“And you believed him?”
“Why, yes.”
“And his name?”
“I do not think he told me.”
“You sure?”
“Ah,” she said, pointing a hand to her head. “I remember. He had strange name, like he was Russian.”
Tallis felt his spirits soar, hopes lift and rise. Being wrong had never felt so good.
“Yes, I remember now,” Elena said, her face sparkling with animation. “He says his name is Kredge.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“MY NAME is Paul Tallis. I used to be a firearms officer for the West Midlands Police. I was approached and recruited by a woman called Sonia Cavall who up until her recent sudden death worked for the Home Office, but whom I suspect was working for MI5. I was instructed to track down foreign nationals who should have been deported from Britain after serving prison sentences, but were mistakenly released into the community. They are Agron Demarku, Ana Djorovic, Mohammed Hussain, Rasu Barzani. All, apart from Rasu Barzani, are dead. They were victims of Fortress 35, a far-right organisation, which exists to create racial hatred and anarchy. The founder of that organisation is my brother, Detective Chief Inspector Dan Tallis of Greater Manchester Police. He has links with John Darius of the BFB.
“During his early career as a police officer, Dan Tallis was involved in the Len Jackson case, and possibly colluded with and covered for Jace Jackson in the murder of his father at a garage in Smethwick. I suspect, but have no evidence, that Tallis turned a blind eye to Jace Jackson’s people-smuggling operation in return for bribes. Belle Tallis, former wife of Dan Tallis, and a scientist at the Forensic Science Service, based in Birmingham, has Jace Jackson’s trainers in her possession. It’s suspected but not yet proven that trace evidence will confirm that he was at the crime scene on the night his father was killed. I also believe that hair found at the scene, together with a single foot impression belong to DCI Tallis.
“One other death you should investigate: the murder of Sonia Cavall. I believe Dan Tallis was directly implicated in, if not directly responsible for, her death.
“Should anything happen to me, I want Elena Landsbergis flown back to her home country of Lithuania. I want Rasu Barzani to be pardoned and granted asylum, and I want guaranteed protection for Belle Tallis and Finn Cronin and his family.”
Tallis turned off the CCTV camera, ejected the tape and locked it in Max’s safe. He’d already phoned Belle at the FSS and told her not to go home.
“This had better be good, Paul,” she said.
“Your life’s in danger.”
“What?”
“Can you go to your mum’s?” Even Dan wouldn’t try anything there, and Belle wasn’t his target—he was.
“What’s it all about? This to do with Jackson?” She didn’t sound so cocky any more.
“Kind of.”
Silence. Please, don’t ask me to spell it out, Tallis thought. Please, don’t make me say it on the phone. If he mentioned Dan’s involvement, he knew that she’d react with disbelief and, quite probably, fury.
“What about work?”
“Throw a sickie.”
More silence.
“Paul, I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“Told me what?” He thought his heart had stopped beating.
“You knew it was him, didn’t you?”
Tallis blinked. Him? Which him? “Belle, I …”
“I found Len Jackson’s blood on the trainers,” Belle burst out. “Jace Jackson had to have been at the crime scene on the night of the murder.”
He felt light-headed with relief. If he thought that Belle had inside knowledge of the operation, known about Dan, he would have died inside. With Dan, it was different. Dan had been twisted from the time he’d been conceived.
“When will I see you again?” she said, plaintive.
“Soon, sweetheart. I just need you to lie low for a while.”
“You’ll call?”
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“And, Belle,” he said, “I love you.”
There is nothing like betrayal. Friends come and go, desert and hurt. Colleagues shop, inform and stick the proverbial knife in the back. It’s called politics. But when it’s your own flesh and blood …
Tallis remembered when Dan had been a lad, how he’d track his every move, spy on him, everywhere he went and whom he went with. And always it had been to report his findings back to Daddy. Something sharp twisted inside. Till the day he died, Tallis would never understand the man who, from the time he’d uttered his first word, taken his first step, had seemed to hate him. Tallis had never fathered a child. He didn’t really think consciously about the possibility of having children, but of one thing he was certain. He would never, ever treat a son the way his father had treated him. Never favour one child more than another. Never create such a poisonous and destructive relationship between brothers.
No wonder Dan made a good copper, Tallis thought bitterly. He suspected that his brother, rather than Cavall, was responsible for the listening device he’d found in the bungalow. Mind flashing back to the brothel, Tallis also realised that Dan must have tailed him. To be honest, so drunk had he been at the time, he wouldn’t have noticed his brother, of all people, following his movements. Tallis raised a sour smile. In his twisted way Dan had, no doubt, fucked poor Elena as payback for Belle.
In torment, Tallis found himself returning to the past, his rotten childhood. Dan never needed an excuse to spend time with Dad. It was their father, not their mother, who occupied a special place in his heart. You could see it in his eyes when their father walked into a room. Dan, who deferred to nobody, would capitulate with one word from him. Father was always right, always knew best, always, always. And over time Dan had listened to and absorbed their father’s more extreme, right-wing views, regurgitating them as if they were his own.
His brother’s strong attraction to the police at a time when the force had been both sexist and racist had come as no surprise to Tallis. Dan had fitted into the system as snugly as a key inside a lock. He’d flourished in the macho male environment. To outsiders, Dan looked strong and powerful and determined. Only Tallis saw the corruption in his brother’s heart, a vice denied by others, particularly their father. In his eyes, Dan could do no wrong. When father looked at the one son he loved, he saw a more vibrant vision of his younger self. It gave him strength. He fed off it. They fed off each other.
But times changed. His father’s health was failing. More women were entering the force, more ethnic minorities represented. When both brothers had been speaking to one another, before Belle, before the affair, Dan had once complained bitterly to Tallis about the shifting climate of correctness, the weakening of moral and political will, of the disaster that would ensue if things weren’t put right. In the darkness of his heart, Tallis wondered if the events of the last weeks were his fault, if, as a result of taking his brother’s wife when he had, he’d tipped him over the edge and into a cycle of revenge and chaos.
Before he left Max’s house, Tallis told Elena that if he didn’t return by the following day, she was to call a friend of his. He wrote the number down on a piece of paper for her.
Elena took it, looked at him, mystified. “It says Max.”
“Yes.”
“But you are Max.”
He really didn’t have time for this. “I’m sorry. I lied to protect my identity.”
“You are not as you say,” she said, fear in her eyes. “You have done something bad?”
“Perhaps.” It was true. He’d been the final corrupting nail in his own brother’s coffin.
“And this is not your house?”
“Wish it was.” He smiled.
She nodded, her expression grave. “So who are you?”
“I’m one of the good guys.” At least, he wanted to be.
Taking the Z8, he drove straight to the bungalow. The sk
y was veined with light from a persistent sun, clouds jinking in the blue. Cruising slowly past, he could make out a figure stalking the sitting room. No, not any figure, a woman. For a confusing moment he wondered whether it was Belle. Who else would be in his home? But it wasn’t Belle. Of that he was sure. This was someone older, bulkier. He drove to the end of the road, turned the car round and parked metres short of the driveway. As he got out, he slipped his hand into his pocket, felt for the comforting shape of the gun, took it out, held it at his side, the barrel pointed at the ground.
Jimmy next door was in full flight, a hot medley of power chords and licks, the guitar swooping and yawing at ear-bleeding volume. Grateful for the ground cover, Tallis slipped down the side and round the back. To his surprise, the door was ajar and there was no sign of forced entry. He crept in, sniffed the air, catching the distinctive smell of cigarettes. Baffled, he moved silently forward through the kitchen, hugging the wall, pausing by the arch.
“Well, well, well, the plot thickens,” Crow said, a scabrous smile on her thick-set face. She was standing with her back to the living-room window, a cigarette poised between her fingers, the evidence of plenty more shoved unceremoniously into the fruit bowl on the table. By the look of it, she’d spent most of the morning there. “Paul Tallis, alias Mark Strong, alias fuck knows who. And, for Christ’s sake, Mr Tallis, put that sodding gun away.”
“How did you get in?” Tallis said, keeping the gun right where it was.
“Through the door.”
“It was open?”
“No, I’m a ghost.”
“How did you get here?”
“I walked,” she said, blowing out a large plume of smoke. He had to hand it to her. She was a very cool character under pressure.
“Where’s your car?”
“Would you drive with a drink habit like mine? And of course I didn’t fucking walk. I got a train and caught a cab. Now, are you going to put that gun away, or not? I won’t ask where you got it from, or am I to assume,” she said, her voice drenched in sarcasm, “it was special issue?”
He lowered his weapon, placed it on the coffee-table in front of him and sat down.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Don’t look so good yourself.”
She issued one of her dreadful smiles. “You didn’t seriously think I could be warned off by some officious tart from the Home Office, did you?”
“The dead officious tart who also happens to work for the security services?”
“Dead?” Crow flinched.
“Shot.”
For the first time Crow looked at the gun, looked seriously worried.
“It’s all right. Wasn’t me.” Even though there are bits of my genetic imprint all over the sodding place, he thought. Hopefully, if Cavall was who he thought she was, a team had already moved into place to eliminate all trace of her in the same way Cavall had arranged to clean up after Kelly Simmons, the girl in Devon.
“If I’d had a quid for every time I’d heard that one, I’d be a millionaire.”
“What did Cavall say?”
“That you were working for the government on some highly important mission, and that I was to leave you out of the loop. All the usual classified claptrap, need to know, for-your-eyes-only bollocks.”
“You ever do as you’re told?” Tallis said with a tired smile.
“Not unless there’s a major inducement. Going to tell me what this is all about?” Crow said, lighting one cigarette off the other.
“Do you have to do that?” Tallis said.
“Do what?”
“Puff fumes everywhere.”
“Don’t think you’re in much of a position to argue. So far, you’ve lied to me, pretended to be someone else, and your name’s cropped up in a murder inquiry. What should I call you, by the way, apart from Houdini?”
Normally he’d have said Tallis, but he wanted to make a clear distinction between himself and his brother. “Paul’s fine.”
She eyed him darkly. “That your car outside on the road?” So she’d spotted it.
“Borrowed.”
“Really?” she said, elevating a suspicious eyebrow. “Friends in high places. Paint looks a bit scuffed.”
Yes, it was. Christ knew what Max would say. “The murder?” Tallis said, bringing her back on track.
“Agron Demarku.”
“You can’t seriously think—”
“I can think what I like.”
Tallis let out a long low sigh. “You alleging I did it?”
“I’m saying that, as far as I’m concerned, you were the last person to see him alive …”
“Not exactly …”
“And you’re no writer, hack, whatever you want to call yourself,” she said with a glare. “Which brings me to a question. Who do you work for?”
“The honest answer is I don’t know.”
Crow stared at him with incredulity. “I think you’d better start talking.”
Tallis glanced at his watch. He hadn’t worked out Dan’s next move. Did he have time to confide in Crow? What difference would it make? And yet he felt strangely drawn to the curmurgeonly heap of humanity that was taking up so much space in his living room. He felt as if he needed to talk to someone who would maybe understand.
“All right,” he said. “Could take some time.” Not something he had.
“Fine by me,” Crow said, pulling out two packs of twenty cigarettes and putting them on the coffee-table. “Fire away,” she said, lighting up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
HE LEFT nothing out. Every conversation, every detail, each nuance was described and explained and put into context. Crow said little, endlessly chain-smoking, her face expressionless, apart from the eyes. They danced like wet sparks in a wood fire. When he’d finished, she said nothing at first, making an endless ritual of stubbing out her final cigarette, laying it beside its numerous brothers and sisters.
“Cherchez la femme.”
“I admit Cavall played a pivotal role,” Tallis began.
“What about Belle?”
“Belle?” he said, astonished. “Belle’s got fuck all to do with it.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.” The idea was preposterous. He glowered at her.
“She was married to your brother for a long time,” Crow said reasonably. “Maybe she belonged to the organisation, was part of the set-up. Maybe she was the trap.”
Tallis shook his head, adamant. He wasn’t even going to allow himself to feel rattled by Crow’s ridiculous assertion.
He knew Belle, had the measure of her. He loved her, for Chrissakes.
“One thing you’re quite wrong about,” Crow said. “Neither Dan nor these flowerpot characters are coming to get you.”
“Bill and Ben?” Tallis smiled. “How come?”
“No need. You’ve crossed enough lines and dished out enough rope to hang without them. All your brother has to do is drop a few words in the right ear and you could be spending the rest of your days banged up in a secret prison in an orange jumpsuit on some tropical island.”
“Thanks for the optimistic appraisal.”
She issued another of her hideous smiles. “In the meantime, your brother can get on with his plans for world domination.”
“Hardly,” Tallis said. “Whatever I think of Dan, he falls a shade short of Hitler.”
“Never underestimate the ambition or designs of evil men.”
“Which is why he has to be stopped.”
“I agree,” Crow stood up, knees creaking with the sudden movement. “Your best chance is to go to the security services and come clean. If Cavall was working for them, they’ll be aware of the situation and be sympathetic to your cause.”
He was right. This was out of Crow’s league. “For such a cynic, I’m astonished at your naivety. With my track record, I’m not going to be believed. Christ, they might even view it as brothers working in tandem against the state.”
&n
bsp; “Interesting idea, but you have to leave this to us now.”
“No,” Tallis said. “This is between him and me.”
Crow laughed. “You’re not in some bloody spaghetti Western.”
“Pity, makes life so much simpler.” He snatched the gun off the table and pointed it at Crow.
Her eyes briefly widened in shock. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Sorry, can’t afford to let you screw things up.”
“Me screw things up?”
“Phone,” he said, gesturing with his free hand.
“You’ll regret this,” she said grumpily, taking her phone out and throwing it across the table.
“Quite possibly. Now cloakroom.”
“I don’t want the cloakroom.”
“Trust me, you could be here for some time,” he said, motioning for her to move.
“I’m the only friend you’ve got,” she snapped.
“Sorry to disappoint,” he said, pushing her into what used to be a hidey-hole-cum-broom cupboard before its conversion. He hadn’t yet got round to taking off the bolt that his gran had fixed to the outside.
“You can’t do this,” she shrieked, making a half-hearted effort to resist. Not easy with a gun pointed at your abdomen.
“Just did,” he said, giving her an almighty shove. “Now, be a good girl and I might come back for you later.”
“What about my fags?” she yelled, hammering a fist against the wood.
“Cold turkey,” he called over his shoulder, running out of the house and heading for the car. There wasn’t a moment to lose.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
HE DROVE at speed in the direction of The Mailbox, parked in the street near Belle’s flat and ran up the drive to where the concierge was stationed. The black guy with the wide smile was finishing his lunch. When he saw Tallis he looked startled.
Tallis didn’t mess about. “She in?”
The black guy nodded.
“Alone?”
He shook his head and looked down.
“There a problem?”
“I don’t know. She said she was all right, but she didn’t look happy. She—”
The Last Exile Page 31