Ratcatcher - By Tim Stevens Page 0,7

the site of Claire’s murder. Although there would have been ways to get at him after his imprisonment – there were always ways, even in an environment as hermetic as Belmarsh – Purkiss had found the idea of cold revenge wearying, depressing even. Now, though, if there was any substance to the intelligence Vale had forwarded to him, any possibility at all that Fallon was on the loose –

This time, he thought, you don’t get away.

THREE

Vale’s overcoat shrouded his tall, rawboned frame like a cloak against the autumn chill. He was a black man in his sixties with salted hair and the beginnings of a stoop. Under the roving of his yellow eyes, Purkiss felt as though he were being measured for a coffin. Vale raised a thumb and fingertips to his lips and drew on his cigarette and from his nostrils blew scythes of smoke.

With two movements of his head – a nod and a tilt – he conveyed a greeting and a request to walk. They headed across the lawn to the graveyard.

‘Hoggart pose any problems?’ Vale had a habit of speaking in a virtual monotone which led people to assume he was on some kind of medication.

‘No. He’s small fry. It’s the end of him.’

‘Clean job?’ He meant had Purkiss been discreet, left any traces of himself.

‘The Rijeka police have me on camera with Spiljak. That’s about it. No names.’

Vale nodded again. He stopped at an ancient gravestone and scuffed at the moss with his toe, crouching to peer at what was carved underneath. It wasn’t his way to look someone in the face when delivering difficult information.

‘The photo was taken yesterday morning in Tallinn, Estonia, by a contact of mine who lives in the city and who spotted Fallon in a market square. I called him, of course. He said he’d tried to follow Fallon but lost him.’ He glanced up at Purkiss. ‘He had no doubt it was him, even if you think that picture might have caught a lookalike.’

‘How?’ Purkiss meant, how was it possible? Fallon, outside?

Vale straightened. ‘I rang the Home Office, got stonewalled. Tried Little Sister, same there. Eventually a friend in Big Sister came through.’

Little and Big Sisters were respectively SIS and the Security Service, or Six and Five. The adjectives referred to the sizes of their personnel lists.

‘And?’ Vale had started walking again and Purkiss kept pace.

‘Donal Fallon was released from prison on February eighteenth last year.’

‘Hang on.’ Purkiss stopped, Vale turning to face him. ‘Released?’

‘Yes, it would seem so. I’m waiting for more details but it could only have been an amnesty granted by the Home Secretary.’

Disorientation set in. Purkiss had been expecting a narrative about an audacious escape from Belmarsh and an embarrassed cover up. Not this.

‘He’d served two years.’

‘Slightly less than.’

‘The tariff was ten years.’

‘I know.’

Purkiss fought the urge to gabble. ‘For God’s sake, Quentin.’

‘It turns the stomach, doesn’t it.’ Vale paced. ‘And it gets worse. Once I’d established that he’d been released, I went back to my Little Sister contacts and confronted them. Lots of awkward coughs and shuffling of feet, and they admitted that Fallon had started working for them again. A brilliant agent, guilty of a terrible crime but given a last shot at redemption, so forth. Then, after a fortnight, he vanished.’

‘Vanished.’

‘Before he’d even been briefed on his new mission. Took off without trace. They pulled out all the stops to find him, at first, but after a while they gave up. He was too good an agent to let himself be found, and chances were they’d never hear from him again. Better to avoid a scandal, put the whole sorry matter to bed.’

Purkiss walked away from Vale, making his way rapidly between the headstones. The hills, the grey sweep of the sky didn’t seem vast enough to contain what he was experiencing within. His jaw muscles felt locked.

In time he walked back. Vale hadn’t moved, had had the good grace not to watch him.

‘Who’s your contact in Tallinn?’

‘A former Service chap, Estonian but one of us. Jaak Seppo. I’ve known him ten years. He does a bit of freelance work for me now and then, keeps me in the picture.’ Vale thumbed his phone. ‘I’m texting you his number and address. I’ve already told him you’re coming.’

A connection fired in Purkiss’s mind. ‘Tallinn.’

Vale gave a faint nod. ‘Yes. Quite.’

‘When is it happening, again?’

‘October the thirteenth. The day after tomorrow.’

‘You think Fallon’s got something planned?’

Vale fired up another cigarette. ‘I know precisely as