Jokerman (10 page)

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, legs. 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.

‘Park and walk?’ she suggested.

She pulled in by the side of the green. Purkiss felt the sluggish warmth settle over him like a shroud as he stepped out. He noticed Hannah slipping the Glock inside her jacket.

They walked narrow lanes, the odd passerby glancing at them incuriously. They must look like daytrippers, Purkiss thought, or else possibly a city couple looking for a second home as an investment, neither of which would be uncommon in a village like this. After a few minutes Purkiss peered down a muddy driveway towards a cottage half-hidden by a hedge.

‘That’s it,’ he said.

They made their way down the drive, avoiding neat piles of horse manure. Purkiss wondered whether Arkwright had taken up farming since his discharge from the armed forces. Yes: the driveway opened out into a yard with stables and a small barn. To the left, in a paddock a pair of heavy horses snuffled and drowsed in the heat. On the other side of the cottage, marshland disappeared towards the tree-lined horizon.

The only vehicle in the yard was a rusting pickup truck on flat tyres, which looked like it was there to be tinkered with but of little further use. Purkiss and Hannah stood still, scanning the cottage. The windows were open, suggesting current habitation, but there were no signs of life.

They walked up to the front door, a weighty antique-looking affair with a brass knocker. Purkiss rapped hard, three times.

Immediately a dog’s barking echoed from within. A medium-sized animal, Purkiss guessed: a Labrador or collie. The barking approached the door and continued there.

Nobody opened the door. Hannah stepped back and gazed up at the windows. No head appeared.

They did a quick circuit of the cottage, peering in at the windows. Nothing suggested anyone was home.

Hannah said, ‘Do we wait?’

Purkiss shrugged. ‘Or we could try the local pub. A place this size, someone there is bound to know where Arkwright is.’

The pub,
The Green Man
, bore the traditional emblem of a bearded and slightly sinister face surrounded by leaves and tendrils. The building appeared authentically old, its Tudor beams listing alarmingly. The doorway was low and Purkiss had to duck as he stepped inside, Hannah behind him.

The scattered late afternoon clientele was as listless as the day outside. Four men sat at the bar counter itself, murmuring their conversation into pint glasses while the florid landlord roved across from them, rubbing crockery dry. A clump of farmers sat around a table to the left, gently joshing one of their number who looked morose. To the right of the counter a girl and a boy, both temporary staff, flirted almost invisibly. A middle-aged tourist couple ate their late sandwich lunches in hasty silence in a booth near the entrance, as if conscious of their outsider status.

One or two of the farmers at the table glanced round as Purkiss and Hannah entered, their gazes lingering on Hannah before they turned back to themselves. A fresh laugh rose from the table.

Purkiss eased himself in among the drinkers at the bar, Hannah beside him. The landlord beamed tiredly.

‘What’ll it be, sir?’

‘We’re looking for Dennis Arkwright,’ said Purkiss, a little more loudly than necessary.

The low hum of conversation in the pub didn’t quite stop entirely, but there was an almost tangible change in the atmosphere, a tightening. Purkiss was aware, on the periphery of his vision, of faces turned towards them.

The landlord’s smile had faded a degree, though it lingered as if unwilling to let go of his face.

Hannah said, ‘Do you know him?’

After a pause, the landlord said: ‘I know him, yes. But he’s not here.’

Purkiss half-turned, addressed the room. One or two more people had wandered in since he and Hannah had arrived. ‘Does anyone here know where Dennis Arkwright might be?’

‘Who wants to know?’ a voice called. It was one of the farmers sitting round the table. Their boozy cheeriness was gone, and they stared at Purkiss and Hannah with open curiosity and a trace of belligerence.

Purkiss held up his fake warrant card. ‘Police,’ he said.

Now all conversation did stop, even the tourists near the door staring across.

The landlord said, quietly, ‘What’s the trouble?’

‘We just need to ask Mr Arkwright a few questions. So if anyone here knows where he might be at the moment, it really would be a great help.’ Purkiss’s tone suggested that, on the other hand,
not
to reveal where Arkwright was might be seen as obstructive.

One of the farmers pushed his chair back, the legs screeching on the rough wooden floor. He reached for his pocket.

Purkiss tensed. A blade? A gun, even? But the man took out a phone. Holding Purkiss’s stare, he murmured into it, then put it away.

He stood up. Purkiss stepped away from the counter and towards him.

The man was in his late twenties, burly, with the ruddy face and neck of someone who spent most of his day in the sun. His build suggested a life of physical labour.

‘Can you help us?’ Purkiss asked.

The man appraised him, then glanced past him at Hannah who was close behind. He jerked his head.

‘I’m Dennis Arkwright’s son,’ he said. ‘He’ll meet you outside.’

The rest of the farmers didn’t move. All eyes followed the three of them as they made their way to the door, the younger man in the lead. The tourist couple cringed away, not making eye contact as if to do so would rope them into the situation somehow.

The man glanced back to make sure Purkiss and Hannah were with him, and turned left, walking along the road in front of the pub. At the side was an open wooden gate leading into the car park, where a few vehicles were scattered about.

The man stopped, turned.

‘He’s on his way,’ he said.

Purkiss studied him. The photo Vale had sent of Dennis Arkwright had been of low quality, and the man’s features had been so generic that it was difficult to see any resemblance in the son.

‘What’s your name?’ said Purkiss.

The man stared back, said nothing.

‘Behind us,’ murmured Hannah.

Purkiss stepped back and turned, so that he could keep Arkwright’s son in his field of vision.

Walking towards them from the car park gate were two more men, of a similar age to the one who’d led them there. One of the men was taller and even broader than him. The other was smaller, wiry, his face drawn and tight, his eyes glittering.

There was a distinct similarity in the features of all three men.

The bigger man held a crowbar, hanging down by his side so that the end tapped against his leg. A length of chain was wrapped around the fist of the smaller man, the end swinging as he walked.

The first man, the one whom they’d met inside the pub, reached into his pocket, pulled out a small metallic object. The blade sprang free with a
snick
.

The two newcomers stopped ten feet away from Purkiss and Hannah.

‘Who
are
you?’ said the big man.