‘What’s going on?’ Purkiss murmured.
The gun barrel twisted into his flank. He was fishing for data: languages, accents. The men said nothing.
Ahead and to the left, a broad piazza opened up, leading to an impressive domed building. A noticeboard announced that this was St Paul’s Cathedral. Tourists milled across the piazza, snapping photographs, consulting maps and guidebooks.
It was a cliché beloved of fiction, Purkiss knew, that a true professional fighter feared a knife more than a gun. This was in his experience only the case if the person with the weapon was in fact a professional himself. Even an amateur with a handgun could do enormous damage inadvertently. And when the gun was pressed up against you as this one was, you didn’t take foolish risks, because there was no chance at all that the gunman would miss, whether or not he was a pro.
Unless he had qualms about pulling the trigger in the first place.
Whoever these men were, Purkiss doubted they were prepared to kill him in public, otherwise they could have easily done so already. They were crossing a busy square in a small town, with a visible police presence, he’d noticed, and the points of exit from the town were restricted.
With a twist and a shrug of his shoulder Purkiss freed himself from the man’s grip and at the same time he pivoted to his left and stepped away from the gun barrel and began striding across the piazza towards the cathedral.
The adrenaline surge made him catch his breath because it was possible the gunman would fire as a reflex, was possible that Purkiss had miscalculated and the man was taking a bead on him now and was going to gun him down, execution-style, but the moment passed and he heard muttered shouts behind him. He picked up the pace, dodging stationary clumps of tourists, heading straight for the cathedral doors. No hands grabbed at his collar. As he’d suspected, they didn’t want to attract attention.
Inside, the cathedral was cool and echoing. More tourists strolled about, their voices low. High above, the vault showed scenes from a life; St Paul’s, Purkiss assumed. He made his way up the central aisle towards the altar.
He didn’t know if the men were local Maltese; but he’d heard the saying that the only way to cross a road in Rome without the slightest chance of being run over was to be accompanied by a nun. Perhaps the men were similarly God fearing and would avoid entering a holy place for underhand purposes.
No such luck. At the front pew he turned and looked back. The men had entered and were standing one on either side of the doors, watching him. Feet apart, hands crossed in front of them. Gangster poses. They both wore suits, and looked so alike they might have been brothers, or cousins at least.
He faced them fully. They stared back across the length of the cathedral. Clearly they were willing to wait. At some point, in an hour or two, the cathedral would close to the public and Purkiss would be forced to leave. The men would then take possession of him again.
He needed to force their hand.
Purkiss pulled out his phone and muttered nonsensical words into it, holding the men’s gaze. They didn’t quite glance at one another, but there was a subtle shift in their demeanour. Reinforcements might make life difficult for them.
They began to advance, one coming up the centre aisle and one up the side where the tourists were fewest. The logical step would be for Purkiss to head down the other side, but the man in the centre would then easily be able to slip sideways between the pews and intercept him.
Instead Purkiss waited.
The man coming up the middle — the man who’d had the gun earlier, though Purkiss assumed they were both armed — reached him first. Purkiss extended his hand.
‘Let’s talk.’
The man stopped, looking momentarily bewildered by Purkiss’s approach. Purkiss smiled and at the same time kicked the man in the shin, a hard pistoning drive of the instep of his loafer against the unpadded strip of bone. It was hardly an incapacitating injury but it produced a sudden shock of pain, always. The man winced and leaped back and Purkiss moved in quickly, ramming the stiffened extended fingers of his hand underneath the man’s breastbone. He grabbed him under the arms as he sagged and lowered him to the pew.
The second man was almost on him but Purkiss yelled, ‘Somebody help, please. I think he’s having a heart attack,’ and immediately the crowd began closing in and the second man was jostled aside. Sprawled on the pew, the first man was half-conscious, his eyelids fluttering, his face mushroom-grey and waxy.
Purkiss kept up a stream of patter — I don’t know him, he just collapsed, can anyone do CPR — while he manoeuvred himself towards the periphery of the crowd gathering at the front of the cathedral, putting distance between himself and the second man. The man moved back and started heading down the side again. At the doors of the cathedral Purkiss looked back and saw the man running after him, gaining ground, barging people.
Purkiss stepped through the doors and waited against the wall on one side of them, blinking in the sudden brightness. A young family stepped back in surprise as the man shoved through the doors. Purkiss hooked the man’s ankle with his foot and the man launched forwards, landing heavily in the dust. Pushing himself away from the wall, Purkiss kicked the man in the head, not a killing blow but an incapacitating one. Without breaking stride he set off rapidly across the piazza.
He moved at random through the streets, letting the adrenaline burn itself out, checking methodically for tags and then rechecking. In the shelter of a doorway he stopped and took out the phone he’d lifted from inside the jacket of the man he’d dropped in the cathedral.
The contact folder was full of Italian names. Purkiss opened the ‘recent calls’ list. The last call had been made at 4.05 p.m. Half an hour ago. There was no name attached to the number.
Purkiss dialled it, waited.
On the second ring it was answered.
‘Si?’
Purkiss said nothing.
‘Quello che sta succedendo?’
What’s going on? Except that wasn’t quite right. Purkiss was fluent in Italian, but the words the man at the other end was using were a little different.
Purkiss rang off. He recognised the dialect. It was Sicilian.
Dusk brought a drop in the heat, but the air was still balmy. In the marina below, the sea shifted and glittered. Across from Purkiss the crenellated walls of Valletta towered against the evening sky. The streets on this side of the peninsula overlooking the bay were crowded and raucous, the seafood restaurants and pubs packed to spilling.
Purkiss stood in the shadows ten yards from the door of the British High Commission and waited.
A phone call half an hour ago had established that Paula Cass was still in the building. He had hung up before he could be put through. There’d been little point going back to the restaurant in Mdina and waiting for either Motruk or Silverman to emerge. It was a small town, and the Sicilians would have backup, possibly on their way already. Purkiss had headed immediately back to the car park outside the entrance to the town and made his way back to Valletta.
He’d been watching the High Commission for three hours.
At a little after eight p.m. she came through the doors, in a lightweight summer jacket and carrying a briefcase. She looked tired, harassed. She was alone.
Purkiss pressed back into his doorway to let her pass, then stepped out after her. As she drew level with an alley between a restaurant and a block of flats he closed in and brought the edge of his hand against her neck, aiming for the carotids.