––––––––
They’d booked seats apart from each other on the plane, partly because of the lateness of the booking but also because it allowed them a broader view of the cabin. Purkiss was near the front, while Kendrick had a window seat in the mid-section and Rebecca found herself at the rear near the toilets.
She’d seen Delatour board after them and settle himself near Kendrick.
As soon as they were seated, ten minute or so before the plane began taxiing, Rebecca took out her phone and sent a text message.
Request intel on a man named Delatour. Late 30s, pallid, fair hair, five-nine. He’s made contact offering assistance.
While she waited for a response, Rebecca peered over the rows of heads in front of her, locating Purkiss’s, his dark hair barely visible over the back of the seat.
She felt a prickle of unease. Delatour’s appearance had been a surprise, and she ought to have dissuaded Purkiss more strongly from agreeing to let him accompany them. But she knew Purkiss would have followed his own instincts, whatever she’d said.
It was one of the things she was beginning to understand about Purkiss. His implacability. His stubbornness.
There was a vulnerability there, too, she sensed, though she hadn’t worked out quite what his weak point was. He gave little away, though he wasn’t by any means an unemotional man.
Did he trust her? Rebecca wasn’t sure. Overtly, he seemed to; and he’d appeared genuinely grateful that she’d helped him in the airport in Frankfurt. But a man of his experience, in his field of work, didn’t survive long by being naïve. Were there aspects of her story he doubted?
Had he realised she was lying to him?
And there was the other man. Kendrick. Purkiss had told her what had happened to him, about the injury. Rebecca had known and cared for people with similar afflictions in the nursing home in Sussex. She recognised the lability, the disinhibition, though Kendrick was far more highly functioning than the invalids she’d nursed. She knew Purkiss wouldn’t have included him if he thought the man was likely to be a liability.
But it was his insistence that he recognised her that bothered Rebecca. She had a good memory for faces, and even taking into account the fact that Kendrick’s appearance had been altered by his wound and the subsequent surgery – his eyelid drooped, and the right upper part of his face was subtly lopsided and distorted – she didn’t think she’d ever seen him before.
Her phone buzzed softly in her lap. Rebecca looked at the screen.
Delatour known SIS. Advise cautious cooperation. Notify me if any suspicious behaviour.
Only mildly reassured, she put the phone away.