Ratcatcher - By Tim Stevens Page 0,80

shot take down Kuznetsov’s man, had watched the concentrated fire sent in return.

The girl, Abby, had been lifted impossibly high into the air by the burst from Kuznetsov’s man’s rifle, so high that a ripple of awe, of disbelief, had spread among even these battle-hardened men. The sound of her body hitting the ground had been audible even through the gunfire and the rain. She hadn’t moved after that.

The rifleman had shown himself too soon. Yes, the girl had had to die, they’d agreed on that. She couldn’t be allowed to reveal what she knew, had seemed to be trying to pass the information on to Purkiss himself when she passed him during the exchange. But if they’d waited until they had Purkiss, they could have taken her out with ease, then dealt with Elle and Purkiss’s other sidekick at their leisure. Instead, Elle had shouted a warning, having seen the rifle emerge from the trees. Purkiss had tried heroics, had managed to knock down one of the gunmen.

They should have shot him where he lay. What was to be gained by taking him prisoner? The Jacobin stared at Kuznetsov’s back, thinking of Churchill’s description of Russia: a riddle wrapped inside an enigma.

*

The roaring in his ears continued, even when he closed his mouth. He realised it wasn’t him but the aftershock of the gunfire. He tried to move his arms, but they were pinioned behind him, something slicing into his flesh. He couldn’t move his legs because he was kneeling with his torso forced down over his lap and a gun muzzle at the back of his neck. His back hurt from the blow that had dropped him.

He raised his head just enough to see the dark shape on the grass.

Abby, gone. Failed. But, worse than that, gone.

From above and behind him he heard a voice, one steeled with authority: ‘Forget them. Let’s go.’

Men swarmed back across the lawns and the paths, one or two walking backwards with their guns trained into the distance. The ones who reached Abby’s body stepped around it, ignoring it.

They were going to leave her there for the dogs and the rats.

Hands jerked him to his feet. He registered a face in front of him, dimly familiar as the bull-necked man who’d stalked him on the streets and in the night club. The man was laughing, his mouth a grotesque gargoyle’s rictus in the harsh rainy lamplight.

From a place deep within him that he’d never be able to find if he looked for it, Purkiss summoned something terrible and brought his forehead hammering into the laughing maw.

The blows came, then, to face and belly and the backs of his legs. On his knees once more he continued fighting, shaking his head like a dog resisting a collar so that one man had to brace a knee in the small of his back while another two gripped his head to keep it still. Yet another man pulled the canvas hood over it.

Darkness. A last shattering blow full into his face made the roaring stop as well.

THIRTY-ONE

Venedikt sat in the front passenger seat, Leok driving. He watched the sparse night traffic dwindling as the city receded and they wove through the slumbering fields and flatlands to the west. Full sunrise was nearly four hours away. Even the first flames of light would not light the horizon for another three. Behind his car was another with Dobrynin and two of his men. In front, the nondescript van with the windowless rear compartment, containing four armed men and their prize. Venedikt’s prize.

It was a risk. A calculated one, but a risk nevertheless. The Englishman had stood back, watching silently, saying nothing after his initial protests. Venedikt did not need to explain himself to anyone, least of all a turncoat Angli. But he understood the Englishman’s puzzlement and frustration. Perhaps it would have been better to have offered a reason for keeping Purkiss alive. Venedikt assumed the reason would be guessed: Purkiss had killed or left dead in his wake six of Venedikt’s men, and would be made to pay the price for this before he himself was dispatched.

The risk was that the Englishman would work out Venedikt’s true intentions. Venedikt thought this unlikely. Even if by some leap of the imagination the Englishman did make the connection, what would he do with the knowledge? Inform the police? Venedikt despised the Englishman – knew his feelings were reciprocated – but had always had a good nose for commitment in