She couldn’t help him.
The Ferryman stepped back and pulled the trigger, the sound of the shot muffled by the suppressor so that it might have been produced by a heavy book falling flat onto a hard surface. The Parabellum bullet hit the woman in the nape of the neck, the projectile expanding disproportionately because of its hollow tip. The effect was to blow the woman’s head apart.
Despite his position several feet behind her, the Ferryman couldn’t avoid a fine sprinkling of gore reaching his suit trousers and his shoes. He ignored it for now. Instead, even as the woman’s body spun and hit the floor, he began to move swiftly through the apartment.
Within five minutes, he’d established that there was nobody else there. He searched all three bedrooms, the adults’ and the children’s. In the dressing table’s drawer, he found a set of passports for the family. The pictures matched those in the frames in the living room.
The target, Saul Gideon, didn’t live here.
The Ferryman gave his suit trousers and his shoes a perfunctory clean in the kitchen, enough that the stains wouldn’t be noticeable except under close inspection. He didn’t bother to wipe the surfaces he’d touched to remove his fingerprints. His prints, and his DNA, were indeed stored on a number of databases. But the Turkish police wouldn’t immediately consider an international connection to the murder.
Out in the street, after a quick inspection to ensure nobody was there waiting for him, he began to walk back towards the city centre. As he strode, he took out his phone and dialled.
The phone was answered within ten seconds. ‘Oracle.’
‘The address was wrong,’ said the Ferryman neutrally. ‘A Turkish family. No trace of the target.’
The Oracle took this news in silence. Then he said: ‘Another ruse.’
‘It would appear so, yes.’
Again, a pause.
The Oracle said, ‘There’s a further complication. Artemis failed to take down Purkiss.’
The Ferryman listened to the account of what had happened at Frankfurt Airport. He heard about the woman who had come to Purkiss’s assistance.
‘The objective has changed,’ said the Oracle. ‘I need you to find Purkiss, of course.’
He explained.
The Ferryman understood.
Twelve
The man was ten feet ahead of Purkiss, a hunched figure in a dirty overcoat at least a size too big. He walked with a gait that was difficult to characterise: half-lope, with the occasional stumble.
The street was dark, the sputtering lamps neglected and desultory and casting more shadow than light. Along either side, rows of terraced houses brooded, many of their windows boarded over. In the distance, the contrasting brightness of the high street beckoned.
Purkiss closed in. He was still wearing the running shoes he’d bought at the airport in Rome. The pavement was strewn with spilled litter, but he dodged it deftly, keeping his eyes on the man’s back.
Once, the man would have heard him. Sensed him, rather.
But this time, Purkiss reached him before he even began to turn.
‘Tony,’ said Purkiss.
The man swung jerkily round. Despite the change in him, his arms came up instinctively. Purkiss caught the glint of a blade in his fist and took a step back.
The outsized collar of the man’s coat made his head appear tortoise-like above it. Across his face the shadow revealed only one of his eyes. It gleamed as brightly as the blade. His mouth was hooked downward in a snarl.
‘Tony. It’s me.’
Kendrick raised the knife so that the blade was vertical in front of his face. In his robe-like coat he resembled a demonic priest conducting a black mass, and about to offer a live sacrifice.
The effect was enhanced by the grin that spread asymmetrically across his face.
‘Purkiss.’
With startling dexterity, he flipped the knife and caught it by the tip. It disappeared inside his coat. He stuck out his hand and Purkiss grasped it, feeling the roughness of the palm. It was scarred rather than callused.
‘No man hugs,’ rasped Kendrick. ‘Or I’ll break your neck.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Purkiss. ‘I just showered.’
For an instant, the smile fell from Kendrick’s face. Both of his eyes were visible now, the right one slightly obscured by a sagging upper lid.
Purkiss wondered if he’d said the wrong thing.
Then the grin was back. ‘Prick,’ said Kendrick.
Purkiss jerked his head and they continued walking in the direction Kendrick had been headed, towards Stoke Newington High Street. The area had been gentrified over the last twenty years, or more accurately bohemianised, but it still had its surprisingly desolate patches, like the street they’d just come up.
‘Nearly got yourself killed,’ muttered Kendrick. ‘Trying to sneak up on me like that.’
‘I didn’t try. I had the drop on you. Could have floored you before you even knew it.’
Purkiss wasn’t needling Kendrick for his own amusement. He wanted to get a feel for just how hair-trigger the man was these days.
Tony Kendrick was a former serviceman with the British Parachute Regiment, whom Purkiss had met in Iraq nearly a decade earlier. Since Purkiss had officially left MI6 and gone freelance, he’d recruited Kendrick on an occasional basis when he needed an extra pair of hands on a mission.
Fourteen months ago, Kendrick had been hit in the head by a ricocheting rifle bullet, fired by the killer known as the Jokerman. Although Purkiss had assumed initially the bullet was meant for him, it had turned out that Kendrick was the Jokerman’s target after all. Despite this, Purkiss continued to feel a twinge of guilt about what had happened.
The bullet had sheared away part of the frontal bone of Kendrick’s skull, and taken a little of the frontal lobe of the brain underneath. The frontal lobes were associated with a wide range of human abilities, including attention, abstract reasoning, motivation and impulse control. Not to mention motor functions.
Kendrick’s mobility had recovered relatively quickly afterwards, with the help of intensive physiotherapy and natural cussed determination on his part. The latter was an indication that his motivational faculties had remained largely undamaged, as well. But in the months after the injury, Purkiss had noticed on his frequent visits to Kendrick both in hospital and post-discharge, that the man had difficulty concentrating for any length of time. Also, his temperament had altered. Always a sardonic, irascible person, quick to react when slighted, he’d developed a placidity which was underlain with a disquieting tone of menace. And every so often, his rage would explode, in response to even a trivial remark, and he’d punch walls.
After he was deemed fit to leave hospital, Kendrick returned to his flat in Hackney in East London. He lived alone, though his former girlfriend continued to visit and bring along their son, Sean. The girlfriend, whom Purkiss had first met soon after the shooting, confided to him that she was afraid to leave the boy alone with him.
‘It’s not that I think he’d hurt him,’ she said. ‘He’s just… different towards him. Talks to him as though he’s another adult, rather than an eight-year-old kid. Cracks dirty jokes.’
Purkiss hadn’t hired Kendrick again since the shooting. The man was comfortably off financially — Purkiss had checked — and was in no fit state for the kind of work Purkiss might require of him.
They made their way along the high street, which was still crowded at eight in the evening despite the October cold. The café where Purkiss had sent Rebecca was in sight ahead.
Kendrick stopped. He turned to Purkiss.