Jokerman (John Purkiss 3)

by Tim Stevens

  A quarter past twelve.

  If Dr Emma Goddard was at home right now, she’d be in bed next to her husband. If she wasn’t home, she’d either be at one of those innumerable conferences Purkiss knew doctors were always attending, somewhere in Britain or abroad; or she’d be at the bedside of her principal patient, Sir Guy Strang.

  Wimbledon was his only realistic destination.

  Purkiss rang a minicab firm, offering a substantial bonus if they arrived to pick him up within fifteen minutes. Then he rang Vale once more.

  Eight minutes later he heard the note of the taxi’s horn outside.

  He used the time in the back of the cab to flex his wrists and fingers, centre himself on the job at hand. The job was to locate Dr Emma Goddard and remove her for interrogation in regard to her role as Sir Guy Strang’s physician. More specifically, in regard to her relationship with the former parachute battalion captain, Tullivant.

  Purkiss was aware the job would likely involve kidnapping.

  He stopped the driver well clear of the actual address, paid him, and set off across the common. The night sky was clear, as it had been for the last six or seven weeks. It wasn’t the majestic star-speckled dome Purkiss had glimpsed briefly outside Riyadh, but it was a cosily British version thereof, the galaxies and occasional flaring dominant stars altogether closer and more intimate than their Gulf counterparts.

  The house was in darkness.

  Purkiss circled it using varying routes and loops. It was a stylish suburban detached property, set on the slope of what was probably Wimbledon’s closest approximation to a hill. There was a copious front lawn, even a swimming pool.

  But there were no lights, either downstairs or upstairs.

  It wasn’t unusual. Monday, after midnight... most professionals, most working people of any kind, would have turned in for the night.

  If Dr Goddard was home, was it likely she’d be alone? Hardly. She was married with a family, and it was a week night.

  Purkiss’s phone buzzed.

  It was Vale. He recited a cell phone number. Dr Emma Goddard’s personal one.

  ‘The phone company was not happy,’ Vale murmured. ‘Nor were my SIS contacts.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ said Purkiss.

  ‘I only mention it because I may be approaching the limits of my influence for the time being.’

  ‘Understood,’ Purkiss said. ‘Thanks.’

  Watching the silent house from his position in the shadow of a hedge bordering the front lawn, he dialled Dr Goddard’s number.

  It rang once. Twice.

  A third time.

  Purkiss pictured her floundering up from a deep sleep, grabbing at the phone on a bedside table to silence it.

  But the voice, when it came, wasn’t befuddled by drowsiness. It was wide awake. And hesitant.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dr Emma Goddard?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Keeping his voice low, Purkiss said, ‘Dr Goddard, listen carefully. Don’t ask who I am or react with surprise in any way, if there’s anyone there with you. Just listen. Your life may be in danger. Are you at home at the moment? Answer simply yes or no.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Attending Sir Guy Strang?’

  There was a moment’s pause. Purkiss strained his ears. Was there the trace of another voice in the background? A man’s?

  Then she said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘At Thames House?’

  Again, the briefest hesitation.

  ‘Yes.’

  Lowering his voice almost to a whisper, Purkiss said rapidly: ‘When I finish speaking, tell me you’ll call me in the morning, that it’s a bit late now. Then, after I’ve rung off, tell whoever’s there with you that I was a lawyer asking if you’d consider being an expert witness in a forthcoming trial. Embellish it as much or as little as you need, but don’t get tripped up in a contradiction. After that, I want you to find a reason to get out of the building. Say you need some air, that you need a smoke, even if you don’t… anything, no matter how suspicious it looks. The important thing is to get out of that building. You’ll receive further instructions once you’re outside. Do I need to repeat any of that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me you’ll call me in the morning.’

  She repeated the words he’d given her.

  The line went dead.

  Purkiss walked out onto the pavement in front of the house, took the SIM card from the phone, dropped it and ground it under his heel. He threw the phone between the bars of a drainage grille a little further along the road. From inside his jacket he took another phone, one of two extra prepaid ones he carried on him which he hadn’t used before, and punched in Vale’s number.

  ‘New phone,’ said Vale.

  ‘Yes. I’ve just had a conversation with Dr Goddard. She was speaking under some kind of duress. I suspect she was being coached what to say.’

  Purkiss had got rid of the other phone in case whoever it was that was with Goddard ran a trace on the number. He relayed the exchange he’d had with the doctor to Vale.

  ‘I need another favour, Quentin.’

  ‘I know what you’re going to ask for,’ said Vale.

  ‘A GPS fix on Dr Goddard’s phone. She’s not at Thames House.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Can you swing it?’

  ‘I said I was approaching the limit of my influence,’ said Vale. ‘I didn’t say I was there yet.’

  Forty-nine

  The ability to make split-second decisions, to allow the unconscious judgement to take over and control one’s actions unimpeded by the delaying effects of conscious thought, was something Emma had found difficult to give expression to in the early days of her medical training. But it was an essential attribute for a doctor.

  You had to weigh up consequences, of course, and apply a weight of knowledge in clinical settings which could only be gained through dogged study over many years. But sometimes you had to trust your instinct, trust the idea that all of that knowledge had seeped down into the deeper layers of your psyche and had been assimilated there into plans of action.

  Emma knew the hazards of leaping out of a moving vehicle, even in relatively light traffic. She’d seen enough road traffic accidents that she’d ceased to be surprised at the variety of ways in which the human body could be damaged by colliding at speed with tarmac or concrete.

  She also knew that she’d be dead if she didn’t take the risk.

  James had turned on to a straight street lined by terraces and was picking up speed. If she jumped out now, she’d be more likely to hurt herself. On the other hand, if she waited till the car slowed down again, James would more easily come after her.

  Emma drew a deep breath.

  She dropped her hand to the clasp of the seatbelt, popped the button, and grabbed at the door handle, ramming her shoulder against the door at the same time.

  It didn’t budge.

  Emma pounded her shoulder against the door, desperately aware of how futile it was. Of course he’d locked the doors.

  James looked across at her.

  ‘For God’s sake, calm down,’ he muttered.

  She stared back at him. Suddenly she hated him: for his deceitfulness, for the way he’d violated her privacy with his listening devices. For the way he was keeping her prisoner.

  For talking to her as though she was a hysterical woman, out of control.

  Vaguely aware of the stupidity of what she was doing, Emma grabbed the handbrake and yanked it up.

  The BMW rocked, its rear slewing round in a peal of rubber against tarmac. James’s yell was lost in the howl of a horn as a car veered past, its lights flashing across Emma’s vision. Emma was flung against the door, and she felt a jarring impact as the wheel on one side struck the edge of the kerb.

  The car had stalled. Emma scrabbled at the door release, felt a surge of hope as the door yielded, the locking mechanism havin
g been disabled. She tumbled out onto hard pavement, her arm barely breaking her fall.

  She felt James’s hand close around her ankle.

  Emma lashed and twisted her leg at the same time, felt his grip falter, kicked backwards. Her foot connected with some part of him, perhaps his chest, and she was able to wrench her leg free; but her shoe came off.

  Emma crawled a few yards, rising to her knees and then stumbling down the pavement, aware how hobbled she was by the missing shoe. Awkwardly she bent and pulled the other one off, before breaking into a run.

  A man walking his dog turned in surprise as she passed.

  Please, Emma thought, let this look like what it is – a man chasing a woman with the intent to harm her – and let someone intervene.

  Two teenage boys in hoodies were loping towards her. She considered appealing to them, asking for their protection, but their glinting eyes beneath their hoods and the peaks of their caps made her decide against it. Their laughter trailed after her.

  Behind her, Emma could hear footsteps approaching rapidly.

  Should she bang on one of the doors of the houses? It was nine o’clock, early still, and most of the windows had lights on. But what if nobody answered? She’d be trapped.

  ‘Emma,’ came James’s voice, urgent, shockingly close behind her.

  It drove her on, even though she knew she couldn’t outrun him. She was in her bare feet, and while she was in reasonable, gym-honed shape, James was an athlete, a soldier, a man of action. He’d catch her, overpower her… then what?

  Unknown horrors made the adrenaline flare, and Emma felt her legs respond, her bare feet not feeling the cracked and stubbled pavement beneath them. She sprinted towards an intersection ahead. If she could make it between the cars and across the road at the right time, the traffic might slow James a little, and give her an advantage, however slight.

  He seemed to have sensed her intention because she heard his footsteps quicken behind her. As the junction approached, the cross-traffic cruising past in either direction at a steady speed, Emma spotted a long-necked beer bottle propped on a gatepost to her right. She lunged for it, felt its heft – it was still half-full, left there by some addled passerby – and, barely breaking her stride, whirled round, swinging the bottle in a backhand movement.

  Whether because of instinct or luck, James was exactly where she’d sensed him to be. The bottle connected with the side of his head, not hard enough to shatter the glass but sufficiently solidly that Emma felt the blow shiver down her arm. The warm, rancid beer spilled over her hand and sleeve. James rocked sideways, stumbling.

  Emma turned and put all her effort into her legs, hurtling towards the road. Already she could see cars braking in anticipation. Her eyes automatically mapped out a trajectory that would – might – take her safely between the vehicles to the other side.

  The tackle caught the backs of her legs, James’s full weight barrelling into her and sending her sprawling, her hands not quick enough fully to cushion the impact so that her chin snapped against the pavement and flashes erupted before her eyes.

  Copper blood bloomed in Emma’s mouth as she felt James grab her under her arms and haul her up and lead her away.

  Fifty

  ‘Emma.’

  She couldn’t look up at his face, couldn’t bear what she’d see there. On the other hand, if she didn’t look at him, she’d be unprepared for what was about to come.

  She was torn.

  Still dazed from the collision between her jaw and the pavement, Emma had allowed herself to be bundled back down the road towards the BMW. She could have struggled, made a public spectacle; there seemed to be more people about under the streetlamps than there had been when she’d been running. But James had pressed close, murmuring in her ear, ‘Don’t cry out, and don’t fight me. Or I’ll have to hurt you,’ and she’d complied.

  The BMW was still in working order. Emma sat staring dully through the windscreen as they travelled a few more blocks. Part of the way up a hill, James pulled in and killed the engine.

  Emma let him help her from her seat and towards a house, this one at the end of a terrace and in darkness. He unlocked the door and pushed her gently ahead of him. She began moving along a corridor in the direction of what looked like a living room but he said, ‘No. Down here.’

  James pushed open a door to the right. Beyond it, stone steps led down towards, presumably, a cellar.

  At the bottom, James flicked a switch, producing bright light. The room was clean and bare, with nothing in it but a pair of foldable chairs propped against one wall. He brought them over and opened them up, taking Emma by the shoulders and lowering her into one of them. He stood by his, but didn’t sit.

  ‘Emma. I’m sorry about this.’

  She said nothing. The faint noises of the city were barely audible down here.

  ‘Sorry I had to plant those devices on you.’

  Had to? she thought.

  ‘And I’m sorry about all this, tonight.’

  Something in his voice made her slowly raise her gaze to his face.

  ‘I really didn’t mean to hurt you. And I’m not going to hurt you any more. Not physically, anyway. But there’s something I’m going to tell you that you’ll find deeply upsetting. Once again, I’m sorry to have to be the one to do so.’

  There was genuine sympathy in his voice, Emma realised. And when she stared at his eyes, they weren’t hostile.

  James said: ‘It’s about your husband.’

  ‘Brian?’ She never used his name in James’s presence. Absurdly, to do so had always seemed to compound her betrayal of him. But this was different. She was hardly in a clinch with James at the moment. Nor would she ever be again.

  As if he’d been waiting until he got a response from her, James sat down. He leaned forward, his legs splayed, his forearms resting on his knees. His eyes peered at her intently.

  ‘How much has he told you about his time in the armed forces?’

  Despite her fear, Emma found herself remembering the exasperation she’d felt at Brian’s caginess when it came to his military years. The chuckling way he’d tended to change the subject. She’d always assumed he’d had experiences he’d rather forget, and she didn’t press him; but at the same time she’d felt slightly resentful that she was always forthcoming with the gory details of her own work, yet he kept his from her.

  ‘Not much,’ Emma said. ‘He spent time in Iraq, which was a worry, of course. Then, when we discovered I was pregnant with our eldest, he left.’

  James would have been in Iraq around the same time Brian was serving there, she knew. Sometimes she’d wondered if the two men had ever met, but she’d avoided asking James. She wanted them to be unconnected in every way.

  ‘And then he became a sports coach at a boys’ school.’ James watched her carefully.

  Emma shrugged. ‘He’s always been a very physical person. After he’d left the Paras he was never going to take a desk job.’

  ‘Those weekend coaching sessions. Those rugby trips away for a few days. Have you ever wondered about them, Emma?’

  ‘What?’ The brightness of the room, the faint mustiness suggesting the cellar wasn’t used much, the panic and confusion of the last hour, all began to make Emma feel disorientated. ‘You mean, have I ever suspected Brian was lying about them? That he was having an affair, or something?’

  The idea was ludicrous. Gentle family men like Brian didn’t have affairs. Unappreciative, needy, chronically dissatisfied women like Emma, on the other hand, did, she thought with a pang of self-loathing.

  James’s gaze was unnerving her. He said: ‘I don’t mean an affair.’

  She waited for more. Instead, he glanced away for a moment.

  ‘Those devices I planted on you,’ he said. ‘The bugs. They weren’t meant for you. They were intended for your husband. To monitor what he was saying.’

  Her mouth opened, stayed that way though no words came out.

  James went on: �
��It would have been easier to wire up your house. But he’d have found the devices. He’ll be sweeping the home regularly for audio surveillance.’

  Despite herself, Emma let out a laugh. ‘Brian? Sweeping for – that’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Emma, listen to me. Your husband isn’t who you think he is. He’s been deceiving you. And so have I.’ He clenched his teeth for a moment as though trying to bite back his words. ‘Your husband has been under my surveillance for the last six months. He’s –’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Emma realised she’d half-risen from the chair. James made a sitting motion with his hands and unconsciously she obeyed. ‘You’re telling me that you and I – our affair – was just… cover? That you used me only to get to Brian?’

  ‘No.’ His voice was emphatic. ‘It was more than that. Much more. I like you, Emma. I’m strongly attracted to you. I’ve enjoyed our time together as much as I’ve always made obvious. None of that was faked.’

  ‘But that was all just a happy extra,’ she whispered. ‘A perk along the way. The main thing was to get to my husband.’

  He watched her silently for a few seconds, then: ‘Yes. Essentially.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  She rose fully from her chair this time. Her palm cracked across his cheek. His head flinched sideways, but he kept his arms down. Slowly he turned his face towards Emma again, a furious red mark growing on his cheek.

  She sat down. Somewhere, deep down, there was rage, and humiliation, and a guilt so corrosive it was a wonder it wasn’t eating her inside out. But at the moment all she was aware of was a grey numbness.

  ‘Why the surveillance?’ she said dully. ‘What’s Brian supposed to have done?’

  Again, though James’s face was burning from the slap, Emma saw unfeigned compassion there.

  ‘Bad things, Emma,’ he murmured. ‘Things which are so terrible, you’ll understand why I did what I did. Even if you never forgive me – and I can understand why you wouldn’t – you’ll at least understand.’

  Brian’s face appeared in her mind’s eye. So reassuring. So bland and unthreatening. Cold terror clutched at her gut. Oh God. Not… something to do with the schoolboys he coached? Not that.