Jokerman (25 page)

Fifty-six

Purkiss entered Regent’s Park at the western side, just down the road from the Central Mosque. He waited until the cab driver was out of sight, then vaulted over the spiked railing and landed in the shrubbery beyond.

He felt the vastness of the 400-acre park before him, dark and silent. It was closed to the public until five a.m., which was three hours away.

The display on his phone located Dr Emma Goddard, or at least her phone, in the north-west area of the park. Vale had called in what must be the last of his favours while Purkiss had hailed a taxi and made his way into central London, ready to go wherever the signal led him. As the taxi headed down Piccadilly, Purkiss’s phone rang.

‘They’ve got a lock,’ he said.

Purkiss switched to the relevant display. The pulsating dot was moving slowly to the north. Purkiss instructed the driver, his eyes on the display. After a few minutes the dot stopped, and remained stationary as it had done ever since. In Regent’s Park.

Purkiss knew it was a set up. Tullivant had his wife, Emma Goddard, captive, and had been listening in when Purkiss called. Tullivant knew Purkiss was on to him, and would put a trace on Goddard’s phone. And so he was leading him into a trap.

Without knowing exactly what he was heading into, Purkiss understood nevertheless why Tullivant had chosen this particular location. Regent’s Park was large enough that it would be next to impossible to cordon off, should Purkiss call in the police. There would be plenty of escape routes if things went wrong.

En route in the taxi, Purkiss made three calls. The third was to Kasabian.

She answered at once, as if she’d been expecting him. ‘Yes.’

‘It’s Purkiss.’

If she was surprised that he was calling her directly rather than having Vale do so as normal, she didn’t show it. ‘What have you got?’

‘The gunman –
Jokerman
– is Brian Tullivant, a former captain in the Paras. He’s got his wife hostage in Regent’s Park. I’m heading there now.’

‘What? Start at the –’

‘I’ll explain later,’ Purkiss cut in. ‘I need you to keep back. Don’t send anyone in, not Special Branch, not an armed response unit. Tullivant wants me. I’ve figured him out, and he knows it. He’s using his wife as bait. He knows I know that he’ll kill her if anyone else but me shows up. Understood?’

After a beat, Kasabian said: ‘Yes. But at least tell me which end of the park. So I can have help on standby.’

‘It looks like the north-west area, just above the Winter Gardens,’ said Purkiss. ‘I mean it, though. Be discreet. Keep everyone well back.’

He rang off.

Once over the railings, Purkiss set off across the grassland. The park was criss-crossed with paths, fewer than in the other Royal Parks, it seemed, which meant that the lamps which lined them were few, casting shadow everywhere. Purkiss skirted the tip of the Boating Pond, water fowl skittering away in a sudden noise that froze him for a moment. The air was cool, giving the merest hint of the autumn which, while not imminent, was on the horizon at least.

Ahead, Purkiss could see the dark outline of a copse of trees. The signal was coming from just beyond it. As he drew nearer, he saw the copse was in fact the nearest edge a rough ring of trees surrounding a central expanse of grass parkland perhaps sixty yards across.

He felt the apprehension rise from his abdomen into his chest, quickening his breathing, and felt the first prick of adrenaline like a surge of speed in his veins.

Through the trees, he could make out something, a silhouette, in the centre of the grass. Light was minimal, a few slanting sheaves managing to get in through the trees from the sparse lamps, but Purkiss believed he could identify a bowed head, narrow shoulders.

He stopped at the edge of the ring of trees, checked the display on his phone. Yes, the signal was coming from the middle of the clearing.

He took a step to the side of one of the trunks and peered through. There was a bench in the middle of the grass, he could see now, the kind that during the daytime people would use for picnicking or simply to rest their feet. Seated on the bench with her back to Purkiss was a woman, who he presumed was Dr Emma Goddard.

He watched her for twenty seconds. There – her head moved a fraction; so she was still alive. He assumed she was bound somehow, or perhaps drugged.

So she was bait, as straightforwardly as an antelope tethered to lure a big cat. Tullivant was somewhere in the ring of trees, with a long gun. If Purkiss approached her, Tullivant would shoot him.

But if Purkiss didn’t arrive, or turned up but then left, Tullivant would shoot the woman.

Purkiss’s gaze roved steadily around the circle of trees. Tullivant knew he was coming, but wouldn’t know which direction he’d approach from. So Tullivant could be anywhere. He might be only a few feet away, even now drawing a bead on Purkiss, prolonging the moment.

Sweat trailed quickly down Purkiss’s back.

If he walked away now, to buy time, he ran the risk that Tullivant might have already detected his presence. Tullivant would shoot the woman.

Purkiss thought of Kendrick, comatose in his hospital bed.

He thought of the terrifying, crippling doubts he’d been forced to entertain about Vale, and about Hannah.

He thought about Claire, who’d betrayed him, but whom he’d failed nonetheless, because where there was life there was the possibility of redemption, and he’d failed to keep her alive.

Purkiss advanced a step.

The advantage he had – the
single
advantage – was manoeuvrability. If Tullivant had a rifle, then depending on his position in the ring of trees he might not be able to take satisfactory aim instantly, without a degree of movement. That could make his position detectable in time for Purkiss to take evasive action.

It was a hell of a risk.

He bounced on the balls of his feet a few times. Breathed deeply in through his nose, out through his mouth, centring himself.

He broke out of the circle of trees and into the clearing, feeling more naked than if he’d cast all his clothes off.

His environment was more intensely real to him than he’d ever known it: the springy firmness of the grass beneath his soles, the cool of pre-morning dew on his face, the aromas of nose-prickling late-summer pollen and industrial city grime.

The high-velocity bullet smashing through the base of his skull, shearing through bone and muscle and exploding his head in an obscene dark gout…

The bench was twenty yards away. Ten.

The woman’s head turned a fraction.

Purkiss veered round, describing a loose arc, sure that this was it, that Tullivant’s finger was finally tightening on the trigger, squeezing it back, the game needing to brought to an end now. He sprinted towards a point in the trees some twenty yards to the right of where he’d emerged, thinking that if this was to be his last sight on earth, something as natural and joyously verdant as a row of summer trees wasn’t bad.

Then he crashed among the trees, knocking his shoulder into one of the trunks, not caring about the pain, his heart hammering in relief, his primitive self aware that he was still alive while his rational brain thought:
Tullivant didn’t take the bait. And now he knows where I am
.

Fifty-seven

Tullivant watched Purkiss’s shape detach itself from the trees approximately ninety degrees to his left.

He tracked the running figure through the scope.

Purkiss would reach Emma, frantically haul her up, and try to drag her back to the cover of the trees. She wasn’t bound any longer – Tullivant had cut the ties around her wrists and ankles – and she’d rise and go with Purkiss. It would be a clean, two-shot double kill. Tullivant chose to wait.

He was mildly disappointed at how easy it was going to turn out to be.

The disappointment triggered a warning light in his mind. 

A man like John Purkiss didn’t disappoint you. If he appeared to do so, to carry out an action that was so stupidly reckless that it was out of character, it meant he was tricking you.

Halfway towards Emma, Purkiss swerved and turned, heading back at an angle.

Tullivant, who was lying prone on the ground between the boles of two oaks, whipped his head round to one side, then the other, sure that he’d see others bearing down on him, or perhaps nothing more than muzzle flashes before eternal darkness.

But there was nobody.

Tullivant turned his attention back to the clearing. Purkiss had disappeared once more among the trees.

So: his foolhardy sprint hadn’t been to draw Tullivant’s attention while Purkiss’s back-up approached Tullivant from behind. Instead, he’d hoped to get Tullivant to reveal his position. Which he hadn’t.

Stalemate.

Tullivant glanced upward. Dawn was still three hours off or more, even though the sky would begin lightening long before that.

He had time. And if Purkiss didn’t show his hand before the darkness receded too far to be of any use any more, then Tullivant would pull the trigger on Emma. Which Purkiss knew.

Tullivant settled down to wait.

A second later he felt the buzz of his phone against his thigh, signalling the arrival of a text message.

Carefully, moving only his arm, he reached down and pulled out the phone. The text was from Emma’s, diverted to his. And yes, on the bench she was groping for her mobile, no doubt assuming he was texting her with instructions.

The message read:
Dr Goddard, I’m the man who phoned you earlier. Don’t look round. I’m in the trees behind you. I’m going to start making my way anti-clockwise round the circle. If you know the location of your husband, message me back with his position on the clock in relation to you
.

Tullivant thumbed in a message to Emma.
Text him back and tell him one o’clock. I receive all texts sent to and from your phone. I’ll know if you tell him anything else.

Tullivant was at the four o’clock position. If Purkiss made his way round in the direction he’d said, he would encounter Tullivant a lot sooner than he’d be expecting. Tullivant would have the jump on him.

On the bench, Emma straightened in bewilderment; but she managed to suppress the reflex to look over in his direction. If she was working on her phone, she was doing it extremely discreetly.

A moment later Tullivant read her reply to Purkiss:
One o’clock
.

Tullivant kept the Timberwolf propped and aimed at the bench. He drew the Heckler & Koch from his jacket and laid it close to his left hand.

He watched the trees arcing away to his left.

Purkiss would be moving infinitesimally slowly so as not to give his position away. Tullivant glanced at his watch, its illuminated display turned toward him to minimise the light it gave off. Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen.

A rustle from the trees somewhere. Tullivant stiffened.

Had it come form his right or his left? He strained his ears.

A further five minutes passed.

The shrill ringing of a phone shattered the quiet. Tullivant registered that it was coming from his left amongst the trees, maybe ten or fifteen yards away, and although it stopped abruptly as if cut off in panic he felt his senses of sight and hearing and even smell homing in on its location and he was up and charging between the trees, the Heckler & Koch primed and aimed, until he felt his foot kick against something and he looked down and saw the abandoned phone and before he could turn he felt Purkiss barrel into him and send him crashing against the trunk of a tree.

Fifty-eight

The woman had answered too readily, texting back her reply, and Purkiss knew it was a further trick.

So, Tullivant wasn’t at the one o’clock position at all. That meant he was probably nearer than that, and intended to surprise Purkiss as Purkiss made his way round the ring of trees.

Purkiss was working with approximations, and also the need to keep himself completely concealed; but he moved swiftly, edging anti-clockwise between the trees until he’d reached the five o’clock position, which was as far as he dared to go, then placing his phone on the ground after flicking off the
silent
key. He doubled back, resisting the urge to hurry, traversing the ring clockwise this time; and it was when he got to the twelve o’clock position, directly ahead of Goddard on the bench, that he saw Tullivant, or at least the tip of his rifle, round at four o’clock.

He crept round until he must have been within leaping distance, then took out his remaining spare phone and rang his own number.

The jarring shriek of the phone on the other side of Tullivant was like a starting whistle to Purkiss. He wove between the trees, spotting Tullivant rising and leaving behind his rifle and advancing in the direction of the phone’s cry.

With a berserker’s fury, Purkiss launched himself.

The impact drove Tullivant against the solid body of an ancient oak. Purkiss grabbed his hair and rammed his forehead against the tree, getting two blows in before Tullivant regained control and elbowed backwards, connecting with Purkiss’s shoulder but giving Tullivant a degree of momentum so that he half-turned and brought his gun hand across.

No guns
, thought Purkiss crazily.
No more guns today. Enough.

He smashed the side of his fist into Tullivant’s wrist in a hammer blow that made the arm drop away, then followed with a punch to Tullivant’s face. Tullivant reeled, got in a kick to Purkiss’s thigh that sent a howl of pain and made him stumble. Purkiss used his slightly bent position to his advantage by ramming his lowered head into Tullivant’s abdomen, pinning him against the tree once more.

He sensed Tullivant’s hands raised above his head, clasped, ready to come down in a killer blow that would snap Purkiss’s neck, so he rammed again with his head, imagining he was driving Tullivant’s belly flat against the tree behind him, mashing his abdominal contents to pulp, rammed again, and again, and he felt a weight on top of him, but not that of a blow; rather, of Tullivant’s sagging torso as he jackknifed forward.

Purkiss wrenched away and stood up, watched Tullivant’s doubled body sag face-forward onto the ground. His lips were distorted against the grass and soil, his face waxen, his breathing coming in winded gasps.

Purkiss stood looking down at the man as he caught his own breath. He kicked him, hard, in the ribs, and Tullivant flopped over onto his back, his eyes half-closed.

Purkiss glanced at Tullivant’s gun, a few feet away.

It would be easy.

Just the two of them here, for at least a few minutes more. Nobody about. An easy story to concoct.

He picked up the gun.

Tullivant’s eyelids fluttered in understanding.

Purkiss flung the gun amongst the trees.

‘Up,’ he said.

Tullivant rose to his knees, retched, climbed his hands up his legs, reached a stooped position, keeled over on to one knee.

Purkiss grabbed him by the arm to haul him up. Tullivant swayed drunkenly but remained upright. They manoeuvred out into the clearing.

The woman, Goddard, was still sitting on the bench. Her head was turned towards them.

‘It’s all right,’ called Purkiss. ‘It’s over.’

Beside him Tullivant lurched, and for an instant Purkiss thought the man was either going to collapse again or was making one last attempt at putting up a fight; but then he heard the twin booming cracks, heard Emma Goddard’s scream from across the clearing, saw Tullivant jerk and stagger and twist to his knees, dropping once more to the ground, two bloody ragged holes punched through his jacket.

Kasabian stepped into the clearing, the gun in her hand already lowered, her gaze switching from Purkiss to Tullivant’s body and back again.