Tim Stevens - Ratcatcher

Rossiter said to Teague: ‘Get on to him.’

‘We’ve come across him already,’ said Elle. ‘He’s named on the Rodina Security website as their managing director.’

In the lift down to the basement Elle said: ‘If we don’t make some progress soon, we’re going to have to hand it over.’

‘To the police? The Service people at the Embassy? No.’

‘We might have no option — ’

‘If we do that, Fallon will get away. He’ll go even further to ground than he has already. He’s clever, he knows he won’t be able to escape the combined resources of two countries’ intelligence services while staying active in the field.’

‘But is that so bad? If it aborts whatever he’s got planned, keeps the summit alive, does it matter?’

‘It’ll only postpone his plans. And if he disappears now we may never have another chance to get him.’

‘ You may never.’

He stared ahead as the doors opened. ‘If you like.’

She kept a pace behind him as he strode towards the car, then said quietly, ‘I wasn’t being snide. In your situation I imagine I’d do exactly the same.’

She pressed the remote control for the car’s locks, swung into the driver’s seat. Purkiss got in the passenger side. He pulled the door shut and then his head snapped round at her.

The gun must have been in some sort of holster on the side of her seat. She was left-handed and she held it low and pointing across her body at a slight angle upwards towards his head, the barrel grotesquely elongated by the silencer screwed to its end.

The word silencer was a misnomer when it came to guns. Nothing currently in existence would produce the tidy quip sound heard in the movies. Suppressor was more accurate: at best, the shot would be muffled so that the sound resembled a heavy book being slammed down on to a table.

The basement was almost empty and echoes were likely to carry, but with the car doors closed Purkiss didn’t think a suppressed shot would be noticeable by Rossiter and Teague, two floors above. Which meant that she might risk one.

He stared past the muzzle at her eyes. They were steady, unreadable. Hazel, he decided, though he was generally hopeless at distinguishing shades of colour.

She was a trained agent and no doubt a fighter but the right side of her throat was exposed, the pulse beating steadily beneath the skin. He could immobilise her in less than a second, except that her index finger was tight across the trigger and he didn’t think he’d have long enough.

A second passed. Two. She said nothing, made no gesture for him to get out. It was to be an execution, which meant there was nothing to lose by making a move.

Purkiss’s instincts took over. He turned his head a fraction to the right because a shot to the face was likely to take out his frontal lobes. A shot to the head from the side would almost certainly kill him, too, but there was the minutest chance that the bullet would pass through another part of the brain, the occipital lobe perhaps, and blind him but allow him to continue functioning for long enough to take her down. The long muscles of his limbs tensed in readiness for action and to reduce the amount of his body available as a target. The trick was to act before the breathing rate increased, as it inevitably would, because that was a giveaway to one’s opponent.

He brought the side of his left fist across in a hammer blow at Klavan’s face while his right arm reached across to grip the wrist of her gun arm. It was a two-pronged attack intended both to incapacitate and to get the gun pointing elsewhere, because even in death the trigger finger was liable to twitch, and it would be embarrassing to go down in the annals as having been shot by a dead person. The gun arm was already gone and her right arm was up and his fist caught the side of her wrist. She gave a cry but managed to gasp, ‘Wait,’ and pointed the gun at the roof of the car. She jacked the magazine out into the footwell and ratcheted the remaining bullet out of the chamber so that it bounced off the dashboard.

He waited, tense, a moment longer. She was rubbing her wrist where his fist had connected. He sagged back into his seat, staring at her.

‘I had to know,’ she said.

‘Know what?’

‘That you didn’t suspect me.’

He let the silence play out, his breathing slowing.

She raised her eyes. ‘Of course I know what’s going on. The woman, Ilkun, didn’t get rid of her SIM card because of some vague suspicions about the delicacy of our interrogation. She did it because somebody tipped her off about it, alerted her beforehand about the interrogation and everything else. I knew you’d worked that out after you called me in the car. And assuming you yourself aren’t the one who tipped off Ilkun — ’

‘Because that would make no sense at all — ’

‘It must be one of us. Richard, Chris or me. I assumed I was under suspicion just as much as the other two. But when you saw the gun just now you were genuinely surprised.’

He had been, she was right. The realisation unsettled him. Ruling her out entirely was dangerous, especially if he’d done it unconsciously.

‘That wasn’t very clever. I could have killed you.’

‘No, you couldn’t. You wouldn’t have seen the shot coming.’

He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. Too many shocks, too many adrenaline spikes. He’d read that repeated surges of stress hormones might contribute to the development of dementia in the long run. Perhaps it would come as a relief, no more memories.

‘Your arm okay?’

‘I’ll live.’ But she gripped the wheel more gingerly with the hand on the affected side. She hadn’t started the engine yet.

‘So if it’s not you, which one is it?’

She shut her eyes. ‘I’ve been thinking about that ever since I made the connection.’

‘Naturally. And?’

She sighed. ‘It must be Rossiter.’

‘Why?’

‘Mostly by elimination. Because it can’t be Chris Teague.’

‘You had a thing together.’

‘You noticed. For a year. It’s been over for six, seven months. We decided to keep sharing the same flat for convenience’s sake.’

‘Not wanting to sound cynical, but don’t you think your judgement of him might be a bit clouded as a result?’

For the first time she looked at him. ‘That’s not it. For him to be involved with these people — this Kuznetsov, Fallon, whatever’s going on — and not to let something slip, given how close we were and are, I mean literally, physically close… it’s not possible. I’d have noticed something. And after I came to realise about the tipping off of the woman, obviously I started trawling through the events of the last year, trying to think of clues that weren’t apparent at the time. There’s nothing, John. It’s impossible that Chris is the one.’

‘Improbable, perhaps. Not impossible.’

Once they were clear of the exit ramp Purkiss said, ‘Have you ever used it? The gun?’

‘Fired it plenty of times.’

‘That wasn’t what I asked.’

‘A question like that is like asking a lady’s age. Downright rude.’ She half smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, no, I’ve never fired it in the line of duty.’

When he didn’t respond she said, ‘Why did you ask?’

‘Just curious. As I am about a lot of things about you. All three of you, before you start getting any ideas.’

She shrugged. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Your surname, for starters.’

‘Klavan’s an Estonian name. My father was born and bred in Tallinn, my mother’s from darkest Buckinghamshire.’

‘And you’re English.’