Tim Stevens - Ratcatcher

‘He’ll be all right. They’ll put a drain in his chest for a couple of days.’

She shifted closer, her legs tucked under her on the sofa, and put a shy hand on his arm. ‘He thanked you, but I haven’t yet. So, thanks.’

Purkiss looked at her eyes, dark in the pale, drawn face. At her mouth, her throat. Through the layers of fatigue he felt a stirring.

Somehow she was closer still. He leant his face in and kissed her forehead, then her mouth. Her lips yielded at first, then responded, pressing back. His hands slid round across her back and up to her hair, drawing her head towards him. Her own arms came up and her hands grabbed at his back, his shoulders, and he broke the kiss to pull at her sweater and drag it off in a cascade of hair which she shook out of her face. Then his hands were on her breasts through her thin blouse and hers clasped his face. She said, ‘Wait,’ rose and tugged on his arm.

He half followed, half propelled her towards the door of the solitary bedroom. Once inside he kicked the door shut and they were clawing at each other’s clothes, tumbling and rolling on the cold bedspread, enveloped in each other’s heat in a raging joy that was so complete it made time cease for hours.

She lay naked against his side, her breast pressed against his chest, her hair pushing up under his chin every time he breathed in. Purkiss watched the ceiling, letting the night vision work its way into his retinas.

He hadn’t been expecting it, wondered if she had. The nearness of death no doubt had something to do with it, the need to respond by engaging in the most life-affirming act of all. There had been other women, since Claire, including one with whom he’d become very close until she’d come up against the impenetrable bedrock of his grief. Usually the women ended it, saddened by his distance.

The evenness of her breathing made him wonder if she’d fallen asleep. He said, ‘We should get ready.’

‘No. Not… all that, out there, yet. Not for a few minutes. Let’s be normal for a while.’ She shifted against him, easing herself. ‘Ask me something normal.’

‘All right.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Elle. Not the commonest name nowadays.’

‘A long story. Well, not long so much as dull.’

‘Try me.’

‘First week at university. I was registering for a class. I was asked for my name, and for some reason instead of Louise Klavan — Louise, that’s my name — I said “L. Klavan”. The woman wrote down “Elle”. It sort of stuck.’

‘I prefer Louise.’

‘That’s too bad.’ She pinched his arm. ‘Your middle name. Rutherford. I noticed it when I did the background search on you. What’s that all about? It wasn’t your mother’s maiden name.’

‘My father was an amateur scientist. He wanted me to pursue a career in physics. Like Ernest Rutherford.’

‘You must have been a great disappointment to him.’ He felt her smile against his shoulder.

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

After a pause she said, ‘Now comes the part where I ask you how, or why, you came to join the Service.’

‘And where I give you the usual reasons. A young man’s restlessness and desire for adventure. A bookish intellectual’s wish to serve abstract ideals of freedom and justice. Or the self-indulgence of an immature existentialist who lacks the imagination to seek out normal ways to live a worthwhile life, and chooses a life of danger as a tragic gesture against the void.’

She sat up and drew the covers around herself and stared at him, still smiling, genuine interest in her eyes. ‘I don’t believe any of those apply to you. But clearly you’ve considered them.’

‘Everyone in this job asks themselves sooner or later why the hell they chose it, as you well know.’ He shrugged, feeling suddenly self-conscious. ‘You know what I read at university.’

‘Philosophy, English literature and history, in which you achieved a first,’ she recited. ‘So… I’m guessing it was the history that motivated you? You saw yourself as an agent of history, destined to carry it forward. I’m not being facetious, by the way.’

‘Don’t worry, I didn’t think you were. But you’re exactly wrong, one hundred and eighty degrees out. There are no grand sweeping narratives in history, other than the ones we construct. Something happens and then another something happens, and then another, and in retrospect we impose a contrived causal link between them, so it seems like one progressed inevitably from the last.’

She said nothing, absorbing it. Purkiss sat up, warming to his theme.

‘Take tomorrow, or later today, rather. The presidents are meeting, and if all goes according to plan, they’ll seal an agreement which will make it less likely that their two countries, Russia and Estonia, and by extension Russia and the NATO powers, will go to war. But there are thousands of other potential triggers, manmade and otherwise, that could lead to such a war. Yet in a year’s time, ten years’ time, if we haven’t gone to war then the historians will attribute this achievement directly to today’s meeting. Baselessly so.’

‘But if the meeting is sabotaged, if the Russian president is assassinated… the chance of war is dramatically increased.’

‘Exactly. Chances, probabilities — that’s all we can deal in. Not certainties. It’s what Hume taught me. That’s why I chose the Service.’ He sat back against the pillows again. ‘You can’t make the world a better place. But you can help reduce the probability of awful things happening, not awful things in principle but individual things. And if that’s the most you do with your life then I think you can say you’ve had a life worth living.’

Her eyes were soft and he thought he saw a sadness in her smile.

‘And where does this fit in? What we’re doing?’

She waved vaguely at them, at the bed. Before he could be lost for words, she let the cover drop away from her body, leaned in towards him, and he reached for her once more.

Purkiss was dressed by the time Kendrick let himself in. Kendrick’s face was taut, the cheeks stretched hollow, his limbs tense as claspknives. He barely nodded at Purkiss as he strode over to the table, where he picked up the gun and hefted it as if it were a prosthetic arm he’d temporarily misplaced.

Elle emerged from the bedroom in a dressing gown. Purkiss handed her the mug of coffee he’d made. She waved at Kendrick’s stare and disappeared again into the bedroom.

‘Have a good walk?’ Purkiss asked. Kendrick had none of the jitteriness of the true speed freak, so probably hadn’t overdone it.

Kendrick sat himself in Purkiss’s line of sight and leered. ‘Filthy bastard.’

Purkiss looked at the smirking face, managed to stop his mouth from twitching in a smile. ‘There’s coffee in the pot. Help yourself. If you need any caffeine on top, that is.’

‘I won’t tell Abby.’ Kendrick laid a forefinger alongside his nose.

Purkiss sighed, exasperated. Perhaps Kendrick had overindulged after all. ‘Why would she care?’

The silence went on longer than was comfortable. Purkiss noticed that Kendrick’s gaze had changed, turned from mocking to wondering.

‘My God. You genuinely don’t know, do you?’

‘What?’

Kendrick let out his breath in a great hiss between his teeth, propping his boots up on a chair. ‘Purkiss… for someone who’s only slightly less educated than God, you can be a right stupid bugger at times.’

‘ What? ’ Purkiss spread his palms.

‘She’s crazy about you. Batshit insane. Like a teenager with a pop star.’

‘Abby?’

‘Yes. Abby.’ Kendrick shook his head. ‘And you haven’t seen it. All that wisecracking, all those chirpy Mister Purkiss remarks… it’s all a front. She’s besotted. Christ knows why, she could do better.’