Sabbathman (9 page)

Kingdom crossed the road. Fifteen yards of gravel drive led to the mock-Tudor front door, and the garden had recently been tidied for the winter. Kingdom paused a moment, sniffing the air. From somewhere round the back came a curl of woodsmoke. Kingdom rang the bell and the door opened at once. A woman in her late forties stood in the pale afternoon light. She was small and trim, and Kingdom could smell the woodsmoke in her clothes. She was wearing jeans and a brightly-patterned roll-neck sweater. Her hair was tied back with a carefully knotted headscarf, and there was a tiny smear of wood ash high on the side of her face. Kingdom recognised her at once from Scarman’s photo.

‘Mrs Baxter?’ he said. ‘My name’s Kingdom.’

He showed her his ID and stepped inside, aware immediately that he wasn’t welcome.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ he said, ‘you must be sick of us by now.’

‘It’s not that,’ she said, ‘it’s just one has a life to lead.’

‘Have the others gone?’

‘Half an hour ago. But I expect they’ll be back.’

She gave him an icy smile and led the way through to the kitchen. The kettle was beginning to boil but she turned her back on the waiting teapot, and answered his questions in a brisk, even voice, much as one might deal with an unwanted questionnaire on a busy street. Yes, she’d seen the man who’d killed Max Carpenter. Yes, he was slight, well under six feet, jeans, white shirt, blue eyes. Yes, he’d been wearing a balaclava and leather gloves. Yes, he’d never said a word. No voice. No accent. Not a single useful clue. She made the experience sound almost second-hand, someone else’s nightmare, and when Kingdom finally knew there was no point going any further, she voiced his thoughts exactly.

‘You’ll think me hard,’ she said, unknotting the headscarf and shaking out her hair, ‘but there’ve been so many questions. Your
colleagues, the press, the television people, my own friends. I know you all mean well. I know you’ve got jobs to do. But …’ She shrugged. ‘I’m sure you understand.’

Kingdom nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘It must have been a trial.’

‘Yes. It has.’

‘Best forgotten.’

‘Best solved.’ She began to twist the headscarf between her fingers. ‘If he’s done it once, he can do it again. That’s why I’m …’ she frowned, ‘… prepared to go through all this. If it helps, I’ll answer any number of questions. Of course I will. No one’s saying it’s been a pleasure but, heavens, I could be in Sarajevo. We all could. No?’

‘Yes,’ Kingdom blinked, ‘of course.’

‘So …’ She looked at him, unsmiling. ‘Was there anything else?’

‘Yes. How did he get in?’

‘Key. Must have been. I heard nothing …’ She broke off, frowning again. ‘Actually, that’s not quite true. I heard just a little noise, you know, wind getting into the house, things disturbed, just for a moment. That’s when he must have opened the front door. But nothing else. No footsteps. Nothing like that. Next I knew, there he was …’ Her eyes closed for a moment, and then she turned away, and for the first time Kingdom sensed the darkness beyond the clipped answers and the icy self-control.

‘You were in bed,’ he said, ‘with Carpenter?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded, looking at him again, her eyes steady, total candour. ‘We were making love.’

‘And he never heard a thing?’

‘No.’

‘Never saw anything?’

‘No.’

‘Nice way to go then. Under the circumstances.’

She looked up at him for a long moment. Then she reached out and picked a long black hair from the collar of his trench-coat.

‘You’re the first man who’s had the guts to say that,’ she said quietly. ‘The rest of them have thought it. I’ve seen it in their faces. They probably had a laugh about it, too, out in the car, the way
men do …’ She broke off, not knowing how to continue the thought, not wanting to go any further.

‘The key,’ Kingdom said gently, ‘you were telling me about the key.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘He must have had a key. It’s a good lock. Big mortice thing. Cost the earth.’

‘So how? How did he get hold of a key?’

‘God knows.’

‘Did Carpenter have a key?’

‘No. I offered once but he said he’d only lose it, or leave it around for his wife to find.’

‘Did she know? About …?’ Kingdom shrugged. ‘You and her husband?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely …’ She paused, studying Kingdom carefully.

‘Why?’ Kingdom asked. ‘Why are you so sure?’

‘Because Max told me.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘Yes.’ She paused again, her arms folded across her chest. ‘Max was a child, you ought to know that. He lied all the time, of course, but he lied like children do. His lies were transparent. If you knew him well, you could see through them. That’s why he never lied to me. I knew him better than anyone.’

‘Better than his wife? Didn’t she see through him?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know but I don’t think so. They weren’t close. Not … you know …’ she shrugged, ‘… like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like us, Mr Kingdom.’

Kingdom nodded. The kettle had switched itself off now but he was no nearer getting the tea.

‘You loved him?’ he said.

She smiled for the first time, and Kingdom realised that she was flattered by the question.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I loved his enthusiasm and his energy. And I loved the way he could get lost so easily. The child again. The puppy. So easily distracted. So wonderfully irresponsible.’

‘Hence not having the key?’

‘Exactly.’

‘So how did he get in?’

‘I used to leave the key out for him.’

‘On Saturday night?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I sometimes slept in on Sunday mornings. Once or twice he even had to wake me. Shameful, isn’t it?’

Kingdom ignored the gibe. ‘So where did you leave this key? As a matter of interest?’

‘Under a stone. We had a secret place. Amongst the shrubs.’

‘Always the same place? Same stone?’

‘Always.’ She smiled again. ‘Politicians aren’t very practical. You get to learn these things. It doesn’t do to stretch them. Especially at weekends.’

‘No,’ Kingdom agreed. ‘I imagine that might be a problem.’

She looked at him sharply, her expression changing, and Kingdom sensed at once the limits to the conversation. In her cool, brisk way she’d mapped out for him the shape of the relationship. She’d mothered her MP in bed, as she’d doubtless mothered him in the constituency. She’d made a nest for him when he’d needed it, and she’d put up with having to take her turn with his wife, and his kids, and his career, and the countless other demands on his time.

‘Did you think there was ever a future in it?’ Kingdom asked. ‘You and Carpenter? Was that something you ever discussed?’

She shook her head, a small, neat, emphatic disavowal. ‘Max and I? God, no. He’d drive me mad. And me him. He’d find some other widow, some other bed to leap into. Why would I ever want that? When I had the best of him already? Don’t misunderstand me, Mr Kingdom. I loved the man very much, and I enjoyed him too. We were very good together. We made it work. But I never mistook any of it for real life, not once. Believe me, I know my limits.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘And his.’ She glanced at her watch, then up at Kingdom. ‘You’re a clever man, Mr Kingdom. I applaud you. You’ve got more out of me in ten minutes than anyone else in the last twenty-four hours. But then I suppose it’s the questions, isn’t it? And the way you listen to the answers?’

Without waiting for a reply, she began to shepherd Kingdom
back towards the hall. Kingdom went without protest, aware of her own role in the conversation, how cleverly she’d played it, how neatly she’d planted her own version of the relationship. Whether it was entirely true or not, Kingdom didn’t know, but he’d certainly seen enough of Clare Baxter to know that Sperring had been wrong. This wasn’t a woman who’d bother murdering Max Carpenter. He simply hadn’t mattered enough.

By the front door, Kingdom paused. On a small occasional table, beside a delicate spray of orchids, was a photograph in a silver frame. It showed a middle-aged man in an army uniform. He had a strong, broad face, and a look of quiet determination. Kingdom studied it for a moment. It could have been a shot from the forties, a face from another age.

‘My husband,’ Clare Baxter said. ‘He was killed in ’86. Car crash. Don’t have much luck, do I?’

‘Did Carpenter know him?’

‘No, they never met. Just as well, really.’

‘Oh?’ Kingdom looked up. ‘Why?’

Clare shook her head. She was still looking at the photograph. Finally she reached for the door, opening it.

‘Chalk and cheese,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m afraid men like my husband don’t exist any more.’

Kingdom drove back along the sea-front, re-running the conversation in his mind, more certain than ever that Clare Baxter was telling the truth. Regardless of any links to the Jersey murder, and the knifing on the terraces at St James’ Park, his instincts told him that Carpenter had been shot by the man Clare Baxter had described. The temptation, of course, was to disbelieve her. A woman less strong-minded, less self-possessed, might already have fallen victim to Arthur Sperring’s impatience for a ‘result’. God knows, a chance set of fingerprints, a misjudged statement or two, a revealing phrase in a letter, might well have seen her facing a murder charge. But Clare Baxter? Kingdom shook his head, turning off the sea-front road, parking beside a cafe, knowing that they had to look much further. Given that the man in the balaclava existed, the key issue was motive. Why shoot Carpenter? Why
come to Hayling? And why, if the links were solid, notch up two other killings en route?

Kingdom was still letting the questions revolve in his head when a red light began to wink on the dashboard radio console. The light indicated a message from Force HQ. Kingdom picked up the handset and called in, recognising Scarman’s voice at once.

‘Al?’ Scarman said. ‘Your Guv’nor’s been on.’

‘Oh?’

‘Wants you to give him a bell. After nine tonight. Says it’s urgent.’

Kingdom wrote down the number, then smiled when Scarman asked what progress Arthur Sperring had made. He’d been trying to make contact himself but for some reason the DCS had vanished.

‘So what news?’ he said, ‘From Camelot?’

Kingdom grinned. ‘Sheehy did it,’ he said, ‘and he’s on a nicking.’

Scarman was still laughing when Kingdom hung up. He switched off the radio and got out of the car, buttoning his trench-coat. Dusk was falling now, and he could just make out a lone figure in a long coat on the shingle beach, ghosting away towards the waterline. Kingdom watched for a moment, wondering whether to take a walk himself, then decided against it, turning on his heel and making for the cafe.

The cafe was at the back of an amusement arcade. At the counter, Kingdom ordered a coffee, drinking it at one of the yellow formica tables, gazing out at the beach through a wall of salt-smeared glass. Motive, he thought again. It’s all about motive. Somewhere in Carpenter’s life there had to be someone who’d been angry enough, or hurt enough, or desperate enough to kill. He pursued the thought a little further, remembering Rob Scarman’s line about Twyford Down. Leaving Winchester, earlier in the afternoon, Kingdom had taken a look at the construction site. Close to, the scale of the excavations had been awesome, a huge white cutting that simply brushed geography aside. Enormous bulldozers ground to and fro, dwarfing the passing traffic, and the outlines of the first bridge had begun to appear, the grey concrete
already spray-painted with protest slogans.
‘Save the Planet,’
went one.
‘What on Earth Are We Doing?’
asked another. Kingdom could see the point, the remains of an ancient landscape thundering past in the backs of the towering spoil trucks. But was that enough to kill for? And if it was, would Carpenter have been the right target? And if so, why begin by killing a Jersey banker? And then some civil servant at a football match?

Kingdom shook his head, not knowing the answer, making a mental note to talk to the medic Rob Scarman had mentioned. He had her name in his pocket. Jo Hubbard. Registrar in the local accident and emergency department. He ought to give his dad a ring, too. What had the old boy made of Angeline? And, even more important, what had she made of him?

Kingdom returned his empty cup to the counter and made his way back through the amusement arcade. By the door was a version of Streetfighter 2, his favourite game. The last few weeks in Belfast, he’d developed a passion for it. He’d even posted the month’s winning score, a mind-blowing 34,867. Now, he felt in his pockets for a twenty-pence piece and settled again in front of the console, his fingers riding lightly on the punch and kick buttons as he tried to flatten the first of his opponents, an alarming figure in a green jump suit called Guile. Guile was still on his feet when someone pushed in through the door, and Kingdom felt the damp kiss of the incoming air. The door closed again and Kingdom launched his streetfighter into a spectacular flying kick, barely missing his opponent’s throat. On the screen, just, he could see a reflection, a face, someone standing behind him. Guile advanced, jabbing at the empty air, and Kingdom’s fingers slipped for once, letting him come too close, the game ending in a blur of green.

Kingdom heard a soft laugh behind him, then the rustle of coins as someone looked for small change. Kingdom frowned, leaning back from the console, feeling a hand settle on his shoulder.

At the same time, a voice he knew, an inch from his left ear, rich, mischievous, amused: ‘Beaten? Already?’

Kingdom turned round. The woman behind him was holding out a twenty-pence coin. The long scarlet coat was open, and he recognised the black woollen one-piece underneath. Last time he’d seen it was a fortnight ago, draped carefully over the back of a
chair. Belfast again. One of the nights he wasn’t playing Streetfighter 2. Kingdom grinned, for once caught off-balance.

‘You,’ he said.

Annie Meredith kissed him lightly on the cheek, then leaned forward, easing the coin into the slot. ‘My turn,’ she said, reaching for the buttons.