Tim Stevens - Ratcatcher

Purkiss sat the man against one of the walls. He tore off the gag, pulled the bottle of soda from his pocket. The shaken carbonated water sizzled over his hands. Purkiss shook it over the man’s waxy face. The man sighed and mumbled, opening his eyes a crack and squinting against the glare of a spotlight from a nearby building. Purkiss took out the pistol — a SIG Sauer P226, he noticed — and laid it on the ground.

‘What’s your name?’

His lips moved silently. Purkiss slapped him.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Braginsky.’ His eyes were open and focused on Purkiss’s. He was on the right side of the twilight that separated consciousness from its counterpart.

‘Okay.’ Purkiss squatted back on his haunches. ‘You know how this sort of thing usually works, Braginsky. You give me the runaround a bit, I cut up rough, you start feeding me scraps, I go easy, you clam up again, I escalate the violence, et cetera, et cetera. Except I haven’t got much time. And when I’m pushed for time, I skip the niceties.’

One of the mistakes that Purkiss had come to learn was frequently made about interrogation science was that the more immediately the urge to be free from the distressing stimulus, the more likely the person being interrogated was to say anything, even if it were untrue. So, a man in extreme pain will reflexively tell his tormentor what he believes he wants to hear. A man facing the less immediate threat of impending death or disfigurement, and who has time to contemplate the consequences of his non-cooperation, may still lie, but is less likely to do so, as the demons generated by his own imagination do their work.

Purkiss picked up the Sig-Sauer, pushed the tip of the silencer against the man’s forehead, and motioned for him to stand. He did so, shakily. Purkiss grabbed his collar and turned him and shoved him towards the adjacent wall which was lower, hip height. He kept pushing so that the man was bent over the wall at the waist. Laying the gun down on the wall, Purkiss squatted and gripped the man’s ankles. He pushed up so that he tipped past his centre of gravity with a cry.

Braginsky hung suspended over the drop, his arms flailing.

‘Where’s my friend? The woman.’

The man yelled some more. Purkiss let go and immediately gripped the ankles again.

‘Whoops.’ He peered over at Braginsky’s face, which arched back at him, eyes rolling in terror. ‘You’ll notice it’s not a clean drop. You’ll hit a balcony or two on the way down. It’ll be messy.’

‘ I don’t know — ’

‘You’re getting awfully heavy, Braginsky.’ He let the ankles slip a few inches more.

‘ For the love of God, I swear I don’t know. The Englishman took her.’

‘Fallon.’

‘I don’t know his name. It was never told to us by the boss.’

‘The boss. You mean Kuznetsov.’

‘ Yes.’ He shouted it unhesitatingly. It made Purkiss think he was telling the truth about the rest.

‘Where’s Fallon?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Back at the farm?’

‘No. It’s — ’ He broke off, and Purkiss gave him an encouraging jolt. ‘Ah, God , don’t — The farm’s being closed down.’

From far away, somewhere below in the streets, came the noise of sirens.

‘What’s planned for tomorrow?’ He combined the question with a shake of the man’s legs. He could feel his grip genuinely starting to slacken.

‘An attack on the President.’

That was interesting. He hadn’t said on the summit .

‘Which one?’

‘Russian.’

Purkiss took this in, the implications not immediately clear. But it became a secondary concern. Behind him a door crashed open in one of the stairwell blocks and men began to stream out, too early to be the police, and looking too murderous.

They were four, just as Elle had said, hard and ugly men who fanned out across the rooftop. Each was armed with a pistol, apart from one who gripped one-handed a single-barrelled shotgun, the end sawn short.

Purkiss dragged Braginsky back over the edge and let him fall gasping near his feet. He grabbed the Sig-Sauer. The block the men emerged from was the farther of the two from Purkiss. The men were perhaps fifty feet away, advancing. Purkiss hauled Braginsky to his feet, pressed the gun against his head. One of the men took aim at Braginsky himself. No good: they’d riddle their own man if they had to. Purkiss placed the gun on the ground and raised his hands. Braginsky’s legs buckled and he slid to the ground, his face a gargoyle mask of fear.

Purkiss scanned the environment. There was nothing he could do, nothing . The door to the fire escape was too far away to be of any use, and the men were between him and the doors to the inner stairs. If they didn’t take his phone away from him immediately he might be able to get a message to Elle and Kendrick. The likelihood of that was almost non-existent.

One of the men coughed, and frowned at the rope of blood his mouth flung out on to the concrete. An instant later the crash of a shot rang off the walls around the roof. The man hit the ground face-down as the other three spun and crouched, one of them knocked off his feet immediately by a second shot. The man with the shotgun pulled the triggers of his weapon. The boom of the firing mechanism was followed by the stinging spatter of lead shot against the wall of one of the blocks. His body jerked twice and he twisted towards Purkiss as he fell. The fourth man got to his feet, swung his gun arm over to point it at Purkiss. Purkiss dived and rolled on his shoulder and the shots sang off the wall. Braginsky screamed and spun face-down, hit by a ricochet, Purkiss assumed. The man was taking aim again when the rifle hammered. He was hit three times before he could fire. He sprawled awkwardly, the gun spinning and skittering away from him across the surface of the roof.

The aftershock of the gunfire had left a high peal in Purkiss’s ears. Below, the sirens were becoming more insistent, the notes from assorted vehicles overlapping. Purkiss crouched, holding the Sig-Sauer lowered in a two-handed grip. From the doorway of one of the stairwell blocks Elle and Kendrick had broken into a run towards him, Kendrick with the rifle at the ready and Elle holding her pistol at her side. As they got near Purkiss saw her eyes were dazed. It was the first time she’d killed, he thought.

‘There may be more coming up behind,’ she said, her voice steady. ‘And the police are on the way.’

Purkiss said, ‘The fire escape.’ He pulled open the door and looked down. Nobody in the alley yet. They began to descend, Purkiss in the lead and Kendrick at the back, their soles squealing on the metal steps. As they approached the window Purkiss had climbed out of, voices from the room beyond became louder. He ignored them and slipped past, hearing them turn to shouts.

Two floors from the bottom Kendrick said, ‘Ah, bollocks ,’ as a police car pulled across the mouth of the alley.

There was nothing to do but keep going. One floor down Purkiss said, ‘Jump’, and swung himself over the banister. His shirt caught on a spur of metal and tore all the way down. The doors of the car were opening, uniformed men emerging and yelling. Purkiss hung in space for a second, then hit the floor, rolling. Something spanged and chipped off the tarmac beside him. The low crack of the shot trailed after it.

Why are they shooting at us , he thought, before realising the shot had come from far away and another direction. He rolled over and over, deeper into the alley, sounds coming disorientatingly from all around, shouting and sirens and two more cracks (from above, he now understood; reinforcements had arrived on the roof). Then he was up and running at a low crouch, glancing behind him, seeing Elle and Kendrick close at his back.