by Des Ekin
Hunter sat down slowly, stupefied. It wasn’t just the fact that he was being wrongly accused, or the duplicity Anya had shown that night – swearing him to silence in order to give herself freedom to tell her false version of the story unchallenged. It was the thought that Jill had gone through their entire marriage harbouring this illusion about him, without once asking him whether it was true. She had chosen silent forgiveness rather than communication. No wonder their relationship had been doomed from the start.
‘Jill,’ he said, his voice calm but full of conviction, ‘none of this is true. Not one word. Surely you know me better than that. You must know I wouldn’t behave in that way. What really happened was –’
‘I thought I knew you!’ Jill’s voice was almost a primal cry of pain. ‘But after that, and after this’ – she pointed at the empty TV screen, where the ghostly image of Joseph Valentia still remained in their imaginations – ‘I just can’t tell whether I know you or not. Whether I ever knew you.’
‘Jill. Just listen.’ Hunter stood up and moved towards her.
She recoiled as though he had attacked her physically. ‘Stay away, Hunter,’ she said tearfully. ‘Just leave me alone. I’ve moved in with Anya for a while, just until I can get this house back, but don’t try to contact me. Don’t phone, don’t write. It’s over. You understand?’
The phone began to ring. Jill dabbed her eyes with a tissue and stared at the handset. Hunter ignored it and it finally stopped.
‘Jill, you have to listen to my side of the story,’ he said forcefully. ‘You owe me that much.’
She hesitated, as though about to reconsider. But at that moment, the door opened and Anya appeared, carrying the cordless phone from the kitchen. She was panting with exertion, and her face bore a rapacious expression of triumph.
‘Hunter, darling, that was Simon Addison,’ she said, sweetly. ‘He doesn’t want to speak to you, but he’s sent you a message. He says you’re fired.’
IT was bitterly cold in the back of the Hiace van. Inspector Bernard Sauvage used the sleeve of his ancient Barbour jacket to wipe the condensation from the inside of the one-way glass window. He hoped the dampness in the air wouldn’t interfere with his electrical surveillance apparatus.
He’d been sitting in this van for nearly eight hours, but he wasn’t fed up and he wasn’t bored. This was how he’d spent most of his life, squatting in cramped vans, lying doubled-up in car-boots, shivering in makeshift shelters in hedges and ditches. And he had never objected to the long hours or the discomfort, so long as he got a result.
Sauvage was a large, bear-like man in his early forties, with thick black hair and a swarthiness that, like his name, betrayed his French Huguenot ancestry. In Ireland, the name Bernard is often shortened to Ber, which suited his character so aptly that his nickname was a foregone conclusion. Everyone referred to him as The Bear.
Despite his tendency to lumber around as heavily as a marauding grizzly, Sauvage had a military demeanour, which he’d gained through twenty years of service in the Army. For twelve of those years, he had worked as an intelligence officer on anti-terrorist surveillance duties along the Republic’s side of the Border. He had built up a formidable network of informers within the republican movement and made dozens of arrests, but during the peace negotiations of the 90s this had become embarrassing to the Government, and Sauvage had been quietly instructed to back off.
When he’d received impeccable intelligence that a maverick republican organisation planned to smash its ceasefire with a devastating bomb in Liverpool, he had informed his superiors. No one had wanted to believe him. The bomb had gone off, killing three people and causing millions of pounds’ worth of damage. His embarrassed superiors, anxious to hush the affair up, had concocted a report that effectively blamed Sauvage for the debacle. The Bear had been unable to defend himself without compromising the safety of his informants. He had resigned from the Army in disgust.
Within twenty-four hours he’d been snapped up by the civilian police force, many of whose members owed their lives to the quality of Sauvage’s intelligence work. He was taken on at the rank of Inspector, and given the job of assembling an élite unit of professionals who would specialise in deep-cover, semi-legal surveillance of suspected drug barons.
This particular target – code-named Hotel One – was no criminal godfather. Sauvage knew that much. In fact, he knew everything there was to know about Hunter. He knew Hunter earned his money honestly, wasn’t involved in terrorism and had never been in trouble with the law in his life. Sauvage couldn’t understand why he’d been ordered to do a full-scale job on him, or why the orders had come from the political side rather than the criminal-investigation side. But that didn’t stop him doing it. A dozen years in intelligence work had taught him that the officer on the ground rarely has the full story. Anyway, orders were orders, and this particular order had come all the way from the top.
He watched as two women emerged from Hunter’s house. The thin dark one was smiling complacently, but lurched a little as she walked. The other one, the pretty one with the chestnut-brown hair, was dabbing her eyes and blowing her nose and seemed upset.
The thin dark one got behind the wheel of her Mercedes 500 SEL. Sauvage had already checked the registration and identified her as Mrs Anya Turnberry, friend of Hunter’s estranged wife Jill, who now followed her into the car. He knew Mrs Turnberry was too drunk to drive, but he couldn’t interfere. He could only watch powerlessly as the Merc roared, did a couple of kangaroo leaps, and disappeared down the road.
‘Safe home,’ Sauvage’s colleague Ian Arthur called out softly as the car’s tyres bounced off the kerb at the corner. He was a civilian electronics expert who’d spent two years working with Sauvage’s élite unit. ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t crash the car on the way.’ He nodded curtly towards the house where Hunter now sat alone. ‘Poor bastard has enough problems to keep him going for a while.’
Sauvage rewound the tape a little and listened carefully. He had a complete record of everything that had been said and done in Hunter’s house over the past few hours. The phone had been the easy part – Hunter had used a cordless unit, transmitting radio signals that had been simple to intercept. Conversations inside the sitting-room had been relayed to the Hiace van through a combination of surveillance microphones: a Swedish Telinga Pro 10 directional mike aimed at the front window, and an X500 surveillance unit buried in Hunter’s front garden, with an accelerometer capable of clear audio pick-up through sixteen inches of solid wall.
Sauvage could easily have entered the house and hidden a standard bug, but that would have required formal clearance, and no one had wanted anything placed on record in this case.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ he told Ian Arthur. ‘Poor bastard’s problems are only just beginning.’
Chapter Nine
HUNTER stared at the pile of envelopes in front of him and tried to convince himself there’d been some mistake.
He picked up the batch of letters and flicked through them.
‘Dear Sir: As you are no doubt aware, your account is seriously overdrawn …’
‘Dear Mr Hunter: The cheque you furnished to us on the 19th instant has been returned to us marked Refer To Drawer. We trust you will forward the due amount at your earliest convenience …’
‘Dear Sir/Madam: We regret the balance on your credit card has exceeded the authorised amount and accordingly we have no option but to withdraw this facility …’
And so on. Joint credit cards, joint bank accounts, joint building-society savings accounts. All the same story. Accounts that had been healthy only a few days ago, now declared dead on arrival at the bank. From being financially secure, Hunter had gone to being flat broke. Wiped out. Penniless. No – worse than penniless: he owed the banks at least four or five grand.
Hunter stared disbelievingly and began combing the statements for more information. Dates, times, transactions. The same date cropped up again and again: 15 No
vember, last Wednesday week. The day after Jill had dropped her divorce bombshell.
Jill had gone around the banks and hoovered out all their joint accounts. A large cheque here, a withdrawal there. Then she’d hit their joint credit card for a huge cash advance that had taken their account right to the limit. After they’d been cleaned out, she’d deliberately gone around the big stores and bounced cheques on the empty accounts.
Hunter grabbed the phone and, fingers shaking, punched in the number of Jill’s mobile.
‘Hi, this is Jill,’ said the recording, in the voice she used for friends and colleagues. ‘If I can’t come to the phone right now, it’s because I’m sunning myself by the pool. I’ve flown off to Boca Raton for a few days to catch some rays. Please talk after the beep and tell me how jealous you are!’
Beep.
Hunter slowly replaced the phone. Outside, at the end of his terrace of houses, a burglar alarm was ringing incessantly. It was driving him crazy. He made a cup of coffee in an attempt to calm his own jangling nerves. It wasn’t just the bloody money, he told himself. That wasn’t what hurt. What hurt most was knowing that someone he’d once loved – or thought he’d loved – was capable of deliberately and systematically setting out to wound him in this way.
He cupped his hands over his ears in an attempt to block out the frantic fanfare of the burglar alarm, and tried to concentrate on his immediate financial problems. Like most modern bank customers, he had freed himself from the curse of paper money. There was no stash of cash under the mantelpiece clock, no secret hoard under the mattress. His life had become dependent upon plastic cards. And with his plastic rendered useless and every hole-in-the-wall machine in the nation primed to devour his bank cards, he was as destitute as a street beggar.
After a long search of suit pockets and bedroom drawers, he managed to find a few crumpled fivers. And that was it. His entire war-chest, to do battle with a man who counted his wealth in millions.
THE Hiace van was gone, but further down the road, in the opposite direction, a blue Transit had replaced it. Hunter took note of its registration as he drove off towards the Street Talk office.
To his intense annoyance, he forgot the number almost immediately. His brain just didn’t seem to be functioning this morning. It was hardly surprising. He’d spent most of the night tossing and turning sleeplessly, trying to make things add up, and failing.
Now it was time to take a deep breath, sit down with Mark Tobey over a couple of cups of strong coffee, and prepare a plan of action.
Mark was already waiting, lurking behind a concrete pillar, when Hunter drove the Lexus into his reserved spot in the tiny basement car park. He looked worried.
‘Addison is furious,’ he whispered urgently. ‘He’s up there in his office, holding a high-level summit with the legal eagles. I’ve never seen so many hungry lawyers in one place. And all looking so absorbed. An ambulance went by this morning, and they didn’t even bother to chase it.’
‘Right.’ Hunter locked the car. ‘I’ll get up there straight away.’
‘You don’t understand, Hunter.’ Mark laid a restraining hand on his editor’s shoulder. ‘You can’t. He doesn’t want you up there. You’ve been barred from the building.’
‘To hell with that,’ said Hunter. ‘I’m going up anyway.’
They began to walk through the gloomy concrete cavern, their footsteps echoing eerily in the silence. ‘We need to get to work as soon as possible, Mark,’ he instructed rapidly. ‘Let’s get back to our sources, double-check everything, grab whatever backup evidence we can before it disappears.’
Mark nodded. ‘We’ll need to move fast. What do you want me to do first?’
‘Get back to your main police source. Press him for a copy of Mags Jackson’s original statement to the cops. Tell him we’ve got our backs to the wall here. Sound him out and see if he can put us in touch with anyone else, anybody at all, who could back up the story.’
Mark raised a thumb. ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to smoke out Mags Jackson.’ Hunter frowned as he opened the door to the stairway and stood back to let Mark through. ‘She’s still not answering her phone. I may have to take a drive up to Passage North and search around for her up there.’
‘Yes. It’s essential that we get her.’ Mark checked his watch. ‘Which reminds me: Valentia’s due to be interviewed on TV in a couple of minutes. Sneak into my office, and we’ll watch that first.’
Feeling like an intruder, Hunter entered the Street Talk premises by the fire exit and followed Mark into his sparsely furnished office.
As Mark flicked the channels on a wall-mounted TV set, Hunter scanned through the morning papers on his desk. All the newspapers that had repeated and rewritten his story in various forms were now tripping over themselves to deny it.
Mark flicked again. Joseph Valentia appeared on the screen, looking relaxed and cheerful even though the early results of the official election count had confirmed his defeat.
‘And have you had any reaction to your ultimatum from Street Talk magazine?’ the interviewer was asking.
Valentia shook his head. ‘Just what I’ve heard from my friends in the media, which is that the author of the article has been relieved of his position.’ He became solemn. ‘I don’t think it’s any secret that this man Hunter has a history of alcoholism, so his judgement may have been … well, a bit clouded when he wrote this piece. Anyway, I believe he will have plenty of leisure time to repent his haste in rushing into print.’
Mark raised his hand, slowly as a deep-sea diver, and flicked the off button on the remote control. The television went black. ‘I’m sorry, Hunter,’ he said. ‘That was a lousy thing for him to say.’
Hunter was staring at his feet, trying to collect his thoughts, when the door burst open.
‘Hunter, thank goodness I’ve found you,’ Claire said breathlessly. ‘They’ve cleaned out your desk. They’ve just put a clamp on your company car to stop you taking it off the premises. And there’s a security man on the way up here to throw you out of the office.’
THEY could hear the security man’s boots on the stairs as they hurried down the corridor towards Addison’s office.
‘Addison’s in there with Samuel Zeicker and Thomas Hinch,’ Claire whispered. ‘I’m under strict instructions – no interruptions.’
‘That’s okay, Claire. I pushed straight past you. Yell at me.’
Claire understood immediately. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘You can’t go in there!’
‘Try and stop me.’ Hunter burst through the door and held it open just long enough for Addison to see Claire’s apologetic expression.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Addison,’ she said. ‘He just pushed right past me.’
‘That’s okay, Claire. No sweat,’ said Addison, looking at her in cold fury. ‘Hey, Hunter. Cool you could make it.’
‘Bloody amazing I could make it, Simon, with Security under orders to shoot me on sight.’
Addison shrugged. ‘We all gotta do what we gotta do,’ he said meaninglessly. ‘We got a problem to deal with here, Hunter.’
‘So I understand, Simon. And you’re going to solve it by sacking me?’
‘Sacking. That’s a nasty word, Hunter.’
‘What’s a nice word for it, Simon?’
Addison glanced over at Thomas Hinch, his company solicitor, who looked embarrassed. Realising he’d just been appointed hatchet-man, Hinch addressed Hunter directly. ‘As a matter of fact, that’s just what we’ve been discussing, Hunter,’ he said. ‘We’ve decided that, in view of the circumstances, it would be only right and proper for you to receive your full salary during your temporary period of voluntary sabbatical.’
‘Voluntary sabbatical?’ Hunter glared at Addison. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
Addison walked away. He carefully examined a framed gold disc on the wall.
‘Put in layman’s terms, it means that you receive fu
ll benefits for a six-month period, during which you are free to take on other employment or pursue other projects,’ said Tom Hinch. ‘After the six months, you will be free to resume your present job – provided, of course, that both parties agree to this.’
‘And if one party doesn’t agree?’
‘Then the agreement is nullified.’ Tom Hinch looked pained that Hunter should be raising petty objections to such a benevolent offer.
‘So I’m being sacked with six months’ pay,’ Hunter translated.
‘That’s not exactly how –’
‘Don’t treat me like a moron, Tom. I’m sacked with six months’ pay. Why?’
Addison sat down, swung his feet onto his desk, and began taking an intense interest in the pattern on his snakeskin boots.
‘Go on, Tom,’ he said. ‘Tell the dude.’
‘Wilful negligence,’ Hinch said apologetically. ‘Recklessly publishing a story in the face of clear legal advice. Knowingly and wantonly exposing your employers to an action for major damages.’
Hunter sat down heavily on a desk. ‘Is that what you told them?’ he asked Simon directly.
The publisher didn’t reply.
‘The truth is that I took a decision against publishing the story,’ Hunter said. ‘And you, Simon, overruled it.’
Addison rose again and looked out the window in silence.
‘I think your exact words were: “Never mind the bollocks.”’
Reflected in the window, Addison’s features assumed a murderous expression. But by the time he turned around, he had regained his precious cool.
‘You’re the main man,’ he said to Hunter. ‘When it goes wrong, you carry the can.’
‘No arguments on that, Simon. But when you overrule my decision, don’t try to blame it on me.’