Single Obsession

by Des Ekin

  ‘But why –’

  ‘Why didn’t it work? Because black propagandists, like journalists, are notoriously inept. Nobody thought to check what I was doing on the night I was supposedly abducting Kate Spain. There was nothing in my official diary, so they assumed I had no alibi. But, as you yourself have found out to your cost, they were wrong. I had lined up a private, off-the-record meeting with the Bishop. And now the entire story has collapsed and everyone has gone running for cover, leaving you and Simon Addison to carry the can.’ He fell silent.

  Hunter said nothing.

  ‘We’re almost back, sir,’ announced the driver.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Valentia. ‘Just pull up around the corner away from all the people, would you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The driver drew up alongside the kerb. He got out and opened the back door for Hunter and Claire.

  Hunter took a deep breath. ‘About your ultimatum,’ he said.

  Valentia gave a short, derisive laugh. ‘Nothing has changed, Mr Hunter,’ he said. ‘Absolutely nothing. You must still pay the price for your complicity in all this. I’ll destroy you, Mr Hunter. And I’ll have the added bonus of relieving Simon Addison of two million. Nine o’clock tonight. That’s the deadline.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  HUNTER watched the Mercedes float gently into the river of traffic and disappear.

  Behind them, a few hundred metres away, a red Honda motorcycle pulled in to the kerb and sat there idling.

  ‘They’re in this together,’ Claire said slowly.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Valentia and his daughter Charlotte. They’re in cahoots. They’re in this together.’

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  Claire shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Just something about the way he reacted when you showed him the photo. He knew what she’d done. He knew all about it. I’d stake my life on it.’

  They began walking back towards her car.

  ‘Did you buy any of that State-conspiracy crap he was feeding us?’

  ‘Not for a minute,’ said Claire. ‘All that smear-campaign stuff was just a diversion, designed to plant seeds of doubt in our minds.’ She grimaced. ‘He’s good, though. He always chooses the lie that’s most likely to be believed. He figured you would swallow the Government-conspiracy angle.’

  ‘Good. We’re both agreed on that. So let’s assume you’re right – that he knew all about Charley and her Mags Jackson con. What possible motive would drive them to do it? Why would Valentia get together with his daughter and mount this sort of elaborate deception?’

  Claire said nothing.

  ‘I mean, he had the world at his feet. He’d worked for years to manoeuvre himself into a position of real power, and he was just about to achieve it by a landslide. Why would he want to throw all that away, destroy his own reputation, smash his entire power base, for no reason?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s not even a question of money,’ Hunter muttered, half to himself. ‘There have been attempts to set up libel actions before – that’s an old scam. You get someone to feed a reporter false information about you, then you sue for damages and rake in the money. But in this case, Valentia stands to get nothing. The entire two million goes to a legitimate charity. Why? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Listen, I don’t know, Hunter, okay?’ Claire was getting flustered. ‘I didn’t say I had all the answers.’ She unlocked the car. ‘What really annoys me is that I’ve missed my morning meditation session listening to Valentia’s verbal diarrhoea. I’ll have to get twenty minutes in at some point during the day, okay? Or else I’ll be going up the walls. Now, where do we go from here?’

  Hunter sat down heavily in the passenger seat. ‘I haven’t a clue,’ he said. ‘I’m stumped. He’s rubbished our only evidence, and I’ve just about run out of ideas. Just drive – the police will be here any minute. And pass me your mobile. I’ll try to reach Emma again.’

  He was about to dial the number when the phone leaped in his hand, shrilling loudly.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said testily. He tossed it across to Claire.

  She looked at him with arched eyebrows.

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘It is your phone, after all.’

  ‘Apology accepted.’ She pressed the green button. ‘Hello?’

  Her face became serious.

  ‘Mark! Perfect timing!’ she cried. ‘We need a Seventh Cavalry … looks like you’re it.’

  Hunter strained to hear Mark’s voice crackling from the tiny handset.

  ‘Where are you? Somewhere over North Carolina?’ She listened. ‘Oh, right, one of those aircraft phones … Yes, a lot’s been happening here. We’ve identified the mystery woman.’ She paused. ‘Charlotte Valentia. His daughter.’

  Mark squawked his reaction over the transatlantic line.

  ‘We’ve just confronted Valentia with the evidence … I know. It was a crazy idea, but I think it helped.’ She paused again. ‘Oh, he denied everything. Denied it totally … No, I think he’s lying through his teeth … Okay, hold on. I’ll pass you over.’

  She handed the tiny phone to Hunter.

  ‘Hello, Mark.’

  ‘Hi, Hunter.’

  There was an awkward pause.

  ‘Where are you? It’s a very bad line.’

  ‘I know.’ Mark’s voice was temporarily cut off by a tannoy announcement instructing passengers to raise their seats to the upright position. ‘I’m on board a flight from Atlanta to Dulles Airport. It’s still early morning here. We’re just starting our descent into Washington, then I’m hoping to grab a charter flight to Dublin. The connections are tight, but if it works I should be back in town by just after eight tonight, in plenty of time for the deadline.’

  ‘What have you got for me, Mark?’

  ‘Dynamite stuff. Can’t talk about it on an open line.’

  ‘Give me a clue.’

  ‘No, Hunter.’ Mark sounded tense. ‘Call me paranoid, but we’re still in Dixie here, and I’m not sure how far Valentia’s long arm can reach. I won’t rest easily until I’m out over the Atlantic.’

  ‘Okay, I understand.’

  ‘Trust me on this, Hunter. What I’m bringing home will change everything. It’s much stronger than the Charlotte Valentia angle. You might be right about her, but if we can’t prove it, it’s purely academic, isn’t it? Besides, it’s irrelevant who the woman was. What’s important is why. And that’s what I’ve got.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll talk to you later.’

  ‘Okay.’ Mark paused uncertainly. ‘Hunter – you’re not still upset about that Emma business, are you?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘I was just trying to help.’

  ‘I’ll talk to you later, Mark. Give us a call as soon as you hit Dublin Airport.’

  ‘Will do. Goodbye.’

  Hunter disconnected the call. He turned around to find Claire staring at him in disbelief.

  ‘Sometimes I can’t understand you, Hunter.’ She grabbed the phone from him in frustration. ‘The man is knocking himself out to help you, and you give him the cold-shoulder treatment.’

  Hunter shrugged silently.

  ‘Okay, be like that.’ She pushed the gearstick forward and moved out into the traffic, accelerating fiercely. ‘Look what you’re doing to me. You’re turning me into a stressed-out wreck like yourself. Where to?’

  ‘Take the carriageway into town. I’ll decide on the way. And could you pass me the phone again? I’ll try Emma.’

  ‘Here you go.’

  He punched in the number.

  ‘No luck. Out of range.’ Hunter peered at the screen and frowned. ‘There’s a text message asking you to phone someone called Peter. It’s just come through.’

  Claire nodded. ‘Dial the number, would you?’

  She turned right into the main carriageway and grabbed the phone from Hunter.

  ‘Hi, it’s me, Clai
re,’ she said after a moment. ‘I’ve just got your message. Any luck on that?’

  Her face changed expression.

  ‘Hang on,’ she said, changing down gears with her free hand and glancing in her mirror. ‘I’m going to have to stop the car to take this down, all right? … No, no, it’s okay. Don’t go away. I’ll be fine. I’m just waiting for a gap in the traffic.’

  Easing the car into the bus lane, she killed the engine and rummaged in the glove compartment for a leather diary. She gestured wildly at Hunter for a pen.

  As Claire began writing, Hunter glanced in the mirror and noticed a red Honda motorcycle slow down behind them as though to stop. Then, abruptly, the rider appeared to change his mind. He pulled out, passed them, and signalled left to turn into the first side-road.

  Meanwhile, Claire was scribbling furiously. ‘When was that again? … Right. And how long? Ninety-one or ninety-two, did you say?’

  Curiously, Hunter peered at her notebook. She appeared to be writing down a list of dates, locations and figures. Behind them, a double-decker loomed up in the bus lane. The driver leaned on his horn and kept leaning.

  ‘Oh, bugger,’ said Claire. ‘No, not you, Johnny. There’s a bus behind me. I’m going to have to move on.’ She tossed the notebook into Hunter’s lap and drove off along the bus lane, waiting for her chance to move into the main stream of traffic. The bus driver sat right on her tail. ‘Listen, Johnny, thanks for coming through. I owe you a favour … No, I haven’t forgotten about dinner. Look forward to it. Byee.’

  She saw a gap in the traffic and moved out. The bus driver coasted alongside them for a few moments, glaring at her. Hunter checked over his shoulder, and frowned as he noticed the same red bike reappear in the traffic and follow them.

  ‘So what was that all about?’ he asked. ‘Who’s Peter?’

  Claire beamed triumphantly. ‘There’s no such person as Peter. That was John Wayne. I phoned him early this morning and begged another favour. I asked him to run a computer check on Maura Granby.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s got a criminal record as long as the road from here to Passage North.’

  ‘What for? Soliciting?’

  Claire shook her head. ‘Blackmail.’

  ‘What?’ Hunter was so surprised, he forgot all about the motorbike behind them.

  ‘She had her first conviction in Dublin at the age of nineteen. She’d befriend lonely country girls working in the big city, bring them back to her flat for a party, feed them booze laced with sleeping pills and then take photos of them in compromising positions with her boyfriend.’ Claire moved into the outside lane and followed signs for the East Link tollbridge that led across the river to the north city. ‘She’d threaten to send the photos to their parents and relatives unless they paid her.’

  ‘Charming. How long did she get away with that?’

  ‘About a year, as I understand it, before one of her victims went to a clergyman and asked for help. When the cops raided her flat, they found compromising photos of over a hundred different victims. All of them had paid up.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The boyfriend went to jail. Maura got a suspended sentence. A couple of years later, she moved on to richer pickings. She set herself up in business as a prostitute, put adverts in the magazines, and blackmailed the married men who came to visit her. She got two years for that.’

  Hunter picked up Claire’s notebook. There was a full page of charges and sentences.

  ‘She moved to London after that,’ said Claire, as they waited in the queue for the Liffey tollbridge, ‘and carried on the same business. It’s all there. Finally she moved back to Ireland and joined the staff of a high-class massage parlour, a place frequented by barristers, doctors, surgeons and the like.’

  She tossed several coins into the toll basket and waited for the green light.

  ‘Shortly afterwards, one of the doctors went to the police and said she was blackmailing him. It turned out she was also bleeding half a dozen other regulars, the ones with plenty of money and lots to lose in their professional lives. But nobody was willing to give evidence. There were never any charges.’

  Hunter fell silent. He remembered Shirley’s words in the nightclub:

  ‘Some of our best regular clients just stopped using our services, all of them at once. I could never understand why … There was a doctor, a barrister, an accountant and a city councillor, among others … and they were all Maura’s regulars …’

  How much had Maura Granby made from her scam? How much human misery had she created? Whatever the truth, one thing was clear: she had creamed off enough cash to take early retirement in Passage North.

  But once a blackmailer, always a blackmailer …

  Claire continued driving through the north-city docklands and out towards the suburbs. She seemed to know where she was going.

  ‘Do you want to tell me?’ Hunter asked at last.

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Where we’re going.’

  She beamed happily, the sort of smile you give someone when handing over a particularly generous present on Christmas Day.

  ‘Maura Granby recently moved back to Dublin,’ she announced. ‘And I’ve got her current address.’

  She left the main road and turned into a mature estate of semi-detached homes. ‘I don’t know how you feel, Hunter, but I think we should call in to see her. And ask her how long she’s been blackmailing Joseph Valentia.’

  ‘WE’VE had a sighting of Hotel One,’ said Ian Arthur, bursting into Sauvage’s office.

  ‘About bloody time,’ growled the Bear. He closed his Dublin street map with a snap. ‘Where and when?’

  Arthur squeezed through the narrow gap between the door and the desk and eased himself into the chair across the desk from Sauvage. ‘Just before noon,’ he said. ‘He went to a political meeting and confronted Joe Valentia in front of a crowd of his supporters.’

  ‘He what?’ Sauvage stared at his colleague incredulously.

  ‘He –’

  ‘It’s okay, Ian, I heard you. Jesus.’ The Bear rubbed his eyes with his giant paws. ‘I thought we’d covered everywhere he was likely to go. But we never reckoned he’d go to meet Valentia. What happened?’

  ‘Hotel One and the girl went right up to him after the meeting and showed him something. One witness said it might have been a photo. Then Valentia took them both for a civilised spin around the block in his Merc. Like they were old mates.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘They split up. The witness thinks that Hotel One drove off with the girl in a Fiat Brava, heading towards town. I’ve got the reg right here –’

  ‘No need. I know it by heart.’ Sauvage rattled it off. ‘Have we put out an alert to all our people?’

  ‘Of course. But there’s a problem.’

  ‘There’s always a problem, Ian.’

  ‘A traffic cop noticed a guy on a red Honda motorbike acting suspiciously. Seemed to be following the Merc at first, then headed off after Hotel One and the girl. He sent in the number, checked it out, and guess what?’

  ‘Let me hazard a guess. Dodgy registration, but habitually used by a man with a purple birthmark? A birthmark shaped like an exclamation mark?’

  Arthur nodded. ‘It’s him all right.’

  ‘Chato Cook.’ The Bear sighed. ‘Any idea where they’re going?’

  ‘We have two leads,’ said Ian Arthur. ‘One: they were caught on video at the East Link tollbridge, heading northwards. Two: as you know, we’ve got a trace on the girl’s mobile. She got one call from the USA, from a passenger aircraft; then a text message at twelve-thirty-three, from you lot.’

  ‘What do you mean, from us lot?’

  ‘From the police.’ Arthur loved reminding Sauvage that he was technically a civilian and outside the control of the police force. ‘We traced it to the mobile phone of one Sergeant John Wayne.’

  Sauvage prided himself on his ability to control
his emotions. He didn’t react.

  ‘Get on to this guy Wayne,’ he said evenly. ‘Ask him what the hell he’s playing at. Tell him that if he knows where Hotel One and the girl are going, he’d better tell us bloody quick or else he’ll be riding into the sunset. Permanently.’

  ‘Way ahead of you. I’ve got a man on his way out to see him right now.’

  ‘Let me know the minute he hears anything. And if Wayne tries to give us any attitude, refer him directly to me. I’d enjoy that.’ Sauvage turned towards a map on the wall and his gaze drifted upwards, to the far northwest. ‘Any news about Emma Macaulay?’

  ‘She’s still in Copenhagen.’

  ‘Where’s she staying?’

  ‘She’s holed up at the Hotel Kong Frederick. We’ve sent one of our people from the Embassy over there. They say she’s gone out for the day, but they don’t know where. We’ve told our man to wait in the lobby for as long as it takes.’

  Sauvage sat back and stared out of his murky window. There wasn’t much to stare at, just a concrete wall with a sick-looking butterfly bush forcing its way through a crack towards the sunshine on the other side.

  ‘Copenhagen,’ he said slowly. ‘What the hell could have taken her to Copenhagen?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Ian Arthur said. ‘Carlsberg lager? The Tivoli Gardens? Hans Christian Andersen?’

  ‘Who?’ Sauvage wasn’t even listening.

  ‘Hans Christian Andersen,’ said Arthur. ‘You know, the man who wrote “The Little Mermaid”, “The Little Match Girl” – and what was that other one? “The Ugly Duckling”.’

  PLICK-plick. Plick. Plick-plick.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ whispered Claire.

  Hunter glanced around. ‘I’ve no idea. Let’s just ring the bell. Get this over with.’

  Maura Granby’s house was a three-bed semi, typical of thousands of houses that had been built around the Dublin suburbs in the 1980s. Bay window with fake lead on the glass, aluminium porch, single-storey garage turned into an extension. A tall cordyline palm in the centre of a small lawn that badly needed mowing.