by Tim Stevens
His house was a three-storey Victorian oddity, a turreted hexagon built by an 1870s eccentric with a taste for the Gothic. Purkiss had bought it a decade earlier, its individual character, peaceful location and easy access to central London all appealing to him. The price would have been well out of the range of his then SIS agent’s salary, but his father, a well-off Suffolk farmer and landowner, had died the previous year and left Purkiss a comfortable inheritance.
Four years after purchasing the property, Purkiss was stationed in Marseille and met Claire Stirling, a fellow agent, who was to become his fiancée. They made occasional trips back to England together, and gradually began to piece together the home they would make when their postings in southern France came to an end. Claire loved the Hampstead house, and began adding her personal touches to it: artwork, furniture, an upright piano she in turn had inherited from her parents.
Purkiss and Claire never got to live in the house together. A year after they met, Purkiss walked in on another fellow agent in Marseille, Donal Fallon, killing Claire with his bare hands. Fallon was caught, convicted of murder, and jailed.
For months afterwards Purkiss left the Hampstead house exactly as it was, not even clearing out the few clothes Claire had already moved into the wardrobes. As the years went by, he began to let go, giving away or selling most of the things he and Claire had never got round to sharing. The artwork went, as did most of the furniture she’d picked, and Purkiss had reverted to his old, bachelor’s items.
The one thing he hadn’t thrown out was the piano.
In Marseille, in the rented flat provided for him by SIS, there’d been a piano, too, and he and Claire had spent balmy, wine-mellowed evenings working their way through their small repertoire. Claire was a Debussy admirer, her playing dreamy and impressionistic, while Purkiss preferred spiky, storytelling stuff: Shostakovich, or Liszt’s Etudes. But they both loved Beethoven’s Pathetique sonata, and it became the equivalent of “their” song. They would take turns playing it, each trying to perfect it for the other. Claire was always the better player, which pleased Purkiss. It forced him constantly to raise his game.
Now, standing in the doorway to the living room, he wondered if it was time to get rid of the piano.
For the first time in ten months, he went over to it, sat down, lifted the lid, and began to find the keys with his fingers.
The piano hadn’t been tuned in nearly a year and it showed. But the opening chords of the Pathetique, the Grave theme, flowed instinctively, as if Purkiss had been practising the piece every day. He closed his eyes, let the music draw him after it.
It was Kasabian’s talk earlier that day of treachery, of betrayal, which had driven Purkiss to sit down at the piano once more. He understood this, consciously.
Ten months ago, on a boat in the freezing Baltic, a man named Rossiter had told Purkiss the truth about Claire. That she was a killer. A hitwoman. Part of what the Americans would call a black-ops outfit within SIS, one which had taken it upon itself to kill known and assumed enemies of the British state, illegally and without official sanction.
Rossiter had been Claire’s handler and mentor, and was now in maximum security somewhere, never to be released. But it had taken Purkiss the better part of a year to acknowledge to himself the reality of Claire, and of himself: that he was a dupe, and had allowed himself to fall in love with, and trust, a conscienceless liar. He began to wake at night with the sheets rucked up in his clenched fists, the fury too intense for sleep to contain. Such wakenings would lead to long rambles in the early hours of the morning across Hampstead Heath, until he arrived back home at dawn, drained and exhausted. But instead of catharsis, he achieved a kind of dreary numbness which he knew would only ever be temporary.
Now, Purkiss came to the Allegro of the sonata’s first movement, and he understood something bewildering and, in its way, even harder to bear than the surges of anger he’d been experiencing over the summer. He loved Claire still, despite everything he’d learned about her. Loved her with undiminished intensity. And that impossible, absurd love would keep him imprisoned, stunted and stagnant, forever.
Purkiss reached the second movement, the Adagio, and the slower pace caused his thoughts to drift away from Claire and roam free. They settled on his encounter earlier that day, with Vale and Kasabian.
Kasabian had blinked when Purkiss said no to her request for help, as if she hadn’t been expecting quite so bald a refusal.
‘Might I ask why not?’ she’d said.
‘My brief is to investigate and neutralise rogue elements among current or former members of SIS,’ Purkiss said, trying not to make it sound like a recital. ‘I have no jurisdiction when it comes to the Security Service.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘One could argue that your jurisdiction within SIS itself is doubtful. Your job hasn’t been approved by Parliament. It doesn’t even exist on paper, as far as I can tell.’
‘That’s not the point.’ Purkiss shifted in his chair, not quite standing up to leave yet but making it clear he was getting there. ‘You’ve got a problem here, I can appreciate that. I fully understand why you’d want an outsider to investigate this, given its sensitive nature. I can even understand why you’ve approached me. But the answer’s no.’
For the first time, the anger he’d seen in her eyes seemed to be directed at him. ‘Is this the old interdepartmental rivalry rearing its head? You can’t help the old enemy? Six versus Five all over again?’
‘Oh, for crying out loud.’ This time Purkiss did stand, and Kasabian reacted as though he’d slapped her. She rose to match him, her face darkening, her eyes wide. Purkiss thought that Mo Kasabian wasn’t used to people terminating meetings with her before she’d given the go ahead. ‘If we’re going to play that game, I could ask you what it would do for relations between SIS and the Security Service if it ever came out that Five’s deputy director had hired a Six man to investigate her own service. You and your organisation would never live it down.’
They held eye contact for several long seconds. At last Kasabian glanced sideways at Vale.
‘Then there’s no more to say. Thank you for your time, Quentin. Mr Purkiss.’
She held a hand towards the door.
As they left, Purkiss gesturing Vale through first, she said to his back: ‘You realise of course that you’re privy to information more properly kept within the Security Service.’
Purkiss stopped, turned.
Kasabian stood at the table, her anger gone, or at least concealed. ‘Information which cannot be allowed to spread further.’
Purkiss had had enough. He said, ‘That sounds like an insult, Ms Kasabian. Or maybe it’s a threat. I don’t take kindly to either.’
On the street, the two men resumed the striding pace they’d adopted before the meeting. This time it was Purkiss taking the lead. But as before, he didn’t know where he was going.
Vale said, ‘That wasn’t very clever.’
‘Why on earth did you agree to the meeting in the first place?’ Purkiss didn’t get angry with Vale, as a rule, but now he felt himself teetering. ‘You must have known I’d say no. And in any case, what I said was right. This is beyond our reach, Quentin. They should clean out their own stables.’
‘The boundaries are shifting, John.’ They were heading towards Oxford Street and Purkiss veered away, to the right. He didn’t need the bustle of a busy shopping thoroughfare just then. ‘We’re no longer in a world of clearly defined roles. The economy’s in a mess. The State’s broke. It’s reasonable for us to muck in, help each other out.’
‘And score points with the deputy head of the Security Service in the process.’
‘That’s not fair, John.’ Purkiss had never seen Vale angry, either. Even now, the older man kept his melancholy composure. ‘Empire building has never been my goal.’
After a beat, Purkiss said, ‘Sorry. That was uncalled for.’ He sighed. ‘I can see your point. Sort of. But there have to be some boundaries.
If only to keep the concept alive in people’s minds. Otherwise, the death squads flourish. The Rossiter types. People who see themselves as unlimited by rules, or roles, of any kind.’
‘It’s hardly the same thing,’ said Vale.
But he didn’t push it; didn’t try to argue any further with Purkiss. That was one of the things Purkiss respected about Vale. He respected your decision, even if he didn’t agree with it.
At the piano, Purkiss came to the Rondo, the final movement of the number eight sonata. With the change to a more forceful playing, he felt his mood shift to one of restlessness. He was unsettled by the encounter earlier. It was the first time he’d ever turned down a job Vale had proposed to him. True, he’d never been asked before to track down a rogue agent of the sister service. And it was also true that he wasn’t obliged to take on this or any other job. He was a freelancer.
Nevertheless, Purkiss was conscious of a vague sense of unfinished business. As if he’d let somebody down – Vale, possibly, or even himself – and needed to make amends in some way.
A sound broke through the piano melody. Without pausing in his playing, Purkiss strained to hear.
The scrape of a shoe’s sole on concrete.
Still playing, Purkiss half-rose from the piano chair and craned to peer down the hallway that led to the front door.
Through the opaque glass next to the door he saw the blurred outline of a human shape.
Kasabian’s words recurred to him: You’re privy to information… which cannot be allowed to spread further.
He brought the Rondo to a natural-sounding close, long before it was supposed to end, and moved quietly across the living room and down the hallway.
He opened the door.
Standing on the doorstep was a man of medium height with cropped hair, stubble shadowing grizzled cheeks, and teeth the colours of the coming autumn. He was dressed in camouflage trousers, a denim jacket, and a stale-smelling T-shirt.
‘Prepare to die,’ he said, and raised the object in his hand.
Purkiss stepped aside to let Kendrick in.
Six
‘Bastard.’
Kendrick levelled yellow, vulpine eyes on Purkiss.
Purkiss raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re mellowing. Before, you used to call me far worse things when I was beating you.’
‘You’re not beating me,’ snarled Kendrick. ‘So you can fuck off.’
Purkiss was impressed. Kendrick, playing white, had opened with a Vienna Game. He’d done so with a certain smugness, and Purkiss realised he’d been doing some reading and practising. Purkiss let Kendrick bask in his tricksiness, before transposing into a King’s Gambit Declined. It was a counterintuitive move, Purkiss refusing to take the pawn Kendrick was offering as a sacrificial lamb, and it wasn’t in Kendrick’s script.
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 & 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 & Wesson, twice, three times.