Purkiss was dimly aware of movement within the room, shouting and struggle, but his attention was focused on the opponent out here on the balcony. The man tried to pivot so that he was facing Purkiss but Purkiss hung on, his arms now gripping the man in a bear hug. The man was barrel-chested, and Purkiss didn’t have the advantage of superior size to make the hug effective.
Instead, he released his grip, allowing the man to turn further, before jabbing a half-fist up into his opponent’s solar plexus. The man jolted back but continued to bring the gun round. Purkiss grabbed the gun arm by the wrist in both hands and ran the winded man to the waist-high balcony railing and flung his arms out and over, the momentum propelling the man over the rail with a yell.
Purkiss took a second to peer down. The gardener had already sprinted for cover. The gunman lay sprawled on the concrete path, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle, a growing pool of blood spreading around his head.
Through the French windows Purkiss saw a third man come charging headlong towards him. Before Purkiss had time to react, the man’s feet were kicked out from under him and hit the carpet just inside the windows. Kendrick was on him, kneeling on his back, wrenching his arms behind him, snarling like a wild beast.
Beyond them, Delatour appeared. He was grimacing, clutching his upper arm.
Purkiss said: ‘Tony. Don’t —’ but even as he spoke, Kendrick looped a crooked arm under the man’s neck and tightened it, at the same time twisting the man’s head sharply to one side. The crack was audible.
Purkiss stepped through the windows. Delatour was dishevelled, his shirt bloodied and untucked, his face sheened with sweat. Through the open bathroom door behind him, Purkiss saw a body sprawled on the floor. There was blood, and a lot of it.
He met Delatour’s eyes. Delatour shook his head.
‘He had a knife. I turned it on him.’
Purkiss went over to the bathroom door and peered through, on the off-chance. But the handle of a sheath knife protruded from beneath the supine figure’s breastbone.
Damn. All four, dead.
‘We need to get out of here,’ Purkiss said.
They moved through the warren of streets near the wharf, losing themselves, intent more on throwing any possible pursuers off track than on reaching a particular destination.
Delatour’s upper arm had been nicked by his attacker’s blade, not deeply enough to cause serious damage but enough to bloody his shirt. He’d slung Purkiss’s coat over himself to disguise the stains — there hadn’t been time to return to his own room. Kendrick loped on Purkiss’s other side, muttering to himself.
Purkiss hadn’t said anything to him about killing the man in the hotel room. It didn’t seem apposite at the moment. But of all four men, Kendrick’s had been the one most obvious to keep for interrogation.
The commotion had started elsewhere in the hotel, voices raised in alarm at the gunshot and the sounds of combat. Purkiss had gone back out onto the balcony and gauged the drop and swung himself over the railing and hung to his full length, before letting go.
He’d angled himself outward so that he’d landed on the grass rather than the concrete pathway. Nonetheless, it was a fair drop, the three-floor distance offset somewhat by the fact that the lawn was raised halfway up the level of the ground floor. Purkiss rolled with the impact, ignoring the stab in his ankle, and rose upright.
He looked up, where Kendrick was already hanging, ready to drop. Purkiss stood below him and caught him awkwardly as he fell, not breaking his fall but slowing it. Delatour looked less confident, and his injured arm slipped at the last moment so that he swung dangerously close to the concrete. But Kendrick got below him in time, and eased his landing.
They ran across the lawn towards the wall of the garden, disregarding the shouts from the overlooking windows. They’d be seen, and by many people; Purkiss couldn’t help that. The important thing was to get away before the police arrived.
The sirens were already flaring nearby as they made it on to the road running along the back wall of the hotel garden. Purkiss took a moment to orientate himself, then set off towards the wharf, in a zig-zag pattern through the narrow streets.
When they’d put a few blocks between themselves and the hotel, Purkiss pulled out his phone and called Rebecca. She answered immediately.
He told her what had happened.
‘Delatour?’
‘He took one of them down,’ said Purkiss. ‘He’s clean.’
‘I’ve organised a boat to take us to Iora at ten o’clock,’ she said. ‘Just under an hour from now.’
‘Good.’ Purkiss slowed to a fast walk, the other two doing the same on either side of him. ‘It’ll give us a chance to catch our breath.’
‘How did they know you were at the hotel?’ Rebecca asked.
‘They must have followed us from the airport,’ Purkiss said. ‘Or someone tipped them off. I don’t know who.’
But he was thinking again of what Delatour had said.
Vale told me you might be a threat to him.
Purkiss felt the chill on his skin, more than just cooling sweat.
Was this Vale’s posthumous way of avenging himself on the man he thought might kill him? By luring him to Athens, on a pretext of sending him to a remote island, just so that he could be ambushed once here?
It just didn’t fit. Vale hadn’t been afraid to take calculated risks, but he’d never go this far. Have Purkiss killed without absolute proof that they were enemies.
On the other hand… Purkiss reminded himself that he had never really known Vale. Hadn’t known much about his background, apart from rumours, legends.
Hadn’t known if perhaps Vale was accountable to some higher authority, one with goals quite different from the ones Purkiss had pursued in Vale’s service.
Purkiss realised he was still on the phone when Rebecca said, ‘John? Anything else?’
‘No. Wait around the wharf. We’ll meet you there nearer the time.’
He put the phone away and said to Delatour: ‘You need to get a change of clothes.’
He’d already asked him if his arm needed medical attention. Delatour dismissed the injury with a wave.
They reached a market street which, even at just after nine in the morning, was alive with bustle and clamour. While Delatour hung back, Purkiss went to one of the stalls and found a cheap shirt and jacket and trousers that looked the right size.
He gave them to Delatour. While the man slipped the new clothes on behind the stalls, Purkiss and Kendrick shielding him, Purkiss said to Kendrick: ‘You cut up a little rough back there.’
Kendrick looked please. ‘Dropped the bastard, didn’t I?’
‘Look, Tony,’ Purkiss murmured. ‘You did well. But you need to pull your punches unless it’s life or death. We could have interrogated that man.’
Kendrick went very still, and stared at Purkiss. ‘You what?’
‘He could have provided us with intelligence.’ Purkiss kept a distance between them, but folded his arms. It conveyed authority without being threatening.
The moment lingered for two seconds. Three.
Then Kendrick broke eye contact and laughed. ‘Nah. We had to get out of there, remember? He would have slowed us down.’
He was right. Purkiss had to acknowledge it, even though he didn’t say anything.
‘Oh,’ said Kendrick, reaching into the waistband of his chinos under his leather jacket. ‘And I got this.’
Part of a gun emerged from Kendrick’s waistband. A Walther, by the look of it.
‘Took it off the bugger,’ he said cheerily.