Sabbathman

by Hurley, Graham

  Now, Kingdom buttoned his trench-coat. ‘Seen Dad recently?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not phoned at all?’

  Ginette shook her head. ‘We’ve been away. I told you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Kingdom nodded. ‘Well, he’s got worse.’

  ‘Really?’

  Ginette reached for a drying-up cloth and opened the eye-level oven. Inside, Kingdom could see a small mountain of couscous in an earthenware dish. Ginette took the lid off a casserole on a lower shelf and sniffed it.

  ‘So what’s happened now?’ she asked, frowning.

  Kingdom explained about the way his father had been, the way he couldn’t cope any more, the tricks his memory played, the fact that he wouldn’t even eat properly. Ginette was busy with the plates, six of them, rimmed in gold.

  ‘So what are you saying? You want Dad to come here?’

  ‘It’s a thought. Unless you fancy Leytonstone.’

  Ginette shot him a look. She’d always hated Mafeking Street. Wrong address. Wrong area. Wrong vibes.

  ‘Are you serious?’ she said.

  ‘About Leytonstone?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘About here. Dad coming here.’

  Kingdom shrugged. To his certain knowledge, Ginette had six bedrooms. Even with two kids, that still left a couple spare. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am. Just for now. While I find something longer term.’

  ‘But I thought you’d got nowhere to live? That’s what you told me on the phone.’

  ‘It’s true. I haven’t.’

  ‘So why don’t you move in with Dad? Kill two birds with one stone?’

  ‘I would. Will. Except I’m never there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She turned and looked at him. In certain lights, Kingdom could still see the stroppy child in her face, the slightly tilted jaw, the unspoken accusations.

  ‘Because I have to work for a living. Like everyone else.’

  ‘Give it up, then. If it’s that important.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  Kingdom felt the blood beginning to pump, his temper quickening. Ginette always did this to him. Always. She knew exactly where to place the knife, exactly how hard to press. Now she was turning away, affecting indifference, reaching for a pile of dessert bowls.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘if Dad matters that much, I’d have thought he was more important than any job.’

  ‘And what about the kids? David? Matthew? Where does the money come from for them?’

  ‘You never see them. You’re always somewhere else.’

  ‘That wasn’t the question. We’re talking money, Ginette. Maintenance. Hard cash.’

  Ginette shrugged. ‘God knows,’ she said. ‘That’s your problem.’

  She counted the dessert bowls and put them on the side. Then Steve’s hands appeared through the hatch, a glass in one, a bottle of Pils in the other. By the look of it, Ginette was drinking Campari and soda. She passed the bottle to Kingdom without a word. Kingdom put it on one side.

  ‘So you’re saying no,’ he said, ‘is that it?’

  ‘I’m saying it wouldn’t work. It’s not fair on the kids, either. Not at their age.’

  ‘Not having their grandfather around?’

  ‘It’s not that. He gets funny. You know he does. You know what it’s like. Dribbling and farting. And all those onions he’s been eating recently …’

  Ginette looked up, realising instantly what she’d said. Kingdom looked at her. There was a long silence.

  ‘So when did you really see him?’ he said at last.

  ‘A week ago. Just after we got back. While you were still in Belfast.’

  ‘He never mentioned it.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he? He can’t remember anything. Just like you say.’

  ‘So what was he like? When you saw him?’

  Ginette shook her head, biting her lips, refusing to answer.

  Kingdom caught her by the arm. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘tell me what happened.’

  ‘Not much. Enough.’

  ‘Enough what? Enough for you to know? Enough for you to know he’s off his rocker? Our Dad? Ginette?’

  She pulled away from him, and he let her go. She was wearing perfume, something expensive, and she left the scent of lemons in the air. She stood by the sink, defensive, rubbing her arm.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ she muttered. ‘The state of him. It’s disgusting.’

  The front door chimes began to ring. The Alsatian loped out of the kitchen and Kingdom heard Steve’s footsteps in the hall. Ginette was crying now, her head in her hands. Kingdom found another drying-up cloth and tossed it across to her. It fell on the tiles by her feet, but she made no effort to pick it up. Kingdom looked at it a moment, then shrugged and turned away. In the hall, Steve was kissing a woman in a red dress. The man behind her was holding a magnum of champagne. Kingdom brushed past, heading for the door. Outside, it had begun to rain again. He was nearly at the gate when Steve caught up with him. He had an envelope in one hand. He gave it to Kingdom. He was slightly out of breath.

  Kingdom took the envelope. What’s this?’ he said.

  ‘A cheque. It may help.’

  Kingdom looked at the envelope, then opened it. Ginette was standing at the front door. She peered out, shielding her eyes against the floodlights, then she disappeared inside, pulling the door shut behind her. Kingdom extracted the cheque and examined it under the floodlights. It was drawn on Steve’s company and made out to E. Kingdom in the sum of one thousand pounds. Steve, for once, was looking awkward.

  ‘Call it a downpayment,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help listening.’

  Kingdom studied him for a moment, then nodded at the digger. ‘What’s that for?’ he said.

  ‘Swimming pool. Out the back.’

  ‘Present for the kids?’

  ‘Ginnie.’

  ‘Ah …’

  Kingdom glanced at the cheque again, then gave it back to Steve.

  Steve stared at him. ‘You don’t want it?’

  ‘No, it’s not that.’

  ‘What then?’

  Kingdom tapped the cheque. ‘It’s the name,’ he said. ‘You should make it out to me, not Ernie.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because …’ he hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Ernie’s a goner, mate. He’s off his head. You should know that. Being part of the family.’ He looked at Steve a moment longer, then patted him on the arm. ‘Bon appetit,’ he said, turning away, back towards the road.

  THREE

  Next morning, Tuesday 21 September, Kingdom spent nearly an hour on the phone to the local Social Services Department. Half a dozen calls took him from office to office as he explained his father’s situation, until finally he secured the promise of a visit from a social worker. Meeting Ernie face to face, the social worker would be able to assess his needs and start work on a Care Plan. In the meantime, with a confirmation from Steve that another £1000 cheque was on the way, Kingdom phoned an agency and bought the services of a contract nurse. For £7.25 an hour, she’d call round three times daily and make sure Ernie was watered and fed. Her name, the agency manager said, was Angeline. She’d worked in nursing homes all over the country, and she was especially fond of what the manager delicately called ‘characters’.

  Kingdom gave Ernie the good news and told him to open the front door when Angeline knocked. The old man did his best with the name, muttering it to himself as he shuffled across the hall to see Kingdom out. The last Kingdom saw of him, waving goodbye, was a bemused smile as the old boy stood blinking in the pale autumn sunshine. He had a chopping board in one hand and the briefcase in the other, and there were dribbles of soup down the front of his dressing gown.

  From Waterloo, Kingdom took the train to Winchester. He’d still had no time for a haircut and the young uniformed WPC who met him at the station asked him for ID before escorting him out to the car park. Kingdom sat beside her for the brief five-minute drive to police h
eadquarters.

  ‘Is it that bad?’ he said, not expecting an answer.

  She glanced across at him, unsmiling. ‘We like to check, sir,’ she said, ‘especially these days.’

  Rob Scarman occupied an office near the top of the tall, slab-sided block that housed the headquarters staff of the Hampshire police force. He was a thin, lanky man with a taste for homespun jumpers and worn tweed suits. When he’d been at the Yard on attachment, he’d deliberately fostered the image of the slow, provincial copper but Kingdom hadn’t been fooled. Behind the soft country burr and the schoolmasterly stoop, Scarman was very sharp indeed.

  The two men shook hands. Sunshine flooded the office, gleaming on the polished emptiness of Scarman’s desk. Scarman, Kingdom remembered, had a hatred of paperwork, preferring to keep as much information as he could in his head. Now, he waved Kingdom into a chair and briefed him on progress in the Carpenter case.

  The murder had taken place in a private house off the sea-front on Hayling Island, a retirement and holiday area east of Portsmouth. An incident room had been established at the police station in Havant, on the mainland, but the investigation had taken the usual twenty-four hours to bed down. The publicity, Scarman said wryly, had been a blessing, and neither manpower nor overtime were proving a problem. The Detective Chief Superintendent in charge had budget coming out of his ears, and was deploying three teams on the ground. One of them, mainly uniformed men, was still combing the immediate area. Another was doing house-to-house inquiries in a slowly widening circle. A third, Scarman’s own boys, was tramping through the small print of Carpenter’s public and private lives, trying to put together a detailed profile of the man: his financial interests, his political debts, his sexual preferences. The key word, as ever, was elimination, chucking every particle of evidence into the sieve in the hope that something, sooner or later, would slip through the mesh and offer a decent lead.

  Kingdom nodded, recognising the textbook approach. ‘And?’ he said.

  Scarman pulled a face. ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘so far.’

  ‘Nothing as in nothing? Or nothing wonderful?’

  ‘Nothing wonderful. Plenty of rubbish, bits and pieces, but nothing worth killing for. Not in my judgment.’

  ‘What about the lady he was in bed with? Where does she fit?’

  Scarman opened a drawer and took out a sheaf of photographs. The one he gave Kingdom showed a woman in her late forties: well-preserved, fetching dimples, steady eyes and a fringe of artfully-cut blonde hair. The photo had recently come from a frame of some kind. Kingdom could feel the indentations on the edges. Scarman reached for the photograph, glancing at it before putting it back with the others.

  ‘Clare Baxter,’ he said, ‘correspondence secretary in the constituency party. Widowed back in the eighties. Not short of a bob or two.’

  ‘Big fan of Carpenter’s?’

  ‘Seems so, according to the letters we found. They’d been at it for a good year and a half. Sunday mornings, mostly. He’d pop down to … ah … discuss the week’s post.’

  ‘Did the wife know?’

  ‘She says not.’

  ‘Do you believe her?’

  Scarman said nothing for a moment. Finally he shrugged. ‘Hard to say. Carpenter was a devious bastard. Did his best to keep the compartments watertight …’ He paused. ‘The two women certainly knew each other, but that proves nothing.’

  ‘So what about the wife? How’s she taken it?’

  ‘Badly. She’s staying with relatives at the moment. Her mother and her step-father. She’s a nice woman. Bright. Cheerful. It’s a real blow.’

  ‘Any kids?’

  ‘Three.’

  Scarman delved in the drawer again and tossed Kingdom an election pamphlet. On the front, under a big black and white photo, it said ‘Max Carpenter – the Voice of South-east Hampshire’. Kingdom studied the photo. Carpenter looked young, sharp, and pleased with himself, a prosperous estate agent after a particularly good day at the office. His wife, beside him, was sheltering behind a quiet smile. The kids looked uncomfortable. Kingdom opened the pamphlet. The first paragraph was a sermon on family values. The rest was a promise to cut taxes, raise standards, and return the country to greatness.

  Kingdom looked up. ‘So what’s his background?’ he said. ‘Where does he come from?’

  Scarman sat back in the chair and began to polish his glasses with the fat end of his tie, a habit Kingdom remembered from their days together at the Yard.

  ‘Forty-four years old,’ Scarman began, ‘cut his teeth on Richmond Council. Big following in Central Office, adopted by the locals in ’86, won the seat in ’87. Right-wing, pro-Thatcher, bit of a favourite. Missed her terribly, people tell me. Trained as a chartered accountant. Still retained a couple of consultancies, both listed in the Commons register. One’s a construction company. Motorways, dams, that kind of thing. The other’s a big hotel group, London-based. Carpenter did a lot of travelling. Got himself onto various fact-finding delegations. Bit of an eager beaver. Very keen to make a name for himself.’

  ‘Any promotions?’

  ‘No. He was tipped for PPS last time round, one of the DTI ministers, but it never happened.’

  ‘Any idea why?’

  ‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘He wasn’t a popular man.’

  ‘Any serious enemies?’

  ‘Not that we’ve found so far. The odd constituency letter. A lot of fuss about one or two local issues. But nothing to justify this …’

  Scarman reached for another of the photos and slid it across the desk. It showed Carpenter’s naked body laid out on a mortuary slab. His face was half-turned towards the camera. There was a gaping hole where his right eye had once been, the flesh torn, the eyeball pulped, a thin trickle of cerebral fluid still glistening in the flashlight from the camera. Kingdom looked at the election pamphlet again, wondering about the journey the MP had made in six short years.

  ‘Just the two shots?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, here.’ Scarman nodded, fingering the soft tissue behind his left ear. ‘Point-blank range. Powder burns. Real mess, as you can see.’

  Kingdom nodded. ‘And the SOCO found the bullets?’

  ‘Yes. The report’s due back this afternoon but they gave me the gist on the phone, Monday lunchtime.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Two softnose 9mm. Nothing exciting.’

  Kingdom nodded. The Scenes of Crime Office would have been at the house since Sunday, working slowly outwards from the bed, looking for every last particle of evidence: blood, bone, hair, semen, palm and fingerprints. The bullets, Kingdom assumed, would have lodged in the mattress beneath the pillow. Tweezered out and stored in clear polythene bags, they’d have been taken to the Home Office Forensic Laboratories at Aldermaston. Reports back normally took three days or so, depending on the length of the queue. In this case, they’d obviously pulled their fingers out.

  Kingdom leaned back in his chair, the sunshine through the window warm on his face. ‘Anything else?’ he said. ‘Anything obvious?’

  ‘Not really. Look for yourself.’

  Scarman got up and went to the corner of his office. A computer terminal stood on a wooden trolley beside the bookcase. Scarman turned the monitor on and tapped an instruction through the keyboard. The screen came to life and he began to punch through a series of displays. Kingdom joined him, peering over his shoulder, recognising the distinctive layouts. The computer software had been developed specially for storing and cross-indexing the flood of information generated by any murder inquiry, and the programme was known as HOLMES, a laboured acronym for Home Office Large Murder Enquiry System. It had already saved thousands of man-hours in hundreds of inquiries, and had been adopted nationwide.

  Now, Scarman paused on the Special Inquiry file. Each of the house-to-house calls generated a separate pro forma. Anything requiring further investigation was handed to teams of CID officers. So far, by the look of it, the Special Inquiry teams had been less than
busy. Scarman glanced over his shoulder, closing down the system again. Both he and Kingdom knew that the lack of leads was a bad sign. Murder inquiries tended to be solved early – the first couple of days – or not at all.

  The two men went back to the desk. In his pocket, Kingdom had a photocopy of the first of what Allder was now calling the Sabbathman communiqués. As far as he knew, the Commissioner at the Yard had now been onto the three respective police forces at Chief Constable level, pointing out the possible links, leaving further action to their own discretion. Given the contents of tomorrow’s Citizen exclusive, he could hardly do otherwise, but Kingdom was uncertain exactly how far down the system the news had filtered. He looked at Scarman a moment, wondering whether or not to tell him. Scarman beat him to it.

  ‘I take it you’ve heard,’ he said.

  ‘About?’

  ‘Our Fleet Street friend. This Sabbathman.’

  Kingdom nodded, feeling slightly foolish. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I was about to mention it.’ He produced the photocopy and passed it across.

  Scarman studied it. ‘Is this kosher? The real thing?’

  ‘It’s a photocopy.’ He nodded. ‘But that’s what it looks like in the flesh, yes.’

  Scarman read it again, then put it carefully to one side. ‘Do you believe it?’ he said, looking up.