Sabbathman

by Hurley, Graham

  Jo smiled, pulling her white coat around her, one hand feeling for the stethoscope in the pocket. ‘Me, too,’ she said, ‘the way this place is going.’

  *

  Back outside, in the hospital lobby, there were two public telephones. Kingdom rang Arthur Sperring and told him about the omelettes and the eggs. Carpenter had apparently used the phrase on television. If the report had only been transmitted locally, the field would begin to narrow.

  Sperring listened without comment. He was too good a detective not to recognise a useful lead, or betray the slightest enthusiasm when one appeared.

  ‘When was this, then?’

  ‘November, last year, give or take.’

  ‘OK, leave it to me.’ Sperring paused. ‘Anything else?’

  Kingdom thought about Fat Eddie for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Sperring began to laugh. ‘Your guv’nor is coming down. Amazing what the telly does to some people.

  Kingdom was back on Hayling Island by midday. A checkpoint on the bridge from the mainland was monitoring a long queue of northbound traffic, and for the first time Kingdom spotted armed police. There were two of them, on opposite sides of the road. They were wearing bullet-proof vests over black jump suits, and both men carried identical sub-machine guns, the stubby Ingrams BPK. At the bottom of the island, close to the sea-front, there was a line of white Transit vans parked by the side of the road. Uniformed men were piling out onto the pavement, each with a clipboard and a flat zip-up briefcase. Kingdom drove slowly past, recognising the scene for what it was, an extravagant display of police resources, a public flexing of muscles, more pictures for the evening news.

  Kingdom drove west, along the sea-front. At the head of Sinah Lane, a traffic car was parked diagonally across the road, limiting access to the width of a single vehicle. Two uniformed officers stood on the grass verge. One of them was muttering into a radio, while the other was looking hard at Kingdom. Kingdom wound down the window as the policeman approached. He gave him his ID.

  ‘Where do I find the ferry?’ he said.

  The officer nodded west, down the coast road, still examining Kingdom’s ID. When he gave it back, he lingered a moment by the open window.

  ‘A-T Squad?’ he said.

  Kingdom nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Your guv’nor’s here’ – a thumb jerked in the direction of a line of parked vans – ‘if you’re interested.’

  ‘Allder? Small guy? So high?’

  ‘Yeah,’ the officer permitted himself a thin smile. ‘Big car, though.’

  The ferry lay at the end of the coast road. Kingdom parked beside a pub and walked down the pebbles to the water’s edge. The last of the flood tide was pouring in through the harbour mouth, tugging at the buoys that marked the deep water channel to the open sea. Fifty yards upstream, protected by a spit of land, a ferry was moored to a landing stage. Beyond the landing stage, as far as the eye could see, was the flat grey expanse of Langstone Harbour.

  Kingdom walked back up the pebbles and wandered across to the landing stage. According to the timetable, the ferry sailed at weekends every half hour. The fare was £1.60 and bicycles were extra. Kingdom gazed out across the water. The harbour mouth was narrow, no more than a couple of hundred yards, but the last thing you’d do in a hurry was depend on the ferry. No, if you wanted to get off the island by sea you’d use a boat of your own or have someone waiting. That way, you could be over in Portsmouth or heading out to sea in minutes. Especially if the tide was right.

  Kingdom disentangled Arthur Sperring’s chronology from his inside pocket and shook it open. The tide on the morning of Carpenter’s murder had been high, no movement in or out, ideal – Sperring had noted – for getting across to Portsmouth. Yet no one, once again, had seen anything worth reporting. Not the Harbourmaster, who’d been alerted in minutes. Nor any of the handful of locals who’d been fishing from the shingle on both sides of the harbour mouth. Nor the husband and wife team who operated the ferry. No, whoever it had been in the balaclava must have taken a different route. Either that, or he was still on the island.

  Kingdom trudged back to the car. A thin rain was drifting in from the north-west and it had got appreciably colder. Kingdom sat in the car with the engine running, tuning the radio. In the spare half-minute before the weather forecast, at five to one, the announcer was promising a special report on the murder of Max Carpenter. The report, she was saying, would come live from Hayling Island, and would include latest developments in the hunt for the MP’s killer. Kingdom smiled, slipping the car into gear, understanding now why Allder had appeared so suddenly on the scene. The man had an obsession with publicity. It fuelled him the way money or sex fuelled other men. In the three years since he’d headed the Anti-Terrorist Squad, his name had rarely been out of the papers. What he lacked in height, as the acid young man in the New Scotland Yard press office had recently put it, Allder certainly made up for in column inches.

  Kingdom drove back to Sinah Lane. The two policemen at the head of the road waved him through, and he joined the convoy of parked vehicles outside Clare Baxter’s house. Two of the bigger vans belonged to BBC television. Thick black cables snaked across the road, and Kingdom counted three cameras mounted on tripods on the other side, their long zoom lenses shrouded against the falling rain. Behind the last van was an estate car from BBC Radio Solent, and Kingdom could see Allder inside, the back of his head leaning against the rear window.

  Kingdom turned the car radio on again, in time to catch the opening headlines on the one o’clock news. The Carpenter murder, and the Sabbathman revelations in The Citizen were the lead story, and when a reporter in the studio began to run through the morning’s developments, Kingdom could see Allder readying himself for the inevitable interview. Since the morning news shows, the editorial line seemed to have hardened – the country definitely appeared to be facing another outbreak of terrorism – and when Allder came on, he did nothing to suggest any other motive. On the contrary, he confirmed at once that his very presence at the scene of the crime suggested yet another battle with the Provos. They’d been at it for years, he said. They’d developed formidable expertise. They were clever, and they were ruthless, and it took a very specialised kind of police work to track them down. In one sense, he said, they were like the AIDS virus. Whatever you did, whichever way you played it, they always came up with something new.

  The latter thought was a gift for the reporter, and while he carefully framed the obvious question – wasn’t that the counsel of despair? – Kingdom caught sight of Allder’s face. He’d been attracted by something on the other side of the road. He’d half-turned in the car, and he was looking out through the side window, still holding a microphone to his lips. Kingdom watched him, recognising the coldness in his eyes, and the way he remained wholly expressionless, a face devoid of anything but a pasty indifference. When the reporter finished putting his question, Allder told him there was no such thing as despair. Laws get broken. Arrests are made. Justice triumphs. The last phrase, for once, brought a smile to his lips and he was still nodding to himself when the reporter finally asked about the next move in the inquiry. Allder looked briefly pensive.

  ‘Work,’ he said at last on Kingdom’s car radio. ‘Days of it. Months of it. Until we get a result.’

  ‘And you will? You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Of course,’ Allder snapped, ‘that’s what we’re here for.’

  The reporter thanked him for his time and turned his attention elsewhere. The door of the radio car opened and Allder stepped out. He ignored the proferred handshake from inside, buttoned his coat against the rain, and began to walk away. Kingdom caught him up beside a hamburger van. Allder was eyeing the hot dogs.

  ‘Double onion,’ he was saying to the girl behind the counter, ‘and lots of ketchup.’

  Allder glanced at Kingdom, acknowledging him with a grunt. ‘What happened to your hair?’

  �
�Had it cut, sir.’

  ‘Just as well.’

  Allder reached up for the hot dog and licked ketchup and mustard from one side.

  ‘I’ve got ten minutes before the next one,’ he said. ‘You hear any of that?’ Allder nodded back towards the radio car.

  Kingdom said he’d heard the whole thing.

  ‘OK, was it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Sound OK, I mean? Make sense? Do us justice?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Allder looked at him a moment, wanting him to go further, wanting Kingdom to spice his performance with a dollop or two of praise.

  ‘We could go back to my car, sir,’ he said instead, ‘out of the rain.’

  ‘No, son, we’ll use mine.’ Allder peered at the hot dog. ‘It’s bigger.’

  Allder and Kingdom sat in the back of Allder’s car. Allder had told the driver to keep an eye open for the BBC producer in charge of the lunchtime television interviews, and now he stood outside in the rain, talking to one of the cameramen.

  ‘It’s war,’ Allder announced, gazing out at the scene, ‘and if you ask me, we’re winning.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Kingdom glanced across at him. Twice he’d tried to raise the subject of Twyford Down, what it might mean, why it might suggest an alternative to yet another IRA plot, but now he realised it was hopeless. Allder was working from a different script, a different agenda. What mattered now was the battle with MI5, and what mattered even more was getting the media to sit up and take notice.

  So far, in seven busy hours, he’d been pushing the Anti-Terrorist Squad to more than a dozen assorted reporters. Doubtless, some of the dickheads would get hold of the wrong end of the stick. Doubtless he’d be misrepresented, quoted out of context. But slowly, very slowly, he was getting the message across. When it came to terrorism, Scotland Yard were in charge. They were the ones who knew about evidence. They were the ones who’d have to bring the buggers to court. They were the ones who’d have to secure convictions, lock these tossers up, protect society. What did Five know about any of that? What did they care about evidence? Building a case? Following the whole thing through? How could they when officially they barely even existed? Had to appear in court behind specially erected screens? Calling themselves Mr A or Mr B?

  Allder snorted with contempt, wiping his mouth with the soggy remains of the paper napkin. His breath reminded Kingdom of Ernie.

  ‘You know why it’s so important, don’t you?’ He poked one greasy finger in Kingdom’s face. ‘Because it’s the thin end of the wedge, that’s why. They’re not just after our little piece of the cake, those bastards. Christ no, they want it all. They want the whole lot, fraud, drugs, organised crime, everything that’s intelligence-based. That’s what they’re up to. That’s what they’re after. That’s why they’re bending ears all over the bloody shop. You think I’m kidding? Look around you. Whitehall, Westminster, Central Office, you name it, they’re in there. Reform Club, the Carlton, they never miss a trick. You want to know who really runs this country? Talk to Five. You think the masons have anything to answer for? Forget it. I’m telling you, son. This is war.’

  Kingdom could see the driver coming across to the car. He bent to the window and tapped his watch. There was a raindrop on the end of his nose. Kingdom opened the door and Allder wriggled out, brushing the crumbs from his coat. A man from the BBC was signalling from across the road. He looked frantic. Time was evidently tight.

  Allder reached out, struck by a sudden thought. ‘That TV interview you mentioned,’ he said. The one Carpenter did. We’ve got a pile of stuff on Twyford Down. Talk to Alice.’

  Kingdom was back in London by late afternoon, the borrowed car returned to Winchester. He took the tube from Waterloo to the Yard, and found Alice at her desk behind a door marked ‘Special Branch Records’, one floor below Allder’s office.

  Alice had been in charge of the filing system since Kingdom could remember. She was a pale, thin, watchful woman who had always had an extraordinary knack of identifying the rising stars in the department. On these men and women she lavished special favours – out of hours retrieval, limitless photocopies – and as a direct consequence she’d survived being swept away by countless administrative new brooms. Quite why she’d got so fond of Kingdom, no one could explain, least of all Kingdom himself, but she greeted him now with a warm smile and the offer of a little treat with his cup of tea.

  ‘Twyford Down,’ Kingdom mumbled through a mouthful of doughnut. ‘Guv’nor says we’re loaded.’

  Alice put a saucer on her teacup and disappeared into the warren of racks that held current intelligence. The best of this material was home-grown, intelligence gathered by Special Branch detectives, uncontaminated by non-SB sources. The other bits, less reliable, were leftovers from other people’s plates. When Alice returned, she was carrying three large files. Two were Special Branch. The other one belonged to MI5.

  Kingdom went across to a table near the window, licking sugar off his fingers. He settled back in the plastic chair and opened the fatter of the Special Branch files. The index began with a brief resumé of the Twyford Down affair, and Kingdom scanned it quickly, committing the important dates to memory, trying to understand exactly what it was that had aroused so much anger.

  In essence, it seemed that successive governments had wanted to fill the one remaining gap in the London–Southampton motorway. Twyford Down, and the adjoining St Catherine’s Hill, stood in the way of this three-mile stretch. One route lay across water meadows between the downland and the city of Winchester. Another would mean a long detour around the other side of the hill. A third, the most direct, went straight through. The locals had protested vigorously, fighting their case through three public inquiries. In the end, the issue had come down to a straightforward choice between a cutting through the hill, and a tunnel underneath. The tunnel would have preserved the hill. The cutting was cheaper. To the fury of the locals, the cutting won.

  Kingdom turned to the back of the file. According to Alice’s collection of press clippings, the locals were accusing various arms of government of lying, cheating, and bullying their way through the democratic process. They’d slanted the evidence, cooked the books, and finally sidestepped an EEC directive to halt construction by a secret, backstairs political fix. One result of all this had been an extraordinary alliance of protestors, from disillusioned local Tories to various factions on the extreme left. The membership of this rag-bag army was the meat of the Special Branch file and was carefully analysed in an accompanying report. The report included an A4 envelope of photographs, and Kingdom emptied the envelope onto the desk, sifting through the black and white prints.

  Most of the shots, according to a stamp on the back, had come from a private detective agency in Southampton. Hired by the Ministry of Transport, they’d attended all the major demonstrations. The photographers involved had been using powerful telephoto lenses, and the anger and frustration was evident in shot after shot. Kingdom bent over the desk, fascinated. These were faces from middle England – people in Barbour jackets, corduroy trousers, stout boots – yet here they were, shouldering their placards, marching uphill, taking on the State they’d once believed to be their own.

  Towards the end of the pile, Kingdom found a face he recognised. She was wearing jeans and a heavy polo-necked sweater. She was kneeling over somebody in the short tufty grass, an open rucksack by her side. There was a roll of crêpe bandage in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, and her head was up, her face clearly visible. To the left, perhaps ten yards away, was a group of men. One of them had a camera on his shoulder. Another carried a microphone on a long pole. Others, in anoraks, formed a protective phalanx around the interviewee.

  Kingdom borrowed a magnifier from Alice and returned to the desk, peering at the face of the man in front of the camera, recognising the blond curly hair, the shape of the chin, the contemptuous half-smile. In his buttonhole, clearly visible, there was a p
oppy, and Kingdom made a note on the pad at his elbow. ‘Carpenter/Twyford Down/Armistice Day?’ he wrote. He returned to the girl in the foreground. Someone had ringed her face in white chinagraph and there was an index reference scribbled inside it. He found the reference in the accompanying file. ‘Jo Hubbard,’ it said, ‘16 Tokar Road, Eastney, Portsmouth.’ There was a note of her telephone number and the (E) suffix that indicated a non-warranted tap. Telephone taps without a Home Office warrant were strictly illegal. Special Branch rarely used them. Others weren’t so fussy.

  Kingdom frowned, looking up. Alice was watching him across the room.

  ‘Problem?’ she said.

  Kingdom nodded. ‘Who’s got the logs,’ he said, for these taps?’

  ‘Which taps?’

  ‘Twyford Down. November. Last year.’

  ‘Ah …’ Alice got up and stepped across, adjusting her glasses as she peered over Kingdom’s shoulder. ‘Anyone in particular?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kingdom found the photograph, ‘Her.’

  Alice studied first the photograph, then the file. ‘Pretty girl,’ she said at last. ‘I’d ask Five if I were you.’

  Kingdom phoned Annie from his office. There was no answer. Alice had made him a copy of the photo of Jo Hubbard and he propped it against the telephone. On the reverse side he’d pencilled her address and phone number. He looked at it now, wondering whether it was a flat, what it looked like inside, whether or not she lived alone, and then he turned the photograph over again. The way she was bent over the figure in the grass had stirred him, and now he felt it again. It wasn’t as straightforward as physical attraction. She was good-looking, and open, and he’d enjoyed talking to her, but it wasn’t that. It was something else entirely, something infinitely more difficult to define.

  The photo looked like a scene from a battlefield. There was smoke drifting in the background. People were advancing pell-mell uphill, their faces down, their bodies bent, as if they were confronting bullets or a particularly vicious wind. And there, in the middle of it all, was this sturdy young doctor with her funny haircut and her muddy jeans, her eyes on the men round the camera, as angry and as guileless as the rest of them. He looked at the photo a moment longer, wondering why on earth anyone would have bothered with a phone tap, knowing that he needed to find out, then he slipped the photo into his briefcase and glanced at his watch. Six o’clock. Rush hour. Time for a pint.