Zagorec were out for the count.
Purkiss retrieved his phone from Spiljak’s pocket and took the man’s own handset. He thumbed through the various menus until he found what he wanted, then bent and grabbed Hoggart and hauled him so that he slumped against one of the cabin’s seats. He twisted the man’s ears until he howled awake, held up Spiljak’s phone, played the recording.
Hoggart’s eyes were slivers of white between the lids, his tongue lolling at the blood around his mouth. From the phone came snatches of English dialogue. Hoggart’s voice, then Spiljak’s, naming places, substances, prices. At the end Purkiss wrapped the phone in an oilskin bag and stowed it in his pocket.
He said, ‘You insisted I surrender any recording devices I might have, but you didn’t consider that your friend here might be keeping his own record for insurance purposes. Been a bit of a chump, haven’t you?’
Purkiss straightened, looked down at Hoggart.
‘Tell the police whatever you like. They might charge you and Spiljak and the rest of this sorry crew with disturbing the peace or whatever. Or, you might escape without a blemish on your name. I couldn’t care less. But understand this, Hoggart. You’re finished. Crawl away and bury yourself where nobody can see you. SIS doesn’t need its dirty knickers washed in public. But you’ve let the side down. And the side won’t forget. If you’re heard from again, anywhere in the world, the Service will put an end to you.’
The sirens were getting louder. The police boats were close enough that their lights were strobing against the cabin’s walls. Purkiss said to Kendrick, ‘Time we were off.’
They clambered over the moaning man on the stairs and ran at a crouch across the deck towards the rail. Then they were airborne. Purkiss felt the shock of the water, surfaced, and glanced back to see the boats swarming round the yacht, the men crowding aboard. He located Kendrick’s head a few metres away. They struck out for the shore.
Kendrick’s car was in a side street just off the marina. They reached it by stealth, two sodden figures skulking through the alleyways. In the boot were enough dry clothes for both of them.
Purkiss climbed into the passenger seat. Kendrick started the engine but didn’t move off. After a moment he said, ‘That gun.’
‘Yes.’
‘It felt lighter than it should’ve. That’s why you took a chance and pretended to shoot my leg.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were certain the magazine was empty. Rather than just not completely full.’
Purkiss, one of whose guiding principles was that you could never be certain of anything, said, ‘Yes.’
‘Fuck off, Purkiss.’
Purkiss leaned his head back, closed his eyes, breathed deeply while Kendrick drove, letting his body find its own way down from the heightened level of alertness at which it had been cruising. Then he fumbled out his phone and looked at the impossible picture Vale had sent him.
It was a three-quarter view of a man’s head and shoulders, taken in the glare of morning sunlight. The man was squinting against the light. There was no mistaking him.
The face belonged to a man named Fallon. It wasn’t in itself especially memorable, but Purkiss would never forget it. The reason the photograph was impossible was that Fallon was serving a life sentence in Belmarsh prison.
The reason Purkiss would never forget the face was that four years earlier Fallon had murdered Purkiss’s fiancee. Purkiss had seen him do it.
Two
All the Jacobin had wanted to do was ask the man a few questions. Was he photographing those people in particular, or did they happen to be standing in shot at the time? Was he freelance or part of an organisation? And why had he appeared now, an apparent complication when there weren’t supposed to be complications at this late stage?
The Jacobin hadn’t meant to kill him.
The man was small and slight, with prematurely receding hair and goggling eyes. The fight he’d been able to put up had been revealing, had confirmed the Jacobin’s earlier suspicions that there was more to him than his appearance implied.
He had opened the door readily. The moment the Jacobin saw the flare of recognition in his eyes the time for innocent questions was obviously past. The Jacobin moved in and kicked the door closed, bringing a sword hand against the man’s throat. But he was fast, faster than he should have been and therefore a professional. He spun away and crouched. They faced each other across the carpet.
The man leaped backwards and sideways through a door off the entrance hall. The Jacobin followed. Inside the living room the man was at the mantelpiece, scooping a vase in his hand and swinging it. The Jacobin dodged, feeling the slipstream of the heavy ceramic sigh past and hearing the vase shatter against the wall behind, not taking an eye off the man because the vase was a distraction, intended to disorientate with pain and noise. The man lunged for a real weapon, a curved sword on the wall. Its blade gasped as he drew it from its scabbard.
Blades were a problem, more so than guns, as any experienced fighter knew. In the Jacobin’s favour, the man didn’t look like a trained swordsman. He gripped the weapon in two hands which left him with neither one free and with both elbows, those exquisite points of vulnerability, exposed.
The Jacobin’s first kick cracked the head of the radius bone in the man’s left elbow, an injury so painful that the involuntary opening of the hand was automatic. The second kick was more daring: still using the left leg as a pivot, the Jacobin snapped a toecap into the upright blade, lifting it spinning out of the man’s right hand to clatter across the bare wooden boards across the room.
Clutching his elbow, the man feinted to his right and darted left. The Jacobin didn’t move. It was a battle of morale, now, one the man couldn’t win. The Jacobin indicated one of the armchairs. The man didn’t sit.
From inside the man’s pocket a phone began to ring. They watched each other’s eyes through one ring, two. The man reached into his pocket with the hand on his good arm.
‘No,’ said the Jacobin, voice soft, and moved in, a quick fist punching the man’s ruined elbow provoking a yell, the other jamming up under the man’s breastbone so that he rocked back and slumped down the wall.
The Jacobin dragged him to the centre of the living room, checked his phone. He hadn’t had a chance to answer, and the call was denoted as ‘missed’. The number was prefixed with the international dialling code for the United Kingdom. Pocketing the phone, the Jacobin propped him into a sitting position on the rug and knelt behind him. Sliding an arm across his throat, the Jacobin applied gentle pressure.
‘How did you know me just now?’
No reply.
‘Why the photographs?’
Still nothing. The pressure wasn’t enough to be preventing him from speaking. The Jacobin applied fingertips to points in the neck, harmless but agonising. The man hissed rapidly between clenched teeth, his body shuddering.
He would have to die now, there was no question about that. The question was whether he was likely to divulge anything useful first. Clearly he was trained to stand up to interrogation, to lie convincingly under duress.
In the event the Jacobin’s hand was forced. The man made a last desperate effort, an extended-knuckle punch with his good arm behind him which connected with the kidney area. The Jacobin swallowed against the roiling pain and flexed the arm across the man’s throat until he sagged. Not wanting to take any chances, the Jacobin gripped the pale, high head between the heels of both palms, and with a quick twist dislocated the vertebrae of the man’s neck.
The Jacobin sat on the rug for a minute, eyes closed, finding calm. It wasn’t formal meditation of any kind,
