Ratcatcher - By Tim Stevens Page 0,20
have. He doesn’t know I’m coming, it’s a surprise.’ He gestured about the room. ‘To be honest I wasn’t even sure he still lived here. Still wouldn’t be if you hadn’t confirmed it. It’s a few years since I last heard from him.’
She glanced around. ‘I’ve never been here either. We’re friends at work, but not that close.’
‘And he hasn’t been in for – how long?’
‘Three days. He isn’t answering his phone either. Our boss is livid. I’m more worried than anything else.’
It seemed presumptuous for either of them to sit so they remained where they were.
He said, ‘What work does he do?’
‘We’re a small English-language newspaper for expats. Living Tallinn.’ She didn’t look at him as though she expected him to have heard of it, or cared if he had or not. ‘He’s a photographer. The photographer, really.’
She was lying through her teeth, as he was, and they each knew the other was lying.
He scratched the back of his neck. ‘It’s a bit difficult for me. I don’t know much about him, about his life here. Do you know where he might have got to?’
‘No idea, I’m afraid.’
He’d spun the first threads in the web of lies: I’m a friend of Jaak’s, well, not a friend exactly. I met him when he was an exchange student at Cambridge with me fifteen years ago. I came up here and the door was open. He didn’t say how he’d got into the block of flats in the first place and she didn’t ask. She countered with her concerned work colleague fable.
They stood with nothing more to say, two strangers with a tenuous link meeting in odd circumstances. He broke the moment.
‘Well, as I say, I was in town anyway. I’ll be off.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Look, if you do hear from him in the next couple of days could you ask him to give me a ring?’ He scribbled his name – Martin Hughes, the one on the passport – and a random seven-digit mobile phone number on a piece of notepaper from a pad on the table beside the landline phone near the door. She took the paper and glanced at it.
‘Likewise, if he gets in touch with you, call me, okay?’ She handed him a business card. She’d slipped up: why not just ask him to tell Seppo to call the office? The name on the card was Elle Klavan, the logo that of Living Tallinn, and there were mobile and fax numbers and an email address.
At the door he said, ‘You staying here?’
‘Yes, I’ll wait a bit, see if he comes back.’ Her eyes were level.
Another mistake she’d made: she hadn’t been sceptical enough about his explanation for his presence there.
Outside the building Purkiss turned left and walked down the hill. He crossed the road and sidled up again behind the row of cars and took up position between two closely parked saloons, where he squatted, watching the windows and the entrance.
There was occasional movement behind the curtains. The brightness increased a fraction, as though a light had been turned on elsewhere in the flat. After several minutes the lights snapped off without warning. Shortly afterwards she emerged from the building and headed down the hill.
Within a block the streets started to become more crowded, something for which Purkiss was thankful as it provided cover. He was able to stay well back, yet keep pace with her. She wasn’t trying any counter-surveillance moves, which meant either that she wasn’t aware that she was being tagged or that she wanted to be followed. She headed back down into the centre of the Old Town. Purkiss tracked her through the square where he’d sat earlier, then off in a direction he hadn’t been before. She had the unhurried stride of somebody with things to do but no particularly pressing deadline to meet.
She’d spoken startled Estonian on seeing him, but he’d answered in English and she’d immediately replied in kind, her accent unambiguously Home Counties. Klavan. Was the name Estonian?
The trap, if it was one, puzzled him. It made sense that she should lead him into the lion’s den, but she’d been alone at the flat – what if he’d attacked her? The risk seemed reckless. He needed to ask Vale a few questions, but didn’t dare compose a text message while he was walking in case she made a sudden move and, distracted, he lost her.
Uphill again, through restaurant crowds thronging the pavements and blasts of music as bars