The Exile

by James Patterson, Alison Joseph

Genres: Suspense

Synopsis

Someone—or something—is killing my ex-wife's family.

Ex-cop Finn O'Grady hasn't been home in years. But the woman he swore to protect is convinced an ancient curse has put her and her son in deadly danger. O'Grady has seen too much evil on earth to believe in the supernatural. And then the killing starts....

Release date: November 7, 2017

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 144

Sample

Chapter 2

The sleek towers of the City of London glittered in the first rays of the sun. In front of O’Grady sat a bank of CCTV cameras, flickering grimy images.

This is what I’ve become, he thought. I was the top cop in Galway—now I’m watching warehouses storing computer kit. And all because I held out for the truth, for justice.

“An exile you chose,” she’d said.

He got to his feet, paced up and down.

And if I’d chosen otherwise? What would it be like? To have a home, a garden, a potato patch. A wife…

He stopped his pacing. He remembered his mother’s words as he played out in the back yard when he was a boy. “I won’t be keeping you here, Finn boy,” she’d say. “A nomad, that’s what you are. A restless spirit. You belong to the whole world, not to me.”

A nomad, he thought. Belonging nowhere.

O’Grady gazed out of the wide, bright window.

A night watchman, paid to guard the wealth of companies against those who would try to take it.

How far from my mother’s dream of warriorhood, of might and right.

And now this…

He stared at his phone.

In his mind, the pleading, desperate voice of Bridie O’Connor.

“It’s here,” she’d said.

He knew what she meant. The Salter curse, which came through her father’s line, before she married into the O’Connors. Bridie’s grandfather, James Salter, was English. He was said to have stolen land in Galway that had belonged to an Irish family. At the time the locals had a story of the ancient Green Man. They believed he would protect them from the English incomers. The Green Man was invincible. In the ancient folk song they try to kill him by earth, air, fire and water, but he always rises up again.

James Salter showed no interest in the stories. He expanded the farm, ignored the locals, claimed he didn’t give a damn what these inbred savages thought of him.

His only son, Richard—Bridie’s father—was different. Richard was a gentle soul, a solitary child who grew up to be an academic—a historian at the university. Much loved locally, he seemed to carry the guilt of the stolen land, the opposite of his bully of a father.

It wasn’t surprising that old Salter was unpopular. Nor was it surprising that the locals used these tales to express their sense of injustice.

What was surprising was that decades later, at Bridie’s window, her little boy had seen something resembling the Green Man of the stories.

O’Grady was brought back from his thoughts by a crash of doors and a beep of security gates.

“All right?” Mo and Ahmed tumbled through the doors and thumped tubs of hot coffee onto their desks. “Quiet night?”

“Quiet night,” O’Grady agreed, handing over a large bunch of keys. Mo was bearded and trim; Ahmed was tall and broad-shouldered, his shirt tight over his muscles. O’Grady sometimes wondered what they made of him, with his ten years on them.

He said his farewells and went down the back stairs into the yard. The huge steel gate slid open to let him out.

  

His flat was in East London, two dingy rooms on a road which never slept. The dusty windows let in minimal daylight and the warring aromas from the artisanal bakers and the cheap fried chicken shop below.

O’Grady took off his jacket. He pulled a comb through his chestnut-brown hair. A glance in the mirror showed a tall, muscular figure, clean-shaven, blue-eyed.

A cowboy, Bridie had once called him. “You calling me names?” he’d asked. “No,” she’d laughed, shaking her head. “From the Westerns, the old films. You look like a man who’s got what it takes. That’s what I mean.”

He looked at the image in front of him. He wondered what Bridie would see now.

He slept fitfully, dreaming of Ireland. Dreaming of Bridie, remembering their happy times before she married Stuart, before little Bobby came along.

At four in the afternoon he woke, got up, boiled the kettle, made tea. He sat at his table, stirring the spoon around in his mug.

Bridie would be wanting an answer. But what could he say to her?

A nomad, my mother would call me, before I knew the meaning of the word. “A warrior,” she’d say, watching me playing in the dust. “One of the ancients.”

I was her beloved only child. Running round the yard with my wooden sword, slaying dragons. Important work, I thought at the time. The dragons were real enough to me.

And then I grew up, fell in love. But I’d catch Bridie watching me as my mother had, as if she too was thinking that one day she would have to let me go.

And then came the time when she said to me, “I’m a woman who needs to be a mother. I need to find the man who’ll give me that.”

Soon after, Stuart O’Connor appeared on the scene with his fancy motorbike, a Suzuki Intruder, bought from a dealer in Raheen who turned out to have stolen it. But Bridie was happy enough being whisked along the country lanes.

The last time he’d seen Bridie had been in the yard at Caffrey’s stables, a set of reins looped over one arm, little Bobby toddling at her feet, her brother Mikey in the distance shoveling manure.

She’d gone up to him, looked into his eyes, taken hold of his hand. She was about to speak.

Stay. Don’t go.

He’d waited for the words.

Instead, she’d shaken her head, squeezed his hand, then turned and walked away.

She didn’t look back.

He’d taken the next flight to London.

  

O’Grady checked his phone, picked up the address of that night’s job from his company.

As the sun set across London, he made his way back to the City, back towards the river. He thought about the fields beneath his feet, the medieval markets, the Roman wine cellars and garrison stations. He looked upwards at the brand-new towers of shimmering glass.

  

By ten o’clock, he was sitting alone on the back stairs of a storage company. He could feel his pistols, Glock 17s, one in each pocket. It was a cool clear night and. . .