Purkiss glanced at her as though mulling it over. He turned back to Arkwright.
‘If we do what my colleague suggests, you will talk, Arkwright. That’s one hundred per cent certain. You’ve obviously been through a lot of pain, by the look of you. But you really have no idea what pain is. None whatsoever. Trust me on that.’ He shrugged amiably. ‘On the other hand, if you help us a little bit, that can all be avoided.’
Arkwright’s lips were parted half an inch. Purkiss watched the rise and fall of his chest. His respiratory rate had increased. The man was frightened.
‘What’s your connection with Mohammed Al-Bayati?’ Purkiss asked softly.
Arkwright moved his mouth as though tonguing the insides of his cheeks moist once more.
He said, ‘I tortured him.’
Twenty-seven
‘I left the Royal Marines in October 2002.’
‘You were discharged then. Yes,’ said Purkiss.
Arkwright glared at him. One of his sons had brought him a glass of water and he’d gulped it down, held it out for more. It seemed to loosen his tongue.
‘Just missed it,’ Arkwright said, his eyes far away.
‘Missed what?’
‘Iraq. It was the big one. The one we all knew was coming.’ He squinted at Purkiss. ‘You a soldier? No, of course you weren’t. Too soft-looking. But if you’d been one of us, at that time, knowing the momentum was building, that we were going back into the Middle East… Christ, the buzz was like nothing else I’ve ever felt.’ He shook his head savagely. ‘And I missed it.’
‘Through no fault of your own, of course,’ Hannah chimed in. One of the sons, Steve, the one who’d had the knife, clenched his teeth and fists, avoiding looking at her.
Arkwright said, ‘But I wanted to help. Wanted to be part of it, in some way. I tried enlisting again. Said I’d take any job, cleaning out the fucking barrack toilets if I had to. But they didn’t want to know.’
Purkiss waited. Through the cottage’s windows, the sunlight was starting to slant as the afternoon tipped towards early evening.
‘So I did the usual,’ Arkwright continued. ‘Looked for private work. Everyone knew there was going to be plenty of it after the invasion, so with my experience, my background, it wasn’t hard to get a job.’
Purkiss remembered. Ten years ago it had seemed that every other former soldier was setting up his own mercenary outfit, eager for the pickings to be had in the post-Saddam chaos.
‘I signed up, and sat on my arse for the first year. For a while, because Baghdad fell so quickly, it looked possible that things were going to settle down and there’d be less need for us. But when the insurgency got underway, when the roadside bombs started going off, the contracts started pouring in.’
‘So you went.’
‘Yeah. Bodyguard work, mostly, at first. Escorting bigwigs in the new administration to and from meetings. It wasn’t a bad life. There was sunshine, and the pay was good.’
‘What happened to your face?’ said Hannah.
It caught Arkwright off guard. Involuntarily he put a hand up to his cheek, then angrily dropped it again.
‘Al Hillah,’ he said. ‘February 2005. Suicide bombing at a police recruiting station. I caught some shrapnel.’
Purkiss recalled the attack. More than a hundred people had been killed. A Jordanian had been responsible.
‘I came back to have it fixed,’ Arkwright continued. ‘Back to Britain. The firm I worked for paid for the surgery privately. You think this looks bad now, you should have seen it before the doctors got to work on it.’
‘And then you went back?’ said Purkiss.
Arkwright fell silent. His mouth twitched.
‘Back to Iraq?’ Purkiss prompted.
‘No,’ muttered Arkwright. ‘I didn’t.’
Purkiss waited again.
‘I was going to go back,’ said Arkwright. ‘I wanted to get back so badly and kill the bastards. Kill all of them, for what they’d done to me. And I was at the airport, all set to leave. Fighting fit.’
‘But?’
‘Then these men approach me as I’m in line to board the plane. Ask me to come with them. Couple of guys in suits.’ He narrowed his eyes, remembering. ‘They know who I am. That’s obvious. Tell me my life story. They ask me if I’d really, really like to do something useful to get back at the bombers who did this to me. I say yes, of course. For a moment I think they’re going to tell me the military wants me back. Then they tell me I’m not going back to the Gulf. That I’m going to stay here in the UK.’
Arkwright’s voice was rising as he warmed to his story. Around him, his sons gazed at him impassively. Purkiss couldn’t tell whether or not they’d heard this before.
‘They ask me if I’d be willing to help them extract information from prisoners. Terrorists and criminals, and the people who support and enable them. They tell me I have no idea, the public has no idea, how many such people are operating in Britain. That Saddam’s agents are everywhere, feeding off the country like maggots, rotting it away. That if I cooperate, I’ll not only be avenging myself, but that I’ll be doing more of a patriotic service to my country than the bravest soldier out there in the desert.’
He spread his palms.
‘So I said yes. I stayed in Britain, and within a week I started work. I’d get called for a few days’ stint at a time, and they’d bring me whatever equipment I asked for, and I’d do my job. Iraqis, Jordanians, a few British-born Pakistanis. Mostly hard nuts, people they hadn’t managed to get to talk using the normal methods. I asked them about links with terrorist cells here in Britain and the rest of Europe, and connections with the insurgency back in Iraq. And I was good. I got results.’
Purkiss saw a glint in Arkwright’s eyes that hadn’t been there before.
‘How many?’ asked Purkiss.
Arkwright rocked a palm. ‘Over two years… maybe a hundred? One a week. Though they tended to come in batches.’
Purkiss thought quickly. There was a lot of information to be gained here, a lot of detail, and he had to decide what to prioritise while Arkwright was being so forthcoming.
‘Where does Mohammed Al-Bayati fit into this?’
‘He was one of the people I… interrogated,’ said Arkwright. ‘Iraqi ex-pat, living in London.’
Hannah asked: ‘How do you remember him so clearly? If he was one among a hundred?’
Arkwright’s eyes flicked to her, then back to Purkiss. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re lying,’ said Purkiss.
‘I don’t know,’ repeated Arkwright.
Purkiss decided to change tack. ‘Who were you working for? These people who approached you at the airport.’
‘They were MI5.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because…’ Arkwright looked at his hands on the table. ‘Because I put two and two together. They were bringing in a steady stream of prisoners for me to interrogate. They were concerned with public security. I didn’t have to sign the Official Secrets Act, obviously, but I still knew who they were. Also — ’
‘Yes?’ said Purkiss.
This time Arkwright took a long breath, sucking air in through his nose, exhaling through his mouth.
‘Sometimes another man came and watched me at work. I got the feeling he was in charge. He never spoke to me, just watched. Through one-way glass. I assumed he wanted to hear for himself, first-hand, the answers I was getting.’
‘And?’
‘I’ve seen his picture in the paper more recently. Couple of years ago. When he was appointed head of MI5.’
Purkiss felt a jolt pass through his chest, sensed Hannah tensing beside him.
‘Guy Strang,’ said Arkwright. ‘Now the MI5 boss. He watched me torture those prisoners. He was in charge.’
Electrified, Purkiss gripped the edge of the table to prevent himself from rising from his chair.
A second later the window exploded inwards.