E.V. Seymour - The Last Exile

“Promise we talk in Polish,” he said laughing, dangling her squiggling body over the edge.

“I promise. I promise,” she shrieked.

“Rude words, too.”

“Yes, yes.” Yesh, yesh.

Afterwards they sprawled out and watched the warm early July sunshine pour through the smoke-tinted windows. Several statues graced the outer perimeter of the pool. They looked like snooty guests, Tallis thought, sipping the coffee Felka had made.

As far as he understood, Felka was leaving to go home for a holiday the following morning, home being Krakow—a city on the river Vistula. According to Felka, and if he’d grasped it right, Krakow had been the capital during the fifteenth century, existing now as an industrial centre producing tobacco and railway equipment. Who needs work? he thought. This way I get history, geography and a foreign language all in the space of an afternoon.

“Can you tell me how to get from Euston station to Heathrow?” She was speaking in Polish again.

Tallis took a stab at it, pretty sure he had the right vocabulary but, worried he might send Felka off in the wrong direction, lapsed back into English. “Don’t want you ending up in Scotland.” He grinned. “I’ll draw you a map.”

“Good idea,” she said, jumping to her feet. That was the thing he loved about her. She was so full of zing. As she scurried off, he took a long look at her luscious, retreating form. There was something unbeatable about a semi-clothed woman with wet hair.

Felka returned with a notepad and pen and dropped them playfully on his chest. He picked them up and lightly swiped her bottom, making her break into peals of laughter. Sketching the route, he advised her to take a cab rather than tube because she had a very poor sense of geography. She’d once managed to get lost with the kids in the city centre. Penny had spent nearly an hour walking up and down trying to locate her, and that had been with the aid of mobile phones.

Felka frowned. “Much expensive.”

“Too expensive,” he corrected her.

She stuck the tip of her tongue out, half playful, half come-on. Tallis ignored the gesture. “Believe me, it would be safest.”

“No, no, I take the tube. I like the tube,” she insisted.

“But—”

“I’ll be fine.”

“All right,” Tallis sighed, advising her to take the Victoria line Euston to Green Park and change onto the Piccadilly line for Heathrow. He wrote it all down, sketched a map and handed her the notepad. “You must be looking forward to seeing your family.” He could manage that bit in Polish.

“Especially my little brother,” Felka said. “He changes so quickly. I hope he’ll still remember me.”

“‘Course he will.” How could he forget? Tallis thought.

“And you, Paul. You have a brother, too?”

Tallis flinched, wondering what was coming next. “Yes.”

“His name?”

“Dan. We don’t see so much of each other,” he added quickly, heading her off. “You know how it is.” Except she didn’t, of course. A sudden memory of Dan piling into the bedroom they’d shared, years before, flashed through his mind. Dan had had an infuriating habit of getting up in the middle of the night and switching the lights full on, often to locate his copy of Penthouse magazine. It hadn’t mattered that Tallis had been fast asleep. Usually it had ended in violence. And that had meant their dad had got stuck in. On Dan’s side.

Felka frowned. “That’s sad. Brothers should be close. Is he older or younger than you?”

“Older, but not by much—eighteen months or so.” Not that it felt like it. For as far back as he could remember, Dan had been like their father’s emissary, taking every opportunity to push him around, spy on his activities, report back to base. Because of Dan, he’d been continually in trouble—caught smoking red-handed, out after dark, consuming his first illicit pint, you name it. Because of Dan, he thought darkly, he’d often been humiliated in front of his mates. She nodded thoughtfully then spontaneously took his hand, squeezed it. “I will miss you.”

“No, you won’t. Think of all those lovely Polish lads.”

Felka pulled a face.

“You don’t like Polish boys?”

She let her viper-green eyes rest on his then slipped her arms around his neck, drawing him close. “I think I prefer English,” she whispered softly, nibbling his ear.

Tallis felt quite the gentleman as he drove home. It had been a long time since he’d so firmly rejected the charms of a lovely young woman. It wasn’t that he didn’t fancy her. He’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to, but he knew in his heart of hearts that Felka neither wanted nor needed him. She only thought she did. And she really was very young. There were too many sad bastards flaunting their younger and more malleable girlfriends to shore up their own inadequacies, and Tallis didn’t intend to join their club. Fortunately, his gentle put-down hadn’t offended Felka. He’d told her how gorgeous she was, sensitive and intuitive beyond her years, but that an affair was out of the question because of Max and Penny—they were his friends and she was their employee. It wouldn’t look good. She’d nodded solemnly then broken into a radiant smile. “Another time,” she said.

“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 .

“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?”