Tim Stevens - Jokerman

‘Charlie had no problem morally with investigating and surveilling dissident Iraqi groups here in London, groups like Iraqi Thunder Fist . He wasn’t one of those who believed that the planting of a bomb in a crowded Baghdad market place was somehow a noble act of resistance. But he was becoming increasingly concerned about the uses to which the intelligence he was gathering was being put. He’d speculate that it was being passed on to the CIA, to some of the Middle Eastern regimes surrounding Iraq, and that it was being used to justify all kinds of things — indiscriminate assassinations, blackmail, kidnapping.’

Purkiss thought about this. In the SIS he’d sometimes seen people start to lose contact with reality. Steeped in a culture of lies, deception, betrayal and ambiguity, eventually they saw treachery and untruth in everybody around them, in every single human interaction.

She sighed. ‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking. And yes, Charlie was paranoid. Particularly after his wife left him and he spent a lot more time on his own. But he was also shrewd. His speculations weren’t altogether implausible. Anyway. Three days ago, he tried to contact me. Left a message on my phone. I was abroad, on a few days’ leave in the South of France. There was no phone reception, something I’d chosen deliberately. I came back the next day, two days ago, and got the message. Shortly afterwards I discovered he was dead.’

‘What was the message?’

‘He said, “Touching down”. Just those two words. It was a kind of code he’d made up. He’d said once that if I ever got that message, it meant he’d gone away, or was about to go away, to a far-off place, and that I was to search his flat immediately.’ She glanced off to one side. ‘I thought he was joking when he said that.’

‘And did you? Search his flat?’

‘Yes. It wasn’t easy. I went straight to his flat in Marble Arch. On the way I learned via the grapevine that he’d been killed that morning. I didn’t get any details, just that he was dead. So I assumed his flat was either about to be searched, or had already been searched and I was walking into a trap. I did as much countersurveillance on it as I could without delaying things for too long, and I went in.’

‘Did you find anything?’

‘A notebook.’ She gave half a laugh. ‘I don’t mean a notebook computer, I mean an actual, old-fashioned paper notebook. Taped in a recess above the toilet pipe as it went into the wall. I’ve got it in a safe place, but so far it hasn’t been much help. Most of it’s written in some kind of personal shorthand. Nothing even a codebreaker could crack, because it’s not designed to be read by a single other human being.’

‘Then why did he want you to find it?’

‘ Most of it’s in code. But a few names come up, written in normal language. Iraqi Thunder Fist is one. Mohammed Al-Bayati is another.’

‘So you staked out the ITF office.’

She shrugged. ‘What could I do? From that moment on, I caught Charlie’s paranoia. He’d obviously known he was at risk of being killed, which is why he rang me. Me , not his line of command. It suggested he at least suspected someone within the Service of being an enemy. That meant I had to regard everyone, the whole of the Security Service, as a potential threat. It meant I couldn’t access any of the databases any more, couldn’t search for Mohammed Al-Bayati’s home address, in case it triggered alarm bells. So I had to do it the hard way. Watch the office and see if he turned up.’

Purkiss sifted through the information she’d given him, calculating how much she probably knew, and how much she didn’t.

‘Ms Holley — ’

‘Hannah.’

‘Hannah, what do you know of the circumstances of Morrow’s death?’

‘That he was shot on an estate somewhere in the Home Counties, with a long gun.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘That’s it. Through the grapevine.’

There was no point holding back, Purkiss thought. He said, ‘He was meeting the Home Secretary. He was going to blow the whistle on something within the Service.’

Hannah’s eyes flared. She sat back in her chair, letting out a long breath through pursed lips, managing to sound vindicated and wondering at the same time.

‘Don’t ask me how I know,’ he continued. ‘But it’s one hundred per cent reliable information. And I’m here as an outsider, to find out both who killed Morrow and what he was about to expose.’

When Hannah leaned forwards again there was something gone from her eyes. It was the professional reserve, the forced coolness. Uncovered, the blackness of her dilated pupils threatened to suck Purkiss in.

‘I’ll help you,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.

‘You said “a few” names came up in Morrow’s notebook,’ said Purkiss.

‘Yes.’

‘There are others?’

‘There’s one more.’

Within twenty seconds of the blast, Tullivant was gone, driving at an unhurried pace north towards Greenwich.

He’d been parked for six hours at the end of the street, in the road with which Al-Bayati’s street formed a T, so that he had a clear view of both the Range Rover and of the entrance to the man’s house.

Ten minutes before climbing into his parked car to wait, he’d approached the Range Rover, a leather bag over one shoulder. The street was all but deserted at five thirty in the morning, not even an early jogger or dog walker to be seen. Nonetheless, there were bound to be people up at this hour, some of them even looking out of their windows as they sipped their first mugs of tea, so he had to make everything look as natural as possible.

Tullivant disabled the Range Rover’s alarm and the locking mechanism with a piece of electronic equipment not widely available commercially. He popped the hood, lugged a bottle of windscreen washer fluid round together with a small package which he’d taken from the leather bag concealed against it, and reached under the raised bonnet as though filling up with the fluid. He withdrew the dipstick, muttered as though finding the oil level low, and lowered himself to peer under the chassis, looking for a leak. Quickly, carefully, he fitted the package of C-24 explosive under the chassis.

Back in the car, he prised away the panel around the ignition and wired up the detonator. It wasn’t his favourite type of car bomb. Motion-sensitive ones, triggered by a human bulk lowering itself onto the seat, were more elegant; but in a busy residential street like this one they were too risky. A child climbing onto the bonnet might set it off. And Tullivant had discounted a remote-controlled device, because the signals jammed too frequently.

At that point, Tullivant could easily have driven away. He could have been on the other side of the country by the time the bomb exploded, reducing considerably his chances of being caught. But he needed to see for himself that the hit was successful. So he waited.

Once, during the six hours, the front door of the house had opened, and Tullivant had stiffened in his car seat. But it had only been one of the bodyguards, going out for the newspaper and a bottle of milk. Tullivant was relieved the man went on foot. It would have been embarrassing if he’d blown up the street in the process of popping out for a few essentials.

Around noon, it had all kicked off, and very nearly unravelled.

Al-Bayati and his entourage emerged in a seeming hurry, heading straight for the Range Rover. As they were climbing in, the tall man whom Tullivant had been aware of on the periphery of his vision suddenly stepped onto the road, his hand extended, holding some sort of identification card.

John Purkiss.