Sabbathman

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. ‘It must be horrible.’

  Wren reached for another letter with a barely perceptible shrug. Regardless of the hard truth about his sell-by date, Annie knew he was a proud man. He looked up at her. The hinge on his glasses was secured with sellotape.

  ‘Not horrible,’ he said, ‘but not altogether pleasant, either.’

  Annie smiled at the phrase. Typical understatement. Typical Wren. ‘I’m sure,’ she said again, ‘and I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He offered her a bleak smile. ‘How can I help?’

  Annie opened the file she’d brought over. She’d transferred Kingdom’s precious phone number and she quoted it now. Wren reached automatically for a piece of paper and wrote it down.

  ‘And?’ he said blankly.

  Annie explained about the tap. There would surely be a log. There may even be transcripts. Might there be a chance of acquiring either? Or even both? Wren peered at her a moment over his glasses, still the boss, still the man who guarded the departmental purse. Laying hands on a phone transcript wasn’t easy. All tapped calls were routed to BT’s Gresham Street headquarters. Voice-activated tape recorders in the basement captured all outgoing and incoming calls on targeted numbers. Specially vetted transcribers spent their working lives typing transcripts. Because the system had proved so expensive, transcripts were only produced to order and every request had to be carefully justified.

  Wren was looking at the number again. ‘Should I ask why?’ he said. ‘Would that be a sensible question?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see.’ He paused. ‘What makes you think I have the inclination? Or, indeed, the opportunity?’

  ‘I didn’t mean …’ Annie hesitated. ‘I just thought … this new job of yours …’

  She sealed the sentence with a grin. Wren liked her. She knew that. He liked her enthusiasm, and her energy, and her cheek. Once, at the Pig and Whistle, MI5’s bar over at Curzon House, he’d even told her she’d make someone a nice daughter-in-law.

  Now, he folded the number and slipped it into his pocket. For the first time, Annie saw the packing cases, stacked neatly beside the larger of his three filing cabinets. It meant that the navvies from Admin would be round soon, boxing twenty years of Wren’s life and carting it away. If he had any sense, he’d take a holiday and let them get on with it. Florence, or perhaps Vienna. Somewhere with a bit of class.

  Wren had inched his chair sideways and was gazing out of the window. Raindrops blurred the shape of a 747 breaking through the clouds, probing the flightpath into Heathrow.

  ‘Seen the paper this morning?’ he mused. ‘Our friend Mr Angry?’

  Annie nodded. ‘First thing,’ she said. ‘It made me laugh.’

  Wren glanced round. It was the first time she’d seen him smile for weeks.

  ‘Me, too,’ he said.

  There was a silence between them. Then Annie stood up. She told him again how sorry she was to see him go and this time the awkwardness in her voice gave the phrase a real warmth. Wren smiled and waved his hand rather vaguely at the paperwork on the desk, a gesture – Annie thought – of stoicism, even relief. His time in the sun was over. The world had moved on. By the door, he called her back.

  ‘How did you know I was going to Tinkerbell?’ he said. ‘That’s supposed to be confidential.’

  Annie tried to make light of it. ‘In this building?’ she said. ‘Confidential?’

  ‘I’m serious. Who told you?’

  Annie looked at him a moment. The least she owed him, under the circumstances, was the truth. ‘Hugh Cousins,’ she said. ‘He told me yesterday.’

  ‘Ah …’ Wren nodded, turning away again, gazing out at the rain. ‘Our Mr Cousins.’

  There was a long silence.

  Then Annie stepped back into the room. ‘That brief you gave me yesterday.’

  ‘For our journalist friend?’

  ‘Yes.’ Annie nodded. ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘But before that, before you? Who authorised the line about Whitehall talking to the IRA? Who’s idea was that?’

  Wren sighed, rearranging the pile of letters on his desk, and Annie knew she’d overstepped the mark. Nothing would soften Wren’s reluctance to part with information. Not even now, when he was about to be put out to grass, joining the rest of the old guard in the paddock.

  ‘Tell me about Cousins,’ he said at last. ‘Did you like him? Did you get on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you trust him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Annie said truthfully, ‘I suppose we wait and see.’

  Wren sighed again. ‘But nobody waits any more,’ he said softly, ‘and nobody sees.’

  Annie got to Euston Tower prompt at noon. Room 1710 turned out to be two offices, and she sat with the secretary for five minutes before the inner door opened. She recognised Andrew Hennessey at once, the young man from Tory Central Office. She got to her feet, calling him by his Christian name, extending a hand. Hennessey had changed suits since the PYTHON meeting. Today he favoured a rather tweedy look which made his face seem even paler than yesterday’s charcoal stripe had.

  Annie nodded at the folded newspaper under his arm. Willoughby Grant’s jaunty headline was clearly visible.

  ‘My commiserations,’ she said, ‘but I did warn you.’

  Hennessey pulled a face. ‘Don’t,’ he said, stepping past her and sweeping out into the corridor.

  Annie turned to find Cousins standing in the open doorway. He was wearing a pair of beautifully cut twill trousers and a light blue shirt. With his jacket off, he belonged in the pages of a men’s fashion magazine, GQ perhaps, or Esquire. His face was pinked with colour and he looked newly washed, as if he’d just stepped out of the shower. He asked Annie into the office and shut the door behind her. He had a briskness she hadn’t seen the previous evening and she wondered exactly what had passed between the two men before she’d arrived.

  Cousins sat down behind the desk. He selected a file from á neat stack at his elbow and passed it across to her. She looked at it, recognising the name in the box on the front. Derek Bairstow, the civil servant knifed to death on the terraces at St James’ Park.

  ‘A little bit of give at last,’ Cousins said, ‘a little bit of movement.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Bairstow worked for the PSA. He was in charge of the department supervising the tender process. A great deal of money went through his hands.’ He smiled. ‘And a great deal didn’t.’

  Annie nodded, opening the file. The PSA was the Property Services Agency. They were part of the Department of the Environment and looked after hundreds of government buildings. Because they commissioned so much work from the private sector, the scope for corruption was immense.

  Annie glanced quickly through the file while Cousins made a phone call. The northern outpost of the PSA was in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the bulk of the file had evidently come from the local Fraud Squad. They’d been conducting a covert investigation into corruption allegations for nearly a year, and Bairstow had been only days away from being arrested when he’d been killed.

  In an annexe at the back of the file, Annie found a list of PSA contractors. There were more than ninety in all, ranging from a big civil engineering company in Croydon to a Hartlepool plumber bidding for the contract to lag pipes in a Young Offenders Institution. Someone had already been through the list with a green hi-lighter, and Annie looked up as Cousins replaced the phone and made a note on the pad at his elbow.

  ‘O’Keefe?’ she queried.

  Cousins glanced down at the file on her knee. Then he nodded. ‘Irish company. They make office furniture. Desks, chairs, storage cabinets, wooden stuff mainly. They’ve got a factory in Longford. That’s in the Republic, of course.’

  ‘But why the interest?’

  ‘We’re not absolutely certain,’ Cousins pushed his chair back from the desk, and swivelled it slightly, �
��but it looks like Bairstow had been ripping them off. When he called in tenders, he always asked for a sweetener. He called it a deposit. We know that for sure. He did it with everyone. Normally fifty quid. Regardless.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘The size of the contract. And it was non-returnable. That’s the point. If you wanted to be in on the bidding, you had to pay the entry fee. To Bairstow. In person.’

  ‘And O’Keefe?’

  ‘Apparently got in a muddle. Thought it was five hundred pounds, not fifty.’

  ‘And he paid it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Cousins nodded. ‘He was bidding for a big job. One of the admin branches of the DoH had relocated up to the north. Hundreds of staff. Brand new premises’ – he smiled – ‘and lots of office furniture. The contract was worth £350,000 to O’Keefe. That’s why he didn’t bother too much about the five hundred quid.’

  ‘But did he win? Did he get the contract?’

  ‘No. It went to a Leicester firm. Their bid went in after O’Keefe’s. Ten quid cheaper.’

  ‘Ten pounds? In three hundred and fifty thousand?’

  ‘Yes. They obviously knew O’Keefe’s bid. I imagine Bairstow told them.’

  ‘Why? Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because they’d pre-agreed a deal with him. Three percent of the contract price.’

  Annie frowned, trying to do the maths. ‘Three per cent. That’s …’

  ‘Ten thousand five hundred quid. To an account at the Neue Allianz Bank,’ he smiled again, ‘In Zurich.’

  Annie returned to the file, following the logic. Zurich was the city that had cropped up in Sabbathman’s second communiqué, the one that had gone to Willoughby Grant. ‘But what’s a guy like him doing,’ he’d written, ‘with a season ticket to Zurich?’

  Annie glanced up. ‘So what happened to O’Keefe’s five hundred pounds?’

  ‘Nothing. Bairstow kept it. Evidently there was another big job coming up and he told O’Keefe to put another quote in. Under the circumstances O’Keefe could hardly rock the boat.’

  ‘And this second job? Did O’Keefe get it?’

  ‘No. It went to the same Leicester firm.’

  ‘On the same terms?’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘But …’ Annie frowned. ‘Is five hundred pounds enough to kill for?’

  ‘It wasn’t just the five hundred pounds. O’Keefe believed he’d got the second contract. He thought it was in the bag. He’d put in forward orders. He’d risked a lot of his own money. He came out tens of thousands down.’

  ‘And Sabbathman? Where’s he supposed to …’

  Cousins stood up, turning his back on Annie, staring out of the window. The rain had stopped now, and sunshine puddled the green swell of Hampstead Heath.

  ‘Longford’s a political town,’ Cousins said, ‘strongly republican. O’Keefe’s the kind of man to carry a grudge. If you were putting together a hit list, if you were looking for names …’ He shrugged. ‘You could do worse than pencil in Derek Bairstow.’ He turned round, leaning back against the window-sill. ‘It’s a clever campaign. Four killings so far, all of them public figures, none of them very popular. Think about it, Annie. A banker, who likes bankers? A civil servant on the take. A right-wing MP, one of the real ultras. And now a man who’s making a small fortune out of water. Water, for God’s sake. No wonder Willoughby Grant’s rubbing his hands.’

  ‘Are you serious? The Provos? Playing Robin Hood?’

  ‘Absolutely. See it their way. They’ll be mobbed in the street. No civilian casualties. No kids hurt. Just the guys you love to hate. Knocked off one by one. To order. Have you seen this?’

  Cousins opened a drawer, forestalling any more questions, and slipped out a sheaf of contact notes. He glanced quickly through them, then gave them to Annie.

  ‘The top one,’ he said, ‘that’s all you need.’

  Annie read the note. It carried yesterday’s date. It had come from the agent handling the source inside The Citizen, the journalist on the subs desk who was passing on Willoughby Grant’s latest thoughts on Mr Angry. Evidently Grant was contemplating a national competition. Readers would be invited to nominate Sabbathman’s next victim. Contenders, in Grant’s phrase, had to be ‘fully paid-up members of the rip-off society’. The name of the winning nomination would be published, an implicit invitation for Mr Angry to do his worst.

  Annie looked up. The very crassness of the idea made her smile. ‘When does he plan to publish?’

  ‘Nobody knows. I gather he’s run into legal problems. There’s a feeling on the Board that he may be inciting murder. Grant says they’ve lost their bottle and he’s probably right. None of them are keen on a gaol sentence.’

  ‘I bet.’

  Annie returned the contact notes, thinking about Cousins’ theory again, that Sabbathman might somehow be a proxy for the Provisionals.

  ‘So you think someone’s running Sabbathman from Belfast?’ she said slowly, making no attempt to hide the scepticism.

  ‘Yes.’ Cousins nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I think. At the moment they’re playing with us. Hints and guesses. No phone calls afterwards. No code-words. None of the usual stuff. Just good, solid professional hits.’ He slipped into the chair, leaning forward towards her, a man determined to prove his point. ‘Isn’t that what they’ve always been good at? In Belfast? Good approach work? Good dickers? Good back-up? The weapon off in one car? The hit man off in another? Eh? Then there’s Lister, the boat down in Devon, identical to the Mountbatten hit, identical.’ He paused. ‘These guys have a sense of humour. They’re trailing their coats. To them, it’s a game. Hide and seek with a difference. Believe me, they’re loving it.’ He leaned back in the chair, watching her carefully. ‘You seriously think it could be anyone else?’

  Annie had gone back to the file. ‘How about the others?’ she said. ‘The other names in here?’

  ‘The Fraud Squad are checking them out, but they don’t stack up.’

  ‘And O’Keefe? Are we saying he’s active? Or a sympathiser? Or what?’

  Cousins hesitated a moment, looking at her. ‘You’re very blunt, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Annie nodded. ‘I find it pays in the end. Especially in this building.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Yes.’ Annie smiled. ‘I expect you can. So,’ she tapped the file, ‘tell me about O’Keefe.’

  ‘He’s a businessman. Longford born and bred. The town’s rock solid Fianna Fail and he’s one of the biggest wheels. Make of that what you will.’

  The phone rang again and Cousins reached back, lifting the receiver, listening, his eyes still on Annie. Annie ignored him, thinking about Desmond O’Keefe. Fianna Fail was the party of Eamonn de Valera, the guardians of the republican flame. They’d spent most of the last decade in office and they were pledged, one day, to extending Dublin’s rule to the Six Counties in the north. Deep down, they’d always hated the Brits, and getting screwed by the likes of Derek Bairstow would – for O’Keefe – be yet more evidence of English treachery.

  Cousins put the phone down.

  ‘You think someone’s doing O’Keefe a favour,’ she asked, ‘by killing Bairstow? Or do you think he’s rather more involved than that?’

  Cousins shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘That’s why I asked you over. That’s why I gave you the file. I think there’s a link there. That’s my guess. I think O’Keefe had something to do with Bairstow’s little accident. But how, or what, I don’t know.’

  ‘You want me to go to Ireland?’

  ‘No, Birmingham.’

  ‘Birmingham?’ Annie gazed at him. ‘Why Birmingham?’

  ‘We have a guy up there. He’s just back from Longford. We put him in a couple of weeks back, after they slotted Bairstow. You probably know him already, by reputation at least.’ He paused. ‘Eddie McCreadie.’

  ‘Fat Eddie?’

  ‘Yes.’ He yawned. ‘He knows the form, the names, the family tree. I
f there’s anything obvious on the ground over there, he’ll have found it. He came back last night. I talked to him on the phone and he knows you’re coming.’ He hesitated. ‘He likes meets at the International Airport. The cops are armed up there and I think it makes him feel happier. There’s a restaurant on the first floor. Half right at the top of the escalator. I’ve said you’ll buy him supper.’

  He produced a small black and white photo and gave it to Annie. It showed a cheerful middle-aged man in a polo neck sweater. He had a thick moustache and not much hair. Annie had never met him in person but recognised the face from the files. Fat Eddie. Once acting-quartermaster with the Belfast Brigade. Now enjoying an early retirement, courtesy of the relocation experts at the Field Research Unit. The man you go to for a little background, those times when you want to test a theory, or cross-check a fact or a face.

  Cousins was on his feet again. ‘The moustache has come off,’ he said, ‘but he tells me the rest looks the same. Give or take a stone or two.’

  Annie nodded, still looking at the photo. ‘I’m surprised he went,’ she said. ‘I thought he was past all that.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘So what did it take?’

  ‘A word in his ear. Plus a false name.’ He nodded at the photo. ‘Meet Sean McTiernan.’

  ‘Am I supposed to use that name?’

  ‘Up to you. Makes no odds.’

  Annie looked at him a moment, marvelling at how easy it was when you were sat behind a desk. Then she slipped the photo into her bag. ‘May I?’ she said, gesturing at the file.

  ‘Of course.’ Cousins nodded at the pile on his desk. ‘I’ve got plenty.’

  ‘Are they all the same? Dupes?’

  ‘Yes. As it happens.’

  Annie bent for her bag, wondering what on earth Cousins was doing with so many copies of the same file. Then she stood up, smoothing her dress, aware of Cousins’ eyes on her body, a frank appraisal. Cards on the table, she thought. Time to get one or two things straight.