He brought the side of his left fist across in a hammer blow at Klavan’s face while his right arm reached across to grip the wrist of her gun arm. It was a two-pronged attack intended both to incapacitate and to get the gun pointing elsewhere, because even in death the trigger finger was liable to twitch, and it would be embarrassing to go down in the annals as having been shot by a dead person. The gun arm was already gone and her right arm was up and his fist caught the side of her wrist. She gave a cry but managed to gasp, ‘Wait,’ and pointed the gun at the roof of the car. She jacked the magazine out into the footwell and ratcheted the remaining bullet out of the chamber so that it bounced off the dashboard.
He waited, tense, a moment longer. She was rubbing her wrist where his fist had connected. He sagged back into his seat, staring at her.
‘I had to know,’ she said.
‘Know what?’
‘That you didn’t suspect me.’
He let the silence play out, his breathing slowing.
She raised her eyes. ‘Of course I know what’s going on. The woman, Ilkun, didn’t get rid of her SIM card because of some vague suspicions about the delicacy of our interrogation. She did it because somebody tipped her off about it, alerted her beforehand about the interrogation and everything else. I knew you’d worked that out after you called me in the car. And assuming you yourself aren’t the one who tipped off Ilkun — ’
‘Because that would make no sense at all — ’
‘It must be one of us. Richard, Chris or me. I assumed I was under suspicion just as much as the other two. But when you saw the gun just now you were genuinely surprised.’
He had been, she was right. The realisation unsettled him. Ruling her out entirely was dangerous, especially if he’d done it unconsciously.
‘That wasn’t very clever. I could have killed you.’
‘No, you couldn’t. You wouldn’t have seen the shot coming.’
He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. Too many shocks, too many adrenaline spikes. He’d read that repeated surges of stress hormones might contribute to the development of dementia in the long run. Perhaps it would come as a relief, no more memories.
‘Your arm okay?’
‘I’ll live.’ But she gripped the wheel more gingerly with the hand on the affected side. She hadn’t started the engine yet.
‘So if it’s not you, which one is it?’
She shut her eyes. ‘I’ve been thinking about that ever since I made the connection.’
‘Naturally. And?’
She sighed. ‘It must be Rossiter.’
‘Why?’
‘Mostly by elimination. Because it can’t be Chris Teague.’
‘You had a thing together.’
‘You noticed. For a year. It’s been over for six, seven months. We decided to keep sharing the same flat for convenience’s sake.’
‘Not wanting to sound cynical, but don’t you think your judgement of him might be a bit clouded as a result?’
For the first time she looked at him. ‘That’s not it. For him to be involved with these people — this Kuznetsov, Fallon, whatever’s going on — and not to let something slip, given how close we were and are, I mean literally, physically close… it’s not possible. I’d have noticed something. And after I came to realise about the tipping off of the woman, obviously I started trawling through the events of the last year, trying to think of clues that weren’t apparent at the time. There’s nothing, John. It’s impossible that Chris is the one.’
‘Improbable, perhaps. Not impossible.’
Once they were clear of the exit ramp Purkiss said, ‘Have you ever used it? The gun?’
‘Fired it plenty of times.’
‘That wasn’t what I asked.’
‘A question like that is like asking a lady’s age. Downright rude.’ She half smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, no, I’ve never fired it in the line of duty.’
When he didn’t respond she said, ‘Why did you ask?’
‘Just curious. As I am about a lot of things about you. All three of you, before you start getting any ideas.’
She shrugged. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Your surname, for starters.’
‘Klavan’s an Estonian name. My father was born and bred in Tallinn, my mother’s from darkest Buckinghamshire.’
‘And you’re English.’
‘Grew up there, but I’ve been visiting Estonia since I was a child, since before the Soviets left. Joined the Security Service after university.’
‘And then you were headhunted?’
‘In a manner of speaking. Someone in Little Sister thought fluency in a Baltic language was wasted at home. I’ve been with them three years now.’
‘This someone. Was it Rossiter?’
She glanced across. ‘No. He was already here, an agent in place. Chris and I both worked from the Embassy until the summit was announced a year ago; then we were introduced to Richard. Good boss.’
‘He strikes me as a bit tightly wrapped. Volatile.’
‘He’s like a lot of us. He becomes calmer, and functions most effectively, when the stress is extreme. You might have started to notice that with him.’
Purkiss nodded.
They had left the Old Town and were threading now through downtown streets populated with highrises and shopping malls. Something was different from before and in a moment Purkiss realised several streets were cordoned off and the traffic was being herded into more restricted routes. Behind the cordons police vehicles were backed up and uniformed officers were congregating and conferring. Overhead helicopters hung and flitted, their rotors like distant drills. All part of the security preparations for the summit, he assumed.
Elle said, ‘I don’t understand why.’
‘Why what?’
‘Why Richard would be working with Fallon. Assuming Fallon’s planning on derailing the summit somehow, assassinating one or more of the parties involved.’
‘Nobody really knows why anyone does anything, in my experience.’
‘It’s just — ’ She shook her head. ‘Any bad blood between Estonia and Russia… it isn’t Richard’s fight. Richard is one of the most patriotic people I know. Not in some bigoted, jingoistic sense, but in that quiet way you sometimes see in the very best civil servants, you know? He loves his country with a commitment I’ve never seen in anyone else. Britain stands only to gain from good relations between Estonia and Russia. It’s in all our interests, Richard’s included, that the summit works.’
‘The fallacy of motive,’ said Purkiss.
‘What?’
‘In every crime novel you read, the detective invests heavily in trying to work out what motive each suspect might have had, and more often than not solves the crime based on his deductions in this regard. Speak to any real detective and they’ll tell you that’s not how they work. They go by evidence, pure and simple. There’s less chance of being misled by wild speculation that way.’
‘But you can’t mean that people’s motives are irrelevant.’
‘Of course I don’t. It’s just that those motives can be figured out afterwards. All that matters when you’re trying to find a perpetrator is evidence of his or her guilt.’
His or her. It hung between them like a trace of smoke from an illicit cigarette.
After a pause that seemed to last aeons Purkiss said, ‘He’ll have forewarned Rodina Security and Kuznetsov that we’re coming. Rossiter, if he’s the one.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not worried.’
She shook her head. ‘They won’t harm us, not there. Richard — as you say, if it is him — knows you have another contact in the city, the person you met at the airport. He knows you’ll have told them where you’re going. If you disappeared on the premises of Rodina Security your contact would raise the alarm immediately.’