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Rebecca Deacon stepped off the Lufthansa flight into a fine but soaking drizzle. She’d never been to Rome before, but had expected balmy Southern European weather, even at this hour of the night.
The train journey from Fiumicino Airport into the centre of the city took thirty minutes. At some point she might need to hire a car, but the hotel address she’d been given was near the station and so she’d decided to take public transport rather than wrestle with the vagaries of traffic in an unfamiliar city. On the way, she ran through the contents of the note she’d memorised before destroying it.
Do the necessary, had been the concluding phrase. It was ambiguous, but not much.
At Gatwick Airport, while she’d been waiting to board the Lufthansa flight – it had been the 22.13 departure, which left her with over two frustrating hours to kill – Rebecca had bought a small laptop computer. She’d seated herself on a rack of chairs with her back to a wall and had inserted the flash drive which had been in the packet along with the passport and the note.
The drive contained a short video. She watched it, listening through ear buds to the audio content.
There hadn’t been any instruction in the note for her to inspect the contents of the flash drive, but there’d been no order not to, either, and Rebecca assumed she’d be expected to open it. She watched the video once, listening to the words. Then she ran it through a second time, with the sound muted, examining the almost static picture for visual clues. There weren’t any.
She’d bought a shoulder bag to carry the laptop in, and stowed it away. Otherwise she had no luggage, not even toiletries. She didn’t know how long she’d be in Rome, but she’d have to kit herself out once she was there if any delays arose.
The hotel was in an unpretentious building part of the way up a crowded shopping street which was now almost deserted. Rebecca didn’t think Purkiss would be waiting for her, but out of habit she carried out a basic counter-surveillance manoeuvre, encompassing two blocks in every direction. Then she went through the doors into the lobby of the hotel.
A brisk, efficient-looking pair of uniformed attendants sat behind the reception desk. Rebecca didn’t speak Italian, but their English was flawless.
Yes, Mr Purkiss was still registered as a guest at the hotel.
Rebecca explained that she had an urgent message for him regarding his sister. She thought he’d want to be informed, even though it was after two in the morning.
The young man behind the desk considered for a moment, then glanced at his colleague. She seemed to be his senior, in experience if not otherwise, and nodded.
He picked up the phone and dialled.
After thirty seconds, and a second attempt, the man replaced the receiver.
Mr Purkiss was not answering. He might not be in.
Rebecca didn’t ask if she might be allowed to go up and knock on his door. It would have aroused immediate suspicion. Instead, she thanked the two concierges for their help, and gave them a cell phone number she made up on the spot, as well as an invented name, asking them to call her as soon as John Purkiss appeared. She also asked for a piece of hotel paper and an envelope, and scribbled a nonsensical message which she sealed and handed to the woman, who placed it in a rack of trays on the wall.
The number below the particular tray was 331.
Rebecca exited the hotel through the front doors, and lingered across the street under an awning, aware that she was obtrusive, a single young woman out in the rain on an October night. But nobody accosted her. She watched the hotel entrance until, half an hour later, a pair of taxis pulled up in front and a group of five or six revellers spilled out, laughing raucously.
Quickly, she made her way back across the road and joined the partygoers as they stumbled up the steps to the doors. There were three men and three women, all in their thirties or early forties, all inebriated. One of the men grinned at her, his gaze unfocused, and said something in Italian. She smiled and shook her head.
She timed it right, holding back until the first of the group made it though the doors and lurched over to the reception desk to engage the staff there in cheery conversation. With the two concierges’ attention focused politely on him, Rebecca detached herself from the group and strode across the lobby and round the corner into a corridor, where she saw a bank of lifts.
She took the fire stairs to the third floor, found a silent corridor beyond. Cautiously she crept along it until she reached room 331. Unlike most of the doors, it had no do not disturb sign hanging on the handle.
She placed her ear to the door and listened.
No sound from within.
The lock was operated with a key card. Rebecca had no way of opening it, short of going downstairs and asking for one, which was out of the question.
She knocked softly on the door, then stepped aside, out of range of the fisheye lens.
Her ears strained. There was no sound from within. No footfall on the floor.
Rebecca walked back down the corridor to where she’d seen the fire alarm, behind a panel of glass at eye level. She glanced about, before hefting the bag containing her laptop and ramming the corner against the glass.
The shriek of the alarm was immediate, a harsh repetitive whoop that echoed around and down the corridor. Quickly she sprinted towards the stairs and down a flight, emerging on the floor below just as the first sleep-befuddled faces were beginning to peer through the doors.
The throng began to grow in the corridor, the jabber of panic rising, and Rebecca merged with the milling crowd.
She manoeuvred her way back to the fire stairs and ascended them, a look of bewilderment on her face, as if she’d forgotten the need to go down rather than up. Reaching the third floor again, she looked down the corridor towards the door of room 331.
It remained shut, though all the rest of the doors on either side of it were open and people were pouring out.
Rebecca waited as long as she dared, until the last of the guests were piling past her, yelling at her and tugging at her sleeves, trying to get her to snap out of her reverie and accompany them to the lobby.
Still the door remained closed.
Rebecca followed the others, making her way through the lobby where the night staff were trying to corral the crowd, to maintain a semblance of order. She pushed her way to the entrance doors and through into the night.
On the rain-slick pavement she ran along the front of the hotel and round the corner, to the side where room 331 looked out. She paused, located the third floor, scanned the windows.
She couldn’t be sure which ones belonged to room 331, but they all remained shut, and intact.
A fire engine’s bleat sounded in the distance.
Rebecca returned to the front of the hotel and watched the doors from across the road once more. Among the people flooding out, she couldn’t see anyone resembling John Purkiss.
By the time the fire engines had arrived, she was convinced. Purkiss wasn’t in the room. Had probably been gone for some time.
Which left her stuck.
She took out her phone and thumbed in a text message.
Target absent from hotel.
She hit the send key, and began walking away.
*
The response came within five minutes, as Rebecca was nearing the station once again.
It consisted of a text message with a new name and address. He may have a lead, read the message.
Rebecca looked up the address on the map application of her phone. It was a long distance to walk from where she was, and she sensed that time was not to be wasted.
She raised an arm to hail a taxi.