Jokerman (John Purkiss 3)

by Tim Stevens

  And if he wasn’t already her husband.

  They’d had an enjoyable evening together, watching some rubbish on the television after Jack and Niamh were in bed, and it was only later, in bed, with Brian’s breathing deepening into the rhythms of sleep beside her, that Emma began to think about what she’d found in her handbag.

  Like many doctors, she was a mixture of the logical and the irrational. Her job taught her to consider facts and evidence, and to avoid wild conjecture. The fact that she was a human being, with an atavistic inclination towards the superstitious and the fantastical, caused her imagination to spin off into flights of fancy.

  The sensible side of her said: it’s a lump of metal in the lining of a handbag. That probably means it isn’t a genuine Louis Vuitton at all, but a tawdry knockoff from some sweatshop in Thailand.

  The imaginative part said: it’s a bug. A transmitting device of some kind.

  Just putting the thought into words in her mind made Emma realise how stupid, how childish it sounded. And yet… wasn’t there some common ground between the logical and irrational positions? She was, after all, sleeping with a member of the British Security Service. An intelligence agent, and bodyguard to the head of the organisation. And she did, after all, have a premium job as the personal physician to that head.

  Sleep claimed her surprisingly quickly, and when she woke in the morning she understood that her mind had wanted her to slip under, to leave the solving of the problem to its unconscious side. For her immediate thought on waking was: I need to ask James about it directly.

  That was the straightforward, no-nonsense approach. Bring the issue out into the open, clear the air. She’d show him what she’d found, and ask his opinion.

  And if he was the one who’d put it in the lining of the handbag – something she couldn’t help but consider, given that she’d noticed it only after returning home for her most recent tryst with him – then so be it. He might admit it, might confess that it was a security measure, something he was obliged to do to all employees who had close contact with his boss, Sir Guy. She wouldn’t like it… but she could understand, sort of. On the other hand, if he had put it there but didn’t admit it – well, there was nothing she could do about that, but then again she’d never know.

  Dimly aware that there was something shaky about her reasoning, Emma rose, stretched, peered across at a still-sleeping Brian, and went into the kitchen to make coffee.

  While waiting for it to brew, she considered her options. She was going to meet James tomorrow afternoon; they’d planned it already. But she didn’t want to wait that long, or the handbag problem would gnaw at her, driving her round the bend.

  She’d always been reluctant to call James at unscheduled times, however much she craved the sound of his voice. He was a busy man, in an incredibly responsible position, and the last thing she wanted to do was disrupt him at work. She didn’t need him thinking she was a clingy, needy woman; it would drive him away.

  On the other hand, he might understand her concerns in this case.

  She retrieved her phone from where it had been charging and thumbed in a text message: Sorry to bother you and on a Sunday especially. But I need to talk to you urgently. It might be a security issue.

  Emma reread the last sentence. It was unbelievably manipulative, but it was the kind of thing that would get James’s attention.

  She hesitated for a few seconds, her thumb over the Send key. Then she pressed it. Immediately afterwards she deleted the message from her Sent folder.

  Breakfast passed slowly, a riot of laughter and spilled food and mock recriminations. Emma joined in heartily, stealing glances every thirty seconds or so at the display on her phone. It remained unlit.

  Only afterwards, with the dishes piled and Brian hauling a sack of refuse to the outside bins, did her phone chime once. Emma snatched it up, read the message.

  Meet me 2 pm outside main entrance of Tate Modern.

  She read it several times, as if there might be some coded message underlying the straightforward instruction. Then she replied – Okay – and deleted both James’s text and her response. She looked up and saw Brian amble back in. He gave her a smile. Emma felt her heart hammering, her throat tight.

  She sighed, as normally as she could. ‘Lousy news.’ She held up her phone. ‘I’m wanted again.’

  The chest pains Sir Guy had been experiencing on Friday, Emma explained, were recurring. This time she was going to insist that the stubborn so-and-so went into hospital, and she didn’t care how busy he was. Brian smiled at her exasperation, but she could see the hurt underneath. Sunday was traditionally a family day, when they’d go to the Common or for a drive, and today they’d been planning to take a trip up to Hyde Park and Kensington Palace Gardens.

  ‘You and Ulyana take Jack and Niamh,’ Emma suggested. ‘I can meet you there.’

  Brian agreed it was an idea.

  Emma realised suddenly that she’d made a mistake. She said, suppressing the flame of panic in her, ‘Oh, and I’ve got to take the car. They’re not sending a driver for me today. Short supply on a Sunday, apparently.’

  If Brian was surprised, he didn’t show it.

  He hurried the children into their clothes while Ulyana prepared a picnic lunch, and Emma made a show of changing into work clothes – nothing fancy, just a blouse and skirt – and checking her medical bag. She kept the metal object from her handbag in her jacket pocket.

  The family and nanny hustled into the station wagon, and Emma drove them to the tube station before heading towards the Thames. She could have taken the Underground herself, but it looked better for the show she was putting on if she seemed to be driving there.

  Dear God, she thought, how complex these webs of deceit end up becoming.

  Emma crossed the river and reached Victoria Station, where she parked. It was a little after one o’clock, an hour before her scheduled meeting with James. She walked the rest of the way, enjoying the sunshine on her upturned face. The South Bank was crowded as ever on a Sunday, the mimes and living statues at the base of Waterloo Bridge appearing suddenly vaguely sinister to Emma, as though they’d been placed there to monitor her progress.

  Looming ahead she saw the shape of the old Bankside Power Station which housed the Tate Modern. It was just the sort of venue James would choose, she thought. Emma had dragged Brian along to the gallery once, to a cocktail party hosted by one of her artist friends, and although he’d gamely smiled and feigned interest in the chatter around him, she could see his heart wasn’t in it. James, on the other hand, could hold his own on the subject of modern art, and offer an intelligent opinion on the most obscure and difficult piece even after viewing it only once.

  She scanned the throng outside the gallery for signs of James, but any number of dark, good-looking young men turned out not to be him. Emma checked her watch. Ten past two. She was wondering whether to go inside and get a coffee when she felt a hand on her elbow. Before she could turn, James’s low voice murmured in her ear.

  ‘It’s me. Keep walking in the direction you were going.’

  Startled, she complied. He muttered beside her, so quietly she couldn’t hear what he said, but she realised it was for show: they were a couple strolling along, in intimate conversation, so she responded with aimless patter of her own. As he directed her into the building, its cavernous lobby cool and echoing, Emma felt the thrill of his closeness, the warm maleness of his arm against hers, his breath on her cheek.

  And she acknowledged the smallest frisson of fear.

  Thirty-three

  The whole set-up put Purkiss in mind of Spandau Prison.

  He wasn’t expecting to see Gothic gates or machine-gun towers, and indeed the building, as it appeared over the rise, didn’t look like a place of detention at all. Rather, it had the appearance of a squat office complex on an industrial estate, the kind normally found on the outskirts of a fair-sized town.

  This one, though, was in the depths of the Berks
hire countryside.

  ‘The Room,’ said Vale, in the seat beside him.

  Kasabian had suggested Vale take Purkiss there. Although she said she’d cleared the way to allow Purkiss access, there was still the possibility of his being stopped by suspicious or ill-informed personnel along the way. Vale would be able to call in for assistance, pull strings if necessary.

  Hannah had slipped out at seven, declining Purkiss’s offer of coffee. She hadn’t quite blown a kiss at the door, but there’d been a mischievous cast to her eyes he hadn’t seen before.

  Vale picked Purkiss up in his car at the Covent Garden flat and they made their way west, out of the city, the traffic relatively light at eleven thirty on a Sunday morning. The highrises and estates in the west of the city gave way gradually to the undulating countryside of Royal Berkshire.

  Vale began a winding descent towards a pair of high electric gates flanked by kiosks in each of which sat a uniformed police officer. The policemen emerged long before Vale reached the gates. Purkiss noticed they both carried carbines slung across their chests.

  The Room, Vale had informed him on the journey, was the place Richard Rossiter was being detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. A former safe house and interrogation facility for Soviet defectors during the Cold War, it had sat disused until almost a year ago, when someone had come up with the idea of turning it into a prison for one man. That man was Rossiter.

  It wasn’t house arrest, because The Room was nobody’s idea of a home. But it was a step up from a normal prison, even a white-collar one. Rossiter apparently had a large cell, more like a dormitory but with a single bed. He was allowed a small selection of his own clothes to wear. He was permitted fresh air and exercise, books, and television, though no Internet facilities.

  Every inch of the property, indoors and out, was covered by closed-circuit television cameras and concealed audio monitors. The reason, Vale surmised, was not so much to anticipate any escape plans Rossiter might be forming, but rather to pick up the smallest scrap of information he might inadvertently reveal about his former collaborators.

  Rossiter had been part of an illegal black-operations project within SIS, one which took it upon itself to dispense with legal niceties and due process and to mete out torture and execution in the interests of British state security. Apart from Claire Stirling, Purkiss’s fiancée, whom Rossiter claimed he’d trained and run as one of his own, it wasn’t known who else was involved in the project. Indeed, it wasn’t clear if Rossiter was in charge, a mere underling, or even a lone wolf.

  He’d been questioned, threatened, cajoled, offered deals that would allow him an early release. None of it had worked. Rossiter had flatly refused to answer any questions about anybody else he might have operated with. He hadn’t denied there were others involved, nor had he confirmed it. He simply hadn’t discussed the matter at all.

  So the hope was, Vale assumed out loud, that Rossiter might betray the identity of others inadvertently. By blurting out their names in his sleep, perhaps.

  ‘It’s a long shot,’ Purkiss said drily.

  ‘Indeed.’

  Might Rossiter be willing to open up about a dead person, though? In this case, Arkwright? Purkiss hoped so.

  The carbine-laden policemen stepped forwards, one peering into Purkiss’s side of the car, the other approaching Vale’s. Purkiss wound down the window.

  ‘John Purkiss.’ He held up a special laminated card, replete with his mug shot, which Kasabian had supplied for him. He’d brought along his passport, too, just in case further ID was required.

  The officer studied it from behind mirror shades, then nodded. ‘Straight through, please, sir. Stop just inside the gates.’

  The gates slid sideways. Inside, Vale was asked to hand over the keys. Four more officers, who had appeared from nowhere, took over, one of them driving the car off towards a smaller building of some kind, no doubt for it to be scanned for explosives, the other three escorting Purkiss and Vale to the main block.

  Inside, Vale stood to one side, his journey ended for the moment. Silent, unsmiling men in prison officers’ garb took Purkiss’s watch, wallet and mobile phone. He was expertly patted down, had metal detectors as well as a Geiger counter run over every inch of his outline, then told to walk through another doorframe-style scanner.

  On the other side, two prison guards and two policemen led him down a brightly lit, institutional corridor to a door at the end. One of the warders touched his fingers against a scanning pad and pushed the door when it buzzed. Purkiss found himself in an airlock. The warder opened the door on the other side similarly.

  ‘No physical contact whatsoever,’ the warder intoned. ‘No standing until you’re ready to leave. You’ll be under video but not audio surveillance, so your conversation is confidential. But if there’s any sign that things are getting heated in there, that the prisoner’s temper is being roused, my staff and I have discretion to terminate the interview immediately. Understood?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Purkiss.

  He stepped through the door into a square room lit with fluorescent ceiling panels. The room smelled freshly painted and clean. There was no other visible exit. In the centre of the room stood a metal-framed table with a laminated wood surface. On the table, in turn, stood a plastic jug of water and two beakers.

  A man stood behind the table. Short, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, eyes blue chips that stood out against surprisingly tanned skin. The trace of a smile teasing the thin lips.

  Rossiter.

  Thirty-four

  Up until the moment he entered the room, Purkiss hadn’t known how he was going to feel, despite his reassurances to Vale.

  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.’