Asher said: ‘Yeah.’
‘Where are you?’
‘At the docks, looking at the ship. It’s berthed. The guy in charge here has told us to hold back.’
‘Are the others with you? Saburova and Kendrick?’
‘Yes.’
Purkiss felt frustration claw at him.
He said: ‘The moment the ship starts unloading, you run ahead and start opening whatever you see. Boxes, crates, whatever. Get the others to help you. Make a lot of noise and fuss.’
‘Got you.’ Then: ‘Here it comes. The doors are opening and stuff’s coming through.’
Purkiss felt Gar at his side, leaning in.
‘What are you doing?’
Purkiss stepped away. ‘Forcing Rossiter’s hand.’
He listened, but Asher had ended the call.
Gar strode ahead of Purkiss down the corridor. He reached a door and opened it and gestured for Purkiss to go in.
They were alone in the office. Gar moved in close.
‘Back off,’ he said. ‘This is no longer under your control.’
‘Your boss called me in because he trusted me,’ said Purkiss. ‘I know Rossiter, better than you do. If he’s importing something, he’ll slip it through any crack in our defences he can find. The vessel needs to be sealed off and contained as a matter of urgency. Once you allow even one man to get through, you’ll have blown your chance.’
‘Don’t you think I’m aware of — ’
‘Listen to me.’ Purkiss took several steps back, his hands raised. ‘The ship won’t be booby-trapped. Why would Rossiter want to blow up Liverpool’s docks? If that ship is his, he’ll be transporting something for internal use. You need to isolate it and scour every inch of it, as well as the personnel on board.’
For a moment Purkiss thought it was his phone ringing, until Gar took out his own and held it to his ear.
He listened for ten seconds.
Then, to Purkiss: ‘A group of men have been identified trying to leave the vessel, unobserved.’
The next few minutes passed in a succession of disjointed snatches of sound.
Purkiss heard an eruption of noise from Gar’s phone, which sounded like shouting voices.
He raised his own phone to his ear.
He rang Kendrick first. There was no answer.
Then Saburova. She said immediately: ‘Men are running. We are closing in.’ And she was gone.
He tried Asher. At first, it rang until Purkiss expected voicemail to kick in. Then: ‘Some guys were slipping out carrying a box. Special Branch have pinned them down.’
A blast of static drowned out his words. But Purkiss recognised the intermittent staccato clatter in the background.
‘Shots,’ said Asher.
He ended the call.
Purkiss prowled the floor of the office, a caged animal, ignoring Gar who stood motionless, making calls on his own phone.
His feelings were a stew of triumph and guilt. There was vindication in the revelation that clearly something untoward was going on. But he wasn’t there, and he’d ordered his colleagues into a situation which sounded hazardous in the extreme.
Asher was the first to call back. ‘Purkiss. The field is secured.’
‘Tell me.’
The man sounded out of breath. ‘Four hostiles dead. Nobody hurt this end. They were armed, they defied an order to stop. Good kills.’
Purkiss wondered briefly why Asher felt the need to justify.
Asher continued: ‘They were carrying a box. Looks approximately four feet by two. Heavy. The tech people are moving in. Bomb guys, too.’
‘The rest of the ship?’
‘They’re aboard. No further resistance.’
Asher disappeared abruptly, and Purkiss recoiled as Kendrick’s voice exploded into his ear.
‘I got them, Purkiss. I fucking got them.’ He gave a high, manic cackle. ‘Took two of them down with the Hockler. Bang, bang. In the head. Like sniping at pumpkins.’
Asher’s voice came back, as though he’d retrieved his phone forcibly. ‘Your guy here shot two of them. Like I say, they were good kills.’
His voice became distant again. Purkiss heard shouting in the background.
When Asher returned, he said, ‘They’re telling us to move back. They’ve found something.’
Purkiss glanced at Gar. He thumbed the speakerphone key, moved closer to the other man.
Asher said: ‘It’s the box the guys were carrying. The Geiger counters are sparking like crazy.’
Twenty-two
The details emerged erratically over the next two hours.
Purkiss had met Vale in a large, open-plan office area crowded with computer stations manned by quietly intense personnel. Gar was co-ordinating, striding from one station to the next, but Waring-Jones appeared after a few minutes, his aged face set in grimness.
The docks had been completely evacuated and a wide area cordoned off by armed police officers. Specialist technicians were flooding in from various cities.
The media were being kept at bay to some extent, and the strict enforcement of a no-fly zone excluded helicopters from reporting events from above. But the scene was appearing in breaking news features on every television station.
Purkiss procured a side office and called Asher. He stood with Vale around the phone on the table.
‘The ship’s crew are being questioned,’ said Asher. ‘So far, it looks like they’re totally confused about all of this. The captain claims his instructions were to take a detour from Dublin up to a location off the west coast of Scotland, and to meet another vessel there. The four men who’re now dead boarded with a couple of crates. The captain was told it was more booze.’
‘Who gave him those instructions?’ said Purkiss.
‘He says they were in a faxed directive sent to him last night, a few hours before the ship left Dublin. The fax came from the Arrowhead office, and he didn’t think to question it.’
‘Osip?’
‘Is already being interrogated about this. He still claims he knows nothing about it. He believes his communications were hacked, and false orders were sent to the captain apparently issuing from Arrowhead’s office.’
Purkiss said, ‘What about the box?’
‘Nothing to report yet,’ Asher said. ‘The techs are still on it. It hasn’t been moved, yet. But there’s radiation, no doubt about that.’
Purkiss glanced at Vale. The man appeared to have aged just in the last few minutes, a graveness dragging his features down.
To Asher he said, ‘Everything okay with Kendrick?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You kept saying, those were good kills.’
Asher hesitated. ‘Two of the hostiles were shot by Special Branch officers when they drew weapons themselves.’
‘And the other two?’
‘Kendrick shot them.’
‘But they were armed?’
‘Armed, yes. But they were running.’
‘Running away?’
‘Yes.’
Purkiss understood.
The problem wasn’t that two innocent men had been killed, because they weren’t innocent. The problem was that two men who could have provided critical information had been gunned down, when there’d been the possibility of merely wounding them.
‘Where’s Kendrick now?’
‘The police have him. He’s not been arrested, but they’ve isolated him.’
‘I’ll smooth things over.’ Purkiss wasn’t sure if that would be possible. ‘What about Saburova?’
‘She took off.’
‘What?’
Asher sounded puzzled. ‘She told me you’d called her and told her you needed her back in London. Didn’t explain why.’
Purkiss became very still.
‘You there?’