Single Obsession

by Des Ekin

  Hunter picked up a folder containing all his notes on the Valentia affair. He hadn’t meant to mention it to Simon yet, but he’d been left with no choice.

  As he outlined the story, Addison’s jaw dropped. Then his face turned hard.

  ‘I went to boarding school with Joe Valentia,’ he said slowly. ‘We used to lead rival gangs. We’d have contests to see who could pee highest up against the ceramic. Didn’t stop when we left school. We’ve been big business rivals. He cost me two hundred grand when we both bid for the same company a few years ago.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you two had a history.’

  Addison was still shaking his head. ‘Joe Valentia,’ he repeated incredulously. ‘Joe Valentia. Hunter, I’m telling you one thing. If you can bring me Valentia’s ugly head on a platter, you’ll never want for anything. I’ll make you so rich you can retire at forty if you want to.’

  Hunter tried to hide his astonishment. It was the first time he’d encountered any human emotion from Addison.

  ‘Don’t get carried away, Simon,’ he said. ‘There’s still a lot of checking to be done before we can even think of publishing this.’

  Addison leaned forward. ‘I want the story for the tenth-anniversary issue,’ he ordered.

  ‘Can’t be done. The deadline’s only a few days away. We’ve got a lot of other good material lined up for that.’

  ‘Read my lips, my man.’ Addison was leaning forward, deadly serious. ‘I want it for the anniversary issue.’

  ‘There’s another problem. Our anniversary issue comes out on the eve of the election,’ Hunter pointed out. ‘This story could influence the result. It could even cause the collapse of the Government. We have to think about this very carefully, Simon. Very coolly and calmly.’

  Addison didn’t even hear him. He rose to leave. ‘It’s scheduled for the anniversary issue,’ he repeated. ‘Capeesh?’

  Chapter Five

  THE clock on the wall said 8.00pm. The Street Talk offices were deserted. Hunter sat alone in his office and dialled a number, one he knew by heart.

  ‘Hello?’ said a female voice.

  ‘I’d like to engage the services of an escort girl,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir. Any preferences? Blonde, brunette? Asian, black, Scandinavian?’

  ‘Albino,’ Hunter said.

  ‘Albino?’

  ‘Yes, she has to be albino. And Japanese, if possible.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ The warm Liverpudlian voice carried just the right tone of regret. ‘We’re all out of albino geisha girls.’ She burst out laughing. ‘How are you, Hunter? I haven’t heard from you for ages.’

  ‘I’m fine, Shirley. How’s business?’

  ‘Oh, comes and goes, as they say.’

  Hunter smiled. Shirley was one of his best news contacts. ‘I need to pick your brain. If you’ve got a minute.’

  ‘I always have time for you, Hunter. You know that. What can I do?’

  ‘Ever heard of a woman called Margaret Jackson? Mags for short?’

  ‘Never heard of her. Working girl, is she?’

  ‘Yes. Street girl. Up in Passage North.’

  ‘Wouldn’t know her, then. It’s a long way from Dublin.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But I know a lady who works on the game in Passage North. Maura Granby, a former employee of mine. She’s retired from escort work, but she still takes the occasional gentleman now and again. Very low-key, very discreet, all done through taxi-men and hotel porters she trusts. No street work. But she’d know all her business rivals. I’ll give her a bell tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks, Shirl. It’s really important.’

  ‘No problem, dear. Oh, and Hunter? If I can get a Japanese albino in time for tomorrow night, shall I put your name down?’

  There was no time to reply. She’d hung up.

  HUNTER had just started transcribing his notes of the Mags Jackson interview when his phone rang.

  ‘You forgot, didn’t you?’ Claire’s voice whispered.

  ‘What? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at university. In the middle of a lecture on Wittgenstein.’ She kept her voice to a surreptitious whisper. In the background, a male voice droned monotonously. ‘And I suddenly thought, he’s forgotten. He’s so wrapped up in this story that he’s forgotten all about it.’

  ‘Forgotten what?’

  ‘Your dinner party.’

  Hunter looked up at the clock. Eight-fifteen.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ he said.

  BY the time he turned the key in the front door of his terraced house in Ranelagh, the clock was striking nine. Jill was sitting on the arm of the sofa, making small talk with her friend Anya Turnberry and Anya’s husband Barry. The other guests were new neighbours. They were pacing up and down the hallway, trying to placate a screaming baby.

  ‘Hunter! How wonderful to see you!’ Anya stood up and kissed empty space on either side of his face. ‘So glad you could make it along after all. Jill’s been working so hard, all by herself.’

  Anya was a tall, dark-haired woman in her late thirties, whose painfully thin figure was kept emaciated by punishing diets. She had an unnaturally fixed smile that was not reflected in her eyes, and she maintained a constant air of breeziness, as though she were perpetually auditioning for the role of a society hostess in a 1950s British movie. She unnerved Hunter.

  ‘Sorry,’ Hunter said, to Jill. He kissed her briefly on the lips. ‘I know I’m late. I had some work to clear up.’

  Jill nodded, but didn’t reply. She ran her hand through her long brown hair and avoided his eyes. Hunter exchanged pleasantries with the rest of the guests and topped up their wineglasses. Only Anya refused, with a silent shake of her head and a hand shielding her glass.

  Hunter finished his round, replaced the bottle in the fridge and then helped himself to a mineral water.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt you, darling,’ Anya said suddenly, breaking through her husband’s monologue, ‘but do you mind awfully if I have a glass of wine too, Hunter?’ She gave a tinkling little laugh that implied embarrassment over his faux pas. ‘Or do you think I’ve had too much?’

  She held out her empty glass ostentatiously while the others laughed.

  Hunter silently bit his lip. Caught out again, by another trick in Anya’s endless repertoire.

  ‘I can assure you,’ Anya was saying merrily, as he went all the way back to the fridge to fetch the wine, ‘that I’m not the one who’s the alcoholic.’

  The new neighbours joined in her cheerful laughter, obviously thinking that this was some sort of in-joke between friends.

  Her voice suddenly became solemn. ‘I do hope I haven’t put my foot in it,’ she told them in a piercing whisper. ‘Poor Hunter really is an alcoholic. It’s a terrible curse, but Jill is so brave. He won’t mind me telling you, I’m sure.’

  ‘DON’T touch me,’ Jill snapped. ‘Just leave me alone.’

  It was midnight. The neighbours had left. Barry had fallen asleep on the sofa.

  ‘Your dinner was delicious,’ Hunter reassured her. ‘Everyone enjoyed it.’

  She shook her head. ‘It was ruined by the time you got home. And that bloody baby lay fast asleep until nine. We could all have had our meal in peace if you’d come home on time.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I just lost track of time.’

  ‘You promised.’

  ‘God knows what Mike and Roz must think,’ Anya chimed in. ‘You’ll never see them again, I assure you. And he’s the head of marketing at that big dot-com company. He’d have been a wonderful business contact for Jill. Congratulations, Hunter.’

  Hunter tried to keep calm as he poured himself another coffee. ‘So why did you have to tell them I was an alcoholic?’

  ‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s true, but I like to tell people myself, in my own way.’

  Anya gave a theatrical gasp of disbelief. ‘Oh, so it’s all my fault that the evening was a disaster? You must be insane if you think I wo
uld deliberately ruin my best friend’s dinner party, at a time when poor Jill is going through … what she’s going through.’

  She let the last few words hang in the air like a cloud of napalm.

  ‘She’s right, Hunter,’ said Jill. She tossed off her shoes, planted herself angrily on the sofa, and began leafing noisily through an old copy of Cosmopolitan. The turning pages made a noise like sniper fire. ‘Anya wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. She’s the only friend I’ve got.’

  ‘You know what, Hunter?’ slurred Anya. ‘You’re pathetic. Not content with making poor Jill suffer through your … your farce of a marriage, you turn round and accuse me of –’

  ‘That’s enough, Anya,’ snapped Hunter. ‘Our marriage is none of your business.’

  He sat beside Jill and put his arm around her. He noticed that her eyes were glistening with tears and her mascara was starting to run.

  ‘I think you should leave now, Anya,’ he said.

  Anya fixed him with her brightest smile. ‘I’ll leave when Jill asks me to leave,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to leave, Jill?’

  Jill shook her head miserably.

  Anya shot Hunter a look of triumph. ‘You see, Hunter,’ she said sweetly, ‘Jill has already told me how she feels. She says she doesn’t love you any more. She doesn’t know if she ever did. And she’s told me she wants a divorce.’

  ‘IT’S too late, Hunter,’ Jill whispered, when he tried to talk to her about it. It was one o’clock in the morning and they were alone at last. Listening to the finality in her voice, he wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the hour or the status of their relationship.

  ‘We have to talk about it sometime,’ he said.

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ said Jill. ‘I’m leaving you. Eventually we’ll get a divorce. There are no children. There’s no problem.’

  Hunter tried unsuccessfully to look into her eyes, to find out what she was thinking. It was impossible. The hazel eyes flitted restlessly around the room, resting here, there and everywhere. She never once looked directly at her husband.

  ‘There’s someone else,’ said Hunter. ‘Isn’t there.’ It wasn’t a question.

  She sighed. Her eyes flitted to the curtain pole over the window. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘There’s someone else.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  She seemed oddly amused. ‘I’ll tell you who it is when you need to know,’ she said at last.

  ‘I need to know now.’

  ‘I’ve been talking a lot to Anya. She says I need more space. More freedom. She thinks I should be celebrating my individuality and my femininity. Exploring new possibilities and experiences.’

  Hunter had known for a long time that this moment was coming. It had been an ill-fated marriage right from the start. When they’d first been introduced, Jill had been on the rebound from a messy affair with a married lawyer. Hunter had been on the rebound from his relationship with Emma. When they’d fallen into each other’s arms, they had mistaken it for love. In fact, it had meant nothing more than the frantic clutching of two strangers sharing their terror on a roller-coaster ride.

  ‘Jill,’ he said softly, ‘you may be right, you may be wrong, but when it comes down to it, you have to be responsible for your own decisions. Nobody can live your life for you. Not me. Not Anya.’

  ‘And not Emma?’

  ‘What’s Emma got to do with it?’

  ‘She’s got everything to do with it. You never really left her, did you? All those weekend trips up to Passage North to see Emma and Robbie. That’s all I ever heard. Bloody Emma and bloody Robbie.’

  Hunter sighed. ‘We’ve talked about this over and over again. Robbie’s my son and I need to visit him. I wanted to take you with me to Passage North –’

  ‘And I told you I’d rather spend my weekend having my appendix removed without anaesthetic than spend a weekend in fecking Passage North.’

  ‘Robbie could have come to visit us in Dublin, and that would have solved the whole problem.’

  ‘Not for me, it wouldn’t. This is my house, not her house. Why should I have somebody else’s child in my house?’

  ‘See what I mean? You left me with no choice, Jill.’

  ‘Well, it’s all academic now. You can travel to Passage North every day, for all I care. Anya was right. You don’t deserve me.’

  ‘Jill –’

  ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow,’ she said over her shoulder, as she climbed the stairs towards the spare bedroom.

  Hunter paused on the bottom stair. He wanted to follow her, spin her around and make her listen to him. He wanted to tell her everything about Anya, the full story behind her bitter grudge against him. But something held him back, as it always did. He could call it a sense of decency, call it keeping his word, call it anything he liked – he had never told tales on Anya, and he knew he probably never would.

  He stared at the living-room sofa, and his mind went back to that midsummer night sixteen months ago.

  They’d just returned from their honeymoon. Anya had been waiting for them in their new home with a surprise meal. The two women had polished off two bottles of Pineau de Charentes; Hunter had sat down in front of the TV to watch the late news, and had fallen asleep.

  When he awoke, he thought it was Jill’s hand under his shirt, Jill’s lips kissing his neck and ears. But as he opened his eyes, he saw that it was Anya who was leaning over him, struggling to undo his buttons, whispering huskily into his ear.

  ‘Jill’s gone to bed, Hunter. No one need ever know. You want this, I want it … God, it’s been so long …’

  She’d left the house five minutes later, tight-lipped and silent, stung and humiliated by his rejection. He’d tried to be tactful, laughing the whole thing off as a side effect of the Pineau. They’d agreed that the whole episode was best forgotten, and that no one should ever be told – least of all Jill.

  What he hadn’t realised, as the door closed behind her, was that he had just made a bitter and vindictive enemy who, from that moment onwards, would do everything in her power to destroy him.

  Chapter Six

  IT was decision time, the moment Hunter had been dreading. All the research on the Valentia story had been done, all the angles covered. Now it was time to phone the Minister, confront him with the allegations, and get his side of the story.

  He looked out of his office window into the bright lights of Baggot Street. It was 5.30pm, and the city was throbbing with the impatient energy of mass exodus. Commuters were scurrying through the rain towards waiting buses and trains. Cars were already gridlocked. The frosty air shimmered with exhaust fumes.

  The calendar on his desk said Monday, 20 November. Just three days to go before Thursday’s general election. Two days before Street Talk was due to hit the streets. Most of the magazine was pre-printed, but it had a wraparound section for news, and the deadline for that was midnight.

  Playing safe, Hunter had prepared two alternative editions. One was the fallback issue, featuring a banking scandal – the material they’d intended to use before they’d stumbled upon the bigger exposé. The other edition featured the Valentia story.

  For the past few days, ever since Jill dropped her divorce bombshell, Hunter had immersed himself in work. All his personal problems had been set aside as he became caught up in the unique buzz of activity that comes with a major story. He’d phoned Mags Jackson several times on her mobile to check and recheck details. He’d written pages of background material on the Minister’s career, including some minor controversies that had emerged before. He’d had his researchers dig up pictures and location shots.

  Meanwhile, Mark Tobey had travelled to Passage North and spent two full days digging for information. He hadn’t unearthed any new witnesses, but he’d become unshakeably convinced of the accuracy of the story.

  Hunter had designed the front page himself. It showed a full-face photo of Valentia in hazy monochrome, with two arresting images superimposed over it
– one a holiday photo of Kate Spain, smiling, in happier times; the other showing forensic experts at the scene where her body had been discovered. The main headline read: ‘The Murder Victim and the Minister’ and, underneath, in smaller type: ‘Kate Spain’s Last Hours: The Questions that Need to be Answered’.

  Four inside pages had been devoted to the exclusive. The main story, simple and unsensational, had been written by Hunter. It kept to the facts and made no mention of the other two victims.

  ‘The mystery over the murder of twenty-two-year-old Kate Spain took a new twist this week with the allegation that the Tánaiste, Joseph Valentia, was one of the last people to see her alive.

  ‘A friend of the dead girl has made a formal statement to police claiming to have seen Ms Spain get into a car driven by the fifty-one-year-old Minister at around 11.00pm on 20 October …’

  And so it went on. Simon Addison, of course, had been delighted. He’d wanted a blitz on publicity, beginning the moment the magazine hit the street.

  ‘I want posters, radio slots, TV,’ he’d shouted. ‘I want the print order doubled! Tripled! Hunter, you’re a genius.’

  Now, sitting at his desk alone, Hunter was about to finish the job. He was about to press the final button, undo the final catch, that would open Pandora’s box.

  He lifted the phone, hesitated for a moment, and then set it down again.

  How on earth do you phone up the Deputy Prime Minister and ask him if he’s committed murder?

  HUNTER dialled the number of Valentia’s mobile phone, checking and double-checking each digit as he punched the keys. A wrong number would be highly embarrassing.

  ‘Hello?’

  Even in those two syllables, the Irish-American twang was unmistakable.

  ‘Hello, I’d like to speak to the Tánaiste, Joseph Valentia, please.’

  ‘Speaking. Who is this?’

  ‘My name is Hunter. I’m the editor of Street Talk magazine in Dublin. I wondered if I could have a few words with you about –’

  ‘Where the hell did you get this number?’ Valentia was genuinely annoyed.