‘Understood.’
‘Also, I need a face to face debrief with you and Kasabian at the earliest opportunity.’
‘Done,’ said Vale. ‘Are you intact, John?’
‘Bit jittery, but otherwise fine,’ said Purkiss. ‘One gunman. He killed Arkwright and his sons, and got away. He was the one who attacked me at my house. Who shot Kendrick.’
‘Interesting,’ said Vale.
‘Get a move on, if you could,’ said Purkiss. ‘I can hear sirens.’
He rang off. Hannah, who had risen from Arkwright’s side, said, ‘How do you know it was the same man as the one at your house? You said he was wearing a balaclava.’
‘And this one had a gas mask on,’ Purkiss said. ‘But it was his build, and the way he moved. The same man. I’m almost certain of it.’
Hannah looked around, blinking, rubbing at her eyes. ‘Water helps,’ she said.
They found a tap near the barn and used it to sluice their eyes. As the irritation eased, Purkiss became more aware of his other discomforts: the bite in his upper arm, the head wounds.
He said, ‘The man will have dropped whatever he used to fire the teargas grenades somewhere nearby. Plus, there’s his handgun, which he also dropped.’
There wouldn’t be any prints — the attacker was a professional, and had been using gloves — but the weapons might produce other important information. Purkiss and Hannah were heading round the side of the cottage when his phone rang.
It was Vale: ‘The local police and other emergency services have been ordered to hang back. Special Branch are coming in. You’re to get out of there immediately and not let them see you. Any information they need, Kasabian will relay to them after we’ve met and debriefed.’
‘Thanks, Quentin.’ He put the phone away, said to Hannah, ‘You okay to drive?’
They left the property over a side wall, assuming there’d be a throng of onlookers at the end of the driveway, which turned out to be the case as they crept past. Wherever possible they avoided passing another human being until they made it to the green and Hannah’s Peugeot.
On the journey back to London, Hannah squinting against the setting sun, Purkiss replayed the sequence of what had happened over and over in his mind. He knew false notes, misremembered details, would creep in, as they inevitably did; but he’d found such rehearsal useful for giving a more-or-less accurate account later.
‘It won’t be enough,’ Hannah said.
Purkiss looked at her.
‘What Arkwright said about Sir Guy Strang,’ she said. ‘It isn’t enough for Kasabian to do anything with.’
‘But it’s a start,’ said Purkiss. ‘It’s a pointer in a definite direction.’
He asked for Hannah’s phone, and began to play the recording of Arkwright’s dying words in a loop, holding the device close to his ear so he could pick up any nuances, any background details. He heard, distantly, the boom of the shotgun several times as he fired it at his assailant.
Purkiss focused on the later part of the recording.
‘Something…’
‘Yes?’
‘Tell you… something else.’
Wheeze. ‘Hospital.’
‘I’ll get you to hospital. Just — ’
‘Hospital.’
He played it again.
And again.
‘Hospital.’
It was like three words, the syllables broken up as Arkwright struggled to get them out.
Hos…pi…tal.
Except it wasn’t at all clear that the plosive p was there. It might have been a click or a pop caused by Arkwright’s jagged breathing, or by external interference.
Nor was the final l distinct.
Purkiss rewound to the first time Arkwright used the word, after the long wheeze.
This time there was no mistaking it.
Arkwright hadn’t been saying hospital at all.
Purkiss stared through the windscreen at the lengthening shadows on the motorway, the firefly lights of the cars ahead.
He picked up his own phone. Dialled.
Vale sounded surprised. ‘I haven’t confirmed the rendezvous time with Kasabian yet,’ he said. ‘I told you I’d call — ’
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Purkiss said.
Thirty
‘It could be coincidence,’ said Vale.
‘It’s him,’ Purkiss said.
‘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.