Kasabian had raised the gun now, held it steady on Purkiss’s chest. Her gaze held that fascinated look he’d noticed at their first meeting.
‘I suspect you’d already begun erasing all traces of the 2006 affair, because you were gunning for the top job and were rewriting history in preparation. That’s why most of those Paras were killed in the last couple of weeks, before Morrow was shot. But at some point you hit on a masterstroke: why not implicate Guy Strang in the torture? Concoct evidence that he was behind it all? That way you’d both get rid of him, and emerge a squeaky-clean hero yourself. So you “hired” me. An outsider, renowned for getting results. And you laid a trail of false clues, pointing in Strang’s direction. The supposed notebook in Morrow’s flat, which I imagine I was supposed to find but which Hannah Holley discovered first. That led me to Arkwright. And you’d primed Arkwright to lie, to tell me that Guy Strang had been his boss.’
Come on, thought Purkiss. Kasabian had taken a couple of steps forward, and was holding the gun in a two-handed grip.
‘What did you offer Arkwright?’ he went on. ‘Amnesty? Whatever it was, you had no intention of honouring it. As soon as he’d mentioned Strang’s name, Tullivant had to dispose of him, and his sons. That made me a little suspicious, by the way. I was blinded by teargas that day. Tullivant could have killed me. But he didn’t. I was part of the plan, back then. Part of the team who would reveal Strang as the mastermind of an illegal torture operation. So I had to be kept alive.’
Purkiss held up a finger. ‘One thing that does puzzle me, though. Arkwright mentioned Rossiter as he was dying. Not you. I don’t understand why.’
He thought Kasabian might stay silent, or obfuscate, but she replied directly. ‘Arkwright never knew I was in charge. I recruited him through proxies. We never met. Even when I instructed him to mention Strang’s name, he thought I was acting in good faith, and that Strang genuinely was involved.’
‘So why mention Rossiter?’
She tilted her head. ‘Rossiter recruited Arkwright while he was in the nominal employ of Scipio Rand. Arkwright probably assumed he was somehow involved in this. We’ll never know.’
Purkiss detected movement between the trees, in the park on the other side, some distance away still. He made a point of keeping his eyes on Kasabian’s.
‘But you’ve been after Strang’s job for a long time, haven’t you, Kasabian? Isn’t that why you contrived to get the job for Emma Goddard as Strang’s personal physician? So that her husband, your lackey, Tullivant, would have a way in, if need be? What was it going to be, Kasabian? Poison hidden in one of the drugs she gave him? Details of the exact state of his health, leaked to Tullivant during Dr Goddard’s pillow talk, which he’d pass on to you?’
Definite movement, now, stealthy and approaching the line of trees.
‘All those Paras, who were innocent in all this, mere escorts. Mohammed Al-Bayati. Arkwright and his sons. Charles Morrow. Murder after murder after murder. Was there no length you wouldn’t go to? And just for a job, Kasabian. Just for a job.’
‘It’s not just a job,’ she murmured, her eyes hard now over the gun.
‘Oh, spare me. Don’t try to make out that you’re some kind of Shakespearean figure, brought down by your vaulting ambition. You’re a common, grubby murderer, Kasabian.’
He glanced away, a natural enough move in context, and gave a nod, just as Kasabian’s finger tightened on the trigger.
Purkiss leaped sideways, the crack of the gun followed by the scream of the bullet as it ploughed past and into the trees on the far side. He rolled, came up, saw Hannah beside Kasabian, the muzzle of her own Glock pressed against the side of the older woman’s head.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Hannah said.
Kasabian closed her eyes. Then she opened them, staring straight at Purkiss.
He yelled a warning as she jammed the barrel of her gun underneath her chin.
‘Uh uh,’ snarled Hannah, and chopped Kasabian’s wrist away with the Glock. Kasabian’s gun was sent spinning.
Purkiss nodded at Hannah. He turned, began to walk heavily to the bench where Emma Goddard sat, hunched, staring at nothing.
Sixty
The ventilator mechanism moved asymmetrically, rising, catching jerkily, and falling rapidly but smoothly.
Purkiss watched it, and thought about hubris.
There was the hubris of Kasabian’s, manifest in the extreme, even insane lengths she had gone to in order to achieve a position which would probably one day have been hers for the taking anyway, and in order to erase a past which might possibly have been quietly forgotten.
There was that of Tullivant, who’d thought even at the bitter end that there might be a way out, a solution, who hadn’t realised that the killing had to stop at some point and that terminating the life of his children’s mother would somehow enable him to escape justice.
And there was Purkiss’s own hubris. The arrogance which had led him to fail to see simple innocence and indeed compassion where it should have been blindingly obvious, to doubt those who were looking out for him: Vale, whose uneasiness and nerves before the trip to Riyadh had been no more than signs that he was worried Purkiss was walking into a death trap, and Hannah, whose failure to arrive at the airport in Saudi had been due to nothing more sinister than a genuine missed flight.
Kendrick’s profile, corpse-still, looked bonier than at Purkiss’s last visit.
Kirsty, the mother of Kendrick’s son, had left three hours earlier, anger holding her face rigid to stop it from crumpling. Hannah had been the next to arrive. She’d sat beside Purkiss, gazing at the man on the ventilator, a man she’d never met and now most likely never would.
At some point, Purkiss realised she’d taken his hand. He squeezed hers back.
‘Get any sleep?’ he asked.
‘An hour.’ It was seven in the evening, some sixteen hours after the police had arrived en masse in Regent’s Park and taken charge. Purkiss had handed Emma Goddard over to a pair of WPCs, who’d wrapped her in a blanket despite the mildness of the night. Kasabian had been led away in handcuffs by a phalanx of uniformed and plainclothes officers.
Vale emerged sepulchrally from the shadows after a few minutes and led Purkiss and Hannah to a waiting chauffeured car. In the rear, a fleshy man moved over to give them room.
‘Guy Strang,’ he rumbled.
Purkiss felt waves of fatigue wash over him as the man’s phrases did the same: words cannot express the debt, true patriots, served your country with great honour. He heard something about a commendation, knew it applied to Hannah.
She’d gone back to Thames House, and Purkiss had gone with Vale for a drive. He’d filled in the gaps, those he was able to, anyway. But there was little more to tell. Purkiss had outlined his theories to Vale when he’d phoned him from Riyadh after the interrogation in the desert, and Vale had concurred. It was then that they had agreed to maintain the fiction to Kasabian that Hannah Holley was the one they were after, in order to make Kasabian think they were heading down the wrong path. Purkiss had rung Hannah, told her of the plan, asked her to lie low until he contacted her again. Which he had, on his way to Regent’s Park that night. He asked her to get there and keep back, but to be on the lookout in case Kasabian showed up.