Sabbathman (45 page)

In the back, Kingdom heard Allder refastening his harness.

‘An island,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I see what you mean.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes.’ He paused a moment. ‘And you think he came this way? That morning? In the inflatable?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can stand it up? You’ve got witnesses?’

‘Not yet, sir. Give me time. People fish along here, take their dogs for a walk, go cycling. It’s a big city. Someone must have seen him.’

Allder grunted, saying nothing. His nose was back at the window. They were much higher now, back at two thousand feet, and Kingdom could see the whole city laid out before them, the long oblong shape of the island, the image he wanted Allder to take away with him. Allder was frowning now, shielding his eyes with his hand. Beyond Portsmouth lay the Solent and the dark swell of the Isle of Wight.

‘You think the woman was involved?’ he mused. ‘Your Mrs Feasey? You think she came over at all? That weekend?’

‘She says not, sir. Says she spends Sundays in bed.’

‘Witnesses?’

‘None.’

‘Kips alone?’

‘Apparently.’

Allder nodded, falling silent again, then the pilot broke into the circuit, talking for the first time.

‘Eleven-twenty, sir,’ he murmured, ‘you’re off the clock.’

They landed back at Winchester fifteen minutes later. The pilot kept the rotors turning, telling them to duck their heads when they left the aircraft, and Kingdom was still debating whether to offer him a tip when Allder opened his door and tugged him onto the tarmac. When they got to the grass, Arthur Sperring was there to meet them. Allder looked up at him. A camera had appeared in his hand.

‘Here,’ he said, giving Sperring the camera.

The DCS looked at it blankly. Allder took Kingdom by the arm, glancing back over his shoulder, manoeuvring their bodies to get the helicopter in the background. The pilot was already easing the machine off the ground. The noise was deafening.

‘Take a picture,’ Allder shouted at Sperring, ‘before he goes.’

Sperring lifted the camera to his eye, doing what he was told. By the time he gave the camera back, the helicopter had gone.

‘What the fuck was all that about?’ he said.

Allder looked at him a moment, then pocketed the camera. ‘One for the book,’ he said, ‘when I get round to writing it.’

Rob Scarman was waiting for them upstairs. A WPC was sitting at a desk in the corner of his office, tapping data into the HOLMES computer. When all three men had settled round the conference table, Scarman asked her to leave. Allder was looking out of the window. The last forty minutes had raised the colour in his face, but when the door finally closed behind the departing WPC he was as brisk and businesslike as ever. The anxiety, the self-doubt, had definitely gone.

‘Number one,’ he said, ‘who’s talked to Jersey?’

Scarman was toying with a pencil. He picked it up. ‘Me, sir,’ he said.

‘And?’

‘Gifford’s boat was in the St Helier marina on …’ He consulted the pad at his elbow. ‘The 3rd of September. That was a Friday. Left again two days later. Sunday the 5th.’

‘Was he alone?’

‘No, there was someone else with him. They had a couple of meals at one of the local bistros. We’ve got a description. Sounds like the son.’

Allder nodded, his eyes still fixed on Scarman. If he was pleased, Kingdom thought, it didn’t show. Arthur Sperring leaned forward, uncapping his pen, an unopened box of Marlboro at his elbow. He was scowling again, the expression of a man with an acute sense of trespass, and watching him, Kingdom wondered when the explosion would happen. Sperring’s temper was legendary. Grown men had wept.

Allder, oblivious, was still looking at Scarman. ‘How about the Bairstow job?’ he said. ‘Anything on that?’

Scarman smiled, and Kingdom realised for the first time how much he was enjoying himself. The inquiry had been bogged down for far too long. At last he had some answers.

‘I’ve been talking to VISA,’ he said carefully. ‘Both the Giffords have cards. That’s how we managed to point the Jersey boys at the bistro in St Helier.’ He got up and fetched a fax from his desk. Back at the table, he spread it carefully beside the pad. ‘On the
10th, Andy Gifford bought a railway ticket. The Visa entry only records the amount and the issuing office. The entry was for sixty-seven pounds. He bought the ticket at Southampton.’ Scarman paused, glancing up. ‘Sixty-seven pounds is the price of a return to Newcastle, and that’s where Bairstow died.’

Sperring grunted, saying nothing.

Allder looked visibly impressed. ‘What else did he use the card for?’ he inquired, ‘that weekend?’

‘Nothing. Just the ticket.’

‘Are there any marinas in Southampton?’

‘Yes. Huge place. Ocean Village.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing. Gifford’s boat definitely wasn’t there. I checked Hamble, too. And Warsash. Nothing. However,’ he leaned back in his chair, ‘one of our blokes was onto the people in Cowes.’

‘Cowes?’ Allder blew his nose. ‘Where’s that?’

‘Isle of Wight,’ Sperring growled.

Scarman glanced across at Kingdom and Kingdom nodded, thinking of Ethne Feasey again as Scarman confirmed that Gifford had hidden himself away in a berth on the Medina River, upstream from Cowes, the dates of his stay neatly bridging the gap between Jersey and his arrival in the Camber Dock.

Allder’s eyes were still on Scarman. ‘It’s all circumstantial,’ he said, ‘so far.’

Sperring nodded, spotting his opening. ‘Too fucking right.’

‘But persuasive,’ Allder looked at Sperring for the first time, ‘don’t you think, Arthur?’

Sperring said nothing for a moment. Kingdom was trying to work out whether it was real anger or just a pose.

‘Yeah,’ he muttered at last, ‘but why? Why would he do it? What’s in it for him? Them?’

‘I don’t know. But that’s hardly a question we need bother about. Not yet, anyway. It’s method that interests me, not motive.’

‘You think the son’s this Sabbathman?’

‘I think he’s the killer.’

‘Same thing.’ Sperring frowned. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ He glared at Allder, trying to
provoke him, but Allder refused to take the bait. Finally, Sperring leaned forward, his huge hands flat on the table, the honest provincial copper, tired of this Metropolitan flannel. ‘If you think you’ve got the evidence,’ he said slowly, ‘why don’t we pick them both up?’

Allder considered the proposition for a moment or two. Then he shook his head. ‘It’s Wednesday,’ he said, ‘we’ve got a bit of time yet.’

‘Time for what?’

‘Time before the next one. If there is a next one.’ He paused. ‘Mind you, the kind of blokes he’s knocked off so far, I’m not sure it matters.’

Sperring frowned, uncertain whether Allder was taking the piss or not. Finally, he threw his pen on the table and sat back. ‘If it’s that fucking obvious,’ he said, ‘you should pick them up. And if you don’t, I should.’

‘No, you won’t.’ Allder shook his head. ‘Gifford’s back in Scotland. We checked this morning. So is his son. Under the Home Office arrangements, I have lead authority. So until I say different, we keep pulling in the evidence.’ Allder looked directly at Sperring. ‘Understood?’

Kingdom gave Allder a lift back to London in the Wolseley. The traffic was heavy on the M3 and a tanker spill near Basingstoke brought all three lanes to a halt. Kingdom fed another cassette into the slot beneath the radio. Chris Rea, he thought. One of Annie’s favourites.

Allder had his head back against the scuffed leather neckrest. He’d been asleep for nearly half an hour and Kingdom wondered whether he’d spent the entire night in the office. They’d had a couple of lengthy phone conferences the previous afternoon, Kingdom still down in Winchester telling Allder exactly what he’d been up to, adding light and shade to the version of events which seemed – to him – to make most sense. Ethne Feasey, he’d kept saying. Ethne Feasey is where it begins and ends. A woman with a story. A woman who’d touched Dave Gifford’s heart. A woman whose grief had turned to fury, and whose finger pointed squarely
at Sir Peter Blanche. Kingdom had told Allder about the letter the woman had written to the banker. More important still, he’d said, was the reply. A letter like that, in his opinion, was a gun to Patrick Feasey’s head. As far as his wife was concerned, the man had probably died at Blanche’s hand, not his own.

On the phone, Allder had been unconvinced. Like Arthur Sperring, he preferred to deal in hard facts, solid motivations, not something as subtle and complex as this. Why should Gifford go to so much trouble? And why should the settling of Ethne Feasey’s account extend to four more bodies? Kingdom, knowing Allder’s impatience with half-baked speculation, had admitted at once that he didn’t know. The son, Andy, had apparently suffered some trauma or other in the Falklands. He’d written about it since, though Kingdom had yet to lay hands on the piece. Maybe it was something overtly political. Maybe it was quite the reverse. But either way it was now beyond doubt that the man was perfectly qualified to undertake the Sabbathman killings.

From Winchester, Kingdom had been able to check with the regimental depot in Aldershot. Back in 1981, Corporal Gifford had been on the NATO sniper’s course, down at the commando training base in Devon, and – according to the 3 Para adjutant – he’d done extremely well. On Gifford’s file, he’d found a copy of the Instructing Officer’s report. After six weeks, Gifford had passed all the badge tests with flying colours – observation, map reading, concealment, stalking, target work, the lot. Kingdom had interrupted at this point, asking the obvious question, wasn’t ’81 a long time ago? But the adjutant had said no, chuckling quietly on the phone. Snipers, he’d told Kingdom, were a breed apart. You had to be dispassionate. You had to be a loner. You had to have a taste for hardship and extreme conditions. And above all, you had to be able to kill, to take a man’s life, without any trace of remorse or emotion. The course taught certain skills, but what really mattered was temperament. If you had the right temperament, the skills – once mastered – would never go.

The traffic began to move again, and Allder jerked awake. He rubbed his face, peering up at the lorry cab beside them, and Kingdom marvelled again at the way his guv’nor had so completely
regained his nerve. Here was a man barely a week away from losing his job. Yet the deadline scarcely seemed to have touched him.

‘Thirsty?’ Allder said, stretching his tiny arms and yawning.

They pulled in at the next services complex. Kingdom queued for a pot of tea and a plate of scones while Allder found a table by the window. When he sat down, Allder reached for the tiny plastic pots of strawberry jam. Kingdom had bought six, just in case.

‘I’m arranging for you to go to Scotland,’ he said at once, building a mountain of jam on the side of his plate.

‘Where?’

‘Scotland. I’ve organised some discreet inquiries. They’ve got plenty of room, you can leave on Monday.’

Kingdom frowned. ‘I’m not with you, sir.’

Allder began to spoon the jam onto the first of his scones. He looked distracted for a moment, licking his fingers.

‘Arthur Sperring’s right,’ he said at last, ‘we have to crack the motivation. That means talking to the man. Being with him. Listening to what he has to say for himself.’

‘Easy. We pull him in.’

‘No.’ Allder shook his head. ‘It’s got to be better than that. It should be his place, not ours. I want the truth, not some bloody statement or other. Tape recorders. Attending solicitors. All that.’

Kingdom was still frowning. A helping or two of Jo Hubbard’s kind of holiday was the last thing he wanted. Autumn would be like spring. Non-stop gales and rain every hour.

‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why dress it up? Why make it so hard for ourselves? Why not go in mob-handed, turn the place over, pull them both in?’

Allder took another mouthful of scone and a tiny sip of tea. Then he gestured at a couple two tables away. They were sitting side by side, their heads together, engrossed in the front page of
The Citizen
. Kingdom recognised the photo on the front, the ’92 cabinet posed in the garden of Number 10, the same old faces digging in for yet another term of office.

We have to get this right,’ Allder was saying, ‘and thanks to you we’re not far off. Five are in the shit. I don’t know what’s happened but it isn’t pretty. The buggers are there for the taking.
They’re still talking Northern Ireland so that means we have to come up with the full story, every dot and comma of it. That’s you, son. Getting up there. Signing on. Getting to know the bloke. Getting to know what makes him tick. The thicker the file we hand the DPP, the more we shaft these Gower Street bastards.’

‘Sunday’s four days away,’ Kingdom pointed out. ‘What happens if Arthur’s right? What happens if they disappear and slot someone else? We’d look pretty silly, wouldn’t we? Not pulling them in?’

Allder shook his head, reaching for another scone. ‘Won’t happen.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ve got blokes up there. Since early this morning. The place is the other side of Skye. There’s one road out, and we have it covered.’

‘Boat?’ Kingdom said bleakly.

‘Nothing there. Apart from some canoes.’

‘Not the motor cruiser? The
Catherine May
?’

‘No, definitely not. In fact I’ve ordered an all-marina alert. As of this morning.’

Kingdom nodded, saying nothing, telling himself to look on the bright side. Allder, at the very least, appeared to have accepted his version of events: Dave Gifford, the man of action, exacting revenge for a woman who’d clearly come to obsess him. Kingdom swallowed a mouthful of tea. The story, he thought, belonged in some paperback or other. If he’d listened harder at school, it might even have made him a bob or two. He glanced up, thinking of Peter Weymes, and the price he was paying for his precious front-page lead.

‘This bloke Pelanski you mentioned,’ he began, ‘anyone talked to him yet?’

Allder nodded. ‘Yes. Couple of Mac’s boys.’

‘And?’

‘He’s not talking, not so far, anyway, says it’s all a fit-up.’ He paused, frowning. ‘I’ve been onto the Serious Fraud Squad, though.’