At last Klavan lifted her gaze to meet Rossiter’s and he nodded, not having said a word. He tapped Lyuba on the shoulder and motioned for her to stand. Klavan fitted the canvas hood back over her head and said, ‘Ms Ilkun, you won’t realise it but you’ve been very helpful. We’ll escort you to a place not far from your home.’
Klavan and Rossiter led the woman out of the room. Purkiss stepped forward and adjusted the hood where it was folded at the back of her head.
She said nothing, didn’t ask who they were or why they’d questioned her. Teague placed her phone in her hand and, with a hand on each of the woman’s forearms, he and Klavan walked her towards the fire exit.
Rossiter watched her go, and said into the silence: ‘Not much.’
‘Nothing, is how I’d put it.’
Rossiter glanced at him sharply. ‘But we didn’t expect much. The tracer’s now in her phone, though.’
Purkiss was half listening, distracted by what his inner voice was telling him. Ilkun had sat there, almost relaxed, as though she’d been prepared for the questioning. Klavan’s mention of her son had rattled her, admittedly. But even then, she had been able to lie. Almost as if she was confident that no threat against her or her son would be carried out.
It was as if she’d been primed. Someone had tipped her off that she was going to be interrogated, and about the line the questioning was going to take.
Rossiter stood, his back to Purkiss, working the computer that was going to be used to track Ilkun. Purkiss watched him.
It could only have been one of them, one of the three agents, who had primed her.
Fourteen
Once outside the Old Town he pulled over in an empty parking slot on a busy commercial street and sat in the car and waited for Abby’s call. It came after a couple of minutes, on the phone she’d given him.
‘Got it. Want to listen?’
‘Yes please.’
Her voice was replaced with a burst of static which he realised was probably clothing brushing against the device. He’d slipped it under the collar of the woman’s shirt when he’d fitted the hood over her head, its location making it less likely to be discovered but meaning that audibility might be reduced. The tiny, Velcro-like hooks were designed to attach to the fibres of clothes. It was an audio-monitoring device which was simultaneously trackable in real time using GPS. Abby was relaying the audio feed from her laptop to his phone while at the same time a pulsing beacon against a street map on her laptop indicated the location of the device.
After the static came a voice, distant but distinct: Elle Klavan’s. ‘Here’s where you get out.’ Another harsher burst of interference and now Klavan’s voice was clearer. The hood must have been taken off. ‘Know where you are?’
‘Yes.’ The woman Lyuba Ilkun’s voice, louder, closer by.
The slam of a door, then footsteps and a confusion of ambient street sounds.
Into the handset Purkiss said, ‘Abby?’
‘Hearing you.’ Her voice cut across the feed from the listening device.
‘That’s great, works a charm. Can you identify my position in relation to hers?’
‘Sure. Got a GPS track on your phone as well. You’re half a kilometre away. I can guide you towards her if you want.’
‘Not just yet. I need to make a call on the other phone. Could you mute the feed but keep my line to you open?’
‘Done.’
With the other handset, the one he’d been using since buying it the previous evening, he called Klavan. She answered before the first ring had finished. ‘John?’
‘Just left the office. I’m going to stake out Ilkun’s flat, see if she comes back and then tail her.’ The lies flowed smoothly. ‘There’s no point relying on the substituted SIM card in her phone. She’ll be wise to that and she’ll ditch it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because you treated her with kid gloves in there. I’m not saying rough stuff would have got any more out of her, but it’s what she would have been expecting. Her suspicions will be up.’
‘I see. How did Rossiter react to your plan?’
‘Hopping mad, as you might imagine.’
‘So why are you phoning me?’
‘To check if Rossiter’s got a bead on the SIM card. I don’t want to stake out her place if she’s heading in the opposite direction.’
‘Hang on.’ Elle’s voice faded to a murmur, then came back. ‘Rossiter on the line to Teague. The signal from her phone has gone.’
‘As I predicted. She’s got rid of it.’ He started the engine. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
He rang off, fitted the earpiece for the other phone and said, ‘Abby, still there?’
‘Right here.’
‘I’m on the move.’
She began to direct him like a bizarre living satellite navigation system. He listened and took the turnings she advised. All the while he pondered the discovery he’d made: that one of the agents had tipped the woman off.
It was at least one of them, or possibly two, but not all three; he was fairly confident of that. If they were all involved then why would they have gone through the charade of the interrogation, just for his benefit? Why not simply say they hadn’t been able to apprehend her? As to which of the three it was, he didn’t think Klavan was likely. She after all was the one who’d responded to his distress call in the nightclub, when she could have ignored it and left him to the Russians. Teague was a possibility. He’d come along for the ride with Klavan when she had rescued him from the club but might have done so to avoid making Klavan suspicious.
Rossiter was the one he favoured. Rossiter, who’d shown hostility and suspicion towards him from the outset, who’d almost flinched when he had mentioned Fallon’s name. At the time Purkiss had assumed this was because of the ominousness of Fallon’s presence in the city at this point, but now he wondered if it was the reaction of someone who had just felt the carefully constructed edifice of a plan tremble a fraction.
‘Mr Purkiss.’ Abby’s voice cut across his thoughts. ‘She’s stopped moving and there’s something coming through on the audio.’
He pulled over when he spotted a clear stretch of pavement and kept the engine running and listened. The scrabble of material against the bug again and a loud noise — another slammed car door — and then a man’s voice in Russian.
‘They hurt you?’
‘No.’ Even the suboptimal sound failed to disguise the fear in her voice. ‘They knew about Ivan.’
‘Your son is in no danger.’ The voice was raspy, middle-aged. ‘You told them nothing?’
There was a prolonged blast of static that made Purkiss wince, then a muffled rumbling. When it continued beyond ten seconds Purkiss said, ‘Damn.’
Abby: ‘It fell off.’
‘Must have. It sounded like she got in a car. Her seatbelt probably pulled the bug off.’
‘But it’s still in the car. That sound is the rumble of the engine. And the signal’s moving again, more quickly now.’
‘Okay. Guide me again. And if there’s a change in the audio, voices or anything, patch it through to me.’
It was more difficult this time because he was chasing an unseen target moving at a car’s speed, with only Abby’s directions to give him a sense of where to go. Always the other vehicle managed to stay several blocks ahead, so that he couldn’t begin to work out which car it was.