E.V. Seymour - 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.

Tallis’s earpiece crackled. A designated senior officer had already confirmed the identity of the target, an Algerian woman with links to the recent failed bombing in Birmingham. Now he was upping the game, issuing instructions to prepare to eliminate the threat—code for execute or shoot to kill. Tallis tightened his grip on the Glock but judged the scene too chaotic and unstable to take aim and fire should the final code word be given. Public safety, threats of criminal proceedings, phrases that tripped off the tongue in the aftermath but made no sense in the context buzzed round his brain like a swarm of demented hornets. Strained faces were everywhere, there seemed more shoppers than ever. And that was dangerous.

Tallis was subliminally aware of Stu drawing abreast of him, feet pounding the floor. They were gaining now but another escalator loomed ahead, ascending. Glancing up, Tallis saw two colleagues openly brandishing weapons, sealing off the exit. The woman’s head lifted minutely in mid-pace. She saw it, too. Tallis caught his breath. His gut tourniqueted. This was when she’d do it. This was when she’d blow them all to kingdom come. He raised his weapon but a group of gormless-looking lads oblivious to the action wandered across his line of vision. Stu let out a yell, making them scatter.

Tallis picked up the pursuit again, speeding around a corner flanked with banks and building societies, the financial heart of the mall. The woman was only metres ahead, losing pace, through stitch or fear, the fight abruptly abandoning her. Nothing left to lose , Tallis thought, raising his weapon a second time, imagining the blinding flash, broken bodies, twisted wreckage, crippled lives. This time he took aim, homing in for a head shot. “I can take the shot,” he radioed back to Control.

“Take it,” was the response.

Then something happened, something more terrible than he could imagine. In that heart-charged split second, she turned, small hands spread in a defensive gesture. Young, her dark face was arresting rather than beautiful. She had a wide, noble brow and brown eyes wet with tears and terror. Not that it mattered, Tallis thought coldly. An order was an order. Question the method, the timing, but never the command. Even so, Tallis experienced an ugly sensation, felt something he wasn’t paid to feel. His earpiece crackled. Maybe they were going to be asked to stand down, he thought wildly hopeful. It crackled some more: the gold commander was giving the code word authorising the use of lethal force.