Tim Stevens - Jokerman

He reached for his phone.

Vale answered, his voice heavy with sleep. It occurred to Purkiss that Vale wasn’t a young man, that it was possible he couldn’t function on minimal sleep the way Purkiss just about could at the moment.

‘Quentin. Sorry. I need to speak to Kasabian, but she didn’t give me a direct number. Can you get hold of her?’

Vale sounded rapidly more awake. ‘Certainly. Have you found something?’

‘I don’t know. But I need to check a code word Morrow used.’

Vale said he’d get in touch with Kasabian and ask her to call Purkiss. Five minutes later Purkiss’s phone rang.

Purkiss asked Kasabian about the term Dolphin .

She paused before replying. ‘Yes. It’s one of several that are used to denote an informant.’

Purkiss said: ‘You hesitated.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Before answering. You held back. Why?’

‘You have to understand, Mr Purkiss,’ she said heavily, ‘it’s not usual for me to divulge information like this to an outsider, someone who’s not part of the Service.’

‘That’s too bad,’ said Purkiss. ‘You invited me in, remember. If I’m to do this job, I need full and unhesitating cooperation from you. That means no squeamishness about divulging secrets.’

‘On a need-to-know basis, of course.’

‘I need to know everything.’

Kasabian said, ‘The other reason I hesitated was that your question interested me. Have you discovered something in Morrow’s files?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Purkiss. ‘Possibly. Look, I need to know from the outset how we’re going to do this. Am I expected to liaise closely with you, reporting back on every scrap of information I uncover? Or can I be allowed to get on with it, consulting you as and when I need to know something?’

‘I’d prefer the former,’ she answered drily. ‘But from what Quentin has said of you, you prefer to work the other way.’

‘It’s speedier,’ Purkiss said. ‘Cleaner. And the fewer contacts you and I have, the less chance there is of someone linking us together.’

‘Point taken.’ She paused again, then said, ‘Anything else?’

‘No. I’ll be in touch through Vale.’ He rang off.

An informant. So was Al-Bayati working for Morrow? Spying on his own organisation, Iraqi Thunder Fist ? In any case, did it have anything at all to do with whatever Morrow had wanted to tell the Home Secretary?

Purkiss skimmed the files again, letting his awareness flit over the data, to see if anything jumped out. But there was nothing.

He’d thought already of searching Morrow’s flat, but had rejected the idea. The Security Service would already have trawled through it, and even if they didn’t still have it locked down, they’d almost certainly have surveillance in place on it to see if anyone came visiting. Purkiss couldn’t access the Security Service’s own databases, even if he had somebody with the necessary IT skills to do so; as Kasabian had said, there couldn’t be any electronic trail to point to outside involvement.

So: the only thing he had that remotely resembled a lead was Mohammed Al-Bayati, and the organisation he headed.

Morrow had noted the London address of the Iraqi Thunder Fist headquarters, and Purkiss memorised it. Now, all he needed to do was to find a way to gain access to the organisation and its head.

As a white middle-class Englishman, he knew it was going to be tricky.

Purkiss watched the hissing rise and drop of the ventilator, a strangely jerky movement, and thought: if Abby were here, I’d have access already .

On the hospital bed, Kendrick lay like an insect trapped by a schoolboy, pinned by leads and tubes, the largest of which disappeared down his throat. His head was swathed in bandages, the mattress he was on rippling faintly like cyborg flesh as the bed did its work protecting against the pressure sores that were inevitable if the human body lay pressed against an unmoving surface for too long.

The consultant neurosurgeon who’d led the team operating on Kendrick had been at the end of his ward rounds when Purkiss arrived at the Intensive Therapy Unit. He’d seemed to know that Purkiss was important enough to be kept up to date — Vale’s doing, no doubt — and he’d made time to take Purkiss aside and explain what the done.

Kendrick had sustained damage to the right frontal lobe of his brain, the extent of which was impossible to determine as yet. The actual quantity of brain volume lost had been minimal, but the size of the lesion did not always equate to the degree of dysfunction. The damage to the skull bone had been repaired with a titanium plate. Cerebral oedema, swelling around the brain, was a problem, and was being treated with mannitol and steroids.

There was unlikely to be lasting impairment in movement or in the lower brain functions such as breathing, assuming Kendrick survived this initial post-surgery period and emerged from the coma he was in. Less certain, the surgeon said, was the degree to which other abilities would be affected. The frontal lobes were more fully developed in human beings than in any other organism, and with good reason: they were involved in judgement, impulse control, the inhibition of aggression, as well as attentional mechanisms.

Purkiss understood. He’d seen people with frontal lobe lesions who’d become apathetic shells, and others who’d turned into uncontrollably violent forces of nature. He’d asked the doctor a few more questions, then thanked him and gone in to see Kendrick himself, nodding to the two policeman who sat nearby.

Seated in an armchair next to the bed, lulled by the ventilator’s hypnotic rhythm, his thoughts drifted back towards Al-Bayati and the ITF group.

Yes, if Abby were there, he’d gain access without too much bother. She’d hack the ITF databases somehow, or locate Al-Bayati’s home address, or both.

Abby Holt had been another of Purkiss’s freelance employees, a computer and general electronics geek who’d provided finesse where Kendrick offered muscle and firepower. Together they’d made a formidable team. But Abby was gone now, shot to pieces in Tallinn at the age of twenty-seven, because Purkiss had made a mistake.

The bed was in a large open area rather than in a side room, with plastic curtains half-drawn around it. Purkiss saw one of the curtains twitch aside, and immediately tensed.

You’re too jumpy , he told himself.

A woman stepped in. Looking to be in her mid-thirties but probably younger than that, she had a faded, hard-faced prettiness which even the heavy makeup she wore didn’t conceal.

‘Who’re you?’ she said bluntly.

‘John. A friend of Tony’s,’ he said, rising and offering her the chair. She ignored it, staring at him.

‘You don’t look like no friend of his.’ Her voice was tobacco-roughened and bitter. She looked Purkiss up and down, then turned her attention to Kendrick, prone on the bed.

Purkiss searched his memory. Christine? Kirsty , that was it.

‘You’re Kirsty. Sean’s mother.’

Her glance snapped back to him, full of suspicion and malice. ‘He been talking to you about me?’

‘He’s mentioned you, yes.’ Kendrick had more than just mentioned her. He’d turned the air blue discussing Kirsty’s failings as a partner and mother. They’d been together a couple of years, had produced Sean, now seven, whom Purkiss had never met, and had split acrimoniously. Kendrick paid the child support and in return got to see his son fortnightly. He spoke of the boy with real fondness, and Purkiss had long suspected that Kendrick had a sneaking respect, liking even, for Kirsty, despite his surface griping about her.