Jokerman

by Tim Stevens

  Twelve

  Purkiss woke at seven o’clock with a name in his head.

  Mohammed Al-Bayati.

  Pattern recognition was something that had been identified as a strength of his, during Purkiss’s initial evaluation when he’d joined SIS. The ability to differentiate foreground from background when the distinction wasn’t immediately obvious, or indeed was highly obscure. The skill applied to visual patterns as well as aural and verbal ones.

  Many names had cropped up time and time again in Morrow’s reports. Yet this one stood out: Mohammed Al-Bayati. Why?

  In the flat’s tiny bathroom Purkiss found a new toothbrush, still in its packaging, and a safety razor. He shaved, showered, and examined the contents of the bedroom wardrobe. A few sets of unremarkable clothes, once again all new and waiting for a visiting agent to use. Taller than most, Purkiss found that nothing fit. He settled for the underwear and put his own clothes from yesterday back on.

  While he boiled the kettle for instant coffee, Purkiss phoned the hospital. Kendrick had left theatre, had done several hours ago, and was in Intensive Care. The doctor Purkiss spoke to said there was cerebral oedema. Fluid around the brain. If Kendrick did wake up, it wouldn’t be for a while yet.

  Over coffee and toast, Purkiss flicked through the Morrow documentation again, this time on the lookout for every mention of Mohammed Al-Bayati he could spot. This was one of the areas where digital records really came into their own, he thought; he’d get what he wanted at the click of a mouse. Perhaps he ought to go out and buy a cheap scanner and laptop? But that would take more time than it was worth. Besides, Kasabian had said there was to be no electronic trail, and there was no point in going against her wishes. Not yet, anyway.

  So Purkiss slogged on. He found the name in memos, in email transcripts, in simple lists with cryptic numbers for titles, in notes Morrow had scribbled to himself. It soon became clear that Al-Bayati was both someone Morrow met personally on a frequent basis, and that he was the head of a group based in London calling itself Iraqi Thunder Fist. Or that was the translation from the Arabic, in any case.

  Purkiss made some more coffee, then started to look for repeated references to Iraqi Thunder Fist. He found an entire briefing about the organisation, cut and pasted and printed out. The group was based in London, with branches in Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Marseille, Purkiss’s old stamping ground. The London headquarters was the hub of the outfit. Made up of a mixture of exiled members of the Saddam clique, disaffected senior Iraq Army soldiers forcibly demobbed without ceremony after the Coalition takeover, and opportunistic Islamist fanatics, Iraqi Thunder Fist was committed to the overthrow of the existing government in Baghdad and the restoration of what it termed a genuinely representative and patriotic state. Morrow had added amendments to the text, inserting evidence of ITF training activities for guerillas who were sent back to Iraq to plant Improvised Explosive Devices along major thoroughfares, and of fundraising efforts ostensibly meant to provide for the widows of locals killed during the invasion but in fact set up to buy arms from private dealers in Russia, arms destined to be channelled back into the homeland.

  Returning to his trawl for the Mohammed Al-Bayati name, Purkiss found no further associations with the Iraqi Thunder Fist group. He did, however, notice another word, Dolphin, which Morrow clearly used as some sort of code, and which cropped up three times in connection with Al-Bayati.

  He reached for his phone.

  Vale answered, his voice heavy with sleep. It occurred to Purkiss that Vale wasn’t a young man, that it was possible he couldn’t function on minimal sleep the way Purkiss just about could at the moment.

  ‘Quentin. Sorry. I need to speak to Kasabian, but she didn’t give me a direct number. Can you get hold of her?’

  Vale sounded rapidly more awake. ‘Certainly. Have you found something?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I need to check a code word Morrow used.’

  Vale said he’d get in touch with Kasabian and ask her to call Purkiss. Five minutes later Purkiss’s phone rang.

  Purkiss asked Kasabian about the term Dolphin.

  She paused before replying. ‘Yes. It’s one of several that are used to denote an informant.’

  Purkiss said: ‘You hesitated.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Before answering. You held back. Why?’

  ‘You have to understand, Mr Purkiss,’ she said heavily, ‘it’s not usual for me to divulge information like this to an outsider, someone who’s not part of the Service.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ said Purkiss. ‘You invited me in, remember. If I’m to do this job, I need full and unhesitating cooperation from you. That means no squeamishness about divulging secrets.’

  ‘On a need-to-know basis, of course.’

  ‘I need to know everything.’

  Kasabian said, ‘The other reason I hesitated was that your question interested me. Have you discovered something in Morrow’s files?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Purkiss. ‘Possibly. Look, I need to know from the outset how we’re going to do this. Am I expected to liaise closely with you, reporting back on every scrap of information I uncover? Or can I be allowed to get on with it, consulting you as and when I need to know something?’

  ‘I’d prefer the former,’ she answered drily. ‘But from what Quentin has said of you, you prefer to work the other way.’

  ‘It’s speedier,’ Purkiss said. ‘Cleaner. And the fewer contacts you and I have, the less chance there is of someone linking us together.’

  ‘Point taken.’ She paused again, then said, ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No. I’ll be in touch through Vale.’ He rang off.

  An informant. So was Al-Bayati working for Morrow? Spying on his own organisation, Iraqi Thunder Fist? In any case, did it have anything at all to do with whatever Morrow had wanted to tell the Home Secretary?

  Purkiss skimmed the files again, letting his awareness flit over the data, to see if anything jumped out. But there was nothing.

  He’d thought already of searching Morrow’s flat, but had rejected the idea. The Security Service would already have trawled through it, and even if they didn’t still have it locked down, they’d almost certainly have surveillance in place on it to see if anyone came visiting. Purkiss couldn’t access the Security Service’s own databases, even if he had somebody with the necessary IT skills to do so; as Kasabian had said, there couldn’t be any electronic trail to point to outside involvement.

  So: the only thing he had that remotely resembled a lead was Mohammed Al-Bayati, and the organisation he headed.

  Morrow had noted the London address of the Iraqi Thunder Fist headquarters, and Purkiss memorised it. Now, all he needed to do was to find a way to gain access to the organisation and its head.

  As a white middle-class Englishman, he knew it was going to be tricky.

  Thirteen

  Purkiss watched the hissing rise and drop of the ventilator, a strangely jerky movement, and thought: if Abby were here, I’d have access already.

  On the hospital bed, Kendrick lay like an insect trapped by a schoolboy, pinned by leads and tubes, the largest of which disappeared down his throat. His head was swathed in bandages, the mattress he was on rippling faintly like cyborg flesh as the bed did its work protecting against the pressure sores that were inevitable if the human body lay pressed against an unmoving surface for too long.

  The consultant neurosurgeon who’d led the team operating on Kendrick had been at the end of his ward rounds when Purkiss arrived at the Intensive Therapy Unit. He’d seemed to know that Purkiss was important enough to be kept up to date – Vale’s doing, no doubt – and he’d made time to take Purkiss aside and explain what the done.

  Kendrick had sustained damage to the right frontal lobe of his brain, the extent of which was impossible to determine as yet. The actual quantity of brain volume lost had been minimal, but the size of the lesion did not always equate to the degree of dysfunction.
The damage to the skull bone had been repaired with a titanium plate. Cerebral oedema, swelling around the brain, was a problem, and was being treated with mannitol and steroids.

  There was unlikely to be lasting impairment in movement or in the lower brain functions such as breathing, assuming Kendrick survived this initial post-surgery period and emerged from the coma he was in. Less certain, the surgeon said, was the degree to which other abilities would be affected. The frontal lobes were more fully developed in human beings than in any other organism, and with good reason: they were involved in judgement, impulse control, the inhibition of aggression, as well as attentional mechanisms.

  Purkiss understood. He’d seen people with frontal lobe lesions who’d become apathetic shells, and others who’d turned into uncontrollably violent forces of nature. He’d asked the doctor a few more questions, then thanked him and gone in to see Kendrick himself, nodding to the two policeman who sat nearby.

  Seated in an armchair next to the bed, lulled by the ventilator’s hypnotic rhythm, his thoughts drifted back towards Al-Bayati and the ITF group.

  Yes, if Abby were there, he’d gain access without too much bother. She’d hack the ITF databases somehow, or locate Al-Bayati’s home address, or both.

  Abby Holt had been another of Purkiss’s freelance employees, a computer and general electronics geek who’d provided finesse where Kendrick offered muscle and firepower. Together they’d made a formidable team. But Abby was gone now, shot to pieces in Tallinn at the age of twenty-seven, because Purkiss had made a mistake.

  The bed was in a large open area rather than in a side room, with plastic curtains half-drawn around it. Purkiss saw one of the curtains twitch aside, and immediately tensed.

  You’re too jumpy, he told himself.

  A woman stepped in. Looking to be in her mid-thirties but probably younger than that, she had a faded, hard-faced prettiness which even the heavy makeup she wore didn’t conceal.

  ‘Who’re you?’ she said bluntly.

  ‘John. A friend of Tony’s,’ he said, rising and offering her the chair. She ignored it, staring at him.

  ‘You don’t look like no friend of his.’ Her voice was tobacco-roughened and bitter. She looked Purkiss up and down, then turned her attention to Kendrick, prone on the bed.

  Purkiss searched his memory. Christine? Kirsty, that was it.

  ‘You’re Kirsty. Sean’s mother.’

  Her glance snapped back to him, full of suspicion and malice. ‘He been talking to you about me?’

  ‘He’s mentioned you, yes.’ Kendrick had more than just mentioned her. He’d turned the air blue discussing Kirsty’s failings as a partner and mother. They’d been together a couple of years, had produced Sean, now seven, whom Purkiss had never met, and had split acrimoniously. Kendrick paid the child support and in return got to see his son fortnightly. He spoke of the boy with real fondness, and Purkiss had long suspected that Kendrick had a sneaking respect, liking even, for Kirsty, despite his surface griping about her.

  She gripped the rail alongside the bed with long-taloned fingers and muttered, ‘Jesus, Kendrick. What did you go and do this for?’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault,’ said Purkiss.

  She appeared to consider for a moment; then she said, flatly: ‘He was at your house, wasn’t he? You’re the one they’re saying was supposed to get shot.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He braced himself, expecting a flurry of accusations, a barrage of slaps and scratches. But she said, simply, ‘Who did this?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But I’m going to find out.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she murmured. ‘You do that.’

  They watched Kendrick’s motionless, shrouded form for a few minutes.

  Kirsty said, ‘They say he might be a vegetable afterwards.’

  Purkiss said nothing.

  ‘Or that he might be aggressive and rude, with no consideration for other people’s feelings.’

  ‘Yes,’ Purkiss said.

  ‘If it’s that, how will we know the difference from normal?’

  It wasn’t so much what she said, but rather the way she said it – she wasn’t making a joke, but asking a genuine question – that tore a laugh from Purkiss’s chest. He fought to stifle it, glanced at her in apology. But Kirsty was grinning too, and they let rip for a few guilty seconds, hysteria breaking free through the carapace of numbness.

  ‘Shut up,’ she spluttered, swiping at his arm. He saw the tears on her cheeks, then the crumpling of her face.

  ‘He’s an arsehole,’ she whispered. ‘But, God love him, he’s the father of my boy.’

  Purkiss held her with the awkwardness of a stranger, while she punched lightly against his chest in time with her sobs, in frustration more than anger.

  ‘Sometimes the world needs arseholes,’ Purkiss said.

  She wasn’t Kendrick’s next of kin because they’d never been married, but, the hospital had agreed to contact her as the mother of Kendrick’s child in case of any change in his condition. Purkiss gave her his number, and asked for hers.

  ‘So I can let you know when I’ve found the man who did this.’

  She nodded.

  On the way out, he said to the head nurse at the ITU desk: ‘Sorry about the laughter back there.’

  She waved her hand. ‘Happens all the time in here. So much death around.’

  Purkiss left the hospital at a quicker pace then when he’d arrived, because his meeting with Kendrick’s ex-girlfriend had given him an idea.

  Fourteen

  Vale tipped the contents of the cardboard box onto the dining table. They were back in the Covent Garden safehouse-cum-office.

  Purkiss rummaged through the pile. There were wallets of various sizes and ages, each containing credit cards in an astonishing assortment of names. Passports, too, with several of them once again carefully weathered to look well travelled. He flipped through them just to admire Abby’s handiwork, and shook his head. Each of them contained his photo, but the names, dates of birth and even sometimes nationalities were different.

  Purkiss found fake driver’s licences, National Insurance Number cards, staff ID badges giving him access to banks and military installations. All utterly authentic looking to his eye, and he was used to spotting bogus documentation.

  In addition to her prowess as a computer programmer and hacker, Abby Holt had shown a remarkable talent for forgery. She’d supplied Purkiss with a plethora of fake documents, allowing him to slip into and out of both friendly and hostile countries undetected. What he hadn’t realised was the extent of her efforts. She’d clearly manufactured credentials for a greater range of situations than he’d ever needed to use them in, just in case.

  After Abby’s killing in Tallinn last October, Vale had arranged for her base in Whitechapel, the flat where she maintained her computer networks and did her forging, to be cleared out quietly, while her grieving parents, who’d known nothing of their daughter’s clandestine sideline, had taken care of the flat in Stoke Newington where she lived, disposing of those personal effects of hers they could bear to throw away.

  Purkiss had never asked Vale exactly what he’d found in Abby’s secret hideaway, or what he’d done with it. But, leaving the hospital an hour earlier, he’d been struck by a thought, and had fished out his phone.

  ‘Yes,’ Vale said. ‘I have the young lady’s effects.’

  Keeping the bits and pieces he’d cleaned out of the secret bolthole of someone whom he’d never met before was just the sort of thing Purkiss might have expected Vale to do.

  Purkiss asked Vale to bring along anything that looked like forged ID, but to leave behind the computer equipment and whatever else Vale had bagged. He didn’t need that sort of stuff now, though it might prove useful later.

  The ideal find would be a tax inspector’s identification card, but although Purkiss didn’t find that, he felt a surge of triumph as he picked up the next best thing. A warrant card with a mug shot of Purkiss, identifying hi
m as Detective Inspector Peter Cullen of the Metropolitan Police. The card even had the holographic emblem of authenticity.

  Abby, you’re a diamond, he said silently, as he’d said to her countless times when she’d been alive.

  Vale was watching him. ‘Care to tell me what you have in mind?’

  ‘It’s probably better that I don’t, at this point.’

  Vale nodded. ‘Very well.’ He was good that way; he respected Purkiss’s decision to withhold information where necessary. Within reason.

  Purkiss said, ‘You might need to do a little damage control later, though.’

  ‘When people start complaining that a nonexistent Met officer turned up and started throwing his weight around, you mean?’ Vale’s tone was as dry as the tobacco leaves he used to rustle between his fingers before lighting up.

  ‘Something like that,’ said Purkiss.

  At the door, with the box containing Abby’s forgeries in his arms, Vale said, ‘Might I make a suggestion?’

  Purkiss waited.

  ‘You don’t look like a detective, far less a DI. You might want to kit yourself out.’

  ‘I know,’ said Purkiss.

  He left ten minutes after Vale and headed towards the nearest men’s outfitters on Charing Cross Road. There he bought a charcoal suit, priced slightly above the bottom of the range, a pale blue shirt with button-down collar, and a nondescript striped tie.

  Purkiss caught the underground to Kennington. The Saturday morning crowds pressed against him and once again he felt himself tense, and forced himself to relax. He’d known of agents, both friendly and hostile, who’d been despatched here on the Tube. It was in many ways an ideal setting, bodies packed so tightly together that one’s hand actions could pass unnoticed as the knife went in.

  The office of Iraqi Thunder Fist was a short walk from Kennington Station, through streets already baking in the morning heat. The city smells and the shouts of market traders ranged around Purkiss as he strode towards the address he’d found in Morrow’s records.