Jokerman (John Purkiss 3)

by Tim Stevens

  James said: ‘Brian Tullivant is a murderer.’

  Fifty-one

  When Tullivant realised what had happened, he cursed himself for an idiot.

  Should have seen that one coming.

  He was seated outside a café on the South Bank, two hundred yards from the entrance to the pub, the babbling summer-evening crowds providing a perfect screen which would render him all but invisible. His Mazda was parked round the back in a side street. The display on his watch said it was five past nine.

  He’d been there twenty minutes. When he’d got home and Emma had given him her usual spiel about how she’d been called out, he’d glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall and estimated she was going to be late for her nine p.m. meeting with James Cromer. And by the looks of it, he was right.

  Tullivant had allowed Emma ten minutes, then told Ulyana he was going out with some friends for a drink. She was happy enough, with her chocolate and her television programmes, especially now that the kids were in bed. Tullivant had taken the car and headed north into the city, towards the pub across the river from Thames House.

  It had taken some fairly simple work on Tullivant’s part to ensure that both Emma’s phones – her usual one, and the one she used to communicate with Cromer, which she assumed Tullivant didn’t know about – transmitted a copy of all text messages, both received and sent, to Tullivant’s own handset. The dates, times and locations of the lovers’ trysts were all noted.

  When, yesterday, Cromer had summoned her to meet him at the Tate Modern, Tullivant had been intrigued. They could hardly engage in a quick bout of passion in such a public place, surely? So he’d accompanied Ulyana and the children part of the way to the park, had told them he’d catch up with them after he’d diverted to one or two shops, and had tracked Emma to the Tate. There, he’d seen her huddled with Cromer, and dropping an object into his hand.

  That was when he knew she’d found one or other of the bugs which Cromer had been planting on her. And that was when Tullivant realised events were moving into a new phase.

  Tonight, he expected Cromer to come clean to Emma. To tell her that her faithful, doting husband was the target of a surveillance campaign by the Security Service. And that could prove fatal, not just for Tullivant himself but for the entire operation. So he needed to make a move on Cromer tonight, and silence him.

  By twenty past nine, Tullivant had seen neither Cromer nor Emma enter the pub. Cromer might have arrived there much earlier; but it was unlike Emma to be as late as this.

  Tullivant took out his phone and brought up the screen which showed him a tracking beacon for Emma’s own phone. He didn’t use it much, though he did usually check that she’d arrived at her meetings with Cromer at the appointed locations.

  The gently pulsing orange dot of the beacon appeared after a few seconds, just as Tullivant was beginning to assume that it wasn’t going to show up, which would mean Emma was still underground on the train and therefore not giving off a detectable signal. But instead of identifying the location of her phone as a few hundred yards away from Tullivant, the beacon’s signal was coming from somewhere four miles away, in Fulham.

  Tullivant rose and began striding in the direction of his car. So Cromer had anticipated that Tullivant might close in tonight, and had taken the precaution of intercepting Emma on the tube and diverting her from her planned destination. It was clever, Tullivant had to admit. Far cleverer than Cromer’s cack-handed attempts at audio surveillance had proven, with his hastily planted bugs.

  But Cromer might not know that Tullivant had a GPS lock on his wife’s phone.

  As Tullivant walked, he studied the beacon on the screen. It was moving, though it was impossible to tell whether the phone it was coming from, and by extension Emma, was in a vehicle or on foot. Tullivant had to assume it was a car.

  He reached his Mazda and started the engine, propping the phone in a holder on the dashboard so that he could watch the progress of the beacon on the screen. It was going to be tricky, negotiating inner London’s notoriously convoluted streets in pursuit of a moving target.

  As he drove, Tullivant centred himself, controlling his breathing, focusing on the remaining goals. They presented themselves in his mind with sharp, brittle clarity.

  The first was to dispose of Cromer. That would be relatively easy.

  The second was to neutralise Emma. This one would be harder to achieve, for all sorts of reasons.

  The third of his goals was to terminate John Purkiss.

  Tullivant had been told yesterday: Purkiss is no longer part of the game. You don’t have to concern yourself with him now. But they had seriously underestimated Purkiss. All of them had, Tullivant included. The fools out there in the desert at Scipio Rand had failed to deal with him; and now he was back, and a significant threat as long as he remained alive, even if he appeared to be pursuing the wrong lead.

  Yes; terminating Purkiss was going to be the most difficult task of all.

  Fifty-two

  The floor of the cellar tilted, the walls looming in, curving.

  James was simultaneously nearby and distant, his voice seeming to echo thinly in another room. Emma didn’t look at him, couldn’t, as if to do so would be to bring into final, unbearable focus the reality she was trying to comprehend only indirectly.

  ‘The car bomb on Saturday, in Lewisham,’ James said softly. ‘That was Brian.’

  The words punched her one after the other, the absurdity of them not softening the blows.

  Emma felt a tiny flicker of hope within her. She raised her head, still not looking into James’s face, and said: ‘He couldn’t have done that. He was coaching sport that morning. He left home early.’

  Into the silence that followed, a terrible understanding dropped and spread like ink in a pool of water.

  Brian had said he was coaching sport. But how did she know?

  One by one, the realisations came crowding in, too many for her to deal with. The weekend trips on rugby or cricket tours. The late evenings at away matches. The staff meetings, at what now seemed excessively early hours in the morning.

  Could they all have been lies? All of them? Was it possible?

  Emma knew Brian’s teaching job was genuine; she’d met colleagues of his, had accompanied him to the occasional work do. But she’d never questioned his out-of-hour and weekend commitments, because she’d been too absorbed in her own life, in her work and her affair with James, to take any interest.

  My children’s father is a murderer.

  The though convulsed her stomach. She turned her head to one side as James rose from his chair opposite in alarm. Emma hadn’t eaten since lunch, ten hours earlier, but what came up was enough to spatter her hand and the rough stone floor.

  James was at her side, his hands on her shoulders. She closed her eyes, cringing from his touch, the sour sting of the bile in her nose and mouth humiliating her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured close to her ear. ‘I’ll get some water.’

  Before Emma could protest, could insist that she be allowed to find a bathroom in the house and clean herself up, James had disappeared up the cellar stairs. She heard the door at the top clothes, and the unmistakable metal sound of a bolt being slid home.

  Through her shock and despair, Emma was aware of the anger returning.

  So, he was keeping her a prisoner here.

  There wasn’t much Emma could do except wait, so she turned the chair with her back to the evidence of her retching and hunched over.

  It occurred to her that she had her phone on her. James hadn’t confiscated that. But whom could she call? Brian? Hardly. The police? James probably had influence over them.

  Emma realised she’d never been so alone in her life.

  A thought struck her. The children. Jack and Niamh. She had to get them to safety.

  The glass of her watch had been cracked when James had tackled her in the street, but the mechanism seemed to be working fine. It was a quarter past ten.
Ulyana would be home with the kids. Brian would still be out in the pub with his friends.

  Except he probably wasn’t out socialising, of course. He was somewhere secret, doing God knew what.

  Emma had her fingertips on the phone in her pocket when James came down the steps, carrying a steaming bucket by the handle in on hand, a mop and cloths in the other, together with a half-litre bottle of mineral water.

  When he saw her, he dumped the bucket on the floor and hurried across. He snatched the phone from her.

  ‘Who have you called?’ he demanded.

  Emma stepped back in terror, the backs of her legs nudging the chair. ‘No-one –’

  ‘Who have you called?’

  ‘No-one, I said.’ Her voice had risen with his. ‘I was going to tell the nanny to take the children and get out.’

  ‘No.’ James shoved her phone into his own pocket and tossed the water bottle to her. He seized the mop and began swabbing the stained floor. ‘It would just tip him off.’

  ‘Damn it, James. They’re my children –’

  ‘They’re in no danger.’ He scrubbed angrily at the stone, as though peeling vegetables. ‘Tullivant – Brian – isn’t an indiscriminate killer. He’s go no reason to harm them. If you talk to the nanny, she might tell him, and the game will be up.’

  Emma had been taking a long draught of water. She lowered the bottle and stared at him. ‘The game?’

  James pushed the bucket aside, propping the mop in it. ‘I’m close, Emma. Close to trapping Tullivant. Given all that’s happened in the last few days, he’s bound to slip up. Bound to make a mistake somewhere. Say something he didn’t mean to. Then I’ve got him. Then I can bring him down. Put a stop to all the killing.’ He faced her squarely. ‘But I need your help. You’ve got to go back. Pretend nothing’s happened. Get him to incriminate himself somehow.’

  She continued to gaze at him, barely able to breathe. ‘Go back.’

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘And carry on as before.’

  ‘It’s the only way.’ He gave a half-shrug.

  ‘You must be out of your bloody mind.’

  ‘Emma –’

  ‘You kidnap me. Imprison me in a cellar. Tell me my marriage is a lie, my husband is a multiple killer. And now you want me to return to him, and share a house with him, all so that you can use me to ensnare him for your own ends.’

  ‘Not my ends, Emma. Those of all of us.’

  ‘The answer’s no, James. I’m not going to play any part in this. Not for you, not for anyone.’

  He sighed. Yet again, the concern on his face looked real.

  ‘Emma, how else are you going to be able to get your children away?’

  Terror for Jack and Niamh blazed within her. Her legs faltered and she sat down on the chair, almost overturning it.

  ‘You have to,’ she whispered. ‘You, the police… whoever. You have to go in there and get them out. Now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Emma.’ Now his gentle tone had an undercurrent of hardness. ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  ‘Then I’m going,’ she said, rising once more.

  ‘Emma.’ He stepped between her and the stairs.

  ‘Get out of my way, James,’ she said. ‘Or I’ll scream. And you said you didn’t want to hurt me. You’ll have to hurt me, badly, to make me stop.’

  She made to push past him but he blocked her easily, catching her wrist. Emma opened her mouth to yell.

  And heard the noise, faint and distant, yet sharp enough to penetrate the closed door at the top of the cellar stairs.

  It was the sound of glass breaking.

  ‘God,’ James breathed.

  Fifty-three

  By the time Tullivant reached Fulham, the tracking beacon on the screen had remained stationary for some time, in a location just off Parson’s Green. Tullivant didn’t know the area all that well, so he chose his route by instinct, taking the occasional wrong turn but generally homing in.

  Because he didn’t know exactly where he was heading, he knew it was a risk to take the car right up to the location marked by the beacon, in case his arrival was easily noted. On the other hand, he wanted to be close enough to his vehicle to be able to access it quickly if necessary. He zoomed in on the display until the names of the individual streets became visible.

  The beacon pulsed alongside one of the streets. It suggested that Emma, or Emma’s phone in any case, was inside a building. And probably a house, since this was a residential area. A safe house of some kind, then. One of many that the Security Service would operate throughout the city, and indeed the whole country.

  Compromising, Tullivant pulled over at the side of the road under a street lamp two blocks away, and got out. He considered taking the Timberwolf in its bag, which he had stowed in its compartment under the seat, but decided against it. This was more likely to be a close-range job.

  Inside his leather jacket he had a Heckler & Koch nine millimetre pistol with a spare magazine.

  The few passersby didn’t give him a second glance. Cupping his phone in one hand to shield the blue light from the display, Tullivant headed in the direction of the beacon.

  At the foot of a hill, he stopped. It was the end-of-terrace house on the left, if the GPS tracking signal was accurate. And he had no reason to believe it wasn’t.

  The house appeared to be in darkness. Heavy curtains hung before all the visible windows, so it was possible there was illumination within which was being prevented from escaping.

  After standing completely still for two minutes, absorbing the sights and sounds around him, Tullivant detected no tell-tale signs o an ambush, no obvious security measures.

  He crept up to the front of the house, one hand inside his jacket and on the grip of the pistol.

  Beside the front door, a frosted glass window gave onto a corridor. He’d been wrong; this window wasn’t curtained. And he could see no light beyond.

  Tullivant drew a pair of thin rubber surgical gloves from the pocket of his leather coat and pulled them on. From another pocket he took a balaclava, and he fitted it over his head.

  Holding his breath, Tullivant turned the doorknob and applied gentle pressure.

  It was locked. There was no sudden blare of an alarm from within.

  Tullivant put his shoulder to the window beside the door and leaned. The glass gave a little, creaking, before a splintering crack made him wince at its loudness.

  He stopped, listening.

  From somewhere inside, he heard raised voices. A woman’s, and overlapping with it a man’s, lower, more placating. Tullivant strained to hear, but was unable to make out what they were saying. There was a door between him and the voices; at least one.

  With his leather-clad elbow he knocked out the window glass. The clattering of the shards on the hard floor inside might as well have been a hailstorm on the roof.

  The voices had stopped.

  Tullivant reached quickly through the smashed window, ignoring the pricks of jagged points against his rubber-clad hands. He groped for the latch of the front door, opened it and stepped inside.

  He drew the Heckler & Koch and looked around. To his right, a closed door; ahead, a corridor from which several other exits led.

  He stood very still, once more absorbing his surroundings, reaching out aurally for the slightest clue as to the whereabouts of the owners of the voices he’d heard.

  Nothing.

  He stepped down the corridor at a slight crouch, gun held in a two-handed grip.

  The door at the far end was ajar, and Tullivant thought he could see the arm of a chair beyond. A living room. But it appeared to be in complete darkness. Beside the door, a flight of stairs led up to the next floor.

  He registered the tiny creak of an unoiled hinge an instant after he’d started to turn, his reflexes kicking in and leaving his conscious self lagging. The first door on the right when he’d come in had swung open behind him. Tullivant brought the gun up just as something shot towards
him, black and gleaming, and he felt agony burn its way up his right arm.

  Fifty-four

  James pressed his finger hard and upright against his lips, holding the other hand up in a don’t move gesture.

  Emma stared at him, her eyes wide, and nodded. He reached inside the pocket of his jacket and drew out a knife in a scabbard. She thought it looked like the kind of thing you’d go hunting with.

  Holding one hand up still to make sure she kept her distance, he crept towards the stairs and began to climb them. Emma watched him go, fear rising in her and threatening to erupt into panic. Not daring to move her feet, Emma jammed a fist into her mouth.

  At the top of the steps James paused, his ear to the door. The unsheathed knife in his left hand, he took hold of the doorknob with his right, hesitated a second, then twisted it and flung the door open.

  Emma watched him step out, turn. She heard a rustle of movement, followed by a gritted gasp of pain.

  Then fast footsteps, a thud followed by a crash as what sounded like a human body collided with a door, and the snarling sounds of fighting.

  Emma released the breath she’d been suppressing, terrified by the sounds she could hear in the absence of any visual guide to put them in context. She stared about her, not knowing what she was looking for but desperate to find something that might be useful in some way. Apart from the chairs, and the bucket and mop James had used to clean the floor, there was nothing.

  She couldn’t stay there, in the cellar, like some zoo animal or lab rat.

  Emma started up the steps, her legs faltering like a foal’s. From above her she could hear a choked groaning, as though somebody was being throttled.

  At the open door, she stopped. The sounds of struggle were coming from down the corridor, to her right.

  The front door was on her left, a few feet away.

  Coward, a voice told her.

  But another voice, a more reasonable one, said: It’s the only way. You’d be no help to James. You’d just get yourself killed.