Tim Stevens - Jokerman

Looming ahead she saw the shape of the old Bankside Power Station which housed the Tate Modern. It was just the sort of venue James would choose, she thought. Emma had dragged Brian along to the gallery once, to a cocktail party hosted by one of her artist friends, and although he’d gamely smiled and feigned interest in the chatter around him, she could see his heart wasn’t in it. James, on the other hand, could hold his own on the subject of modern art, and offer an intelligent opinion on the most obscure and difficult piece even after viewing it only once.

She scanned the throng outside the gallery for signs of James, but any number of dark, good-looking young men turned out not to be him. Emma checked her watch. Ten past two. She was wondering whether to go inside and get a coffee when she felt a hand on her elbow. Before she could turn, James’s low voice murmured in her ear.

‘It’s me. Keep walking in the direction you were going.’

Startled, she complied. He muttered beside her, so quietly she couldn’t hear what he said, but she realised it was for show: they were a couple strolling along, in intimate conversation, so she responded with aimless patter of her own. As he directed her into the building, its cavernous lobby cool and echoing, Emma felt the thrill of his closeness, the warm maleness of his arm against hers, his breath on her cheek.

And she acknowledged the smallest frisson of fear.

The whole set-up put Purkiss in mind of Spandau Prison.

He wasn’t expecting to see Gothic gates or machine-gun towers, and indeed the building, as it appeared over the rise, didn’t look like a place of detention at all. Rather, it had the appearance of a squat office complex on an industrial estate, the kind normally found on the outskirts of a fair-sized town.

This one, though, was in the depths of the Berkshire countryside.

‘The Room,’ said Vale, in the seat beside him.

Kasabian had suggested Vale take Purkiss there. Although she said she’d cleared the way to allow Purkiss access, there was still the possibility of his being stopped by suspicious or ill-informed personnel along the way. Vale would be able to call in for assistance, pull strings if necessary.

Hannah had slipped out at seven, declining Purkiss’s offer of coffee. She hadn’t quite blown a kiss at the door, but there’d been a mischievous cast to her eyes he hadn’t seen before.

Vale picked Purkiss up in his car at the Covent Garden flat and they made their way west, out of the city, the traffic relatively light at eleven thirty on a Sunday morning. The highrises and estates in the west of the city gave way gradually to the undulating countryside of Royal Berkshire.

Vale began a winding descent towards a pair of high electric gates flanked by kiosks in each of which sat a uniformed police officer. The policemen emerged long before Vale reached the gates. Purkiss noticed they both carried carbines slung across their chests.

The Room, Vale had informed him on the journey, was the place Richard Rossiter was being detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. A former safe house and interrogation facility for Soviet defectors during the Cold War, it had sat disused until almost a year ago, when someone had come up with the idea of turning it into a prison for one man. That man was Rossiter.

It wasn’t house arrest, because The Room was nobody’s idea of a home. But it was a step up from a normal prison, even a white-collar one. Rossiter apparently had a large cell, more like a dormitory but with a single bed. He was allowed a small selection of his own clothes to wear. He was permitted fresh air and exercise, books, and television, though no Internet facilities.

Every inch of the property, indoors and out, was covered by closed-circuit television cameras and concealed audio monitors. The reason, Vale surmised, was not so much to anticipate any escape plans Rossiter might be forming, but rather to pick up the smallest scrap of information he might inadvertently reveal about his former collaborators.

Rossiter had been part of an illegal black-operations project within SIS, one which took it upon itself to dispense with legal niceties and due process and to mete out torture and execution in the interests of British state security. Apart from Claire Stirling, Purkiss’s fiancée, whom Rossiter claimed he’d trained and run as one of his own, it wasn’t known who else was involved in the project. Indeed, it wasn’t clear if Rossiter was in charge, a mere underling, or even a lone wolf.

He’d been questioned, threatened, cajoled, offered deals that would allow him an early release. None of it had worked. Rossiter had flatly refused to answer any questions about anybody else he might have operated with. He hadn’t denied there were others involved, nor had he confirmed it. He simply hadn’t discussed the matter at all.

So the hope was, Vale assumed out loud, that Rossiter might betray the identity of others inadvertently. By blurting out their names in his sleep, perhaps.

‘It’s a long shot,’ Purkiss said drily.

‘Indeed.’

Might Rossiter be willing to open up about a dead person, though? In this case, Arkwright? Purkiss hoped so.

The carbine-laden policemen stepped forwards, one peering into Purkiss’s side of the car, the other approaching Vale’s. Purkiss wound down the window.

‘John Purkiss.’ He held up a special laminated card, replete with his mug shot, which Kasabian had supplied for him. He’d brought along his passport, too, just in case further ID was required.

The officer studied it from behind mirror shades, then nodded. ‘Straight through, please, sir. Stop just inside the gates.’

The gates slid sideways. Inside, Vale was asked to hand over the keys. Four more officers, who had appeared from nowhere, took over, one of them driving the car off towards a smaller building of some kind, no doubt for it to be scanned for explosives, the other three escorting Purkiss and Vale to the main block.

Inside, Vale stood to one side, his journey ended for the moment. Silent, unsmiling men in prison officers’ garb took Purkiss’s watch, wallet and mobile phone. He was expertly patted down, had metal detectors as well as a Geiger counter run over every inch of his outline, then told to walk through another doorframe-style scanner.

On the other side, two prison guards and two policemen led him down a brightly lit, institutional corridor to a door at the end. One of the warders touched his fingers against a scanning pad and pushed the door when it buzzed. Purkiss found himself in an airlock. The warder opened the door on the other side similarly.

‘No physical contact whatsoever,’ the warder intoned. ‘No standing until you’re ready to leave. You’ll be under video but not audio surveillance, so your conversation is confidential. But if there’s any sign that things are getting heated in there, that the prisoner’s temper is being roused, my staff and I have discretion to terminate the interview immediately. Understood?’

‘Yes,’ said Purkiss.

He stepped through the door into a square room lit with fluorescent ceiling panels. The room smelled freshly painted and clean. There was no other visible exit. In the centre of the room stood a metal-framed table with a laminated wood surface. On the table, in turn, stood a plastic jug of water and two beakers.

A man stood behind the table. Short, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, eyes blue chips that stood out against surprisingly tanned skin. The trace of a smile teasing the thin lips.

Rossiter.

Up until the moment he entered the room, Purkiss hadn’t known how he was going to feel, despite his reassurances to Vale.