Cronos Rising (12 page)

‘You want me to follow him if he leaves?’

‘No,’ said Purkiss. ‘I’ll be nearby. Just let me know.’

Purkiss had bought Kendrick a mobile phone at Heathrow and given him his own number.

As Purkiss was about to go up to his room, Kendrick said: ‘Hey. Purkiss.’

‘Yes.’

‘You and Rebecca?’ He leered.

Purkiss shook his head. ‘No, Tony.’

‘Suit yourself.’

*

D
ownstairs, half an hour later, they crowded around a table in the breakfast room. It was at one end, and the place was only a third full, so privacy was easy to obtain.

‘Here’s what we know,’ Purkiss said to Delatour. ‘Vale left a posthumous message for me, telling me to locate a man named Gideon. Saul Gideon. He said he was one of us, whatever that meant. And that he might be dangerous.’

‘One of us,’ repeated Delatour. ‘As in, SIS?’

‘Maybe. The fact that he said he might be dangerous suggests Gideon may have flipped. Turned, in some way.’ Purkiss watched Delatour’s eyes. If he knew anything about this already, he was concealing it expertly. ‘Vale said a starting point would be an island in the Cyclades. An islet, he said. Its name is Ressos.’

That was the first lie. Purkiss had learned from experience that the most effective ones were those that clove most closely to the truth.

Again, there was no reaction from Delatour. Purkiss continued: ‘We need to find a way to Ressos. I suspect it’ll be by chartered boat, since the place doesn’t sound like a tourist trap. Rebecca and I will go out after this and scout around, try and establish access.’

Delatour nodded.

They finished breakfast in silence. As he’d often been in the past, Purkiss was astounded by the amount of food Kendrick put away. He didn’t think it was a lack of restraint resulting from his head injury: Kendrick simply had a huge, soldier’s appetite.

Purkiss went up to his room to make final preparations before going out. From habit, he’d already done a basic security sweep for audio surveillance equipment, even though the chances of the room being bugged were close to zero since they hadn’t pre-booked it. But such a sweep wasn’t just for existing bugs. It was also useful in spotting places where surveillance equipment might later be installed.

He set a dozen small traps: the room service menu angled in a certain way on top of the complimentary writing paper on the dressing table, the towel hung apparently haphazardly on the rail in the bathroom. They were a combination of the obvious and the subtle, and a skilled agent might be expected to pick up some of them but by no means all.

He met Rebecca on the stairs between the second and first floors. She’d changed her clothes and looked fresher than he suspected he did, as if she’d compressed her tiredness into a five-minute power nap and come out fully recharged.

On the way to the hotel, Purkiss had noticed a row of desultory travel agents on a shopping street, a kilometre or so away. They might not be open yet at this time of day, especially if business was slow, but Purkiss was prepared to wait. In any case, it would be Rebecca making the enquiries. Purkiss had other plans.

Three blocks from the hotel, he said: ‘Okay. I’m heading back.’

She nodded.

He reached the entrance to the hotel ten minutes after they’d left it, and made his way across the lobby to the stairs. On the periphery of his vision he saw Kendrick lounging in an armchair next to a potted palm. He didn’t acknowledge him. Purkiss climbed the stairs quickly, pausing at each floor to check the corridor before continuing.

From the top of the stairs on the third floor, he watched the door to his room. Delatour’s own room was on the other side of the building around a turn in the corridor.

Purkiss moved swiftly down the passage to his door and paused outside.

The building had come to life some time ago, the pipes groaning in the walls, the guests already on the move, and the background noises obscured any sounds that might be coming from inside his room. He put his hand on the door handle. The locking mechanism was the old-fashioned kind: a simple mortise lock and key. The key was in Purkiss’s pocket.

The door moved a fraction when Purkiss applied slight pressure. It was unlocked. He’d hung the
do not disturb
sign on the handle, so it wouldn’t be the maid service in there.

He had seconds, he knew, before the movement of the door was noticed. As was so often the case, surprise was the best weapon.

Purkiss threw the door open and was inside even as he surveyed the interior. He registered the open drawer in the bedside table and the open bathroom door which he’d left closed. At the same time he sensed the shape to his right and turned that way but it was a pillow propped on the window sill, a crude but simple trick to give the fleeting illusion of a human silhouette.

The blow came from his left, a hard jab much like the one he’d used on Billson in Rome beside the river, aimed at the nape of his neck. Purkiss tensed his shoulder muscles an instant before it struck and felt the overwhelming, almost paralysing shock of pain in his trapezius. He swung his left arm as he pivoted round, but the blow had numbed it and he couldn’t put his full force into it.

Delatour grasped Purkiss’s arm in one hand and jerked it aside, exposing his torso, and brought up a claw hand into Purkiss’s face. Purkiss turned his head aside and felt the tip of Delatour’s little finger against his lips and opened his teeth and bit down, hard.

Delatour gave a tiny howl of pain and pulled his hand back. Purkiss pressed home his advantage, slamming his forehead into Delatour’s face, connecting with the bridge of the man’s nose.

Delatour dropped to his knees, his arms sagging by his side. Purkiss raised his foot, ready for a kick, but he saw the man was dazed, his eyes swimming unfocused in his slack face.

Purkiss closed the door and locked it, after a quick look out into the corridor to see if anyone had heard the struggle. He hauled Delatour up and sat him on the bed. The head butt hadn’t been a hard one; Purkiss’s intention hadn’t been to kill the man or even render him unconscious. The bleeding from the nose was minimal.

Purkiss slapped the man’s face, sharply but gently, several times. Delatour put his hands up in a vague warding-off gesture. He shook his head as if to free it from the fug inside.

‘Delatour,’ said Purkiss. ‘Can you understand me?’

Delatour’s eyes swivelled in the direction of Purkiss’s. They appeared to register him. His hand fumbled in his breast pocket, found his glasses, placed them shakily on his nose.

‘Water,’ he said thickly.

Purkiss grabbed a sealed bottle off the bedside table and shook some of it over Delatour’s face, before raising it to his lips. The man sipped, rather than gulping. It showed presence of mind, suggested he was almost fully conscious.

Purkiss had already run his hands over the outline of the man’s torso and limbs, checking for a concealed weapon of some kind. He said: ‘Talk to me.’

Delatour didn’t try to obfuscate or bluster. He said, simply: ‘Self-defence. That was all.’

‘What?’

‘The way I attacked you just then.’ He swigged more water. ‘I realised it was you rather than someone else after I’d already primed myself to act.’

‘What were you doing in my room?’ said Purkiss.

‘Searching it.’

‘For what?’

Delatour moved his mouth, twitched his nose, as if testing whether his facial muscles were in working order. ‘You’ve been cagey with me. Understandably so. I want to find out what happened to Vale. I can’t be sure you’re keeping me entirely in the loop, can’t assume you’re telling me everything. So I decided to see if there was anything else I could learn from you.’ He peered at Purkiss, a shrewdness creeping into his look. ‘You’d have done the same.’

‘Probably.’ Purkiss gazed around the room. A few drawers were open, his small suitcase agape. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

Delatour said, ‘No. Why did you come back?’

‘Because I didn’t entirely trust you. Still don’t.’

‘At least we know where we stand.’ Delatour tried to rise to his feet, dropped back, made it on the second attempt. ‘Where’s the woman? Deacon?’

‘Gone to find us transport to the island in the Cyclades.’

‘Am I still coming along?’

Purkiss said, ‘If you want to.’ He steadied Delatour as the man rocked a little on his feet. ‘You want to lie down here for a bit?’

‘No.’ Delatour shrugged Purkiss hand off his arm. There was a trace of annoyance there, the resentment of a man bested in combat. ‘I assume I’m confined to the hotel? That you’ve posted your attack dog, that Kendrick, to make sure I don’t leave?’

Delatour was smart; Purkiss had to give him that. He thought like Purkiss. ‘Let’s just say your trustworthiness would be enhanced in my eyes if you didn’t slip out for a rendezvous with anybody.’

At the door, Delatour said: ‘I wonder what you think my motive would be in betraying you.’

‘You must have worked it out,’ Purkiss said. ‘You might be working with the group that killed Vale. You could be planning to tip off this Saul Gideon before our arrival. For all I know, you’ve already done so.’

Delatour seemed to hesitate, the door ajar in his hand. He closed it again and faced Purkiss.

‘Shall I tell you why I really tracked you down?’ he said.

Purkiss felt his interest stir.

‘It wasn’t just because I thought you would be the obvious person to help me find Vale’s killer,’ Delatour went on. ‘It’s because I thought
you
might have killed him.’

*

T
hey sat, Delatour on the edge of the bed once again, Purkiss in the room’s single chair.

‘Vale contacted me by phone a week ago,’ said Delatour. His nose was swollen and already bruised, and his voice came out a little distorted. ‘I was still in New York at the time. He told me he thought he might be in danger. Serious danger, as in terminal. I asked if there was anything I could do to help. He told me that if anything happened to him, I was to try and find you. He warned me to take extreme care, because there was a possibility that you were the one who might harm him.’

Purkiss watched Delatour’s face, processing the words. It made no sense.

‘He didn’t say why,’ Delatour went on. ‘I asked him, of course. But he was as cryptic as ever. He said simply that there were enemies showing their hand, and he couldn’t be sure that you weren’t one of them.’

No sense at all.

‘And now?’ said Purkiss. ‘Do you believe I had anything to do with Vale’s death?’

Delatour studied him for a moment before answering. ‘I think probably not,’ he murmured. ‘But I can’t be sure.’ He frowned, glancing down. ‘You told me earlier that Vale left a posthumous message for you.’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

Purkiss told him about the video clip Rebecca had shown him, giving Delatour the gist rather than the exact account. Delatour listened impassively.

‘So he tells me in confidence that you might be a threat to him,’ Delatour said, ‘yet sends you a message which suggests he regards you as an ally.’

‘It’s contradictory,’ Purkiss agreed.

His phone hummed in his pocket. He looked at the screen.

Kendrick.

‘Men coming into the hotel,’ Kendrick rasped, as if he was trying to keep his voice low. ‘Four of them. Look like hard buggers. Pros.’

––––––––

P
urkiss put the phone away. Stared unblinkingly at Delatour.

‘Hostiles are on their way up,’ he said.

He’d told Kendrick to stay put near the entrance.

Delatour looked alert. ‘How many?’

‘Four.’

Delatour rose to his feet, steady by now. He caught Purkiss’s eye and said, ‘Oh, for God’s sake. No, I didn’t know they were coming.’

Still uncertain, Purkiss said: ‘Get in the bathroom. They come in there, put them down. Use lethal force if you have to, but we need at least one of them alive.’

Delatour moved quickly, disappearing into the bathroom, as Purkiss opened the French windows leading to the small ledge of a balcony. It overlooked the hotel’s tired garden, which consisted of concrete walkways interspersed with scraps of neglected lawn. There was nobody in the garden apart from a workman weeding a flower bed and dumping the takings into a wheelbarrow.

Purkiss pulled the French windows closed behind him and pressed himself against the wall. Light drapes hung on either side of the windows inside the room, and he watched the one closest to him for any sign of movement.

It came perhaps thirty seconds later: a soft rapping on the door to the room, followed by a voice, muffled through the door and the closed windows. Purkiss couldn’t make it out, but it was a man’s, and it had the sing-song quality of a domestic worker asking permission to enter.

He’d left the
do not disturb
sign hanging on the handle. Hotels differed throughout the world, but if there was one thing that united them, it was that the cleaning staff respected a guest’s request for privacy. Especially this early in the morning.

He strained his ears. The noise of the city, complete with the grinding of construction machinery, made it difficult to hear clearly any sounds coming from within the room. But Purkiss thought he heard the soft creak of the unoiled door handle being turned.

He thumbed a text message to Kendrick:
they’re here at my room
.

The next sounds were unmistakable: heavy footfalls as men entered the room, all pretence at stealth dropped. He listened to the crash of the chair being knocked aside, presumably as someone looked under the bed.

A moment later, the French windows swung open.

Purkiss kicked the window nearest him, pistoning his foot so that he drove his full force into the frame. The window smashed against the man coming through, a pane breaking as it connected with his head. Purkiss had delayed his kick until the man was far enough through that his arm extended beyond the edge of the frame. As Purkiss had been expecting, the hand held a gun.

Purkiss grabbed the gun hand with both of his, the fist itself rather than the wrist, and pulled the man all the way through onto the balcony. He noted fleetingly that the man was bleeding from his head where the glass pane had shattered against it, red droplets spraying finely in the morning light. Purkiss twisted the gun hand up and outward, raised his foot again, and kicked the man hard in the abdomen, causing him to double over with a groan.