Tim Stevens - Jokerman

Kendrick’s predatory gaze flickered over the chess board. He reached for his glass, Purkiss grimacing as his blindly groping hand nearly knocked it off the coffee table, and took a hit of the Jameson’s he’d brought along with him.

‘You know that one, then,’ he said.

‘The Vienna. Yes,’ said Purkiss, sipping at his own beer. ‘I’ll tell you afterwards why it isn’t a good idea.’

‘I don’t need your lectures,’ muttered Kendrick. But Purkiss knew he’d be interested.

He’d first met Tony Kendrick — Colour Sergeant Kendrick, as he’d been then — in Basra, nearly ten years earlier. Kendrick had been part of Second Parachute Battalion, or Two Para, stationed in the city in the aftermath of the invasion. Purkiss, as an SIS agent of a year’s standing, had been posted there on a British Intelligence mission to develop a network of informers across southern Iraq. As part of an armed forces-SIS liaison exercise, Kendrick and three fellow Paras had been assigned to accompany Purkiss in his ventures into Basra and the other towns and villages in the region. Despite Kendrick’s unrelenting and merciless disparaging of the civilian he was babysitting, he and Purkiss had in fact got along well.

They’d lost touch after Purkiss had finished in Iraq and been assigned to Marseille, where he met Claire. Years later, following Claire’s death and after Purkiss had left the Service and started working freelance for Vale, Purkiss had encountered a demobbed Kendrick again. Vale had given Purkiss discretion to hire his own help in the course of his investigations, and since then Purkiss had made use of Kendrick’s services on numerous occasions, most recently in New York.

A few months previously, Purkiss had mentioned to Kendrick that he was a chess player. Kendrick had pooh-poohed the game instinctively, but as Purkiss explained some of the principles, Kendrick started to show an interest. And so had begun their fortnightly Friday-evening matches, always at Purkiss’s house. (‘Believe me, mate,’ Kendrick had said, ‘you don’t want to see my flat.’)

Kendrick was an aggressive, reckless player, a tactician more than a strategist. His major weakness was his repeated failure to ensure defensive cover for his king and queen, though he was aware of this and was starting to work on it. And every now and again he’d come up with a genuinely surprising move which would catch Purkiss off guard.

But today, disconcerted by the failure of his Vienna opening, Kendrick wasn’t on best form. He made a bizarre move with a bishop, wincing as soon as he’d done it, and Purkiss took one of his knights. Forced into a retreat by the vulnerability of his king, Kendrick began to play a reactive, defensive game. He slowed down, brooding over each move while Purkiss sat back in his armchair and sipped and watched and listened to the evening birdsong outside the window, the murmur of the city below.

‘Giving me a headache,’ said Kendrick. He reached for his glass again, found it empty. The bottle was beside it and he poured. He placed the bottle back on its coaster, but too close to the edge. It tipped over.

‘Shit. Sorry.’ Kendrick lunged to set it upright.

Purkiss lunged instinctively for it, too.

The chessboard exploded between them.

Purkiss registered the spraying black and white pieces even before his consciousness took in the starburst of the window glass blowing inwards, the crash of the wooden board fragmenting, the whine of the projectile as it ricocheted somewhere away past his left ear.

He dived to his right, reflexes hurling him away from what he understood on a primitive level was the direction of a bullet, and hit the uncarpeted wooden parquet floor hard with his shoulder and hip. He rolled, coming up at a crouch behind an armchair.

Kendrick too had flattened himself behind the cover of a chair. He stared at Purkiss.

‘What the fuck?’ he hissed.

Purkiss waited through one long second, then another. A single shot. No ensuing fusillade. His eyes roved over the wall opposite the window through which the shot had come. High up, the plaster was chipped from the ricochet.

‘Rifle,’ he murmured. Kendrick nodded.

Purkiss crawled round the back of the armchair, gripped its sides to brace himself, and raised his head above it before dropping back down. Through the bay window, one pane neatly shattered out, he’d glimpsed the front lawn and driveway, sloping upwards towards the road, the row of elm trees lining the property. Nothing more.

Across the floor from him, Kendrick lunged for his jacket, cast off on the sofa. He reached into one of the pockets and drew out a pistol. A Smith amp; Wesson, by the look of it.

‘You’re carrying?’ Purkiss said.

‘Just as well, ain’t it?’ Kendrick thumbed off the safety. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any hardware in the house?’

‘No.’

Kendrick rolled his eyes.

Purkiss glanced at the bullet hole in the wall again. Its position suggested the shot had angled in slightly from the right. Keeping low, he shuffled out from behind the chair and over to the wall to the right of the window. Cautiously he rose, keeping against the wall, and peered through so that the front garden to the left of the window was within his field of vision.

Still nothing to see but the tranquil lawn in the golden early-evening light.

He detected movement on the periphery of his vision and was diving as the second shot came, the suppressed thump of the firing mechanism audible this time and melding into the crash of another pane shattering and an altogether more frightening noise as the bullet hit the piano on the other side of the room. Sprawled on the floor, Purkiss felt his nerves jangling in harmony with the wires of the instrument. From where he lay, he could see the ragged punched hole in the wood of the piano just above the keyboard.

The hole looked like a wound, and Purkiss felt a surge of fury.

They shouldn’t have shot the piano.

As he turned where he was lying, he saw Kendrick on his feet, pistol in a two-handed grip, aiming out the window. The pistol roared twice before Kendrick ducked, another shot smashing through the room and this time connecting directly with the wall opposite, sending plaster showering.

‘How many?’ Purkiss squatted again, casting about for a plan.

Kendrick said, duckwalking over to below the window: ‘One, that I could see. At the far end of the garden, between the trees near the road.’

Purkiss considered. ‘All right. If you’re happy to hold him off, I’ll go out the back. Come up the side and outflank him.

‘There might be others waiting at the back.’

‘I’ll take the chance.’

Stooping, Purkiss made his way towards the doorway of the living room. The whole property was built on the side of a hill, the long rear garden sloping downwards away from the house. Alongside the garden was a narrow lane, well lined with trees. If he got over the wooden fence and up the lane, he might be able to approach the front entrance without being seen.

As he reached the kitchen, Purkiss heard Kendrick’s sudden shout: ‘Whoah, he’s running towards the house.’ Then the noise of the Smith amp; Wesson, twice, three times.

Purkiss raced back to the living room, entered at a crouch again. Kendrick was to one side of the window, using the wall for cover, firing awkwardly through the ruined glass.

A shot cracked through the window, jolting the sofa as it impacted, sending a billow of upholstery blooming. Purkiss saw a blur of movement in the front garden as a man’s shape sprinted and dodged, zig-zagging closer down the slope.

Kendrick, who’d jerked back behind the wall again, took a breath and once more aimed through the window.