She came to on the river bank. Her cheek lay in a pool of vomit. Above her was a light of some kind, a torch, and a pair of faces peering down at her. One of the men was wringing water from his balaclava. The other was trying to light a cigarette. Annie groaned, reaching for her knee, trying to piece together the last few minutes, knowing that these men had stopped her drowning, probably saved her life, wondering why on earth they’d bothered. Then a third face appeared, much closer than the rest, and she blinked up at it. The thinning hair was as wet as her own, sodden through, but there was no mistaking the expression. She swallowed hard, tasting the vomit in her throat, not wanting to believe it. The wide, fleshy, almost feminine lips. The deep-set eyes. The face in the photo from the Dublin warehouse. The trophy she’d brought back to London.
Annie began to struggle upright, knowing that somehow she had to get away but a gloved hand reached out, restraining her. The voice belonged to the face in the photo.
‘Take it easy now,’ he murmured, ‘we’ve lots to talk about.’
PHASE THREE
PRELUDE
He lay awake in his room, the bedside light still on, the curtains half-drawn, the Millwall FC mug on the window-sill, the agreed signal. He’d no real idea when it might happen but he’d raided his private supply of Le Carré novels in the library, and he’d no objection to reading half the night.
At eleven-fifteen, as usual, they’d secured the main door. He’d heard the key in the lock, first one turn, then another, then the precautionary tug on the handle, just in case. For weeks now, that had been the limit of their interest. No midnight checks. No patrols around the premises in the small hours of the morning. Nothing to disturb a decent stretch of solid kip. Maybe they were understaffed again, he thought, or maybe it had something to do with yet another Home Office directive on rehabilitation. Extend a little trust. Offer a little responsibility. Change a man for life. What a joke.
He yawned, peering over the book at the bedside clock. Quite what excitements the stranger might bring he didn’t know but only yesterday, in the visitors’ room, Trish had confirmed the money. Five hundred in notes had been stuffed through the letterbox and she’d been sufficiently impressed to suggest he stayed inside a little longer. In a way, she had a point. It was, without doubt, the easiest money he’d ever earned.
He returned to the book. It was one of Le Carré’s early efforts, and he’d read it before, but one of the things he’d noticed about this place was the tricks it played with your memory. The effect of even a modest stretch was almost chemical, like living on a permanent drip-feed of tranquillisers. Time hung heavy. The routines never changed. You ended up numbed, softly bludgeoned by the boredom of it all, longing for something, anything, to happen. He smiled to himself, turning back a page, trying to pick up the story. Yet another reason, he thought, for saying yes.
The knock at the window came an hour later. He sat upright, realising at once that he’d been asleep. He reached for the bedside lamp, turning it off. There were inspection panels inset in all the doors, and light from the corridor spilled into the room. He waited for a second or two, then eased himself out of bed, stepping across to the window and releasing the catch. With the window open, he could hear the wind in the trees. The wind felt cold against his naked flesh after the warmth of his bed and he began to shiver. This side of the block was shielded from the office beside the main gate and a row of bushes provided extra cover. It was one of the reasons, he assumed, that they’d chosen his room, one of the reasons he’d been tapped up for the favour.
He peered into the darkness, seeing nothing. Then a voice, very close, beneath the window-sill.
‘Alright, then?’
The voice was light, amused with itself, an accent he’d grown up with.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You coming in?’
He stepped back into the room, pulling the curtain aside. A slim, slight figure balanced for a moment on the window-sill, then stepped carefully into the room, pulling the window shut behind him. He was wearing jeans and a tight black roll-neck sweater. An olive balaclava masked his face. Mud from the worn Reeboks left a set of perfect prints across the grey lino. The visitor nodded at the bed.
‘Get in. They tell you about this bit?’
‘No.’
In one hand, the visitor carried a plastic bag. On the outside it said ‘Debenhams’. He produced a length of cord and began to bind the prisoner’s wrists together, working quickly. Another loop of cord and a knot secured his bound wrists to the bar at the head of the bed. The visitor was wearing gloves. He could feel the soft leather against his skin.
‘That hurt?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you move at all?’
‘No.’
The eyes behind the balaclava watched him for a moment, plainly sceptical. Then he produced a long knife, the kind you can buy at specialist kitchen stores. He cut the cord and began to bind his ankles together, stripping back the sheets at the bottom of the bed and securing the rope around the frame.
‘That make it worse?’
‘Yeah.’
‘OK.’
He bent to both knots, easing them. ‘Better?’
‘A bit.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yeah.’
The face was very close now. His eyes, in the light from the corridor, were a pale blue.
‘Which room?’ he said.
‘Twenty-six. Upstairs.’
‘Towel?’
‘In the drawer.’
He went to the chest of drawers. The towels were in the second drawer down. He chose an old one, barely any nap left, binding it tightly round the prisoner’s mouth, knotting it at the back, checking to make sure he could still breathe through his nose. He stepped back a moment, reviewing his work, the knife still in his hand. Satisfied, he bent to the door, trying a number of keys from a ring in his pocket. When it finally opened, he looked out, up and down the corridor. Then he was gone.
ELEVEN
Kingdom was asleep again when the phone rang. He’d been up early, answering the call from his father’s room, the spoon and empty cake tin routine they’d agreed for emergencies. It had still been dark, five in the morning, and he’d known at once what had happened. He could smell it from across the room, the sour pungent stench of urine, Ernie pissing himself again, half-awake, half-asleep, not knowing quite what to make of the spreading wetness between his legs.
Kingdom had told him it didn’t matter, stripping the sheets off the bed, using the soiled pyjama bottoms to mop the mattress, but his father had taken it badly. He’d sat in the battered old armchair, naked below the waist, his head in his hands, making tiny gasping noises as if he couldn’t breathe properly. When Kingdom had tried to comfort him, he’d clung onto his son’s hand. He couldn’t help it any more, he’d whispered. He’d tried and he’d tried but it just kept happening.
Now, half-asleep, Kingdom went down to the phone. He’d made up a bed on the sofa for his father and he was curled up beneath the spare duvet, only the top of his head visible. Lately, the last week or so, he seemed to have physically shrunk. With Barry no longer around, he’d stopped eating and the weight was falling off him. Very soon, Kingdom knew he’d have to find some kind of help but he was still no closer to working out exactly how. Even the social worker, it seemed, could offer nothing but forms.
Kingdom picked up the phone, wondering whether it might be Annie. He’d dialled the Kew number twice the previous evening, trying to find out whether she’d returned, but both times there’d been no answer. By now, though, she might be back. Maybe she could come over for Sunday lunch. Maybe they could sort something out about Dad.
Kingdom kept his voice low, anxious not to wake his father. Instead of Annie, it was Allder.
‘This is getting fucking silly,’ he said at once.
Kingdom looked at his watch. It was later than he thought. Nearly eleven o’clock. ‘What is, sir?’
‘Our friend.’
‘W
hat friend?’
There was a moment’s pause. Last time Kingdom had seen Allder was two days ago in the Assistant Commissioner’s office at New Scotland Yard. The AC had convened an update conference on the Sabbathman killings, a family affair, Met CID and Special Branch only. There’d been fresh rumours out of Gower Street that the killings were definitely linked to some kind of split in the Provisional high command. No one at the Yard had access to any of their intelligence and there was now a perception that events were running out of control. If Sabbathman’s strings were really pulled from Belfast, and arrests were imminent, then police involvement would have been zero. The meeting in the AC’s office had lasted most of the afternoon, Allder’s formal contributions punctuated by sullen asides for Kingdom’s ears only. Kingdom had never seen him so dismissive and so bitter. MI5, in a newly appropriate phrase, was pissing all over them.
Now, Kingdom tried to shield the conversation with his body. The longer Ernie slept, the better. If Allder wanted to get anything else off his chest, it might take a while.
‘Ford Open Prison,’ Allder was saying. ‘You know it at all?’
‘Yes, sir. Sussex somewhere. Near Bognor.’
‘That’s right.’ He paused. ‘We’re expected for lunch.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m sending a car. For you.’
‘But why, sir?’
‘Guess.’
Allder turned up half an hour later in the back of a brand new Daimler. The Assistant Commissioner had been emphatic about the Sabbathman inquiry having first call on resources, and Allder had evidently extended this largesse to the use of the AC’s car.
They took the M25 clockwise, then headed south towards Brighton, the uniformed police driver hugging the outside lane, dismissing other traffic with brief bursts of main beam. At 110 mph the big car was rock-solid, the engine barely audible, leafy bits of Surrey racing past the tinted windows. Allder, to Kingdom’s surprise, was unusually cheerful. In a fast-disintegrating world, he seemed to be saying, Sabbathman – at least – was someone you could rely on. A murder a week. Set your watch by it.
‘Are we sure it’s him?’
‘Good as.’
‘Why?’
They were passing Gatwick now. Allder was watching a big 747 fighting a cross wind as it wallowed in over the motorway.
‘We’ve got a description, for starters,’ he said at last. ‘We know what he looks like. Height. Build. The stuff he was wearing. Matches the Carpenter job. Exactly.’
Kingdom nodded, watching the 747 disappear behind the embankment, remembering Clare Baxter, down in Hayling Island, and the candle she’d lit for Max Carpenter. She’d seen the MP’s killer. She’d described him.
‘Smallish?’ Kingdom said. ‘Slender build? Jeans? Cotton shirt? Balaclava?’
Allder nodded. ‘Polo neck this time,’ he said, ‘but the rest’s the same.’
Kingdom stretched out, rubbing his eyes, trying to concentrate, trying not to think too hard about Ernie. He’d asked his sister to take charge for the day but she’d said no. Since the collapse of Steve’s firm, she’d become a virtual recluse. Her own world, she’d said, had fallen apart. The last thing she needed was more grief.
Kingdom blinked, suddenly aware that Allder was gazing at him. That smile again, something held back, something he had yet to mention.
‘This bloke he stiffed,’ Kingdom said, ‘Marcus Wolfe.’
‘Yes?’
‘Was he asleep or what? Didn’t anyone hear anything?’
‘Nothing. Not a peep. No one saw or heard anything. Apart from chummy downstairs. The one he tied up. The one who got the description.’
‘And you’re saying he used a knife?’
‘Yes. Cut Wolfe’s throat and put a pillow on his face until he died. At least, that’s what it looks like.’
‘Blood?’
‘Everywhere.’
‘And …’ Kingdom made a gesture with his right hand. He disliked the name Sabbathman. It was somehow a surrender, an acceptance of the script this weirdo was writing for himself.
Allder nodded, understanding at once. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we’re assuming he’s probably covered in it.’
Kingdom looked away, still curious. Not about this latest killing, the sequence of events, what exactly had happened down in Sussex, but about Allder’s mood, the reason for the grin he kept trying to suppress. Laughter just wasn’t in his repertoire. Not, at least, until now.
‘I’m missing something,’ Kingdom said slowly, ‘something obvious. Matey clocks on. Finds himself another victim. Only this time he’s harder than usual to get at …’ He glanced sideways at Allder. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘So he finds himself a way into the nick, a hole in the wall, whatever. Then he goes to the accommodation block, breaks in through someone’s room, and does the business on this Marcus Wolfe.’ He paused again. ‘Am I getting warm?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘So it has to be an inside job, doesn’t it? He has to know somebody. Somebody has to have marked his card, told him where Wolfe sleeps, how to find him, how best to get in, all that … no?’
‘Of course.’ Allder nodded. ‘Logically, there’s no other way. Unless he’s been inside himself. But I have to say that’s unlikely.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Wolfe’s only been in Ford since the beginning of September. September the sixth to be precise. Before that he was up in the Scrubs. According to the prison people.’
‘And by the sixth matey was already at it?’
‘Exactly.’
Kingdom nodded. Allder was right. The Sabbathman killings had started on 5 September, the day that Sir Peter Blanche was shot at his home in Jersey. If Sabbathman really existed, if the same man was really responsible for five consecutive deaths, then he’d hardly be banged up between killings.
‘So we have a lead at last?’ Kingdom said. ‘An accomplice? Is that it? Is that why we’re off down there?’
Allder beamed at him. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘of course.’
The little man was perched on the edge of the seat now, his body turned sideways. He looked absurdly pleased with himself. Something else, Kingdom thought, something else he’s yet to tell me.
‘Wolfe,’ he said carefully, ‘anything there?’
‘Apart from the obvious, no.’
Kingdom nodded. Marcus Wolfe was doing five years for fraud and embezzlement. The trial had been high-profile, daily reports in all the national newspapers, yet another eighties legend exposed as a swindler and a crook. Wolfe had been selling high-yield retirement bonds through a series of international tax havens and he’d squandered hundreds of millions of pounds in the process. When his empire had finally collapsed, there’d been nothing left. No deposits. No assets. Nothing. Given the number of investors he’d reduced to near-poverty, the list of potential killers probably ran to five figures.
Kingdom was still looking at Allder. Despite the differences in rank and age, the frustrations of the inquiry had drawn them together. Sometimes, just sometimes, he almost liked the man.
‘OK then,’ he said, ‘I give up.’
‘Give up what?’
‘Give up trying to guess what’s got into you.’ He paused. ‘Sir.’
Allder reached across, patting him lightly on the thigh. ‘Our witness,’ he said, ‘the one who got tied up.’
‘You think he’s the accomplice?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s hardly the point. Not according to the conversations I’ve had so far.’
Kingdom gazed at him for a moment, trying to think the thing through, trying to imagine the local CID boys arriving at the prison, assessing the scene, interviewing the witness, nailing down the obvious, getting it on tape, putting it on paper. That’s the way you always did it. Simple things first. Nothing complicated. Nothing fancy.
‘He spoke,’ Kingdom said slowly, ‘matey opened his mouth. Said something.’
&nbs
p; ‘Yes. Exactly.’
‘And he had an accent?’
‘Correct.’
‘And it wasn’t Irish?’
‘No.’ Allder sat back at last, exultant. ‘Since when have the Provos been using cockney hit men?’
Ford Open Prison is south of Arundel, a sprawling collection of huts and brick-built accommodation blocks surrounded by an eight-foot wire fence. The Daimler swung into the main gate and stopped for a security check. The uniformed driver showed his Met ID and the prison officer touched his cap briefly before bending to the window and giving instructions on where to find the governor. Parked inside the gate, on a square of oily tarmac, was an untidy line of media vehicles. Kingdom counted them while they waited to move off. There were five in all: estate cars belonging to TV news crews, local radio cars, even one of the bigger outside broadcast vans capable of transmitting live reports from the scene of major incidents. Since Hayling Island, Kingdom thought, Sabbathman had acquired a major following.
The prison governor occupied a shabby office in the administration complex. He’d evidently been at his desk since dawn. Empty styrofoam cups ringed his telephone and the pad beside his elbow was covered in angry doodles. He was a small, thickset man with a greying moustache and the beginnings of a double chin. According to Allder, he had a reputation as a liberal, one of a crop of highflying seventies recruits who still believed in rehabilitation.
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