you to move in and apprehend him. Non-lethal force only.’
‘Understood.’
‘How public are you?’
‘Very.’
‘No police.’
‘Of course.’
The Jacobin stood still, breathing slowly, frustrated at the lack of visual contact.
Purkiss, gone from the Service for four years. What the hell was he doing here now?
*
He looked back and there was no pretence now, a direct hard stare as the crop-haired man bore down. The street was crowded but not enough that an attack would go unnoticed in a press of bodies.
Unless the man had something in his – He reacted even before the thought was fully formed as the man lunged, a fluid sweep of his arm which Purkiss sidestepped feeling like he was defending himself against a fencing sword, except that protruding from the man’s fist was no blade but a needle so tiny that it barely produced a glint. For an instant the man was off balance. Purkiss tried to swat at his back to tip him past his centre of gravity, but he sprang forward and righted himself and stepped aside. He glared at Purkiss across the pavement.
Nobody else seemed to have noticed. It was some sort of tranquilliser, Purkiss assumed, designed for quick action so that he’d go down and the man would support him, full of concern, explaining to the passersby that he was a friend. Then he would hustle him away to whatever fate was planned for him.
The man up ahead, the bull-necked one, would be either on his way back or staying put waiting for his friend to drive Purkiss towards him and so to try to keep the odds as they currently stood. Purkiss backed under the awning of a shop and elbowed open the door and stepped inside, letting the door swing shut. It was a bookshop, deeper than it was wide, not crowded but with a few customers browsing unhurriedly enough that it didn’t seem about to close. Purkiss sidled down the centre aisle, keeping his eye on the door. It opened and the crop-headed man came through. He held back, standing near the door, watching Purkiss, waiting. Again his lips were moving. Purkiss knew he was summoning his colleague. There wasn’t much time.
The fire door was down a passage on the other side of the service counter. Two women sat at the tills, one young, the other possibly her mother. Neither had looked up when the man came in. Purkiss walked to the counter. ‘Excuse me, do you speak English?’
The younger woman said, ‘Little.’
‘Sorry to have to tell you, but I just saw that man near the door put a book in his pocket.’
The girl’s eyes widened and she glanced past him. The other woman muttered a question and she answered and the older woman came out from behind the counter and called down the length of the shop at the man, her tone pleasant but assertive.
The man’s stare flicked from Purkiss to the advancing woman, calculating. Then Purkiss was vaulting over the counter and as the young woman screamed he was down the passage and pushing the fire door open. He found himself in an alley, dark and murky.
The other man was there. He must have doubled back earlier and been lurking nearby. He saw Purkiss and ran the short distance towards him, quick for such a thick-set man. Purkiss was off running in the opposite direction but his foot slid on a slick of wet cardboard. He stayed upright but lost a second. The man bore down.
Purkiss turned and the man’s forearm drove off his shoulder. In the man’s fist he saw the flash of a needle – he’s got one too – and he pivoted on one foot and brought an extended-knuckle strike against the man’s neck. There wasn’t much of a neck to aim at and he got the side of the man’s jaw. He bellowed and punched Purkiss in the chest, slamming him back against the wall of the alley, winding him. There was no time to make a fuss about not being able to draw breath properly because the fist with the syringe was stabbing at his thigh. Purkiss twisted his hips, felt a sting in his upper thigh. He pistoned his leg side-on into the man’s abdomen, the syringe spinning high with a liquid streak spilling from the needle’s tip. The man staggered back and Purkiss swept at his shins with a foot, bringing him down hard.
Ten feet away the fire door barged open and the crop-headed man came through. Purkiss felt it then, the