Tim Stevens - Ratcatcher

The Jacobin gripped the phone, fighting down the frustration. ‘I told you, I need to extract information from him. Crucial information that could scupper the whole enterprise if we let it.’

‘If he is as dangerous as you say, then we’re better off with him dead.’ The call was disconnected.

The Jacobin paced, channelling the anger, trying to divert it like lightning into the earth. The pig-headed idiot had ideas above his station, was going to let his ego wreck everything.

From across the nearby bay a horn sounded, low and prolonged like a moan.

He’d identified four of them so far but suspected there were more. The bull-necked man was barrelling his way through the throng, hanging back when Purkiss changed direction so that he could track him. On either side of the entrance there were two of them, their stares like spotlights trained on a lone sprinter across a prison yard. And behind the bar the woman, Lyuba, was ignoring the shouts of drinkers trying to get her attention and stood with folded arms, her gaze naked as the others’.

He fished the card out of his breast pocket and read the number by the light of his phone.

It was going to be impossible to make himself heard over the cacophony. On the other hand, he couldn’t risk heading back into the restrooms where it was marginally quieter, because he’d be trapping himself down a cul de sac. He thumbed in the text message and hit the send key.

The bull-necked man was trying to drive him towards the two at the entrance and he headed deep into the heaving mass of clubbers but it was hazardous because he didn’t know how many of them would be waiting further back in the depths of the dance floor and if one of them had a syringe like earlier they could slip it in before he’d realised what was going on and he’d be down and then they’d have him. He felt himself borne along by the press of bodies. This, as well as the strobing lights and the endless grind of the music, triggered panic in his stomach. He thought about screaming. Nobody would notice, and it might offer him some release.

The phone in his pocket vibrated. He looked at the screen, saw the words: On our way. Fifteen minutes.

Our ? There was no point dwelling on what this meant, because he had to concentrate on staying conscious and keeping his wits about him for a quarter of an hour. It was no time at all and yet an eternity.

There was another possibility to consider, a wild card he had no control over. The body might be found in the cubicle in the next fifteen minutes and the place locked down. It would reduce the immediate danger, but would generate problems of its own. His best bet was to make his way to one of the walls and keep against it, limit the directions from which the enemy could approach without restricting his potential escape routes. Purkiss squirmed his way over to the far wall. Once there he turned and took stock.

The bull-necked man was approaching, his progress remorseless through the sea of bodies. From over to the left, one of the men who’d been guarding the entrance was advancing, too, sidling along the wall. Purkiss eased to his left instinctively but ten feet or so in that direction was a corner and that was the last place he wanted to end up.

Purkiss breathed deeply, sucking reserve oxygen into his lungs and his bloodstream. He flexed his limbs, bounced on his toes, preparing himself. Two of them at close quarters, in his weakened state, were going to be a problem, to say the least. If they had syringes they wouldn’t even necessarily be filled with a sedative, as before. The man in the toilet cubicle had been trying not to subdue him but to kill him.

It murmured through the crowd like a ripple or a Mexican wave, a word he didn’t recognise at first until he realised another word was filtering through in counterpoint, this one in Russian: police . The collective mood of the crowd shifted, most people continuing their frenetic leaping but considerable numbers moving fast towards the restrooms, the back of the dance floor, the fire exits. Near him a boy swallowed painfully, forcing down whatever had to be hidden. Another hopped on one foot, trying to stuff the illicit goods into his other shoe. The bull-necked man and his colleague halted their advance, looking about and then craning back towards the entrance.

Purkiss ran, diving into the crowd and not caring that he was treading on feet and elbowing chests, somebody yelling in his ear hey, man, don’t panic, they’ll notice you . She was there inside the entrance, Elle Klavan, with another man, and they were holding up ID of some sort while one of the bar staff stood nearby frowning in bewilderment. Purkiss stopped short. She shouted in Estonian and he turned. The bartender he’d first spoken to when he arrived got him in a bear hug from behind. Purkiss kicked and struggled, but not too hard. Elle Klavan and the other man came forward, handguns drawn. Purkiss shouted in Russian ‘Enough,’ and the man released him. He raised his hands and let them turn and bundle him out the door, Klavan shouting instructions he couldn’t understand over her shoulder.

She pulled up in a mews off the main street. The Turkish restaurant next door was closed and a few people milled on the streets, on their way to or from bars. They took the stairs to the first floor. Through an unmarked door a small office suite greeted him. The main open-plan section brimmed with computer equipment, less chaotically arranged than in Abby’s basement.

‘ Living Tallinn ,’ she said drily.

She’d forced her way between the rows of taxis and parked right outside the club, swinging into the driver’s seat. The man with her had opened the rear door and pushed Purkiss’s head down as he clambered in, purely because that was what television had taught people to expect from police officers arresting a criminal, and got in beside him.

‘Chris Teague,’ said the man. He was late thirties, big through the shoulders like a former rugby player who’d kept in shape, fair hair short, mouth wry.

‘John Purkiss.’

‘We know.’ Of course they did; they were SIS, and Klavan would have scoured their databases till she’d matched his face.

‘You were quick.’ She’d said fifteen minutes but it had been closer to ten.

‘I happen to live round the corner. Stroke of luck.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Impersonating a police officer. That’s a first for us, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yes,’ said Teague cheerfully.

Turning her head to address Purkiss she said, ‘I expect you’re wondering why we did it.’

‘Because you want to know what I’m doing here.’

‘Of course.’

He remembered the missed call from Vale earlier and said, ‘Hang on a moment,’ and put the phone to his ear, aware of the stinging of the laceration across his neck. The message was brief. Vale had established that Klavan was not working out of the embassy.

As if by unspoken consent they said no more on the journey. At one point a police car shot past, siren going. Clearly the body had been found in the toilet cubicle. Purkiss wondered how easy witnesses would find it to identify Klavan and Teague, given the darkness in the club. He himself was another matter: the bartender had got a good look at his face.

Another man was waiting in the office and stood as they entered. He was compact, several inches shorter than either Purkiss or Teague and perhaps in his late forties. Unlike his colleagues he was dressed in a suit, though the jacket was slung over the back of a chair and his sleeves were pushed up.

‘Mr Purkiss. Richard Rossiter.’

There was an aura about him, a sense of tightly bound anger. Up close his pale eyes were like taut meniscuses barely holding back a flood of rage. He didn’t offer his hand, just studied Purkiss’s face before waving abruptly at a chair. Purkiss sat. Teague brought him a cup of water from a cooler in the corner and he gulped it. The others took seats themselves.