The Last Exile

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.”

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…

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!

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.