by Tim Stevens
Pushing the lining of the bag so that it protruded out, she examined the seam. Something looked odd about it. She rubbed a fingertip over it.
A definite bump.
With a fingernail, she prised another thread free. Holding the seam inches from her face, she detected a dull glint from within.
Her nailtips plucked a couple more threads loose, and she worked them into the gap and pulled the object free.
It was a perfectly round, slate-coloured bit of metal, no bigger than a pinhead. Emma turned it round. There were no markings.
Had it been there before last night? She supposed she might not have noticed.
She emptied the bag out on the kitchen counter and turned it inside out. With eyes and fingers she examined every millimetre of the lining, but found nothing else.
She watched the tiny ball, as though she thought it might suddenly start rolling across the granite surface of its own accord.
James. He was the one to ask. James would know whether it was something of significance, or whether she was being ridiculous, fretting over a bead which had found itself in the design of the handbag by accident.
James. She thought of him, among the rumpled sheets last night, managing to look lazy and intense at the same time, watching her as she headed for the shower.
And left him alone. With her handbag.
The thread of unease snapped then, as Melanie Finch’s station wagon pulled into the driveway and the carefree yelling of the children dragged her into a different world.
Twenty-one
Hannah handed Purkiss the small, hardbacked notebook.
‘You have a look through,’ she said. ‘See if you spot what I did.’
They were on a mezzanine level at Victoria Station, seated at a table which was part of the sprawling fast-food dining area. Hannah had rented one of the station’s lockers to keep the notebook in.
‘I didn’t feel safe leaving it at home,’ she said. ‘Nor carrying it around with me.’
They’d left the café and headed for the nearest A amp;E department, where Hannah had been seen promptly and had her leg wound dressed. She’d slipped and fallen at a dump, she said, and cut herself on corrugated iron. None of the staff appeared inclined to disbelieve her, or particularly interested one way or the other. The hum of conversation in the department was about the car bomb and how many likely casualties there were going to be.
While Hannah was being seen to, Purkiss watched a television set on the wall in the triage area. The reporting was all very preliminary, with little to be seen on camera beyond the bustling of the police, ambulance and fire services, but the excited reporter revealed that there appeared to be at least ten people killed or injured.
Hannah emerged, having changed into a pair of jeans she’d bought along the way. She’d washed the dirt off her face and arms, and looked pale underneath.
‘Did they look at your back?’ Purkiss asked.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Sunburn.’
At Victoria Station now, Purkiss perused the notebook. Almost every page was crammed with crabby lettering and symbols. Most of it, as Hannah had said, was unintelligible, a highly personal form of shorthand. But he saw the names leap out at times: Al-Bayati, Iraqi Thunder Fist.
And another: Arkwright, preceded once by the first name Dennis.
‘Heard of him?’ asked Purkiss.
‘No.’
The name hadn’t come up in the Morrow files Kasabian had given him.
‘Why would Charlie leave these names unencoded like this?’
Purkiss shrugged. ‘Insurance, I suppose. In case anybody else ever needed to use the information in the notebook. Like us, now.’
She swept a hand across her forehead. ‘If I could only access the Service database… But if this Arkwright is important in some way, his name will be flagged. Any search will not just set off alarms, but will probably lock his data and prevent anyone reading it.’
‘There’s another possibility,’ said Purkiss.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a long shot.’ He took out his phone and dialled Vale’s number.
‘John. You’ve heard about the car bomb?’
‘I was there,’ said Purkiss.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No.’
‘What happened?’
‘The target of the bomb was Mohammed Al-Bayati, the London head of Iraqi Thunder Fist, a dissident group possibly involved in insurgent activity in Iraq. Morrow’s notes suggest Al-Bayati was a Service agent, or at least informant. He had a phalanx of bodyguards with him. I wanted to interview him but he was killed first.’
‘How did the killer know you intended to approach Al-Bayati?’
‘They may not have known. He might have been earmarked for assassination and I just happened to take an interest in him beforehand.’
Vale was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Difficult to tie all this together. Morrow’s killing, the attempt on your life, and now this.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘Yes,’ said Purkiss. ‘Could you run a name through the SIS database? Dennis Arkwright.’
‘I’ll be in touch,’ said Vale. He didn’t ask any more, and rang off.
It was, as Purkiss had said, a long shot. But it was worth checking. If the coded material in Morrow’s notebook related to Iraq, then it was possible this Arkwright existed in the database of the foreign intelligence service, SIS, as well as the domestic Security Service.
Hannah was watching him. ‘You need to fill me in on a few details,’ she said.
So Purkiss did. He told her about the attack at his home, about Kendrick in hospital, and about the access he’d obtained to Morrow’s files. But he avoided mentioning Kasabian altogether, saying only that he’d obtained the files via a “high-placed source”.
She put her hands together, touched her lips against her fingertips. Shook her head.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You’re going to have to tell me everything sooner or later. Who you’re working for. Because if this gunman attacked you in your home knowing you were involved in the case, then there’s a leak somewhere. Whoever’s employing you has allowed the opposition to get wind of the fact.’
‘True,’ noted Purkiss, who’d said as much to Kasabian. ‘But I can’t tell you who’s hired me. Not yet. Not until I know I can trust you.’
He expected her to react with anger, but she just nodded.
Vale telephoned back after twenty minutes. Although he was no longer an official SIS employee, he’d retained high-level connections within the service, as well as privileges to access the databases.
‘We have a match,’ he said. ‘But not much detail. Dennis Kincaid Arkwright, born twentieth February 1964. Did some freelance work for the Service — that’s our Service, SIS — in Turkey in the middle years of the last decade. The nature of that work is not recorded. He’s a former Royal Marine, Three Commando Brigade. Dishonourably discharged in 2002 for brawling and insubordination, narrowly avoiding a court martial.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t suppose you have an address for him?’ asked Purkiss.
‘I do, as a matter of fact.’ It wasn’t Vale’s style to sound smug or triumphant, and he didn’t do so now. ‘He draws disability benefit, luckily enough. The Department of Work and Pensions have him living in a village called Dry Perry, in Cambridgeshire.’
He gave Purkiss the exact address. ‘There’s a photo, too. Not a very good one, and a few years old. I’m sending it across.’
Purkiss said, ‘Thanks, Quentin. That’s a great help.’
‘Nine people so far confirmed dead in the car bomb explosion. Seven in the vehicle — I assume that’s Al-Bayati and his bodyguards — and two civilians. Do you think anyone will remember that you were nearby when it happened, John?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Purkiss. ‘In any case, it wouldn’t h
ave looked as though I was involved, if that’s what you’re worried about. I was approaching the Range Rover at the time. Hardly the behaviour of someone who’s wired the vehicle to blow up.’ He paused. ‘There is something, though.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Shortly before the blast, I’d been making enquiries at the Iraqi Thunder Party office, posing as a policeman. I persuaded them to give up Al-Bayati’s home address. That might be why he went to the car when he did — he’d been tipped off, and didn’t want to hang around to be questioned me.’
‘I see,’ said Vale.
‘But it means the ITF staff will suspect me of doing this. One minute they’re giving me their boss’s home address. The next, he’s murdered. I’m just letting you know that there could be fallout from this.’
‘Understood. Thank you.’
Purkiss rang off. A moment later a text message arrived, with an attached photo. It was a blurred three-quarter view of a man’s face. His age was indeterminate, and he had close-cropped soldier’s hair, a truculent jaw, dark eyes. Arkwright, evidently.
Across the table from him, Hannah said, ‘This man you were talking to. Quentin.’
‘Yes.’
‘He seems like a man you can trust.’
‘He’s proved himself trustworthy more times than I can remember,’ said Purkiss.
‘And yet,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You agreed there’s a leak somewhere. Somehow, the opposition were tipped off about your involvement in this case. It could have come from him. This… Quentin.’
Purkiss shook his head. ‘No, it couldn’t.’
She raised her eyebrows.
Purkiss: ‘It wouldn’t make any sense.’
And as he said it, he saw how it could, indeed, make sense. Vale wanted him to take on the case. Vale could have set him up, just as Purkiss had accused Kasabian of doing.
But he knew Vale, and knew he wouldn’t do such a thing.
Purkiss stood, abruptly. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re going to talk to this Arkwright.’
Twenty-two
Beyond Stansted Airport the terrain flattened out, fields of wheat and sheep and yellow rapeseed undulating gently towards the horizon. Hannah drove quickly and smoothly, passing the lumbering queue of lorries crawling up the slow lane.
They’d taken her car, a Peugeot saloon which she’d collected from outside her flat in Kilburn, while Purkiss had taken the tube back to Hampstead and his house. His property was cordoned off, police teams still at work inside and in the front garden. But they let him in, to change his clothes and collect a spare set which he packed in a small holdall. He also threw in his passport, because you never knew.
Purkiss glanced at the piano as he left, at the chipped and puckered scars of the bullet holes in its wood.
Hannah picked him up in the car near the tube station. She’d changed, too, into a lightweight jacket and trousers. She nodded at Purkiss’s bag.
‘Do you think we’ll be staying overnight?’
‘I don’t know what to expect at the moment.’
They drove in silence until they reached the M25, the motorway ringing London. The village where Arkwright lived, Dry Perry, was in rural Cambridgeshire, almost two hours north of the city.
Purkiss said, ‘So what’s your story?’
She glanced across. ‘My story?’
‘How did you come to join the Service?’
She smiled faintly. ‘If I tell you, then you’re going to have to be a little more forthcoming about yourself.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘I’m the daughter of a spook. My father was head of the Service’s Manchester office in the seventies and eighties.’
‘You don’t have an accent.’
‘I grew up here in London. Notting Hill, to be exact. My parents divorced when I was three. I still saw my dad, remained close to him. Still do. He’s retired now.’
‘And he persuaded you to join up?’
‘He didn’t need to,’ she said. ‘I was always fascinated by his work, and I knew from the age of about twelve that I wanted to follow him. My mother wasn’t happy with it. She’s an artist and sculptress, and she wanted me to do something along those lines.’
‘What was it about the Service that interested you?’
‘I used to tell myself the usual things. That I wanted to make a difference, wanted to protect the country I grew up in, give something back. I mean, I do… but it’s the nitty gritty that’s fascinating, really. You know? The tradecraft, the inventiveness you have to display, the sheer deviousness. It’s like being an actor. You take a delight in tricking people. Except an actor’s audience knows it’s being tricked.’ She sighed. ‘It sounds perverse.’
‘I know exactly what you mean.’ He studied her profile, her eyes. ‘Are your parents Eastern?’
‘My maternal grandmother was Burmese. She met my grandfather when he was stationed out there during the war.’ She returned his glance. ‘So. John Purkiss. Your turn.’
There was nothing particularly controversial about the first part of his story. ‘I was recruited to SIS as an undergraduate at Cambridge.’
‘By this man Quentin?’
‘No. He came later.’ Purkiss cast his thoughts back, almost sixteen years. He remembered the reasons he’d believed made signing up worthwhile. Reasons he’d held on to until as recently as last year. That in a world of no certainties, a world of constantly shifting probabilities, it was worth incrementally shifting the balance of probabilities towards a good outcome. Good being a fuzzy concept, something that the majority of reasonable people might agree on.
His beliefs seemed now to him to be at once hopelessly naïve and unnecessarily complicated. Probabilities might be all there were, but human beings weren’t wired to live in a world of probabilities. You had to live as though there were certainties, otherwise you were forever drifting, unanchored and rudderless, a hapless tourist through life.
Hannah’s voice cut through his thoughts. ‘I’m more interested in why you left SIS. You’re too young to be retiring, so that’s not the reason. You might have got fired, but you don’t seem bitter enough for that.’
‘I’m a natural outsider,’ Purkiss said. And although it sounded impossibly trite, and he’d never said anything like it before, he realised at once that it was the truth.
‘So don’t tell me.’ She shook her head, but there was a faint smile at her lips.
The M11 stretched northwards, taking them deeper into fenland. After a few minutes’ silence, Hannah said, ‘Are you armed?’
‘No. You?’
‘You know very well officers of Her Majesty’s Security Service aren’t permitted to bear arms,’ she said mockingly.
Agencies in other countries, like the FBI, were astounded by the British system. Its counterintelligence operatives weren’t even allowed to make arrests, but had to call in the police, specifically Special Branch, to do so.
‘Seriously,’ said Purkiss. ‘Are you carrying?’
In a moment she reached beneath her seat with one hand, her eyes still on the road. She drew out a heavy metal object and tossed it to Purkiss. He caught it.
‘Glock 19,’ he said. ‘Reliable piece.’
‘You know guns?’ she said.
‘Not all that well.’
‘Are you anti them?’
He shook his head once. ‘They’re tools. Nothing more or less.’
‘But…’
‘But, a gun culture isn’t what I’d like to see in this country.’
‘Me neither.’
They lapsed into silence once more. Purkiss had the feeling that something important hadn’t been said yet. He didn’t push it, but handed the gun back. She stowed it under the seat once more.
The late summer afternoon shadows were lengthening, the day still hot and languid, as they crossed into Cambridgeshire. Purkiss used the time to contract and relax the muscle groups in turn: neck, shoulders, arms, chest, abdomen, le
gs. Usually when he took on a mission he had time, even a few hours, to prepare himself mentally and physically. This time the mission had thrust itself upon him without warning, at his home, and he realised he was off-kilter, unsettled by it. The bombing of Al-Bayati’s car had thrown him more than it should have. He couldn’t have anticipated it; but he needed to get into a mindset in which surprises didn’t wrong-foot him quite so badly.
Because he suspected surprises were waiting for him.
Hannah said, ‘What line are we going to take? With Arkwright, if we find him at home?’
‘Well, you might have another idea, but I thought we’d go for the mysterious no-name agency approach. We let him know we’re from some sort of service, down in London, but we keep its exact identity deliberately obscure. Hint at the possibility of a renewed court martial if he doesn’t cooperate, that sort of thing. It all depends how he reacts to us.’
Hannah tipped her head. ‘Sounds workable.’
‘And I thought you could play bad cop. Arkwright sounds like a macho type. It might catch him off guard if the attractive young woman is the ballbreaker.’
He mouth quirked, but she didn’t say anything.
Twenty-three
Dry Perry made it into the category of village by a hair’s breadth, and fifty years earlier it had probably been a hamlet. It lay to the north-east of Cambridge, well off the motorway and even the A roads. Purkiss had lived for five years in Cambridge, but hadn’t explored the surrounding countryside much. Still, he was familiar with the type of terrain; his own childhood had been spent elsewhere in East Anglia, in the flat fenlands and misty fields of rural Suffolk, with their resemblance more to the landscape of the Netherlands than to the rolling-hill idyll which constituted the popular tourist’s view of England.
They pulled into the village at a little after four o’clock. The day’s heat was at its zenith, the low afternoon sun casting giant shadows. Ducks Crossing read a sign beside a narrow road which ran alongside a sculptured pond. Further ahead, a well-manicured village green was bordered by trees on two sides, a pub on a third.
Hannah slowed to a crawl. The satellite navigation system’s usefulness began to break down; the village was evidently too small for fine details to come up on the screen.