Tim Stevens - Jokerman

She gripped the rail alongside the bed with long-taloned fingers and muttered, ‘Jesus, Kendrick. What did you go and do this for?’

‘It wasn’t his fault,’ said Purkiss.

She appeared to consider for a moment; then she said, flatly: ‘He was at your house, wasn’t he? You’re the one they’re saying was supposed to get shot.’

‘Yes.’

He braced himself, expecting a flurry of accusations, a barrage of slaps and scratches. But she said, simply, ‘Who did this?’

‘I don’t know yet. But I’m going to find out.’

‘Yeah,’ she murmured. ‘You do that.’

They watched Kendrick’s motionless, shrouded form for a few minutes.

Kirsty said, ‘They say he might be a vegetable afterwards.’

Purkiss said nothing.

‘Or that he might be aggressive and rude, with no consideration for other people’s feelings.’

‘Yes,’ Purkiss said.

‘If it’s that, how will we know the difference from normal?’

It wasn’t so much what she said, but rather the way she said it — she wasn’t making a joke, but asking a genuine question — that tore a laugh from Purkiss’s chest. He fought to stifle it, glanced at her in apology. But Kirsty was grinning too, and they let rip for a few guilty seconds, hysteria breaking free through the carapace of numbness.

‘Shut up,’ she spluttered, swiping at his arm. He saw the tears on her cheeks, then the crumpling of her face.

‘He’s an arsehole,’ she whispered. ‘But, God love him, he’s the father of my boy.’

Purkiss held her with the awkwardness of a stranger, while she punched lightly against his chest in time with her sobs, in frustration more than anger.

‘Sometimes the world needs arseholes,’ Purkiss said.

She wasn’t Kendrick’s next of kin because they’d never been married, but, the hospital had agreed to contact her as the mother of Kendrick’s child in case of any change in his condition. Purkiss gave her his number, and asked for hers.

‘So I can let you know when I’ve found the man who did this.’

She nodded.

On the way out, he said to the head nurse at the ITU desk: ‘Sorry about the laughter back there.’

She waved her hand. ‘Happens all the time in here. So much death around.’

Purkiss left the hospital at a quicker pace then when he’d arrived, because his meeting with Kendrick’s ex-girlfriend had given him an idea.

Vale tipped the contents of the cardboard box onto the dining table. They were back in the Covent Garden safehouse-cum-office.

Purkiss rummaged through the pile. There were wallets of various sizes and ages, each containing credit cards in an astonishing assortment of names. Passports, too, with several of them once again carefully weathered to look well travelled. He flipped through them just to admire Abby’s handiwork, and shook his head. Each of them contained his photo, but the names, dates of birth and even sometimes nationalities were different.

Purkiss found fake driver’s licences, National Insurance Number cards, staff ID badges giving him access to banks and military installations. All utterly authentic looking to his eye, and he was used to spotting bogus documentation.

In addition to her prowess as a computer programmer and hacker, Abby Holt had shown a remarkable talent for forgery. She’d supplied Purkiss with a plethora of fake documents, allowing him to slip into and out of both friendly and hostile countries undetected. What he hadn’t realised was the extent of her efforts. She’d clearly manufactured credentials for a greater range of situations than he’d ever needed to use them in, just in case.

After Abby’s killing in Tallinn last October, Vale had arranged for her base in Whitechapel, the flat where she maintained her computer networks and did her forging, to be cleared out quietly, while her grieving parents, who’d known nothing of their daughter’s clandestine sideline, had taken care of the flat in Stoke Newington where she lived, disposing of those personal effects of hers they could bear to throw away.

Purkiss had never asked Vale exactly what he’d found in Abby’s secret hideaway, or what he’d done with it. But, leaving the hospital an hour earlier, he’d been struck by a thought, and had fished out his phone.

‘Yes,’ Vale said. ‘I have the young lady’s effects.’

Keeping the bits and pieces he’d cleaned out of the secret bolthole of someone whom he’d never met before was just the sort of thing Purkiss might have expected Vale to do.

Purkiss asked Vale to bring along anything that looked like forged ID, but to leave behind the computer equipment and whatever else Vale had bagged. He didn’t need that sort of stuff now, though it might prove useful later.

The ideal find would be a tax inspector’s identification card, but although Purkiss didn’t find that, he felt a surge of triumph as he picked up the next best thing. A warrant card with a mug shot of Purkiss, identifying him as Detective Inspector Peter Cullen of the Metropolitan Police. The card even had the holographic emblem of authenticity.

Abby, you’re a diamond , he said silently, as he’d said to her countless times when she’d been alive.

Vale was watching him. ‘Care to tell me what you have in mind?’

‘It’s probably better that I don’t, at this point.’

Vale nodded. ‘Very well.’ He was good that way; he respected Purkiss’s decision to withhold information where necessary. Within reason.

Purkiss said, ‘You might need to do a little damage control later, though.’

‘When people start complaining that a nonexistent Met officer turned up and started throwing his weight around, you mean?’ Vale’s tone was as dry as the tobacco leaves he used to rustle between his fingers before lighting up.

‘Something like that,’ said Purkiss.

At the door, with the box containing Abby’s forgeries in his arms, Vale said, ‘Might I make a suggestion?’

Purkiss waited.

‘You don’t look like a detective, far less a DI. You might want to kit yourself out.’

‘I know,’ said Purkiss.

He left ten minutes after Vale and headed towards the nearest men’s outfitters on Charing Cross Road. There he bought a charcoal suit, priced slightly above the bottom of the range, a pale blue shirt with button-down collar, and a nondescript striped tie.

Purkiss caught the underground to Kennington. The Saturday morning crowds pressed against him and once again he felt himself tense, and forced himself to relax. He’d known of agents, both friendly and hostile, who’d been despatched here on the Tube. It was in many ways an ideal setting, bodies packed so tightly together that one’s hand actions could pass unnoticed as the knife went in.

The office of Iraqi Thunder Fist was a short walk from Kennington Station, through streets already baking in the morning heat. The city smells and the shouts of market traders ranged around Purkiss as he strode towards the address he’d found in Morrow’s records.

Arriving outside a greengrocer’s, Purkiss peered upwards. The office must be above the shop. Beside the grocer’s was a door with an unadorned bell. He pressed the button and waited.

A moment later a voice came over the intercom, a woman’s voice, in a language he didn’t understand. Arabic, it sounded like.

Purkiss said, ‘I need to speak to Mr Mohammed Al-Bayati, please.’

‘He’s not here,’ the woman answered in accented English.

‘This is Detective Inspector Cullen of the Metropolitan Police,’ said Purkiss. ‘May I come in.’ His tone suggested a command, not a question.

‘You have a warrant?’ The woman sounded as if she’d asked it before.