The Last Exile

by E. V. Seymour

  “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 und
er 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?”r />
  “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.