Ratcatcher

It seemed presumptuous for either of them to sit so they remained where they were.

He said, ‘What work does he do?’

‘We’re a small English-language newspaper for expats. Living Tallinn.’ She didn’t look at him as though she expected him to have heard of it, or cared if he had or not. ‘He’s a photographer. The photographer, really.’

She was lying through her teeth, as he was, and they each knew the other was lying.

He scratched the back of his neck. ‘It’s a bit difficult for me. I don’t know much about him, about his life here. Do you know where he might have got to?’

‘No idea, I’m afraid.’

He’d spun the first threads in the web of lies: I’m a friend of Jaak’s, well, not a friend exactly. I met him when he was an exchange student at Cambridge with me fifteen years ago. I came up here and the door was open. He didn’t say how he’d got into the block of flats in the first place and she didn’t ask. She countered with her concerned work colleague fable.

They stood with nothing more to say, two strangers with a tenuous link meeting in odd circumstances. He broke the moment.

‘Well, as I say, I was in town anyway. I’ll be off.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Look, if you do hear from him in the next couple of days could you ask him to give me a ring?’ He scribbled his name — Martin Hughes, the one on the passport — and a random seven-digit mobile phone number on a piece of notepaper from a pad on the table beside the landline phone near the door. She took the paper and glanced at it.

‘Likewise, if he gets in touch with you, call me, okay?’ She handed him a business card. She’d slipped up: why not just ask him to tell Seppo to call the office? The name on the card was Elle Klavan, the logo that of Living Tallinn, and there were mobile and fax numbers and an email address.

At the door he said, ‘You staying here?’

‘Yes, I’ll wait a bit, see if he comes back.’ Her eyes were level.

Another mistake she’d made: she hadn’t been sceptical enough about his explanation for his presence there.

Outside the building Purkiss turned left and walked down the hill. He crossed the road and sidled up again behind the row of cars and took up position between two closely parked saloons, where he squatted, watching the windows and the entrance.

There was occasional movement behind the curtains. The brightness increased a fraction, as though a light had been turned on elsewhere in the flat. After several minutes the lights snapped off without warning. Shortly afterwards she emerged from the building and headed down the hill.

Within a block the streets started to become more crowded, something for which Purkiss was thankful as it provided cover. He was able to stay well back, yet keep pace with her. She wasn’t trying any counter-surveillance moves, which meant either that she wasn’t aware that she was being tagged or that she wanted to be followed. She headed back down into the centre of the Old Town. Purkiss tracked her through the square where he’d sat earlier, then off in a direction he hadn’t been before. She had the unhurried stride of somebody with things to do but no particularly pressing deadline to meet.

She’d spoken startled Estonian on seeing him, but he’d answered in English and she’d immediately replied in kind, her accent unambiguously Home Counties. Klavan. Was the name Estonian?

The trap, if it was one, puzzled him. It made sense that she should lead him into the lion’s den, but she’d been alone at the flat — what if he’d attacked her? The risk seemed reckless. He needed to ask Vale a few questions, but didn’t dare compose a text message while he was walking in case she made a sudden move and, distracted, he lost her.

Uphill again, through restaurant crowds thronging the pavements and blasts of music as bars swallowed and disgorged their patrons. Just beyond a Turkish bistro she stopped. Without a backward glance she opened a door and went through. Instead of approaching the door, Purkiss stood on the other side of the road and peered at the number of the building. It was a narrow three-storey affair with something he couldn’t read stencilled on a glass panel in the door. The phone he’d bought was 3G enabled. He called up a search engine and entered “Living Tallinn”. There it was, the address matching. When he clicked on the newspaper’s website he got an error message. There were no other matches for the name.

He walked to a corner so that he could keep the door in view, punched buttons. When Vale answered Purkiss said, ‘Ever heard of a female Service agent called Elle Klavan?’ He spelled it and described her.

‘Doesn’t ring any bells. I’ll do some checking.’

Purkiss brought him up to date. ‘Also, Living Tallinn. It’s almost certainly bogus, a front. Maybe one of your contacts knows something about it.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Go back to Seppo’s flat and search it properly.’

Getting back in would be more difficult, as he couldn’t try the trick of pushing all the buzzers in the block again. On the way back up the hill he spotted something that would fit his purpose: a skip outside a shop. In the skip he found a dilapidated chest of drawers which he hefted with some awkwardness. He attracted a few curious looks on his way back to the flat, but no opposition.

Twenty minutes passed until the door buzzed open and a couple stepped out, dressed for a night on the town. The man held the door open automatically. Purkiss smiled his thanks and hauled the chest into the lobby. He thought: taking advantage of simple human courtesy. What a life we lead.

He worked quickly and methodically, starting with the living room and dining area — the stain on the carpet was damp, he noted — and moving on to the bedrooms. Two of them, men’s clothes of different sizes in each. Vale hadn’t mentioned anything about Seppo’s having a flatmate, but perhaps he hadn’t known.

In Seppo’s room — Purkiss deduced it was his from the size of the clothes in the cupboard, Vale having described Seppo as a small man — he noticed the slightest protrusion of the lower of two drawers in the bedside table when he closed it. He lifted the drawer off its rollers and pulled it out. Taped to the back was a memory stick. He pocketed it and replaced the drawer.

The drawers in the other room, the mattress, yielded nothing. He peered behind the row of paperbacks on the room’s only shelf, then glanced at the books themselves. Estonian titles, some of them translations of popular novels by British and American authors. He turned away before a delayed realisation caused his head to snap round again.

Wedged in between two doorstop novels, its spine furrowed through repeated use, was a paperback he recognised.

He pulled it down. Reflections on the Revolution in France. The same edition. He riffled the pages against his thumb and checked inside the covers. There were no identifying marks, but it was the one.

Fallon’s totem.

Purkiss sagged on the bed, gripping the book in both hands, staring at the cover. The memories were rising.

Claire, in a montage of images and smells and tactile traces, vivid as phantom limbs. Looking back over her shoulder at him while she dressed, grey eyes mischievous and smile gently mocking. Walking towards him in the rain in her turtleneck and the boots he’d bought her which were ruined on the first day she’d worn them. Pressing her small head with its short blonde hair scented with her lemongrass shampoo back against his face on the balcony of the Marseilles flat, his arms around her from behind as they stood and drew on the heady tang of the sea. Arching her back beneath him as he pressed his mouth against the hot musk of her neck.

Dropping sack-like to the carpet, eyes suffused and starred crimson, tongue like lolling liver, neck efficiently dislocated.

Claire, dear sweet Jesus. Claire.

He turned the book over and found that his nails had driven deep crescents into the cover.

He held off calling Vale, because although the shaking in his hands had stopped he wasn’t sure his voice would be as steady. Also, he needed some time to process the new information. Suddenly nothing made