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Who the hell was calling at this time?

He dashed back to the sitting room to where his cell phone was vibrating on the coffee table. “Max?” Tallis said, bewildered.

“Sorry to disturb you.”

“It’s all right,” he said, dizzy with relief. “I wasn’t in bed.” He should have been, he thought, checking his watch. It was three-thirty in the morning.

“Something wrong?” Tallis said. Course it blood was.

There was an uneasy silence as though Max hadn’t quite rehearsed what he was going to say. “Just had the police on the phone.” His voice was grave. “They got my name from Felka’s belongings.”

“Something happened to her?” Of course it had. He knew only too well how people dished up bad news.

It started in increments.

“She’s dead,” Max blurted out. “Murdered.”

About the Author

E. V. SEYMOUR lives in a small village in Worcestershire. Before turning to writing, E.V. worked in PR in London and Birmingham, then moved to Devon where, five children later, she began writing.

E.V. has bent the ears of numerous police officers in Devon, West Mercia and the West Midlands—including scenes-of-crime and firearms officers—in a ruthless bid to make her writing as authentic as possible.

The Last Exile

E.V. Seymour

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For lan With a song in my heart…

Acknowledgments

This book would not have come into being had it not been for a small number of serving firearms officers. Because of reasons of security and protocol, I am neither allowed to mention them by name nor state the place where we met. They know who they are, however, and I thank them for their time, generosity and good humor. I should also add that my take on a firearms officer’s job is just that, with dramaticlicence. Moreover, the views expressed in the book are not those necessarily shared by those I talked to.

Major thanks go to my agent, Broo Doherty, for having the perspicacity to encourage me to write something completely different and, most important, giving me the confidence to do it. Thanks also to Catherine Burke, my editor at MIRA Books, for spotting the book’s potential and putting it through its paces, and indeed the whole of the MIRA team for their warmth and infectious enthusiasm. Most notably Guy Hallowes, Sarah, Oliver on the marketing side, and lan on sales—not the lan to whom the book is dedicated; we got on well but not that well! Those I’ve failed to mention in person, apologies! Thanks, too, to Jana Holden for turning my schoolgirl Croatian into colloquial Croatian, and for sharing a little of her family history with me.

Lastly, thanks to an unlikely individual, to Tim, the inspiration for Jimmy. But that’s not an excuse for further turning up the volume!

PROLOGUE

THE woman was running. Running for her life. Small and sinewy, she moved at speed, twisting like a desperate vixen. But there was no escape. Not for anyone. She knew it. Tallis knew it. From the instant he and Stu barrelled through the automatic doors, he understood how it was going down, how it was going to be. All of them were ensnared in a dance of death.

Tallis didn’t register the glossy-looking, brightly lit stores, or the homely sweet aroma drifting from a biscuit stand nearby. He failed to admire the display of brand new Minis parked at the mall’s entrance. He didn’t detect Paul Young crooning hoarsely through the centre’s speakers. Sound, taste, smell, touch all disappeared. His focus was on the woman. Only the woman. The woman with the rucksack on her back.

Fuck, she was going down the escalator the wrong way. Tallis sharply elbowed a middle-aged man aside, and leapt on, feet skimming the moving parts, shoppers cursing his jostling form. Stu, close behind, snarled an order to get out of the frigging way. An acne-faced youth spat at them then, seeing the guns, recoiled and cowered, his bottle gone. Men with weapons in full tactical firearms kit represented the visible arm of the law. Guys in plain-clothes, whatever their rank and standing, were scary, unknown quantities.

Women and children started to scream. Tallis, fearing it would force the woman to detonate her lethal load, bounded clear of the moving staircase, feet landing square, the fleeing figure still ahead, ducking and weaving. For the second time, Tallis shouted a warning. Again he used her native tongue, yet there was no break in step, no change in pace, no backward glance. Relentless, Tallis thought, but not nearly as relentless as me. Whatever the cost. Whatever the personal sacrifice.

People were fleeing now. Those who’d ordered morning lattes were dropping them where they stood, the contents spooling over a floor the colour of rancid butter. Boisterous school-kids already bored by the prospect of long summer holidays dived for cover. A security man too old and fat for the job looked clueless then slack-jawed then barked a What the hell? into a mobile phone.

Area should be cleared by now, Tallis chafed as a woman pushing a baby buggy almost cannoned into him. What the fuck was going on? Where was back-up? Two foreign-looking men selling cosmetics from a stand extolling the virtues of Dead Sea salt turned and gazed, the laconic expression in their eyes suggesting that they’d seen it all before.

Tallis’s earpiece crackled. A designated senior officer had already confirmed the identity of the target, an Algerian woman with links to the recent failed bombing in Birmingham. Now he was upping the game, issuing instructions to prepare to eliminate the threat—code for execute or shoot to kill. Tallis tightened his grip on the Glock but judged the scene too chaotic and unstable to take aim and fire should the final code word be given. Public safety, threats of criminal proceedings, phrases that tripped off the tongue in the aftermath but made no sense in the context buzzed round his brain like a swarm of demented hornets. Strained faces were everywhere, there seemed more shoppers than ever. And that was dangerous.

Tallis was subliminally aware of Stu drawing abreast of him, feet pounding the floor. They were gaining now but another escalator loomed ahead, ascending. Glancing up, Tallis saw two colleagues openly brandishing weapons, sealing off the exit. The woman’s head lifted minutely in mid-pace. She saw it, too. Tallis caught his breath. His gut tourniqueted. This was when she’d do it. This was when she’d blow them all to kingdom come. He raised his weapon but a group of gormless-looking lads oblivious to the action wandered across his line of vision. Stu let out a yell, making them scatter.

Tallis picked up the pursuit again, speeding around a corner flanked with banks and building societies, the financial heart of the mall. The woman was only metres ahead, losing pace, through stitch or fear, the fight abruptly abandoning her. Nothing left to lose, Tallis thought, raising his weapon a second time, imagining the blinding flash, broken bodies, twisted wreckage, crippled lives. This time he took aim, homing in for a head shot. “I can take the shot,” he radioed back to Control.

“Take it,” was the response.

Then something happened, something more terrible than he could imagine. In that heart-charged split second, she turned, small hands spread in a defensive gesture. Young, her dark face was arresting rather than beautiful. She had a wide, noble brow and brown eyes wet with tears and terror. Not that it mattered, Tallis thought coldly. An order was an order. Question the method, the timing, but never the command. Even so, Tallis experienced an ugly sensation, felt something he wasn’t paid to feel. His earpiece crackled. Maybe they were going to be asked to stand down, he thought wildly hopeful. It crackled some more: the gold commander was giving the code word authorising the use of lethal force.

Before Tallis could act, two shots rang out from Stu’s Glock, one winging wide, missing by inches a startled bank clerk taking a break, and ricocheting harmlessly off a pillar. The other felled the target. Tallis ran forward, saw the stain from a wound in the young woman’s shoulder spread and dye her T-shirt a darker hue. In shock, she made no sound. Just fluttered a hand towards her body, a movement that, whatever instinct was stirring inside him, was to cost her her life. With the colour still draining from her skin, Tallis emptied five bullets into her head and neck, witnessing her final second of life, hearing her last breath, watching as her life-blood flowed freely on the floor.

An eerie stillness descended. People stood silent, in dread and awe and shame, all of them witnesses to something they neither understood nor desired. One woman was weeping. The bank clerk, white with horror, eyes drilling into Tallis, murmured, ‘Murderer.’

“Job done,” Stu said, the relief in his voice drowned out by the gathering clamour of local police and forensics in full cry.

Tallis nodded, feeling hollow.

CHAPTER ONE

One year later

RED silk tie or navy? Paul Tallis held both of them against the white shirt and dark blue jacket hanging from the top of the doorframe. Maybe red would come across as a bit aggressive, a bit over the top. Then again, he wanted to look as if he knew how to do the business. But he was supposed to be protecting a school-kid, not some foreign head of state, he reminded himself. Navy, then. Gave the impression of responsibility, reliability, confidence. Yeah, navy was definitely a safer bet.

He turned away, satisfied with his choice though not quite so thrilled with the out-of-shape figure reflected back from the long mirror propped against the wall. At six feet two inches, he was able to carry several extra pounds and get away with it, but lately his trousers had started to feel a little tight around the waistband. Sure, he knew that to the untrained eye he still cut it. It was more a case of not being as super-fit as he used to be. Always happened when you reined back on a fairly demanding exercise regime. Fact was, in twelve months he hadn’t run much, been to the gym or cycled. Hadn’t seen the point. The best he could muster was a quick thrash up and down Max’s swimming pool and that was only because he wanted to impress the au pair. Pathetic, he knew. Felka was considerably younger than himself, bright and fresh-faced, and with an innate sweetness and innocence that he had no intention of despoiling in spite of the fact that, on a number of occasions, she’d made it quite plain that she wouldn’t have minded.

He let out a sigh, smoothing his not-so-taut six-pack. No matter, he thought. His future employers weren’t going to interview him in the buff, and with his clothes on he still presented a commanding figure. He clowned a face in the mirror, thrust his chin out, the way he did when he shaved. Still had all his own hair and teeth, which at thirty-three he bloody well ought to have. The faint scar across his forehead made him look interesting rather than dangerous, he thought, and he still had the up-for-it look in his eyes. He grinned and winked. Once he got the job, could see a way forward again, he’d get back to his old exercise routine, get back to his old self. He’d done it before after he’d spent a stint undercover early on in his police career—nothing more guaranteed to screw up your brain and pile on the pounds than hanging out with people whose lives revolved around pubs, clubs and fast food. He’d had to drink so much alcohol to fit in that his weight had ballooned to Sumo proportions.

Not like Stu, Tallis thought grimly. The more the guy drank, the thinner he seemed to get. Last time they met he’d been wasted before Tallis had sunk his first pint. Tallis had ended up piling him into his car, a shit-heap in Stu’s opinion, and taking him back home or hame—the more drunk, the stronger Stu’s Glaswegian accent. Stu’s hame had turned out to be a room in a house full of deadbeats. Oh, how the mighty had fallen. Yet Tallis recognised that he, too, was one of them. It still astonished him how quickly one’s fortunes could change. In one single minute he’d ripped up the ground from beneath his feet. One false decision and the world, as he’d once known it, had changed for ever. To say he regretted the shooting didn’t even come close. An innocent woman had died, for Chrissakes, but there were other regrets: the collapse of the team and loss of personal identity.

It took him twenty minutes to shower, shave and clean his teeth, five minutes to dress and splash on the last dregs of aftershave. He’d shined his shoes the night before. Half an hour to kill, he thought, glancing at his watch, flicking on the radio. “The men were arrested in South London last night. The raid followed a long period of surveillance by police and MI5. It’s thought…” Tallis switched off and picked up the TV guide, idly flicking through the pages. He usually worked in the evening so TV was a bit of a luxury. Maybe he’d take in one of those home make-over shows, he thought, closest you could get to property porn. Might give him some ideas about how to transform his less than glorious surroundings. He suddenly became acutely aware of the horrible floral design of the wallpaper, the decrepit-looking gas fire in the tiled fireplace, the campaign table which was really a fold-down from Ikea and for which he’d paid six quid, the smell of old lady and lavender. In the thirty years his grandmother had lived there, she hadn’t changed a thing.

The phone rang. Tallis eyed it warily. After the shooting, and in spite of strict orders not to talk, his phone had never stopped. Since his fall from grace, it had never rung at all. He’d become a social and professional pariah: no status, no self-esteem. Someone once said that you could judge a man’s standing in the world by the number of calls he received. Applying that criterion, his was on the same level as an amoeba’s.

“Paul, it’s Max. You OK?”

Tallis smiled in relief. “Bit nervous.”

“Yes, well… erm, there’s been a change of plan.”

“Yeah? No problem,” Tallis said cheerfully. Flexible was his middle name, especially if it meant the prospect of landing a decent job that paid well. Since his decision to leave the force, finding work had proved a soul-destroying task. There weren’t too many orthodox lines of business for an out-of-work killer, as he’d been famously dubbed. To keep body and soul together, he’d taken a rubbish job as a security man at a warehouse. The work was tedious in the extreme, the pay lousy, with the result that he was seriously into his overdraft. That his grandmother had left him her crumbling wreck of a bungalow should have saved him from penury, but he’d spent so much time and money attempting to sort out the faulty plumbing and dodgy wiring, it was haemorrhaging his already limited resources.

“Thing is,” Max said, strain in his voice, “they’ve changed their minds, Paul.”

“Changed their minds about having a bodyguard or changed their minds about me?”

Sweaty silence. Tallis imagined Max rubbing his face with a paw of a hand. In looks, they were quite similar—tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, ‘fucking good-looking’ according to Max in one of his more expansive moments. “It’s all my fault,” Max said. “I should have come clean, told them the truth from the start.”

Tallis almost laughed. The truth that we were given duff intelligence, he asked himself, or the truth that we were obeying orders? “Don’t worry, mate. Notoriety does strange things to people. To be honest, I’m not sure babysitting an over-pampered public schoolboy is really my thing anyway.” Tallis felt his neck flush. Pride was a terrible thing. Another month playing security guards and he’d go mental and be no good to anyone.

“I feel really bad about this,” Max said, deeply apologetic. “It was me who put you up to it, for Christ’s sake. Look, if there’s anything I can do…”

“You can. Have a nice holiday.” Tallis loosened the tie from his collar. “When do you fly?”

“Leave Heathrow tonight. Kids are so excited they’re already driving Penny nuts. Think she’s beginning to regret not taking Felka with us.” Paul smiled. He liked Penny enormously but she didn’t strike him as a natural at motherhood. How would she cope for six whole weeks without her au pair?

Max was talking again, hell-bent on trying to make amends. “Why not take a trip out to the sticks, check on the house, give it a once-over?”

“Doesn’t need a once-over. It was me who advised you on security, remember?”

“Well, go and see if Felka’s all right. She doesn’t leave until tomorrow. You could have a swim, make sure she’s not throwing a party or entertaining unsuitable young men.”

“You asking me?” Paul laughed.

“Keep an eye on her, I said, not get your leg over.”

“The thought had never crossed my mind.” It had, and often, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Max. For reasons that baffled him, he’d acquired an unfair reputation for being a womaniser. In his book, there was a huge difference between having erotic thoughts about a woman and having base designs on one. It was all right to look and admire, but not to act on every instinct, which was why he was careful to keep his thoughts and emotions about the female of the species to himself. Somewhere lurking at the back of his mind, he suspected his brother had started the rumour. From the time they had been in their teens, Dan had always been jealous of the fact that women were more attracted to his younger brother than to him. So much easier for Dan to accuse him of being a letch rather than recognising the simple, uncomplicated truth that women preferred men who were nice to them.

“And if you need a decent set of wheels …”

“What’s wrong with my car?”

“Where to start?” This time Max laughed.

Tallis had to admit that his car was neither cool nor sexy. It wasn’t even very practical. Price alone had guided his decision to buy a Rover. After the demise of Longbridge, they had been practically giving them away.

“I’d look on it as a personal favour if you took the BMW out for a good run,” Max said persuasively. “No point the lovely beast sitting in the garage for all that time.”

Tallis almost punched the air. Things were looking up. This wasn’t just any BMW. This was a Z8, the dog’s bollocks. “Deal.”

“Good man,” Max said, voice warm with absolution as he cut the call.

It was too early for a beer but Tallis decided to have one anyway. Screw the fitness and weight-loss regime.

CHAPTER TWO

SEVERAL beers later, Tallis was in danger of feeling maudlin. He’d changed back into jeans and T-shirt, feet up on the coffee-table because there was nobody there to tell him not to, and was considering his lowly domain. The road in which he lived, a mile out of Birmingham city centre, was the type where people regularly dumped litter and the remains of last night’s tikka Marsala in the privet. Dog shit regularly anointed the pavement. Compliments of the next-door neighbour’s fourteen-year-old son, rock guitar blasted out at all times of the night loud enough to shatter the windows.

Tallis could cope with all that—just. But not the bungalow. Bungalows were for others—disabled, retired and those who cared not a jot about image. In short: for old people. For a bloke with all his life ahead of him, living in one was a travesty. Because of his less than cool surroundings, he’d actually bottled out of bringing a woman back. Once. The thought made him feel ashamed and disloyal. His gran had been exceptionally generous in leaving the place to him but, aside from the obvious lack of refurbishment, Tallis felt she’d handed him a poisoned chalice. Certainly his older brother, Dan, already as bitter as cyanide, viewed it that way, citing his younger brother’s devious ability to deceive and wheedle his way into an old woman’s affections as clear evidence. His mum had been restrained in any form of criticism, (difficult as it was her mother who’d played fairy godmother). Dad, utterly predictable, had taken Dan’s side.

Tallis wondered what his grandmother would have made of the ensuing family fallout. He’d loved her to bits. A Croatian by birth, she’d never fully got the hang of English even though she’d lived most of her life in Britain after marrying his grandfather. It had been Gran who’d given him a love of foreign language, Gran who listened when nobody else had, who’d never judged, never taken sides, and though he was glad that she wasn’t around to witness his current circumstances, he badly missed her. Not that he’d been short of takers desperate to hear his tale of woe. Plenty of people had listened at first, the I-jackers, as he thought of them, the people who’d hijack a conversation with the express determination to talk only of themselves. Fortunately, Tallis had Max, the closest he’d come to finding a confessor. They’d met several years before in a pub and had hit it off from the start, probably because both of them had been three-quarters of the way down a bottle of Bourbon at the time. Max, Tallis often thought, was the most elegant drunk he knew. Beyond this, and their joint lust for life, theirs was an unlikely pairing. Max came from a wealthy background where nannies and public school, university and a job in the City were normal. Tallis was a guy who came from humble and uncomplicated origins—left school at sixteen to join the army, eight years on joining the police. Then much, much later, had made the screw-up of all screw-ups.

Her name was Rinelle Van Sleigh, a Liberian who’d overstayed her visa. The explanation for her frantic flight from the police that mid-July morning a year before was explained by the stolen pair of trainers she had been concealing in her rucksack. Perhaps her over-reaction to the law had been connected to growing up in a country where coups and civil war had been commonplace. Aside from his brief stint in the army, Tallis had heard enough from his grandmother about the breakdown of law and order that could befall a nation, the hatred and suspicion it generated, and the madness that ensued. Maybe the Liberian girl had recognised something horribly familiar in the eyes of the plain-clothes police officers, and in her fear, a fear not misplaced, had turned tail and run. Tallis revisited that day often, playing the events through in his mind, frame by frame stopping, rewinding. To kill the wrong person was a firearms officer’s worst nightmare. That it had happened to others before provided no solace. But to kill someone you instinctively believed to be innocent was like a fast track to eternal damnation.

Tallis rubbed his temple, replacing the image of the dying woman with the memory of the second-by-second news coverage, the graphic headlines. Only the better quality press had emphasised the importance of correct intelligence, the chain of command, the fact it had been a dynamic or fast entry rather than an operation of containment based on accumulated information. As usual everyone had blamed everyone else. Overnight he’d shot to fame but one not of his choosing. He’d heard himself and Stu described as gunslingers and woman-haters, of being institutionally racist.

Tallis grimaced at the irony. Throughout his life he’d constantly defended the rights of the black man, mainly against his own father, a man who harboured a rabid and irrational dislike of people whose skin colour was different from his own. To be accused of holding those same views was a terrible insult to Tallis. For a time he and Stu had been the talking point of every radio phone-in and television show. While experts had opined and members of the public heaped insults, Tallis had received death threats. All this while he’d been on suspension, another force engaged in finding out if rules had been broken, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission investigating the case with the certainty of an internal inquiry and the possibility of criminal proceedings.

He recalled the debrief afterwards. Stu had already chewed his ear off on the journey back to base.

“You entered that shopping centre with the absolute conviction that you were doing the right thing, ridding the world of a bomber, saving people’s lives.”

“Yes, but—”

“No but,” Stu snarled, sharp eyes glinting.

So Tallis told the great and the good what they wanted to hear: yes, he’d believed that lives were in danger; yes, he’d believed the woman had been a suicide bomber; yes, he’d been convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt.

He’d been returned to a desk job and normal duties, the standard procedure following suspension, and usual after the discharge of a firearm. He didn’t remember much of his time spent in the close company of a computer. He’d been too much in a state of frozen shock. Everything had seemed amplified. People, noise, as if all his senses had been in revolt. He’d become almost agoraphobic.

And then there’d been Belle. Immediately his mind tumbled with memories. His heart began to race. He thought about that very first time they’d gone out for dinner. He’d wanted to take her to an Italian restaurant but, because they were meeting out of town, they’d settled for a tiny French place serving international cuisine. The food hadn’t been bad but neither of them had eaten very much, as he recalled. Time had seemed too short for something so functional. But there had been something else. With each precious second that had passed, both of them had known that they were closer to saying goodbye, both of them, even then, had sensed how it would end between them. As it turned out, and for everyone’s sake, they’d agreed to go their separate ways, a hard decision made painful by the simple truth that they loved each other. After the shooting, he’d wanted to call her but had known it wouldn’t have been fair on either of them. He didn’t have the right to open old wounds.

Eventually, he was cleared through the formal channels of any wrongdoing, though absolution in his own eyes was harder to come by. Legal proceedings against the force were still pending, the inquest adjourned. Offered his old job back, he didn’t feel up to it. Hesitation could get him killed. Fear might kill someone else.

Staring at walls dingy with age and neglect, he thought the bungalow reeked of defeat. He really ought to get off his rear and go to the supermarket, if only because the beer had run out.

He’d taken to frequenting the cheap end of the food market. Sunglasses protecting his identity, he could lurk behind aisles piled high with boxes of cut-price goods without being noticed. The products all seemed to have strange-sounding names that reminded him of supermarkets in the far reaches of the Czech Republic. The clientele were interesting, too, in a lurid sort of a way. In summer they sported tattoos and nipple rings, in winter cheap, shiny imitation leather jackets—and that was just the women. The blokes had necks like tree-trunks, shaved heads and what’s your problem expressions.

Making a brief detour to the newsagent’s to pick up a copy of Loaded magazine, he dropped the shopping off at home—stashing the beer in the fridge, frozen stuff in the freezer—and grabbed some swimming gear, then headed the car south-west. Traffic was dense, with a succession of roundabouts, traffic lights and speed restrictions to further impede the motorist. The more ground he put between him and the city, the leafier the landscape. Clent Hills stretched out on one side, a whisper of Kinver Edge on the other, nothing like the place where he’d grown up in rural Herefordshire, home and county to the Special Air Service. Once upon a time, Tallis had nursed hopes of joining the SAS but hadn’t been considered good enough. It had been the first time he’d seriously encountered disappointment. Up until then he’d seemed to have led a charmed life, which was probably why he’d dealt with the rejection in his laid-back, don’t-give-a-fuck fashion. For the rest of his brief, if eventful, army career, he’d stuck with the First Battallion, the Staffordshire Regiment.

Belbroughton, the highly desirable village in which Max Elliott and his family lived, was the kind of place where the size of houses was only rivalled by the size of lawnmowers. Even the council homes were gabled. So-called down and outs could generally be found sitting on one of the many wooden benches donated by some worthy, consuming strong cider while speaking into expensive mobile phones. Cars louchely parked on block-paved driveways fell into the BMW, Mercedes, Porsche category. Aside from the village’s upmarket credentials, the place was steeped in history, a subject dear to Tallis’s heart. It was a regret to him that he’d not taken the subject more seriously at school, though he’d done his best in later years to make up for it and educate himself. When walking through the village on previous visits he’d studied a plaque on the main wall that told the story of a young woman convicted of theft and packed off to Australia. He’d also discovered various references to scythemaking, indicating that it had once been the mainstay of Belbroughton, the industry having petered out somewhere around the late 1960s. As Tallis drove past yet another multi-million-pound house, he couldn’t get past the feeling that had assailed him when he’d first discovered the village, that he’d entered a little oasis of glamour. God knew what the neighbours thought of him driving up to Max’s not inconsiderable pile in his lowly Rover.

Keying in the code to the security pad, the electronic wrought-iron gates swung open allowing Tallis a tantalising glimpse of the house, which was Italianate in style with arches and domes to rival the Duomo. On his first visit there, Tallis had harboured serious suspicions about what exactly Max Elliott did for a living, fearing either he was a drug dealer or bent lawyer rather than the City financier he proved to be.

A paved drive led to a gravelled area and what Tallis called the tradesman’s entrance but was really the indoor pool and sauna. Spotting him through the glass, Felka beamed, threw aside the magazine she was reading, and swivelled her neat, deliciously put-together body off the sun-lounger to greet him. Tallis got out of the car, glanced up and smiled for the camera, part of the state-of-the-art security system. He’d personally advised Max on it free of charge after discovering that his mate had been royally ripped off by a cowboy security firm that didn’t know the first thing about protection and was only interested in taking a sizeable wedge of the client’s money each month on a bogus maintenance contract.

“Paul,” Felka said, “I didn’t expect you.” Felka had trouble with x’s and s’s, so it sounded like ‘eshshpect’, one of the many quirky things Tallis found deeply sexy about her. She had flame-red hair, pale features and the greenest eyes imaginable. Slight in build, she was wearing a bikini displaying perfectly rounded breasts and an enviably flat stomach. He suddenly felt old.

She tipped up on her toes and planted two impossibly chaste kisses, one on either side of his cheek. Tallis inhaled her perfume of musk and roses. “Max said you had an interview.”

“Change of plan.” He shrugged.

She studied his face for a moment, her expression suddenly serious. “You are sad,” she said. “I can tell.”

That obvious, he thought. He hoped she wasn’t too much of a mind reader—she’d be appalled by what else he was thinking. “Not for long.” He broke into a grin.

“Come,” she said, grabbing his hand. “We swim.”

“No splashing,” he teased.

The pool was thirteen and a half metres by six and a half, and over two metres deep at the far end. The floor, painted turquoise, gave the impression of clear Caribbean. Tallis let her push him in but not before he’d scooped her up off her feet, making her squeal, and threatened to dump her unceremoniously into the water.

“Promise we talk in Polish,” he said laughing, dangling her squiggling body over the edge.

“I promise. I promise,” she shrieked.

“Rude words, too.”

“Yes, yes.” Yesh, yesh.

Afterwards they sprawled out and watched the warm early July sunshine pour through the smoke-tinted windows. Several statues graced the outer perimeter of the pool. They looked like snooty guests, Tallis thought, sipping the coffee Felka had made.

As far as he understood, Felka was leaving to go home for a holiday the following morning, home being Krakow—a city on the river Vistula. According to Felka, and if he’d grasped it right, Krakow had been the capital during the fifteenth century, existing now as an industrial centre producing tobacco and railway equipment. Who needs work? he thought. This way I get history, geography and a foreign language all in the space of an afternoon.

“Can you tell me how to get from Euston station to Heathrow?” She was speaking in Polish again.

Tallis took a stab at it, pretty sure he had the right vocabulary but, worried he might send Felka off in the wrong direction, lapsed back into English. “Don’t want you ending up in Scotland.” He grinned. “I’ll draw you a map.”

“Good idea,” she said, jumping to her feet. That was the thing he loved about her. She was so full of zing. As she scurried off, he took a long look at her luscious, retreating form. There was something unbeatable about a semi-clothed woman with wet hair.

Felka returned with a notepad and pen and dropped them playfully on his chest. He picked them up and lightly swiped her bottom, making her break into peals of laughter. Sketching the route, he advised her to take a cab rather than tube because she had a very poor sense of geography. She’d once managed to get lost with the kids in the city centre. Penny had spent nearly an hour walking up and down trying to locate her, and that had been with the aid of mobile phones.

Felka frowned. “Much expensive.”

“Too expensive,” he corrected her.

She stuck the tip of her tongue out, half playful, half come-on. Tallis ignored the gesture. “Believe me, it would be safest.”

“No, no, I take the tube. I like the tube,” she insisted.

“But—”

“I’ll be fine.”

“All right,” Tallis sighed, advising her to take the Victoria line Euston to Green Park and change onto the Piccadilly line for Heathrow. He wrote it all down, sketched a map and handed her the notepad. “You must be looking forward to seeing your family.” He could manage that bit in Polish.

“Especially my little brother,” Felka said. “He changes so quickly. I hope he’ll still remember me.”

“‘Course he will.” How could he forget? Tallis thought.

“And you, Paul. You have a brother, too?”

Tallis flinched, wondering what was coming next. “Yes.”

“His name?”

“Dan. We don’t see so much of each other,” he added quickly, heading her off. “You know how it is.” Except she didn’t, of course. A sudden memory of Dan piling into the bedroom they’d shared, years before, flashed through his mind. Dan had had an infuriating habit of getting up in the middle of the night and switching the lights full on, often to locate his copy of Penthouse magazine. It hadn’t mattered that Tallis had been fast asleep. Usually it had ended in violence. And that had meant their dad had got stuck in. On Dan’s side.

Felka frowned. “That’s sad. Brothers should be close. Is he older or younger than you?”

“Older, but not by much—eighteen months or so.” Not that it felt like it. For as far back as he could remember, Dan had been like their father’s emissary, taking every opportunity to push him around, spy on his activities, report back to base. Because of Dan, he’d been continually in trouble—caught smoking red-handed, out after dark, consuming his first illicit pint, you name it. Because of Dan, he thought darkly, he’d often been humiliated in front of his mates. She nodded thoughtfully then spontaneously took his hand, squeezed it. “I will miss you.”

“No, you won’t. Think of all those lovely Polish lads.”

Felka pulled a face.

“You don’t like Polish boys?”

She let her viper-green eyes rest on his then slipped her arms around his neck, drawing him close. “I think I prefer English,” she whispered softly, nibbling his ear.

Tallis felt quite the gentleman as he drove home. It had been a long time since he’d so firmly rejected the charms of a lovely young woman. It wasn’t that he didn’t fancy her. He’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to, but he knew in his heart of hearts that Felka neither wanted nor needed him. She only thought she did. And she really was very young. There were too many sad bastards flaunting their younger and more malleable girlfriends to shore up their own inadequacies, and Tallis didn’t intend to join their club. Fortunately, his gentle put-down hadn’t offended Felka. He’d told her how gorgeous she was, sensitive and intuitive beyond her years, but that an affair was out of the question because of Max and Penny—they were his friends and she was their employee. It wouldn’t look good. She’d nodded solemnly then broken into a radiant smile. “Another time,” she said.

“Another place,” he agreed in a worldly way, believing he’d spotted something like relief in her young eyes.

“We’re still mates, then,” she said, slapping his arm.

“Best mates.” He laughed.

He got home shortly after six, intending to take something out of the freezer and bung it in the microwave. He’d bought some cheap Italian wine from the petrol station on the way back in honour of his considerable self-restraint and a mark of his confirmed celibate status. If it was good enough for Catholic priests, it was good enough for him.

He parked the car in the lean-to, loosely described by estate agents as a carport, and walked up the short path to the front door, expecting to encounter the same old silence. Except he didn’t. There wasn’t sound exactly, nothing you could readily identify. It was more a recognition of some disturbance, something different, the kind of feeling he’d sometimes experienced as a soldier.

Tallis put the bottle of wine down on the low wall that edged the garden, and moved forward cautiously. Since receiving death threats, he was more attuned to detail, to things not being quite right. A quick visual told him that the porch door was locked, the front door closed. All just as he’d left them. Skirting down the side of the building, he checked the back—again, door firmly locked, no telltale footprints in the overgrown borders, no sign of broken glass or break-in. Peering in through the windows, he saw no signs of disturbance in the kitchen, nobody lurking in the bedroom. Bathroom window was shut tight. At least bungalows had some advantage, he thought as he continued his tour of duty. They might be easy to break into but they were also a doddle to check and clear. Feeling the pressure ease, he glanced in through the side window at the doll-sized sitting room, and tensed. The image seemed to dance before his eyes so that he had to blink twice to take it in: an immaculately dressed blonde, classy looking, hair swept back in a ponytail, long tanned legs, sitting on his sofa, as cool as you like. To add insult to injury, she was flicking through his brand-new copy of Loaded.

CHAPTER THREE

“WHO the bloody hell are you?”

The woman glanced up as if he were an unreasonable husband demanding to know why his dinner wasn’t on the table. “You normally greet people like this?”

“Only when they break into my house.”

She arched an imperious eyebrow and transferred her gaze to the walls. Tallis felt his jaw tighten. “How did you get in?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

She smiled—nice set of white teeth—and leant towards him. “Aren’t you a tiny bit intrigued to know why I’m here?”

She sat back again, uncrossed her legs, re-crossed them. She was wearing a dark brown linen dress with a plain square neck and three-quarter-length sleeves. Her arms were slender, fingers long. Apart from a thin gold necklace, she wore no other jewellery. He estimated her as being the same age as him, possibly a little older. She was actually very beautiful, he thought, and she knew it. She had soft brown eyes displaying vulnerability she didn’t possess, small breasts, about which he had a theory. Women with small breasts were dangerous. You only had to look at Lucrezia Borgia, the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish pope with whom it was rumoured she’d had an incestuous relationship. Even by sixteenth-century standards, Lucrezia was judged to have been cruel and avaricious.

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Sonia Cavall.” She extended a hand. He didn’t take it. She let it drop. “Aren’t you going to sit down?”

“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing,” Tallis said, ignoring the invitation.

“I’d have thought that was obvious.” She put the magazine away, slowly, carefully, met and held his gaze.

He blinked. This was barmy. She was so composed, so in control. Was he going mad? Or was he missing something? Horrible questions hurtled through his brain. Had they met before? Had he been drunk? Had they slept together? Christ on a crutch, was she pregnant with his child? No. He gave himself a mental shake. He was always very, very careful about stuff like that and he hadn’t slept with a woman for God knew how long. “Explain or I’ll call the police.”

Again the astringent smile. “Oh, I don’t think so.” Confident. Authoritative. He immediately thought spook. “Consider me your fairy godmother.”

Playing games, are we? Tallis thought. All right, baby, let’s play. He donned a smile. “I never read the Brothers Grimm.”

“Should have. They’re quite instructive. Full of moral fervour.”

“Can we cut the crap now?” He was still smiling but he felt fury. Whoever this woman was, she was too smart for her own good.

“What if I said you’ve been selected for a job?”

“What job?” Suspicion etched his voice.

“Finding people.”

He burst out laughing. “Come to the wrong house. It’s not what I do.”

“What do you do?” There was a scathing intonation in her voice.

He should have thrown her out on the spot yet he badly wanted to know what this was all about. “What sort of people?”

“Illegals.”

“A job for Immigration, I’d have thought.”

Cavall said nothing. Tallis tried to fill the gap. Immigration remained in rather a pickle, which was why the latest Home Secretary, like all the rest, had pledged to take a robust approach to failed asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants.

“We’re talking about people released from prison after serving their sentences,” she told him, “and mistakenly released into the community.”

“Mistakenly?” Tallis suspected some inter-agency cock-up.

“They should have been deported,” Cavall said, ice in her voice.

“Not exactly original.” Tallis shrugged. “It’s happened before.”

“But these individuals are highly dangerous. It’s feared they may reoffend.”

“Ditto.” And everyone knew the recidivist rate was high. The only difference was that released British lifers were monitored. One slip, even for a relatively minor offence like drunk and disorderly, could land them back in prison. The people Cavall was alluding to had presumably dropped off the radar.

“A decision has been taken at the highest level to have them located.”

Tallis shrugged. So what? he thought. Bung them on a website or something.

Cavall’s face flashed with irritation. “You don’t seem to understand the seriousness of the threat.”

“Oh, I understand. It would be a source of great political embarrassment should it come to the attention of the public, particularly if one of them should reoffend.”

“We don’t want to spread panic and fear,” she said evenly.

“So put your finest police officers onto it.”

“We already have.”

“We?”

“I represent the Home Office.”

This time Tallis’s smile was genuine. Which bit? he wondered. “So this is an arse-covering exercise.”

“Damage limitation,” she corrected him.

To protect reputations and ease some politician’s way up the greasy ladder of success, he thought. “Britain’s finest failed, that right?”

“I’m sure you’re aware of the pressure on police resources.”

Code for they’d got nowhere. Doesn’t quite square, he thought. The British live in a surveillance society. With over four million cameras tracking our every move, each time we log on, use our mobile phone or sat nav in our car, fill in a form, make a banking transaction, someone is logging it. Except, of course, the information is fragmented. It takes a measure of expertise to draw the right inferences, match the electronic footprints and plot the trail back to an identity. While the ordinary citizen might feel threatened and guilty until proven innocent by the power of technology, a determined criminal could still manipulate it and evade detection. Either he stole someone else’s identity or had no identity at all. “Why not wheel out the spooks?”

“Snowed under with the terrorist threat.”

Tallis flinched. The security service had foiled many plots since 9/11 and 7/7. They were mostly doing a fine job in difficult circumstances, but the death of Rinelle Van Sleigh was a stain on their history. Somehow, somewhere, there’d been a chronic lapse of intelligence, and for that an innocent woman had paid with her life. To a far lesser degree, so had he: life as he’d once known it was over. “So these individuals aren’t on control orders?”

“They pose no terrorist threat,” Cavall confirmed.

“What happens if and when they’re found?” He suspected a form of extraordinary rendition.

“They’re handed over and deported, like I said.”

“Handed over to whom?”

“I think you’re forgetting that these are extremely dangerous individuals.”

“They still have rights.”

“So did their victims.” Her look was so uncompromising, he wondered fleetingly whether she’d been one of them. “Rest assured, they’ll be handed over to the authorities responsible for deportation.” She smiled as if to put his mind at rest.

“How do you know these people haven’t already left the country?”

“They don’t have passports.”

Tallis blinked. Was she for real? “Heard the word ‘forgery’?”

“No evidence to suggest that’s the case.”

Tallis stroked his chin. That had not been a good answer. There was something fishy about all this. Too much cloak and dagger, smoke and mirrors. What authorities, what agencies? “You say a decision was taken at the highest level.”

“From the very top.”

“And it’s legal?”

“Yes.”

He studied her face—impassive, confident, certain, the type of woman who once would have appealed to him. He idly wondered, in a blokish way, whether she was beddable. “Why me?”

“Because you have the right qualities. We need someone who’ll follow orders, but also kick down doors. We need someone with a maverick streak, Paul.”

Tallis frowned. He didn’t recognise the man she was describing.

“At eighteen years of age, during the first Gulf War, you were part of a reconnaissance troop that came under friendly fire by the Americans. You rescued a colleague showered with shrapnel and pulled several others to safety then, still under fire, retrieved an Iraqi flag, waving it in surrender until the firing ceased. For that you received the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for Heroism. The citation ran ‘outstanding courage, decisiveness under fire’. On joining the police, you became a firearms officer, during which time you fell out with a sergeant who tagged you as a chancer.”

A stupid, dangerous bastard, Tallis remembered. So concerned with procedure, the man daily risked the lives of his men. “I was put back on the beat.”

“And swiftly caught the attention of CID, where you became rather a good undercover operative until you got your old job back and then graduated to the elite undercover team. You also speak a number of foreign languages. Your credentials are impeccable.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

A killer smile snaked across Cavall’s face. “Trust me, Paul. I forget nothing.” She glanced at her watch, an expensive Cartier. “Goes without saying there’ll be generous terms and conditions.”

“Well, thank you but, no, thank you.”

“You don’t have to decide straight away.”

“The answer’s the same.”

Her smile lost some of its light. Tight creases appeared at the corners of her mouth. It was enough, Tallis thought. She’d briefly shown her cards; she hadn’t banked on him refusing her kind invitation. “Don’t be too hasty, Paul. This could be your chance to redeem yourself.”

“Redeem myself?” Tallis scoffed. “From what?”

Cavall leant forward. He caught a whiff of opulent scent. Her eyes were so dark they looked black. “A man sleeps with his brother’s wife and he doesn’t need redemption?”

“How fucking dare you?”

“Your weakness for the opposite sex is well documented,” Cavall said in an even tone.

“Get out,” Tallis said, barely able to control the mist of anger that was fast descending on him, his desire to physically remove her crushing.

“I’ll leave my card,” Cavall said smoothly, slipping one from the pocket of her jacket and placing it on the coffee-table. Her fingernails were short and unpolished. “One more thing,” she added, rising to her feet, “in certain matters, it’s better to obey one’s conscience than obey an order.”

Tallis stared at her. He suddenly felt as if his gut had been gouged with shrapnel.

“Don’t worry,” she smiled, walking stealthily towards the door, “I won’t whisper a word to anyone about your doubts about shooting the black girl.”

CHAPTER FOUR

TALLIS burrowed deeper beneath the duvet. After finishing the wine the night before, it had seemed the obvious thing to hit the Scotch. Bad idea.

He turned over, groaned, his head throbbing with the highlights of last night’s conversation. He’d already come to the deeply unsettling conclusion that Cavall had used her Home Office contacts to get into his home. How she’d been privy to such personal and what he’d thought confidential information he was less certain, though that too seemed to point in the same direction. Clearly, someone, somewhere had talked. Not that he was denying Cavall’s obvious powers of persuasion. Hers was a rare combination of cleverness and good looks. No point having those kind of attributes if she didn’t exploit them. She’d done her homework well, using the intelligence with rapier-like precision. He was still bleeding from the final thrust.

The only person who could have betrayed him was Stu, but Tallis didn’t believe his old friend would do such a thing, not even if he were absolutely trousered. Tallis pulled a pillow over his head, thinking that this was a morning when he really didn’t want to go out to play. Budding Jimmy Paige next door wasn’t helping. Perhaps if he lay very, very still, his head would stop hurting and his mind stop racing. But they didn’t. Instead, his thoughts dragged him kicking and screaming to a period of time he didn’t want to revisit, to him and Belle, to the exposure of their affair.

They’d been seeing each other intimately for about six months. On this particular occasion, Belle had told Dan that she was letting off steam in town with some of the girls from the Forensic Science Service where she worked. In truth, the two of them were meeting at a bustling country pub eighteen miles away. Later on, when Belle had called Dan from her mobile to let him know she’d be back later than expected, making the excuse that she was going onto a restaurant with the girls for something to eat, she’d accidentally left her phone line open. Worse, she’d left the phone on the table where they’d been sitting, exchanging sweet nothings. Dan had heard her every word, every promise, every declaration. He’s also identified the man to whom she’d been making them. The fallout had been devastating.

“Don’t you ever darken my door again,” his dad had spat in the aftermath. “Know what’s going to happen to you?” he’d added with breathtaking savagery. “You’ll end up walking the streets, holes in your shoes, stinking of piss, with a carrier bag in your hand. A useless nobody. Just like you’ve always been.”

And, yes, Tallis felt remorse, guilt about the affair, about the betrayal of his brother, but there had been extenuating circumstances. In reality, had either he or Belle exposed the truth, the consequences would have been cataclysmic.

Tallis struggled out of the covers and forced himself into a cold shower. Dried and dressed, he downed a handful of painkillers with a pint of water, made strong coffee and picked up the phone. It was coming up for noon. The line rang for a considerable time before being answered. Tallis didn’t dwell too heavily on the standard hi, how are you warm-up routine. He could tell from Stu’s voice how he was—grim, sense of humour failure, depressed.

“You ever spoken to anyone about my reservations about the Liberian girl?”

“Fuck you take me for?” From sour to fury in 0.4 seconds.

“Fine,” Tallis said.

“Why?” Stu growled. There was a paranoid hitch in his voice.

“Nothing, nothing. Know how it is. Too much time on my hands, I expect.”

His poor-old-soldier act had the intended effect of softening his friend’s prickly edges. “No luck, then? Still doing the warehouse job?”

“Got one or two irons in the fire,” Tallis said, jaunty. Who was he kidding?

“Glad for you, mate. Does your heed in, not having a proper job. I should know.”

“But you’re all right,” Tallis pointed out.

“Aye, pushing bits of paper around.” His voice was corrosive.

If Tallis had been a decent sort of a mate, he’d have told Stu that he was never going to get his old job back as long as he was on the sauce. Truth was, Stu wasn’t in the mood for listening. Hadn’t been for quite some time.

“You’ve got to stop thinking about the past, Paul. Won’t do you any good.”

Tallis could have said the same. Why else was Stu drinking himself to hell in a bucket? “You’re right,” he said. “Well, you take care, now.”

“Aye, have to meet for a bevy.”

“You’re on,” Tallis said, eyes already scanning his address book for the next number on the list.

This time it was answered after the first ring.

“Christ, you’re quick off the draw.”

“Right by the phone. How you doing?” Finn Cronin’s voice was full of warmth and, for a moment, Tallis was reminded of Finn’s brother, Matt. Matt had served with Tallis way back. They’d joined the army together, trained together, got drunk and pulled birds together. Matt had been the colleague he’d rescued under friendly fire. In spite of Tallis’s best efforts to save him, Matt hadn’t made it home.

“Good,” Tallis lied. “And you?”

“Not bad. Carrie’s pregnant again.”

“Christ, how many’s that?”

“This will be our fourth. But that’s it.”

“Going for the unkindest cut of all?” The thought made his eyes water.

“Carrie’s idea. Doesn’t want to spend the rest of her days on the Pill, screws around with her body apparently, mood swings, headaches, mostly.”

“Fair enough,” Tallis said, feeling awkward. “I was wondering if I could ask a favour.”

“You want to doss down at ours for the weekend.”

“Smashing idea but no.”

“Pity. I’d hoped we could have a repeat of the Dog and Duck.”

“Only just recovered from last time.” Tallis let out a laugh. “No, it’s…” He hesitated. Was he asking too much of Finn? Would it put him in a difficult position? Oh, sod it. “I need something checked out.”

“Come to the right man. I spend my entire life checking things out.”

“Well, it’s not a thing exactly, more a person, a cool-looking blonde, actually.”

“Tell me more,” Finn said, voice throbbing with curiosity. “I can feel my journalistic streak stirring.”

That what these Southerners call it, Tallis thought drily. “Her name’s Sonia Cavall. She’s connected to the Home Office.”

“The Home Office?” Finn sounded amazed. “And you’re asking me to check her out?”

“That’s about it, yes.”

“Nice looking, you said.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Not like what?” Finn laughed. So what’s it really like? his voice implied.

Tallis held back. He’d known Finn for years. After Matt’s death, they’d vowed never to lose touch so that whenever Tallis was in the West Country, he made a big point of seeing him. However long the absence, they always had a blast. Tallis was also godfather to Finn’s youngest son, Tom. Tallis trusted Finn, but he was still a journalist and God knew what he might do with the information. “She’s tying up loose ends, you know, from last year,” he said elliptically.

“Right,” Finn said, his curiosity seemingly appeased. “Timescale?”

“Soon as. Don’t kill yourself for it.”

They talked a bit. Tallis sent his love to Carrie and the kids, double-checked Tom’s birthday, which happened to be the following week then signed off.

In the two hours before he went to work, Tallis tidied up, pulled on some sweats and trainers, and went for a run in the hope that it would flush the last of the alcohol from his system. A shower and cheese sandwich later, and dressed in black trousers and a bright white shirt with the company logo emblazoned on the breast pocket, he drove the short distance to the out-of-town warehouse where he worked.