The Last Exile (16 page)

A
FTER
a beer and a strange dinner of pasta bake with a sausage chucked in, he took a long hot shower, turning in for the night with the newspapers he’d bought in Devon. Spreading them out on the bed, he read, paying more attention. Nowhere could he find any mention of the events of the weekend. To be certain, he combed through the
Western Morning News
again. The lead article highlighted the case of a man who preyed upon young homeless boys in the city of Plymouth. Several short pieces covered a stabbing in Union Street outside one of the nightclubs and various other assaults at different locations. There was no reference to the abducted baby that had gone walkabout, not even as a slice of late news, although there was a short piece about a road accident in which a car had been turned into a fireball, incinerating its two unfortunate occupants. So that’s what all the shock and awe had been about, Tallis thought. Then his eyes hooked on something.

With a slight lurch, Tallis wondered how clever Cavall had been and, if not, how long it would be before an association was made between the woman who’d been present at the pub on the night of the stabbing in Stonehouse and the one now lying in bits in a mortuary. With luck, it could take time before the Transport Police linked up the information with Devon and Cornwall. But that wasn’t really his main concern.

Without hesitation, Tallis contacted Cavall. The number rang and rang. Doubt worming in his mind, he made three more attempts during the night. Still no reply.

It was just possible, he supposed, that Djorovic had made an escape and ended up beneath the wheels of the train, or perhaps she’d been escorted onto the train and fallen by accident. No, he thought, that wouldn’t work. There’d be some record of Djorovic buying a ticket and boarding with the immigration officials in tow. And why would they be catching a train in any case? They had a car.

He got up, flicked on the kettle, made himself some coffee. What if it wasn’t suicide? What if she’d been taken to some secluded stretch of land near to the train track, filled up with alcohol and pushed? Jesus, he thought, was that why Cavall wasn’t answering his calls? What happened now?

He took a gulp, almost scalding the roof of his mouth, suspicion gnawing at him. He still had no idea what had happened to the murdered girl’s body, how much his tracks had been covered at the crime scene. Enough? Or was there a little bit of evidence that could be used against him as some kind of lever or bargaining chip? Was it even possible to forensically sweep and clear away so much blood? Should he continue, or should he ditch the entire operation? What would be the consequences? Did he already know too much? And if he shared it with someone else, would they, too, be at risk?

As soon as it was light, he called Finn Cronin from his mobile phone. He’d taken the precaution of wandering outside into what passed for his back garden.

“Fuck me, you’re up with the lark.”

The lark hasn’t slept, Tallis thought grimly. “Early bird and all that crap. Anyway,” he said deliberately sounding upbeat, “it’s too nice to be lying in bed.” In, fact from where he was standing, it looked as if it were going to be a glorious day.

“And you thought you’d call to tell me about it.”

Tallis smiled. Didn’t feel too convincing. Time to cut to the chase. “Finn, I need your help.”

“Go on.”

“Cavall—can you dig deeper?”

Finn let out a sigh. “Not sure I can, mate.”

“It’s important.”

“Why?”

Tallis hesitated. “What I’m going to tell you next has to remain between you and me.”

“Discretion’s my middle name.”

“Discretion’s no good. This requires secrecy. Can’t breathe a word, use the information or leak it. And no questions.”

“You in trouble?” Finn’s voice was ringed with concern.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Fire away.”

“Can you run a check on deportations, one in particular, a guy called Agron Demarku, an Albanian. He’s served life for the murder of a prostitute. Immigration officials were supposed to be putting him on a plane back to his homeland.”

Tallis could hear Finn scratching a pen across a pad.

“Run to appeal?”

“Erm, not that I’m aware of.”

“OK.”

“Next, a girl was murdered in South Devon at the weekend, place called Totnes. I can’t find any record or any news coverage of the killing. Not even sure the police were called in.”

“Not called in?” Finn let out a laugh, “they must have been. People don’t get bumped off and disappear. Well, not in this country anyway.”

Unfortunately, Tallis suspected they did. “You need to tread very carefully. This is all highly sensitive. I shouldn’t even be discussing it.”

“And Cavall’s in the mix?”

“Uh-huh. Kind of.”

“Fuck,” Finn sighed. “All right, let’s recap.”

Forty minutes later, Finn began to wrap up the call. He didn’t have a question, only a statement. “Sounds as though you’re really in the shit this time.”

Without a trace of humour, Tallis couldn’t help but agree.

He spent the next few days in a state of partial paralysis. Part of him wanted to operate like normal, the other found he couldn’t. It was just like before, after the shooting in the shopping mall. He had spent whole days obsessing about the girl with the midnight eyes.

Finally, his fear was replaced by the hope that either Finn or Cavall would phone and clarify everything so that when Cavall eventually called back, in the middle of him performing a home surgical to remove the stitches from his face, he was taken by surprise.

He came straight to the point. She didn’t deny it.

“Collateral damage. Djorovic employed the oldest trick in the book. Said she had to have a pee then made a break for it. The rest you already know. How did you find out, by the way?”

“Newspaper,” he said dully. It sounded plausible even if Cavall was cold-blooded about it. “What about the alcohol?”

“What about it?”

“Where did she get it?”

“Must have been tight when you picked her up.”

“She wasn’t. And she had nothing to drink in the car.”

“You were with her?” Cavall suddenly sounded as suspicious as he did.

“Briefly. The immigration guys gave me a lift.”

“How many of them?”

“Same as last time, one bloke, one woman.”

“Where did they take you?”

What is this? I’m the one supposed to be asking the questions, he thought. “To collect my vehicle.”

Cavall said nothing. He could almost hear the cogs in her brain revolving. He pressed her again. “Basically, you’re telling me it was an unfortunate accident.”

“And we have to move on,” she said firmly. “The reason I called, there’s been a sighting of Hussain near Stockport.”

“Where exactly?”

“In the main shopping centre.”

“When?”

“Two days ago.”

“Makes my job easier.”

“Not too easy, I hope.”

“You’re still getting your money’s worth. One other thing.”

“Yes?”

“The murdered girl.”

Cavall gave a silvery laugh. “You really worry too much, Paul. By the time we’d finished, nobody would have had a clue you’d been there.”

He knew from Belle that it was an impossible task to remove all evidence. It only took one spot of blood, one hair, half a footprint impression …

“But what about Kelly?” he persisted. And the dead baby, he thought.

“Unwise to get on first-name terms with victims.”

“She wasn’t
my
victim.”

“No need to be defensive, Paul,” she soothed. “All taken care of.”

That’s what bothered him.

T
ALLIS’S
first impression of Stockport was that it hadn’t moved on since the Industrial Revolution. A huge hat museum, and testament to the city’s millinery credentials, formed the main tourist attraction. Other than that, there were the usual types of shops with the usual types of people, the overall impression one of suppressed criminal activity, judging by the hard-looking shaven-heads prowling the town’s precincts. But first impressions were deceiving. In among the mills and chimneys, there were some very fine examples of thirteenth- and fifteenth-century architecture. A huge brick-built nineteenth-century viaduct, a determined suicide’s dream, dominated the town.

Having switched cars before the journey, Tallis parked the Rover in a multi-storey car park, a concrete construct that smelt of piss, within a short walk of the Merseyway Shopping Centre. The journey to Stockport would have been made in half the time in the Z8 but he didn’t dare risk Max’s car in an area where the criminal scene was heavier. He’d already seen one parked car on his way in with its window smashed, bits of windscreen over the passenger seat. If someone nicked the Rover, they’d probably be doing him a favour.

He started off by trying to get a feel for the place, the territory, to check the pulse beneath the surface. He went into various shops, bought an
A-Z
of Manchester and a basic guide, talked to people, showed them Hussain’s photograph and was met either with indifference or hostility. After a couple of hours he started a trawl of the pubs. Same reaction. If Hussain had been there two days ago, he wasn’t now. And nobody was telling anyway.

Walking down a street, he saw two ugly-looking white girls being chatted up by four Turkish Lotharios. As he passed, catching a drift of the Turks’ native tongue, he wondered if the girls realised the depth of depravity on offer. From the coy smiles on their faces, he guessed they had no idea. Further on, a paramedic on a motorbike was cheerfully driving across a pedestrian walkway. Maybe he was looking for prospective patients, Tallis thought drily.

Getting nowhere, Tallis gave up and headed for Manchester and found a modern, comfortable hotel at Salford Quays, not far from Mighty Manchester United’s Football Club. He fancied he could almost hear the victorious cries of Man U. fans as he stepped out of the car.

After checking in under an assumed name, he took a trip round Salford and was surprised to see that it was a fairly affluent neighbourhood, or at least not as rundown as he’d expected. There were several blocks of newish-looking flats. Streets were lined with trees, not too much evidence of graffiti or litter. The women looked groomed, make-up immaculate. Some bordered on flashy and cashed up. Fake tan was popular with both camps.

Salford Crescent Police Station, he noticed, was closed, enquiries directed to the new twenty-four-hour police station in Chorley Road at Swinton. Not that he had any intention of popping in.

The sub-post office looked as though it had been the subject of a facelift. Clean and modern, it was hard to imagine the place as the scene of so much misery ten years before. Following the map he’d sketched in his head, he crossed over the road to where the stolen Escort had been parked for the getaway and where parking restrictions now marked the spot. Glancing at his watch, it would have been roughly the same time. Traffic lighter than it would be now. He wondered how Hussain had felt at the prospect of getting his hands on the money. Excited, pumped up, apprehensive that his plan might go wrong? No, Tallis thought, there was nothing nervy about the man with the gun. If he shouted and screamed orders, it was to intimidate, to display power, not because his was a disordered personality.

So where would Hussain go? Back to where he’d come from, where gun law was king, Tallis thought, but Moss Side could keep for the morning.

He started early when the crack dealers were still asleep. Armed police with bulletproof vests routinely patrolled the area, though he saw none. Walking down streets disfigured by poverty, the grinding atmosphere of criminality and decay was inescapable. Acutely aware of his surroundings, Tallis ran a mental commentary—hidden doorway to the right, alley up ahead, wasteland, two black guys wearing woollen hats giving him the look. It was the kind of place where outsiders were viewed with deep suspicion, where you never met a stranger’s eye. Even the sun seemed reluctant to make an appearance, the sky opening up a crack, enabling it to take a peep and decide, no, thanks.

Terraced houses were numbers with no name, down at
heel, deprived, gardens more concrete and gravel than flowers. Even the pavements felt lethal beneath his feet. Cars in assorted states of abuse lined the road, some torched, some bent, some abandoned, and those on drives were swathed in tarpaulin, though this rarely protected from vandalism. Graffiti adorned walls and hoardings made play of the gangster culture that had come to dominate the area, reminding him of Northern Ireland. The site of the Old Maine Road Stadium, bulldozed and awaiting redevelopment, lay like a permanent scar, providing a magnet for more crime. A bank of freshly laid flowers in a local park marked the spot where a teenager had been shot dead, another mother losing a son.

All attempts to talk to newsagents, café owners, taxi drivers, people selling Halal food were deflected and crushed. Tallis shouldn’t have been surprised. Witnesses who testified were as rare as witch’s blood. Reprisals were real.

Crossing the divide from Moss Side to the edge of the city centre, Tallis found himself off a roundabout in a street of mostly boarded-up shops, the sole survivors an old-fashioned barber’s with the red and white striped insignia outside, a boutique selling saris and a military surplus store, glorifying the paraphernalia of combat. A downtrodden-looking bloke confronted him with the usual plea for small change, his accent pure Birmingham. Why did homeless people go to other cities to be homeless in, Tallis thought, chucking him fifty pence in a vague symbol of solidarity, though suspecting that it would contribute to his next fix.

Tallis entered the surplus store, looked around, checking it out, noting the clientele, mostly little men posturing as big men. The goods were laid out on two floors.
Downstairs flak jackets, boots, Bergen rucksacks and camouflage trousers; upstairs air pistols, devices to catch rats and squirrels, shotguns in display cabinets and a terrifying array of ceremonial swords. Millets meets Territorial Army, Tallis thought. Near the back of the till a lethal-looking crossbow hung in sinister splendour. An urbane-looking man with short silver-grey hair and a moustache, more accountant than gun dealer, approached Tallis. Tallis wished he could show his warrant card, not that it ever proved a barrier to lies. He smiled, flashed the photograph of Hussain.

“You police?” The man’s eyes were dark and deep set. There was a trace of a foreign accent, not one Tallis could easily identify.

“No.”

The man shook his head, handed back the photograph. “We have many customers.”

“But you’d remember this guy. He’s big, six-three,-four. Passionate about guns.”

The man smiled. “You’d be surprised the number of people fitting that description.”

“So you haven’t seen him?”

“No.” Those dark eyes said something else, Tallis thought.

“Tell you what you could help me with.” Tallis smiled. The man smiled back, glad of the change of subject, it seemed. “I’m new to Manchester. Where’s the rough part of town so I can avoid it?”

“Which way did you come?”

“From Moss Side.”

“Doesn’t get much rougher,” he said. “It’s a shame. The older generation are largely upstanding and God-fearing. It’s their children who pose the problem. They
have no respect for anyone or anything. We had a couple of stabbings here a few days ago.”

“This street?”

“Uh-huh, one fatal.”

“That usual?”

“What’s usual? People who live in nice areas get knifed outside their own homes these days.”

Tallis thanked the man for his time and went downstairs. Walking out, he overheard some old fat bloke dressed from top to toe in camouflage gear extolling the virtues of semi-automatics for ‘taking out’. Sliding a pie out of an oven looked the closest the man ever got to taking out, Tallis thought. He just didn’t get the fascination with killing people. When you’d done it for real, it was hard to comprehend anyone wanting even a vicarious slice of the action.

Like Plymouth and Coventry, Manchester had suffered its fair share of bombing during the Second World War. Fortunately, many of its oldest buildings remained untouched. Tallis was struck by the successful blend of old and modern architecture. In common with Birmingham, Manchester provided a shoppers’ dream location, and there was more. The hotels were bigger, the sense of glamour stronger, yet no matter how many architectural facelifts, he was aware of a stronger undertow of criminality. He could almost touch it.

Feeling hungry, he found a bar in Bridgewater Street. Split into two rooms, classy upstairs, basic downstairs, he ordered a pint and a steak sandwich and took his drink to a quiet corner. Still quite early, most punters tended to drift outside and sit by the canal and soak up the sun.

For the first time since he’d become embroiled in
Cavall’s plans, he felt lonely. In a strange city, with no leads, he wondered whether this time his luck had run out, whether he’d fail, and whether he really cared. He imagined Cavall’s reaction, the curl of her full lip, the expression of disdain on her face then, with a sick twist in his stomach, he remembered the precariousness of his situation. One of the last to see Djorovic alive, the first to find the girl dead, he couldn’t afford to fail. Dared not fail. If he did, Cavall had enough on him to throw him to the lions.

“You look troubled, my friend.”

Tallis looked up. The man standing before him was dark-skinned with sharp, intelligent-looking eyes. He might have been Indian, Pakistani or from the Middle East. Tallis suddenly realised how easy it was for a white man to confuse one race with another. An image of Rinelle Van Sleigh flashed through his mind.

Smartly dressed in pale denim jeans, the man wore a casual lemon check shirt, open neck, short sleeves. His build lean, he was probably no more than five-ten in height. He held a glass of what looked like whisky in his hand, which struck Tallis as out of place. No devout Muslim, then.

“Mind if I sit down?”

Tallis shrugged. “Free country,” he muttered. He really didn’t feel like being someone’s mate. He took out the newspaper he’d bought earlier in the day, making a show of unfolding and reading it. The man pulled up a chair. He sat close enough for Tallis to notice his aftershave. Part of him felt queasy. It reminded him of Demarku.

Tallis’s sandwich arrived. He took a hungry bite, and looked around the bar, saw that it was steadily filling up with drinkers.

“Understand you’ve been asking questions.”

Tallis didn’t flinch, kept on chewing. Intelligence must be exceptionally good in these parts. If the guy had come to warn him off, however, he could go to hell. There was more at stake than the mission.

“I may be able to help.” The voice was perfectly modulated, like he’d done a stint at Eton, Tallis thought, thinking of his rather humbler roots. He held his silence, avoiding eye contact, thinking this was a set-up. The man smiled, extended his hand. “My name is Asim.”

Tallis eyed him warily, took another bite of his sandwich, chewed, and swallowed. “And why would you want to help me, Asim?”

“Not help exactly.” Asim smiled. “Trade.”

“For money?”

Asim nodded, eyes bright with fire.

“Strange line of business to be in.”

“Popular,” Asim corrected him. “Trading people is one of the oldest professions.”

“Like prostitution.” Tallis twitched a smile. “You make it sound almost noble.”

Asim laughed. “Trade, not traffic.”

“What makes you think you can find my man?”

“Nobody can hide for ever.”

“Bin Laden seems to be making a pretty good stab at it.”

Asim smiled engagingly. “It’s a question of knowing the terrain and who to talk to. You’ve been talking to the wrong people.”

Tallis gave him a sideways look. There was something about the guy he liked. He didn’t seem dodgy, even if he was. He had a presence—confident, authoritative, trustworthy. And what, Tallis thought, do I have to lose? He
extended a hand. Asim took it in his warm and steady grip. “Craig Jones,” Tallis said.

“Get you a drink?” Asim said.

He was tempted to ask for another pint, but decided it was better to keep his wits about him. “A Coke’s fine.”

Tallis’s mind tumbled with questions. Who’d put out the word? How had Asim found him? Was he really a guardian angel or devil in disguise? He’d heard somewhere of a company with an A-list celebrity membership who guaranteed to attain the unattainable—tickets for World Cup Finals when there were none to be had, dinner in an exclusive restaurant with a six-month waiting list. Were they in the people game, too? Was Asim part of their team?

“So Craig, can we do business?” Asim flashed a winning smile, returning to the table with Tallis’s drink.

“That depends on whether you can find him.” Tallis pulled out the photograph. “Mohammed Hussain. Sometimes known as Mo Ali or Mo Rahman or Saj Rahman.”

Asim’s face darkened. “This man is protected.”

“By whom?”

Asim’s black eyes glanced away. From the grind of his jaw, he seemed to be weighing something up in his own mind. For some reason Tallis noticed that he’d barely touched his drink. “When people are sent to prison, they become vulnerable to causes,” Asim said. “Prisons, like universities, are recruiting grounds for extremists of all denominations.”

“You saying that Hussain is involved in terrorism?” Christ, whose toes was he going to be treading on? Tallis thought. And Cavall had assured him that all four illegals had no terrorist links.

“He moves in interesting circles, which is the reason I will try to help you. I believe in peace, and people like Hussain give the rest of us a bad name.”

“You Pakistani?”