Tim Stevens - Jokerman

She was giving him an excuse, a way to save face. He said: ‘Thanks. For saving my life.’

‘And thanks for stopping me burning.’ It sounded almost farcical, but this time, unlike back in the hospital ITU, Purkiss didn’t give vent to hysterical laughter.

‘John Purkiss,’ he said. He glanced at her, expecting her to nod in recognition, but she didn’t.

‘Hannah Holley,’ she said.

She stumbled a little and he caught her elbow. Spotting a cafe, he steered her in and sat her down at a corner table. She didn’t resist.

Purkiss ordered coffee, black, for them both. Opposite him the woman gazed about distractedly, seldom meeting his eye. What she needed, he thought, was a few minutes alone to vent. To scream, weep, rage. But she couldn’t, here, and certainly not in his presence.

When the coffee came he emptied three sachets of sugar into hers without asking, and pushed it under her nose. She sipped, grimaced, sipped again. The couple at the next table were looking across and Purkiss stared back; their gaze twitched away. Purkiss peered under the table to see if the woman was bleeding on the floor from her leg wound. She wasn’t.

‘So,’ he said. ‘You’d better start.’

Hannah Holley tossed the hair out of her eyes, drained her coffee, looking at him over the cup. He waved the waitress over for a refill.

Holley said, ‘I followed you there. To Al-Bayati’s flat. I saw you approach him and his entourage, and I got in closer to try to hear what was said. That’s when I saw the man in the back drawing the gun.’

‘Where did you follow me from?’ asked Purkiss.

‘The Iraqi Thunder Fist office,’ she said. ‘I’ve had it under surveillance since yesterday. Al-Bayati’s the man I wanted to talk to, but he hasn’t shown up there. Then you arrive. You don’t fit the demographic. I was intrigued. You left with a purpose in your walk. That’s when I thought you’d be worth following.’

Purkiss studied her, knowing the obvious question he had to ask her was the same one she had for him. It was a calculated dance: giving away too much would be risky, but if he didn’t reveal anything, she probably wouldn’t either.

He decided on an oblique approach: ‘You said you had the ITF office under surveillance since yesterday.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why yesterday, particularly?’

She hesitated, then released a long breath. ‘I’m going to take a leap into the unknown here, and suggest that we both know the name Charles Morrow.’

As she said it, she watched his face intently. Again he was struck by her professionalism. She was interested not so much in his reply as in what his face revealed.

Purkiss said, ‘Yes.’

Holley said, ‘You’re not Security Service. Not Five.’

‘No.’

After another pause, she said, ‘I am.’

‘Then you should be able to find out relatively quickly who I am.’ Though not what I’m doing involved in this mission , he thought.

She shook her head. ‘If you mean, you’re on the Service’s database… no. I can’t access it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m working off the books,’ she said. ‘Freelance. Not even that, because it suggests I’ve been hired. I’m doing this on my own.’

‘Doing what, exactly?’

‘Looking for Charlie Morrow’s killer,’ she said. ‘He was a friend of mine. A decent man.’

‘Your Service must be tearing the country apart looking for the killer,’ Purkiss said. ‘Why not become part of that investigation?’

Instead of answering, she picked up a spoon and stirred her coffee absently, even though she’d already done so. ‘You’re not in the Service,’ she repeated.

‘No.’

‘Are you working for it, though?’

‘No.’ It wasn’t entirely a lie. He was working for Kasabian unofficially, not for the Security Service. The distinction would be a little fine for most people, Purkiss knew. But truth and lies had different meanings in his world.

‘So… what’s your role in this?’

‘I’m looking for Morrow’s killer, just like you.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

For the first time he saw a flash of anger in her dark eyes. It faded rapidly. Purkiss suspected she was by nature a fiery person, who had to struggle more than most other spooks to maintain the iron grip of emotional control that was required by the job.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I owe you. If it wasn’t for you I’d be dead. And to use a cliché, we’re on the same side here. I think we can help one another. But I can’t reveal why I’m involved. Not yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘It would be breaking confidence.’

It sounded so old-fashioned, so out of place in a discussion between two espions, even to Purkiss, that he thought he saw the twitch of a smile at her mouth.

She studied him levelly, appraising. Then she nodded.

‘That I can understand.’

‘I will tell you that my background is with the other side. SIS.’

‘Yes, I suspected that. But you’re not with them any more?’

‘No.’ Through the window over her shoulder, Purkiss saw a fleet of police vans barging its way down the high street. People in the café were turning to look, the buzz in the air rising as word spread. Bomb… terrorist attack…

He spread his hands. ‘Answer this or not, as you see fit… but to go back to what I asked, why are you going it alone? Why not join the official investigation?’

‘Because I suspect someone within the Service is involved in the killing. Possibly more than one person.’

She sat back, leaving the statement between them. If she was expecting surprise from Purkiss, she must have been disappointed. Or intrigued.

‘Why?’ he said.

‘Charlie Morrow and I are — were — friends. We worked together a couple of years ago on some data mining stuff involving new blood in the Egyptian Embassy, and hit it off. Nothing intimate, if you see what I mean. None of that. But we each liked the way the other worked. We had similar values.’ She raised her eyebrows a fraction. ‘It sounds ridiculously naïve, doesn’t it.’

‘Not at all.’

‘We stayed in touch after our work together finished. Met up rarely, exchanged the odd email or text. And it became clear to me that Charlie was unhappy. Not with his day-to-day work itself, not even particularly with his personal life, though he was divorced and lived alone. Rather, he had a problem with the way the Service was run. With its ethos.

‘He wasn’t so green as to imagine that any counterintelligence service was entirely pure, that there weren’t underhand and even morally questionable things that had to be done from time to time in the interests of the greater good. But he felt the Service had become not just the protector of the good, but the determiner of what was good in the first place. It was the old story of how the legislative and executive branches of government need to be kept separate in order for a system to be just. Charlie felt the Service had outstripped its authority. Divorced itself from the need to answer to Parliament. And he didn’t like it.’

She shifted in her seat, and winced. She’d need that wound seen to soon, Purkiss thought. But he didn’t want to interrupt her flow.

‘I’m assuming you know Charlie was deeply interested in Iraq,’ she went on. ‘His wife being Kurdish. She was a refugee from Saddam’s persecution, and was apparently a passionate advocate of his overthrow, for obvious reasons. Like her, Charlie backed the Coalition invasion in 2003. He began to have his doubts in the aftermath, when no weapons of mass destruction were found, when the extent of the failure of the post-invasion planning became glaringly evident. When the bombings and mass slaughter got underway.