Single Obsession

by Des Ekin

  ‘I can’t say, Minister.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have it. I’m going to have to change it now.’ He became less hostile, more resigned. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Hunt?’

  ‘Hunter. I’d just like to put a couple of questions to you.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Valentia’s voice expressed his deep personal regret. ‘I’m really, truly sorry, Mr Hunter, but you’re going to have to go through my press officer. I hate this damn bureaucracy too, but it’s party policy. Hold on, I’ll get his number …’

  ‘This is personal, Minister, if you’ll just bear with me for a moment.’

  ‘Mr Hunter.’ There was an indulgent laugh. ‘I really don’t have time.’

  ‘It’s about Kate Spain.’

  The pantomime suddenly stopped. There was a long, long silence. If Hunter hadn’t heard Valentia’s steady breathing, he would have been convinced the Minister had hung up on him.

  ‘What about Kate Spain?’ The voice was dangerously calm.

  ‘We have a signed statement from a friend of Ms Spain’s. She maintains that you were one of the last people to see her alive. That you picked Kate up in a blue Corolla at 11.00pm on 20 October, just hours before she was murdered.’ He gave Valentia the registration number. ‘We’ve established that this Corolla was rented to your wife Ruth on that date.’

  Silence.

  ‘I wanted to ask you if this was true. That you gave her a lift at that time.’

  Silence.

  ‘Because that’s what our witness is claiming in a statement to the police.’

  Silence.

  ‘Have you any comment to make on these allegations?’

  Hunter was sure he’d been disconnected. He was about to hang up and try again when he heard a deep inward breath, followed by a nasal sigh. No, not a sigh; more a whine. The painful whinge of a beaten dog.

  ‘And you’re going to print this?’ asked Valentia. His voice was almost a whimper.

  ‘That depends on your response, sir,’ Hunter said truthfully. ‘We need to get your side of the story.’

  The line went quiet again.

  ‘Minister?’

  ‘Sweet Jesus.’ The Minister sounded old and broken. ‘You can’t do this to me.’

  Hunter stared at the phone in disbelief. He’d expected angry denials, outrage, threats of injunctions. He hadn’t expected this anguished cry of humiliation.

  ‘Did you give her a lift home that night, sir?’ he persisted.

  Silence.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘This is it,’ whispered Valentia. ‘This is the end.’

  And then the line went dead.

  ‘YOU can’t publish this crap!’

  It was hardly the language of the Chancery Division of the High Court, but it made the point nonetheless. Whether he was arguing a fine point of constitutional law before a tribunal, or advising Simon Addison on the libel laws, barrister Samuel Zeicker was not a man to mince his words.

  It was eight o’clock on that same Monday evening, four hours before the magazine’s deadline. Hunter had called in a legal team of solicitors, experts in defamation law, to check over the big story. Appalled at the risk, the lawyers had insisted on calling in counsel for a second opinion. When he received the summons, Samuel Zeicker had been in his favourite restaurant, enjoying a perfect Dover sole washed down by a rather nice Montrachet. Not even the prospect of an astronomical fee could mollify his rumbling stomach.

  ‘The damned thing is unpublishable,’ said Zeicker. ‘Print this crap and you’ll be working for Valentia for the rest of your natural lives.’

  There was an embarrassed pause while the two solicitors reeled under the onslaught. Hunter exchanged glances with Addison. To his surprise, the publisher was grinning all over his tanned face. Confidence or cannabis? Hunter couldn’t be sure.

  He looked back at Zeicker. The barrister wasn’t a tall man, but he exuded an aura of controlled aggression.

  One of the solicitors cleared his throat. ‘I think it might be helpful, Mr Zeicker, if we went over the specific problems, one by one, rather than the … er … macro,’ he suggested.

  ‘Fine by me,’ said Zeicker. ‘Specific problems are line one, line two, line three and every other line to the end of the bloody article.’

  He fell silent. The two solicitors shuffled their feet and said nothing. Only Addison seemed to be hugely enjoying the show.

  Zeicker glowered at the solicitors as though they’d written the article themselves. ‘All right, all right,’ he said testily. ‘It’s been cleverly written to make Valentia look like an innocent who just happened to talk to the wrong girl at the wrong time, but that’s not going to help us in court.’

  ‘It is, if we can prove it’s true,’ Hunter pointed out. Zeicker didn’t intimidate him. Hunter kept reminding himself that Street Talk was paying his bill.

  ‘How?’ Zeicker shot back. ‘By calling Mags Whatsername? A common prostitute? “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I call my first – and only – witness, a young lady who’s prepared to do anything for cash. She’s got no scruples, no morals, and she makes no contribution at all to our society, yet I’m asking you, twelve decent taxpaying members of the community, to accept her word over the word of a Cabinet Minister.’’’ He snorted resonantly. ‘She wouldn’t last five minutes.’

  ‘But she’s not our only witness,’ Mark Tobey interjected. ‘We can subpoena our police source, the man who has a copy of that formal statement she made to the cops.’

  Zeicker turned slowly to Mark and studied him as though he were a particularly revolting insect. After staring rudely in silence for ten seconds or so, he simply turned away again.

  ‘Mr Hunter,’ he said, totally ignoring Mark, ‘I assume you have a copy of this alleged statement to the police.’

  ‘We don’t have a copy,’ said Hunter. ‘But Mark has seen it.’

  Zeicker decided to notice Mark after all. ‘So you saw the original?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, I saw a photocopy.’

  Zeicker sighed. ‘Well, ask bloody Valentia if he’ll be content to accept a photocopy of Simon Addison’s cheque when he sues you for libel,’ he said.

  There was another long silence, during which Zeicker’s fingers drummed loudly on the wooden desk. At last he said, ‘I can’t see any way around this. The thrust of your article is to suggest that Valentia was involved in some way in the murder of Kate Spain, either directly or as an accessory. I know’ – he raised his arm to forestall the interjection – ‘I know you don’t actually say so, but there’s a clear innuendo. It’s what a reasonable person would infer from the article.’

  He lifted the proof copy of the story. ‘My advice, if I haven’t already made myself clear, is to tear this into very small pieces and flush it down the jacks.’ He donned his expensive black cashmere overcoat, checked his watch, and turned to Simon. ‘I don’t usually discuss the sordid subject of coin, Mr Addison,’ he said, ‘but this session has just cost you a hundred a minute. Take my advice, and it will be the wisest money you’ve ever spent.’

  He bustled out, honking noisily into his handkerchief. Looking embarrassed, the two solicitors filed out after him.

  Hunter tilted his chair back and wearily rubbed his face with his palms. Mark was angrily stomping around the open-plan office, kicking metal waste-bins.

  At last Hunter opened his eyes. To his amazement, Simon Addison was still grinning with delight.

  ‘Well, wot you waitin’ for?’ Addison asked in his broadest punk-rock Cockney. ‘Never mind the bollocks. We’re gonna publish anyway.’

  ‘WAY to go!’ Mark Tobey cheered, picking up one of the waste-bins and banging it like a parade drum. ‘Good for you, Simon. Publish and be damned.’

  They both turned around and looked at Hunter, who had gone very quiet.

  ‘What do you say, Hunter?’ asked Mark. ‘Do we run with the story, or do we run with the story?’

  Hunter took a long, deep breath and shook his h
ead.

  ‘I hate to say it,’ he said, ‘but Zeicker is right. We can’t go on the basis of what we’ve got. It’s not enough.’

  ‘What?’ Mark said.

  ‘It’s not enough,’ Hunter repeated. ‘We’re going to need a proper comment from Valentia. A formal statement, not just garbled rubbish. We’ll need a comment from the Garda Press Office and the Department of Justice. And we’ll have to get our hands on Mags’s statement to the police, somehow or other, if it means doorstepping every single cop in the station. I think we should hold off until our next issue.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Hunter,’ Mark exploded in fury. ‘Grow a pair of balls.’

  Hunter stared at him. He’d never seen his news editor so angry about anything.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mark. There’s two hours to deadline and I have to make a decision. We hold off.’

  Mark tried another tack. ‘Hunter,’ he pleaded, ‘do you realise how many hacks there are out there, just begging, praying, pleading to get the sort of story we’ve got, just once in their miserable lifetimes? We only get one shot at the big one. One shot! Don’t throw it away!’

  ‘We’ll get the story, Mark,’ Hunter shouted back. ‘We’ll get the bloody story, but we’ll get it right. Another seven days won’t make any difference. Kate Spain won’t be any less dead.’

  ‘Simon.’ Mark turned on his heel. ‘What do you say?’

  Addison was about to answer when Hunter’s mobile phone rang.

  ‘Yeah,’ Hunter shouted into the mouthpiece with unnecessary aggression. Then he became very quiet. ‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘Give me that last bit again. No, not that. The bit about the marks on his face.’

  There was something in the tone of his voice. Mark stopped his noisy rampage around the newsroom. Even Addison seemed to emerge temporarily from his narcotic stupor.

  They waited in silence until Hunter replaced the phone in his pocket. ‘That was Emma,’ he said quietly. His face had turned deathly pale. ‘Her house was broken into tonight. She surprised the guy in the act. And I think I know who it was.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Chato Cook.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Mark, sitting down. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Who the hell is Chato Cook?’ demanded Addison.

  They both ignored him.

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Hunter said. ‘Tough-looking, Brillo-pad hair, big red birthmark like a slanted exclamation point across his right cheek.’

  ‘That’s him, all right. Can’t be two people in the world as ugly as that.’

  ‘Who’s Chato Cook?’ Addison asked again.

  Hunter wasn’t listening. He was staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Dear God,’ he whispered. ‘Why did it have to be Chato Cook?’

  ‘CHARLTON Athletic Shelbourne Cook,’ Mark was explaining to Addison. ‘Born in the north inner city thirty-six years ago. His father was a soccer fanatic who christened him after his two favourite football teams, just before he ran off and left his family in the lurch. The kid was nicknamed Chato, after an Indian chief in an old Charles Bronson movie.’ Mark drew imaginary warpaint diagonally across his right cheek. ‘And the name stuck. He grew up to become one of the most vicious thugs in the Dublin underworld.’

  ‘Yeah? So what’s he doin’ hanging out in Passage North?’

  ‘That’s what we don’t know. His speciality is intimidation. It could be that he’s been hired to put pressure on Emma.’

  Addison looked sceptical. ‘What kinda thing is the dude likely to do?’ he asked.

  ‘The dude is likely to do anything,’ said Mark. ‘Chato Cook has built up his reputation as a gangland enforcer, a debt-collector, a retribution man. Basically, he inflicts pain for a living. And he does it because he enjoys doing it.’

  Hunter wasn’t listening. He was still in shock. The thought of the country’s most sadistic gangster targeting his son and his former girlfriend chilled him to the bone.

  Emma had picked Robbie up at the crèche at six-thirty and driven home. She’d walked straight into her living room to find the place in chaos – drawers upturned on the floor, paper scattered everywhere. Before she’d had time to take it all in, a thickset figure in a leather jacket had burst out of her office, hurled her out of his way, and escaped through the front door. She immediately recognised his face – the distinctive birthmark, the killer eyes …

  ‘What Chato likes to do,’ Mark was saying, ‘is to video his victims’ last hours and then send a copy to their relatives. You must have heard of the most famous episode – it’s passed into gangland legend. Chato and his brother were both working for the same drug baron. The drug baron blamed the brother for stealing a shipment of heroin. He wasn’t sure whether Chato was involved as well, so he decided to test him by hiring him as hatchet man. Chato’s reputation was at stake. He kidnapped his brother, tortured him to death, and sent the video to his own sister-in-law as proof.’

  ‘Heavy,’ said Addison in awe.

  Mark nodded. ‘After that, nobody messed with Chato any more. He’s working freelance now. Short-term contracts, hiring himself out to the highest bidder. And what makes it even worse –’

  ‘Is that he’s got a particular grudge against me,’ Hunter supplied dully.

  ‘How come?’ Addison demanded.

  Mark Tobey grimaced. ‘This goes way back. To when Hunter was working for the Evening Mercury. He wrote about a protection racket that was going on in the south inner city. You didn’t pay up, you had your Merc or your Beemer destroyed with some sort of chemical.’

  ‘Thermite,’ Hunter said.

  Mark nodded. ‘That’s it. He just poured this stuff over the bonnet and it ate right through the engine. None of the victims wanted to talk. But Hunter passed his findings on to the police. The cops set up a sting, and Chato was caught in the act of turning a Daimler into a Dali. He got four years. And he’s been swearing to get Hunter ever since.’

  ‘Is this true, my man?’

  Hunter nodded slowly.

  Mark was on his feet again, pacing up and down the office. ‘This is intimidation. I’m convinced of it. Valentia’s hired that scumbag to put pressure on Hunter.’ He slammed his fist on a desk. ‘Journalists can’t give in to this sort of pressure,’ he said firmly. ‘We just can’t. We have to run that story now, if only to show that they can’t shut us up by intimidation.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mark.’ Hunter’s voice came out from behind his palms, which were still covering his face. ‘The decision still stands.’

  ‘But you’re just playing into their hands. You’re just –’

  Addison raised his hand for silence. ‘Mark, my man – somebody has to make the decision,’ he said solemnly. ‘The buck has to stop somewhere.’ He turned to his editor. ‘I’ve got total faith in your judgement, Hunter. If you say we hold off, we hold off.’

  ‘Thank you, Simon.’

  Addison clapped his hands decisively. ‘Right, that’s it, then,’ he announced. ‘We go with the fallback story, the bank scandal. Your deputy editor will take over and steer this big jumbo in to land. Hunter, you take a couple of days off and get your ass up to Passage North. Right now. That’s an order. This is a time when a little boy needs his pa.’

  Addison sounded like a bad country-and-western song, but Hunter wasn’t even listening. His entire body was shaking with shock.

  ‘I appreciate that, Simon,’ he said. For all Addison’s faults, he could show a surprising capacity for compassion when it was needed. ‘I’ll take you up on that.’ He rose and searched for his coat in the untidy office. ‘There shouldn’t be any problems. Our alternative edition is all wrapped up and ready to go.’

  Addison waved his hand magnanimously. ‘Don’t thank me, my man,’ he said. ‘I’ll be docking it off your salary.’

  THE streets of Dublin were almost deserted as Hunter drove to Ranelagh. He phoned Emma on the way home, and promised that he’d set out for Passage North at first light. She sounded relieved.

&n
bsp; ‘Would you mind staying at my house?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘In the spare bedroom? I’d feel a lot safer. It’s not something I’d ask normally, because it’s obviously unfair to Jill, but –’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Hunter assured her. He tried to keep his voice neutral. ‘Jill won’t mind in the least.’

  He ended the call and pulled into a twenty-four-hour filling station to top up his tank for the long journey ahead.

  The teenager behind the security screen took his credit card, then handed it back with an insulting grin. It had been refused. Hunter gave him a different card, one he kept for emergencies. It was refused too.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Hunter said irritably.

  He walked across to a nearby cash dispenser and inserted his bank card. The machine said it was sorry, but it was unable to provide a cash service for him at this time.

  Hunter resisted the temptation to kick the dispenser. Luckily, he’d enough cash in his wallet. Bloody technology, he thought to himself. He’d complain to the bank first thing in the morning.

  He switched on his radio to calm himself down as he drove the short distance home. Political pundits from the main newspapers were being asked to forecast the results of Thursday’s general election.

  They all came up with more or less the same scenario. Each of them predicted that the man who’d decide the shape of the next government would be Joseph Valentia.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘WHAT have you done with Joseph Valentia? Hand him back at once. We need him.’

  Hunter held the mobile phone to his ear and tried groggily to identify the voice on the other end of the line. The green digital display on the phone told him it was 6.15am. For a second or two, he wasn’t even sure where he was. The room looked vaguely familiar. Single bed, oak wardrobes, open window, smell of salt and oil and fish … suddenly it clicked. He was in Emma’s spare bedroom in Passage North.

  ‘What?’ he mumbled stupidly.

  ‘Someone has stolen our beloved Tánaiste. Now listen carefully. We’re going to switch off all the lights, and if he’s replaced on the mantelpiece, no questions will be asked.’