‘Good God, of course there are.’ Rossiter looked mildly astounded. ‘I never said there weren’t.’
‘But you won’t reveal their names.’
Rossiter sighed. ‘John, you’re at risk of becoming something I’d never have thought you were capable of. Boring. Are you going to get to the point?’
‘All right. I need your help.’
Purkiss had meant to wrong-foot Rossiter, and if he didn’t quite succeed, he saw from the raised eyebrows that he’d at least surprised the man.
‘Well. That, I wasn’t expecting, I must admit. Full marks for honesty.’
Purkiss took from his pocket the one object he’d been allowed to bring in with him. It was a printout of the photo of Arkwright from the SIS database, the one Vale had sent him. The one showing Arkwright before the scars.
Rossiter took out a pair of glasses and put them on, peering down his nose at the picture. He seemed to consider for a moment; then he said, ‘Dennis Arkwright. In handsomer days.’
‘That’s very forthcoming of you,’ said Purkiss.
Rossiter shrugged. ‘There’s no reason I’d keep his identity secret. He was never a colleague of mine. Just a thug for hire, with a brute talent for interrogation.’
‘He’s dead.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
‘He was shot yesterday. I was there.’
Rossiter waited.
‘What was your connection with him?’
‘Now, now, John.’ Rossiter wagged a finger. ‘You’re going to have to give me a little more.’
‘Before he died,’ said Purkiss, slowing down for emphasis, ‘Arkwright revealed he was hired as a torturer by the current head of the Security Service, Sir Guy Strang.’
And there it was, definitely this time. The force behind the eyes. The roiling, almost feral energy.
Rossiter leaned in.
‘Now you’re being interesting,’ he said.
Thirty-five
‘Istanbul, in early 2007, it would have been. You were in Marseille at the time, weren’t you? Yes. My brief was to investigate the flow of Turkish drug money which was suspected to be helping fund the insurgency in Iraq.’
Rossiter’s gaze was in the distance as he remembered.
‘Our relationship, the Service’s relationship, with the Turkish authorities, was — how can I put it? — complex. Nominally we were allies, and still are. But there was a strong element within the Turkish services which bitterly resented our presence there, even though various pacts and accords enshrined our rights to be involved. So although we were reliant to some extent from the intelligence shared with us by our Turkish counterparts, we couldn’t always fully trust either its accuracy or its completeness.
‘I decided this wasn’t good enough, and developed my own intelligence-gathering network within the city. Off the books, of course. The official SIS line, even internally, was that we were to engage in no underhand operations that didn’t have the approval of the authorities.
‘I used local people for the gathering of intelligence, but outside sources for the extraction of information. I’d tried Turkish interrogators before, but I’d found them either too soft on their compatriots, or by contrast too zealous. One has to strike a balance. So I hand-picked a number of people, mostly Europeans, to carry out the questioning of individuals I’d identified as being involved in the local drug business.’
‘One of them being Arkwright,’ said Purkiss.
‘Yes. He came recommended to me through a complicated series of links, none of which probably have any bearing on the matter at hand. I learned of his background as a Royal Marine Commando, and of his dishonourable discharge. At the time I recruited him, he was working for a low-rent security firm in Saudi Arabia.’
‘Did you discover anything about his involvement with the Security Service?’
‘No. That part was carefully covered up. No doubt he’d had professional assistance in doing so. His CV was a list of short-term contracts with assorted mercenary and security outfits. I looked into one or two of them, they held up, so I didn’t bother vetting him further.’
‘Sloppy,’ remarked Purkiss.
Rossiter turned a palm upwards. ‘Perhaps. But you have to remember, John, I wasn’t hiring an agent to do sensitive, complicated undercover work. I was hiring a torturer. A flavour of the background of such a person is usually all that’s necessary.’
Purkiss thought about it. ‘You recruited Arkwright in early 2007.’
‘March, I believe.’
‘He told me he’d left Iraq in February 2005, after the car bombs at Al Hillah. He returned to Britain to have his injuries seen to. And then, as he was about to go back to Iraq, he was approached by the Security Service.’
‘When was that, exactly?’ said Rossiter.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to clarify that point.’ Purkiss counted off on his fingers. ‘But let’s say he was undergoing medical treatment for three months. That’s probably an underestimate, given the apparent extent of his injuries, but we’ll say three months. He’s recruited by the Security Service in May 2005. He told me he worked for them for two years. Till May 2007, that would be. It doesn’t tally with when you say you hired him.’
‘It’s close, though’ said Rossiter. ‘When he told you two years, it might have been an estimate.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘But I take your point. And if he did come to work for me immediately after the Security Service work, it means the last job on his CV — the one in Saudi — was fake.’
Purkiss drew a long breath, released it through his nose. He sifted through the information, trying to find something of use.
‘Why would Arkwright have mentioned you with his dying breath?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been wondering that myself,’ Rossiter said, sounding genuinely intrigued. ‘He obviously wanted you to speak to me, but it’s hard to fathom why.’
‘Did you ever have anything to do with Mohammed Al-Bayati?’
‘No. I hadn’t heard of him until you mentioned his name. I didn’t have a great deal of involvement in the Iraq arena.’
Purkiss ran through the sequence in his mind again. Al-Bayati gets killed. Arkwright, when confronted with Al-Bayati’s name, confesses to torturing him and dozens of others. After being shot, and presumably knowing he’s dying, Arkwright mentions the name of Rossiter, a man he was hired by only after doing the torture work for the Security Service.
It didn’t add up.
Purkiss transferred his gaze to Rossiter across the table.
‘You haven’t told me why you’re interested in this, by the way.’
‘Because it’s a puzzle, and I always like those,’ Rossiter said.
Purkiss shook his head. ‘That’s not the only reason.’
‘No. It isn’t.’ Once more, the cold blaze behind the eyes. ‘The mention of Sir Guy Strang is what got me.’
Purkiss waited.
‘Strang represents everything that’s wrong with the Security Service.’
‘How would you know?’ said Purkiss. ‘You were SIS. You had nothing to do with them.’
Rossiter smiled faintly. ‘Not wanting to boast, John, but an SIS operative of my seniority starts to get roped into interdepartmental liaison more and more. Particularly since the start of the new terror threat, Five and Six have been forging closer links, even as they’ve come to detest one another increasingly. I’ve seen the workings of the Security Service up close.’
‘So what’s wrong with Sir Guy?’
‘Strang is, on the surface, a Churchillian figure. A big, bluff, no-nonsense ox of a man who enjoys a drink and a cigar and has little time for the oily corporatism and middle-management mentality which seems to be suffusing both our services at the moment. He’s a clichéd hate figure, a privileged white middle-class male with High Tory political views and no sensitive feminine side whatsoever.
‘The immense irony is, he’s exactly the same as the careerists and opportunists he affects to despise. He’s all image. All style and no substance. His image is a rebellious, snook-cocking one… but it’s an image, ultimately, and that’s all it is. He’s not serious about the job. He has no principles. He’s easily led. And at a time when the head of Britain’s Security Service cannot afford to be weak, or even show weakness… he’s exactly the wrong person for the job.’