Smoke and Whispers

by Mick Herron

  Since then, things had changed. Less of the feather boa; more of the boa constrictor, sloughing one skin to show the fresh glistening surface beneath. Down by the river was where this change was most apparent. You could stand on a bridge after nightfall and think yourself in a European capital: lights dancing on the water, and big glass buildings winking at the stars above. There was music and art and sculpture; there were the new courts buildings, with the promise they carried of justice and order and jobs for professionals, and plenty of cafés and bars and restaurants where those same professionals could satisfy their daily need for latte and Shiraz and pesto. And everywhere, new buildings were under construction: luxury apartments with urban views to rival anywhere in the country, and with immediate access to live jazz venues; to museums of storytelling; to city-farms and organic groceries.

  But Sarah knew, too, that the older city remained, and you didn’t have to look hard to find it. Behind the new and newly refurbished blocks on the quayside were the same small streets that had always been there; the same railway arches and lock-up garages; and hanging around them were the same people, pursuing the same lifelong objective of satisfaction bordering on happiness. There’d be untouched pubs on those old streets – untouched meaning unthemed – and in their snugs and saloons, Newcastle survived unaltered. You could doll a city up in new glad rags, but you couldn’t actually change its identity. It would be like trying to forge DNA. And this was a good thing, because otherwise you could always be anywhere; the name hanging over the streets irrelevant.

  As she walked, she had wondered what Zoë had made of the place. It was an oddity of their relationship that she could rarely predict what Zoë’s opinion might be. That too had been a good thing. And as she contemplated this, she regretted the slippage of tenses, and recognized that all morning, she’d been preparing herself for what was almost upon her now, as the car driven by Detective Sergeant King came to a halt round the back of a large complex of buildings she guessed must be part of a hospital. Here were industrial-sized waste bins, and heating vents billowing out steamy clouds, and a pair of double doors with a horizontal Day-Glo strip painted across them; a strip which split as the doors swung to allow two boilersuited men to emerge, pushing a huge trolley laden with what looked like dirty laundry.

  She’d done well, she thought, at the station. Perhaps we’d better get on with that part, she’d said, as if the chore ahead was just another in a long list. But now she felt her legs jellying, and had to take a grip on the door handle to assure herself she had strength in her body. That she wasn’t about to collapse getting out of the car; to choke like a Brit at Wimbledon at the enormity of the upcoming task.

  ‘Are you all right, Ms Tucker?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘We’ll get you a cup of tea. You’ll have to wait a few minutes anyway. There’s hoops need jumping through first. Nothing you’ll be involved in.’

  This was Fairfax, who managed the avuncular tone quite well. But she wasn’t in the mood for being cosseted. She needed a scratching post. ‘Well, enjoy your boys’ games. Is there anywhere special you’d like me to wait?’

  Her legs worked well enough, it turned out, and slamming the car door helped. She’d folded her arms before she knew what she was doing; probably looked the archetypal angry woman, though the men hadn’t emerged yet, so didn’t notice. They’d be whispering a quick joke. When she unfolded her arms, her hands shook. No one had made her come here – it was the end result of her own decision – but that initial phone call felt a long way back; felt as if it had been the first step taken on to scree, to launch a tumbling she couldn’t halt. Too late now. DS King emerged from the car. Fairfax too.

  ‘This is hard for you. We realize that.’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  ‘The DI came on like a patronizing tosser.’ This was said clearly enough for Fairfax to hear. ‘It’s just his way. He doesn’t mean anything by it.’

  She had nothing to say. Words were sharp-edged objects, to be issued carefully, in case they caused damage. ‘Shall we. Get on with it?’

  ‘This way.’

  Through those double doors, then, and up a stairwell: this surprised her. She’d imagined heading down; had expected a cellar, a lack of windows. King led the way. Fairfax walked beside her. Neither said anything until they reached a small room containing a glass-topped table on which a few leaflets had been scattered. There were also two plastic chairs, on one of which she was expected to sit.

  ‘This won’t take long.’

  She nodded.

  The leaflets were on grief counselling and death registration procedures. Sarah tried to ignore them.

  It was impossible, she discovered, to shake off a feeling of impending diagnosis. As if whatever was about to happen had graver implications for her own future than for anyone else’s, even if its effect on the latter was a line drawn through it. Her legs felt shaky again, so she sat, but could do nothing to prevent a tremor convulsing her body. In twenty minutes she’d know if Zoë were dead. Sarah couldn’t be sure what kind of hole that would leave in her own life. It was like trying to predict the injuries you’d suffer if the floor beneath you gave way.

  The door opened. DS King appeared.

  ‘If you’d like to come through, please.’

  The air smelled of ethanol; a still-damp aroma, as if the walls had just been hosed down, but it seemed to Sarah that it masked something earthier, something rotten, the way a teenage boy might spray on deodorant in lieu of showering. She had been wrong about there being no windows, but the windows had white plastic blinds over them, and the light was all electric. She was in a viewing area; part of a larger room, the rest of which hid behind a curtain. The curtain made it worse. It indicated that there was nothing behind it you’d be comfortable seeing.

  And there was a slab in the centre of this area, with something laid dead flat upon it, covered by a sheet.

  DS King and DI Fairfax stood behind her, close enough for her to feel their heat. A young man who looked vaguely Latin was present too, wearing a white coat with ID clipped to the pocket. He didn’t speak, but nodded in a way that seemed kind. Sarah’s lip trembled with tension as she nodded back. He withdrew the covering sheet, and stepped aside.

  Sarah saw a woman, lying on a slab. She was white – so white she was faintly blue – and had black hair, and was dead. It was Zoë. Why would Sarah be here, if it wasn’t Zoë?

  All the air had been sucked out of the room, but leaked slowly back. Breathing was a luxury granted to visitors.

  She heard Fairfax, unless it was King, clear his throat, and took a step forward to forestall words.

  It felt important to be quiet, though there was nobody here to disturb.

  Sarah closed her eyes, and opened them again. The body on the slab hadn’t moved. It was Zoë. But it was not Zoë. It was like looking at a lamp from which the bulb had been removed, and trying to gauge how much light it once shed. The last time Sarah had seen Zoë Boehm, they’d shared a meal in an Italian place near the bus station in Oxford. There’d been photos of the owner’s infant daughter plastered across the walls, and the tablecloths had been the usual red-and-white check. Almost two years ago, because Zoë had never been one for keeping in touch, but at least she’d been alive; the light she’d cast being that dark glow Sarah had grown used to: laughing and joking but holding something back – not a secret, necessarily (though Zoë kept plenty of those); more a state of mind she held at bay so as not to spoil the occasion. And now she was here, an unchecked tablecloth laid across her; more years than anyone could count waiting to be piled on top. Except it wasn’t her. And then it was. And then it wasn’t.

  Truth was, Sarah couldn’t tell. It was like Zoë, that was certain. The features were arranged the way Zoë’s had been. But this woman looked both older and younger at once; this woman – this body – had been some time in the water. There was bloat to contend with, and the recol-oration of death. Zoë, always pale, had never looked rinsed
this way. The blue-white of the skin shaded black in the hollows of eyes and nose. The hair, a dark cap of curls, looked – well – lifeless. Any visible marks? was the usual question, but Sarah didn’t know that either. For certain Zoë had scars, but Sarah hadn’t borne witness to them. Besides, two years of living would have changed her in ways Sarah could hardly be expected to catalogue; two years of living plus one week of death would have pushed her a whole new distance away. It might be her. It looked like her. But Sarah couldn’t be sure. Corpses sink, she’d been told. Then rise to the surface three, four, five days later, when gases in the body are released. Was that how long this woman had been in the water? What would Sarah look like if this had happened to her? Would she recognize herself? Would Russ?

  Again, she felt that someone was about to talk, and tensed. It was all she could do not to put her fingers in her ears.

  This body had not been laid to rest. It had simply been stretched out. Under its sheet, its arms would be at its sides; its fingers thicker than fingers ought to be. Zoë had been fingerprinted, to Sarah’s certain knowledge. She’d also since received notification, as Sarah had herself, that those prints had been destroyed. This had been in the aftermath of their first encounter. Sarah’s copy of that letter was in a drawer somewhere. Zoë, she suspected, would have stood over its sender and watched the records fed into a shredder. There ought to be other items of equal forensic value, of course, but we can’t find that Ms Boehm’s registered with a dentist anywhere, Fairfax had said. Would that come as a surprise to you?

  Hell, no.

  Anyone might have reasons for flying under the radar. Zoë’s had been better than most. A while back, she had fallen into the path of a man who killed women; murdered them so carefully they looked like unrelated accident victims, or middle-aged suicides. There’d been two Zoë had known of for sure. And these, she’d assured Sarah, had been points on a graph: no man insinuated himself into the lives of two lonely women, and ended those lives, then decided enough was enough. It was just that he’d vanished so cleanly afterwards that Zoë was left feeling she’d been trying to nail a shadow to a wall. She referred to him by the name he’d had when he first came to her attention – Alan Talmadge – but that had been no more genuine than the accent he’d used at the time. On the few occasions Zoë had laid eyes on him, he’d borne little resemblance to the man she’d been hunting. Not that he’d been a master of disguise. He was simply anonymous; so bland that a haircut and an earring could remake him anew. All Zoë had known for sure was that he liked Motown. And even that might not have been true; might have been an overlap between identities.

  Zoë had never quite stopped looking for him, and had never been sure he wasn’t looking right back, waiting.

  And perhaps he’d stopped waiting. Perhaps that was why Zoë was on this slab now. why Zoë was on If it was Zoë.

  Sarah became aware she’d been holding her breath. She let it out now; a long slow sigh, involuntary but weighted. It changed the room’s dynamic. Someone shifted from one foot to another behind her, his shoe scraping on the floor like wet chalk on a blackboard. Any moment now, she thought. Any moment now, she was going to be asked the question she didn’t yet have an answer to.

  ‘Ms Tucker –’

  I’m not sure yet, she intended to say, but the words wouldn’t come.

  ‘There are a few other things you should look at.’

  She took a step back from the body. ‘I’m sorry?’ Her voice belonged to someone else.

  King nodded at the white-smocked young man, who turned to what looked like a cross between a wardrobe and a filing cabinet. When he opened it, that was pretty much what it was. On one side hung a jacket; on the other were drawers, the topmost of which he pulled open. Shallow, almost a tray, it held a scatter of objects.

  ‘Her things,’ DS King explained.

  Sarah recalled an ancient comedy riff, about the decline in status of possessions whose owners had died: a falling-off, from ‘stuff’ to ‘rubbish’. In this case, a deterioration hastened by time spent underwater. She stepped towards the drawer, and the objects acquired shape and form. Keys, watch, lipstick, pen: some other things. A tortoiseshell comb. Some jewellery. Here was the wallet she’d been told about; a wallet she didn’t recognize because who would? It was just a black, fold-over wallet with a clasp, somewhat river-damaged. Its contents were splayed next to it: coins, some bedraggled notes; a soggy mass that might have been till receipts. Some of Zoë’s business cards in a frothed-together clump, their lettering faint. And her credit cards, seemingly unaffected by their drenching; their holograms winking in the light, as if all they needed were a little nudge, one tiny pin-prick, and they’d be ready to hit the shops.

  Okay, all this belonged to Zoë. But the fact that this was Zoë’s stuff – her rubbish – didn’t mean that the body on the slab was hers too.

  ‘Also, her clothes,’ King said.

  Like a well-trained domestic, the morgue attendant slid the drawer shut, and pulled open a lower, deeper one, holding clothing.

  Her first impression was that they’d been laundered, and for a moment she was agog at the idea that this might be standard practice; that the unclaimed dead were valeted, here in this stainless steel palace. She’d already seen how the body was sluiced and rinsed of its muddy build-up. But this impression didn’t last, because the river smell hit her, and no, they hadn’t been cleaned; they’d been lain flat to dry, that was all. If at first glance they looked ironed, that was simply because they’d been vacuumed – not a courtesy; just another step in the forensic process. Any evidence this clothing might have offered had been sucked up into an industrial device, though what further clues might have been needed that their owner had been pulled from a river, Sarah couldn’t have said.

  Black jeans, belted; a black blouse and a red top. If she’d been asked to describe what Zoë might be wearing at a given moment, that would be it: black jeans, black blouse, red top. And here they were.

  Underwear too, of course: white, functional, knickers and bra. That, too, was of a piece with how she pictured Zoë.

  And, on the hanger, a black leather jacket she’d seen Zoë wearing a dozen times.

  Jeans, blouses, tops, underwear: you could put them on more or less anyone, and it wouldn’t make much difference. Black jeans and red top wasn’t an ensemble to stop you in your tracks. A leather jacket, too, was an everyday sight.

  But this jacket: this was different.

  ‘Does anything seem familiar?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘The jacket?’

  ‘It’s hers. It’s Zoë’s.’

  She had no doubt about this. Zoë had bought the jacket in Italy, years before Sarah met her. There was a slight tear on one sleeve, just above the cuff: Sarah had noticed it more than once; had suggested somewhere Zoë might take it for repair.

  ‘I don’t need it repaired.’

  ‘It’ll just get worse.’

  ‘It’s part of what the jacket is.’ Zoë had stroked the rip as she’d said the words. ‘Like keeping a diary. You know? I’m fond of this tear. But then, I remember how it got there.’

  Zoë, being Zoë, hadn’t revealed how this was.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  That was DS King again, breaking into memory.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  He shared a glance with his boss. Job done were the words neither said.

  ‘Ms Tucker?’

  She had reached out and taken the cuff in her hand. Was stroking the tear, just half an inch long, the same way Zoë had done when they’d shared that moment: she couldn’t now put even an approximate date to it.

  ‘Ms Tucker?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is this the body of your friend, Zoë Boehm?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. It is.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  A discreet nod and the sheet was replaced, the drawer pushed back, the locker closed, and the jacket sealed out of sight, along with the jeans
, the blouse, the top, the underwear.

  It felt as if the lights should be switched off too, but that didn’t happen.

  They spent a further ten minutes in a different room, at the end of which Sarah signed something, she wasn’t sure what. It didn’t matter. A signature, anyway, was just a prearranged squiggle; not proof of identity. All it meant was that you were aware of the shape of the squiggle required.

  If Sarah had been asked what she was feeling during this period, she wouldn’t have been able to say.

  The men, Fairfax and King, stepped gently round her. They seemed decent enough, as far as that went. A little too much like a double act, sure, but if any job excused a shoulder-to-shoulder outlook, she supposed police work fitted the bill.

  As they left the building, Fairfax said, ‘Thank you for your help, Ms Tucker. I’m sorry for your loss.’

  The cold air cleared her head. ‘You think she killed herself, don’t you?’

  ‘We’ll continue tracing her movements in the days leading up to her death.’

  ‘She’d checked out of her hotel.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Really? The staff haven’t heard the news. That she’s dead, I mean.’

  (She’s dead. The words struck a flat metallic note, as if someone were tolling a cracked bell.)

  He said, ‘So you’re staying there too? The Bolbec?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope you’re not . . .’

  ‘You hope I’m not what?’

  He said, ‘I hope you’re not causing yourself unnecessary grief.’

  For a moment it interested her, this apparent distinction between unnecessary grief and the other kind. She had to blink the distraction away, like a tear. ‘As I say, the staff aren’t aware of what’s happened.’

  ‘It wasn’t necessary to inform them that we’d found a body to establish that Ms Boehm had checked out,’ Fairfax said, as if delivering a prepared statement. ‘What will you do now, Ms Tucker?’