Jokerman (John Purkiss 3)

by Tim Stevens

  Hannah hurled herself towards the door, getting there just ahead of Dave, the biggest son. She barged him aside, wrenched at the door and threw it open. Purkiss saw her swing the Glock in an arc, left to right, covering the exterior.

  The words registered in Purkiss’s mind like a read-out on a cyborg’s internal computer.

  Protect Arkwright.

  Purkiss groped unseeingly at the table, found the barrel of the shotgun, lifted it.

  The men were trying to crowd out the door, their collisions almost comical. Holding the shotgun in one hand, Purkiss grabbed the collar of Arkwright’s shirt with the other and jerked him back. Arkwright tried to turn, flailing, as though suspecting he was under attack. In front, his sons emerged into the daylight after Hannah. Purkiss pushed ahead of Arkwright and beckoned him to follow, to stay close.

  Hannah stood in the middle of the yard, her swollen tear-streaked face contorted, turning slowly with the Glock extended in a two-handed grip. Around her the sons bent over with their hands on their knees, retching, scrubbing at their faces as if trying to rub the torment away with their fingers.

  A whoosh, then, followed by a metallic thunk, and a second gas canister skidded across the ground in the middle of the yard. Purkiss barely saw it before the hissing cloud bloomed and the fierce, prickling burning started up again in his nose and eyes.

  The first shot hit Steve, the son who’d pulled the switchblade, in the chest, lifting him backwards off his feet to sprawl hard on the gravel. Even before the crack of the shot had reached Purkiss’s ears the second one came, Dave’s head rocking sideways and spraying gore over the rusting pickup truck in the yard.

  Arkwright barrelled by Purkiss, snarling in panic. Purkiss rammed an elbow into Arkwright’s abdomen, making him jackknife and drop. Crouching, Purkiss did what he could to shield the man folded on the ground, and peered about through blurred eyes cracked open only millimetres. The shapes around him were by now so hazy that he could barely distinguish male from female.

  The roar of another shot assailed his ears. He heard a yell, a man’s voice, and saw dimly yet another figure go down. The third son, Jimmy, he guessed.

  ‘Purkiss,’ Hannah called, in a muffled croak. ‘Down.’

  He ducked, blind, not knowing where the danger was coming from. This is it, he thought. A quick, violent punch in the head and it’ll be over.

  From over in the direction Hannah’s voice had come from, a different weapon crashed. The Glock. He heard, and felt, the shot sing past his head. Squinting in the opposite direction, he made out a looming shape diving to one side.

  Purkiss aimed the shotgun, keeping low, and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in his hands, the shot fanning and scattering. He made out movement, a dark shape rolling and rolling and coming up in a squatting position. Purkiss reloaded and fired again, then threw himself flat as the returning salvo began.

  Beside and behind him, Purkiss heard Arkwright scream, heard the punch of projectiles through flesh.

  Prone, he fired the shotgun again. Using his elbows he wriggled backwards until he came up against Arkwright. The man was burbling liquidly. Purkiss’s groping hand found his face, probed his head. It seemed intact. His fingers moved lower. There was stickiness on the shoulder, and he felt a sudden dip in the chest area.

  Rising to his knees, Purkiss reloaded, fired. He did it again. Through the haze in front of him, he sensed a shape scrambling to retreat round the side of the cottage.

  One man. There must be only one man, or else surely by now the others would have joined in.

  ‘Hannah,’ he called, his voice a rasp.

  She answered, though he couldn’t make out what she said, as though the tear gas had fogged up his ears as well.

  ‘Arkwright’s hit. Keep him alive.’

  Without waiting for a response, Purkiss got to his feet.

  He’d never gone into a gunfight blind before. The odds weren’t appalling. They were utterly insane.

  He loped towards the corner of the cottage, the shotgun barrel leading.

  As he reached the corner something – a distantly heard sound, a subtle change in the air pressure, pure instinct – made him stoop.

  A man stepped out, a handgun aimed at the level Purkiss’s chest would have been.

  The range was too close for Purkiss to fire the shotgun. Instead he jabbed the barrel up at the exposed torso.

  He could still barely see, and the man was fast, but he was close enough that he made contact. The man’s breath grunted out of him and he reeled back. Purkiss pressed home his advantage and rose, jabbing with the shotgun again, noticing the man’s face was obscured by a gas mask resembling an alien snout. The man swung his arm across to deflect the blow, and Purkiss felt the jarring clang of metal on metal as the shotgun’s barrel struck the gun in the man’s hand.

  Purkiss was vaguely aware of an object – the handgun – spinning away, the man leaping after it. Purkiss raised the shotgun to fire. The dim shape of the man changed direction, sprinting away down the side of the cottage.

  Purkiss fired, saw the fleeing figure drop, scramble to its feet again, and he knew he’d missed. He blinked, rubbing furiously at his burning eyes. The figure disappeared round the far corner.

  As he followed, Purkiss tried to remember the layout at the back that he’d seen when he and Hannah had done a circuit of the cottage earlier. There’d been a small vegetable garden and one or two sheds, beyond which fields had stretched to distant trees.

  Purkiss slowed when he reached the corner, risked a quick look round it before pulling back again. The man’s shape was heading for the fence at the far end of the vegetable garden.

  He had no hope of hitting the man with a blast from the shotgun at this distance, but if Purkiss went back for the handgun the man had dropped, and managed to locate it in his half-blinded state, he’d lose so much time he might as well not bother. So Purkiss headed after the man at a stumbling run, mindful of the thousand possible traps in his path: uneven ground, wire netting protecting rows of vegetables, exposed roots.

  On the other side of the fence a blurred meadow sloped downwards to some kind of riverlet before tilting upwards towards the distant trees. Away from the cloud of teargas, Purkiss found his breathing easier, the intense prickling in nose and eyes fading; but his eyelids remained swollen almost closed, and tears fragmented his vision every time he kept his eyes open for more than a few seconds. The retreating man multiplied before liquefying, over and over again.

  Purkiss crawled clumsily over the fence, hooking and tearing his clothes on protruding wire. On the other side the meadow was marshy, the drainage poor. His feet sank into mud and mulch which threatened to drag him down as he hauled his way down the slope. Ahead of him the man appeared nimbler, unencumbered by either a weapon or impaired vision. He weaved and dodged, presenting an unsteady target.

  Purkiss gauged the distance between them. Between fifty and a hundred yards, he estimated. He wasn’t certain what type of shotgun he was carrying, or what its exact specifications were, but he knew that at more than forty yards the spray pattern of the buckshot was going to be very broad indeed. His chances of doing any damage were limited.

  He decided to risk a shot. Stopping, making sure his stance was steady, he raised the shotgun, aimed, pulled the trigger.

  The man dived sideways, and for an instant Purkiss thought he’d got lucky, had caused a significant injury. But no, the man had risen again, was sprinting now, and Purkiss understood: the man had used the shot to gain useful information about how far Purkiss was behind him.

  A spike of adrenaline loosened Purkiss’s limbs, drove him forwards so that he rode out the stitch in his side, the leadenness of the muddy ground sucking at his shoes. At the bottom of the slope the man had reached the creek – really a river bed with a desultory, unflowing overlay of water – and was wading through. The water slowed him enough to allow Purkiss to gain some ground, and as he closed the distance he reloaded and took aim and fired o
nce more, still on the move.

  He heard the shot speckle the surface of the water, heard a grunt from the man, but saw him crawl out the other side and resume his run. Purkiss saw a narrower stretch of the creek to his left, which would allow him to cross more quickly but meant he’d have to divert from the straight line he was following. He did a quick mental calculation, decided it was worth it, and peeled off to the left.

  By fording the creek at this point, Purkiss put himself at an angle from the man, and on the other side he began to close the distance once more. The man had enormous stamina, was showing no signs of flagging, and also seemed to know where he was going. Purkiss thought that if he made it to the trees, he’d get away. The opportunities for camouflage were too great there.

  Purkiss drew a breath in through his nose, exhaled through his mouth, centring himself, noticing as he did so the rawness of the lining of his throat and nasal passages. He pictured himself as a spring, compressed and quivering on the point of release. Then he exploded forwards, putting all his concentration, all his energy, into a burst of speed he couldn’t sustain for any great length of time but which might allow him finally to catch up.

  The man loomed nearer above him on the slope, but was almost at the trees. Purkiss put his head down, not concentrating on the man but rather on the action of his legs, one in front of the other. At the last minute he looked up through his slowly clearing vision, saw the man at the wooden fence marking the boundary of the meadow, twenty yards away, fifteen. The man had one leg over the fence, and turned the insectoid snout of his gas mask towards Purkiss.

  Purkiss snarled like a berserker, raised the shotgun.

  The man seized one of the horizontal planks of the fence, tore it free with the ripping sounds of wood splintering around nails, and swung it at Purkiss.

  A ragged end slashed across Purkiss’s face, knocking him sideways. Pain exploded in his head and he fought to keep his balance, the shotgun barrel veering away.

  The man had dropped off the fence and swung the length of wood in a backhand movement, catching Purkiss across the head again. The world tilted and Purkiss felt the gorge rise in his throat. He stepped towards the man, raising the shotgun once more, but he teetered crazily to one side and dropped to his knee. Through roiling waves of pain and disorientation he saw the man clear the fence, disappear into the woods.

  Purkiss slumped forwards, his face making contact with the soggy, bristly ground. For long moments he inhaled the cloying, sweet smell of the wet earth, relishing its raw coolness.

  No good. You’ve lost him. It’s no good.

  He tried rising, failed once and dropped back, tried again. When he was confident his legs would support him, he leaned on the shotgun and studied the line of trees beyond the fence.

  The man was either long gone, or rearming himself from a hidden stash. In neither case did it make any sense for Purkiss to stay there.

  Feeling sick, both from the blow and with a sense of failure, of a missed opportunity, he began to make his unsteady way back across the meadow to the cottage.

  Twenty-nine

  The teargas had largely dissipated, but a lightly stinging haze remained, like a lingering, spiteful spirit. Purkiss picked his way across the yard between the bodies. He identified the three sons, all unstirring in death.

  Near the door of the cottage, Dennis Arkwright lay on his back, Hannah crouched beside him, something in her hand. Arkwright’s chest was black with gore, and cavernous. His face was still, not twisted in agony.

  Hannah glanced up, surveyed Purkiss, studying his head. Her eyes remained inflamed. ‘What happened?’

  Purkiss touched the side of his head and face, felt stickiness. ‘He got away. I’m okay.’ He tipped his head at Arkwright. Hannah shook hers.

  ‘Died a few minutes ago.’

  Purkiss squeezed his eyes shut in frustration.

  ‘There might be something, though.’ Hannah held up the object in her hand. It was her mobile phone. ‘Listen.’

  She touched a key and a rough, ragged recording began to play. At first Purkiss thought it was obscured by static, until he realised he was listening to a dying man’s laboured breathing.

  ‘Shot… me…’

  Hannah’s voice, low and urgent. ‘Tell me again. What you said in there. Who did you see when you were interrogating – torturing – those prisoners? Who was there?’

  More rasping, then an explosion of a cough that seemed to go on for an entire minute.

  ‘Ah, God, that hurts.’

  ‘Talk to me, Arkwright.’ Hannah. ‘That name.’

  ‘Something…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tell you… something else.’

  A wheeze, then his voice came back, a whisper now: ‘Hospital.’

  ‘I’ll get you to hospital. Just –’

  ‘Hospital.’

  A melange of scratchy, unidentifiable noises took over then. Hannah put the phone away.

  ‘That was all.’

  ‘Okay. Good thinking.’ Purkiss took out his own phone. He couldn’t hear sirens. ‘A place like this won’t have its own police station, but someone’s bound to have heard the shooting and phoned it in. They’ll be coming from Cambridge or somewhere.’

  Vale answered. Purkiss said: ‘I’m at Arkwright’s address. He’s dead, and so are his three sons. I need you, Kasabian or whoever, to pull strings immediately and lock this place down. Keep the local police out, and send in only people Kasabian knows well and can trust.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Also, I need a face to face debrief with you and Kasabian at the earliest opportunity.’

  ‘Done,’ said Vale. ‘Are you intact, John?’

  ‘Bit jittery, but otherwise fine,’ said Purkiss. ‘One gunman. He killed Arkwright and his sons, and got away. He was the one who attacked me at my house. Who shot Kendrick.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Vale.

  ‘Get a move on, if you could,’ said Purkiss. ‘I can hear sirens.’

  He rang off. Hannah, who had risen from Arkwright’s side, said, ‘How do you know it was the same man as the one at your house? You said he was wearing a balaclava.’

  ‘And this one had a gas mask on,’ Purkiss said. ‘But it was his build, and the way he moved. The same man. I’m almost certain of it.’

  Hannah looked around, blinking, rubbing at her eyes. ‘Water helps,’ she said.

  They found a tap near the barn and used it to sluice their eyes. As the irritation eased, Purkiss became more aware of his other discomforts: the bite in his upper arm, the head wounds.

  He said, ‘The man will have dropped whatever he used to fire the teargas grenades somewhere nearby. Plus, there’s his handgun, which he also dropped.’

  There wouldn’t be any prints – the attacker was a professional, and had been using gloves – but the weapons might produce other important information. Purkiss and Hannah were heading round the side of the cottage when his phone rang.

  It was Vale: ‘The local police and other emergency services have been ordered to hang back. Special Branch are coming in. You’re to get out of there immediately and not let them see you. Any information they need, Kasabian will relay to them after we’ve met and debriefed.’

  ‘Thanks, Quentin.’ He put the phone away, said to Hannah, ‘You okay to drive?’

  They left the property over a side wall, assuming there’d be a throng of onlookers at the end of the driveway, which turned out to be the case as they crept past. Wherever possible they avoided passing another human being until they made it to the green and Hannah’s Peugeot.

  On the journey back to London, Hannah squinting against the setting sun, Purkiss replayed the sequence of what had happened over and over in his mind. He knew false notes, misremembered details, would creep in, as they inevitably did; but he’d found such rehearsal useful for giving a more-or-less accurate account later.

  ‘It won’t be enough,’ Hannah said.

  Purkiss looked at her. />
  ‘What Arkwright said about Sir Guy Strang,’ she said. ‘It isn’t enough for Kasabian to do anything with.’

  ‘But it’s a start,’ said Purkiss. ‘It’s a pointer in a definite direction.’

  He asked for Hannah’s phone, and began to play the recording of Arkwright’s dying words in a loop, holding the device close to his ear so he could pick up any nuances, any background details. He heard, distantly, the boom of the shotgun several times as he fired it at his assailant.

  Purkiss focused on the later part of the recording.

  ‘Something…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tell you… something else.’

  Wheeze. ‘Hospital.’

  ‘I’ll get you to hospital. Just –’

  ‘Hospital.’

  He played it again.

  And again.

  ‘Hospital.’

  It was like three words, the syllables broken up as Arkwright struggled to get them out.

  Hos…pi…tal.

  Except it wasn’t at all clear that the plosive p was there. It might have been a click or a pop caused by Arkwright’s jagged breathing, or by external interference.

  Nor was the final l distinct.

  Purkiss rewound to the first time Arkwright used the word, after the long wheeze.

  This time there was no mistaking it.

  Arkwright hadn’t been saying hospital at all.

  Purkiss stared through the windscreen at the lengthening shadows on the motorway, the firefly lights of the cars ahead.

  He picked up his own phone. Dialled.

  Vale sounded surprised. ‘I haven’t confirmed the rendezvous time with Kasabian yet,’ he said. ‘I told you I’d call –’

  ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Purkiss said.

  Thirty

  ‘It could be coincidence,’ said Vale.

  ‘It’s him,’ Purkiss said.