Tim Stevens - Jokerman

‘I’m not here to search the premises. I just need to talk to Mr Al-Bayati. Or somebody else senior. Just an enquiry.’

There was a long silence. Just when Purkiss was about to press the bell again, and was considering his options if they decided not to let him in, the door buzzed. He opened it and went in.

At the top of a narrow flight of stairs that doubled back upon itself, he found a door with an opaque glass panel, like the entrance to a private eye’s office in a noir film. Cheap lettering had been scratched off the panel, leaving a ghostly trace. Beyond, dark and blurred shapes shifted.

He rapped on the door. It opened and a small woman of about thirty opened it. Her eyes were wary, almost hostile. Not frightened. Purkiss produced the warrant card, held it up so that she could read it.

Wordlessly she stepped aside, holding the door, her eyes roving over Purkiss. In a small reception area stood three young men, also of Middle Eastern origin. They appeared to be waiting for Purkiss. In hooded jackets and jeans or combat trousers, they glared at him from beneath lowered brows, their feet apart, their arms hanging by their sides, fingers curled. Their body language exuded anger and menace.

Purkiss glanced around. The walls of the reception were festooned with garish posters displaying clenched fists, rifles, the crescent symbol. One giant chart showed a screaming woman standing in a pile of rubble and clutching a child shape, and listed figures for the dead, the maimed, the homelss in Iraq since 2003. Another poster consisted of a Photoshopped image of a mushroom cloud rising over the White House.

‘Where’s the other?’ the woman said.

Purkiss frowned down at her.

‘You police always come in pairs,’ she said.

Purkiss had considered it beforehand, and had wondered whether to bring Vale along. But he’d decided the pair of them together would be just too identifiable in future.

‘This isn’t an official line of enquiry or anything,’ Purkiss said. ‘And I’m not here to make trouble. I just need to ask Mr Al-Bayati a couple of questions. Off the record.’

‘I told you,’ said the woman, an edge creeping into her voice. ‘He is not here.’

One of the young men shifted his stance, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, like a boxer preparing to step into the ring. Purkiss glanced at him sharply, held his gaze. The man didn’t drop his.

Without looking away, Purkiss said to the woman: ‘Then perhaps you can tell me where he is, so I can find him and talk to him.’

Another of the men took a step forwards. ‘He’s not here,’ he said, his accent shot through with South London. ‘We don’t know where he is. So try another time, copper.’

Purkiss took a long look at each of the three men in turn, as though memorising their faces. Then he ostentatiously turned so that his back presented a three-quarter view to them and said to the woman, ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d give me his home address.’

Turning his back had been a deliberate provocation, and it worked. One of the men took a step forwards.

‘Time you were going, copper.’

Purkiss felt the hand descend on his shoulder.

His first thought had been to approach the ITF office in a friendly guise, presenting himself as an interested potential recruit. But his conversation at the hospital with Kirsty, Kendrick’s ex, had given him another idea.

Sometimes the world needs arseholes.

Using the blind sense of spatial awareness you developed after years of fighting in confined spaces — and you developed it, or you didn’t last years — Purkiss aimed the heel of his shoe backwards and downwards in a raking action. It caught the man’s shin and he let out a shriek of pain, his hand dropping away from Purkiss’s shoulder. Purkiss pivoted, saw the man on one knee, clutching at his leg. Beyond him the one who fancied himself as a boxer was darting forwards, fists up and in front of his face.

Purkiss stepped around the man on the ground and snapped a roundhouse kick at the boxer’s knee, pulling it at the last moment so as not to deliver it with full force. The tip of his shoe caught the side of the kneecap and the man screamed, if anything more shrilly than the first one had, his leg giving way entirely so that he tumbled onto his bottom. He rolled, howling, his hands clamped around his drawn-up knee.

Down at Purkiss’s feet the first man crouched, something flashing in his hand. Off to the side the woman hissed ‘No.’ This time Purkiss pistoned his leg, as though pressing down hard on a footpump. His sole caught the man squarely in the face, the force flinging him back, the switchblade skittering from his hand across the lino floor.

Arms folded, Purkiss watched the third man. He’d taken a step back, and stood hunched, eyes darting everywhere like an animal searching for an escape route.

Purkiss went over and picked up the switchblade, folded it closed and put it in his pocket. The man whose knee he’d kicked was still writhing in agony. The one who’d pulled the knife was sitting up against the wall, shaking his head as if it was cobwebbed.

‘And that’s just with my legs,’ Purkiss said. ‘You don’t want to see what I can do to you with my hands.’

The woman too had backed off and was pressed against the door. Purkiss glanced beyond the reception area and down the corridor which led to the rest of the office. Nobody emerged. It must be a skeleton staff, he thought, holding the fort on a Saturday.

He looked at each of them in turn, speaking with quiet authority. ‘Assault on a police officer, and with a blade as well,’ he said. ‘I ought to arrest each and every one of you. And perhaps I should get a search warrant, after all. I’d certainly have grounds now.’ He looked pointedly off down the corridor again. ‘Anything in this office you might want to keep away from prying eyes?’

A few darted glances were exchanged. Purkiss nodded.

‘But I won’t. As long as you give me what I came here for.’

The woman looked back at him blankly.

He said, ‘Mohammed Al-Bayati’s home address.’

After a few seconds’ glaring delay, she stalked over to the reception desk, ripped a sheet of paper off a notebook, and scribbled.

Purkiss took it and looked at it.

He put it away in his pocket. ‘If this is wrong,’ he said, ‘I’ll be back. I guarantee it. And this time I won’t be alone.’

The address for Al-Bayati was in Lewisham, a neighbouring borough. Purkiss decided time was of the essence and flagged down a taxi a couple of blocks from the office. If the woman had given him the correct address, as he suspected she had, then she would certainly be on the phone to Al-Bayati immediately, warning him of the impending police visit. He was unlikely to flee, unless he had something to hide, but he might decide to set an ambush, and Purkiss didn’t want to give him time to plan anything elaborate.

After twenty minutes’ struggle through the Saturday crowds, the taxi reached Lewisham High Street. Purkiss said to the driver: ‘Drop me a couple of blocks away, will you?’

Like so much of London, Lewisham was a clashing mix of the old and the new, exuberant regeneration side by side with depressing urban decay. Purkiss consulted the map feature on his phone and turned off the main thoroughfare, following a grid of side streets until he saw the one he wanted.

He stood at the end and gazed down. A narrow street, lined on either side with parked cars and, further back, terraced houses. Purkiss saw from the way the numbers were arranged that Al-Bayati’s address must be about two-thirds of the way down, on the right.

For a few moments he waited, watching for signs of activity. One or two local residents passed him, glancing curiously at this man in a suit on a hot street. On either side of the street, neighbours chatted languidly, and a trio of small boys kicked ball around in the middle of the road, whooping guiltily as it bounced off the side window of a stationary car.