The Mephisto Threat

by E. V. Seymour

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean…’

  ‘No, it’s all right, Paul. I’m all right. It’s just…’ Her voice faded away.

  Tallis snatched at his coffee. Maybe he shouldn’t have come so soon. ‘You here on your own?’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked taken aback.

  ‘Should you be?’ Tallis smiled. ‘Haven’t you got family, friends?’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like my family liaison officer,’ Gayle snorted. ‘Like I already explained to her, my mother wasn’t that keen on my marriage to Garry, my sister lives in Canada and most of my friends are hard out at work.’

  Now that she’d reminded him, Tallis remembered Gayle once talking about her mother’s opposition to the marriage. ‘You shouldn’t be alone,’ he said, thinking, What do I know about such things? After Belle’s death the thought of spending time with people had quietly appalled him. Still did.

  ‘I’m not. I get regular visits from the police.’

  ‘Are they keeping you informed?’

  ‘They’ve been brilliant.’

  ‘You’re not flying out?’

  ‘I don’t need to. Someone from the MET’s gone on my behalf.’

  ‘But surely…’ Tallis began.

  ‘Unfortunately, my passport’s expired.’

  ‘I’m sure, in the circumstances, someone could rush one through.’

  Gayle gave a morbid shrug. ‘What difference will it make? Garry’s gone. Doesn’t matter whether I see him here or in Turkey.’

  Neither of them spoke for a moment. Tallis was first to break. ‘Do the police have a line on the killers?’

  Gayle took another sip of coffee. ‘To be honest, it all sounds fairly confused. A bike matching the description was found in a back street.’

  ‘They say where exactly?’ Tallis chipped in. ‘I visited Istanbul a few years ago. Know it pretty well.’

  Gayle frowned. ‘Strange-sounding name, Beyoglu.’ North of the Golden Horn, Tallis remembered. ‘According to the Turkish police, they want to trace a man Garry was having coffee with before he was killed. Ever heard Garry mention David Miller?’

  Tallis frowned, stroked his jaw, shook his head. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘With me neither. They seem to be fairly worked up about him, mainly because he’s disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘Gone missing, although I suppose it’s possible he could have been injured in the earthquake.’

  ‘Or killed,’ Tallis said, warming to the idea. Gayle asked if he’d like a refill.

  ‘That would be great,’ he said, watching as Gayle went through the coffee routine once more. ‘You don’t think the police are connecting this Miller guy with Garry’s murder, do you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I mean, it’s got to be some mad Turkish nutter, hasn’t it?’

  ‘You reckon? The guy or guys who ordered the contract could be any nationality at all.’ Like British, for instance.

  ‘You think so?’

  She looked a bit perturbed, he thought. ‘Gayle, I know this is an obvious question, but do you know of anyone who’d want Garry dead?’

  She let out a mournful sigh. ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied.

  ‘In Garry’s line of work he was always being threatened. He didn’t speak much about it because he knew it frightened me, but it stands to reason that you can’t rattle cages as much as Garry did and always expect to get away with it.’

  So whose cage had he rattled this time? ‘Anyone threaten him recently?’

  ‘Not specifically.’

  Tallis arched an eyebrow.

  ‘He got a bit roughed up the third time he went to Turkey, had his wallet stolen.’

  ‘Did he report it?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  Tallis threw her another quizzical look.

  ‘Ever spent any time in a Turkish police station? They take hours simply to fill out a form.’

  Yeah, he remembered. ‘Did he speak to you about what he was currently working on?’

  Gayle glanced away. ‘Not really.’

  Tallis leant towards her, adopting his most persuasive tone. ‘Gayle, this is me you’re talking to.’

  She looked up, swallowed. ‘Like I said, I knew nothing of specifics but the general theme of the book he’d mapped out was an exploration of links between organised crime and terrorism.’

  Right. Tallis felt something snatch inside. Now they were getting somewhere.

  Gayle was still speaking. ‘He was very preoccupied. It was his fourth trip to Turkey this year. Every time he came back, he seemed more distant.’

  ‘Do you remember when he went exactly?’

  ‘Easy enough to find out,’ she said, twisting round, reaching up and swiping a calendar from the wall behind. ‘Here,’ she said, showing it to Tallis, pointing with a finger. ‘January 13th for a week, back in April, 17th to the 28th, then more recently early August and then this last final time.’ She folded the calendar over, hooked it back onto the wall, let out a deep sigh.

  ‘Mind if I take a look in his study?’ Tallis already knew that Garry had used the spare bedroom as his base. It doubled as a guest room. Tallis had slept in it when he’d last visited.

  ‘Help yourself. Warn you, police have already been through it with a fine-tooth comb.’

  ‘Take much away?’

  ‘Garry’s diary, containing an audit trail of contacts, his files and computer.’

  ‘Find anything?’

  ‘If they have, they haven’t told me.’

  Probably a waste of time, but he thought he’d take a peek anyway.

  The room was neater than he remembered. It had recently received a fresh coat of paint. Sofa bed up against one wall, Garry’s desk, an IKEA self-assembly job, against the other. It looked sad and pathetic with only the keyboard lying there on its own. A rummage through the drawers yielded nothing of startling import, mainly because the police had probably already removed anything of significance. He found a couple of building-society books, one in Gayle’s old married name, which he quickly flicked through, pausing over one of the entries before moving on to a sheaf of receipts that proved Garry had recently visited Birmingham. Tallis looked up, a snatch of conversation whistling through his head. It felt as if Garry was in the room right next to him.

  ‘Thing is, Birmingham’s your patch, right?’

  ‘Used to be.’

  ‘But you still know the movers and shakers in the criminal world?’

  Tallis closed the drawer, aware that Gayle was standing in the doorway. He didn’t know for how long. ‘Find anything?’

  ‘No.’ Tallis thanked her, said he ought to be making a move. ‘All right if I use your loo before I head off?’

  ‘You know where it is.’ She flashed a sudden, tight smile. Probably thinking of happier times, Tallis thought as he went into the main bathroom to take a leak. Afterwards, glancing in the mirror over the washbasin, an offbeat thought hovered and began to take flight in the outer reaches of his mind. He blinked, grabbed a towel, drying his hands, and ambled back towards the lavatory, staring out of the open window for a few seconds then squashing the offending idea dead before it had a chance to fly.

  Gayle was waiting for him outside. She’d removed her sunglasses. The skin around her grey-blue eyes looked dark and tired. ‘Thanks for coming.’

  ‘You’ll take care?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Remember what I said.’ He squeezed her arm. ‘Don’t be alone.’

  9

  * * *

  HE TOOK the train from Marylebone to Birmingham, Snow Hill. The closer to home, the more his thoughts centred on family, or what was left of it. His father, with whom he had an appalling relationship, was dying of cancer. Dan, his elder brother, was banged up in jail and would remain so for many years to come. How his mum continued with such courage and good humour was a source of constant inspiration to him. And then there was Hannah, his much younger sister
, falling in love with a geography teacher when still in her teens, married, two kids, happy and settled. She rarely returned home.

  Tallis idly looked out of the window. They were pulling into Solihull. A middle-aged man carrying a large suitcase was walking towards a woman of similar age, the look of delight on both their faces the most uplifting sight. As soon as they were within arm’s length of each other, the man put his case down in the same momentous way an explorer marks his triumph by sticking a flag in the ground, and took the woman in his arms. Tallis watched enchanted, glad that life continued joyously for the vast majority of people, while also feeling an overwhelming sense of something precious lost.

  From Snow Hill, he took a cab to Quinton, getting out at the end of the avenue so that the driver couldn’t see where he lived, his motivation nothing to do with security, everything to do with embarrassment. Young, cool guys didn’t live in bungalows. Unless bequeathed. Although grateful for his Croatian grandmother’s generosity—it put a free roof over his head after all—it didn’t quite square with the image. He’d thought many times of selling and buying something more suitable, yet every time he got as far as phoning an estate agent he bottled it. The bungalow and what it represented was part of his history, something that couldn’t be overestimated. Without history, he felt sunk.

  The sun was less intense, more cloud in the blue. As Tallis lowered his vision, he saw the familiar figure of his next-door neighbour’s son shambling along the pavement, sidestepping the dog shit. Jimmy, as Tallis insisted on calling him after the great guitarist Jimmy Page, seemed to have grown several inches in the past three weeks, legs absurdly sticking out of three-quarter-length trousers, manly hairs sticking out of his legs. He was wearing scuffed top-of-the-range trainers, no socks and a black T-shirt touting some group Tallis had never heard of. His thick fringe made him seem as if he was peeking out from a foxhole. Although studiously listening to an iPod, he gave Tallis a goofy grunt as he walked past. Relations had improved beyond recognition since Tallis’s computer had blown up one morning. Not fully realising how terminal things were, he’d gone round next door and appealed for help. Jimmy, for once not manacled to his electric guitar, loped round, fingers whizzing over the keyboard as though he were Elton John then bluntly announced that it was fucked.

  ‘What you need is an Apple Mac, a proper computer, not some crappy old PC,’ he told Tallis.

  Whenever people offered that type of advice, Tallis knew it meant only one thing: forking out. ‘It’ll cost a bit,’ Jimmy said, shrewdly reading his expression, ‘but worth it. And you get ever such good back-up if things go wrong.’

  ‘You on commission, or what?’ Tallis grinned.

  ‘Nah, just got taste.’ To prove the point, Jimmy invited him round to examine his own machine.

  ‘Your mum in?’ Tallis said warily. Jimmy’s mum had a bit of thing for him. Well, a bit of thing for any man with a pulse, if he was honest.

  ‘Nah, gone to the social club.’

  Twenty minutes on, Tallis was sold. Two days later, he was the proud owner of a flat-screen seventeen-inch iMac with web cam and full Internet connection.

  The bungalow looked the same: elderly. In the carport, his Rover stood mute and accusing. He presumed nobody thought it worth nicking.

  Inside there was a musty and neglected smell. After dumping his stuff in the bedroom, he set about opening all the windows and, ignoring the phone winking with messages, stepped out into the garden. Since losing interest in home DIY, he spent more time outdoors. Not that his efforts proved much of an improvement. The grass had grown with a speed that was only rivalled by weeds, his half-hearted attempts to nurture some plants whose names escaped him a resounding failure. Still, there were always the birds. He had a bit of a theory about them. In the criminal sphere, he reckoned the sparrows and robins were bobbies on the beat, wagtails private investigators, rooks and crows hit men, buzzards and sparrow hawks the Mr Bigs. The blackbirds, clever little bastards, were CID on account of setting up their own early warning cat alarm. Every time next door’s moggy appeared in his garden, there would be the most terrific racket, giving him enough time to turn the hose on the feline intruder. He thought the bloody thing would have got the message by now, but it kept coming back, strutting its stuff as only cats could. Maybe they were the real Mr Bigs, he thought idly, his thoughts turning to Garry Morello once more, and the potential people he’d crossed.

  Back inside, Tallis made himself a cup of coffee, black, with sugar to make up for not having any milk. Finding a pen and a piece of paper, he steeled himself to play back his messages. Only one message was urgent. It was from his mother. His father had died.

  ‘Where have you been? We’ve been trying to get hold of you.’ It was Hannah, his sister.

  ‘I’ve been away.’

  ‘Well, we know that,’ she said accusingly. ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’

  ‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Look, when did he pass away?’

  ‘Over a week ago.’

  Tallis closed his eyes. Perhaps they’d already buried him. Please.

  ‘We’ve been waiting for you to get back so we can have the funeral.’

  Oh, God. He muttered apologies, his sister admonitions. ‘How’s Mum?’ he said.

  At the mention of their mother, some of the heat went out of Hannah’s voice. ‘A little better than she was. Hard to say.’ She paused. ‘Look, I know you and Dad never got on, but now he’s dead, you might feel…’

  Nothing, he thought coldly. ‘Hannah, let’s concentrate on Mum, make sure she’s looked after.’

  ‘Of course, but—’

  ‘Mum must come first,’ he said firmly. This was not the time for an examination of his feelings towards the man who’d done his best to break him. And yet the man had been his father and, as his son, Tallis felt it wrong to harbour such animosity towards him. He’d often wondered what it would feel like when his dad died. If he was honest, there had been times in his life when he’d wished for it. Now that his father was dead, his emotions were less easy to pin down.

  The silence throbbed with hurt and disappointment. Then he heard his mother saying something in the background.

  ‘Hold on,’ Hannah said, strained. ‘Mum wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Hello, Paul.’

  ‘Mum, how are you?’ Stupid bloody question. And then she took him completely by surprise.

  ‘You of all my children know how I feel.’

  It was the first time she’d openly acknowledged his grief for Belle. She must be feeling pretty dreadful, he thought. ‘Mum, what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Come home.’

  ‘I’ll be right there.’

  She waited a beat. ‘But could you to do something for me first?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘I want you to get Dan out of Belmarsh.’

  Something in his stomach squelched. ‘Mum, I really don’t—’

  ‘Please. I know what he did, but it was your father’s dying wish for Dan to be at his funeral.’

  Always Dan, even to the last, he thought bitterly. The compassionate part of his nature was having a difficult time shining through, yet even he realised that Dan needed to be there as much as his old man had desired it. How the hell he was going to manage it was another story. Dan was in no ordinary prison for any ordinary offence. His only hope was Asim. ‘I’m not making any promises, but I’ll see if I can pull some strings.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They talked a little more. Now that he was home, they planned to go ahead with the funeral in five days’ time. To his surprise, his father was going to be cremated. Somehow Tallis had envisaged a full Catholic funeral, all bells and whistles. He had to remind himself that his mother was the religious one. His father never had much time for it. So much he hadn’t had time for.

  ‘You’ll let me know,’ she said, ‘about Dan.’

  ‘Soon as I can.’

  Asim got to him first. Tallis was halfway down a
bottle of fine malt whisky, all peat and bog, the taste suiting his mood, when Asim called. ‘The Moroccan was a guy known as Faraj Tardarti,’ Asim told him. ‘He’d trained at camps in Pakistan, was not considered to be a main player, although known to have contacts to those who were.’

  ‘Looks as though the Americans have a different take on him.’

  ‘He was on their watch list. Of more interest as far as Morello’s concerned,’ Asim continued, ‘two British men flew out of Heathrow to Istanbul and back again in the very twenty-four-hour period in which Morello was shot. Customs cottoned onto them because they were travelling light, and alerted the embassy.’

  That prat Cardew, Tallis thought. Damn him and his blasted procedure. Either he didn’t make the connection or he was bought. ‘Names?’

  ‘Toby Beaufort and Tennyson Makepeace.’

  What sort of names were those? ‘Having a laugh, were they?’

  ‘They were indeed.’

  Forged passports.

  ‘Looks like they might be good for Morello’s murder,’ Asim said. ‘Must have picked up their gear the Turkish end.’

  ‘I’d say so. Still think there’s no connection between Morello and our Moroccan?’ Tallis couldn’t disguise the playful note in his voice.

  ‘Go on,’ Asim said, humouring him.

  ‘I went to visit Morello’s widow. She told me that Garry was working on a book exploring the link between organised crime and terrorism.’

  ‘Historically, there’s always been a link. Only have to look at the IRA.’

  Asim could be so infuriating. ‘I don’t believe it was in a general sense,’ Tallis persisted. ‘Garry wanted to pick my brains, ask me about my patch, Birmingham, who the movers and shakers were. My take is that he was talking about current events. Gives more credence to what we already suspect.’

  ‘Birmingham, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Asim remained silent. Tallis assumed this to be a good sign. What he said was being taken seriously. ‘Maybe we should have left you at home.’

  ‘And deny me my two-night stay in a Turkish gulag?’ Tallis cracked.