Ratcatcher

though he were being measured for a coffin. Vale raised a thumb and fingertips to his lips and drew on his cigarette and from his nostrils blew scythes of smoke.

With two movements of his head — a nod and a tilt — he conveyed a greeting and a request to walk. They headed across the lawn to the graveyard.

‘Hoggart pose any problems?’ Vale had a habit of speaking in a virtual monotone which led people to assume he was on some kind of medication.

‘No. He’s small fry. It’s the end of him.’

‘Clean job?’ He meant had Purkiss been discreet, left any traces of himself.

‘The Rijeka police have me on camera with Spiljak. That’s about it. No names.’

Vale nodded again. He stopped at an ancient gravestone and scuffed at the moss with his toe, crouching to peer at what was carved underneath. It wasn’t his way to look someone in the face when delivering difficult information.

‘The photo was taken yesterday morning in Tallinn, Estonia, by a contact of mine who lives in the city and who spotted Fallon in a market square. I called him, of course. He said he’d tried to follow Fallon but lost him.’ He glanced up at Purkiss. ‘He had no doubt it was him, even if you think that picture might have caught a lookalike.’

‘How?’ Purkiss meant, how was it possible? Fallon, outside?

Vale straightened. ‘I rang the Home Office, got stonewalled. Tried Little Sister, same there. Eventually a friend in Big Sister came through.’

Little and Big Sisters were respectively SIS and the Security Service, or Six and Five. The adjectives referred to the sizes of their personnel lists.

‘And?’ Vale had started walking again and Purkiss kept pace.

‘Donal Fallon was released from prison on February eighteenth last year.’

‘Hang on.’ Purkiss stopped, Vale turning to face him. ‘Released?’

‘Yes, it would seem so. I’m waiting for more details but it could only have been an amnesty granted by the Home Secretary.’

Disorientation set in. Purkiss had been expecting a narrative about an audacious escape from Belmarsh and an embarrassed cover up. Not this.

‘He’d served two years.’

‘Slightly less than.’

‘The tariff was ten years.’

‘I know.’

Purkiss fought the urge to gabble. ‘For God’s sake, Quentin.’

‘It turns the stomach, doesn’t it.’ Vale paced. ‘And it gets worse. Once I’d established that he’d been released, I went back to my Little Sister contacts and confronted them. Lots of awkward coughs and shuffling of feet, and they admitted that Fallon had started working for them again. A brilliant agent, guilty of a terrible crime but given a last shot at redemption, so forth. Then, after a fortnight, he vanished.’

‘Vanished.’

‘Before he’d even been briefed on his new mission. Took off without trace. They pulled out all the stops to find him, at first, but after a while they gave up. He was too good an agent to let himself be found, and chances were they’d never hear from him again. Better to avoid a scandal, put the whole sorry matter to bed.’

Purkiss walked away from Vale, making his way rapidly between the headstones. The hills, the grey sweep of the sky didn’t seem vast enough to contain what he was experiencing within. His jaw muscles felt locked.

In time he walked back. Vale hadn’t moved, had had the good grace not to watch him.

‘Who’s your contact in Tallinn?’

‘A former Service chap, Estonian but one of us. Jaak Seppo. I’ve known him ten years. He does a bit of freelance work for me now and then, keeps me in the picture.’ Vale thumbed his phone. ‘I’m texting you his number and address. I’ve already told him you’re coming.’

A connection fired in Purkiss’s mind. ‘Tallinn.’

Vale gave a faint nod. ‘Yes. Quite.’

‘When is it happening, again?’

‘October the thirteenth. The day after tomorrow.’

‘You think Fallon’s got something planned?’

Vale fired up another cigarette. ‘I know precisely as much as you do. But… I have a feeling.’

Abby’s office, or “command centre” as she was pleased to call it, was a basement flat in Whitechapel which had been converted into one large room with a kitchenette, miniature bathroom and shower and fold-out bed. Two L-shaped desks dominated the floor, straining under an assortment of desktop computers, laptops, printers and scanners in various states of physical integrity. A gigantic plasma screen television had conquered one wall and was tuned to a news channel Purkiss didn’t recognise. A pile of lesser TV sets in the corner displayed a cornucopia of what Purkiss assumed was real-time footage of mundane scenes: empty streets, the interior of a shopping centre, a busy motorway.

She had met him at the door with a screwdriver in one hand and a motherboard in the other, dark and untidy, a tiny pixie with a wild mess of hair.

‘Hi, boss.’ Her accent was broad Lancashire, unleavened after five years in London.

‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that. It makes me feel old.’

‘You are old, Mr Purkiss, sir.’ She stood aside for him. ‘You’ve shaved off the goatee. Pity. I rather liked it.’

He declined her offer of tea — there’d been semi-dried paint in the mug once before — and dumped a sprawl of papers on the floor to make some room on one of the armchairs. Purkiss nodded at the pile of TV screens. ‘That looks a bit dodgy, legally speaking.’

‘Testing out some new surveillance gear. For professional use only.’ She gazed at the images, rapt. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it? The resolution.’

‘I won’t ask where you got this stuff.’

‘Best not, no.’

He employed Abby as both researcher and technological wizard. She had done the background work for Purkiss on the Rijeka case, tracking down Hoggart’s address, rooting out the intelligence on Spiljak and his crew, even producing false credentials for Purkiss which were accurate down to the minutest detail. One of the things she did was generate a constant supply of fake passports for use at short notice.

She handed him a couple and he studied them, marvelling. They even smelled used. He chose a British identity: Martin Hughes. In the picture he was clean shaven, slightly amused looking. Affable was the word he’d most often heard used to describe his features. Even Claire had used it, among many others besides.

‘Good choice,’ she said. ‘The alias all the best-disguised spies are using this year.’

‘Stop calling me a spy.’

‘Will sir be requiring any accessories? A driver’s licence?’ She handed him a plastic card. ‘No endorsements — you’ve been a good boy.’

He pocketed passport and licence. ‘The flight — ’

‘Booked for quarter past two, Stansted. You’d better get a move on.’

Purkiss planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘Abby, you’re a diamond.’

‘Tallinn. That’s where that meeting’s taking place, isn’t it?’

‘Day after tomorrow.’

‘Is your trip anything to do — ’

He made a zipping motion at his mouth and she held up her hands in defeat. ‘Anything else?’

‘Be on standby. I might need your help later.’ He headed for the door, then paused. ‘Oh. Check on Kendrick, would you?’

‘I already gave him a ring. He’s back at home, they didn’t keep him in. I gave him your best wishes.’

‘And?’

‘Apart from his usual dismal takeoff of my accent, he said, “Tell him to stick his best wishes in his arse, and I