E.V. Seymour - The Last Exile

“We have no references,” the woman was saying in halting English.

“No problem.”

“But without references, we cannot get a mortgage.”

“I can get you a mortgage,” the black man said confidently. “I can get you anything.”

Passports, visas too, Tallis thought, ticking off the mental list. “It’s all right, I’ll come back later,” Tallis said, walking back outside, narrowing his eyes against a bright sun and sky veined with light. From there, he made his way back to central London where he trawled the outside of two mosques. Studying the faces of the faithful leaving after Friday prayers, he was met with a wall of dark suspicion. As an antidote, he headed for Soho.

Six hours later, footsore and weary, Tallis returned to the hotel. Many years before, he’d gone out with a girl who’d worked in Great Marlborough Street, something in public relations, he thought. She’d invited him down for what he’d hoped was a dirty weekend. He’d met her at her office after work full of expectation. She’d taken him on a whistle-stop tour around Soho—maybe it was to get him in the mood. He’d been gobsmacked by the place. It had seemed like the centre of the universe, bursting with life and colour. It hadn’t been the vice trade that had captured his attention, the restaurants, or the swirl of scandal boiling in the streets, but the presence of the film and television industry, all the small independent production companies, theatrical agents, actors’ support groups. There had been people like he’d never seen them before; with attitude, daring, assertive, look at me, darling. He’d loved the smell of success and, yes, the sometimes seediness, even liked the street names—Berwick, Frith, Brewer. It had seemed dangerously intoxicating to a poor lad brought up in the sticks. But that had been then. This time he looked with fresh eyes, jaded eyes maybe. When he spotted a small cinema it was one promising adult viewings, cards in windows advertised the prospect of a good time . It made him think only of Demarku and pain and exploitation, and no amount of gawping at astonishingly priced menus in staggeringly inviting eateries was going to change all that.

The following day he visited gyms, clubs and cafés. He hung out in several bars, eavesdropped on any number of conversations, flashed Demarku’s latest mugshot to a couple of likely looking sorts and came up empty. As a devout Muslim, Demarku was unlikely to be found in a back-street boozer, but Tallis hoped that it might spark a connection, cause a chain reaction. With the aid of Google Earth, it was possible to locate a guy by the brand of condom he used. All you needed was an address in a suburb. Via a computer, you could trace a mobile-phone user, even with the phone on sleep mode, to within five hundred yards. But he had no address, no phone, no nothing, in fact. He was beginning to feel the awesome nature of the task ahead of him, wondered how he was going to get that one lucky break. Around four, he found himself in a bar full of old people and dispossessed-looking men and women on benefits, drinking their way to oblivion. The old folk had red eyes and red faces, the younger lines and heavy jaws. The talk was of soap stars and TV shows and somebody’s latest operation. Nobody spoke of politics or the state of the nation. Afterwards, he took a detour through Chinatown, eventually picking up the underground at Tottenham Court Road back to Euston. Not a very productive day.

But tomorrow would be different, he promised himself. Tomorrow he was going to a pub in Earl’s Court. According to a snippet of conversation gleaned from two unsuspecting Croats rabbiting away on the tube, the place was well known for its eclectic clientele.

SUNDAY morning in London, beautifully warm and sunny, with only a few wisps of cloud in a sky panelled with light. Perfect. Resisting the temptation to visit the Imperial War Museum, Tallis decided to meander down the Kings Road, and eventually found himself staring into the branch windows of some very expensive estate agents. Their business cards, he noticed from a display, were printed in both Russian and Arabic. He wondered where the average well-heeled Albanian was buying property these days.

Walking up to Sloane Square, Tallis took a tube to Earl’s Court. By one o’ clock, he was sitting in a ratty-looking pub on the corner of Earls Court Road. Two days without a shave, his clothes slightly rumpled, he blended into the scenery well. The pub was crawling with down-and-outs and those whose dissolute hue suggested that they were recovering from last night’s hangovers. Not easy, Tallis thought, when your head’s throbbing with the blast of sound from Big Screen Sky TV and three pool tables.

Tallis took his drink and sat down at a beer-stained table overrun with last night’s empties. Scouring the blunt-featured clientele, it wasn’t long before Tallis heard the sound of hrvatski , the official language of Croatia, and traced it to two men standing at the bar. They looked to be in their mid to late twenties. Both had shaved heads. Both had flat, slanted cheekbones. One had the triangular physique of a bodybuilder on anabolic steroids. The other was smaller, less pumped up. They were rattling away, joshing one another, excited about something. Tallis pushed his way through to get closer. They were talking about a VAT scam with mobile phones. After five minutes or so the conversation switched to drugs: heroin and amphetamines.

Tallis listened. From the way they were talking it was clear they were small fry, runners for someone else. Tallis wondered who their supplier was. He listened some more but no name emerged. “Oprosti!” he said, breaking into the conversation. “Excuse me.” The two men threw him slow, suspicious looks. Keeping his voice low, he asked whether they could supply him with some cocaine for personal use. He was careful to ask only for a small quantity so that he didn’t alert their suspicions. The triangular-shaped guy ignored him. The other issued a flat, ‘ Ne razumijem’ . I don’t understand.

“Come on, guys,” Tallis said persuasively, continuing to speak in their native tongue. “I’m off my own patch. It’s just to keep me going. Blood brothers and all that.”

Triangle shape burst out laughing.

Tallis looked him straight in the eye. “If you can get more, I’ll take it.”

The big guy stopped, stared. His sludgy-coloured eyes were unblinking. “Where are you from?”

“Vukovar.”

Both men exchanged glances. As Tallis already knew, Vukovar struck an emotional chord in the heart of every Croat. It wasn’t a place readily forgotten. A prosperous pretty little town on the Danube, Vukovar had once been the showcase for baroque architecture. No more. In the early 1990s, it had become a battleground, laid siege to by Serbian forces, a siege in which more than two thousand people had died, many more afterwards, a lot of them buried in mass graves. Tallis had visited once. The weather had been cold and damp and miserable, yet even if the sun had shone, the place would still have felt tainted. He thought of the town as a beautiful woman who’d had the misfortune to catch smallpox. Every street corner was pitted and made ugly by gunshot and mortar. Tallis remembered his grandmother weeping over its destruction.

The triangular-shaped man clapped a thick and meaty arm around Tallis’s shoulders. “Drink, my friend,” he said, ordering brandy. “A pity it isn’t slijvovica ,” he added, referring to the fierce plum brandy traditionally drunk in Croatian restaurants. “My name is Goran,” the big guy explained. “This is Janko,” he said, indicating his waxy-faced friend.

“Marko Simunic,” Tallis said.