Sabbathman

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘I’ve got a Sean McTiernan on Five’s trace list,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure that’s kosher.’

  There was a silence. Then he heard Allder chuckling. More than anything else in the world, he loved being ahead of the game.

  ‘He’s changed his name.’ he said, ‘I thought you’d have known.’

  ‘No,’ Kingdom said. ‘So what was he before?’

  ‘Eddie McCreadie.’

  ‘Fat Eddie?’

  ‘Yes.’ Allder sounded suddenly impatient. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Allder rang off and Kingdom wrote the new name on the pad beside the number, sitting back again in the chair, his pencil between his teeth. Fat Eddie had been an active republican in Belfast, a quartermaster, a man near the centre of the Provisionals’ Northern Command. The violence that he’d witnessed over the years had finally sickened him, and towards the end of his days in Belfast he’d provided enough hard intelligence to save dozens of lives. The operations he’d compromised had always carried the risk of civilian casualties, and to Kingdom’s certain knowledge he’d never asked for a penny in payment. As such, Fat Eddie had left his Army handlers in a state of some bewilderment: why did he do it? What was his real motivation? How could they hope to bind him hand and foot, the way they did the rest of the touts?’

  In the end, Fat Eddie had left Belfast, preferring his own version of retirement to a violent death in the bottom of some ditch in South Armagh. He’d moved his wife and family to a housing estate on the edge of Birmingham, and he’d at last accepted Army help in the shape of a job at a local engineering works. Kingdom had inherited him as a ‘dry source’, someone to go to for background – history, really – and over the course of several conversations he’d taken a real liking to the man. He was generous and funny, one of life’s survivors. He doted on his family, and the last time they’d met, in the upstairs restaurant at Birmingham Airport, Kingdom had ended the evening with the purchase of five plastic footballs, one for each of Eddie’s kids. Like Eddie, the kids were soccer-mad, and Kingdom remembered the scene now, Eddie juggling the footballs on the down escalator, returning to the car park, trying to wave goodbye. Away from Belfast, the man was reborn. He had a new life. He could sleep at night without worrying about knocks at the door, or petrol through the letterbox, or neat little parcels of Semtex taped to the underside of his car. So what was he doing back in the frame? Why had he changed his name? And why had he so suddenly appeared on the MI5 trace list?

  Kingdom pondered the questions, aware of the WPC standing behind him. Back from the canteen, she was studying the screen with interest. MI5 display files were evidently a rare sight in provincial police stations.

  ‘Can you make any sense of that?’ she said, nodding at Fat Eddie’s trace code.

  Kingdom glanced up. ‘No,’ he said truthfully, ‘I can’t.’

  FIVE

  Portsmouth’s main hospital, the Queen Alexandra, lies on the lower slopes of Portsdown Hill, the steep fold of half-quarried chalk which looks down on the city from the north. Kingdom had phoned the Accident and Emergency Department from the Incident Room and had arranged to meet the Junior Registrar at eleven. With luck, she said, she’d be free for coffee. They could talk in the staff room.

  Now, Kingdom stirred sugar into his coffee and waited while the young doctor dealt with yet another inquiry on the internal phone. Jo Hubbard was in her late twenties, stocky, solidly-built, with broad shoulders and a pleasant open face under a startling haircut. The hair, tinted a rich auburn, was scissored in a straight line level with her ears. At the back and sides, beneath the line, it was shaved to a close nap. The overall effect was two-fold. At first, meeting her, Kingdom had thought it was ugly. Now, on closer inspection, it said something else. In this, and probably every other respect, Jo Hubbard was very definitely her own person.

  She put the phone down at last and apologised for the interruption with a grin. She grinned a lot. Outside, while he’d waited in the casualty department, Kingdom had watched her stepping from cubicle to cubicle, bending to examine an ankle or a knee, reassuring the younger kids with a squeeze on the shoulder or a tickle under the chin. She had natural warmth, and she seemed to leave little parcels of it behind her wherever she went.

  Now, she poured herself another coffee and sat down. Rob Scarman, it turned out, was a distant relative. She’d talked to him on the phone about Carpenter, more out of curiosity than anything else, but she hadn’t made any kind of formal statement. She sipped at her coffee. Carpenter’s medical notes lay beside her on the low occasional table.

  ‘He was a mess,’ she said. ‘Strictly speaking, he was still alive but that had more to do with the ambulance boys than anything else. They were brilliant.’

  Kingdom looked at the notes. An outline of Carpenter’s head was bisected by a careful line of pencilled dots. Kingdom frowned. In his experience, two bullets in the head led straight to a drawer in the mortuary.

  ‘Alive?’ he queried.

  ‘Yes.’ Joe Hubbard picked up the notes. She extracted a sheet of blue scribble and peered at it. ‘They’d worked on him in the ambulance. His BP was way down and his breathing was pretty shallow and once I got the dressing off it was obvious he wasn’t going to make it, but …’ she looked up, the grin again, ‘… he was still with us, just.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Say? You think he was still conscious? Wound like that?’ She laughed. ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I got some fluid in him and tried to do something about his breathing but in the end I had to put him on the respirator. Machine that did his breathing for him.’

  ‘Knowing he wouldn’t make it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  She hesitated a moment, thinking about the question. There was a copy of The Citizen lying on the table. Someone had put their coffee on the photo of Max Carpenter and he peered up through a wet, brown circle.

  ‘I was the only one who knew who he was,’ she said at last. ‘We had no ID at the time, nothing from the para-medics, but I’d seen him before.’

  Kingdom nodded at the table. ‘In the papers?’ he said. ‘On telly?’

  ‘No. In the flesh.’

  ‘And that’s why you put him on the machine? Kept him alive? Because he was who he was?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I suppose so. God knows why. It wouldn’t have made any difference. Switch off the machine, and he’d have died anyway.’

  ‘Which is what happened? In the end?’

  ‘Yes, more or less.’ She consulted the notes again. ‘I got the neuro-bods over. Better they took the decision than me. They agreed it was hopeless. He came off the machine at’ – she picked up the notes – ‘ten past one. Went into cardiac arrest about a minute later.’ She glanced up. ‘And that was that.’

  ‘He died?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t try …’ he shrugged, ‘… anything else?’

  ‘No.’ Jo shook her head. ‘No point.’

  Kingdom nodded, making a note on his pad. Then he looked up. Jo was studying the newspaper and for the first time Kingdom wondered whether she’d seen it before.

  ‘This new to you?’ he said. ‘All this stuff? Sabbathman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No one out there talking about it?’ He nodded at the door. ‘You didn’t hear the news this morning? Watch TV?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Have I missed something?’

  Kingdom smiled. His question exactly. ‘I don’t know,’ he began. ‘There’s a theory that says Carpenter was down to a serial killer. Someone’s writing to the press. Claiming responsibility. Carpenter and two others.’

  ‘Why? Why should they want to do that?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Jo was looking at the paper again, her eyes returning to the blotchy photograph of the dead MP.

  ‘You say you knew him?’ Kingdom said at l
ast.

  ‘I met him. Once.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At Twyford Down.’ She hesitated. ‘You know about Twyford Down?’

  Kingdom nodded, remembering the huge white scar in the hill overlooking Winchester, the big yellow diggers clawing at the chalk.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘more or less.’

  ‘Well …’ Jo toyed with her coffee. ‘He’d gone along there to be interviewed. There was a big demo that day and everyone knew something would happen. There were security men there, hundreds of them, and police too. There was bound to be violence. It was bound to happen. He must have known it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Carpenter. He turned up with a TV crew. I was there when he was being interviewed. He just milked it, the demo, the scuffles, everything. It was …’ She looked away, shaking her head. ‘Doing this job, it’s hard sometimes not to get involved. You shouldn’t but you do. You see the way people get themselves injured. Most of it’s carelessness. Domestic accidents. RTAs. People driving too fast, not paying attention, coming to grief. You get horrible injuries, truly horrible, and that’s bad enough. You get violence as well, fights, the drunks on Friday nights, knife wounds, people beaten up, even us sometimes if we’re unlucky, and that’s pretty awful, too. But Twyford Down …’ Her eyes were back on the paper. ‘That was worse, much worse, the way I see it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it was deliberate. They did it in cold blood. And that man didn’t give a damn.’

  Kingdom was watching her carefully now, recognising a new tone in her voice, real anger and something close to disgust.

  ‘They?’ he said. ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘The security men. The goons they hire to protect the site.’ She looked up. ‘Isn’t that a joke? Protecting something they’re busy destroying? Signing on all those psychopaths? Two pounds an hour plus all the violence they can handle?’ She shook her head. ‘I’d never have believed it if I hadn’t been there. If you’d have told me that kind of thing could happen here, in England, I’d have laughed at you. Truly …’ She nodded, emphasising the point, telling Kingdom how naive she’d been, and how out of touch. She should have known better, she said. She should have taken the hint.

  ‘Hint?’

  She nodded again. ‘We’d had a young girl in here about a month earlier. She’d been living up on the Down with the rest of them, one of the Dongas. There’d been some kind of scuffle about a Land Rover and she said she’d been beaten up. By the security guys.’

  ‘What was the matter with her?’

  ‘She was bruised around here …’ Jo tilted her head back, showing Kingdom her throat and the underside of her chin. ‘She said it hurt whenever she swallowed and she was obviously shocked. She said one of the security guys had put a choke hold on her but …’ She shrugged. ‘She was young and hysterical and you get to hear lots of stories like that.’

  ‘You didn’t believe her?’

  ‘I didn’t know. I gave her the benefit of the doubt but I didn’t know. She certainly had oedema – bruising – and there was a little bit of swelling round her larynx but … who can say?’

  ‘What about the police? Why didn’t she contact them?’

  ‘She said there was no point. The security guys were on their own property. I suppose, technically, she was trespassing. Anyway, she didn’t trust them. In fact the state she was in, she didn’t trust anyone. And I didn’t blame her.’

  Kingdom nodded. ‘Is that why you went up there yourself? Later?’

  ‘Partly, yes. If you’re doing our job, it’s obviously better to be there. But I’m against it, too, what they’re doing with the road. I think it’s absurd, really stupid. I suppose you could say I was demonstrating.’

  ‘And what happened? When you went?’

  ‘We got nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. There were hundreds of us, maybe thousands. We weren’t lefties. We weren’t revolutionaries. We weren’t trying to bring down the state. We were just trying to make a simple point. We were just trying to say no. But there was no dialogue, no exchange of views. Just one lot of people shouting, and another lot of people itching to beat them up. It was the first time, truly. The first time.’

  ‘The first time what?’

  ‘The first time I realised you can’t do anything. The way the system works, it’s hopeless. The system is the system. It’s there, and that’s it. There’s lots of stuff they tell you about consultation, and the democratic process, and all that, but it’s a joke. The decisions are made already. Whatever we did, whatever we said, the road would go through. It didn’t matter how strong our case was. It didn’t matter about the facts, the evidence, the way we all felt. None of that counted for anything. There could have been ten thousand of us up there that day, twenty thousand, and it wouldn’t have changed anything.’ She paused a moment, her eyes back on the newspaper. ‘And do you know what he said? During that interview he did? Carpenter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He said you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs. That’s all. Just that. Just dismissed the–’

  Kingdom was leaning forward.

  ‘He said what?’

  ‘He said …’ She frowned, trying to think of another way of putting it. ‘He meant …’

  ‘No, no. What did you say just then?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just now? About omelettes and eggs?’

  She stared at him, uncomprehending, and Kingdom reached for the newspaper. The quote was on the front page. ‘No more nonsense about omelettes and eggs,’ Sabbathman had written. Kingdom pointed it out and Jo read it, colouring slightly, aware of Kingdom watching her. Eventually she looked up.

  ‘That’s what he said,’ she repeated. ‘He said you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs.’

  ‘When did he say it? When did this happen?’

  ‘Oh …’ She looked at the ceiling. ‘October last year. No, later, maybe November. I can check, if you think it’s important.’

  Kingdom noted the date. ‘And what did he mean, do you think?’

  ‘Mean?’ She blinked, the colour flooding into her face now. ‘It meant he just dismissed us, just dismissed the whole thing. You want change, you want decent roads, you want five minutes off the journey to Southampton, then you just move the landscape round a bit. Easy as that. That’s the implication. That’s what he meant. That’s how simple it all was. To him …’ She paused, her hands around the cup. ‘And it was the way he said it, too. He said it with a smile on his face. That nasty little smile they’ve all got. Mr Smug. From the Smug party. Yuk.’

  ‘You sound angry.’

  ‘Anyone would. Working here. In the NHS. The things they’re up to … But I was, yes, you’re right, I was angry, very angry.’

  ‘And you’re still angry? About what they’re doing? Up on the hill?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, I am. But what do you do about it? Where do you start?’

  Kingdom said nothing. They were both looking at the newspaper again. The ring on Carpenter’s face was beginning to dry.

  ‘It was on television,’ Jo said at last, ‘about the omelettes and the eggs. I don’t know whether you’re interested but it was on the local news, that bit. I remember seeing it in the evening. It made me even madder. I felt like putting something through the set. Funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘Which channel?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Which channel was it on? This interview? Which station?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She frowned. ‘The one that’s on at nine-thirty. Before the weather forecast. BBC South. Try them.’

  ‘And do you have a date?’

  ‘I told you. October, November time.’

  ‘An exact date?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head, startled by his sudden interest. ‘Should I? Is it important?’

  Kingdom looked at her, not saying anything, then made a note on his pad. When he glanced up again, she was still watching him.


  ‘They took pictures of Carpenter after he died,’ she said quietly. ‘Have you seen them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You saw his face? What was left of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She nodded, saying nothing for a moment. Then she sat back in the plastic armchair, her eyes glazing, and for the first time Kingdom realised what it was that made her so attractive. She was totally honest. Whatever she thought, whatever she felt, whatever she believed, she let you see it. See it and share it.

  ‘That man was a real mess,’ she said. ‘Alive, he was pretty awful. But dead, he was much worse. No one deserves that. Not even him.’

  She looked down at the coffee a moment, then tipped the cup to her lips. Kingdom nodded, remaining silent, knowing the conversation had touched an important nerve. She swallowed the last of the coffee and put the cup down.

  ‘There are answers,’ she said with a smile, ‘but you have to go a bloody long way to find them.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I was up in Scotland, the start of the summer. I spent ten days on an adventure course. It’s the kind of thing I do occasionally, the kind of thing I love. And it was incredible, really tough. You had to be out of your mind to even think about doing some of the things we did. Crazy things. Things that made me shudder, just remembering them. But you know something? It worked. It really did. And there was a moment at the end of it all when none of this other stuff mattered. It was just you, and the mountains, and the silence. Amazing. Quite amazing. Made up for everything.’

  ‘Even the rain?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She stood up, the grin returning at last. ‘Even that.’ She held out her hand. ‘I have to go, I’m afraid. Was there anything else?’

  Kingdom stood up, pocketing his note-pad. A jam-jar by the door held donations for a sponsored ambulance pull.

  ‘Not really,’ he said, ‘not yet.’

  ‘Yet?’

  ‘Yes.’ he smiled. ‘I might be back.’ Kingdom paused by the door, dropping a pound in the jam-jar. A trolley rattled past in the corridor outside. ‘Scotland sounds wonderful,’ he said. ‘I could do with some of that.’