Single Obsession

by Des Ekin

  He gave a thin, satisfied smile as he watched Simon Addison turn his head from right to left, like a man in a burning building searching for an escape route.

  But Valentia knew, as he scanned the crowd complacently, that there was no one there to help. Hunter had been sacked. Mark was in the skies somewhere over the Atlantic. Emma Macaulay had been well and truly frightened off.

  Addison was on his own.

  ‘CHARLEY! Charley! Where are you? What’s the matter with you?’

  Emma’s frantic voice echoed through the bathroom in Dublin Airport as she walked down the long row of cubicles, banging on each door with her fist.

  ‘Come on, Charley, for God’s sake! It’s nine o’clock! The meeting has started!’

  She cursed herself for having waited so long. She had sat patiently outside, sweating more with each passing minute, waiting for Charley’s frail figure to emerge from the bathroom. But she had never appeared.

  ‘Charley! Where the hell are you?’

  Her anger rose as she passed each cubicle, knocking open each metal door with a furious rattle. But when she reached the last one and found it empty, her outrage was replaced by the sort of despair that sends your gut plummeting downwards faster than an elevator in free-fall.

  The entire room was empty.

  At the very last minute, Charley Valentia had done a runner.

  ‘WHAT do you mean, I can’t leave?’

  Inspector Bernard Sauvage confronted the bank manager like an Irish wolfhound towering over a whippet. His face was flushed with anger.

  ‘You can’t leave,’ the bank manager repeated nervously. ‘I’ve locked the front doors of the bank. As I said earlier, this matter is highly irregular, and I have taken the liberty of telephoning a senior counsel who has acted on behalf of this company in the past. His considered advice is that your action may be unconstitutional, Inspector.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your action in opening our client’s deposit box may run contrary to the Constitution. It may be subject to challenge in court.’ The bank manager raised himself to his full five foot four inches and positioned himself in the centre of the corridor. ‘Our counsel is on his way here as we speak. Until he arrives, he has expressly instructed me that no one is to leave and nothing must be removed from these premises.’

  Hunter looked up at the large gilt clock that hung above the counter of the bank. It showed three minutes past nine.

  My God, he thought. It’s already begun. We came so close to winning. Now we’re going to fall at the very last fence.

  ‘SO, without further ado,’ announced Valentia, ‘I shall hand you over to Mr Simon Addison, who, I believe, has a rather important announcement to make.’

  He sat down. Addison rose to his feet, his face as white as the tablecloth in front of him. His legendary cool, his Cockney rock-star insolence, had deserted him. He stood exposed to the world as a broken man, just a few seconds away from humiliation and bankruptcy.

  ‘Good evening, ladies and …’

  His voice trailed off in the awesome silence.

  ‘Could you speak up, please?’ shouted a voice from the back of the room.

  ‘Yes, do speak up, Mr Addison,’ crowed Valentia. ‘We all want to hear what you’ve got to say. Every single …’

  He paused as a man wearing an Aran jumper hurried across the room in a crouch and whispered something in his ear.

  Meanwhile, Addison was coughing and tapping his microphone. ‘Is that any better?’ he asked meekly.

  ‘Yeah. Fine,’ the voice at the back shouted.

  ‘Okay. Er, good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ Addison said again. ‘I’m sure you all know why I’ve come here tonight. It gives me no pleasure.’ He stopped, his face twisted in bewilderment, as he watched Valentia rise to his feet again.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your baring your soul to us, Mr Addison.’ Valentia was enjoying the other man’s confusion. ‘But I have just received a message about a major news development. It seems that a shooting incident took place earlier today in Slane in County Meath, and that one person has been killed. The village has been sealed off, and news crews are reporting live from the scene at this moment. The TV producers have requested that we suspend our … our little ceremony for just fifteen minutes until they can return to cover it live. Since this is, indeed, the era in which television controls the events it reports, it seems I have little option but to agree. I deeply appreciate your patience.’

  He sat down again. The crowd rippled with frustration, and there were shouted protests from print journalists who had deadlines to meet. But Valentia, beaming back at them, seemed totally unfazed.

  Addison, on the other hand, showed no sign of relief. Instead, his face betrayed the dull resentment of a man on death row who has steeled himself for his own execution, only to find it postponed for a few minutes in order to fix a broken fuse in the electric chair.

  Fifteen bloody minutes, his slumped posture seemed to say. Big deal. What can possibly happen in fifteen minutes?

  ‘CHARLEY!’

  Emma was yelling at the top of her voice now, outside the bathroom, around the lounge. In the far corner, two airport policemen talked quietly into radios and began moving across towards her.

  ‘Doctor?

  Emma spun around.

  ‘My God, Charley, you gave me a bad moment. Where the hell were you?’

  ‘Getting a breath of fresh air. I felt sick, Doctor. Really sick.’

  Emma peered at her with concern. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Charley nodded. ‘I just took enough to keep me straight, and it’s starting to kick in. Another five minutes, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Charley, we don’t have another five minutes. Do you feel up to this or not?’

  ‘Doctor … I guess I’m just plain scared.’

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am.’ One of the airport cops leaned over them, his voice full of suspicion. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, we’re fine, thanks.’

  The policeman walked away. Emma turned back to Charley and grasped her hand. ‘You can do it, Charley. I know you can.’ Her voice became urgent. ‘It’s time to put right that which has been spoiled. Remember?’

  Charley nodded weakly. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m ready.’

  She took a deep breath and allowed Emma to hustle her out of the airport lounge towards the patrol car that was waiting, its siren whooping and its engine already revving for takeoff.

  ‘THAT’S it.’ Bernard Sauvage’s renowned patience had finally run out. He grabbed the bank manager by the lapels and hurled him up against the wall. ‘Did you see what was in that box? Did you get a good look at those pictures? Do you realise what your valued client did to those innocent women?’

  ‘Yes, I saw.’ The manager’s breath was coming in anxious gasps. ‘But that’s not the point. Due process must be followed. The legal niceties have to be observed.’

  ‘That could have been your wife. Your daughter. Your sister or cousin. And you’re trying to protect him?’

  ‘I’m trying to protect my client’s rights under the Constitution.’

  Sauvage lifted the man until their faces were level. ‘Listen to me,’ he said evenly. ‘Ten years ago, I caught a renegade terrorist who’d kidnapped the children of a top industrialist. He’d kept them starving in a tiny wooden shed until they were at the point of death. I used certain techniques that are strictly forbidden by the Convention on Human Rights. Within two minutes, he’d told me exactly where they were.’

  His voice didn’t waver. ‘I am six months away from retirement and I have nothing to lose,’ he lied. ‘This is a matter of life or death. Within two minutes, I promise you, you will open that bloody door.’

  He dropped the man to earth and stared at him, breathing heavily.

  ‘I’ll open the door,’ said the manager.

  He fished in his pockets, produced several complex keys, and freed the locks. ‘I can assure you that you’ll regret
this, Inspector,’ he stuttered breathlessly as he swung open the heavy front door.

  ‘I’ve come to regret a lot of things, sir,’ the Bear shouted over his shoulder as he walked off into the night. ‘But I can assure you that this will not be one of them.’

  ‘YOUR attention again, please.’ Valentia’s voice rose above the wail of microphone feedback. The delay had lasted a lot longer than fifteen minutes, and the audience was becoming impatient. ‘I believe we are ready to resume.’

  He peered at the television crews, eyebrows raised, and was rewarded with a thumbs-up.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ he continued. ‘So, without further ado, I shall hand you over to Mr Simon Addison, in anticipation of a most important announcement.’

  Addison rose again, radiating bitterness and resentment at the entire room.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me no pleasure to stand here tonight and take responsibility for the negligence of others,’ he said with unconcealed venom. ‘But the buck always has to stop somewhere, and in this case it stops with me.’

  He lifted the white envelope, opened it, and pulled out a bank draft. ‘On behalf of Street Talk magazine –’ he began.

  ‘Wait!’

  Addison looked up and realised no one was watching him any more.

  Instead, every eye in the room was focused on a determined-looking woman who was elbowing her way through the crowd. With unbelievable brashness, the woman walked straight up to Addison’s table and grabbed the mike from his unresisting hand.

  ‘What Mr Addison is trying to say,’ interrupted Emma Macaulay, ‘is that, before we get down to the main business of the evening, we have an unexpected guest speaker. A courageous woman who has come all the way from Denmark with a very surprising story to tell. May I introduce Ms Charlotte Valentia – Joseph Valentia’s daughter.’

  There was a scattering of confused applause from one corner of the room, but it was lost amid the stunned silence. TV crewmen glanced around for directions and were told to keep their cameras running.

  Charley Valentia did not appear, as expected, at Emma’s side. Instead, she stepped from the shadows on the other side of the room and stood directly beside her father, who did not utter a word of protest when she lifted his microphone from its stand on the table.

  For a long while she stood there, saying nothing, while chairs shifted and throats were cleared in embarrassment.

  Emma literally stopped breathing. It seemed that Charlotte Valentia’s nerve had gone.

  Then, just when everything appeared to be lost, Charley spoke. And her voice sounded surprisingly strong and confident.

  ‘You know Joseph Valentia as a man who demands the highest standards of morality from others,’ she said, her Southern twang carrying clearly across the room. ‘He has fought and won elections by campaigning against what he sees as the two great evils of modern society: unmarried mothers and abortion.’

  There was a long pause. She swallowed, clutching at the chair-back for support.

  ‘So it may come as some surprise to you all,’ Charley announced at last, ‘that I was almost a single mother myself. In fact, I would have been proud to be a single mother. But my father, Joseph Valentia, prevented me from enjoying that privilege.’

  Total silence descended on the room.

  ‘He prevented me from becoming a mother,’ she continued, ‘by arranging for me to have an abortion.’

  WHEN Charley finally sat down, her face even paler than usual with the strain of confessing her role in the Mags Jackson set-up, Emma wanted to run across the room and hug her.

  ‘Can I ask you one question about the abortion allegation?’ A television reporter had risen to his feet and was choosing his words cautiously, terrified of leaving himself open to a libel action. ‘You’re telling us that Joseph Valentia actually ordered you to terminate your pregnancy?’

  ‘Yes.’ Charley nodded weakly.

  ‘For no other reason than that it would damage his political career in the Deep South if you had a black man’s baby?’

  ‘That’s correct.’ Charley was nodding again. ‘You see, he ran a right-wing radio station down in Mississippi. It was supposedly gospel, evangelical, but it constantly preached a subtext of white supremacy and racism. It was a rallying point for Klansmen, gun-nuts, Waco wackos, survivalists, all sorts of freaks. I guess he knew he’d lose all that support if the story leaked out that his daughter had slept with a black man.’

  Another reporter had sprung to his feet. ‘But why an abortion?’

  ‘He told me it was the lesser of two evils. That it would be much worse if I gave birth to a child of mixed race. But most of all’ – she glanced with contempt towards her father – ‘I don’t think he believed black babies had the same rights as white babies.’

  ‘But what about you? You tell us you wanted to keep the child?’

  ‘Desperately.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you stand up to your father?’

  ‘Because I knew he would ultimately win. It was pointless fighting him. He always won. No matter what, no matter who, he always ended up winning.’

  She stared down at Joseph Valentia, who was sitting motionless, gazing into space. ‘But not this time,’ she said with iron determination. ‘Not this time, Dad. This time it’s my turn.’

  ‘What about Richard? The child’s father, the black actor? Didn’t he have anything to say in the matter?’ shouted a middle-aged woman.

  ‘My father bought him off. Gave him a big cheque and told him to go make a fresh start on the West Coast. That was the last I saw of him.’

  ‘Now just one minute.’ Cormac Falcarragh had shuffled noisily to his feet. ‘You have told us that you are a drug addict. And you have admitted lying again and again, lie upon lie. Why should we believe a single word you say about this … this alleged termination?’

  Charley shrugged. ‘I don’t expect you to.’

  ‘Then what proof –’

  Charley removed a well-worn rectangle of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. ‘How about a credit-card receipt from the abortion clinic? Approved by my father’s personal signature?’

  The room exploded in noise. Some reporters dashed towards the door, others began gabbling into mobile phones.

  Valentia stood up abruptly, pushing over his chair with a clatter as he dashed towards a side exit. The corridor outside was empty. He hurried towards the main exit, ignoring the frantic cries of the reporters.

  Hurling himself through the revolving doors and into the cold night air, he quickened his pace and raised his arm to hail a taxi.

  A blue Ford Granada pulled up. Valentia leaped in.

  ‘Dublin Airport,’ he snapped. ‘Quick as you can.’

  The large man at the wheel turned around, taking his time.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘My name is Inspector Bernard Sauvage. Joseph Valentia, I am arresting you under Section Four of the Criminal Justice Act, as part of our ongoing investigations into the abduction and murder of Kate Spain.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ‘HUNTER! My main man!’

  Hunter sighed in irritation as he hurried through the conference chamber in search of Emma and Charley. The room had become a cauldron of noise and frantic activity. Everyone realised history had been made in the past few minutes; no one could quite believe it.

  The country’s press had turned up to witness the final triumph of Joseph Valentia and the abject humiliation of Simon Addison. Instead, it had been the other way around.

  ‘Hunter. Way to go, man!’

  Addison’s voice was growing louder. To Hunter’s intense annoyance, he felt a bony hand descend on his shoulder, loop around his neck, and reel him in like an angler hooking a prize trout.

  ‘What a day, dude! What a win!’ Addison was clutching Hunter’s head to what he thought was his bosom, but was actually his armpit. ‘Hey!’ He gestured across to a cameraman. ‘Get a pic of me with my main man, my numero uno, the best damn editor in the whole damn
universe and beyond!’ He clapped his sacked employee on the back. ‘Hunter. The man.’

  Within seconds, a circle had formed around them.

  ‘We pulled it off, Hunter,’ proclaimed Addison. ‘We did it!’

  Hunter struggled free and stared at him in amazement. ‘We, Simon?’

  ‘The biggest bluff in history,’ Addison explained to the bemused press. ‘I pretended to sack this man so he could work undercover and dig for the truth without Valentia suspecting we were still operating together. And he went through it all without a single complaint. He let everyone think he was sacked, down and out, ready for Skid Row, all to get the story of the century for Street Talk magazine.’

  His eyes met Hunter’s briefly, begging him to back up the lie, and quickly looked away again. ‘Now the man is back. He’s back big-time. He’s editor of Street Talk again, he’s got a big raise in pay, whatever damn automobile he wants under his butt, and you’re gonna read the full story in our next issue. Believe it!’

  There was a cynical silence.

  ‘Is this true, Hunter?’ one of the reporters asked.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Hunter disentangled himself from Addison’s spidery tentacles and walked away.

  ‘Hey, let him go, dudes,’ Addison was saying. ‘He’s tired, he needs time to get his head together. We’ll be holding a press conference in the morning, let you all know what to expect in the next issue of the hottest magazine in …’

  His voice trailed off. He was talking to himself.

  ‘HUNTER!’

  ‘Emma. Oh, my God. Emma.’

  He flung his arms around her and kissed her on the lips. She responded hungrily, urgently, as though trying to make up for all the time they’d lost.

  Neither of them had intended it to happen that way. They’d meant it to be a brief embrace between friends, a gesture of relief and celebration. But as soon as they saw each other, they were hurled together as forcibly as passengers in an accelerating bus. It was inevitable, irresistible. And both of them had forgotten how good it had felt.