‘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.’