Ratcatcher - By Tim Stevens Page 0,38
they’re stopping,’ said Abby. ‘Not a traffic light, I don’t think. Halfway along the road.’
He put his foot down a touch and overshot before she could correct him and went round the block and she murmured, ‘You should be nearing them just about now,’ and then he saw her, Lyuba, standing talking through the open rear window of a black car by the kerb, a Lexus by the look of it. She straightened, nodded and walked away. The car pulled off.
‘Got a visual,’ he said to Abby.
‘Are you going to follow her, or the car?’
‘The car.’
Now it was easier because he could hang back a little, confident that if he lost visual contact Abby was still tracking the car. He couldn’t be sure but it seemed there were two people in the Lexus: the driver, and the man in the back to whom Lyuba had been talking after she’d got out. The Lexus moved smoothly through the streets, heading north through the bustle of early afternoon commerce. Purkiss felt the first salt tang of sea air in his mouth.
The office blocks and arcades thinned out and finally yielded entirely. They were heading along a coast road, the sea shifting and glittering on the left. Ahead the Lexus was slowing and pulling on to the pavement. There wasn’t any apparent reason for Purkiss to stop, so he drove past and turned off into a small parking lot on the edge of the water where people were unloading picnicking materials. He parked so that he could watch the Lexus in the rear-view mirror.
Another vehicle had been waiting where the Lexus had pulled in, a large four by four which looked bulkier than normal as though it had been customised, possibly with armour plating. A man emerged from the rear of the Lexus, large and blocky in build, hair in a military crop, perhaps fifty years old and dressed in a business suit. The distance was too great for any decent pictures but Purkiss lifted his phone to the window. He did what he could with the zoom function and took as many photographs as he could of the man before he climbed into the passenger side of the four by four, which began to turn on to the road back in the direction the Lexus had come. The Lexus pulled off in the opposite direction.
Purkiss considered the options for a second. The man in the four by four appeared to be in charge and was potentially a more valuable target, but the tracking device was in the Lexus. Plus, there was only the driver in the Lexus, which meant better odds in the event of a confrontation. He waited until the black car had passed, then reversed back on to the road and set off after it.
Ahead, inland to the right and set back from the road, Purkiss saw a stone spire which put him in mind of Cleopatra’s Needle on the north bank of the Thames in London. The Soviet War Memorial. He knew this because it had featured heavily on the news in recent months, was the site at which the meeting was to take place between the Russian and Estonian leaders. As he passed it he saw the activity around the cordoned-off base. A couple of news crews were shooting footage and a chanting crowd brandishing placards was being kept back from the cordon by a thin film of uniformed police.
The Lexus turned off the coast road as the city began to coalesce into a discrete whole in the mirrors. Buildings started to become sparse and the aroma of pine began to supplant the sea air. Traffic was thinner here, too. Purkiss touched the brake to pull back.
‘Abby?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’re obviously heading away from the city. What’s ahead?’
‘Google Earth says forest, and plenty of it.’
‘Okay. I’m going to keep well back. I might lose visual contact. Let me know if he turns off or does anything odd.’
*
The road began to wind and climb upwards. Pine and spruce soared on either side, blanketing the road in shadow, and the temperature was dropping noticeably. Purkiss had lost sight of the Lexus fifteen minutes earlier but took Abby’s silence to mean that he was still keeping pace. They had taken a turnoff some way back when he’d still had the Lexus in view and were now on a single-lane road. Cars passed in the opposite direction at the rate of perhaps one every three minutes.
Abby’s voice startled him. ‘He’s stopped.’
‘All right.’ Purkiss pulled off