Single Obsession

by Des Ekin

  ‘Say what?’ Mary Smith leaned over his bear-like shoulder and peered at the mangled wreckage of Hunter’s Vespa. The metalwork of the engine had literally melted and fluxed until it looked like a nightmare vision by Salvador Dali.

  ‘Thermite,’ repeated Sauvage. ‘Someone just put it on the engine and it melted right through the metal.’ He rose from his crouching position. ‘Pity. It must have been a beautiful restoration job before this guy got his filthy hands on it.’

  ‘What’s thermite?’ Mary was curious. ‘A sort of acid?’

  Sauvage shook his head. ‘It’s just a simple mixture of aluminium and iron oxide. Mix them together, get it to the right temperature, and you get a fierce chemical reaction with enough heat to melt through an engine block.’ Using a gloved hand, he cautiously lifted one of the plastic containers and peered into it. ‘They use thermite commercially in the welding industry,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘but it’s so basic you can make it yourself with beverage-can filings and rust. Then all you need is something hot enough to ignite it.’

  He carefully placed the container in an evidence bag.

  ‘Last time I came across thermite,’ he told Mary, ‘it was being used very successfully by protection racketeers in the south inner city during the early nineties. If someone didn’t pay up, they just paid a visit to his car and put this stuff on the engine hood. It would eat its way straight through the bonnet and right into the cylinder block. I’ve seen an expensive Merc destroyed in seconds. And guess who was behind that little racket?’

  ‘Our friend Charlton Cook, also known as Chato?’

  Sauvage nodded curtly and turned to the uniformed garda who stood beside him, waiting for instructions. ‘You can take it away now,’ he said. ‘Just be careful with the chemicals.’

  ‘Do you have a name for the owner, sir?’ asked the policeman. ‘We tried tracing the reg number, but it turned out to be Italian.’

  Mary nodded. ‘Yes, I ran it through the Europol computer. Last registered to a Federico Benotti in Turin in 1967.’

  ‘It belongs to a Mr Hunter,’ Sauvage told the garda. ‘He lives in Ranelagh, but don’t waste your time trying his house. He won’t be there.’

  ‘How do you know that, sir?’

  The Bear’s face was taut with anger and frustration. He ignored the garda and walked off towards his waiting car with Mary.

  ‘How do you know that?’ she challenged him.

  ‘Because he’ll be going to ground, Mary. After tonight, he won’t risk spending another night in his house.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Sauvage stared at her for a moment, then dug deep into his inside pocket and unfolded a piece of paper.

  ‘Police circular,’ he said. ‘It’ll be put out on the news later tonight.’

  Mary Smith took the sheet of paper and read it in disbelief.

  ‘They can’t be serious,’ she said.

  ‘The cops in Athmore? I’m afraid they’re perfectly serious.’ He thumped his car roof in frustration. ‘After this, Hunter’s going to be impossible to trace. He’ll be a man with no home, no job, no phone, no family and no money. No credit card, no cash-machine transactions. He’s our worst nightmare.’

  ‘And we’re his.’

  The Bear nodded agreement as he opened the passenger door and swung his large frame into the car. ‘He’s not stupid. He’s seen us watching his house. And now he thinks we’re all part of a grand conspiracy. He thinks we’re the bad guys.’

  HUNTER held a red-stained scarf to his forehead as he attempted to flag down a taxi. There were plenty of passing cabs, but none of them seemed to want to risk taking him on board. He ran his fingers cautiously through his blood-matted hair and knew why.

  It took half an hour before a cab finally drew up beside him. The driver, a heavily tattooed man with a bodybuilder’s physique, made sure that Hunter saw the can of Mace spray mounted on the dash and the cosh lying across the open ashtray.

  ‘Thanks for stopping.’ Hunter climbed into the back of the cab and gave an address. ‘I’ve been assaulted.’

  ‘Don’t want to know,’ the driver said. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘The way I see it, you want to have a fight, it’s your business.’ He glanced over his shoulder and eased out into the traffic. ‘But if somebody dies, I don’t want to end up in court as a witness. That’s why I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Okay.’

  The driver turned up his radio to emphasise that the conversation was over. They drove through the southside suburbs listening to high-volume dance music.

  Just before they reached their destination, the music was interrupted by the hourly news bulletin.

  Hunter was hardly listening. He was dabbing his forehead with his scarf in an unsuccessful attempt to stanch the blood that still flowed freely from the wound on his forehead.

  ‘Police in County Athmore have named a man they wish to question in connection with last month’s murder of Kate Spain in Passage North,’ said the headline.

  Hunter stopped dabbing and sat bolt upright.

  Then he froze as the newsreader read out the name.

  Because the man the police wanted to question was him.

  DETERMINED to give it a second try, Emma pushed open the iron gate of the old parochial house and hurried through the torrential rain, running the gauntlet of the overgrown barberry shrubs whose thorny branches whipped at her face and arms. She dived for shelter in the leaking wooden porch and hastily glanced around her.

  She lifted the dull iron knocker and sounded four loud, confident knocks on the blistering paintwork of the main door. A shout of response came from inside the house, but it sounded curiously muted, like a voice from under heavy woollen blankets. For a long time there was no sound at all, apart from the staccato drumming of rain on the wooden porch roof and the steady drip-drip of a leak on the tiled floor.

  The door opened, just enough to reveal Monsignor Mason’s face. The thick lenses of his cheap glasses magnified his sharp blue eyes and emphasised his suspicious stare.

  ‘Go away,’ he said.

  ‘Listen, Monsignor –’

  ‘I recognise you. You were here before. I told you I don’t need a doctor, and I don’t need a social worker, either. Please just go away and leave me alone.’

  Emma tried again. ‘I need your help, Monsignor. Please. I’m not here as a doctor.’

  ‘You’ve nothing to do with the Bishop?’

  She shook her head.

  The monsignor stepped back from the doorway. ‘Take off your coat and come in,’ he ordered curtly.

  Emma glanced down at her all-weather anorak and shrugged. ‘Okay,’ she said, undoing the first of the snap-studs as she moved to follow him into the hallway.

  He reappeared at the narrow slit of the open door and barred her way. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You have to take off your coat before you can come in.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘But it’s raining out here.’

  ‘I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient. But it is necessary, as you will see.’

  Emma took off the wet coat and stood on the porch amid a flurry of wind-driven rain.

  Monsignor Mason nodded, satisfied. ‘Just hang it there. Anywhere.’

  ‘You mean … outside? Here in the porch?’

  ‘Yes, yes. It’s waterproof, isn’t it?’

  ‘Can’t I bring it inside and hang it up there? I mean, I’ve got things in the pockets – car keys, money …’

  The shock of grey hair shook from side to side in emphatic refusal. ‘No, no. It won’t be touched. Nobody ever comes here any more. Come in, come in.’

  She tried to push the door open wider, but it wouldn’t budge.

  ‘For God’s sake, woman, don’t push it!’ yelled the monsignor. ‘Do you want to create a landslide? Just ease in gently, sideways. You’re not fat. You’ll make it.’

  Emma squeezed sideways through the gap. Once inside, her irritation vanished in a gasp of s
heer disbelief. The huge Victorian hall was jammed solidly with ceiling-high stacks of books. There must have been thousands of them – no, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. They stretched from the far end of the hall right up to the area behind the door. There was only the slimmest gap, a tiny rabbit-warren of a passageway just wide enough to admit a human being walking sideways. This passage, never growing wider, wound through the hall towards the kitchen and living-room, where there were two narrow access gaps.

  ‘See what I mean?’ the old man chuckled indulgently. ‘I’ve left it wide enough to walk through.’ He raised a finger and wagged it. ‘But not with a coat on. Not with a coat on.’

  Emma decided it was time to introduce herself. ‘Monsignor Mason, my name is Emma Macaulay. I run the clinic here.’

  Still standing sideways in the narrow passageway, she stretched out her right hand towards his. Instead, he held out his left and grasped it in a back-to-front handshake. At first she thought he was indulging in some sort of ritual. Then she realised that the truth was much simpler: the passage was simply not wide enough for him to turn around and extend his right hand. Even as it was, their movements caused the piles of books on either side to quiver unnervingly.

  ‘Whoops-a-daisy,’ said Monsignor Mason. ‘Better be careful! Can you imagine what would happen if those books fell over?’

  Emma had always suffered from a terror of confined spaces, and this was a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare. She looked upwards at the unsteady stacks, which continued to move in a sort of nervous shiver, like a mound of jelly.

  ‘Even if we weren’t crushed,’ said the monsignor cheerfully, ‘we’d never be able to climb out, and nobody would find us because nobody comes here any more. So’ – he raised the wagging finger again – ‘even more reason to be careful! Come on.’

  Emma needed no further urging to be cautious. Slowly, gingerly, at times sucking in her stomach and chest to negotiate a particularly narrow gap, she followed him towards the back of the house. Occasionally her handbag would snag on the corner of a book that protruded into the passageway and she would freeze in apprehension, almost afraid to breathe, as the entire mountain of books swayed unnervingly. Ahead of her, the emaciated old monsignor wormed his way through the passageway with all the blissful unconcern of a child skipping through a play-tunnel.

  After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the kitchen door. Emma looked forward to a release from the constraints of the cramped passage. There must at least be a table to sit around, she told herself. Maybe even a back door to escape through …

  Her face fell as she squeezed through the doorway. The gloomy kitchen was nearly – but not quite – as densely packed as the hall. There was no table, no chairs, not even a visible back door. Instead, piles of books extended from the walls towards the sink and cupboards, where the monsignor had left a slightly wider gap – just enough to allow the doors of the kitchen cupboards to open halfway.

  ‘Tea?’ offered Monsignor Mason, striking a match and leaning over to light a gas ring. ‘Kettle’s just off the boil.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, thanks.’ Emma tried to steady her nerves with a deep breath. It was all she could do to fight off the waves of panic as she imagined densely packed walls of books closing in on her.

  ‘What do you think of my collection?’

  ‘It’s … it’s overwhelming,’ Emma said.

  ‘Fifty years of pure gold in there,’ the monsignor said proudly. ‘Some wonderful first editions, worth a fortune.’ He frowned. ‘If I could only find them. There’s a first edition of Ulysses that I wasn’t supposed to buy, because it was banned by the Church at the time, so don’t tell anyone. But it’s in there, somewhere. In fact, it might just be there, directly behind you.’

  He began to rummage. The stacks of books shifted softly and groaned.

  ‘No, no, it’s okay!’ Emma’s voice betrayed her panic, but it achieved the desired effect. He stopped rummaging, and the books settled nervously down again. ‘Some other time, Monsignor.’

  ‘As you wish.’ The monsignor reached down towards a low cupboard, squatting rather than bending to keep his body in the same thin profile, and re-emerged with a spoon, two mugs and a box of teabags. He made the tea directly in the mugs and handed one to her. ‘There you are, Miss Macaulay. Now, what can I do for you?’

  He stood looking at her inquiringly, the cup raised halfway to his lips.

  Emma glanced around, hoping the gesture would convey the difficulties of holding a conversation with both parties standing side by side facing forwards. ‘Is there somewhere we could go? Perhaps sit down for a minute?’

  Monsignor Mason looked around helplessly, as though he were a stranger in someone else’s house. ‘Where?’

  ‘I was thinking perhaps the sitting-room …’

  He shook his head. ‘Exactly the same as the hall, I’m afraid.’

  ‘But where do you eat? Where do you sit down?’

  ‘I eat standing up, right here. I sit down on the same place where I sleep, which is my bed, but I don’t really think I could invite you in there. For a start, it’s a bit messy; and secondly, I don’t think the Bishop would understand if he heard I’d been sharing my bed with an attractive young lady.’ His eyes twinkled.

  ‘Monsignor, if you don’t mind my asking … what good are all these books if you can’t get at them to read them, or even hold them?’ asked Emma. ‘I mean, what’s the point?’

  The monsignor shrugged. ‘I just love books, Miss Macaulay. I can’t stop myself buying them. The Bishop brought in some shrink, like yourself, who tried to maintain I had an obsessive-compulsive disorder, or some such mumbo-jumbo. That’s the problem with our modern society, if you ask me. These days, anyone who prefers Cervantes to “Coronation Street” is regarded as an oddball or a nutcase.’ He smacked his lips, savouring his tea. ‘Anyway, you still haven’t told me why you’re here.’

  Emma took another deep breath and tried not to think about the tottering skyscrapers of books that loomed over her head. ‘I want to ask you about Elizabeth Forrest,’ she said.

  He stared at her.

  ‘Lizzie Forrest,’ Emma repeated. ‘She was a nanny to Joseph Valentia in the 1950s.’

  Her heart thumped wildly as she waited for his response. He would be perfectly justified in shouting at her, ordering her out, even pushing her towards the door. Just one angry gesture, she realised, could bring piles of dusty hardbacks toppling down in an avalanche that would bury them both.

  Instead, the old priest sighed.

  ‘You don’t need to remind me about poor Lizzie,’ he said. ‘I can’t forget her. And Joseph Valentia can’t forget her, either.’ He looked up at Emma with a frankness that startled her. ‘And you know why? Because she won’t let us.’

  A long silence followed.

  ‘So,’ she prompted finally, ‘the young Joe Valentia was very attached to his nanny?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Monsignor Mason. ‘Exceptionally so. Unhealthily so. But it was understandable.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  The monsignor thought for a moment. ‘Because the alternative was so awful, I suppose. You see, Joe’s dad, Andrew, was a very strict man. A moral tyrant. He ruled over his family like some Old Testament patriarch. His wife wasn’t allowed to wear make-up, his children weren’t allowed to watch TV or go to the cinema. Life in the Valentia household wasn’t a barrel of laughs, Miss Macaulay, I can tell you.’

  ‘So, he was a strict disciplinarian?’

  The monsignor made fresh tea for both of them. ‘Yes. He believed in what they call tough love. In other words’ – he looked up – ‘beating the bejasus out of them.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Anything at all, any infringement of the rules – but particularly moral lapses. You see, Andrew Valentia had delusions of grandeur. He regarded himself as the moral watchdog for the entire area.’ Monsignor Mason shook his head sadly. ‘He would picket the local cinema for showing Doris Da
y films. It embarrassed even me. He’d lead deputations to the local library, remove dozens of books he didn’t like, and publicly burn them.’

  He winced as though he were describing the burning of people.

  ‘So, you see,’ he continued, ‘Andrew Valentia’s children had to be above reproach. They had to be whiter than white. They had to study instead of playing, and they had to refrain from speaking unless they were spoken to. It was a pretty miserable existence for Joe, until Lizzie Forrest came along.’

  ‘What age was she?’

  ‘She was thirteen when she arrived. She was some sort of second cousin, and when both her parents died in a car crash in Scotland, she was adopted by the Valentias. And they never let her forget the debt she owed them. Never.’

  ‘What sort of girl was she?’

  ‘Ah, a lovely girl,’ said Monsignor Mason. ‘A lovely, lovely girl. Reddest hair you ever saw in your life – not just ginger or auburn, but red, like ripe raspberries. Lots of freckles. Full of life and fun. No matter what the Valentias threw at her, she would smile and let it run off her like water off a duck’s back.’ Emma smiled. ‘And she made Joe happy, too. At least for a while.’

  ‘Yes, she made little JoJo very happy. That was his pet name when he was a little boy, you know: JoJo. He was only three when she arrived, and I suppose about eight when she left. Lizzie was there for the important years. She loved children, and she knew how to squeeze fun out of the most unpromising situations.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, the Valentias always insisted on total silence in the house. She knew how to keep young JoJo quiet so he’d stay out of trouble. She’d play endless games, organise water-play in the bath, read him books, make up stories, sing his favourite song, “The Ugly Duckling”. The girl had the patience of a saint.’

  Emma’s back was getting tired. She leaned back on the wall behind her, felt it flex under her weight and suddenly remembered it was a fluid tower of books.

  ‘Monsignor Mason,’ she said quietly, ‘what happened to Lizzie?’

  For the first time, the old monsignor looked evasive. ‘What happened to lots of attractive young girls in the era before sex education and birth control,’ he said.