Ratcatcher

young, the other possibly her mother. Neither had looked up when the man came in. Purkiss walked to the counter. ‘Excuse me, do you speak English?’

The younger woman said, ‘Little.’

‘Sorry to have to tell you, but I just saw that man near the door put a book in his pocket.’

The girl’s eyes widened and she glanced past him. The other woman muttered a question and she answered and the older woman came out from behind the counter and called down the length of the shop at the man, her tone pleasant but assertive.

The man’s stare flicked from Purkiss to the advancing woman, calculating. Then Purkiss was vaulting over the counter and as the young woman screamed he was down the passage and pushing the fire door open. He found himself in an alley, dark and murky.

The other man was there. He must have doubled back earlier and been lurking nearby. He saw Purkiss and ran the short distance towards him, quick for such a thick-set man. Purkiss was off running in the opposite direction but his foot slid on a slick of wet cardboard. He stayed upright but lost a second. The man bore down.

Purkiss turned and the man’s forearm drove off his shoulder. In the man’s fist he saw the flash of a needle — he’s got one too — and he pivoted on one foot and brought an extended-knuckle strike against the man’s neck. There wasn’t much of a neck to aim at and he got the side of the man’s jaw. He bellowed and punched Purkiss in the chest, slamming him back against the wall of the alley, winding him. There was no time to make a fuss about not being able to draw breath properly because the fist with the syringe was stabbing at his thigh. Purkiss twisted his hips, felt a sting in his upper thigh. He pistoned his leg side-on into the man’s abdomen, the syringe spinning high with a liquid streak spilling from the needle’s tip. The man staggered back and Purkiss swept at his shins with a foot, bringing him down hard.

Ten feet away the fire door barged open and the crop-headed man came through. Purkiss felt it then, the leadenness in his limbs and his eyes as though the earth’s gravitational pull had suddenly been doubled. He thought that while most of the contents of the syringe hadn’t gone in, a fair amount had. Even his thoughts were heavy.

There was no chance of taking the other man down now. There was no option but to run, run…

‘Talk to me.’

‘Stefan’s down, out of action. He got him with the needle first. He’s running, but he’s slowed down.’ The man sounded out of breath.

‘Stop him.’

The Jacobin kept the line open and picked up another phone and dialled.

Kuznetsov answered at once.

‘I need more men. Near the bus station.’ The Jacobin gave a quick summary.

‘There’s no-one else in the area at the moment. By the time I can get anybody down there it will probably be too late.’

‘Send them anyway. Your man might already have him by then.’

‘Who is this person?’ said Kuznetsov.

‘I’ll explain later. Someone I know. Someone very dangerous.’

The wall toppled towards him and he recoiled and the opposite one slammed into his shoulder. One foot in front of the other, like a marathon runner on his last legs, like a baby taking its first steps. Where was the other man? He didn’t dare look round in case the rotational movement dropped him.

A sense of proximity warned him at the last second and he summoned all his reserves and jerked his elbow back, connecting with something soft, a face. The cry receded behind him which meant the man had dropped back, even if for only an instant. Purkiss clasped the wall and swung round a corner. There ahead was a main street again, its lights harsh but welcome as the sun. He loped along the side of the building until he reached the main road. He turned, allowing himself a glance back.

The man was coming after him, closer than he’d hoped, darkness at his nose and streaked on his cheek, his eyes shadowed under the neon glare. Purkiss set off into the pedestrian traffic on the pavement, was immediately buffeted. He stumbled to his knees, hauling himself up amid angry mutters which he couldn’t understand but took to mean look at him,bloody drunk. It wasn’t a clever move being in a crowd because it would be so much easier now for the man to close in and slip in the needle, and this time depress the plunger all the way. What he needed was adrenaline to counter the sluggishness. If you couldn’t get an adrenaline fix from running for your life where could you get it?

Then he knew.

Purkiss lurched towards the kerb, bouncing off a lamppost, and stepped into the road. For an instant he felt as if he were actually viewing his surroundings upside down, so dislocating was the chaos of sensation on all sides, the rushing of headlights and the fury of horns and the tiny faces on the pavement and behind windscreens. The razor squeal of tyres seemed to slash at his legs as a wing mirror clipped his hip and sent him to his knees again, another set of wheels missing his fingertips by an inch.

His pulse drilled in his chest. He lifted his head and saw the front grille of a car halted a foot from his face. He tried to stand but his limbs were nailed to the road surface. Then there were hands on his upper arm hauling him up and a face looking into his in sympathy and helping him back on to the pavement. A familiar face.

No, something wrong there. The face had blood on it and it wasn’t expressing sympathy. It was the man with the cropped head.

Others clustered round. Purkiss saw the man’s other hand come out of his pocket. As it moved between them Purkiss grabbed the wrist and twisted it and jammed the needle in up to the hilt and forced the weight of his thigh against the plunger, driving it into the man’s groin. Purkiss smelt the bloodied breath through the man’s nose as his eyes turned up. Purkiss let him fall, watched his head bounce off the pavement.

There was no time to go through his pockets because the growing crowd had shrunk back in a communal gasp. Shouting, there came the older woman from the bookshop. Was that where he was? He’d come full circle.

All he could do was push his way loose and, again, run.

Seven

After the call to Kuznetsov to tell him — your other man’s down, the target’s free — the Jacobin went for a walk in the Old Town. The conical turrets were blacker against the backdrop of the newly darkened sky. By the clock on the tower of the Holy Spirit Church it was half past eight. In thirty-six hours’ time it would be over.

Purkiss. He was troubling in himself, but so were the implications of his presence in the city. The Jacobin hadn’t yet explained to Kuznetsov who Purkiss was, but would have to soon, even though Kuznetsov would reasonably blame the presence of a former SIS officer on poor security on the Jacobin’s part.

There was no point in conducting an intensive manhunt. Tallinn was a small city but not that small, and the manpower available to Kuznetsov wasn’t unlimited. The Jacobin assumed Purkiss was still operational, so there would be little gained in checking the hospitals. He would have to be ignored for now, until he showed his hand again.

The Jacobin watched a British stag party posing crudely for photographs on the Town Hall Square, and was put in mind of the small man, Seppo, and his camera that morning. Like Purkiss, he was another loose end unsatisfactorily tied off. Too much was unexplained at this late stage.

Unless -

Seppo and Purkiss.

Of course. The connection was not only possible but seemed likely.

With a renewed lift of spirits the Jacobin left the square.