘No point.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We don’t … ah … keep records.’

  ‘At all?’

  ‘Of the destinations?’ The man shook his head. ‘Never.’

  ‘Then maybe you’ll tell me who took her. I’m sure you’ve got a record of that.’

  The man frowned a moment, reaching for a paper napkin, buying time. ‘Bloke’s left,’ he announced at last, ‘gone.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He finished with his chin and started on his forehead, leaving a thin film of ketchup below the hairline. ‘Fucking typical. These days.’

  Kingdom nodded, saying nothing. Then he sat back, smothering a yawn, a smile on his face. ‘You pay your drivers shit,’ he said at last, ‘they’re all on the black. No stamps. No NI. Half the poor bastards are foreign, and I’m sure most of them don’t even have work permits.’ He reached for another chip. ‘You’ve gor ten minutes to tell me what I want to know. Otherwise …’ He shrugged. ‘It might get heavy.’