Sabbathman

by Hurley, Graham

  Andy glanced across at Kingdom. ‘Chez moi,’ he said.

  Kingdom followed his pointing finger. Behind them, hidden from the path, was a simple wooden hut. It was a decent size, about eighteen feet square, with a pitched roof covered in bitumen felt. The clapboard walls had recently been painted with creosote and the windows on either side of the stable door were picked out in white. Wires stretched tight over the roof were secured to stakes driven deep into the rock, a testament – Kingdom assumed – to the strength of the wind.

  Kingdom gazed at it a moment, trying to calculate its position relative to the path he had taken last night. The light, he thought, hanging in the darkness. ‘You live here?’

  Andy nodded. ‘Yes. And I built it, too. Everything hand-carried up the hill. Took forever.’

  ‘And you sleep here at night?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Andy led him to the front door. It opened without a key. Inside was a bed, a chest of drawers, and a table underneath one of the two front windows. On the table was a manual typewriter and a pile of manuscript. Around the manuscript was a litter of books and maps and sepia photos of the kind that Kingdom had already seen on the walls of An Carraig.

  ‘What do you use for light?’

  ‘This.’

  A Tilley lamp hung on a hook on the back of the door. Andy took it off and shook it gently. Kingdom could hear the paraffin slurping in the reservoir beneath the wick.

  ‘And heat?’

  Andy nodded at the chest of drawers. ‘Sweaters,’ he said, ‘and thermal underwear.’

  ‘Water?’

  ‘There’s a spring up in the rocks. Behind the hut. You can drink it, wash in it, whatever. No problem.’

  Kingdom smiled, fascinated. If you were after the simple life, this was as perfect a setting as you’d ever find. For the second time that day he began to wonder about the years that separated father and son. The gap, he thought, was infinitely smaller than Andy Gifford would probably admit.

  Kingdom sat down at the desk, glad of the weight off his feet. The view was breathtaking, the clouds beginning to clear now, weak autumn sunshine puddling the water below, and in the distance he could just make out the still blue shadows of the mainland.

  Andy had retrieved a pair of binoculars from the floor beside the chair. He gave them to Kingdom.

  ‘Take a look at the island,’ he said.

  Kingdom racked the focus ring until a rocky beach across the Sound was pin-sharp. A pair of black heads broke the surface of the waters offshore and then disappeared again. Kingdom returned the glasses. ‘By the beach,’ he said, ‘what are they?’

  Andy looked. ‘Seals,’ he said at last. ‘There’s a colony over there. The salmon farmers hate them.’

  Kingdom nodded, sitting back, absorbing the view. He’d never seen anything quite so beautiful. ‘You’re a lucky man,’ he said. ‘People would kill for this.’

  Andy looked down at him, smiling, saying nothing.

  Kingdom glanced at the pile of manuscript, neat lines of type. ‘You writing a book, or something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘About what?’

  Andy turned away, opening the top half of the stable door, leaning out, suddenly diffident, not wanting to talk about it. When Kingdom asked again, he shrugged. The book was an experiment, he said. He’d based it on a true story. Back in the eighteenth century a ship called the William had arrived off Skye. Her master evidently had a contract to rid the island of various miscreants but instead of rounding up the thieves and vagabonds, he’d simply kidnapped a hundred or so locals, bound them hand and foot, and thrown them in the hold. On the plantations of North America, they’d fetch a high price.

  Kingdom was looking hard at a line of typescript. ‘As what?’ he said.

  ‘As slaves.’

  ‘And they went?’

  ‘No. First they escaped from the ship. Then they were recaptured and taken on board again. The captain’s name was Davison. He ordered his men to teach them a lesson. Some of them were beaten unconscious. By this point he was ready to sail but the locals staged an insurrection and appealed to the clan chief. They wanted Davison and his employer arrested. The employer was the key to it, a man called Macleod. Without him, Davison would never have arrived in the first place.’

  Kingdom was examining a second sheet now, no less attentive. ‘So what happened,’ he said, ‘to Mr Macleod?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The magistrate had to answer to the clan chief.’

  ‘And what was his name?’

  ‘Macleod.’

  Andy stepped back into the room, closing the stable door behind him. The smile on his face had gone. He looked, if anything, resigned, a man for whom life and history no longer held any surprises.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re on your own tomorrow,’ he said softly. ‘I’m over to Inverness to pick up our friend from London.’

  Kingdom awoke in the bunkhouse next morning with the sun in his eyes. He turned over, sheltering beneath a corner of the sheet, wondering whether he could summon the strength to make it through to the lavatories next door. When he tried, easing his long frame over the edge of the bunk, it was an effort to make his legs even bend. Ten hours’ sleep had turned the aches and pains into an enveloping stiffness. His legs felt armour-plated, almost alien, as if they belonged to someone else, and both heels were badly blistered.

  Kingdom limped across the bare wooden floor. He had the bunkhouse to himself now. Both the girls and the American student had begged lifts from Andy, leaving at first light. By now, they should be almost in Inverness.

  Shaved and dressed, Kingdom made his way to the house. One of the dogs met him at the door, jumping up and barking as he pushed past. In the kitchen, he found Dave Gifford. He was on his hands and knees on the tile-patterned lino, mopping away with a floor cloth. He barely glanced up as Kingdom appeared in the open doorway. He was wearing the tracksuit bottoms again with a sweatshirt on top, and his face had an unyielding, determined look, as if someone was trying to distract him. On the rack over the cooking range hung a newly-washed red singlet and a pair of khaki shorts.

  ‘Been running?’ Kingdom inquired cheerfully.

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Up in the mountains?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Kingdom asked about breakfast. He felt, he said, incredibly hungry. The mountains again. Their fault.

  ‘You went up with Andy?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Productive?’

  ‘Immensely.’

  Dave Gifford looked up. Kingdom could see the ring at the base of his neck where the leathery windburn stopped and the paler flesh began.

  ‘What about today?’ he said. ‘You want company? Only Hughie …’

  Kingdom had found the frying pan now, and the cupboard where Andy kept the eggs. Self-help was clearly one of An Carraig’s charms.

  ‘No,’ he said quickly, ‘I’m off out by myself. Andy was marvellous. Told me everything I needed to know.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kingdom poured oil into the frying pan. ‘Give or take.’

  It was nearly eleven before Kingdom left An Carraig. After breakfast, he’d returned to the bunkhouse, packing the day-sack again. Under the sandwiches and the flask of tea, he’d stowed his camera, the mobile telephone, and the address book where he’d stored all the key numbers. Beside it, wrapped in a T-shirt, was the Browning Hi-Power he’d brought over from the mainland. The automatic was fully loaded, and he had two spare clips of ammunition.

  Whether he’d need the gun or not, he didn’t know. He’d never enjoyed using a weapon, and preferred not to carry one, but just now he had little choice. He’d liked Andy Gifford, no question about it. Unlike his father, he had a patience and a gentle good humour that sat oddly with the lurid psychological profiles that had appeared in The Citizen. So how come this man c
ould kill without compunction? What had driven him to stalk his victims with such singlemindedness and dispatch them with such brisk efficiency? How many other Andy Giffords lurked inside the man he thought he’d got to know the previous day?

  Kingdom toiled up the path, away from An Carraig, easing the stiffness from his limbs, trying to ignore the pain from his blistered heels. For October it was warm and he was wet with sweat by the time he crossed the tiny stream and began the steepest part of the climb, zig-zagging up the mountainside towards the sheltered little pocket where Andy Gifford had made his home. The path here was narrow, steps crudely cut into the peaty earth, and every few yards Kingdom would pause, catching his breath before clambering over yet another outcrop of rock. Coming down, in near darkness, had been a nightmare. Going back up seemed just as hard.

  Kingdom had nearly reached the top when it happened. He’d stopped again, half-turning to adjust his day-sack and look at the view. An Carraig had disappeared behind the shoulder of the mountain but a haze had settled in the valley and sunlight on the burn glittered through it, a gauzy, almost magical effect. Kingdom gazed at it, tasting the air, savouring the wet, heavy smells of the heather, storing the moment away.

  He turned back to resume his push up the hill, bending forwards, all his weight on his back foot. His boot slipped on the wet earth. Instinctively, he leant sideways into the hill, losing his balance, then his other foot gave way and he yelped with pain as the ankle turned. He fell heavily, the injured ankle wedged between a rock and the side of the hill. He distinctly heard something rip, a tearing noise, and the pain shot up his leg, and then he was sitting in a heap, his back to the mountain, his left leg still bent beneath him.

  He knew at once that it was serious. When he tried to move, he cried out in pain. For a minute or two he did nothing. Then, very carefully, he began to straighten himself out, first one leg, then – with infinite care – the other. He reached down, unlacing his boot, pulling off the sock. At first sight, it was difficult to judge but when he looked hard he could see the faintest purpling of the flesh beneath the skin. He looked upwards, trying to gauge the distance to the hut. It was in sight now, no more than a stone’s throw away. Two zigs and a zag, he thought grimly. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

  He put the sock back on and tightened the laces on the boot. Soon, he knew, it would start to swell. By that time, with luck, he’d have made it to the hut. Behind the hut, according to Andy, there was a spring. Cold water would be good for it. Cold water would bring out the swelling. Cold water would help.

  He began to limp up the track, an awkward hopping movement, his left leg bent at the knee, the toe pointing downwards, giving him enough balance to shuffle slowly upwards. Every step was agony, hot, sharp, scalding pains, and they got worse and worse until he had to stop and rest for a while, fighting the urge to vomit. He was oblivious now to the views. All that mattered was the hut. Getting there, finding the spring, sorting himself out.

  It took him the best part of an hour to reach the top of the path. On his hands and knees, he crawled across the grassy plateau towards the hut. He reached up and tried the door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open. Inside, he could smell something sweet and oriental, a joss-like scent. He took off his day-sack and threw it towards the bed. Then he crawled back into the sunshine, skirting the hut. The hut was protected on three sides by the mountain. In the shadow of the rock overhang, Kingdom could hear the bubbling of the spring. It was tiny, the diameter of a bucket, trickling away down a rock gulley behind the hut. The water was clear and clean and icy-cold to the touch. Kingdom took the boot off again, and then the sock, gasping as the pain hit him anew. He lowered his foot ankle-deep in the spring and sat back against the damp moss, waiting for the numbness to take away the pain. After a while, the throbbing began to slow and then stopped altogether and after a while he could feel nothing.

  Back in the hut, he made himself comfortable behind the table. The typeface on the small, portable Olympia he’d already recognised. He’d had the calligraphic report on The Citizen’s communiqués for weeks now and he was letter-perfect on the fingerprints that Sabbathman’s machine had left behind. The tiny pitted indenture on the left-hand rise of the ‘o’. The lack of pressure on the capital ‘K’. The way the serif on the upper-case ‘T’ didn’t quite stretch the distance. He listed the tell-tales in his head, looking for matching characters in the manuscript on the table. Five minutes’ work, and the evidence was overwhelming: the Sabbathman communiqués had been typed on Andy Gifford’s machine.

  But that, Kingdom knew, was only part of the treasure he’d come to find. Behind the throwaway lines about ‘disconnecting’ the Chairman of the water company, and ‘sticking the knife’ in Marcus Wolfe, lay a good deal of thought. Chances were that Andy Gifford might have made a draft or two, trying out ideas, polishing phrases, looking for that exact balance between overt threat and cheerful derision he’d made his trademark. Kingdom went through everything on the table without success. Then he tried the drawers. One was empty. The other was full of photos, each set carefully filed in separate envelopes. Kingdom shook them out, one after the other, recognising the faces and the locations from the files he’d lived with for the past six weeks.

  Sir Peter Blanche, snapped at Jersey airport, caught full-face as he sank into the back of his chauffeured Mercedes. The patio of his house on the clifftops at Les Perques, a telephoto shot, 130mm at least, the table in the sunshine set for a continental breakfast, the plump pink folds of The Financial Times lying beside the jug of fresh orange juice. Then Bairstow, the civil servant up in Newcastle, a shot through the window of his office, the man bending over a telephone, deep in conversation. Another shot, the turnstile entrance he used at St James’ Park, the foreground a mass of black and white scarves. In the third envelope were studies of Clare Baxter’s house, shots taken at the height of the summer, the trees in full leaf, flowers everywhere.

  Kingdom paused, studying another photo from the same envelope, oblivious now to the pain beginning to seep back into his ankle. Sinah Lane again, but a different house, the one across the road, the one that had been for sale, the one Ethne Feasey had graced with a visit. Kingdom beamed, holding the shot at arm’s length, knowing at last that he’d been right. Andy Gifford had holed up in the empty house. A photo taken through the upstairs bedroom window proved it. Line of sight. A perfect view of the shrubs under which Clare Baxter always buried her spare key.

  Kingdom leaned back at the desk, pleased with himself. The other two envelopes he barely touched. One was full of shots of Lister. What he looked like. Where he kept his boat. The other contained no photos but a sheaf of press cuttings on the Marcus Wolfe trial. Lister still bothered him: what had victim number four done to earn Andy Gifford’s wrath? But the real clincher was the lack of a sixth envelope. Or a seventh. Or an eighth. The attack in Ford Prison had evidently been the last of the Sabbathman killings. With Wolfe dead, the cull was over. Willoughby Grant had indeed fallen to another hand.

  Kingdom reached for his day-sack, pulling out the mobile telephone. He dialled Allder’s New Scotland Yard number. His secretary announced that the Commander was in conference but when Kingdom gave his name she apologised at once and went to fetch him. Allder was on the phone in seconds. He sounded out of breath, excitement rather than exertion.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you ready for this?’ Kingdom had settled full-length on the bed now. His left ankle was twice its normal size. ‘That cassette,’ Allder was saying. ‘The one you gave your lawyer friend.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I did what you said. I gave it to Wren.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I got the stuff back in four hours. Instant turnround. Gold star service.’ He paused, gulping, and Kingdom suddenly had a vision of what he must have been like as a kid, small, pudgy, excitable, bursting with enthusiasm. He was talking about the transcripts now, how far back they went, how they mapped out the entire campaign, a blueprint for the Sabbathman k
illings.

  ‘Spelling it out?’ Kingdom was astonished. ‘Names? Dates? Locations?’

  ‘Not quite, no, but near enough.’ Allder began to explain. Dave Gifford had evidently dressed it up a little, the names thinly camouflaged, the locations crudely disguised, but the subterfuge was infantile, a code that even Gower Street could break.

  ‘The master plan,’ Allder repeated, ‘the whole fucking works.’

  ‘But why Ethne Feasey? Why tell her?’

  ‘God knows. He was flexing his muscles, poor man. Trying to impress her.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘No. If anything, she was embarrassed.’

  ‘Embarrassed enough to come to us?’

  ‘Obviously not.’

  Kingdom nodded, knowing that it must be true. Dave Gifford had fallen in love with Ethne Feasey. She was what he needed, the new woman in his life, someone who knew the meaning of loss. He was nuts about her. Literally. And he’d prove it any way he could. That, though, wasn’t the issue. Not as far as the transcripts were concerned.

  Kingdom still had the phone to his ear. Allder was talking to someone in the background. He heard a door shut. Then he was back on the line. Now for the big one, Kingdom thought. The million dollar question.

  ‘So who was the customer?’ he said carefully. ‘Where were these transcripts going? Did Wren tell you?’

  ‘Of course he did.’

  ‘And?’

  He heard Allder starting to chuckle. Revenge is a dish best served cold, Kingdom thought. And Allder was clearly enjoying every mouthful.

  ‘Cousins,’ he said, ‘Mr Hugh fucking Cousins.’

  ‘He had the transcripts all along?’

  ‘From the start.’

  ‘So he knew everything? The whole deal?’

  ‘Before it even started. The tap was part of the “T” Branch surveillance operation on Twyford Down. They were trawling for names. Dave Gifford just turned up in the net. Pure chance. Gave them the whole thing on a plate.’