Cronos Rising (3 page)

His best bet was to hire a car.

He’d make his way back to London, and then... what? He had no contact details for Vale, apart from the phone number which now appeared defunct. Vale didn’t use an office, at least not one Purkiss was aware of. All their meetings had taken place outdoors, or in other public places.

He couldn’t very well walk into the MI6 building and ask after Vale, because Vale wasn’t officially Service any more.

No. He’d have to wait to be contacted, either by Vale himself or by somebody who knew him. And that cast Purkiss in a passive role, which he didn’t like.

Purkiss had spent the day tailing David Billson, and realised that as such he hadn’t kept up with the news. He looked for a remote control, couldn’t find one, and turned the small television set on manually, flicking through the channels until he found a 24-hour news channel in English.

He watched the grainy footage. The black smoke billowing towards the slate sky, the frantic activity as people scurried about in bright neon outfits. The aerial shots, taken from helicopters, of the shattered plane, half-submerged in the field in a crater of its own making.

Flight TA15. Turkish Airlines.

Purkiss cast his mind back to his last conversation with Vale, four days earlier. They’d been walking through St James’s Park – London’s parks were a favoured choice of Vale’s for their rendezvoux – and Vale had said:
I’ll be out of the country for the next few days, but I’ll be contactable by phone, so feel free
.

Purkiss watched the screen for a minute more. The German security service had received a telephone message six hours after flight TA15 had gone down, from a man identifying himself as a spokesman for the Islamic Caliphate in Asia. The ICA claimed responsibility for the destruction of the plane in the name of international
jihad
. More blows would be struck against the ICA’s enemies in the West. Et cetera.

Purkiss turned off the television. He looked at the phone beside it on the dresser.

Then he headed back downstairs, the damaged briefcase under his arm once more, and he asked the woman at the desk for change for a twenty-euro note.

Three blocks from the hotel, Purkiss found a public phone booth. It was one of a dying breed that still took coins rather than merely credit cards.

He punched in the international code for the United Kingdom, then the number he’d committed to memory.

She answered on the fifth distant ring, just as Purkiss was about to hang up. ‘Holley.’

‘Hannah,’ he said. ‘It’s John.’

There was only the briefest pause. ‘John? Hold on a moment.’ The faint noise he’d heard in the background faded, as she closed a door. ‘What’s up?’

Hannah Holley was an operative with the British Security Service, MI5. She and Purkiss had met in the summer of the previous year, when he’d been hunting a gunman known as the Jokerman. Purkiss and Hannah had become close during the investigation, and had developed a relationship of sorts. But it hadn’t survived, any more than the Jokerman had, and four months ago they’d parted company.

They’d done so by mutual assent. Hannah had, over a meal in a Soho restaurant, first proposed it, in the awkward way that even normally straightforward, confident people couldn’t avoid. Her career was vital to her, and she didn’t feel she had room for a man in her life at this stage in her progression.

Purkiss had experienced a disquieting sense of relief. He agreed, saying he understood fully, and that his own job made it difficult for him to pay a relationship the attention that was required to sustain it.

In reality, he didn’t understand why they were splitting up.

Purkiss hadn’t spoken to Hannah since then, though their separation hadn’t been acrimonious. It had been tacitly understood that they’d probably remain in contact from time to time.

‘I need a favour,’ he said.

*

H
annah called him back half an hour later, as a thin drizzle was starting to soak the pavement around him. Several people had passed him by while he waited, though thankfully nobody had tried to use the public phone.

‘Got it,’ she said. ‘His name isn’t there.’

Her tone sounded relieved, for Purkiss as well as for herself.

‘Read them out,’ Purkiss said.

‘All of them?’

‘Yes. Please.’

She’d obtained the passenger manifest for flight TA15. How, he didn’t know. But she was an up-and-coming MI5 asset, who’d earned a great deal of respect for the part she’d played in concluding the Jokerman operation, and she’d have plenty of favours to call in discreetly.

Hannah began to recite the names quickly. There were one hundred and forty-eight of them, Purkiss knew from the news report.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Say that one again.’

‘Terence McCall?’

‘No. The one before.’

‘Robert Edgar.’

‘That’s him,’ said Purkiss.

He felt a tightening in his face. In his gut.

Hannah said: ‘What? John –’

‘He’s used it as an alias before,’ said Purkiss. ‘Usually when flying somewhere. He has a passport in that name.’

Hannah was silent for a second. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’ Purkiss took a deep breath of the cooling air, felt the taste of new rain at the back of his throat. ‘Hannah, thanks.’

‘John, what’s this about? Did he have something to do with this –’

‘I don’t know,’ said Purkiss. ‘I need to think. You’ve been a great help.’

‘Where are you?’ she said.

But she’d be able to work it out, from the number of the public phone he’d given her. It was obviously Rome.

‘John, are you all right?’

‘Physically, yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go, Hannah. I might call you again.’

He hung up and began striding back towards the tiny hotel, ignoring the rain as it soaked his head and neck.

Quentin Vale, AKA Robert Edgar, had been on board Turkish Airlines Flight TA15.

And there were no survivors.

Random scenes flashed through Purkiss’s mind. His first meeting with Vale, in the restaurant after the sentencing of Donal Fallon, the man who’d killed Purkiss’s fiancee, Claire. Vale’s jitteriness in the car, last year, as he’d dropped Purkiss off at Heathrow Airport knowing Purkiss was likely to be ambushed in Saudi Arabia where he was heading. Vale’s dark, furrowed face, etched with concern, as he’d met Purkiss at the airfield in Finland eight months ago, when Purkiss had been carried by stretcher off the chartered flight from Siberia, delirious and riven with frostbite from the terrible trek he’d endured across the tundra.

And Purkiss thought of the briefcase under his arm, full of worthless paper, of garbage intelligence.

An idea, fanciful but plausible, was gestating in his mind.

He needed to find David Billson again. Find him, and ask what the hell was going on.

––––––––

‘E
xcellent. You’ve done really well.’

Rebecca winced at the words, even though she’d tried hard to keep any hint of a patronising tone out of her voice. Sometimes the words themselves were at fault, however you delivered them.

The old man blinked at her. The tip of his tongue snaked out to collect the last smear of pureed vegetables from his lips. Behind the watery film covering his eyes, she could read nothing. No recognition, no emotion.

But she told herself he appreciated her praise. It was one of the ways she got through the working day.

Rebecca collected up the dinner things - the half-empty plate, the plastic beaker of milk with its nipple-like spout - and put them on the tray. She wiped the old man’s mouth gently, again trying not to belittle him, not to give the impression that she was wiping a baby’s bottom. She removed the corner of the napkin from the collar of his cardigan where it was tucked, and deposited it too on the tray.

‘Be back in a moment with a cuppa. Okay?’

Damn. The perky cheeriness was there in her voice, as if she was humouring him. A lot of the nurses and nursing assistants did it. Even the doctors who visited the home assumed the same light-hearted approach. They meant well, as Rebecca did. But, in truth, it was difficult to know how to talk to somebody with dementia. Somebody who might not understand a word you were saying to them. But who might, deep down, respond adversely to your carefree tone, and be unable to say so.

She gave the old man’s hand a squeeze, maintaining eye contact, her expression friendly but genuine. And, for an instant, she felt a connection. Nothing tangible, nothing she could put into words. But there was a moment of contact there, between two human beings, rather than between a ninety-four-year-old man afflicted with advanced Alzheimer’s disease and his thirty-two-year-old carer.

Rebecca straightened. Through the window, the afternoon sun bathed the South Downs in mellow light. The view was spectacular, and very English, the Sussex countryside rolling away towards the distant sea in a patchwork of fields dappled with sheep and clusters of burnt-orange oak leaves which still decked the trees.

As nursing homes went, Rebecca doubted there were many better than this, or even as good.

In the corridor outside the old man’s room, Rebecca felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.

She put the brake on the dining trolley with her foot and fished out the phone.

Read the text message.

Lifted her head and stared down the corridor.

At the far end, Jasmine, one of her fellow nursing assistants, was helping another resident, a woman in her eighties stunted by arthritis, to pick her painful way towards her room. Jasmine looked up, smiled at Rebecca.

Rebecca remembered at the last instant to smile back.

She looked down at the phone in her hand again, half-convinced that the screen would be blank, or that the message would be some junk one asking her if she had been missold PPI in the last five years.

But the text was still there, terse and stark as a paper cut.

Four words, and a number.

Almost without thinking, Rebecca deleted the message.

She grasped the trolley once more and wheeled it towards the kitchen, where she deposited it just inside the doors. Then she made her way to the corridor which housed the offices.

*

‘A
week.’

Rebecca’s boss was called Sheila Docherty. Her hair spilled untidily from beneath her matron’s cap. Her eyes were tired, her stout body reluctant to unwedge itself from behind her desk.

‘Yes. Probably no longer than that.’

Docherty’s gaze roved over Rebecca’s face, dropped to her hands. Rebecca held them clasped before her, as if to stop them from writhing.

‘Rebecca, you look awful,’ Docherty said. Despite her aloof, almost grim demeanour with her staff, Rebecca knew she was a sympathetic person at heart, and a shrewd one at that.

‘Not feeling great, Sheila, to be honest.’

Docherty dropped her pen on the desk and tilted her head. ‘What’s happened?’

‘My brother,’ said Rebecca. ‘He’s been in a car accident. Down in Devon. It’s... well, he’s had a head injury. He might not come round.’

It was the first lie.

Docherty’s expression softened immediately. ‘Oh, Rebecca. I’m so sorry -’

‘We’re not close,’ said Rebecca quickly. ‘But I’m his nearest relative. He’s single. Divorced. I have to go down there.’

‘Of course.’ Docherty spread her hands. ‘Forget what you said about a week. Take as long as you need.’

‘I know you’re short-staffed,’ Rebecca muttered. ‘I’ll try to get back -’

‘Forget it,’ Docherty said again. ‘Don’t even worry about it.’

‘Thanks, Sheila.’ Rebecca sucked her lips in between her teeth, as if to suppress a sob. ‘I’ll let you know what’s happening as soon as
I
know.’

The older woman stood up. ‘Do you need anything? Is there anyone who can go with you?’

‘No.’ Rebecca shook her head. The last thing she needed was company. ‘If I set off this evening, I can be there in a couple of hours. I’ll stay at his place. My brother’s. I’ll be fine.’

She’d never taken emergency leave before. She was a diligent, reliable worker, well liked by the residents of the nursing home and the staff alike. Docherty would probably have allowed her to take time off anyway, but Rebecca had invented the lie to speed things along.

Lying was what she was steeped in.

Docherty waved her hands, as if she’d allowed the gruffness to slip for long enough. ‘Go. Now. I’ll cover the rest of your shift.’

*

R
ebecca reached the North Terminal of Gatwick Airport in fifty minutes. She left her VW Polo in the long-stay car park and made her way through the throng inside the concourse.

The first three words of the text message had said:
Gatwick, Nth Terminal
.

The next:
Locker C26
.

She could have no more avoided complying with the instruction inherent in the message than Pavlov’s dogs could have prevented themselves from salivating at the sound of his bell.

In the pocket of her jeans - which she’d changed into quickly in the car, tossing her nursing assistant’s uniform into the back seat - she felt the small hard shape of the key.

She’d kept the key with her, never more than a few feet away even when she was in bed or in the bath, for the last six years. Ever since her mother had given it to her, a couple of days before her death. A thin, superficial layer of Rebecca’s mind had told her she’d never have occasion to use it.

But, deeper, she’d known this day was as inevitable as sunrise.

She found the locker, an anonymous square block among a grid of identical ones, and inserted the key. Almost surprisingly, the door opened immediately.

Inside was a small canvas case. Rebecca drew it out, feeling something shifting within. She closed the locker and turned the key again. Then she walked towards the public toilets at the end of the passage and found an empty cubicle and bolted the door shut, before sitting on the lowered lid and unzipping the case.

Inside, she found a tiny flash drive, a mauve-coloured UK passport, a wad of euro bills – she estimated the total came to at least a couple of thousands’ worth – and a handwritten note, with a photo attached.