Tim Stevens - Ratcatcher

No, something wrong there. The face had blood on it and it wasn’t expressing sympathy. It was the man with the cropped head.

Others clustered round. Purkiss saw the man’s other hand come out of his pocket. As it moved between them Purkiss grabbed the wrist and twisted it and jammed the needle in up to the hilt and forced the weight of his thigh against the plunger, driving it into the man’s groin. Purkiss smelt the bloodied breath through the man’s nose as his eyes turned up. Purkiss let him fall, watched his head bounce off the pavement.

There was no time to go through his pockets because the growing crowd had shrunk back in a communal gasp. Shouting, there came the older woman from the bookshop. Was that where he was? He’d come full circle.

All he could do was push his way loose and, again, run.

After the call to Kuznetsov to tell him — your other man’s down, the target’s free — the Jacobin went for a walk in the Old Town. The conical turrets were blacker against the backdrop of the newly darkened sky. By the clock on the tower of the Holy Spirit Church it was half past eight. In thirty-six hours’ time it would be over.

Purkiss. He was troubling in himself, but so were the implications of his presence in the city. The Jacobin hadn’t yet explained to Kuznetsov who Purkiss was, but would have to soon, even though Kuznetsov would reasonably blame the presence of a former SIS officer on poor security on the Jacobin’s part.

There was no point in conducting an intensive manhunt. Tallinn was a small city but not that small, and the manpower available to Kuznetsov wasn’t unlimited. The Jacobin assumed Purkiss was still operational, so there would be little gained in checking the hospitals. He would have to be ignored for now, until he showed his hand again.

The Jacobin watched a British stag party posing crudely for photographs on the Town Hall Square, and was put in mind of the small man, Seppo, and his camera that morning. Like Purkiss, he was another loose end unsatisfactorily tied off. Too much was unexplained at this late stage.

Unless -

Seppo and Purkiss.

Of course. The connection was not only possible but seemed likely.

With a renewed lift of spirits the Jacobin left the square.

Purkiss passed between the twin mediaeval towers of the Viru Gate into the Old Town at eight fifty-five by his watch. He’d assumed it was hours later, his sense of time having slowed along with his reactions. After lurching round corner after corner he’d finally stopped, hands braced on thighs, fighting the urge to vomit. For the first time he noticed that he’d dropped his shoulder bag at some point and had no spare clothes. The weight in his limbs was beginning to lift, but his eyelids still felt sodden.

A street newspaper vendor sold him a guidebook and map. From another vendor he bought a pay-as-you-go phone. He tried Seppo again, got no response, binned the phone and bought another from a different shop. He called Vale, surprised to find that his tongue and jaws worked well enough that he could make himself understood.

‘I’m compromised.’

He told him about the surveillance from the airport, the chase.

‘Fallon must have got on to Seppo.’ Purkiss could hear cellophane being stripped off a fresh pack of cigarettes. ‘Obtained your name and arrival time. I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault. Everyone breaks if the pressure’s extreme enough. And Fallon’s a professional, he’d have known if Seppo was trying to feed him disinformation.’

Down the line Vale drew deeply, exhaled through his nose. ‘Do you want to come back?’

Purkiss ignored that. ‘I’m going to Seppo’s flat.’

‘That’s highly dangerous.’

‘It’s the only way.’

He rang off and dialled again. Abby answered after two rings.

‘Abby, it’s me. Sorry to wake you.’

‘You didn’t. It’s a quarter to seven.’

He looked at his watch. ‘Sorry, yes. Bit disorientated.’

‘How’s Tallinn?’

‘Friendly people. Can you get a GPS fix on this phone?’

‘I can do anything, Mr Purkiss.’

‘If I don’t ring you back in two hours, locate me and phone this number.’ He gave her Vale’s number. The two of them had never met; Vale provided the funding and some very basic logistical support but was otherwise content to leave Purkiss to hire his own help on a freelance basis. If she had to contact Vale it would mean Purkiss was fatally compromised.

With the help of the map he found himself on the outskirts of the Old Town, picture-postcard red roofs clustered on the far side of a busy main road. He crossed unsteadily, the blare of traffic making him flash back to the recent past. For a moment he wondered if there’d been some kind of hallucinogen in the syringe, but concluded that the stress of the last hour was still gnawing at him.

He walked cobbled streets, modern shopping facades kept discreet amongst the splendour of the mediaeval buildings. The aroma of roasting meat assailed him from restaurant doorways. He realised he hadn’t eaten since grabbing a bite on the way to see Vale that morning. There was no time to stop. On the other hand he was weak, needed protein and carbohydrates. He stepped into a square, the cobbled pavement of which sloped alarmingly, bought a steak sandwich and a litre bottle of water from a vending wagon, and sat on a stone bollard to eat. He felt his blood glucose levels rise immediately. As if in tandem a memory surfaced for the first time.

After he’d dropped the bull-headed man and was staggering away with the tranquilliser starting to spread through him, the other man had been close enough behind him that he’d heard him muttering into his phone in Russian. The content wasn’t particularly revealing — he’s hit, I’m going after him, or similar — but the throaty vowels were unmistakeable. Although there wasn’t anything odd about the man’s being a Russian speaker, ethnic Russians making up over a third of the city’s population according to the guidebook he’d bought, it might be significant that Fallon was working with Russians.

Seppo’s flat was in a residential area of Toompea Hill in the upper Old Town. Using the looming silhouette of the city’s castle as a landmark, Purkiss strode up the hill, pausing once to look back at the view over the city below. The autumn chill had deepened, cooling the sweat he’d accumulated.

He reached the end of the street he wanted and looked up it. Rows of parked cars lined one side. At a crouch he crawled up the street beside the cars, keeping his head up enough that he could peer into each one. None looked occupied. Straining his eyes, he stared across the street and identified Seppo’s block. From where he was, Purkiss couldn’t tell which of the two first floor flats was Seppo’s. Lights were showing from behind the drawn curtains in the windows of only one of them.

He watched the entrance to the block for ten minutes to see if anyone would emerge. There wasn’t much point. The place would have been searched already, the trap set and waiting for him to spring it. They’d be either in the flat itself or in the lobby, most likely the first. In that case breaking in wasn’t an option, even if he could make it up to the window somehow once he’d established which of the two flats it was, because he’d be heard. Short of waiting until whoever was in the flat finished his shift and was relieved — and who knew how long that would take — the only course was the direct one.

He crossed the road beneath the flood of the streetlights, feeling his back contract as it anticipated a bullet between the shoulder blades. He made it to the door. Seppo’s number was unadorned by any name. He pressed the buzzer and waited. Nothing.