Tim Stevens - Ratcatcher

He tried again, twice. The response was the same. There were twenty-four call buttons. He pressed them in rapid succession. Within seconds the voices started coming through, short and rising into questions at the end. In Russian he muttered, ‘Hi, it’s me.’

Another Babel of monosyllables, then a sharp buzz and he pushed the door open. The lobby was dim and smelled of antiseptic. He mounted the stairs, saw that Seppo’s flat was on the right, which meant it was the one without visible lights on from the street. At the door he paused. A booby trap? Breath held, he tried the handle. Locked. He got out a credit card and set to work.

He’d been half expecting a complicated system, given Seppo’s past as an agent, but the lock yielded at once. He pushed gently and let the door swing open. No light greeted him. For an instant he felt the primal terror of stepping into the dark. He reached for a switch. The passage filled with light. With a vase he found on a table just inside the door, he propped the door ajar and, hugging the wall, he moved down the passage. He reached an open doorway into the living room and dived in, rolling on his shoulder and coming up at a crouch. There was nobody in the room.

He turned on the lights and did a quick survey. It was simply and tastefully decorated, like someone’s home rather than a safe house. A sword, some kind of antique, hung on the wall. Otherwise there was little to give any impression of the occupier’s personality. The surfaces were dust-free and clean, apart from the shadow of a scrubbed stain on the carpet by the fireplace.

Purkiss put his head into the kitchen. It too seemed in order. He had crossed the living room to explore the rest of the flat when the echo of footsteps rang up the stairs. He ducked back into the living room, but the front door was already swinging open.

‘He didn’t mention anything about a visitor.’

She was early thirties, Purkiss guessed. Light brown hair tied back, thin fawn pullover and suede jacket, jeans.

‘He wouldn’t have. He doesn’t know I’m coming, it’s a surprise.’ He gestured about the room. ‘To be honest I wasn’t even sure he still lived here. Still wouldn’t be if you hadn’t confirmed it. It’s a few years since I last heard from him.’

She glanced around. ‘I’ve never been here either. We’re friends at work, but not that close.’

‘And he hasn’t been in for — how long?’

‘Three days. He isn’t answering his phone either. Our boss is livid. I’m more worried than anything else.’

It seemed presumptuous for either of them to sit so they remained where they were.

He said, ‘What work does he do?’

‘We’re a small English-language newspaper for expats. Living Tallinn .’ She didn’t look at him as though she expected him to have heard of it, or cared if he had or not. ‘He’s a photographer. The photographer, really.’

She was lying through her teeth, as he was, and they each knew the other was lying.

He scratched the back of his neck. ‘It’s a bit difficult for me. I don’t know much about him, about his life here. Do you know where he might have got to?’

‘No idea, I’m afraid.’

He’d spun the first threads in the web of lies: I’m a friend of Jaak’s, well, not a friend exactly. I met him when he was an exchange student at Cambridge with me fifteen years ago. I came up here and the door was open . He didn’t say how he’d got into the block of flats in the first place and she didn’t ask. She countered with her concerned work colleague fable.

They stood with nothing more to say, two strangers with a tenuous link meeting in odd circumstances. He broke the moment.

‘Well, as I say, I was in town anyway. I’ll be off.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Look, if you do hear from him in the next couple of days could you ask him to give me a ring?’ He scribbled his name — Martin Hughes, the one on the passport — and a random seven-digit mobile phone number on a piece of notepaper from a pad on the table beside the landline phone near the door. She took the paper and glanced at it.

‘Likewise, if he gets in touch with you , call me, okay?’ She handed him a business card. She’d slipped up: why not just ask him to tell Seppo to call the office? The name on the card was Elle Klavan, the logo that of Living Tallinn , and there were mobile and fax numbers and an email address.

At the door he said, ‘You staying here?’

‘Yes, I’ll wait a bit, see if he comes back.’ Her eyes were level.

Another mistake she’d made: she hadn’t been sceptical enough about his explanation for his presence there.

Outside the building Purkiss turned left and walked down the hill. He crossed the road and sidled up again behind the row of cars and took up position between two closely parked saloons, where he squatted, watching the windows and the entrance.

There was occasional movement behind the curtains. The brightness increased a fraction, as though a light had been turned on elsewhere in the flat. After several minutes the lights snapped off without warning. Shortly afterwards she emerged from the building and headed down the hill.

Within a block the streets started to become more crowded, something for which Purkiss was thankful as it provided cover. He was able to stay well back, yet keep pace with her. She wasn’t trying any counter-surveillance moves, which meant either that she wasn’t aware that she was being tagged or that she wanted to be followed. She headed back down into the centre of the Old Town. Purkiss tracked her through the square where he’d sat earlier, then off in a direction he hadn’t been before. She had the unhurried stride of somebody with things to do but no particularly pressing deadline to meet.

She’d spoken startled Estonian on seeing him, but he’d answered in English and she’d immediately replied in kind, her accent unambiguously Home Counties. Klavan . Was the name Estonian?

The trap, if it was one, puzzled him. It made sense that she should lead him into the lion’s den, but she’d been alone at the flat — what if he’d attacked her? The risk seemed reckless. He needed to ask Vale a few questions, but didn’t dare compose a text message while he was walking in case she made a sudden move and, distracted, he lost her.

Uphill again, through restaurant crowds thronging the pavements and blasts of music as bars swallowed and disgorged their patrons. Just beyond a Turkish bistro she stopped. Without a backward glance she opened a door and went through. Instead of approaching the door, Purkiss stood on the other side of the road and peered at the number of the building. It was a narrow three-storey affair with something he couldn’t read stencilled on a glass panel in the door. The phone he’d bought was 3G enabled. He called up a search engine and entered “Living Tallinn”. There it was, the address matching. When he clicked on the newspaper’s website he got an error message. There were no other matches for the name.

He walked to a corner so that he could keep the door in view, punched buttons. When Vale answered Purkiss said, ‘Ever heard of a female Service agent called Elle Klavan?’ He spelled it and described her.

‘Doesn’t ring any bells. I’ll do some checking.’

Purkiss brought him up to date. ‘Also, Living Tallinn . It’s almost certainly bogus, a front. Maybe one of your contacts knows something about it.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Go back to Seppo’s flat and search it properly.’

Getting back in would be more difficult, as he couldn’t try the trick of pushing all the buzzers in the block again. On the way back up the hill he spotted something that would fit his purpose: a skip outside a shop. In the skip he found a dilapidated chest of drawers which he hefted with some awkwardness. He attracted a few curious looks on his way back to the flat, but no opposition.