Tim Stevens - Jokerman

‘And for my part, I could have had a stellar career in the legal world. Taken silk, eventually become a judge. But I too chose to confront the internal enemy. The one at the heart of the nation. The one poised to strike from inside the body politic. Which is why I joined the Security Service. Why the majority of the operations I personally conduct and co-ordinate are those against home-grown threats. British Islamist fundamentalists, neo-fascist groups. Eco-terrorists.’

It was an impressive performance, Purkiss thought. The cadences of her speech, the ebb and flow of a rising tide, were masterfully handled. She was becoming impassioned without the need for theatrics.

Kasabian stepped back to the table and rested her flat palms on it once more, leaning forward on straight arms. When she spoke again, it was in a quieter voice, but one no less commanding.

‘So do you see, Mr Purkiss, how much it means to me to find out who killed Morrow? To expose this coverup, whatever it is? We’re the guardians of public safety. If we can’t uphold the very highest moral standards, then there is no more morality.’

She held his gaze for a few seconds, then pulled back the chair and sat down.

‘Will you help me, Mr Purkiss?’

‘No,’ he said.

He wasn’t, Emma reflected for at least the tenth time, at all how she’d expected the head of MI5 to look.

His status, even his name, suggested somebody patrician, with long, swooping grey hair, an aquiline nose, chiselled lips. Perhaps a slightly raffish air. Instead, Sir Guy Strang was a bull. Round-shouldered, hulking and neckless, with a smooth pink pate from which the last die-hard strands of hair had been brutally shaved, he stood six feet two and towered over most people in any room he was in, not just because of his height but by virtue of his massive, imposing persona.

He certainly stood higher than Emma’s five feet six, when he was on his feet. At the moment, however, she was looking down at him.

Sir Guy’s exposed chest was, like his head, pale pink and hairless. Emma fitted the leads into position, holding them in place with discs sticky with gel, and ran the ECG machine.

‘Can I — ?’ he rumbled, but she held a finger to her lips.

When the printout had run its course, Emma detached the leads and handed Sir Guy a fistful of paper towels with which to wipe off the gel. She examined the ECG printout, feeding the flimsy paper through her hands. Very slight ST depression, and the occasional ectopic beat. But not much different from the last one, a month ago.

She nodded and he sat up, began buttoning his shirt. He was peering at Emma’s face, trying to read her expression, and she kept her features neutral for as long as she could before letting a smile break through.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Fine.’

‘Comedian, eh?’ he muttered, fitting his cuff links.

Emma turned her back on him while he dressed, and went over to the counter to write up her notes. The room was a purpose-built medical examination facility deep in the bowels of Thames House. Whatever Emma said she needed, equipment-wise, she got, without question or fuss. It was startling, and a complete contrast to her experience in the NHS.

Dr Emma Goddard had been personal physician to Sir Guy Strang, the Director of MI5, for a little over a year now, and she still couldn’t quite get used to the notion. At the time of her recruitment she’d been a junior partner in a general practice in Wimbledon, a pleasant enough job which was starting to take on the comfortable, undemandingly dangerous feel of a rut. At a cocktail party she’d been introduced to a friend of a friend of a friend, someone who evasively mentioned he was employed in the Civil Service and who took a great interest in hearing about Emma’s own career. A week later she received a letter from the Home Office, asking if she’d be interested in considering a job offer and inviting her to come in to discuss it.

There followed an extraordinary series of meetings and interviews, initially in Whitehall and eventually at Thames House as well. Emma and her husband, Brian, spent long evening discussing the decision she’d have to make. Brian was gently sceptical. Did she really want to give up the relative security of a GP post in the NHS for something as outside the normal range of a doctor’s experience as this? More importantly, did Emma think she’d be happy, attending to just one patient, who in all likelihood would stay fit and healthy anyway? Wouldn’t she miss the hurly burly of GP life, of caring for a host of ills, medical and social, while feeling that she was genuinely making a difference? And it wasn’t as though she could bask in the status afforded to her by being personal doctor to the country’s top counterintelligence officer. She wouldn’t be able to tell a soul.

But Brian let her convince him. The money was good. Better than what she’d been earning in full-time practice, in fact. Much better. It meant she and Brian could now afford a live-in nanny to look after the children. Her duties were, frankly, not all that arduous. Monthly examinations of her patient, including routine blood and other standard tests. Updates on the state of his health to an array of other, handpicked specialists — surgeons, cardiologists, urologists — who would be called upon if he ever needed them. And Emma was aware that she’d be on twenty-four hour call in case of an emergency.

The sudden freeing up of her time would allow Emma the breathing space she’d never had since graduating. To spend time with her and Brian’s children, seven-year-old Jack and his sister Niamh, two years younger. To do some research work. To garden.

So Emma underwent the final, formal interview. She signed the Official Secrets Act. She perfected the cover story she’d been advised to concoct: that she was starting up a private practice and travelling to the homes of assorted Civil Service mandarins and Saudi Arabian dignitaries. And she began the monthly trips from their Wimbledon semidetached home to Thames House, always in a chauffeured car with tinted windows and a rota of politely aloof escorts.

She poked and prodded Sir Guy’s flesh, listened to the thump of his heart and the rasp of his on-off smoker’s lungs, lobbed back his grumbles and sarcastic remarks in the form of jibes of her own. Over the following year, she became genuinely fond of this gruff, sometimes alarming, yet kind man. And she knew he liked her, too, even though it wasn’t in his nature ever to admit it.

Now, writing her notes with Sir Guy dressing behind her, Emma said, ‘How’s the smoking?’

‘Haven’t touched one for three months.’

She turned and gave him a look.

Sir Guy held up his hands in resignation. ‘All right, all right. Two cigars a week. Maximum.’

‘That’s two too many.’

‘Ah, shut up.’

They went back to his office and made small talk for a while. Eventually Sir Guy said, ‘Well. Till next month.’

She smiled.

He pressed a button on his desk. A few seconds later the door opened and a man came in. Of medium height, broad shouldered. Light on the balls of his feet, like a cat. Hair buzzed short in a military style.

‘James,’ said Sir Guy, ‘be a good chap and escort Dr Goddard to the car.’

The man inclined his head. He held the door for Emma and followed her through.

They walked in silence through the murmuring corridors. Halfway along, Emma said, ‘Okay if I pop to the loo?’

‘Of course,’ said James. He indicated down a short passage.

Emma strode towards the restrooms, not looking back. In the women’s room she glanced around, found it empty. She went back to the door and gave a sharp rap on it.

The door opened and James came in.