Ratcatcher (2 page)

‘You guys have no idea about interrogation. None whatsoever. What you do is, you hurt them badly,
first
, before you ask any questions. That removes all doubt from the word go.’ Keeping his eyes on Kendrick, Purkiss reached his hand back. ‘Give me a gun.’

Spiljak moved behind him and he felt the butt of a handgun slap into his palm. He hefted and glanced at it. A Bulgarian Arsenal, cheap and stubby.

Kendrick glared at his eyes but showed no recognition.

Purkiss stepped back, aimed straight-armed at Kendrick’s left knee, and pulled the trigger.

The hammer cracked on an empty chamber. Purkiss turned, sighed. There was a shift in the atmosphere because he hadn’t turned the gun on one of them as soon as he’d been given it, had instead fired at the prisoner whom they’d suspected of being in league with him. They were off-guard. It was the perfect time to make his move.

He transferred the Arsenal to his left hand and in a spinning backhand strike lashed Zagorec across the face with it. He felt the nose crack and Zagorec was down without a word. Purkiss completed the turn and used the momentum to bring his right leg snapping across in a roundhouse kick which caught Spiljak in the shoulder, sending him staggering back into Hoggart who had risen, his own gun emerging. Purkiss headbutted Hoggart between the eyes, hard frontal bone meeting bridge of nose. As he sagged, Purkiss seized his arm and twisted the gun free and fired at the steps where the helmsman had appeared, catching him in the chest and flinging him back. He crouched and sighted down the length of his arm at Spiljak, who was standing upright, his gun aimed at Purkiss, one foot propped on the stool on which Kendrick was balancing.

From across the water the shouting had started up.

Purkiss had time to notice the gun he’d taken off Hoggart, a Heckler & Koch P30. To Purkiss’s right, on the steps leading up to the steering deck, the man he’d shot was groaning.

More shouting, and, distantly, sirens.

Over the guns, Spiljak’s eyes mocked him. He tapped his foot on the stool, making the implication clear.
Shoot me, and I’ll knock the chair away. Your friend will hang
.

Purkiss glanced up at the rope above Kendrick’s head.

His first shot caught Spiljak in the right shoulder, jerking his arm upward so that his own shot would go high if it came, which it didn’t. His second smashed into Spiljak’s left knee. Spiljak dropped with a shriek.

And kicked the stool away with his other leg as he fell.

The rope snapped taut and Kendrick swung. Purkiss kicked the gun away from Spiljak’s hand and caught Kendrick. He righted the stool, propped Kendrick’s feet on it, and prised loose the noose around Kendrick’s neck. Moving behind him he slipped out a Swiss Army knife, cut the cords binding his wrists and ankles.

Kendrick dropped off the stool, stumbling but keeping his feet. In a voice like a sheet of ice plummeting into an Arctic gorge he said: ‘Bastard.’

‘We’re even. You shouldn’t have gone in without me.’ But by delaying the departure of the boat he’d allowed Purkiss to get aboard. There’d never been any danger of his neck breaking. Spiljak had committed the novice hangman’s error of making the rope too short. In a few more seconds he’d have strangled to death, but Purkiss hadn’t been planning on waiting that long.

Purkiss glanced out of the window. Flashing red and white lights were massing on the shore. Spiljak was rolling on the floor clutching his wrecked knee, too shocked to scream. On the steps the other thug Purkiss had shot was on his back, whimpering, his breathing not laboured. He’d survive. On the floor of the cabin, Hoggart and Zagorec were out for the count.

Purkiss retrieved his phone from Spiljak’s pocket and took the man’s own handset. He thumbed through the various menus until he found what he wanted, then bent and grabbed Hoggart and hauled him so that he slumped against one of the cabin’s seats. He twisted the man’s ears until he howled awake, held up Spiljak’s phone, played the recording.

Hoggart’s eyes were slivers of white between the lids, his tongue lolling at the blood around his mouth. From the phone came snatches of English dialogue. Hoggart’s voice, then Spiljak’s, naming places, substances, prices. At the end Purkiss wrapped the phone in an oilskin bag and stowed it in his pocket.

He said, ‘You insisted I surrender any recording devices I might have, but you didn’t consider that your friend here might be keeping his own record for insurance purposes. Been a bit of a chump, haven’t you?’

Purkiss straightened, looked down at Hoggart.

‘Tell the police whatever you like. They might charge you and Spiljak and the rest of this sorry crew with disturbing the peace or whatever. Or, you might escape without a blemish on your name. I couldn’t care less. But understand this, Hoggart. You’re finished. Crawl away and bury yourself where nobody can see you. SIS doesn’t need its dirty knickers washed in public. But you’ve let the side down. And the side won’t forget. If you’re heard from again, anywhere in the world, the Service will put an end to you.’

The sirens were getting louder. The police boats were close enough that their lights were strobing against the cabin’s walls. Purkiss said to Kendrick, ‘Time we were off.’

They clambered over the moaning man on the stairs and ran at a crouch across the deck towards the rail. Then they were airborne. Purkiss felt the shock of the water, surfaced, and glanced back to see the boats swarming round the yacht, the men crowding aboard. He located Kendrick’s head a few metres away. They struck out for the shore.

*

Kendrick’s car was in a side street just off the marina. They reached it by stealth, two sodden figures skulking through the alleyways. In the boot were enough dry clothes for both of them.

Purkiss climbed into the passenger seat. Kendrick started the engine but didn’t move off. After a moment he said, ‘That gun.’

‘Yes.’

‘It felt lighter than it should’ve. That’s why you took a chance and pretended to shoot my leg.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you were certain the magazine was empty. Rather than just not completely full.’

Purkiss, one of whose guiding principles was that you could never be certain of anything, said, ‘Yes.’

‘Fuck off, Purkiss.’

*

Purkiss leaned his head back, closed his eyes, breathed deeply while Kendrick drove, letting his body find its own way down from the heightened level of alertness at which it had been cruising. Then he fumbled out his phone and looked at the impossible picture Vale had sent him.

It was a three-quarter view of a man’s head and shoulders, taken in the glare of morning sunlight. The man was squinting against the light. There was no mistaking him.

The face belonged to a man named Fallon. It wasn’t in itself especially memorable, but Purkiss would never forget it. The reason the photograph was impossible was that Fallon was serving a life sentence in Belmarsh prison.

The reason Purkiss would never forget the face was that four years earlier Fallon had murdered Purkiss’s fiancée. Purkiss had seen him do it.

TWO

All the Jacobin had wanted to do was ask the man a few questions. Was he photographing those people in particular, or did they happen to be standing in shot at the time? Was he freelance or part of an organisation? And why had he appeared now, an apparent complication when there weren’t supposed to be complications at this late stage?

The Jacobin hadn’t meant to kill him.

The man was small and slight, with prematurely receding hair and goggling eyes. The fight he’d been able to put up had been revealing, had confirmed the Jacobin’s earlier suspicions that there was more to him than his appearance implied.

He had opened the door readily. The moment the Jacobin saw the flare of recognition in his eyes the time for innocent questions was obviously past. The Jacobin moved in and kicked the door closed, bringing a sword hand against the man’s throat. But he was fast, faster than he should have been and therefore a professional. He spun away and crouched. They faced each other across the carpet.

The man leaped backwards and sideways through a door off the entrance hall. The Jacobin followed. Inside the living room the man was at the mantelpiece, scooping a vase in his hand and swinging it. The Jacobin dodged, feeling the slipstream of the heavy ceramic sigh past and hearing the vase shatter against the wall behind, not taking an eye off the man because the vase was a distraction, intended to disorientate with pain and noise. The man lunged for a real weapon, a curved sword on the wall. Its blade gasped as he drew it from its scabbard.

Blades were a problem, more so than guns, as any experienced fighter knew. In the Jacobin’s favour, the man didn’t look like a trained swordsman. He gripped the weapon in two hands which left him with neither one free and with both elbows, those exquisite points of vulnerability, exposed.

The Jacobin’s first kick cracked the head of the radius bone in the man’s left elbow, an injury so painful that the involuntary opening of the hand was automatic. The second kick was more daring: still using the left leg as a pivot, the Jacobin snapped a toecap into the upright blade, lifting it spinning out of the man’s right hand to clatter across the bare wooden boards across the room.

Clutching his elbow, the man feinted to his right and darted left. The Jacobin didn’t move. It was a battle of morale, now, one the man couldn’t win. The Jacobin indicated one of the armchairs. The man didn’t sit.

From inside the man’s pocket a phone began to ring. They watched each other’s eyes through one ring, two. The man reached into his pocket with the hand on his good arm.

‘No,’ said the Jacobin, voice soft, and moved in, a quick fist punching the man’s ruined elbow provoking a yell, the other jamming up under the man’s breastbone so that he rocked back and slumped down the wall.

The Jacobin dragged him to the centre of the living room, checked his phone. He hadn’t had a chance to answer, and the call was denoted as ‘missed’. The number was prefixed with the international dialling code for the United Kingdom. Pocketing the phone, the Jacobin propped him into a sitting position on the rug and knelt behind him. Sliding an arm across his throat, the Jacobin applied gentle pressure.

‘How did you know me just now?’

No reply.

‘Why the photographs?’

Still nothing. The pressure wasn’t enough to be preventing him from speaking. The Jacobin applied fingertips to points in the neck, harmless but agonising. The man hissed rapidly between clenched teeth, his body shuddering.

He would have to die now, there was no question about that. The question was whether he was likely to divulge anything useful first. Clearly he was trained to stand up to interrogation, to lie convincingly under duress.

In the event the Jacobin’s hand was forced. The man made a last desperate effort, an extended-knuckle punch with his good arm behind him which connected with the kidney area. The Jacobin swallowed against the roiling pain and flexed the arm across the man’s throat until he sagged. Not wanting to take any chances, the Jacobin gripped the pale, high head between the heels of both palms, and with a quick twist dislocated the vertebrae of the man’s neck.

*

The Jacobin sat on the rug for a minute, eyes closed, finding calm. It wasn’t formal meditation of any kind, but rather a necessary process of reestablishing equilibrium after the taking of another human being’s life. For the dead man himself, the Jacobin felt nothing. For the fact of having killed – again – there was disquiet, a feeling that was growing, not diminishing, with each such episode. A limb that was beginning to rot with gangrene could be salvaged by the excision of the corrupted matter. Did the same apply to a soul? Could it?

In the passage by the front door, the Jacobin retrieved the small grip dropped there on entry. Inside was the equipment that, given more time, the Jacobin would have installed at leisure after first establishing that the man wasn’t at home. The man’s body would have to be hidden within the flat. The smell would attract attention in a few days, of course, but by that time it would all be over.

Spreading the contents of the grip across the dining table, the Jacobin set to work.

*

Vale was a motionless silhouette against the cold morning sky. Purkiss parked in the dirt semicircle at the bottom of the track and made his way up through the light ground fog towards the churchyard. It was Vale’s way, always had been. Remote locations for meetings to minimise the risk of surveillance. Purkiss had no idea where Vale’s office was, or if he even had one.

They’d arrived back from Zagreb mid-morning. To be on the safe side Purkiss had packed Kendrick off to see a doctor about the strangulation injury. He had freshened up, then phoned Vale for a rendezvous.

Driving out into the Hertfordshire countryside, Purkiss let his thoughts drift back four years. He’d replayed those events many times but there had always been the imperative to look forward, not to wallow. There was nothing more that could be done, and justice of a sort had been achieved. Now, that justice seemed ephemeral, like a software programme whose licence had expired.