Ratcatcher

Purkiss went in, grimaced at the stink and the swamp of urine and toilet paper on the floor, kept away from the edge of the toilet bowl. He lifted the phone to his ear to hear the voice message while he reached behind him to slide the latch across.

The door slammed open against his thumb and the man cannoned into him shoving him forward so that his shins connected with the toilet bowl. He heard the door bang shut as he fought to keep his balance. With awful speed the man’s hands came down on either side of Purkiss’s neck and he felt the bite of the garrotte.

Ten

It was the phone that saved him from immediate death. It was in his left hand because he’d been reaching back to latch the door with his right and hadn’t had time to lower it completely. The garrotte caught across his watch but cut into his neck on the other side. He felt the wire tighten and crush the heel of his hand against the side of his jaw and he felt the closeness of the man behind him and the hot sourness of his breath against his right ear.

Purkiss shifted his head a fraction, all he could, to the right. At the far extreme of his vision was the shape of the other man’s head and part of one fist where it bunched with its fellow at the back of Purkiss’s neck, increasing the torque on the ends of the garrotte. Pain slashed through his neck and he felt the flesh bulging around the crevasse gouged by the wire. There was no blood yet, he was fairly sure of it. His right arm hung free.

Purkiss fought against the roil of nausea and tried for a backwards head butt with his occiput into his assailant’s face, but the twist of the garrotte around his neck might as well have been a vice holding his head in place because there was almost no range of movement. The wave of nausea was turning into one of panic as his watch slipped partially free from the garrotte and the wire began tightening across his forearm.

He pivoted back from the hips. This shifted the man back slightly and Purkiss was able to get his right foot up and onto the edge of the toilet bowl. He shoved himself backwards, pistoning his leg, slamming the man back against the door. Purkiss pushed again and a third time, each time pounding the man into the door and shaking the entire cubicle. From outside a drunken voice laughed what the fuck’s going on in there in Russian — another Russian speaker, this was quite a Russian club, that might be significant flitted through Purkiss’s thoughts — and the man behind him gasped back, ‘Leave us alone,’ which was met with cheers and wolf whistles. Purkiss got his right arm up and grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair and bent his head sideways. The angle was all wrong because his arm was flexed behind him and he was trying to exert force outwards, but the stretch on the man’s neck was enough to make him hiss through clenched teeth and momentarily shift his grip on the ends of the garrotte to secure it more tightly. In that instant Purkiss let go of the hair and gripped his left fist in his right hand and pressed his left forearm against the wire, the separate pains in his arm and in the right side of his neck blinding but the manoeuvre succeeding in creating a little slack. He was able to turn his head a fraction to the right and whip it sideways and he felt his frontal bone just above and to the side of his right eye connect hard with the man’s cheekbone and with a soft cry the man loosed his hold on one end of the garrotte. Purkiss spun to face him and the movement tore the garrotte free from the man’s left hand. Purkiss closed in, striking with a half-fist at the side of the man’s neck.

The blow to his cheekbone had been hard but the man recovered quickly and brought his arm up and deflected Purkiss’s attack. The man countered with a two-fingered eye jab but the space was too confined, ridiculously so, and he didn’t have the distance available to build up any momentum. Purkiss caught his hand and wrenched it around and down. With the edge of his other hand he struck at the man’s exposed neck. The man did his best to avoid it but with his arm held twisted as it was there wasn’t much he could do, and he sagged against Purkiss.

Purkiss let go of his wrist and caught him under the arms and supported the dead weight for a second, catching his breath, blinking until the ceiling stopped rocking, struggling not to topple over the toilet bowl pressed against the backs of his legs. There was a flicker at the man’s eyelids and he’d been bluffing and Purkiss let go of him and brought his knee up just as the man brought both fists stabbing in at Purkiss’s kidneys, an incapacitating blow if done right. Purkiss’s knee into the man’s abdomen as he dropped took some of the force out. Now the man had an arm around Purkiss’s neck and with his other hand he was gouging at Purkiss’s face. Purkiss seized the wrist in his hand and held it quivering. He stared into the man’s face, so close to his, red and sweating, the eyes narrowed to slits and the breath wheezing hot against his face.

For a fraction of a second they held the position, taking stock. The man had his left arm around Purkiss’s neck and his right in a claw near Purkiss’s face. Purkiss gripped the man’s right wrist in his left fist. His right hand was free and between them.

Purkiss brought his left hand up with the heel of the palm foremost and slammed it into the underside of the man’s jaw with as much force as he could muster, which was less than it would have been a minute earlier because the pain and disorientation were taking their toll. Still the man managed to avoid the worst of the blow by turning his head and taking the brunt on the corner of his jaw. He loosened his arm further from Purkiss’s neck and jabbed his stiffened fingers at the side of Purkiss’s throat and Purkiss staggered, vision blurring. The thrash of the music was suddenly overwhelming and as if detached from his body he saw himself stumble over the toilet and the man shift position for the killing blow. From somewhere inside him Purkiss felt something building, a great dark shadow which couldn’t be contained and which erupted from his chest and along his arm as he rammed the heel of his palm out again. This time he caught the man directly beneath the nose and snapped his head back. He dropped, finally, the nasal bones driven into the soft tissues of his brain, his knees sinking into the foetid mulch on the cubicle floor.

Purkiss reeled, gripping the cistern and heaving over the bowl, though nothing came out apart from a sour spew of half-digested soda. His foot slipped in the mess on the floor and the wall tilted towards him. He shoved down the lid of the toilet and slumped onto it and leaned forward, head in his hands.

When he opened his eyes, panic scrabbled at him because he thought he’d been out for hours; but by his watch, which was still functioning, barely five minutes had passed since he’d entered the cubicle. At his feet, pressing against his legs with genuine dead weight this time, the man half sat, half slumped, empty eyes turned turned to the ceiling. When he was confident he’d keep his balance Purkiss stood and let the man slide sideways so that his head fell alongside the root of the toilet bowl.

In the man’s hip pocket he found a wallet with a driver’s licence. He read the name — Abram Zhilin, Russian again — and address. The man had no phone on him. Purkiss bent to peer under the door of the cubicle. There were two pairs of feet at the urinal trough. Swiftly he opened the door and exited and pulled it shut and walked past the two men who didn’t turn. He went to the basins. In the mirror his face was bone-sallow, the eyes grey bruises and not fully focused. There were angry red lines along his left forearm and the right side of his neck, seeping blood. He washed his arms and neck, cupped water over his face and between his lips, spitting and repeating.

There wasn’t time to reflect on what had happened, because he had to see if the woman was still out there. It was ten to one and he hoped she hadn’t left yet. He stepped out into the dizzying throb and sidled along the wall towards the bar. She looked up, Lyuba. In her face there was shock. Her glance darted across the floor and he followed it and saw, picked out intermittently in the strobes, the face of the man with the bull neck who’d been following him earlier, separated from him by a mass of clubbers.

He though about moving sideways towards the entrance, but saw her looking in that direction as well, and he understood there were others, probably guarding the fire exits too. He’d been set up, and he was now well and truly cornered.

Afterwards the Jacobin went for another walk, this time along Pikk, the Long Street, past the old guild houses towards St Olaf’s Church. Not one but two more scars on the soul. The old woman had to die after she’d seen what happened to her husband, there was no question about it; but she was blameless, as indeed was the old man. They might even have been left to live if the Jacobin could have been sure Purkiss hadn’t given the man his phone number and asked him to get in contact should anyone come asking.

The three-quarter moon perched on top of St Olaf’s spire, at one time the tallest of its kind in the world. The Jacobin gazed up at it, breath pluming in the cold night air, and thought about human hubris. A year’s meticulous