FORTY-TWO
He leaned on the rail, watching a freighter lumber its way through the black water. To the left the river curved away from the bleak Essex marshes towards the sea.
The tang of cigarette smoke was what he noticed first. He didn’t turn, not even when he was joined at the rail a few feet to his right. For once Vale had let him choose the meeting place. Purkiss didn’t know why he’d decided on this spot. Claire had liked the Thames. Perhaps that was it.
They stood in silence for a minute, the raw October wind coming down the estuary off the North Sea, bringing with it creaking gulls and the stench of decomposing fish. Vale lit another cigarette and pitched the match into the reeds. Purkiss watched it stick headlong in the mud.
‘You’ll have worked it out, I imagine.’ Had Vale’s voice become coarser since he’d last heard it? He glanced across and yes, the man appeared to have aged, though it was barely two weeks since he’d last seen him.
‘Fallon was your man all along. From before he killed Claire.’
Vale took a long drag, spoke on the exhale. ‘He was my first agent, the first one I ran after leaving the Service. The original Ratcatcher, if you will. I’d set him on the trail of whomever it was that was co-ordinating the hits on Asgari the Iranian and others. He discovered Claire was involved. Obviously she wasn’t the ringleader.’
‘And he agreed to take the fall for Claire’s death, accept a murder conviction, to keep his cover intact. With the promise that he’d be out in a few years.’
‘Correct. We had credible intelligence that the Jacobin was operating in Tallinn –’
‘The Jacobin?’
Vale waved his cigarette hand. ‘Fallon’s nickname for the ringleader, Rossiter as it turned out. You know what a French Revolution buff Fallon was. Burke’s Reflections and all that.’ He drew on the butt again. ‘Rather apt, I suppose, “The Jacobin”. A fanatic, committed to the destruction of the enemy, blind to all else.’
‘Sounds like you had a fair amount of affection for Fallon.’
Vale sighed. ‘Yes, I did care for him. He was a brilliant agent, a brilliant man. You liked him as well, you must admit. Before... well, before.’
‘So after he went to gaol, you needed me as – what? Filler?’
‘Far from it. I needed a replacement for him. You were the best there was.’
‘And once he was out, I’d step back into the shadows?’
‘No.’ It was the first time Vale had raised his voice. ‘I couldn’t run you two as a team, naturally. But you’d be my agents, both superb, each with his own unique talents for particular situations.’
Purkiss watched the water fowl for a while.
‘Seppo and Fallon were sharing the flat in Tallinn.’
‘Yes. Seppo was mainly a backup man. Fallon knew the Jacobin was one of the three, Rossiter, Teague or Klavan. He penetrated Kuznetsov’s crew by getting in with that woman. Then he went missing. I couldn’t very well just send you in to rescue him. You’d never have gone. So I had to create the legend that Seppo had only recently spotted him in the city, that he’d been released from prison without my knowledge.’
‘And when I told you later I was refusing to pull out, broke off contact with you –’
‘I didn’t exactly tear myself apart trying to persuade you otherwise, no.’ Vale made a sound as dry as the leaves in his cigarette. ‘I must admit, I was worried you’d get suspicious then.’
Vale had moved quickly in the aftermath of the downing of the Black Hawk, working with the Embassy in Tallinn, securing the release of Purkiss and Elle and Kendrick. Purkiss himself had been patched up with fair speed. The other two spent several days in hospital with hypothermia before flying back to London. In the meantime, the remaining members of Kuznetsov’s crew had been identified and either apprehended or subjected to the sort of manhunt that was mounted by the security forces of a country the size of Estonia perhaps once in a generation. Christopher Teague’s body had been found in Rossiter’s bathtub, neck broken, hand still clasped around the paperknife he’d used to stab Rossiter.
Abby’s body had been flown home. Purkiss had wanted to speak to her distraught, bewildered parents in Bolton, but Vale had stopped him. The Official Secrets Act applied, and Purkiss had to remain in the shadows. He and Kendrick would attend her funeral, though, no doubt keeping back in the rain while the small crowd of family and friends stood bowed and shaking in the churchyard afterwards.
Purkiss spent more time with Vale in those first days than he had for months previously, yet they hadn’t talked properly before today. In his head Purkiss had played out today’s inevitable encounter in all the forms he could imagine it taking. He hadn’t been prepared for this, this bald stating of facts, this utter absence of affect.
Vale flicked another spent match, this one far enough to draw the momentary attention of a gull before it dropped into the water. ‘Think about what life would have been like if you’d known about Claire from the start. Think of the last four years. Bitterness, self-loathing at having been taken in by her… all the things you’re experiencing now. You wouldn’t have gained anything by finding out earlier. But you would have lost four years.’
Purkiss swallowed, and for a moment thought his throat would stay closed permanently. ‘So the more years of your life you spend wallowing in delusion, the better?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Vale. ‘Sometimes it’s better not to know.’
They watched a cargo ship groan and blink its way down the river until it was out of sight. Purkiss said, ‘What’s happened to him?’
‘Rossiter? Yes, you have a right to know if anyone does.’ Vale rubbed his eye with the thumb of his cigarette hand. ‘It’s all very hush hush, no trial or anything. He’s kept his mouth shut, so far. Everything’s been tried, from the usual threats to an offer of full immunity.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Oh, of course. That was always going to be an option. And no, I don’t like it any more than you do. But in some ways it doesn’t matter because you know what drives him. He’d never accept something like that. No, my bet is we’ll never find out who else he was running, if there was anyone else. He’ll rot in a cell for the rest of his days.’
‘I’ve heard that before.’ Purkiss looked away.
‘You must have been tempted.’
In his mind’s eye Purkiss saw Rossiter cowering, injured chest forgotten as his hands came up to protect his face, the shots chipping and splintering the boat around him. When the shooting stopped he lowered his hands and looked at Purkiss. In his eyes was defeat, and acceptance.
Purkiss straightened, walked along the railing away from Vale. He saw movement below, and stopped.
From behind him Vale said: ‘So this is where you throw your badge and gun into the river.’
Down in the thicket of mud-smeared reeds something flopped wetly. A rodent of some sort.
‘What’s it to be?’ Vale said.
Purkiss turned to look at him. ‘What do you think?’
THE END