NINE
‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Tell me about it.’
He was on his way down the hill again, glad to be outside. Purkiss had seen death before, but the sight had unnerved him, coming as it had after his memories of Claire: the small frame cramped sideways on its bed of frozen goods, the face twisted up at an unnatural angle so that it seemed to peer at him through cracked eyes. He had hauled Seppo out, noting the absence of lividity and of ice formation as he turned him over. Less than six hours, he estimated. There was no wallet or phone. Purkiss hoisted him back into the freezer, closed the lid.
Vale said: ‘Why would Fallon leave his book in Seppo’s flat after killing him?’
‘He didn’t. I mean, he lives there too. That was his room I found the book in. The clothes in the cupboard are his size. Seppo and Fallon were sharing that flat.’
The silence grew. ‘John, this has got me. I’ll need to think about it.’ The rustle, as always, of cigarette paper. ‘I do have something for you, though. Elle Klavan. She’s an active agent.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I haven’t got that sort of information yet. All I have is confirmation that she’s with Little Sister, as in not ‘ex’. I can make discreet enquiries at the Embassy over there.’
‘That’s useful.’ Most SIS personnel operated out of the embassies or consulates in the host country. He was walking fast to burn off adrenaline. ‘What do you want me to do with the body?’
‘Leave it. It’ll keep for a few days.’
It made sense. Tipping off the police now could be awkward, especially as Purkiss’s DNA was all over the flat.
‘Also,’ said Purkiss, ‘there’s video surveillance in the flat.’ He’d spotted the tiny lens at the back of the fireplace just before leaving, hadn’t seen it the first time he’d searched the place because he hadn’t been looking for it. ‘I’m assuming Fallon set it up to see who came looking for Seppo.’
He told Vale he’d call back later. After reaching the Old Town square, he spent a few minutes in the side streets, trying to find the internet café he’d spotted on his way earlier. Inside it smelled of coffee and tourists. When a machine was free he sat and slotted the memory stick into one of the ports. The box that came up told him the entire stick was password protected.
Purkiss bought a paper cup of coffee the size of a small bucket and left the warmth of the café. He phoned Abby.
‘How soon can you get here?’
‘There’s a six a.m. flight, so, eleven tomorrow morning your time? I’ve already booked it.’
He shook his head. ‘What if I hadn’t needed you to come?’
‘You always need me. Anyway, I’d have put the cancellation fee on expenses.’ Her voice dropped a notch. ‘Anything the matter, boss? You sound… I don’t know.’
‘I’m all right.’ He checked his watch. Ten forty-five. ‘Could you do something else for me?’
*
She called back within the hour. He’d wandered about the town, frustration gnawing at him, unease flickering on the periphery of his sensory fields. The face staring at him turned out to be somebody trying to read a restaurant menu near his head. The man who stumbled spraying red onto the cobbles hadn’t been stabbed, but had simply spilled a bottle of red wine after a glass too many. When the phone vibrated he tensed.
‘We’re in luck. All the flats in the block are owned by the same landlord.’ She gave a name and address. ‘It’s walking distance from where you are.’
‘I don’t suppose you found out if he’s at home this evening, did you?’
She paused. ‘No, but I –’
‘Only joking. Great work, Abby.’
*
Over the chain stretched taut across the crack of the door the man’s eyes were black and baleful. He was old, a dressing gown open over a grubby vest.
‘Mr Väljas?’
The man’s face clenched. Purkiss thought it was because he’d spoken Russian.
‘Apologies for disturbing you so late.’
The man muttered something.
‘Sorry, I have no Estonian.’
In Russian the old man said, ‘It’s nearly midnight.’
‘Sorry again. I have a question about one of your tenants.’
‘Who are you?’
He held up his open passport. ‘My name’s Hughes. I’m a debt collector.’
‘English?’ The man’s tone softened, though he made no move to lift the chain.
‘Yes. The tenant’s Jaak Seppo. He owes tens of thousands in unpaid rent back in London. I traced him here but he’s not at home. You’re listed online as the landlord.’
The fury was back in the eyes. Purkiss realised it wasn’t directed at him. The door closed, reopened with the chain off. Inside it stank of sweat and onions and fried meat.
The man was shaking his head. ‘I knew he was up to no bloody good.’
‘He’s behind on the rent with you?’
‘No. He’s always been regular. Been there –’ He screwed up his face. ‘Three years? No trouble at all. Then, one day, I find he’s got someone else living there. A man. Not homosexual stuff, the guy’s got his own room. I tell Seppo I think he’s taken in a lodger. Subletting. He says no, the man’s his friend, staying a few months.’
Purkiss let some of his eagerness show through. His pulse was hammering. ‘Did you meet this other man?’
‘Sure. Pleasant enough fellow. Name of –’ He broke off, suspicious. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because Seppo had an associate in London, who was also involved in fleecing the landlords.’
‘Son of a bitch.’ An elderly woman appeared halfway down the stairs. He barked at her and she fled. He picked his way across the cluttered living room to a sideboard, rummaged in a drawer, found a notepad. ‘Julian Fisher.’
It meant nothing. ‘What did he look like?’
‘Forties. Average in everything. Friendly smile.’
‘Like that?’ Purkiss had downloaded the photo of Fallon to his new phone. The man peered at it.
‘That’s him, yeah.’
‘How long has he been staying in the flat?’
The man turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘Three, four months. Haven’t seen either of them for about a fortnight. Lots of properties to keep an eye on.’
‘And you said it was okay for this Fisher to stay?’
‘Wasn’t thrilled about it, but I’m a nice guy, and Seppo’s been a good tenant over the years. You should see some of the arseholes I get. I asked his friend a bit about himself, what he did and so on. He was quite forthcoming. He’s working his way around the Baltics, doing small jobs to pay his way while he travels. Seems a bit old to be doing that sort of thing, but hey, live and let live.’
‘Did he say what work he was doing now?’
‘Bartender at Paradiis. You know it? Shithole of a nightclub out east. Always in the news. Drug raids, stabbings, you name it. He’d stick out like a sore thumb there.’
Purkiss didn’t think so. Fallon’s unremarkable appearance meant he could adapt himself uncannily to any environment. He nodded.
‘Mr Väljas, you’ve been a great help. Thanks.’
‘You catch these guys, you cut their balls off for me, okay?’
*
Out east meant a couple of kilometres outside the Old Town. He flagged down a taxi, sat in the back and willed himself to relax without letting the fatigue overwhelm him. The driver navigated crowds of young whooping party animals. At one point Purkiss recognised the main road where the pursuit earlier had started and ended.
The entrance to the club was unprepossessing. A small pink neon sign flashed the name, Paradiis, over a blue martini glass. From across the street Purkiss could see a dark archway with steps leading up under an awning and two bouncers in the shadows at the top. People were streaming up there but there was no queue. It was too early for that, just after midnight. He walked up the steps. The door opened in a blast of bass-driven noise.
The bouncers were mirror-eyed walls of meat in tight, shiny black suits. They stared at Purkiss’s rumpled jacket and shirt and chinos, and motioned for him to step aside. They frisked him, one taking the upper body and one the legs. He was a little rough round the edges after the chase earlier, so he supposed he looked as if he might cause trouble. The torso man found his wallet, held it up as if it were a weapon. Purkiss didn’t want to draw attention by making a fuss. He made a show of sighing in resignation, peeled off a couple of notes. The bouncer grinned goldly and clapped him on the shoulder, jarring Purkiss’s own teeth.
Inside it was the worst kind of place, the music so loud that the bass set up a vibration in the outer pinna of the ear rather than just the eardrum. It was industrial electronica and triggered a mild clench of nausea in Purkiss, whose musical tastes ran more to the classical. The air conditioning was fighting a losing battle against the humidity of sweaty flesh. On each of four podia spaced throughout the floor area a woman gyrated, clad in a bikini and what looked like a Second World War gas mask.
Purkiss chiselled his way through the layers of dancers towards the bar counter. He signalled the nearest bartender with a hundred-kroner note held up between two fingers. The man, shaven-headed and burly as the bouncers, his leather vest revealing a phantasmagoria of tattoos on his arms, leaned across, his ear close.
In Russian Purkiss shouted, ‘I’m looking for this man.’ He held up his phone with the picture of Fallon together with the caption he’d added: Julian Fisher.
The man was straightening, shaking his head almost as soon as he had glanced at the picture. Then he frowned at it again. Beckoning Purkiss closer he yelled, ‘Englishman. He didn’t turn up for his shifts last week, so everyone’s assumed he’s moved on.’
‘How long was he working here?’
The man shrugged. ‘Couple of months? Lyuba will know. I’ll get her.’
He plucked the note from Purkiss’s fingers without looking at it and moved down the bar and tapped the shoulder of one of the other bar staff, bending to her ear. She stared at Purkiss, a compact woman with short punky hair and similarly bared and tattooed arms. Lyuba: a Russian name. Only briefly taking her eyes off him, she finished serving her order and made her way down the counter. Purkiss produced another banknote between his knuckles and showed her the photo. She glanced at it, then back into his eyes. Up close her face was hard and angled and seamed. She was perhaps thirty but looked five years older.
‘You know him?’
She put her lips to his ear, but the music changed to something even more frenetic. He shook his head. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, ‘This way,’ and jerked her head. He followed her further down the bar, where she lifted a hatch, let him through and took him down a corridor to where the noise was merely intrusive. Arms folded, she faced him.
‘Who are you?’
‘A friend of Julian’s from England. I can’t find him.’
‘He was here since February. Then last week – poof.’ She splayed her hands. There was naked hostility in her glare. In a moment Purkiss got it.
‘You were seeing each other?’
‘The famous English chivalry. One minute he’s all over me, talking about getting a place together. The next he’s saying he needs to move on. He’s not ready to settle down. It’s not me, it’s him.’ She delivered the last in a wincingly accurate parody of a well-spoken Englishman’s Russian. Her mouth twisted in bitterness. Suddenly her eyes were calculating. ‘And you can tell your whoreson friend, if you find him, that I haven’t forgotten the money he owes me, nor have those friends of mine he met.’
‘How much?’
‘Six thousand krooni.’ About four hundred pounds, Purkiss estimated. ‘He was always short.’
‘Perhaps we can help each other find him.’
She studied his eyes, said, ‘I have to get back to work. My shift ends at one o’clock. Will you wait?’
‘Yes.’
She hadn’t taken the note he’d been holding. He made his way back into the heat and noise of the dance floor. At the bar he bought a bottle of water and a Diet Coke, after which he wormed his way over to one of the walls and leaned against it, wincing at the stickiness that tugged at the back of his jacket. Lyuba reappeared behind the bar. She and her fellow bartenders swarmed back and forth, keeping up with the demand. Purkiss checked his watch. Twelve thirty-five.
Fatigue was starting to tug at his eyes and limbs, brought on by the shortage of sleep he’d had the previous night on the way back from Rijeka, as well as the emotional grind of learning about Fallon’s escape. The lingering effects of the chase earlier and the sedative his body had absorbed weren’t helping either. He took a long draught of the soft drink, waited for the caffeine to kick in.
There was no pattern that he could discern. Fallon taking a flat with Seppo, who’d then reported his presence to Vale after several months. Fallon working in a dive of a club and taking up with an apparent street fighter of a woman, stringing her along and then ditching her without warning – and owing her money into the bargain. But in Purkiss’s experience the attempt to fit facts to patterns was one of the great errors of which human beings were capable. Of more use was the notion of probability based on past experience. His experience of Fallon was that the man didn’t get infatuated easily and didn’t run short of cash. His relationship with the woman had to be cover of some sort.
The relentless assault of the music was getting to him, proving hypnotic in both the mesmerising and the soporific senses. He thought about waiting outside but decided that he might miss Lyuba at the end of her shift. Instead he headed for the restroom. As usual the queue for the ladies’ was long, the one for the gents’ non-existent. He shouldered through the swinging door and into the reek of urine and bleach. He edged past the row of men at the communal urinal, found a vacant sink and ran the cold tap, ladling water against his face before pooling it in his hands and gulping it down. It was surprisingly palatable for city water. In the brown flyblown glass his face was pale, full of dark scoops: under the eyes, below the cheekbones and nose.
Beside Purkiss a skinny man with a ravaged face held open a jacket lined inside with slender pill bottles and knuckly twists of hashish. Purkiss shook his head. He was turning to leave when he felt a vibration against his leg. He pulled out his phone. A missed call from five minutes earlier. Vale.
He stood outside the cubicles until one of the doors opened. A man lurched out fumbling up his trousers. 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.