“Sit down,” Goran snarled.
“Fuck you.”
The air was electric. Tallis had visions of thrown fists, thrown chairs.
Janko stepped in. “Guys, guys, calm down. We are as one. Our enemies are the same.” He meant the Serbs, Tallis thought. “Go get the drinks, Marco.”
Tallis felt more rattled than he should have done as he pushed his way to the bar. He took a few deep breaths. Told himself not to be so bloody unprofessional.
On his return, Goran had softened. “This operation in Devon, it’s easy to import the goods?”
“Dead easy.”
“We know someone,” Goran said, trading a look with Janko, “someone we work with. He might be interested.”
“Yeah, who?”
“Our boss,” Janko chipped in. “We need to run it past him. We’ll let you know what he thinks.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Zivjeli!” Goran said, raising his glass. “As a sign of good faith, Janko has a tester for you. You like it, we can discuss more.”
Without a word, Janko stood up. Tallis knew the routine. They both headed for the toilets. Janko discreetly passed him a wrap, which Tallis pushed into his trouser pocket. Job done, they went back to Goran. “You like girls?” he said.
Tallis grinned in what he hoped was a convincing manner. These guys were into machismo. To state otherwise would have displeased them.
“We fix you up,” Goran said, knocking back the rest of his brandy. “Come.”
Tallis stood up and followed him. He didn’t feel he had much choice.
They travelled in a bottom range Mercedes-Benz E-Class, still an impressive ride. Janko drove and broke into raucous song. Goran turned round, laughing. Tallis joined in, more as a cover than amusement. He was watching where they were taking him. They were headed for Hammersmith. Tallis thought they’d go over the flyover and join the Great West Road. Instead, they dropped down underneath it.
Traffic seemed heavy for a Sunday. The sky was losing some of its light, the day its energy. The brandy was starting to kick in just behind Tallis’s eyes. He closed them for what seemed a fraction of time. When he opened them they were outside a chip shop. Great, he thought. It would soak up some of the alcohol. The boys had other ideas.
Exchanging greetings with two men behind the counter, Janko and Goran led the way. Tallis followed them through a scullery and into a small, enclosed, paved yard. Encased in glass, fruitless vines hung from the roof, it smelt like a greenhouse. Instead of tomatoes growing, big hessian sacks of potatoes lined the walls. The yard formed a bridge between the chip shop and another building in which there was a closed door with an entry phone next to it. Goran pressed a button and spoke his name. There was a click and the door sprang open, leading into a narrow hall with a flight of stairs leading steeply up to a short landing. Carpeted in worn deep purple, the stairs had seen some action. They went up another flight, and through another door which opened out onto a dimly lit bar with barstools in faded leather. Tallis took it in at a glance—furnishings dark and indecipherable, three sofas, one of which looked badly sprung, door off to the right, one man, nervous looking. And no surprise, Tallis thought as a fat woman emerged from behind the counter. Well, not fat exactly. Not even overweight—more a human hulk with a pockmarked jaw and teeth like an Orc.
“This is Duka,” Goran said, grinning like a demented hyena.
Tallis looked at Goran, looked at the woman, stunned, thinking, Please, God, no.
“Duka looks after the girls,” Janko explained, with a laugh.
“Oh, right,” Tallis said, grinning now, sharing the joke.
“You want girl?” Duka probed a tooth with a dirty nail.
“Give him the new one,” Goran said. “On the house,” he added, a sly expression in his eyes. Tallis wondered what was expected in return for the favour.
Duka waddled along the length of the bar and out of sight, flesh sliding over flesh. Tallis heard a grunt, a curse then a jangling sound of metal. When Duka returned, she was sweating like an elephant on heat. “Eleven,” Duka said, belligerently handing him a key.
“Through the door,” Janko explained. As Tallis pushed it open, he heard Goran order more brandy.
He stepped into a dingy corridor, doors off, not unlike a cheap hotel. He could hear nothing other than his own feet creaking on the thinly carpeted floor. Either business was lax or, as he suspected, the rooms were soundproofed. Number eleven was at the very end. He waited outside, collecting his thoughts, then slipped the key in the lock, turned it, tapped on the wood with his free hand as he entered, the sound hollow in the surrounding silence.
Inside smelt of cheap perfume and damp. A double bed dressed in black satin sheets, more funeral pyre than love nest, rested in the middle of a room that took seediness to another level. There was a cracked sink in the corner with a bottle of baby oil resting on the ledge. The window, from which hung faded brown polyester curtains, had bars. To the right of the window was a single wooden school chair on which a girl was seated. Dark-haired, pallid, she gazed straight ahead with big eyes, seeing but not seeing. Tallis recognised the expression. He’d witnessed it before in the eyes of war-hardened civilians who had lost everyone and everything. The girl, no more than Felka’s age, wore a black bra and panties. Her feet, resting square on the floor, were bare, nails polished but chipped. She possessed a full figure, the skin close knit and youthful. Her right arm was crossed over her left breast as if to protect herself, the fingers of her hand resting on the shoulder strap. She had a large, recent bruise on her thigh. She was breathing fast.
He approached her softly. She turned to him with large eyes and pushed the strap off her shoulder, allowing him a tantalising glimpse of her nakedness.
“No,” he said, looking around him for something to cover her with. Seeing nothing, he took off his jacket, put it round her shoulders. For the first time, she lifted her eyes and looked at him, whispering something he couldn’t make out.
“It’s all right,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “I only want to talk.”
She swallowed hard, nodded.
“What’s your name?”
She didn’t answer, wouldn’t answer. He wondered how long it had been since she’d felt like a person instead of a thing. “Where are you from?”
She shook her head, sudden fear in her eyes. She glanced at the door. “Nobody will hear us,” Tallis assured her.
Still the big-eyed stare.
“Do you understand me?”
The flicker of light in her eyes told him she did. “Were you brought here?”
She opened her mouth very slightly, closed it.
“Against your will?”
Her dark eyes filled with tears.
“I can get you out of here,” Tallis said urgently, “but first I need your help.”
Her face sagged. She looked down at the floor. He’d blown it, he thought. “My name is …” He wanted her trust but knew that telling the truth could get both of them into a lot of trouble. He started again. “The guys out there know me as Marco,” he told her, “but my real name is Max.”
“Max,” she said softly, as if committing his name and her lifeline to memory.
“Yeah.” Tallis smiled warmly. “I have a wife and kids and I live in a lovely big house in a village called Belbroughton, not far from Birmingham.” Then, meshing fact with fiction, he told her about where he’d grown up, that he hadn’t always been so successful, that he, perhaps like her, had come from humble beginnings.
She gazed at him in awe. “Thing is,” Tallis said, wondering how long he’d got before the others became suspicious. “I need to find this man.” He pulled out the most recent photograph of Demarku, showed it to her. “You recognise him?”
The girl drew back, shook her head sadly, disappointed that she couldn’t help.
“His name is Agron Demarku. He’s an Albanian with a history of violence towards prostitutes.”
Again, the closed-down expressio
n.
“Do you talk much with the other girls?” Tallis said.
She gave a mournful shrug.
“All right,” he said, gently slipping the jacket off her shoulders. “See what you can find out. I’ll return tomorrow night.” Without looking back, he left the room.
There was no sign of Janko or Goran. “They left,” Duka said tonelessly.
“They say anything?” Tallis said.
“Nothing.” Duka glowered.
Retracing his steps, Tallis found his way back to the chip shop. He caught the eye of one of the two men who’d greeted Goran and Janko. “Here,” the man said smiling, handing Tallis a portion of fish and chips in a small plastic tray. Small and wiry, he had a broken front tooth and blunt features. He spoke Croatian, his accent suggesting that he, too, was from the north. “Goran says to meet him back at The Courtfield tomorrow night at eleven.” Tallis thanked him and began to eat. Food customers came and went. Other punters, knowing the ropes, walked straight through. Tallis dismembered a piece of fish. The batter was chewy, but he was hungry and didn’t care. During a lull Tallis turned to the small guy.
“Known Goran long?”
“Three years.”
“Good guy to do business with?”
The small man leant over the glass, the genial manner gone. “No questions.”
Tallis smiled a fair enough. “Thanks again for the chips. Be seeing you. She was good, by the way,” he called over his shoulder.
The evening was spitting with rain. Logging the exact location of the chip shop, he began to walk, finishing his supper on the way. He soon found himself in a mixed sprawl of residential and industrial estate. Low-flying aircraft indicated he was near the airport, the sheer density of houses suggesting that they’d been there first. A gang of kids shambled along the road towards him. One was on a bike, zigzagging along the pavement, the others larking about behind, effing this and effing that. On seeing two girls walking up the other side of the road, they let out a stream of sexual abuse. The oldest lad, who happened to be of mixed race, looked to be about fourteen years old. Tallis wondered if this was the future, if they were the next generation of thugs. Drawing near, it became clear from the feral expressions on the boys’ faces that nobody was going to step aside, nobody was giving ground. He should have done the simple thing and walked round them. Better to be safe than wind up dead with a knife in your stomach, but Tallis felt in a perverse mood. He kept on walking, calling their bluff, his eyes fixed on the ringleader riding the bike. As Tallis predicted, the lad swerved at the last minute to avoid him, the others following suit. Not quite so hard as you think you are, Tallis thought with a smile.
The urban landscape was changing. Roads were wider and busier, the concrete more connected and commercial, less grim. There were airport hotels where you could walk into Reception and catch a glimpse of people in swimming costumes kick-starting their holidays, sipping pina coladas around bathtub-temperature swimming pools. Maybe Tremlett, the probation officer, was right, Tallis thought, if not about the ethnicity of the inhabitants, about the location. On he walked, occasionally glancing over his shoulder, for an irrational moment feeling as if he were being followed. Eventually, seeing a taxi, Tallis stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Dropping the plastic tray in a nearby bin, he sprinted across the road and instructed the driver to take him to Euston.
“Fair way to go,” the cabbie said, dubious.
Tallis suddenly realised how dishevelled he looked, unshaven, smelling of booze and fish and chips. He pulled out a wad of notes. The driver told him to hop in. “You often do this run?” Tallis asked.
“Several times a day, usually pick-ups from Heathrow.”
“Know the area well, then.”
The cabbie laughed. “Stating the bleeding obvious, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“What about the people living here?”
“What about them?”
“Good mix of cultures?”
“You mean how many immigrants we got here?”
“Well, I wouldn’t …”
“Answer to that’s bloody hundreds of them. Slough’s an Asian stronghold. Here’s full of Eastern Europeans and Polish. Well,” the cabbie said, blowing out between his teeth, “don’t get me started. Poles all over the bleedin’ place, ain’t they? Begging, and doing us out of a living and all that. Me, I live in Dagenham. Know where I belong.”
Bet you vote BNP, Tallis thought. “Many Albanians live here?”
“Shouldn’t wonder. Know how to use guns, don’t they?”
Everyone from the Balkans knows how to use a gun, you prat, Tallis thought.
They pulled up at some lights. Tallis whipped out the photograph of Demarku, held it up for the driver. “Seen this guy before?”
The cabbie looked in his rear-view mirror. “Not a clue, mate.”
“You sure?”
The cabbie eyed it again. “Mate of yours, is he?”
“No. Someone I need to find.”
“Right,” the cabbie said, looking again. “Bit of a sort, ain’t he?”
“Think so?”
“Know so. Looks like a bleedin’ foreigner.”
CHAPTER TEN
DOG-TIRED, TALLIS SLEPT most of Monday. After his customary run and shower, he left the hotel around two, ambled down Tottenham Court Road and found a café where he ordered and ate a sandwich before making his way across London and over the river to the Imperial War Museum. Some hours later, sobered and not a little depressed, he retraced his way back, walking through St James’s Park to clear his head then catching the tube to Westbourne Grove to an Italian restaurant he’d seen advertised in a free newspaper. After downing a plate of prosciutto and pasta with clams, washed down with two glasses of house red and finished off with a heavy-duty espresso, he took another tube to Hounslow West, changing once.
It was after nine when he reached the chip shop, two hours before his meeting with Goran in Earls Court. Tallis walked in, exchanged a glance with the small, wiry guy who’d given him the chips the day before. This time there was less warning in his manner: he came across as relaxed, bordering on friendly. “Back already?” Then with a leer, he said, “That good, huh?”
“The best, but this time I pay,” Tallis said with a grin, taking out his wallet.
“Duka takes care of it. Go on through,” he indicated with his thumb. “Know where to go.”
Duka was mean and malodorous. She turned her slow eyes on Tallis who explained he wanted the same girl as the night before. “No,” Duka said without explanation.
Tallis smiled as though he didn’t understand, part of his brain racing. Had the girl talked? Had she betrayed him? “She with someone else?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
“No,” Duka said again, emphatic.
Tallis raised an eyebrow. This time he wasn’t smiling. Duka shrugged. “Take another girl or come back tomorrow.” Who gives a shit? her expression implied.
Tallis walked straight up to her, put his face close to her face, inhaling breath foul with garlic and tooth decay and hostility. “I’ll come back tomorrow afternoon at two. Make sure she’s here.” Then he turned on his heel and walked back the way he’d come.
Tallis was three hundred yards from the pub when two blokes in hoodies appeared from nowhere and jumped him. The biggest bloke was in front of Tallis, the other slighter figure moving to the left, catching Tallis on his blind side. It was a typical pincer movement and one he was familiar with. Had it been one assailant, he would have reacted differently, perhaps tried to talk him down, but with two, the odds were greatly against him. Only one thing for it, he thought. Attack.
Eyes flicking to the right, locating the bloke’s jaw line, Tallis pushed off his back leg, letting out a blood-curdling scream and simultaneously lashing out with an elbow. His reward a gratifying snap as he connected with the man’s jawbone, felling his attacker and knocking him into the side of a car parked illegally in
the road. A split second later, the bloke built like a brick wall had landed a right hook heavy enough to make Tallis’s brain rattle around his head. Immediately, Tallis grabbed the man’s hood with both hands, forcing him down, and brought his own knee up sharply, smashing into his opponent’s head. The man rocked backwards momentarily then pulled out a blade. Suddenly, everything slowed. Tallis knew that the situation could cut up very dirty, very quickly and wondered whether the guy was pumped up on drugs.
Almost crouching, his attacker sliced the air with his knife hand, feinting with the other. Tallis, eyes fixed on his assailant, waited for the strike then blocked the guy’s knife hand with a forearm punch. Kicking out with his foot, and hooking it round the guy’s thigh, he knocked him off balance. As he crashed to the pavement, knife flailing, Tallis moved in to stamp on the guy’s chest. To his astonishment, the man raised his hands, and let out a laugh. The hood had slipped back, revealing a face: Goran.
“Fuckin’ weird sense of humour,” Tallis said in Croatian, grabbing Goran’s arm and pulling him up. “Oh, Christ,” he said, looking at the staggering figure unpeeling himself from the wing of a Mini. “That Janko?”
“You fight good,” Janko said, eyes rolling, still dazed.
“Come,” Goran said, slapping his arm around Tallis’s shoulder. “We drink. We celebrate. Then we meet Iva.”
Iva had the bearing of a rattlesnake. He was tall and thin with deep hooded eyes that never let you know what was going on behind them. As Tallis had clearly passed his little initiation ceremony with flying colours, he seemed affable enough, but Tallis wouldn’t have trusted him as far as he could have thrown the mighty Duka. By now, Janko and Goran had melted into the background. This was Iva’s show.
Iva was from Osijek, a large town on the south bank of the river Drava. Like Vukovar, its near neighbour, it had suffered heavy bombardment during the hostilities in 1991. Tallis prayed Iva wasn’t going to quiz him about his so-called homeland and his alleged activities during the war. Fortunately, Iva appeared more curious about Tallis’s commercial interests.
“The boys say you have contacts in the South-West,” Iva said, taking a sip of brandy, his lazy eyes focused on Tallis.
The Last Exile Page 8
