Ratcatcher - By Tim Stevens Page 0,83
of Purkiss, a clear shot of his face even though he wasn’t looking at the camera, didn’t even seem aware he was being photographed.
The Jacobin frowned at it, then put the wallet aside and pulled the laptop back in front of him and in the space marked password he typed purkiss and hit enter.
Password incorrect.
He typed johnpurkiss.
For a moment the screen went blank. Then a telephone number appeared, and beside it the words: signal lost.
He sat back. So, he had access, but no signal, which meant that either Purkiss hadn’t taken along his phone, or Kuznetsov had taken it from him and destroyed it.
The Jacobin kept the laptop open on the off chance that the situation changed.
*
Fallon remained motionless, continuing to watch Purkiss from beneath a lowered brow.
Purkiss had wondered what his reaction would be, seeing him for the first time. Would he feel overwhelming fury, be swamped by grief? But all he found himself thinking was, it wasn’t him on the phone.
There was nothing to say as an opening gambit that wouldn’t sound hopelessly melodramatic, so Purkiss said nothing. The silence was boken only by his breathing, harsh and loud through his swollen throat, by intermittent far-off bangs and echoes, and the faint buzzing of the fluorescent strips.
In the end it was Fallon who spoke first. ‘What time is it?’
The voice… Last heard in the courtroom, where he’d barely spoken, it now caused time to telescope so that to Purkiss days rather than years had passed since they’d last encountered each other.
All he was able to reply was, ‘I don’t know.’
‘No, of course not. I mean, what time was it when you last looked, and how long ago was that, do you think?’
There was something off about the voice now that he’d spoken for longer, a mushiness in the sibilants, and in a moment Purkiss got it. Several of the man’s teeth were missing. Without stopping to wonder why he was answering in so conversational a way, Purkiss said, ‘Four o’clock, and it was about an hour ago, I’d say.’
‘Four o’clock in the afternoon?’
‘The morning.’
‘Jesus.’
When they’d been friends, Fallon and Claire and Purkiss, Fallon had used to pronounce the word with a deliberately exaggerated Irishness – Jaysis – for comical effect, but he didn’t now. It came out quiet, heartfelt.
‘How long have you been here?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
Fallon was lashed to the chair just as Purkiss was to his, if anything more securely so, his legs bound one to each chair leg. He wore an open-necked shirt filthy with old dried blood. The whites of his eyes were webbed red and a cut beneath one eye gaped stickily. His nose appeared intact, but his lower lip was a swollen wedge of meat.
Purkiss understood, then, what Fallon’s stare had meant in the long minutes after they were left alone. The man had been utterly astonished to see him.
*
It was like a bizarre type of motionless, silent sparring. Purkiss did not know what to say, where to begin. Fallon clearly had lots he wanted to say, urgently, but his words were kept at bay by the huge, the all-encompassing fact that both separated and joined them. Spliced, thought Purkiss absently: that was a good double-edged word to describe the dynamic.
An hour passed, or possibly ten minutes. Neither man dropped his gaze.
Fallon ended the silence again, his mouth moving with the sticky sound of somebody deficient in saliva.
‘We have two things to talk about. One is more urgent. Why don’t we address that first.’
Purkiss said nothing.
‘Why are you here?’
Purkiss watched the face but the question seemed genuine.
‘I came here to find you.’
‘How did you know –’
‘Somebody sent me a photo of you in Tallinn.’
Fallon blinked slowly, as if considering this.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Purkiss.
‘Trying to stop an attack on the summit.’ He coughed, broke off wincing. ‘Today, is it? It’s the morning of the thirteenth?’
‘Yes. There’s about three hours to go.’ Purkiss would have leaned forward if he could, the urgency beginning to take hold. ‘Keep talking.’
‘I’m on a Service operation. It’s why they got me out of Belmarsh. A rogue Service agent here in Tallinn is helping Kuznetsov, the man who’s holding us here.’
‘Do you know which one? Which of the three agents?’
Fallon stared. ‘You know them?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, I never discovered which one.’
‘Teague.’
‘You stopped him?’ said Fallon.
‘No.’
‘He’s still at large?’
‘Yes.’
Fallon closed his eyes, nodded, then looked at Purkiss again. ‘Briefly, I got close to one of Kuznetsov’s crew. A woman.’
‘Lyuba Ilkun.’
‘You know that, too. I was hoping to get on board