Jokerman

by Tim Stevens

  Tullivant was walking back to his own car at the time, which he’d left in the pub car park. He didn’t dodge out of sight, because there was no need; his face would mean nothing to either Purkiss or the woman. So he continued towards the car park at an unhurried pace, watching the pair as if he was innocently looking at the green.

  They headed in the direction Tullivant had come from, with that typical appearance of people who were looking for a particular address. And Tullivant knew exactly the address they wanted, because he’d just been there himself.

  In the car park, he got his car, a VW Golf, and drove in a circuit until he was heading down the street off which Arkwright’s cottage stood. There were Purkiss and the woman, peering down the lane which led to the cottage. Now they were heading towards it.

  Tullivant stopped the car, leaving the engine running, took out his phone, and watched the pair’s backs. When the woman turned slightly to say something to Purkiss, Tullivant took a quick series of photos with his phone. The angle wasn’t great, but it would have to do.

  He drove on, thinking. They’d knock on the cottage door, find that Arkwright wasn’t home… and then what? Would they force their way in to search the place? Possibly. But they wouldn’t find what Tullivant had left there, because they wouldn’t be looking for something like that. And afterwards? Tullivant doubted they’d turn round and head back to London. More likely, they’d hang around. Perhaps make enquiries in the village.

  He hadn’t anticipated that Purkiss would arrive this soon, and had been banking on Arkwright’s being home when Purkiss did turn up. No matter. It was a detail, that was all.

  Tullivant parked up another residential lane and sent a text which read: Who’s the woman? He attached a couple of the photos he’d taken.

  While he waited for a reply, he considered his options. The obvious thing to do would be to carry on with his original plan: hole up near the cottage and wait for Arkwright to return, and after that Purkiss. But what if Purkiss went in search of Arkwright, found him, and took him somewhere else?

  It was a risk too far. Tullivant started the car again and drove back. At the end of Arkwright’s street he saw Purkiss and the woman emerge from the lane once more. He watched them head back in the direction of the green.

  This was going to be tricky. Surveillance in a crowded city, whether on foot or by car, was one thing. But in a tiny village like this, he’d be spotted quickly, especially by a professional like Purkiss.

  The pub was the obvious place, Tullivant thought. The hub of the village, it would be where a stranger would go to ask questions.

  Parking again, he headed straight for the pub without looking around for Purkiss or the woman. On the way, a text message arrived: Can you talk?

  He rang the number.

  ‘The woman is Hannah Holley. A Service agent. Not assigned to the Morrow investigation.’

  ‘She’s operating off the books?’ asked Tullivant.

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘She was the one who saved Purkiss when the bomb went off,’ said Tullivant.

  ‘Interesting.’ There was a pause. ‘I’ll have to think about this.’

  Tullivant rang off, reached the pub and went inside.

  Purkiss was at the bar, the woman beside him.

  Twenty-six

  ‘So talk,’ said Arkwright.

  His accent was Merseyside, the catarrhal glottals enhanced by some kind of speech defect. Purkiss wondered if his tongue had been damaged at some point.

  They sat around a huge oak dining table, as scarred as Arkwright himself. All the furniture in the cottage looked similarly rustic. Arkwright was across from Hannah and Purkiss, one of his sons – Steve, the one who’d led them out of the pub, the one who’d pulled the knife and whom Hannah had put down – sitting beside him. The other two, Dave the big one and Jimmy the smaller, stood behind Arkwright on either side, like a pair of bodyguards.

  Dave had had a tooth knocked out; Jimmy held a wad of cloth to his bleeding ear. Purkiss himself had probed his wounded upper arm gingerly, picking ribbons of cloth out of the punctured flesh. He’d need it seen to. Human bites could be nasty.

  The shotgun was on the table, the business end pointing in Purkiss’s direction, though Arkwright wasn’t touching it. He’d walked them all back to his cottage, holding the gun hanging down as if they’d all been out on a hunting trip together with one piece to share.

  Purkiss said, ‘So, we wanted to ask you some questions. Your sons attacked us. We put them down. They had it coming.’

  On either side of Arkwright the three men stirred. Not looking at them, Arkwright raised a finger.

  ‘You’re not police,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ Purkiss folded his hands, leaned forward. ‘We’re not. We’re from an agency that could make life extremely difficult for you if you don’t cooperate with us, Arkwright. As in, revisiting the reasons you were kicked out of the Army and making a persuasive case that criminal charges should be pressed, even at this late stage.’

  Arkwright’s face was twisted into a permanent grimace, so it was hard to tell how he reacted to this. He watched Purkiss, his glance flicking occasionally to Hannah.

  Purkiss went on: ‘Your sons, reacting the way they did. That suggests they’re protecting you. That anybody who comes round asking questions of you needs to be seen off. It’s the behaviour of a man with a guilty secret. With something to hide.’

  ‘You said cooperate,’ Arkwright rasped. ‘Cooperate, how?’

  ‘Just answer some questions.’

  The big man, Dave, snorted, rolling his eyes.

  Hannah stood up, walked round the table until she was inches from him, stared up into his face.

  ‘What was that?’ she said. Her voice was quiet, icy with menace.

  Dave’s eyes narrowed. His shoulders swelled, his hands bunched into fists.

  She laughed at him. ‘You think you’ve seen a fraction of what we’re capable of? The two of us, unarmed, dropped the three of you. We’ll do it again if we have to. But we won’t have to. Because there are others, waiting for the signal. The signal is our failure to make a phone call within –’ she glanced at her watch – ‘just under thirty minutes from now. If we don’t make that call, our backup arrives. This time you’ll be the ones who’re outnumbered. And they won’t play nice, the way we did.’

  He glowered down at Hannah, hate threatening to spill from his eyes and hooked mouth. ‘Jesus, you –’

  ‘Shut up. We want to hear from your father, not you.’ Ostentatiously she turned her back to him and went to sit down again next to Purkiss.

  Arkwright transferred his gaze from her to Purkiss once more. His jaw worked, as though he was chewing something invisible.

  He shrugged. ‘Ask.’

  He’s been expecting this, thought Purkiss. He’s resigned to it. Not outraged.

  ‘Charles Morrow,’ said Purkiss.

  He studied Arkwright minutely. The eyes and the scarred flesh around them, the mouth, the hands.

  ‘Never heard of him,’ said Arkwright.

  Nothing moved. There was no tell-tale lifting of the fingers towards the lips to suppress a lie.

  Beside Purkiss, Hannah said, ‘Bullshit.’

  Arkwright ignored her, holding Purkiss’s stare instead.

  Purkiss said, ‘You’ve never heard of Charles Morrow.’

  ‘No.’

  Either Arkwright was telling the truth, or he was such a spectacularly accomplished liar that the whole interview was a waste of time.

  ‘Charles Morrow was murdered two days ago,’ said Purkiss.

  No reaction from Arkwright.

  ‘Why was your name mentioned prominently in Morrow’s notebook?’

  Arkwright leaned forward. He spoke slowly, enunciating each word as though talking to a dim child. ‘I have no idea.’

  Purkiss watched him in silence for a full ten seconds.

  Then: ‘Mohammed Al-Bayati.’

  There it was. A tell-tale s
hifting of Arkwright’s eyes, just a fraction. He was in control enough not to blink, or to move his hands; but the eye muscles flickered.

  ‘So,’ said Purkiss. ‘You know Al-Bayati. Or knew him, I should say.’

  Still Arkwright said nothing.

  Purkiss went on: ‘Al-Bayati was killed by a car bomb less than six hours ago. You may have heard the news? An explosion in South London. That was him.’

  The scars streaking Arkwright’s face and scalp made it difficult to be certain, but Purkiss thought he saw the faintest glint here and there.

  ‘You’re sweating,’ he noted.

  Hannah slapped the table with both palms. ‘We’re wasting time here. This is too slow. Let’s just take him in and let the others get to work on him.’

  Purkiss glanced at her as though mulling it over. He turned back to Arkwright.

  ‘If we do what my colleague suggests, you will talk, Arkwright. That’s one hundred per cent certain. You’ve obviously been through a lot of pain, by the look of you. But you really have no idea what pain is. None whatsoever. Trust me on that.’ He shrugged amiably. ‘On the other hand, if you help us a little bit, that can all be avoided.’

  Arkwright’s lips were parted half an inch. Purkiss watched the rise and fall of his chest. His respiratory rate had increased. The man was frightened.

  ‘What’s your connection with Mohammed Al-Bayati?’ Purkiss asked softly.

  Arkwright moved his mouth as though tonguing the insides of his cheeks moist once more.

  He said, ‘I tortured him.’

  Twenty-seven

  ‘I left the Royal Marines in October 2002.’

  ‘You were discharged then. Yes,’ said Purkiss.

  Arkwright glared at him. One of his sons had brought him a glass of water and he’d gulped it down, held it out for more. It seemed to loosen his tongue.

  ‘Just missed it,’ Arkwright said, his eyes far away.

  ‘Missed what?’

  ‘Iraq. It was the big one. The one we all knew was coming.’ He squinted at Purkiss. ‘You a soldier? No, of course you weren’t. Too soft-looking. But if you’d been one of us, at that time, knowing the momentum was building, that we were going back into the Middle East… Christ, the buzz was like nothing else I’ve ever felt.’ He shook his head savagely. ‘And I missed it.’

  ‘Through no fault of your own, of course,’ Hannah chimed in. One of the sons, Steve, the one who’d had the knife, clenched his teeth and fists, avoiding looking at her.

  Arkwright said, ‘But I wanted to help. Wanted to be part of it, in some way. I tried enlisting again. Said I’d take any job, cleaning out the fucking barrack toilets if I had to. But they didn’t want to know.’

  Purkiss waited. Through the cottage’s windows, the sunlight was starting to slant as the afternoon tipped towards early evening.

  ‘So I did the usual,’ Arkwright continued. ‘Looked for private work. Everyone knew there was going to be plenty of it after the invasion, so with my experience, my background, it wasn’t hard to get a job.’

  Purkiss remembered. Ten years ago it had seemed that every other former soldier was setting up his own mercenary outfit, eager for the pickings to be had in the post-Saddam chaos.

  ‘I signed up, and sat on my arse for the first year. For a while, because Baghdad fell so quickly, it looked possible that things were going to settle down and there’d be less need for us. But when the insurgency got underway, when the roadside bombs started going off, the contracts started pouring in.’

  ‘So you went.’

  ‘Yeah. Bodyguard work, mostly, at first. Escorting bigwigs in the new administration to and from meetings. It wasn’t a bad life. There was sunshine, and the pay was good.’

  ‘What happened to your face?’ said Hannah.

  It caught Arkwright off guard. Involuntarily he put a hand up to his cheek, then angrily dropped it again.

  ‘Al Hillah,’ he said. ‘February 2005. Suicide bombing at a police recruiting station. I caught some shrapnel.’

  Purkiss recalled the attack. More than a hundred people had been killed. A Jordanian had been responsible.

  ‘I came back to have it fixed,’ Arkwright continued. ‘Back to Britain. The firm I worked for paid for the surgery privately. You think this looks bad now, you should have seen it before the doctors got to work on it.’

  ‘And then you went back?’ said Purkiss.

  Arkwright fell silent. His mouth twitched.

  ‘Back to Iraq?’ Purkiss prompted.

  ‘No,’ muttered Arkwright. ‘I didn’t.’

  Purkiss waited again.

  ‘I was going to go back,’ said Arkwright. ‘I wanted to get back so badly and kill the bastards. Kill all of them, for what they’d done to me. And I was at the airport, all set to leave. Fighting fit.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Then these men approach me as I’m in line to board the plane. Ask me to come with them. Couple of guys in suits.’ He narrowed his eyes, remembering. ‘They know who I am. That’s obvious. Tell me my life story. They ask me if I’d really, really like to do something useful to get back at the bombers who did this to me. I say yes, of course. For a moment I think they’re going to tell me the military wants me back. Then they tell me I’m not going back to the Gulf. That I’m going to stay here in the UK.’

  Arkwright’s voice was rising as he warmed to his story. Around him, his sons gazed at him impassively. Purkiss couldn’t tell whether or not they’d heard this before.

  ‘They ask me if I’d be willing to help them extract information from prisoners. Terrorists and criminals, and the people who support and enable them. They tell me I have no idea, the public has no idea, how many such people are operating in Britain. That Saddam’s agents are everywhere, feeding off the country like maggots, rotting it away. That if I cooperate, I’ll not only be avenging myself, but that I’ll be doing more of a patriotic service to my country than the bravest soldier out there in the desert.’

  He spread his palms.

  ‘So I said yes. I stayed in Britain, and within a week I started work. I’d get called for a few days’ stint at a time, and they’d bring me whatever equipment I asked for, and I’d do my job. Iraqis, Jordanians, a few British-born Pakistanis. Mostly hard nuts, people they hadn’t managed to get to talk using the normal methods. I asked them about links with terrorist cells here in Britain and the rest of Europe, and connections with the insurgency back in Iraq. And I was good. I got results.’

  Purkiss saw a glint in Arkwright’s eyes that hadn’t been there before.

  ‘How many?’ asked Purkiss.

  Arkwright rocked a palm. ‘Over two years… maybe a hundred? One a week. Though they tended to come in batches.’

  Purkiss thought quickly. There was a lot of information to be gained here, a lot of detail, and he had to decide what to prioritise while Arkwright was being so forthcoming.

  ‘Where does Mohammed Al-Bayati fit into this?’

  ‘He was one of the people I… interrogated,’ said Arkwright. ‘Iraqi ex-pat, living in London.’

  Hannah asked: ‘How do you remember him so clearly? If he was one among a hundred?’

  Arkwright’s eyes flicked to her, then back to Purkiss. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ said Purkiss.

  ‘I don’t know,’ repeated Arkwright.

  Purkiss decided to change tack. ‘Who were you working for? These people who approached you at the airport.’

  ‘They were MI5.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because…’ Arkwright looked at his hands on the table. ‘Because I put two and two together. They were bringing in a steady stream of prisoners for me to interrogate. They were concerned with public security. I didn’t have to sign the Official Secrets Act, obviously, but I still knew who they were. Also –’

  ‘Yes?’ said Purkiss.

  This time Arkwright took a long breath, sucking air in through his nose, exhaling through his mouth.
/>
  ‘Sometimes another man came and watched me at work. I got the feeling he was in charge. He never spoke to me, just watched. Through one-way glass. I assumed he wanted to hear for himself, first-hand, the answers I was getting.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ve seen his picture in the paper more recently. Couple of years ago. When he was appointed head of MI5.’

  Purkiss felt a jolt pass through his chest, sensed Hannah tensing beside him.

  ‘Guy Strang,’ said Arkwright. ‘Now the MI5 boss. He watched me torture those prisoners. He was in charge.’

  Electrified, Purkiss gripped the edge of the table to prevent himself from rising from his chair.

  A second later the window exploded inwards.

  Twenty-eight

  Perhaps it was because Hannah had knocked him to the ground an instant before the bomb in the Range Rover had gone off, or perhaps it was because she was the person closest to him. Whatever the reason, Purkiss collided with her hard, flinging her and the chair she was sitting on sideways, as his brain caught up, registering and processing the data it had received.

  The burst of glass from the imploding window, a jarring flashback to the attack on his own house.

  The object that came hurtling into the living room, its momentum slowed but not broken by the impact with the window.

  The yells from Arkwright and his sons, and their own collisions as the small one, Jimmy, cannoned into his father.

  The noise of the shattering glass coupled with the hissing.

  The rapidly billowing fog of grey-white cloud that was rapidly filling the room.

  On the floor Purkiss rolled off Hannah. She buried her face in her sleeve even as Purkiss felt the first crawling prickle in his nose and ears and throat, the blinding stream of tears as his eyes were stung shut.

  CS gas.

  He clambered to a kneeling position, resisting the urge to stand up and thereby present a target through the window. From Arkwright and his sons he heard muffled swearing interspersed with coughing, choking sobs.

  One arm still held awkwardly across her nose and mouth, her reddened eyes almost shut, Hannah drew the Glock from her jacket.