or simply a meaningless piece of detritus? Tallis thought.
‘You’ve done really well,’ Asim congratulated him. ‘Shame about the screw-up with Morello, could have done without it, but you handled everything superbly. I’ll see what I can find out from my contacts and get back to you. In the meantime, I suggest you go back home, get some rest, forget about it for a bit.’
Forget about it? And poor Garry relegated to nothing more than a gross inconvenience. Tallis sadly shook his head. He really felt like a most reluctant spook.
He didn’t go back home. He stayed the night in London. The hotel was overrun with American kids doing a sightseeing tour. As he went down to breakfast the next morning, an anarchic help-yourself affair, he stood in line behind a youth wearing a T-shirt that announced he wanted to shoot all the fucking jackasses. Couldn’t agree more, Tallis thought drolly.
The earthquake in Turkey featured well inside most newspapers’ covers, sometimes not making it until the ‘World News’ section. Loss of life was reported as minimal, a couple of dozen deaths scattered over Istanbul, many more injured. Tellingly, there was no mention of those crushed deep within its city streets.
Outside heralded a fine September day, warm and sunny, with puffs of light cloud. After a quick wander around Kensington Palace Gardens to take some air, he returned to the hotel, checking out shortly after ten. From there, he took a tube to Ladbroke Grove.
Gayle Morello lived in the heart of Notting Hill in a handsome loft apartment arranged on two floors. The visit was a flyer. There was a strong possibility that she might already have left for Turkey. If she was at home, he knew that, whatever came up in the conversation, he couldn’t admit to being with Garry in his final moments. The police were bound to have mentioned David Miller, the man Garry had met at the café. No way was he confessing to being the same man.
Getting out at the station, he walked past a range of local shops, including a number that had a culinary theme. Outside the Morellos’, he stood for a full minute, gazing up at huge arched windows, black wrought-iron balcony, red brick, freshly painted white rendering. He was wondering how the hell he was going to talk to a woman who’d lost not only her first husband in sudden circumstances but her second husband, too. But he had to. Gayle deserved no less. As for Garry, it was Tallis’s way of honouring his old friend’s memory.
With a heavy heart, he trudged up the four steps to the painted black front door and pressed the entry-phone. After a few moments, Gayle answered. ‘Yes?’ Her voice sounded tired.
‘Gayle, it’s Paul Tallis.’
‘Paul?’ she said, sounding confused then, as if it suddenly dawned on her who he was, she let out a small cry. ‘Come on up,’ she said, pressing the buzzer to let him in.
Tallis ascended two flights of narrow stairs. Must have been a bugger moving the furniture in, he thought, his frame constrained by the architecture. The front door to the apartment was already open, Gayle standing there. She was wearing dark glasses. Her skin was ashen. Although a tall, statuesque woman, she seemed to have shrunk since the last time he saw her. Stooped shoulders, long blonde hair unwashed, clothes thrown on anyhow. That’s grief, he thought, wondering if he too, perhaps more subtly, had morphed since Belle’s death. A sudden image of her dying in his arms flashed into his mind. She’d been shot. The man responsible for the order was Belle’s husband, Dan, a bent copper and wife-beater, the act perpetrated not out of jealousy, but as a means to get back at Tallis, Dan being Tallis’s morally disconnected older brother.
Tallis put his arms around Gayle, gave her a hug. A memory of Hikmet flashed through his mind. Was he becoming a magnet for the bereaved?
Gayle began to cry. ‘How could somebody do that to him? How could they? I keep going over and over it, imagining, wondering what it must have been like.’
Tallis murmured softly, letting her weep, feeling her tears soak into his shirt. Eventually she calmed down a bit, pulled away from him.
‘They said he died instantly, that he didn’t feel pain, so I suppose that makes it more bearable.’
‘Yes,’ he said, unflinching.
She nodded, attempted a smile. ‘You look well,’ she said. ‘Been on holiday?’
‘Sicily,’ he said, seizing on the first place he could think of.
‘Come on,’ she said, taking him by the hand, ‘can’t stand here all day, bawling.’ He admired her spirit. She seemed to be holding it together better than he’d done.
They went through to the kitchen. Hand-painted, handcrafted, and of traditional design, it made a refreshing change from the pathology-suite-themed cooking environment. Tallis sat down at the kitchen table and watched as Gayle made coffee with an amazing contraption that hissed and blew like an old steam train. The result was amazing, the real deal.
‘How did you find out?’ Gayle said at last, raising the cup to her lips.
He was prepared. ‘One of Garry’s mates. He works on The Independent.’
‘Typical journo. Always have their ears to the ground.’
‘And you?’
‘Police in Turkey traced me through Garry’s passport details, contacted our boys here. I received the proverbial knock at the door.’ She grimaced, putting the cup back down, clattering it against the saucer. ‘Two officers: one male; one female. I knew it was bad soon as I clapped eyes on them. Remembered from last time. I can tell you,’ she said, ‘having been through this once before doesn’t make it any easier.’ She reached for a box of tissues, blew her nose fiercely.
‘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
