Tim Stevens - Jokerman

‘Antibiotics,’ the doctor said curtly. ‘For the bite. Don’t miss any. If the wound turns septic, seek help at once.’

With a nod to Vale, he’d left.

‘Service?’ Purkiss asked. He meant their service, SIS, not Kasabian’s lot.

‘A friend,’ said Vale.

It was code for one hundred per cent discreet and trustworthy .

Then Purkiss had laid his phone, with the sound file he’d transferred from Hannah’s, on the dining table and hit the play key.

He watched Vale while the older man listened, not getting it the first time.

Purkiss rewound the final exchange and played it a second, and a third time. Vale leaned forward a fraction.

‘Again,’ he murmured.

On the fourth listen, he glanced up at Purkiss, a question in his eyes. Purkiss said: ‘Tell me what you heard.’

‘Not hospital ,’ said Vale. ‘ Rossiter. ’

And he’d started coming up with arguments against it, against the notion that Arkwright’s dying words had referred to Richard Rossiter, the man Purkiss had last seen as they’d both been hauled off a boat on the freezing Baltic Sea. The man who had very nearly succeeded in assassinating the Russian president a few minutes before that.

The man who’d corrupted Purkiss’s fiancée, Claire, and whom Purkiss should have killed when he’d had the chance.

Vale closed his eyes, as though mentally reaching out for possibilities that made sense. He shook his head slightly.

‘Let’s come back to that.’

‘Quentin — ’

‘We’ll come back to it. First, debrief.’

Purkiss didn’t point out that Kasabian hadn’t arrived yet, and that he’d have to repeat the story for her benefit. Hearing the account for a second time, Vale would spot inconsistencies, details that hadn’t been there the first time. Sometimes that led to clues. Breakthroughs, even.

Purkiss related everything he’d learned from Arkwright, virtually word for word. He omitted all mention of Hannah Holley, giving the impression that he’d obtained Arkwright’s name himself from Morrow’s notes. When he reached the remarks Arkwright had made about Guy Strang, Vale reacted almost imperceptibly: he parted his lips, blinked twice. For Vale, that was like slapping the table in delight.

‘My take on it,’ said Purkiss, ‘is that this attacker — the one who killed Arkwright and his sons, the one who came after me at my home — had Arkwright wired. Either him personally, or his cottage. He was holed up close by, and when Arkwright dropped the Strang bombshell, he moved in.’

‘He was well equipped,’ said Vale. ‘Teargas grenades and mask, small arms.’

‘Arkwright was a Royal Marine, remember. And his sons, though they weren’t professional fighters, were experienced brawlers. The attacker knew what he was up against.’

Vale tipped his head in acknowledgement.

‘It bothers me, though,’ said Purkiss. ‘Why would he happen to be holed up just then, when I arrived?’

‘Because he knew somehow you were coming,’ offered Vale.

‘Then why did he wait until Arkwright crossed the line before making his attack? Why not just smoke us all out as soon as he knew I was in the cottage?’

‘Perhaps he wanted to avoid out-and-out carnage.’ Vale shrugged. ‘Perhaps he’d have preferred to wait till you’d left, then pick you off away from the cottage. You forced his hand by getting Arkwright to reveal what he did.’

Purkiss reached for the two-litre bottle of water he’d filled from the tap. Something else was bothering him about the way the whole episode had played out. He grasped at it, but it eluded him.

Kasabian arrived, letting herself in. She looked Purkiss over, noted the dressed arm, the facial plasters and bruises.

Without asking how he was, she got to the point.

‘Quentin here has told me some of it. Earlier he mentioned you were investigating a man named Arkwright, who had SIS connections.’ She took the mug of tea Vale handed her. ‘I’ve searched our files myself, manually. There’s nothing on him.’

‘Nothing,’ said Purkiss.

‘Not a mention of him anywhere. Which is odd. These former high-level military types who get themselves kicked out… they usually come up on our radar. I’m not talking ordinary squaddies who basically joined the armed forces to knock heads together and who’ll have ample opportunity to carry on doing so as civilians. I mean career soldiers. Proud men. They take badly to having their aspirations terminated. Often they set up mercenary groups, and we catch them domestically doing deals with gun runners. Or, they join right-wing extremist outfits. But this Arkwright doesn’t feature at all.’

‘Is it possible all intelligence on him might have been erased from your databases?’ asked Purkiss.

‘Possible, yes.’

That would make sense , thought Purkiss.

She raised her eyebrows, the rest of her pouchy face failing to lift with them. ‘So who is he?’

Purkiss told her.

When he reached the part where Guy Strang was mentioned, her reaction was more conventional than Vale’s had been. She jammed a thumbnail between her teeth and tore it audibly.

‘Fuck me ,’ she hissed, her eyes distant.

She took three strides over to Purkiss, seemed about to embrace him, thought better of it and clapped a hand on his uninjured shoulder.

‘ Excellent work.’

‘It’s hardly proof,’ Purkiss said, thinking of what Hannah had said.

‘It’s proof enough for me,’ Kasabian breathed. ‘It means I’m right. I knew he was involved.’ She gazed off again, her expression wondering, but also triumphant. ‘It means we’ve got a focus for our efforts.’

Purkiss concluded his account. He described the recording of Arkwright’s last words, and played it back for her. Afterwards she rocked her head.

‘Difficult to tell,’ she said. ‘The two of you are more likely to hear Rossiter than I am, because you’ve had a personal involvement with him.’

‘You know of him, though,’ Purkiss said.

‘Of course. He was very nearly the first person to be tried in this country for high treason since William Joyce in 1946. It would’ve been difficult to keep that secret, though, so the Crown got him on terrorism and murder charges. It’s multiple life sentences either way.’

Purkiss had deliberately been kept from involvement in the proceedings against Rossiter, but he knew the man had undergone due process, in a trial which had been conducted as far as possible out of the public eye.

‘The one thing that does make sense,’ said Vale, ‘is that Arkwright did some freelance work for SIS as well. This would have been later, after the work he alleges he did for Strang. Rossiter was SIS. There might be a connection there.’

‘Okay,’ said Kasabian. She ran a hand through her hair. Purkiss could see she was distracted, her thoughts still on Strang. ‘I’ll see what I can dig up on Rossiter, though I doubt it’ll be much of relevance. He did a pretty good job of covering his tracks. Quentin, maybe you can look at the SIS databases again. See if there’s anything fresh that might link him to Arkwright.’

‘There’s something else we can do as well,’ said Purkiss.

Kasabian looked at him. ‘What’s that?’

‘Get me access to Rossiter.’

They were both silent, Kasabian and Vale.

Purkiss went on: ‘Direct, face to face access. You can swing it.’

Kasabian breathed out, shook her head slowly. ‘There’s no way you’re using duress against him.’

‘I’m not talking about using duress,’ said Purkiss. ‘I won’t be interrogating him at all.’

‘Then… what?’

‘I’ll ask him for his help.’