‘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.’
They 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.’
Sixteen
Purkiss 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.
A second man crouched inside the room just inside the doors, his gun extended in a two-handed grip. Purkiss swung the first man round so that his body was between Purkiss and the second man and aimed the gun arm as best as he could and drew back the man’s finger against the trigger.
The unsuppressed blast echoed through the room and out across the garden, sending a yell up from the gardener like a startled bird. Inside the bedroom the second man took three or four stumbling steps backwards, his chest soaked in crimson, before he crashed against the dressing table and dropped to the carpet.
The man Purkiss was using as a shield began to recover and struggled against Purkiss’s grasp. Purkiss held on, his arms reaching around the man from behind, his own hands clamped over the hands gripping the gun. The trouble with that was that Purkiss didn’t have much room for manoeuvre. As long as his hands were occupied controlling the gun, they couldn’t be used for anything else.
He rammed his knee up between the man’s legs from behind. The blow would normally have been incapacitating, but the man squeezed his thighs together, mitigating the effect of the strike. With a grunt of fury the man brought the heel of his shoe down on Purkiss’s foot. The sharp pain caused Purkiss to relax his grip a fraction, and the man wrenched his hands free and twisted.