Single Obsession

by Des Ekin

  THE paper was flying off the news-stand. People were queuing to buy it, ignoring all the rival papers. This was a newsman’s dream, a good old-fashioned scoop.

  As Hunter reached the front of the queue, the vendor looked at his face and did a double-take. He shook his head to refuse payment. ‘On the house, friend,’ he said kindly, handing him a copy of the paper and slapping him on the shoulder as he turned to the next customer.

  Returning to the comfortable gloom of the bar, Hunter scanned the opening paragraphs of the front-page story:

  ‘The man behind the Joseph Valentia news hoax was last night sensationally arrested on suspicion of a stalking offence. Disgraced editor TS Hunter (32) was detained by gardaí outside the home of a librarian in Passage North, Co. Athmore.

  ‘The journalist, whose false allegations about Joseph Valentia resulted in the former Minister losing his seat in Thursday’s general election, may now face charges under anti-stalking legislation. He is alleged to have threatened and intimidated the librarian, Ms Margaret Jackson, accusing her of taking part in a conspiracy against him.

  ‘Ms Jackson said: “I was absolutely terrified. He claimed I was involved in covering up a murder and accused me of being a Secret Service spy.”’

  By this time, Hunter had returned to his seat at the bar. His throat had gone dry and he could hardly swallow, but when he reached for his coffee cup, he found that someone had taken it away. He speed-read the rest of the article:

  ‘Former Minister Valentia commented: “This is further confirmation, if confirmation be needed …”’

  And the final paragraph:

  ‘Mr Hunter could not be contacted for comment this morning, but Simon Addison, publisher of Street Talk magazine, made it clear that he is no longer in his employ. “What happened last night had absolutely nothing to do with Street Talk magazine or myself,” he said. “Mr Hunter has had health problems for a long time now. He has been under a lot of pressure and it has been mutually agreed that he could use a long period of rest and recuperation. I have absolutely no responsibility for his actions, but I hope the authorities will show leniency in view of his mental condition.”’

  Thanks, Simon.

  Hunter was wearily folding up the newspaper when the public phone rang again. The bartender answered it, and for the first time Hunter caught sight of a copy of the Evening Monitor under the bar counter. At least that explained the barman’s stares, and the fact that he knew Hunter’s name.

  ‘It’s for you again,’ he said.

  Hunter walked over to the kiosk, feeling so punch-drunk that the ground seemed to pitch slightly under his feet, like the deck of a ferry in high seas. This time he was sure everyone in the bar was staring at him. It wasn’t just paranoia. Words had obviously been exchanged in his absence. The old men looked sleepily at him over their pints, pleased that something had added drama to their dull afternoon. The shoppers were studying him in horrified fascination. At the old pine table, the two sharp-suited salesmen were laughing drunkenly. They seemed fascinated with his every movement.

  Hunter turned his back on them all and picked up the phone.

  ‘Hello, Mark.’

  He was surprised at how shaky his own voice sounded.

  ‘Mr Hunter?’

  It wasn’t Mark Tobey. It was a stranger’s voice, with a slight foreign intonation.

  ‘Speaking. Who’s this?’

  ‘I don’t want to give my name, Mr Hunter,’ said the voice. ‘But you’re on the right track about Joseph Valentia.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Hunter lifted one shoulder to trap the phone handset under his ear. He rummaged in his pocket and produced a pen.

  ‘I mean you’re on the right track, but you need more information. I can give it to you, but not right now. We have to meet.’

  Hunter’s heart felt as though it would pound its way out of his chest. His hand shook violently as he held his pen over a scrap of paper. ‘Where can I reach you?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ll meet in an underground car park at midnight,’ said the voice. ‘But be careful – this goes all the way to the Oval Office. My name is Throat. Deep Throat.’

  There was a sudden explosion of laughter, echoed at the far end of the bar. Hunter spun around to see the two salesmen doubled up in drunken hilarity. One of them had a mobile phone clutched to his ear. He raised his finger to his mouth in a dramatic appeal for secrecy as the two of them tumbled out through the far door. Their over-loud, forced laughter rattled like machine-gun fire from the alleyway outside as they walked away.

  Feeling every eye on him, Hunter put the pen back into his pocket and hung up the phone. His racing heartbeat refused to calm down. The adrenalin buzz had been replaced by the stinging shame of humiliation.

  Every instinct told him to turn on his heel and leave, but somehow he couldn’t do it. Two things caught his eye. One was his own face, staring back at him like an image in a distorting mirror from the newspaper under the bar counter. The other, unexpectedly, was a full glass of gin and tonic that the two salesmen had left untouched on their table. What a waste, he thought. Even at this distance, Hunter could see that it was a perfectly served drink, the lemon fresh and yellow, the three cubes of ice bobbing gently against a clean, cold glass with just the slightest mist of condensation.

  There they were. The problem. And the solution.

  It was simple. So simple. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’ The barman’s voice interrupted his thoughts. ‘Those two gentlemen who’ve just left asked me to serve you a drink on their tab. Coffee, is it, sir?’

  He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

  Hunter stared back at him.

  To hell with the lot of them, he thought. To hell with Valentia and Addison. To hell with Jill and Anya. To hell with Emma and her prissy, politically correct views on alcohol addiction.

  At times like this, a man needed a real drink.

  He returned to the bar and sat down heavily on the stool, with the air of someone who knew he was going to be there for a while.

  ‘Get me a double vodka-and-tonic,’ he said.

  The barman walked over to the optics. ‘Will I make it with ice and lemon?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t care.’ Hunter put his elbows on the counter and allowed his posture to fall into a barfly slump, the sort of position he could hold for hours. ‘I don’t care how you make it, as long as you make it quick.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  HUNTER caught her perfume before he saw her. That unmistakeable scent of Chanel’s Coco. Just a hint, never overdone.

  ‘Hello, Claire,’ he said without turning around. He realised with surprise that his voice had already assumed the hard, disaffected edge of the cynical drunk, even though the barman hadn’t brought over that first vodka yet. ‘Have you come to bait the dancing bear, too?’

  Claire eased her tall, slim figure onto the barstool beside him. She gave him a sympathetic smile, but instead of responding, he looked quickly away. He hated her for her serenity, her unflappability, her seemingly eternal peace of mind. And for turning up right now.

  ‘I hoped you’d still be here,’ she said with concern. ‘Mark couldn’t make it and he was worried about you. How are you bearing up?’

  She discreetly shuffled the newspaper to the side, out of his line of vision.

  Hunter looked at her properly for the first time. With her shiny blond hair, she looked like one of those energetic, healthy models who populate the world of cereal adverts.

  ‘Not so good,’ he said at last.

  She nodded. ‘I can imagine how you must feel. All this … on top of what’s going on at home.’ She pulled a face. ‘I ran into Anya at the gym last night. She couldn’t wait to tell me that Jill had moved out. I’m sorry.’

  Hunter shrugged.

  ‘If it’s any consolation,’ Claire said, ‘it’s not much better at the office. It’s like the Salem witch-hunts over there.’ She nodded in the general direction
of the Street Talk premises. ‘People are afraid to support you because that makes them suspect. Mark and I both tried to speak in your defence. We tried to get them to change their minds about sacking you. But we were both told in no uncertain terms that, if we valued our jobs, we should never mention your name again.’

  Hunter said nothing. He glanced anxiously towards the barman, who was taking far too long to replace an empty vodka bottle in the row of optics.

  ‘But it hardly matters,’ continued Claire, ‘because the word is that there won’t be any jobs after next week. In fact, there won’t be a magazine. Addison will be forced to close it down after he pays over the two million to Valentia. Everyone’s been warned to prepare for the worst.’

  ‘What can I say, Claire? I’m sorry.’

  She shook her head and touched his hand lightly with her fingertips in a surprisingly eloquent gesture of support. ‘Don’t be. We all know it’s not your fault. I’ll survive, and Mark will survive. We’ll both get other jobs.’ She tried and failed to make direct eye contact with Hunter. ‘We’re more worried about you, Hunter. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,’ said Hunter, unable to keep a note of unpleasantness out of his voice. ‘I’m going to get blind drunk. Do you want to join me?’

  She stared back at him in hurt and alarm. Hunter was well aware that she’d pledged never to take alcohol. Plus, she had been his main crutch in keeping off the booze for two long years.

  ‘You know I’m not going to do that,’ she muttered.

  ‘Why are you doing this to me, Hunter?’

  Hunter felt a malicious sense of minor victory. That had wiped the smile off her face.

  Within seconds, however, she had recovered her composure. ‘And why are you doing this to yourself?’ she asked calmly. ‘It won’t help. You know it’ll only make things worse.’

  ‘Claire,’ said Hunter with equal calm, ‘why don’t you mind your own business?’ He banged the counter. ‘What’s keeping that drink?’

  ‘Apart from anything else,’ Claire hissed, as she anxiously watched the barman cut a slice of lemon and pop it into Hunter’s drink, ‘you’ll be giving ammunition to your opponents. They’re all saying you’re a drunk. Right now, you can prove them wrong. You haven’t had a drink in years. But thirty seconds from now, you’ll be proving it’s all true. You’ll be handing them victory on a plate.’

  ‘They already have victory on a plate,’ said Hunter, longingly eyeing his drink as the ice cubes clinked in. ‘They always win. What’s the point in even trying? Forget it, Claire. Go home and meditate. I’m going to get plastered, and it’s not a pretty sight.’

  ‘No,’ she said decisively. ‘I won’t let you.’

  ‘What?’ He looked at her incredulously. ‘And just how are you going to stop me?’

  The barman shuffled over at last and set the vodka down on the counter.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Claire said suddenly, ‘that drink is for me.’

  The barman shrugged and handed it to her. She grabbed the glass and held it solidly in her fist.

  ‘Fine,’ said Hunter in annoyance. ‘I’ll have the same.’

  He turned to see Claire’s reaction. To his amazement, she upended the glass and drained its entire contents.

  ‘You know what I’m going to do when the next one comes?’ she challenged him. ‘I’m going to take that too. And the next one. And the next one. You’re one of the most decent, capable, intelligent men I know, Hunter. Besides, you’re my friend. I’m not going to let you go back to being a self-pitying drunk.’ She slammed the empty glass down on the counter angrily. ‘And you’d better have listened to all that, because those are probably the last coherent words you’ll hear from me tonight.’

  The barman was already back with the second drink. Hunter tried to take it, but Claire was there ahead of him. Once again, the glass was upended and drained. The barman watched in amusement, thinking this was some sort of dare.

  ‘My God,’ Hunter said in awe. ‘You’re serious.’

  ‘You bet your ass I am,’ said Claire. She stared at him challengingly. The phrase sounded totally out of character in her refined South Dublin accent, but he’d absolutely no doubt she meant it.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because I …’ Her voice faltered and trailed off.

  ‘Another?’ prompted the barman, anxious to get into the spirit of the game.

  ‘Yes. But this time bring us two.’ He glanced at Claire. ‘One each.’

  Claire eyed him defiantly. ‘I’ll drink both.’

  The barman hesitated. ‘Are you sure, sir?’

  But before Hunter could reply, the barstool shifted noisily on the tiled floor and Claire stood up. Her face was ashen, almost green, and her eyes gleamed bright with tears of defeat as she clutched her stomach.

  ‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ she said. ‘You’ve won, Hunter. Now you can drink as much as you like.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  CHATO Cook had been hitting the bottle hard ever since he came back from Passage North. Dublin was the last place he wanted to be right now. The cops had been putting heavy pressure on the criminal gangs, and all his old mates in the business had either gone to jail or been forced abroad to Spain or Amsterdam. Still, he’d had no choice but to leave County Athmore after the Macaulay woman had come back home to find him ransacking her house.

  His final act before leaving Passage North had been to send a death threat to her kid – let the bitch sweat that one out for a while. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t carry the threat out right away. Chato Cook was the sort of fella who didn’t mind waiting. After all, he’d been waiting for four long years to get his own back on Hunter …

  It was early on Saturday evening, but already Chato was on his seventh pint. As the Angelus bells tolled gloomily across the bleak city suburb of Kilmucklin, he was firmly settled in at his local pub, half-slumped across a corner table, muttering into his pint.

  ‘What’s that, Chato?’ asked an old man at the next table.

  Chato glared at him, trying to focus and stop the old fella’s head from drifting upwards towards the ceiling.

  ‘Bastard is going to suffer,’ he muttered.

  The old man sighed. All he’d wanted to do was have a quiet half-pint of stout and watch the Liverpool game before tea. What he definitely didn’t want to do was get drawn into a conversation with Chato Cook.

  He’d known Cook since he was a nipper. He’d seen him grow up in the inner-city flats and watched as he’d joined the ranks of The Bugsies, a gang of teenage crooks who’d specialised in high-speed bag-snatches. Later, Chato had graduated to armed robbery, but he was too much of a loose cannon to be asked to work with any of the serious criminal operators like The General or The Abbot. The best he could do was earn a living as a freelance hatchet-man for drug dealers and protection racketeers – someone who broke kneecaps or burned cars to order.

  Earlier this year he’d suddenly turned legit. He told everyone he’d landed a job as a minder with some top politician. But now it seemed the idiot had lost that job, just like he’d lost all the others. Nobody knew why, but it was an odds-on cert that he’d screwed something up, just like he always did. The fella was a born loser.

  ‘Ah, sure, there you are now, Chato,’ said the old man vaguely. ‘Look at that, would you. It was definitely offside. Jaysus.’

  But Cook wasn’t looking anywhere near the screen. His eyes were fixed on the old guy’s table.

  ‘Cost me my job,’ he said. ‘Him and his bleeding mot.’

  ‘Who’s that, Chato?’

  Chato grabbed the old man’s copy of the Evening Monitor and thrust a yellowed finger at the main photo on the front page.

  ‘Who’s that fella?’ asked the old man. ‘Do I know him, Chato?’

  ‘That’s the bastard I’m talking about,’ Chato said. ‘That’s the bastard who’s going to pay.’

  The old man was sorry he’d asked. If Chato
Cook said the bastard in the photo was going to pay, then the bastard in the photo was likely to end up in traction in the Cappagh Orthopaedic Hospital, or floating in the Grand Canal. Maybe he deserved it, or maybe he didn’t. Either way, the old man didn’t want to know anything about it.

  HUNTER took a long, lingering drink. It carried a kick and hit the spot.

  ‘Cheers, Claire.’ His voice was low and serious. ‘And thank you. I’ll never forget what you did for me back there.’

  Claire shrugged and took another sip of her Red Bull. ‘Don’t mention it. It was a plan born out of desperation. And I suppose I’m still technically an alcoholic virgin,’ she mused. ‘The vodka just hit my stomach lining and bounced right back again. I don’t think it ever had a fighting chance of reaching my bloodstream.’

  Hunter smiled and looked around him. It was the same busy Saturday evening; only the location had changed. They’d moved to the restaurant on the top floor of Weaver’s department store, where an overworked chef served the best Waldorf and Caesar salads in town, and a panoramic window provided the best view. The surroundings were bright and airy. From their table they could see the lights of the city spread out before them.

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘when it comes down to it, pledges aren’t nearly as important as people. I’m just glad I was there in time. You looked as though you’d hit the legendary rock-bottom.’

  Hunter raised his glass in another ironic toast. Red Bull, his favourite adult soft-drink, was ice-cold and deliciously sharp. It would never have the sinful, sexy appeal of that vodka-and-tonic, but he knew now that he had gained the strength to resist that temptation. After Claire had fled green-faced to the bathroom in the bar, he’d felt so ashamed that he’d simply paid his bill, walked out and waited for her on the pavement outside.