Tim Stevens - Jokerman

He looked into Rossiter’s eyes, and felt nothing. Because this was a different man.

It was Rossiter, technically speaking; but the eyes were different. When Purkiss had seen them before, in Tallinn, they’d been alive, as though fine blue membranes were providing a precarious barrier between the man’s inner rage and the world outside.

Now they were the same blue, but calmer. Resigned looking.

They stood on either side of the table, watching one another. Rossiter was the first to sit. Purkiss followed.

‘John.’

The voice was quieter, again with none of the seething tension Purkiss remembered. Rossiter looked older, too, and had lost a little weight. He must be around fifty, but he could have passed for five years older.

‘Rossiter.’

It was the point at which two old acquaintances meeting for the first time after a separation would start complimenting one another on how well they looked. Purkiss fought an insane urge to laugh.

‘You know why I’m here?’ he asked.

‘I’ve no idea, no,’ said Rossiter levelly. ‘I must admit to being intrigued, though.’

‘I’m here to ask you some questions.’

‘Not this, surely? Not ten months on?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Purkiss.

Rossiter placed his palms together, rested his chin on his fingertips. ‘I always wondered why they didn’t send you in to interrogate me back then, John. After I was first taken into custody.’

‘Because I would have killed you,’ said Purkiss.

‘You didn’t kill me on the boat, when you had the chance.’

‘That was a crazy, heat-of-the-moment display of mercy. With time to cool off, I’d have done it.’

Rossiter looked faintly amused. ‘So what’s stopping you from killing me now? Or is that why you’re here?’

‘I don’t want to kill you, Rossiter,’ Purkiss said. ‘Not any more.’

‘Why not?’ Now genuine interest had replaced the amusement.

Purkiss waved a hand, glanced around. ‘All this is death.’

‘It’s really quite comfortable.’

‘ Comfortable. This from a man who was prepared to trigger a war between NATO and Russia in order to restore the importance of SIS in the world.’ Purkiss smiled. ‘Comfort isn’t your style. And here you are, in a parody of middle-class suburban hell. Good food, reading material, regular exercise. A stress-free environment, designed to allow you to nurture your spiritual side.’ He sat back, aware he’d been leaning steadily forward and not wanting to attract the disapproval of the watching warders. ‘No, Rossiter. I don’t want to kill you. I’m quite satisfied knowing you’re dying in here. And you’ve got thirty or forty years worth of dying ahead of you yet.’

For an instant, for the briefest beat, Purkiss thought he saw a flash of the old expression in the eyes, a bulging; but it was gone even as he registered it. Rossiter chuckled, a cordial sound.

‘Why the hell didn’t you join us, John? You’d have been an enormous asset.’

‘ Us. You said that to me on the boat.’ Purkiss paused. ‘There are others, then.’

‘Good God, of course there are.’ Rossiter looked mildly astounded. ‘I never said there weren’t.’

‘But you won’t reveal their names.’

Rossiter sighed. ‘John, you’re at risk of becoming something I’d never have thought you were capable of. Boring. Are you going to get to the point?’

‘All right. I need your help.’

Purkiss had meant to wrong-foot Rossiter, and if he didn’t quite succeed, he saw from the raised eyebrows that he’d at least surprised the man.

‘ Well. That, I wasn’t expecting, I must admit. Full marks for honesty.’

Purkiss took from his pocket the one object he’d been allowed to bring in with him. It was a printout of the photo of Arkwright from the SIS database, the one Vale had sent him. The one showing Arkwright before the scars.

Rossiter took out a pair of glasses and put them on, peering down his nose at the picture. He seemed to consider for a moment; then he said, ‘Dennis Arkwright. In handsomer days.’

‘That’s very forthcoming of you,’ said Purkiss.

Rossiter shrugged. ‘There’s no reason I’d keep his identity secret. He was never a colleague of mine. Just a thug for hire, with a brute talent for interrogation.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

‘He was shot yesterday. I was there.’

Rossiter waited.

‘What was your connection with him?’

‘Now, now, John.’ Rossiter wagged a finger. ‘You’re going to have to give me a little more.’

‘Before he died,’ said Purkiss, slowing down for emphasis, ‘Arkwright revealed he was hired as a torturer by the current head of the Security Service, Sir Guy Strang.’

And there it was, definitely this time. The force behind the eyes. The roiling, almost feral energy.

Rossiter leaned in.

‘ Now you’re being interesting,’ he said.

‘Istanbul, in early 2007, it would have been. You were in Marseille at the time, weren’t you? Yes. My brief was to investigate the flow of Turkish drug money which was suspected to be helping fund the insurgency in Iraq.’

Rossiter’s gaze was in the distance as he remembered.

‘Our relationship, the Service’s relationship, with the Turkish authorities, was — how can I put it? — complex . Nominally we were allies, and still are. But there was a strong element within the Turkish services which bitterly resented our presence there, even though various pacts and accords enshrined our rights to be involved. So although we were reliant to some extent from the intelligence shared with us by our Turkish counterparts, we couldn’t always fully trust either its accuracy or its completeness.

‘I decided this wasn’t good enough, and developed my own intelligence-gathering network within the city. Off the books, of course. The official SIS line, even internally, was that we were to engage in no underhand operations that didn’t have the approval of the authorities.

‘I used local people for the gathering of intelligence, but outside sources for the extraction of information. I’d tried Turkish interrogators before, but I’d found them either too soft on their compatriots, or by contrast too zealous. One has to strike a balance. So I hand-picked a number of people, mostly Europeans, to carry out the questioning of individuals I’d identified as being involved in the local drug business.’

‘One of them being Arkwright,’ said Purkiss.

‘Yes. He came recommended to me through a complicated series of links, none of which probably have any bearing on the matter at hand. I learned of his background as a Royal Marine Commando, and of his dishonourable discharge. At the time I recruited him, he was working for a low-rent security firm in Saudi Arabia.’

‘Did you discover anything about his involvement with the Security Service?’

‘No. That part was carefully covered up. No doubt he’d had professional assistance in doing so. His CV was a list of short-term contracts with assorted mercenary and security outfits. I looked into one or two of them, they held up, so I didn’t bother vetting him further.’

‘Sloppy,’ remarked Purkiss.

Rossiter turned a palm upwards. ‘Perhaps. But you have to remember, John, I wasn’t hiring an agent to do sensitive, complicated undercover work. I was hiring a torturer. A flavour of the background of such a person is usually all that’s necessary.’

Purkiss thought about it. ‘You recruited Arkwright in early 2007.’

‘March, I believe.’

‘He told me he’d left Iraq in February 2005, after the car bombs at Al Hillah. He returned to Britain to have his injuries seen to. And then, as he was about to go back to Iraq, he was approached by the Security Service.’