by Tim Stevens
He bounced on the balls of his feet a few times. Breathed deeply in through his nose, out through his mouth, centring himself.
He broke out of the circle of trees and into the clearing, feeling more naked than if he’d cast all his clothes off.
His environment was more intensely real to him than he’d ever known it: the springy firmness of the grass beneath his soles, the cool of pre-morning dew on his face, the aromas of nose-prickling late-summer pollen and industrial city grime.
The high-velocity bullet smashing through the base of his skull, shearing through bone and muscle and exploding his head in an obscene dark gout…
The bench was twenty yards away. Ten.
The woman’s head turned a fraction.
Purkiss veered round, describing a loose arc, sure that this was it, that Tullivant’s finger was finally tightening on the trigger, squeezing it back, the game needing to brought to an end now. He sprinted towards a point in the trees some twenty yards to the right of where he’d emerged, thinking that if this was to be his last sight on earth, something as natural and joyously verdant as a row of summer trees wasn’t bad.
Then he crashed among the trees, knocking his shoulder into one of the trunks, not caring about the pain, his heart hammering in relief, his primitive self aware that he was still alive while his rational brain thought: Tullivant didn’t take the bait. And now he knows where I am.
Fifty-seven
Tullivant watched Purkiss’s shape detach itself from the trees approximately ninety degrees to his left.
He tracked the running figure through the scope.
Purkiss would reach Emma, frantically haul her up, and try to drag her back to the cover of the trees. She wasn’t bound any longer – Tullivant had cut the ties around her wrists and ankles – and she’d rise and go with Purkiss. It would be a clean, two-shot double kill. Tullivant chose to wait.
He was mildly disappointed at how easy it was going to turn out to be.
The disappointment triggered a warning light in his mind.
A man like John Purkiss didn’t disappoint you. If he appeared to do so, to carry out an action that was so stupidly reckless that it was out of character, it meant he was tricking you.
Halfway towards Emma, Purkiss swerved and turned, heading back at an angle.
Tullivant, who was lying prone on the ground between the boles of two oaks, whipped his head round to one side, then the other, sure that he’d see others bearing down on him, or perhaps nothing more than muzzle flashes before eternal darkness.
But there was nobody.
Tullivant turned his attention back to the clearing. Purkiss had disappeared once more among the trees.
So: his foolhardy sprint hadn’t been to draw Tullivant’s attention while Purkiss’s back-up approached Tullivant from behind. Instead, he’d hoped to get Tullivant to reveal his position. Which he hadn’t.
Stalemate.
Tullivant glanced upward. Dawn was still three hours off or more, even though the sky would begin lightening long before that.
He had time. And if Purkiss didn’t show his hand before the darkness receded too far to be of any use any more, then Tullivant would pull the trigger on Emma. Which Purkiss knew.
Tullivant settled down to wait.
A second later he felt the buzz of his phone against his thigh, signalling the arrival of a text message.
Carefully, moving only his arm, he reached down and pulled out the phone. The text was from Emma’s, diverted to his. And yes, on the bench she was groping for her mobile, no doubt assuming he was texting her with instructions.
The message read: Dr Goddard, I’m the man who phoned you earlier. Don’t look round. I’m in the trees behind you. I’m going to start making my way anti-clockwise round the circle. If you know the location of your husband, message me back with his position on the clock in relation to you.
Tullivant thumbed in a message to Emma. Text him back and tell him one o’clock. I receive all texts sent to and from your phone. I’ll know if you tell him anything else.
Tullivant was at the four o’clock position. If Purkiss made his way round in the direction he’d said, he would encounter Tullivant a lot sooner than he’d be expecting. Tullivant would have the jump on him.
On the bench, Emma straightened in bewilderment; but she managed to suppress the reflex to look over in his direction. If she was working on her phone, she was doing it extremely discreetly.
A moment later Tullivant read her reply to Purkiss: One o’clock.
Tullivant kept the Timberwolf propped and aimed at the bench. He drew the Heckler & Koch from his jacket and laid it close to his left hand.
He watched the trees arcing away to his left.
Purkiss would be moving infinitesimally slowly so as not to give his position away. Tullivant glanced at his watch, its illuminated display turned toward him to minimise the light it gave off. Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen.
A rustle from the trees somewhere. Tullivant stiffened.
Had it come form his right or his left? He strained his ears.
A further five minutes passed.
The shrill ringing of a phone shattered the quiet. Tullivant registered that it was coming from his left amongst the trees, maybe ten or fifteen yards away, and although it stopped abruptly as if cut off in panic he felt his senses of sight and hearing and even smell homing in on its location and he was up and charging between the trees, the Heckler & Koch primed and aimed, until he felt his foot kick against something and he looked down and saw the abandoned phone and before he could turn he felt Purkiss barrel into him and send him crashing against the trunk of a tree.
Fifty-eight
The woman had answered too readily, texting back her reply, and Purkiss knew it was a further trick.
So, Tullivant wasn’t at the one o’clock position at all. That meant he was probably nearer than that, and intended to surprise Purkiss as Purkiss made his way round the ring of trees.
Purkiss was working with approximations, and also the need to keep himself completely concealed; but he moved swiftly, edging anti-clockwise between the trees until he’d reached the five o’clock position, which was as far as he dared to go, then placing his phone on the ground after flicking off the silent key. He doubled back, resisting the urge to hurry, traversing the ring clockwise this time; and it was when he got to the twelve o’clock position, directly ahead of Goddard on the bench, that he saw Tullivant, or at least the tip of his rifle, round at four o’clock.
He crept round until he must have been within leaping distance, then took out his remaining spare phone and rang his own number.
The jarring shriek of the phone on the other side of Tullivant was like a starting whistle to Purkiss. He wove between the trees, spotting Tullivant rising and leaving behind his rifle and advancing in the direction of the phone’s cry.
With a berserker’s fury, Purkiss launched himself.
The impact drove Tullivant against the solid body of an ancient oak. Purkiss grabbed his hair and rammed his forehead against the tree, getting two blows in before Tullivant regained control and elbowed backwards, connecting with Purkiss’s shoulder but giving Tullivant a degree of momentum so that he half-turned and brought his gun hand across.
No guns, thought Purkiss crazily. No more guns today. Enough.
He smashed the side of his fist into Tullivant’s wrist in a hammer blow that made the arm drop away, then followed with a punch to Tullivant’s face. Tullivant reeled, got in a kick to Purkiss’s thigh that sent a howl of pain and made him stumble. Purkiss used his slightly bent position to his advantage by ramming his lowered head into Tullivant’s abdomen, pinning him against the tree once more.
He sensed Tullivant’s hands raised above his head, clasped, ready to come down in a killer blow that would snap Purkiss’s neck, so he rammed again with his head, imagining he was driving Tullivant’s belly flat against the tree behind him, mashing his abdominal contents to pulp, rammed again, and ag
ain, and he felt a weight on top of him, but not that of a blow; rather, of Tullivant’s sagging torso as he jackknifed forward.
Purkiss wrenched away and stood up, watched Tullivant’s doubled body sag face-forward onto the ground. His lips were distorted against the grass and soil, his face waxen, his breathing coming in winded gasps.
Purkiss stood looking down at the man as he caught his own breath. He kicked him, hard, in the ribs, and Tullivant flopped over onto his back, his eyes half-closed.
Purkiss glanced at Tullivant’s gun, a few feet away.
It would be easy.
Just the two of them here, for at least a few minutes more. Nobody about. An easy story to concoct.
He picked up the gun.
Tullivant’s eyelids fluttered in understanding.
Purkiss flung the gun amongst the trees.
‘Up,’ he said.
Tullivant rose to his knees, retched, climbed his hands up his legs, reached a stooped position, keeled over on to one knee.
Purkiss grabbed him by the arm to haul him up. Tullivant swayed drunkenly but remained upright. They manoeuvred out into the clearing.
The woman, Goddard, was still sitting on the bench. Her head was turned towards them.
‘It’s all right,’ called Purkiss. ‘It’s over.’
Beside him Tullivant lurched, and for an instant Purkiss thought the man was either going to collapse again or was making one last attempt at putting up a fight; but then he heard the twin booming cracks, heard Emma Goddard’s scream from across the clearing, saw Tullivant jerk and stagger and twist to his knees, dropping once more to the ground, two bloody ragged holes punched through his jacket.
Kasabian stepped into the clearing, the gun in her hand already lowered, her gaze switching from Purkiss to Tullivant’s body and back again.
Fifty-nine
‘I thought he had the drop on you,’ she said.
The aftershock of the shots rang around the clearing. At the bench, Goddard was cowering, still screaming but with her hands clamped over her mouth so that the sound emerged as a high-pitched keening.
Purkiss said, ‘Nonsense.’
Kasabian’s eyes widened.
‘And you know it,’ he said.
She watched him. She was ten feet away. Purkiss didn’t know how quick her reaction times were, but she was clearly an accurate shot.
‘Tullivant had to die,’ he said. ‘It would have been better if he’d killed me, but now that he’s failed, he couldn’t be allowed to live.’
Sirens, lots of them, were detaching themselves from the low background hum of the surrounding city.
‘That’s why I rang you earlier to tell you Tullivant was here, and I was coming to get him,’ Purkiss said. ‘I wanted to panic you. Make you expose yourself. You knew there was a chance I’d get the better of him, take him alive. And that’s why you’re here. Presumably on your own.’
Stalling was an art. But it helped if you knew how long you had to do it for. Purkiss had no idea.
‘The question you’re asking yourself is, when did I find out about you? The answer’s out in the desert, outside Riyadh. I captured one of the Scipio Rand operatives and interrogated him. He told me that back in 2006, a regular pool of Paras were escorting prisoners from Iraq to Saudi Arabia for further transportation elsewhere. That’s when the penny dropped.’
The sirens were coming closer, but it wasn’t them Purkiss was waiting for.
‘The reason you passed the polygraph test wasn’t that you’re skilled at doing so, but because you never actually lied. I just asked you the wrong questions. Specifically, I asked if you’d sent a gunman to my house to kill me, or to frighten me. And you hadn’t. The gunman, Tullivant, was there to kill Tony Kendrick. Just as he’s been killing every fellow member of that Para outfit who was involved in escorting those prisoners.
‘Because it was you, Kasabian. You were in charge of the torture of prisoners on British soil during the Iraq occupation, specifically in 2006. Not Sir Guy Strang. You liaised with Scipio Rand, ordered the transfer of selected prisoners to the UK, paid and supervised Dennis Arkwright to torture them. But some of them didn’t stay silent afterwards. Mohammed Al-Bayati, for one. And he spoke to Charles Morrow. Somehow, you discovered Morrow was going to blow the whistle on the whole sordid operation. He might not have known all the details, might not even have known of your involvement. But he knew enough to warrant, in your eyes, being killed. So you sent Tullivant to take him out.’
Kasabian had raised the gun now, held it steady on Purkiss’s chest. Her gaze held that fascinated look he’d noticed at their first meeting.
‘I suspect you’d already begun erasing all traces of the 2006 affair, because you were gunning for the top job and were rewriting history in preparation. That’s why most of those Paras were killed in the last couple of weeks, before Morrow was shot. But at some point you hit on a masterstroke: why not implicate Guy Strang in the torture? Concoct evidence that he was behind it all? That way you’d both get rid of him, and emerge a squeaky-clean hero yourself. So you “hired” me. An outsider, renowned for getting results. And you laid a trail of false clues, pointing in Strang’s direction. The supposed notebook in Morrow’s flat, which I imagine I was supposed to find but which Hannah Holley discovered first. That led me to Arkwright. And you’d primed Arkwright to lie, to tell me that Guy Strang had been his boss.’
Come on, thought Purkiss. Kasabian had taken a couple of steps forward, and was holding the gun in a two-handed grip.
‘What did you offer Arkwright?’ he went on. ‘Amnesty? Whatever it was, you had no intention of honouring it. As soon as he’d mentioned Strang’s name, Tullivant had to dispose of him, and his sons. That made me a little suspicious, by the way. I was blinded by teargas that day. Tullivant could have killed me. But he didn’t. I was part of the plan, back then. Part of the team who would reveal Strang as the mastermind of an illegal torture operation. So I had to be kept alive.’
Purkiss held up a finger. ‘One thing that does puzzle me, though. Arkwright mentioned Rossiter as he was dying. Not you. I don’t understand why.’
He thought Kasabian might stay silent, or obfuscate, but she replied directly. ‘Arkwright never knew I was in charge. I recruited him through proxies. We never met. Even when I instructed him to mention Strang’s name, he thought I was acting in good faith, and that Strang genuinely was involved.’
‘So why mention Rossiter?’
She tilted her head. ‘Rossiter recruited Arkwright while he was in the nominal employ of Scipio Rand. Arkwright probably assumed he was somehow involved in this. We’ll never know.’
Purkiss detected movement between the trees, in the park on the other side, some distance away still. He made a point of keeping his eyes on Kasabian’s.
‘But you’ve been after Strang’s job for a long time, haven’t you, Kasabian? Isn’t that why you contrived to get the job for Emma Goddard as Strang’s personal physician? So that her husband, your lackey, Tullivant, would have a way in, if need be? What was it going to be, Kasabian? Poison hidden in one of the drugs she gave him? Details of the exact state of his health, leaked to Tullivant during Dr Goddard’s pillow talk, which he’d pass on to you?’
Definite movement, now, stealthy and approaching the line of trees.
‘All those Paras, who were innocent in all this, mere escorts. Mohammed Al-Bayati. Arkwright and his sons. Charles Morrow. Murder after murder after murder. Was there no length you wouldn’t go to? And just for a job, Kasabian. Just for a job.’
‘It’s not just a job,’ she murmured, her eyes hard now over the gun.
‘Oh, spare me. Don’t try to make out that you’re some kind of Shakespearean figure, brought down by your vaulting ambition. You’re a common, grubby murderer, Kasabian.’
He glanced away, a natural enough move in context, and gave a nod, just as Kasabian’s finger tightened on the trigger.
Purkiss leaped sideways, the crack of the gun follow
ed by the scream of the bullet as it ploughed past and into the trees on the far side. He rolled, came up, saw Hannah beside Kasabian, the muzzle of her own Glock pressed against the side of the older woman’s head.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Hannah said.
Kasabian closed her eyes. Then she opened them, staring straight at Purkiss.
He yelled a warning as she jammed the barrel of her gun underneath her chin.
‘Uh uh,’ snarled Hannah, and chopped Kasabian’s wrist away with the Glock. Kasabian’s gun was sent spinning.
Purkiss nodded at Hannah. He turned, began to walk heavily to the bench where Emma Goddard sat, hunched, staring at nothing.
Sixty
The ventilator mechanism moved asymmetrically, rising, catching jerkily, and falling rapidly but smoothly.
Purkiss watched it, and thought about hubris.
There was the hubris of Kasabian’s, manifest in the extreme, even insane lengths she had gone to in order to achieve a position which would probably one day have been hers for the taking anyway, and in order to erase a past which might possibly have been quietly forgotten.
There was that of Tullivant, who’d thought even at the bitter end that there might be a way out, a solution, who hadn’t realised that the killing had to stop at some point and that terminating the life of his children’s mother would somehow enable him to escape justice.
And there was Purkiss’s own hubris. The arrogance which had led him to fail to see simple innocence and indeed compassion where it should have been blindingly obvious, to doubt those who were looking out for him: Vale, whose uneasiness and nerves before the trip to Riyadh had been no more than signs that he was worried Purkiss was walking into a death trap, and Hannah, whose failure to arrive at the airport in Saudi had been due to nothing more sinister than a genuine missed flight.
Kendrick’s profile, corpse-still, looked bonier than at Purkiss’s last visit.
Kirsty, the mother of Kendrick’s son, had left three hours earlier, anger holding her face rigid to stop it from crumpling. Hannah had been the next to arrive. She’d sat beside Purkiss, gazing at the man on the ventilator, a man she’d never met and now most likely never would.