Tim Stevens - Jokerman

James was hurled back, his body jerking, a spray of something hot and black in the darkness lashing across the stone floor. He crashed hard, supine, one arm flung out at his side.

Emma clapped her hands to her ears and screamed, the sound choking off as her throat closed. The after-noise of the shots rang on and on, the air in the corridor rich with the stench of cordite and blood.

The other man rose, pulled off his mask. Despite the darkness Emma could see his face clearly.

‘Emma,’ he said quietly.

Brian.

Tullivant drove, his route meandering but broadly purposeful, describing wide and irregular arcs away from the house in Fulham but staying this side of the river.

In the back, the only sound Emma made was a periodic, muffled sob.

Her wrists and ankle were bound with plastic ties from a supply he kept in his kit bag. In her mouth was a gag, secure enough to prevent most sound from seeping past but not so tight that she was in danger of suffocating. He kept his ears open for sounds of vomiting, which would put her in danger of aspiration.

When he’d been sure she wasn’t going to run out the front door, rooted as she was to the spot in shock, Tullivant had swiftly gone through Cromer’s pockets. He’d left the dead man’s own phone — it could have all sorts of alarms, bugs or traces built into it — but taken the one he’d recognised as Emma’s. Apart from the hunting knife, the man was unarmed.

Tullivant used a strip from the dead man’s shirt to bind the wound in his right arm. The man had thrown well. A few inches to the left and the blade would have penetrated Tullivant’s chest.

Tullivant’s blood was smeared on the floor, the walls, the living room door. In an ideal situation he’d have spent an hour scrubbing it off, and scoring the entire corridor to eliminate other traces of his DNA. In an ideal world, he’d also have taken time to remove Cromer’s body and dispose of it elsewhere, far away.

He’d used a suppressor on the Heckler amp; Koch, but the echo in the empty corridor had been loud enough to alert whoever lived next door, and probably others in the neighbourhood as well. And Emma’s scream would have put paid to anyone’s doubts that they’d heard something unusual in the house at the end of the terrace.

Tullivant left Cromer’s body where it was. He reached Emma in four rapid strides. She cowered against the closed front door, her arms crossed in front of her, her entire body shaking as though in the grip of a fever. She recoiled when he reached for her, but she didn’t try to run away.

Tullivant put his arms round her, held her close, feeling her face against his chest, her lips moving silently. He maintained the embrace for ten long seconds, feeling her juddering slow a fraction.

He took a quick look at her face. The frozen panic had been replaced by a dull caul of passivity.

Tullivant slipped the balaclava back on. Taking Emma gently but firmly by the upper arm, he pushed open the front door and led her down the short driveway, glancing about as he went. Lights blazed across the street and in the house next door. Silhouetted figures peered from behind slanting curtains.

Not breaking his stride, he marched Emma to the Mazda. Her eyes widened a little when she saw it, as if its stultifying familiarity brought home to her the horror of her situation.

She struggled only briefly, and weakly, as Tullivant bundled her into the back. He said, very soft and low: ‘Emma, no,’ and his tone was warning enough that he didn’t have to pull his leather jacket aside to reveal the grip of his gun or anything as melodramatic as that. She went limp, her face averted, her eyes closed, as he secured first the ties, then the gag.

He pulled away, leaving behind a house with a dead body, copious traces of his own recent presence, and a neighbourhood which had heard gunfire and witnessed a man and a woman fleeing the scene.

The situation was messy, that was for sure. But most messes could be cleaned up, given enough time and resources. And Tullivant had plenty of the latter to call upon.

It was the more immediate mess he was less optimistic about.

Tullivant said, ‘Emma, are you conscious? Can you hear me?’

A moan rose from the back seat.

‘In a little while, once we’re a safe distance away, I’m going to take the gag off you and ask you some questions. I’m telling you now because I want to give you the chance to think very, very carefully about how you answer.’

Silence.

He went on: ‘First of all, no matter how frightened you are now, no matter how confused, I want you to know that the children are completely safe. They’ll come to no harm at all, no matter what happens.’

Another low moan, and a sob.

‘But I can’t say the same for you, necessarily. When I come to ask you my questions, I want you to answer completely and unhesitatingly truthfully. I’ll know immediately if you’re lying. As you’ve discovered, I’m not who you thought I was. I have skills you won’t be able to beat.’

He let his words sink in for a few seconds.

‘If any of the answers you give me are less than the full and unvarnished truth, I will hurt you. If the lies accumulate, so will the pain. Eventually you’ll die.’

The closest thing to a scream escaped the confines of the gag. He felt her writhing in the back, thumping her knees against his seat.

‘Think about it, Emma.’

He said nothing more, and Emma’s stifled wails ebbed into harsh-sounding rattles. Tullivant wondered if she’d noticed what he hadn’t said.

That if she told him the truth, she wouldn’t necessarily live.

He found a less-than-salubrious street with faulty lamps that left most of it in darkness, and pulled up. Climbing out, he moved Emma into the front seat and sat beside her. Anyone passing would think they were a couple who’d stopped to pursue a late-night argument.

He pulled the gag free. Red lines marked its pressure across her cheeks.

She turned to look at him. In her eyes there was only wonder.

Tullivant began with some mild test questions — how long had she been having the affair with James Cromer, where had they met on specific occasions — to which he knew the answers. In each case she replied hurriedly, as though desperate not to be suspected of even trying to lie. He watched her carefully much of the time, only occasionally glancing up as a car’s headlights swept past. Before long, he moved on to more recent events.

What had she found that she’d shown Cromer at their meeting in the Tate Modern yesterday?

She paused for the briefest instant. Tullivant thought it was because she was stunned that he’d been there, watching the two of them in what they’d thought was the camouflage of the crowd.

‘Something he’d hidden in my handbag,’ she blurted. ‘A listening device.’

Had she found others?

Yes, she had. Hidden in her lipstick.

Had Cromer told her what they were for?

To eavesdrop on him, on Brian, she replied.

Tullivant closed in with his questions.

‘What did James tell you about me?’

This time her pause was, he knew, because she still couldn’t quite believe the enormity of what she was about to say, despite what she’d seen him do a short while earlier.

‘He told me you were a murderer. That you were responsible for that bomb that went off in Lewisham on Saturday.’

‘Anything else?’

She looked appalled by what must seem like his nonchalance. ‘No. I mean, yes. Just that… you’re a murderer. That you’ve been under surveillance for a long time. That he… used me to get to you.’

It came out in a rush. Tullivant let her continue, allowing her to vent. When Emma’s tone became increasingly shrill, he stopped her, guided her with a specific question.