Kendrick fidgeted, occasionally crossing his legs and then uncrossing them in quick order, drumming his fingers on the rail of the boat, his lips moving silently and in apparent amusement. Every now and again his hand stole inside his leather jacket as if to reassure himself that the pistol was still there. For years, he’d used amphetamines, not exactly recreationally but before a mission, to give him an extra bit of oomph, as he put it himself. Purkiss had connived at this because it had never got in the way of Kendrick’s performance. He had the appearance now of someone cranked up, but Purkiss didn’t think he was using. It was as if the brain injury had triggered some natural mechanism in his head which previously had needed speed to set it off.
An unstable, unpredictable former soldier, and two virtual strangers whose motivations and loyalties Purkiss couldn’t be entirely sure of. It was a hell of a team.
Georghiou seemed to understand English well enough, even if he didn’t speak it much. On the way, Purkiss told him he could leave once he’d dropped them on the island. The old man nodded as if he hadn’t considered any other possibility.
Rebecca murmured to Purkiss: ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’
‘We may be there some time,’ said Purkiss. ‘If there is anybody on the island, they’ll most likely have a means of transport off, which we can use. And if we’re going into a hazardous situation, we can’t expose Georghiou to it.’
‘And if there’s nothing there at all?’
‘We’ll do a quick recce when we get there,’ said Purkiss. ‘With an island of that size, it’ll be easy to establish if it’s inhabited. If it’s just barren rock, we’ll ask Georghiou to take us back then and there.’
The journey took a little under two hours, smoothed by the mild sea and the clear weather. Georghiou slowed the boat and stood up, training a pair of binoculars on a point on the horizon. He nodded.
The shape appeared on the distant sealine as they approached. At first, Purkiss thought it was a flat expanse, but as they drew nearer he saw it was peaked slightly off-centre, like a shallow hill protruding from the water. The only other island was far larger and off to the left. Purkiss hadn’t seen another vessel for the last quarter of an hour.
The first prick of adrenaline made its way into his system, along with a creeping tendril of dread.
Georghiou took the boat slowly along the southern perimeter of the islet, studying the cracked and jagged coastline intently. Purkiss got the impression that the man had never actually landed on Iora before, though he’d navigated there easily enough. The rock was more elevated than Purkiss had initially thought, its sides sheer enough to be called cliffs and rising to a height of perhaps eighty feet in places.
A cleft in the rocks came into view. Deep within it, and shadowed by its sides, a cove led to a sloping expanse of rock, worn smooth by the sea over the centuries. At the far end of the rock, a rudimentary set of steps, formed by the placing of boulders rather than the carving of a staircase, wound upwards and into the darkness between the sides of the cleft.
Georghiou pulled up to the cove and cut the engine. He stood stiffly and extended his hand to Rebecca, his manner gruffly courteous. She allowed him to help her over the side. Kendrick barged past next, his booted feet splashing carelessly in the shallow, impossibly clear water.
Purkiss said: ‘Rebecca, Tony, wait here a moment.’ To Georghiou: ‘I’m going to climb those steps and see if there’s anything up there. Will you wait a few minutes?’
The man glared at him through his small, pouched eyes.
Rebecca stepped forward and peeled a wad of euros from a clip. ‘Mr Georghiou, we really would appreciate it.’
Without acknowledgement, the captain pocketed the cash and sat on the rail of the boat. He fished a pipe and a packet of tobacco from a pouch around his waist and began packing the bowl.
Purkiss began to climb the steps, Delatour behind him.
He’d chosen the pairings deliberately: he and Delatour scouting ahead, while Rebecca and Kendrick stayed behind. His first instinct had been to take Kendrick along, but Rebecca and Delatour were the unknown quantities as far as he was concerned, and he didn’t want to leave them alone together.
The boulders which formed the steps were worn down in the centres, as if feet had traversed them numerous times. Purkiss took them slowly, his feet threatening to slip at times where the surface had been rendered slippery by the spume that had lashed from the sea. Behind him, Delatour was having similar difficulty.
The path wound through a rough S-shape, and after rounding the second curve Purkiss found he couldn’t see the cove any longer. Up ahead was a ridge.
His head rose above it. Before him was an expanse of rock, dotted with smaller boulders of different sizes and shapes like an array of sculpture. The rock surface sloped gently away, before reaching the steep verge of a central hillock.
At the top of the hillock, the unmistakable silhouette of human habitation was dark against the pale sky.
The structure was ruined, and appeared ancient. Chipped Doric pillars supported a crumbling façade, beyond which were squatter, less decorative buildings, though the extent of them wasn’t discernible from Purkiss’s vantage point.
He scanned the rocky plain ahead. For an instant, his eye was caught by a swaying movement over to his left.
Further round the perimeter of the islet, he saw the tip of a mast, just visible over the ridge.
Purkiss pulled himself up over the lip of the ridge. Behind him, Delatour followed suit.
Delatour said: ‘This isn’t Ressos.’
‘No,’ said Purkiss. He turned to Delatour. ‘How did you know?’
‘I researched it, after you told me it was where we were going,’ Delatour said. ‘It’s nothing like this.’
‘You understand why I lied to you?’
‘Of course,’ said Delatour mildly. ‘Insurance. And I suspect even now you’re not going to tell me where we are.’
‘I might as well,’ said Purkiss. ‘It’s Iora.’
Purkiss led the way leftwards along the ridge. Once, he glanced down, and saw the vertiginous drop of the cliff plunging into the rocks and sea at its base. As they approached the western end of the islet, the yacht came into view. It was a fifteen-footer, moored in a small cove alongside a second, smaller vessel, a motorboat.
‘We’ve got company, then,’ said Delatour.
Purkiss took out his phone. As he’d expected, reception was poor this far from the mainland. But he sent a text message to Rebecca, which went through: The island’s inhabited. We’ve found boats. Send Georghiou away and come up.
Her reply came after a few seconds. Yes.
While they waited, Purkiss studied the ruins on the distant hillock. From this new angle, further along the perimeter, he could make out something else behind the façade. It was a tall structure, almost as tall as the pillars themselves, and constructed of dull metal with buttresses of wood and stone.
A tower.
Rebecca and Kendrick appeared over the lip of the ridge. Purkiss beckoned them over.
They gazed down at the vessels in the second cove.
‘Do we go and check them out?’ said Rebecca.
Purkiss gazed up at the structure again. ‘Not yet. Let’s walk the perimeter, see if there’s anything else. Then we need to have a look at that ruin.’
Perhaps it was luck, or fate, or perhaps it was simple physics with no mystical weight behind it. But the flash winked in the side of the tower, sunlight glinting off metal, and triggered a reflex in Purkiss as if he’d been administered an electric shock directly to his central nervous system.