Sabbathman

by Hurley, Graham

The driver had turned the music off now. Like Kingdom, he sat in silence, waiting for the sheep, gazing at the view.

  ‘Been up here long?’ Kingdom asked.

  ‘Me?’ the driver laughed. ‘I’m in and out of the place. Back and forth. Strictly part-time.’

  ‘You can do that?’

  ‘Sure. No problem.’

  ‘And you like it? The work? The island?’

  ‘Yeah …’ He sounded reflective now. ‘Yeah, I do. I like the peace of the place. And the weather, too, believe it or not. Drives some people mad, the wind especially, but I love it. You get the odd day off, you know, when the old man’s feeling generous, and you can be in the hills all day and not see a soul. Just the sheep. Magic.’

  Kingdom nodded. ‘The old man?’ he said lightly.

  ‘Dave. Dave Gifford.’

  ‘And he runs the place?’

  ‘Yeah. You talked to him this morning. About those boots of yours.’

  ‘Of course,’ Kingdom nodded. ‘So what’s he like? Patient? Only I haven’t done this kind of thing for a while.’

  The driver looked at Kingdom in the mirror again. The light was beginning to fade but there was no mistaking the smile that curled his lips.

  ‘Dave?’ he said lightly. ‘I’m the last person to ask.’

  Kingdom frowned, not understanding. ‘Why’s that?’

  The driver didn’t answer for a moment. Then he turned round in the seat, extending a hand. ‘My name’s Andy,’ he said. ‘I’m Dave’s son.’

  It took another forty minutes to get to the Adventure Centre. Kingdom spent most of the journey with his eyes shut and his head bumping against the window. He’d established in minutes that Andy Gifford had spent the entire weekend at An Carraig. They’d had trouble with the wellhead pump they used to supply the bunkhouses with fresh water and it had been his job to help one of the instructors sort the problem out. They’d stripped the thing down and traced the fault to a crack in one of the metal seatings but the weather had slowed them down and even if they’d fancied a wild night in the fleshpots of Kyle, it would have been out of the question. The last ferry on Saturday had left at five o’clock and after that the island had effectively been cut off. Kingdom had followed the story nut by nut, bolt by bolt, knowing that it must be true. When Willoughby Grant was shot, Andy Gifford had been 300 miles away, helping to mend a dodgy water pump. So who on earth had been out on the moor? Who had pulled the trigger? Sent the note? Added yet another notch to Sabbathman’s gun?

  The Adventure Centre, An Carraig, lay in a bowl between the mountains and the sea, a collection of stout timber huts roughly fortified against the weather. Sheep cropped the surrounding grass and there were a couple of dogs chained to a post beside the cindered hard-standing where Andy brought the minibus to a halt. He helped Kingdom from the bus, stooping to pat one of the dogs. Upright again, he grinned and suggested a drink. Kingdom grinned back. There was still enough light to get his first good look at Andy’s face. The eyes, as both Clare Baxter and Jo Hubbard had mentioned, were the palest blue.

  Kingdom followed Andy towards a small white house beyond the huts. Away to the left, a heavy swell was breaking on a pebble beach. The beach was protected by rocky headlands on both flanks and there was a tidy line of canoes upturned on the rising ground beyond the high-water mark. Mountains rose beyond the headlands, a depthless black against the darkening sky. The wind had died now, and apart from the growl of the breakers, the silence was unbroken.

  Andy paused outside the house, stamping the mud from his boots. There were a couple of lobster creels propped against the wall and above them, on the window-sill, someone had left a hand-line, the kind you use for mackerel fishing, the hooks baited with feathers. Beside the door, roughly chiselled in blue-grey slate, was the name of the house, ‘An Carraig’, and from somewhere deep inside came the voice of a BBC newscaster. Sarajevo, he was saying, was under renewed bombardment.

  Kingdom followed Andy into the house. The front door opened into a narrow, stone-flagged hall. Yellow waterproofs hung on a line of hooks. Beyond the hooks, through another door, was the living room. A large man occupied the only armchair. He was wearing a pair of ancient tracksuit bottoms and a faded blue denim shirt and his feet were bare. Copies of National Geographic lay in a pile beside his chair and a huge mug of tea was steaming on top. The sock on his left hand was in even worse shape than the tracksuit bottoms and he was attacking the biggest hole with stabs from a darning needle. He grunted at Andy and looked up as Kingdom came in. Except for the glasses, the face hadn’t changed since he’d posed outside the tent back in March with Ethne and Jo Hubbard. The same lean features, hollowed by exercise, leathered by wind and rain. The same watchfulness in the eyes. Dave Gifford. Definitely.

  ‘Quietened down nicely,’ he growled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The weather, son.’

  Kingdom looked around, recognising the gruffness in the voice, the flat Kentish accent. The room was undeniably cosy. Framed photos hung on the rough stone walls, souvenir shots from summers gone by, and there was wood everywhere, polished boards underfoot, tongue and groove panelling overhead, shelf after shelf of books. Handcarved pieces of driftwood necklaced the fireplace. Peat glowed in the hearth. A cat sprawled on a square of raffia matting. If home’s as good as this, Kingdom asked himself, why are these men putting it all at risk?

  Andy completed the introductions and fetched a chair from the room across the hall. When he came back for the second time, he carried four cans of McEwans. Dave Gifford had a map out now, Ordnance Survey, 2½-inch to the mile, and was quizzing Kingdom on what he wanted to do. It took him about a minute to realise that Kingdom’s thoughts on the matter were less than precise, and he didn’t bother to hide his impatience.

  ‘Fresh air and a bit of exercise?’ he repeated. ‘You could have got that in Hyde Park. The exercise, anyway.’

  Kingdom tried hard not to look foolish. He was better at playing the callow journalist than he’d expected.

  ‘Well …’ He shrugged. ‘You know …’

  ‘Done this before?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Where?’

  Kingdom blinked at the tone of voice. With the half-moon glasses and the piercing stare, this man could be truly intimidating. Sergeant-Major Gifford, he thought. The toast of the Aden mess.

  ‘West Country,’ he said limply, ‘Dartmoor.’

  Gifford grunted, refusing his son’s offer of a beer. Kingdom’s eyes were back on the map. Wherever you looked, there were brown contour lines, painfully close together. Gifford’s finger was anchored on the Adventure Centre.

  ‘You free tomorrow?’ he was saying to his son.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Packing done?’

  ‘More or less. There’s another van-load to go, but there’s no rush.’

  ‘What about Hughie?’

  ‘He’s with the girls. They’re taking the canoes out tomorrow. Over to Soay, weather permitting.’

  Gifford nodded, looking sharply at Kingdom again. ‘Canoeing?’ he said. ‘That appeal at all?’

  Kingdom reached for a beer and ripped off the ring-pull. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’d prefer dry land.’

  ‘OK.’ He nodded again. ‘Andy’ll take you up Sgurr Fasach. Give you an appetite, if nothing else. You bring a camera?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then take it. Brilliant views. As long as the rain holds off.’

  Gifford reached for his darning, the conversation evidently over. Andy had disappeared without a word and from the back of the house Kingdom recognised the sound of a washing machine.

  ‘I hear you had problems with the plumbing,’ he said, ‘over the weekend.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Gifford was bent over the darning, the needle tugging together the wreckage of the sock. He looked up, as gruff as ever, a man with little time for either courtesy or conversation.

  ‘Andy mentioned it. Said there’d been some problem with a pump.’

&nb
sp; ‘He’s right. Hughie could have done it single-handed, with his background. But he had a touch of flu.’

  ‘Hughie?’

  ‘One of our instructors. Came from down your way. Devon somewhere. Used to work for the water people before they took it private. Bloody useful round here. Good bloke, too. I’ll miss him.’

  ‘Is he leaving?’

  ‘We all are.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The needle paused and Gifford looked up again. ‘The place is fucked. You’re the last person I should be telling, your line of country, but too bad. Nothing wrong with the truth, is there?’

  The question came out like a challenge, terse, angry, full of bitterness, and for the first time Kingdom began to sense what was missing. The room was clean and warm. It spoke of a life rooted in this remote, solitary place, of memories gathered in and harboured, of good times photographed and framed, but there was no softness, no plants, no flowers. What it needed, what it didn’t seem to have, was a woman.

  ‘Business bad?’ Kingdom asked. ‘Recession? Is that it?’

  ‘Not really. It’s been OK, no worse than anywhere else. No,’ he shook his head, ‘it’s not that.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand. Is the lease up or something? Doesn’t the place belong to you?’

  ‘Here, you mean? This house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No,’ he dismissed the point, ‘it’s always been ours. Ours to buy. Ours to develop. And now ours to sell. You interested, then? Fancy it, do you?’

  Kingdom said he wouldn’t know where to start. He had trouble wiring plugs. Gifford got on with his darning.

  ‘Any chance of a buyer?’ Kingdom inquired after a while. ‘Anyone turned up?’

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘Someone local? In the same game?’

  ‘Fuck, no. The locals think we’re barmy, always have done. No. There’s a bloke up from London. Phoned through this morning. Due across Wednesday. Says he wants to do what we did …’ He began to laugh, a derisive cackle, the darning thrown aside, one huge hand reaching for a can of beer.

  ‘What’s that then?’ Kingdom asked. ‘Wants to do what?’

  Gifford was gazing at him now, his eyes tinged with yellow, hostile, unblinking, the stare of a man with an uncertain hold on reality. ‘Get away from it all,’ he said softly. ‘Isn’t that the phrase? Wasn’t that what you said on the phone? This morning? Good to be up here? Good to get away from it all?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Kingdom nodded, beginning to tire of the aggression and the rudeness. ‘And I meant it, too. If you live where I live, this could be the moon.’

  ‘Yeah, once maybe. Now?’ Gifford tipped the can to his mouth and took a long pull at the beer. ‘Who knows? If these bastards have their way, we’ll be a theme park. Like the rest of this fucking country.’

  ‘Which bastards?’

  A shadow fell between them. Andy had reappeared with an armful of peats. He knelt in front of the fire, busying himself, playing the housewife, asking his father whether he wanted to bother with soup. He was baking trout for supper, with loads of potatoes and greens. Afterwards, there was the remains of last night’s crumble. Listening to the exchange, Kingdom had the strong impression that Andy’s entry had been an intervention, an abrupt change of subject, a signal for the older man to calm down. This has happened before, Kingdom thought. Often.

  Dave Gifford’s body was sprawled in the armchair, his legs apart, the half-empty beer can dangling from one hand. He was humming to himself now, a Strauss piece, The Radetsky March, his eyes gazing sightlessly at some point on the ceiling.

  Andy stood up. When he wiped his hands on his jeans they left brown marks from the peat. ‘There’s telly across the way,’ he said, ‘if you’re interested.’

  Kingdom had supper in one of the huts, sitting at the end of a long pine table laid for five. The room was cheerless and cold, pictures from the wall already stacked in one corner. Two of the fellow guests were sisters from Birmingham, big sturdy girls in their early twenties who ate in total silence, exchanging grimaces from time to time when one or other of them found a bone in the trout fillets. The fourth guest was slightly older, an American PhD student from Stanford, California. He was forceful and articulate, lecturing Kingdom on his choice of footwear. The fit of the boot around the heel, he said, was the real key to the mountains. Too loose, or too tight, and Kingdom would be a cripple by lunchtime.

  ‘Where are you headed?’ he asked, as Andy appeared from the darkness with a bowl of luke-warm rhubarb crumble. ‘Which peak?’

  ‘Sgurr something,’ Kingdom said, watching Andy distribute the crumble amongst the waiting dessert plates.

  ‘Fasach,’ Andy murmured.

  The American laughed, his spoon already poised. ‘Holy shit,’ he said, ‘I wish you luck.’

  After supper, Hughie the instructor appeared. He’d evidently been asleep and he looked surprised when the girls told him that the meal was over. One of them pulled a face and said he hadn’t missed anything.

  ‘I bet,’ he said softly, unfolding a map and spreading it on the table.

  He began to take them through next morning’s programme, pointing out the landfall they’d be making on the island across the Sound. The crossing was about four miles, an hour’s moderate paddling if the wind stayed in the north-west. Kingdom remained long enough to find Sgurr Fasach on the map. As far as he could judge, it lay due west. A straight line from the Adventure Centre would put it no more than five miles away, but the country in between was a whorl of brown contour lines and the real distance, he suspected, would be far longer.

  The American was still sitting in front of the television in the corner. Kingdom joined him when he heard the opening bars of the Nine O’Clock News. The lead item featured the latest developments on the Willoughby Grant murder. The Citizen’s deputy editor spoke glumly about the loss of a great newspaperman. Staff on the paper, he said, had been deeply shocked by what he called ‘this callous, clinical killing’, and the paper’s board of directors would shortly be announcing a substantial reward for information leading to the murderer’s arrest. Listening, Kingdom couldn’t suppress a grin. All mention of Mr Angry had gone. Real life had put a bullet in Willoughby Grant’s head and the fairy tale that had served the paper so well was over. In a brief accompanying profile, the BBC reporter revealed that even Willoughby Grant himself had been a fiction. The dead editor’s real name was evidently William Green.

  The story cut to the North Yorkshire Moors and another reporter offered an update on the investigation. The hallmark of all the recent killings, she said, was their sheer efficiency and police were now concentrating on exactly how the killer had been moving around. Grant had been shot at a remote moorland spot north of Swaledale. The nearest trunk roads serving the area were the M6 and the A1. Thereafter, from the south, the killer would have been forced onto a series of secondary roads, ending up on the B6720 as far as Muker. From then on, he’d have been travelling on foot and local police were now appealing for any witnesses who may have been in the area. The search, said the reporter, was for out-of-area cars and unfamiliar faces, but even the police had admitted that the moors were popular with tourists who would – by definition – fit both these categories.

  Kingdom was staring at the screen, oblivious to the American sitting beside him. The student had been asking Kingdom about the other murders. He’d only flown in the previous week. What had been happening? Who’d been killed? Kingdom ignored the questions. The A1, he thought. The B627 something. And the name of the village, the little place they’d shown, the name stripped across the top of the general stores. Muker. He was sure of it. Muker.

  Kingdom walked at least a mile before he stopped to use the mobile phone. He followed the track inland from the house, doing his best to skirt the deeper puddles. The wind was rising again, and thin cloud veiled a crescent moon, but as his eyes became used to the darkness he could make out the line of the track, winding up
through the heather, and the blacker mass of the mountains on either side. From time to time, a lone sheep would emerge from the shadows, clattering away over the loose scree at the foot of the steeper slopes, and once he disturbed a bird of some kind, something big and awkward that flapped away into the night. At first it was cold, the wind eddying down the valley, but he was moving quickly, and by the time he stopped to make the phone call he was beginning to sweat.

  He crouched in the lee of an outcrop of rock, punching in the numbers Allder had given him, hoping the phone would work. Allder should be home by now. He’d been booked on the late afternoon flight from Inverness.

  The number began to ring and then a faint voice, barely audible.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Kingdom? That you?’

  Kingdom smiled, fighting the urge to whisper, hearing Allder bellowing into the phone. He had some news from Rob Scarman. He’d been monitoring calls from the phone box on Shanklin sea-front. Ethne Feasey had been talking to An Carraig that very morning, and Gifford had arranged for her to travel up to Skye. According to Scarman, she was due to arrive some time Thursday.

  Allder paused. ‘Will you be through by then? Only she’s seen you, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what do you think?’

  Kingdom had settled on his haunches, his back against the rock. It was getting colder by the minute. ‘What about the rest of those transcripts?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  ‘What transcripts?’

  ‘The ones on the seafront number. The one Feasey’s been using.’ He paused. ‘We need to know who ordered the tap. And what she’s been saying.’

  ‘I know. It’s in hand.’

  ‘Yeah, but when? When do we get to know?’

  Allder grunted something about procedures. Gower Street, as ever, were being difficult. As were the supervisors at the BT intercept centre. Kingdom waited until he’d finished. High up to his right, away in the distance, was a light. He peered at it, trying to decide whether it was moving or not. After a while, he decided it wasn’t. He bent to the phone. Allder had finished.

  ‘There’s a solicitor friend of mine,’ Kingdom said.