by Tim Stevens
‘It certainly sounds like his name, but –’
‘It’s him.’
‘There must be hundreds, thousands of people with the same –’
‘Oh, give me a break, Quentin.’ Purkiss paced about the living room of the Covent Garden flat. He’d arrived there half an hour earlier to find Vale already ensconced. Hannah had dropped Purkiss nearby and gone off on her own, to await his call. They’d agreed he wouldn’t say anything about her yet, to either Vale or Kasabian.
Hannah had insisted on the way down that Purkiss have his wounds attended to, and had pressed him, ignoring his protestations until he’d rung Vale once more and asked for a doctor to attend at the flat. The doctor had arrived five minutes after Purkiss and before Purkiss could reveal his discovery to Vale. A middle-aged, taciturn man, the doctor had probed Purkiss’s wounds, asking a few questions about the circumstances in which they’d been sustained but passing no comment. He’d cleaned and dressed them, given Purkiss a tetanus shot even though he was up to date, offered painkillers which Purkiss declined, and handed him two bottles of pills.
‘Antibiotics,’ the doctor said curtly. ‘For the bite. Don’t miss any. If the wound turns septic, seek help at once.’
With a nod to Vale, he’d left.
‘Service?’ Purkiss asked. He meant their service, SIS, not Kasabian’s lot.
‘A friend,’ said Vale.
It was code for one hundred per cent discreet and trustworthy.
Then Purkiss had laid his phone, with the sound file he’d transferred from Hannah’s, on the dining table and hit the play key.
He watched Vale while the older man listened, not getting it the first time.
Purkiss rewound the final exchange and played it a second, and a third time. Vale leaned forward a fraction.
‘Again,’ he murmured.
On the fourth listen, he glanced up at Purkiss, a question in his eyes. Purkiss said: ‘Tell me what you heard.’
‘Not hospital,’ said Vale. ‘Rossiter.’
And he’d started coming up with arguments against it, against the notion that Arkwright’s dying words had referred to Richard Rossiter, the man Purkiss had last seen as they’d both been hauled off a boat on the freezing Baltic Sea. The man who had very nearly succeeded in assassinating the Russian president a few minutes before that.
The man who’d corrupted Purkiss’s fiancée, Claire, and whom Purkiss should have killed when he’d had the chance.
Vale closed his eyes, as though mentally reaching out for possibilities that made sense. He shook his head slightly.
‘Let’s come back to that.’
‘Quentin –’
‘We’ll come back to it. First, debrief.’
Purkiss didn’t point out that Kasabian hadn’t arrived yet, and that he’d have to repeat the story for her benefit. Hearing the account for a second time, Vale would spot inconsistencies, details that hadn’t been there the first time. Sometimes that led to clues. Breakthroughs, even.
Purkiss related everything he’d learned from Arkwright, virtually word for word. He omitted all mention of Hannah Holley, giving the impression that he’d obtained Arkwright’s name himself from Morrow’s notes. When he reached the remarks Arkwright had made about Guy Strang, Vale reacted almost imperceptibly: he parted his lips, blinked twice. For Vale, that was like slapping the table in delight.
‘My take on it,’ said Purkiss, ‘is that this attacker – the one who killed Arkwright and his sons, the one who came after me at my home – had Arkwright wired. Either him personally, or his cottage. He was holed up close by, and when Arkwright dropped the Strang bombshell, he moved in.’
‘He was well equipped,’ said Vale. ‘Teargas grenades and mask, small arms.’
‘Arkwright was a Royal Marine, remember. And his sons, though they weren’t professional fighters, were experienced brawlers. The attacker knew what he was up against.’
Vale tipped his head in acknowledgement.
‘It bothers me, though,’ said Purkiss. ‘Why would he happen to be holed up just then, when I arrived?’
‘Because he knew somehow you were coming,’ offered Vale.
‘Then why did he wait until Arkwright crossed the line before making his attack? Why not just smoke us all out as soon as he knew I was in the cottage?’
‘Perhaps he wanted to avoid out-and-out carnage.’ Vale shrugged. ‘Perhaps he’d have preferred to wait till you’d left, then pick you off away from the cottage. You forced his hand by getting Arkwright to reveal what he did.’
Purkiss reached for the two-litre bottle of water he’d filled from the tap. Something else was bothering him about the way the whole episode had played out. He grasped at it, but it eluded him.
Kasabian arrived, letting herself in. She looked Purkiss over, noted the dressed arm, the facial plasters and bruises.
Without asking how he was, she got to the point.
‘Quentin here has told me some of it. Earlier he mentioned you were investigating a man named Arkwright, who had SIS connections.’ She took the mug of tea Vale handed her. ‘I’ve searched our files myself, manually. There’s nothing on him.’
‘Nothing,’ said Purkiss.
‘Not a mention of him anywhere. Which is odd. These former high-level military types who get themselves kicked out… they usually come up on our radar. I’m not talking ordinary squaddies who basically joined the armed forces to knock heads together and who’ll have ample opportunity to carry on doing so as civilians. I mean career soldiers. Proud men. They take badly to having their aspirations terminated. Often they set up mercenary groups, and we catch them domestically doing deals with gun runners. Or, they join right-wing extremist outfits. But this Arkwright doesn’t feature at all.’
‘Is it possible all intelligence on him might have been erased from your databases?’ asked Purkiss.
‘Possible, yes.’
That would make sense, thought Purkiss.
She raised her eyebrows, the rest of her pouchy face failing to lift with them. ‘So who is he?’
Purkiss told her.
When he reached the part where Guy Strang was mentioned, her reaction was more conventional than Vale’s had been. She jammed a thumbnail between her teeth and tore it audibly.
‘Fuck me,’ she hissed, her eyes distant.
She took three strides over to Purkiss, seemed about to embrace him, thought better of it and clapped a hand on his uninjured shoulder.
‘Excellent work.’
‘It’s hardly proof,’ Purkiss said, thinking of what Hannah had said.
‘It’s proof enough for me,’ Kasabian breathed. ‘It means I’m right. I knew he was involved.’ She gazed off again, her expression wondering, but also triumphant. ‘It means we’ve got a focus for our efforts.’
Purkiss concluded his account. He described the recording of Arkwright’s last words, and played it back for her. Afterwards she rocked her head.
‘Difficult to tell,’ she said. ‘The two of you are more likely to hear Rossiter than I am, because you’ve had a personal involvement with him.’
‘You know of him, though,’ Purkiss said.
‘Of course. He was very nearly the first person to be tried in this country for high treason since William Joyce in 1946. It would’ve been difficult to keep that secret, though, so the Crown got him on terrorism and murder charges. It’s multiple life sentences either way.’
Purkiss had deliberately been kept from involvement in the proceedings against Rossiter, but he knew the man had undergone due process, in a trial which had been conducted as far as possible out of the public eye.
‘The one thing that does make sense,’ said Vale, ‘is that Arkwright did some freelance work for SIS as well. This would have been later, after the work he alleges he did for Strang. Rossiter was SIS. There might be a connection there.’
‘Okay,’ said Kasabian. She ran a hand through her hair. Purkiss could see she was distracted, her thoughts still on Strang.
‘I’ll see what I can dig up on Rossiter, though I doubt it’ll be much of relevance. He did a pretty good job of covering his tracks. Quentin, maybe you can look at the SIS databases again. See if there’s anything fresh that might link him to Arkwright.’
‘There’s something else we can do as well,’ said Purkiss.
Kasabian looked at him. ‘What’s that?’
‘Get me access to Rossiter.’
They were both silent, Kasabian and Vale.
Purkiss went on: ‘Direct, face to face access. You can swing it.’
Kasabian breathed out, shook her head slowly. ‘There’s no way you’re using duress against him.’
‘I’m not talking about using duress,’ said Purkiss. ‘I won’t be interrogating him at all.’
‘Then... what?’
‘I’ll ask him for his help.’
Kasabian probed his face with her eyes. Vale, on the other hand, looked thoughtful. Purkiss wondered if he knew what Purkiss had in mind.
Purkiss said, ‘Rossiter’s a patriot. A twisted, misguided, delusional patriot, but a patriot nonetheless. He has his own view of what’s best for the country, and he’ll follow that path no matter what. Even at the cost of his own skin. On that boat, in the baltic, he actually asked - begged - me to kill him, rather than bring him in and cast the Service into disrepute.’
Kasabian glanced at Vale, then back at Purkiss. She made a rolling movement with her hand: keep going.
‘If I put it to Rossiter that his cooperation is important to national security, and if I can convince him of it, he’ll play ball. He might try to manipulate me, to play games, but he’ll do it. The hard part will be convincing him of it. Because we don’t know that this does involve national security at all. I’ll have to lie persuasively.’
‘How will you know he’s telling you the truth, rather than feeding you misinformation?’ asked Kasabian. ‘He hoodwinked you before.’
‘I won’t know. I’ll just have to be on my guard.’ Purkiss looked at each of them in turn. ‘Come on. It makes sense. The sooner we do this, the better. In the mean time you can look for connections within the respective services.’
Kasabian was silent for a beat. Then she said: ‘All right. I’ll arrange it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It’ll be tough,’ she said. ‘Doing it without tipping off Strang... it’ll take some doing.’
‘I’m sure you’ll find a way.’
Kasabian left. Purkiss thought she had a spring in her step.
‘It was risky, telling her,’ said Purkiss.
‘She had to know, John.’
‘Nevertheless.’ Purkiss began to pace again. ‘If she’s not careful, she’ll play straight into Strang’s hands. Make a blunder of some kind.’
Vale said, ‘There’s something else that’s risky. It concerns your meeting Rossiter.’
‘What’s that? If you’re worried I’m going to attack him, finish what I started in Tallinn, forget it. I wouldn’t have the opportunity, anyway. The security around him will be airtight.’
‘It’s not him I’m concerned about,’ Vale murmured. ‘It’s you.’
‘Why?’
‘Coming face to face with him for the first time since... well, since then. You don’t know what it’ll trigger in you.’
Purkiss stopped pacing, faced Vale. ‘I’ve come to terms,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Very well.’ Vale looked at his watch. ‘I’d better set to work.’
Thirty-one
After Vale had left, Purkiss phoned the hospital and spoke to the registrar on duty in the Intensive Care Unit. Kendrick was still comatose and being ventilated. Brain oedema was still there, but under control. There was otherwise no change in his condition.
Purkiss rang Hannah.
‘Where are you?’
‘Home,’ she said. ‘Marble Arch.’
‘Come round here,’ he said. ‘I’ll update you, and we can go through Morrow’s paperwork together again.’
He gave her directions, not insulting her by advising her to employ countersurveillance methods en route. While he was waiting for her he ordered Chinese takeaway food.
Hannah arrived half an hour later, just after the food. She’d changed into casual trousers and a lightweight sweater which accentuated her slimness.
Over their meal, Purkiss brought her up to speed.
‘You’re going to speak to this Rossiter yourself?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Kasabian’s going to try and arrange it for tomorrow morning.’
‘So what do we do till then?’
‘We wait,’ said Purkiss. ‘As I said, it would be useful if you went through Morrow’s files with me. You might spot something I didn’t.’
They spent a couple of hours sprawled on the uncomfortably new sofas around a low table in the small living room, going over the paperwork again, looking to see if Arkwright’s name came up the way it had in the notebook Hannah had found. There was no mention of the man. Nor was there any hint of a connection with Rossiter.
‘Maybe the notebook was more up to date than any of this stuff,’ Hannah suggested. ‘Charlie might have only discovered the Arkwright link recently.’
‘Possibly. But the most recent memos and email transcripts here are from a couple of days before his death.’
‘Still doesn’t mean much. He wouldn’t necessarily mention Arkwright in every single piece of correspondence.’
Purkiss filled and refilled the coffee. At last he glanced up at the clock, his head swimming, and saw it was almost midnight.
‘We’re not going to find anything here,’ he said. ‘At least not tonight.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Damn it.’
‘You drive here?’
‘Caught the tube.’
‘They’ll still be running, but I can call a cab –’
She watched Purkiss, her gaze frank.
He felt a slow warmth spread from his chest, upwards through his throat and face, and downwards as well.
Wordlessly he shifted over on the sofa. She rose from hers and sat beside him, leaning in towards him.
For a moment she rested her head in the crook of his arm. He laid his hand along her side, feeling the dip of her ribcage towards her narrow waist. Her hair smelled warm and freshly washed, a spicy scent he couldn’t easily identify.
Purkiss pressed his lips against her hair, let them linger.
Hannah slipped a hand up his chest, stroking lightly. She tilted her head and his lips found her forehead. The fingers of his own hand ran down the smooth softness of her cheek.
Purkiss moved, turning towards her, and she slid her arms around his neck. Their mouths met, probed, her tongue slick against his. He wound his arms around her waist and pulled her hard against him.
Quickly, awkwardly they grappled with their clothes, fumbling and kicking. Hannah frowned as his left arm was exposed, swathed in its bandage. Purkiss’s hands roved over her bottom, her thighs, their smoothness marred only by the dressing on her own wound.
She straddled him and he entered her, groaning. Her feet were on the floor in front of the sofa and provided leverage as she rocked up and down. She flung her head back, her glossy hair writhing, her breasts thrust out. As they approached their peak, Hannah swung forwards, her hair shrouding Purkiss’s face, her mouth seeking his again.
Afterwards she lay slumped across him on the sofa, her breathing synching with his. Purkiss touched the sweat-slick groove of her spine with his fingertips, inhaled her hair once more.
She seemed to sense he was about to say something because she half-lifted her head and said, ‘No talk. Is that all right? No murmurings. Just… it.’
He nodded. Grasping her waist with both hands, he lifted her off him and sat up.
She peered into his eyes. ‘You’re not offended, are you? I didn’t mean to –’
‘Shh.’ Rising, he took her hand, led her to the bedroom.
Thirty-two
Lying to Brian o
ver the phone on Friday, when she’d called him to say she had to attend Sir Guy and wouldn’t be home till later that evening, had been relatively easy because Emma hadn’t had to see his face. This time it was more difficult.
It was Sunday morning, and the breakfast dishes were piled up ready for scraping and then the dishwasher. Brian had made one of his epic breakfasts for the two of them and the children, and they’d lingered over it, making it last nearly two hours. Niamh and Jack were in the garden, yelling in carefree delight. Their shrieks intensified when Ulyana the nanny arrived.
Emma bustled about the kitchen, stealing glances at her husband’s profile. His face was always utterly relaxed, even when he was concentrating on a task, in this case getting dried egg yolk off a plate. His hair was tousled still, even his moustache a little ungroomed. As usual he was in cargo trousers and a rugby sweatshirt.
After the kids had returned yesterday, Emma had had little time to think about the object she’d found in the lining of her handbag. But its presence in her pocket, where she’d stowed it, nagged at her for the rest of the day. She’d listened to the children’s account of their misadventures at the Finches’ last night, had taken them shopping into Wimbledon that afternoon and spoilt them with treats – something she felt guilty about, because it felt like compensation for her betrayal of her family – and had undergone the protracted process that evening of feeding and bathing them.
Brian arrived home from cricket coaching a little after eight. She’d forgotten there was a match on after the coaching, and he’d bustled in, looking tired but happy.
‘My lot won,’ he said. ‘And just as well, too, considering how much work I’ve put into them.’
She kissed him, made an effort to ask him about his day, apologised once again for missing their evening together the night before. By no means everything she said was insincere. She had a genuine affection for this man, which had never waned even as the physical attraction, the excitement, had. He’d make a good friend, and an occasional confidante, in another life. Some of Emma’s friends had gay male friends, and she thought Brian would fit that particular bill rather well. If he was gay, which he wasn’t.
