by Mick Herron
‘The hairbrush,’ Sarah said slowly.
What I need is a hairbrush, Zoë had said. The bastard took mine.
Fairfax paused. ‘What hairbrush?’
‘The hairbrush that wasn’t.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘Sorry. I’m tired. I was playing Kim’s Game yesterday – ever played that, Inspector?’
‘A memory game, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Is this going anywhere?’
Keys. A watch. A lipstick. Zoë’s hairbrush. Zoë’s wallet.
‘I was trying to remember the things you’d found with the body. And I kept remembering a hairbrush, because that’s what Zoë uses. A hairbrush. Except that’s not what it was. It was a comb. A tortoiseshell comb.’
‘And that matters why?’
‘Because there’ll be hairs on it.’
‘It was in the river, Ms Tucker,’ he said.
‘And in her pocket. If you don’t find any on the comb, there’ll be some in her pocket.’
He waited, so she spelled it out.
‘You can get DNA traces from hair, can’t you?’
‘We’ve already got a headful of her hair. It doesn’t match any DNA on file. How will more help?’
‘Because this won’t be hers,’ Sarah said. ‘It’ll be Cartwright’s. It’s his comb.’
Her phone hadn’t magically recharged itself, so Sarah had little to do but sit for the next hour. Every so often, a police officer would wander out to smoke, and looked at her curiously. And every so often she glanced skywards, but no more balloons appeared.
She could leave. Nobody would stop her. More to the point, pretty soon she was going to be asked what she thought she was doing there. But her coffee cup seemed to act as an alibi, and there were enough unclaimed cigarette butts around for her to look like she had purpose. Minutes ticked past. Alittle over an hour later, Zoë stepped out again.
A policeman closed the door behind her, and took up position by the coffee machine, inside, in the warm.
‘You’re still here then,’ Zoë said, lighting a cigarette.
The flare of her lighter underlined the gathering dark.
Sarah shifted to one side, but Zoë shook her head.
‘I’ve been sitting all afternoon.’ But she leaned against one arm of the bench. ‘I didn’t say thank you.’
‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘You didn’t.’
‘Okay,’ Zoë said. ‘I deserve some grief. But can it wait for a less complicated moment?’
‘Not really.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because you knew,’ Sarah told her.
‘I knew what?’
‘About the comb.’
‘I knew about the comb,’ Zoë said flatly.
‘You knew there was a comb on the body.’
‘Sarah, I asked if you had a hairbrush, that’s all. My head was itchy.’
‘And if it had been an innocent comment, you’d not know what I was talking about.’
Zoë said, ‘So now I’m in trouble for not pretending I don’t know what you’re talking about? I remember things I say. It’s not a big deal.’
‘So you remember what you said to Talmadge. Back in the Baltic.’
‘He’s called Cartwright. Oliver Cartwright. Can you believe that?’
‘Answer the fucking question.’
‘Yes. Yes, I remember everything I said to him. Which part was so important?’
‘The bit where you told him it wasn’t river water in her lungs.’
Zoë dragged smoke into her own. Then breathed it out again. ‘That’s it?’
‘How did you know that?’
‘Internet, I guess. Does it matter?’
‘It wasn’t in the original news story. And I’m pretty sure it’s not been reported since. I don’t think you saw it on the Internet, Zoë.’
‘So I must have picked it up somewhere else.’
‘What, local gossip? Really?’
Zoë didn’t answer.
‘Speaking of the Internet,’ Sarah said.
‘I’m supposed to be back inside.’
‘Have another cigarette. I won’t tell if you don’t.’
‘Enabler.’ But she flicked another free of her packet anyway, and lit it with the stub of her ongoing smoke.
‘You were using a service to trace your own phone. After Talmadge took it.’
‘Don’t make it sound like a special power. Anyone can do it.’
‘I’m sure. But you found him before, didn’t you? Before we were at the Sage, I mean.’
‘It’s not all that accurate, you know, Sare. I mean, it’s not like a big red arrow appears with –’
‘I’m not interested in the technicalities. That’s what you did, isn’t it?’
Zoë stood, and moved away a few paces. Her outline blurred into shadow. ‘I went to ground when he stole my identity. What would you expect?’
‘So you wake up and find you’ve been robbed, and your instinct is to hide? I’d expect you to go to the police, Zoë. That’s what I’d call normal.’
‘I was robbed. But not of my cash. Did you catch that part? The cash was on the dresser. Short of signing his name . . . I mean, what kind of burglar robs you of everything but your money?’
Sarah shook her head. They both knew the answer to that.
Zoë came back and joined her on the bench. There was a memory connected to this: the pair of them sitting on a cold bench, but that time they’d been looking out to sea. Right now, all the waves Sarah knew about were lapping at her heart, and each of them washed it that little bit more numb.
‘Yes. I traced him through the phone. He left it on at first. I think he was hoping I’d call, you know? When I didn’t, he sent that e-mail. Just in case I hadn’t picked up on the big picture. But I already knew it was him.’
Pausing, she offered Sarah a cigarette. Sarah shook her head.
‘Like I say, the trace isn’t that accurate. But it put him on a street in Gateshead, not far from the river. Houses to let. Didn’t take long to find out which one had been occupied for all of two days. But not in a man’s name, a woman’s. Julie Simpson. I tried tracing that, but didn’t get far. Probably a fake. But I didn’t have many resources available.’
‘Where were you staying?’
‘I wasn’t staying anywhere. I’d stopped being Zoë.’ She inhaled. ‘My wallet was gone. But I keep a credit card in my case for emergencies.’
Emergencies, Sarah understood, which didn’t need Zoë Boehm written all over them.
‘I watched a full day. Nobody came or went. And I realized he’d gone. Just like every other time I went looking for him, he’d gone, and there’d be nothing to find. So I went in.’
The distance between them hid inside those four words. So I went in. Not something Sarah would have known how to go about achieving . . . But even as she had the thought, she remembered lifting Gerard’s room key from the reception desk in the Bolbec. If she’d needed to, she’d have found a way.
‘And he’d left.’ Sarah needed to speak, just to hear her own voice. ‘But she was still there.’
‘In the bath. I couldn’t tell how long she’d been dead. But standing in the doorway, you could read it like a story. There was a soap streak on the floor, and a thin wet wedge of it splatted against the wall. Everything but a big sign reading Join The Dots. She’d run the bath, and was about to get into it when she’d slipped on the soap and bang, game over. The knock on the head might have killed her. But she drowned.’
‘Yes,’ Sarah said. ‘She drowned.’
‘And he was smoke. Just another accident happening to some other poor woman.’ Zoë dropped her cigarette end, ground it with her boot, then breathed out heavily. It was full-on dark, though lights from the office and corridor windows around them filled the well-like area with passive electricity. She said: ‘She was fully dressed. Black jeans. Red top. Sound familiar? And she looked like me.’
‘I know.’
‘And I�
��d seen her before.’
This was news. ‘Where?’
‘At the Bolbec. The night I was robbed. That’s why I didn’t see Talmadge doping my drink. He had her do it for him.’ Zoë shook her head. ‘God knows what he told her. Maybe that he was a spy. There’s always someone ready to fall for a story like that, isn’t there?’
There was always someone hungry to hear words no one had ever told them, was what Sarah thought. The kind of words Talmadge specialized in: love and need. Both fed on desperation.
She said, ‘I think it started with him taking her on holiday. And then it turned into an adventure.’
‘He picked her because she looked like me.’
‘Yes. And when he followed you to Newcastle, he took her with him.’
Zoë said, ‘He’d kept my phone, but the rest of my stuff was there. Even my leather jacket. It was like he was laughing at me. As if he knew I’d be first one there.’
Sarah said, ‘Or wanted people to think it was you.’
‘He’s a twisted freak. It’s a game to him. The woman was a counter on his board. Nothing more.’
As if there were a timer operating, she reached for another cigarette. Sarah put a hand on her arm to stop her.
‘No. Finish it.’
Zoë glared, but bit back a retort. She placed the packet on the arm of the bench. Then said, instead, ‘I found a comb.’
‘In the house?’
‘On the floor in the bathroom. I like to think it fell from his pocket when he was arranging her accident.’
‘And that’s why you did it,’ Sarah said flatly.
‘I put her shoes on. Put my jacket on her. It was hanging on a hook by the door, can you believe that? And I carried her out to my car.’
‘By yourself?’
Zoë said, ‘She was quite petite, really. Smaller than me. You didn’t notice that?’
She had looked bigger on the slab, Sarah thought. Had been river-bloated.
‘If anyone had seen us, they’d have thought she was drunk. But nobody saw us.’
‘And you drove her to the river.’
‘She was already dead.’
‘And you put her in the river.’
‘I knew he’d have to come back. He’d need to know what was going on. He might even wonder if it was really me they pulled from the Tyne. It was pretty clear they’d not find her true identity in a hurry.’
‘So you changed the rules of his game.’
‘It worked, didn’t it? They’ll find his hairs on the comb. That’ll tie him to the body. And that’s when it’ll unravel. All those accidents that happen while he’s somewhere else. That’s not going to work this time.’
‘And all it took was, you put Madeleine Irving in the river.’
A flat-sounding thump meant that Zoë had knocked her cigarettes to the ground. She bent and retrieved them, and had one in her mouth before Sarah could stop her. Her lighter flared. ‘Was that her name?’
‘Yes,’ Sarah said, forgetting for a moment that she didn’t know this for a fact. ‘She’s just a counter in your game too, is she?’
‘Of course not. She’s the reason I did what I did, Sarah. Her and the others like her. So Talmadge never does this again.’
‘But meanwhile she’s lying in a drawer which doesn’t even have her name on it.’
‘And that’s my fault? Sarah, there’s more to identity than just a name. Talmadge isn’t even called Talmadge. You think it matters to Madeleine, that the cops don’t know her name yet?’
‘It matters to me,’ Sarah said.
Zoë didn’t reply.
There was a tap on the window; a policeman, beckoning Zoë back inside.
‘I’ve not even been charged yet,’ she said. ‘But I’m still at their beck and call.’ But she took one last drag anyway, then dropped her cigarette.
‘Are you going to tell them?’ Sarah asked.
‘I’ll give them the house he was using.’ The words came out as smoke. ‘They can match the hairs by themselves. After that . . .’ Zoë shrugged. ‘I’m hoping to avoid some of the finer detail. But if I can’t, I can’t.’
‘You’re certain there are hairs to find.’
‘I have faith in science,’ Zoë said. ‘Largely because otherwise, I’m fucked.’ She fitted her cigarette packet into her jeans pocket. ‘What about you? Going to tell them what I did?’
Sarah didn’t answer.
‘I won’t hold it against you.’
The policeman tapped again.
Zoë said, ‘Dry your eyes.’
‘I’m not crying for you.’
‘Take care, Sarah.’
Zoë slipped back into the light. Through the window, Sarah watched her say something to the policeman, which made him laugh, then the pair disappeared through a set of swing doors.
After a moment, Sarah followed.
* * *
Fairfax caught her by the elbow just before she left the building. ‘So what did she have to say, then?’
Sarah stared pointedly at his hand until he released her. Then said, ‘Nothing she won’t tell you herself.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
Sarah gave him the goodbye look, then pushed through the doors into the street.
She collected her bag from the Internet café, walked to the station, and caught the first train south. At the last moment, the carriage filled with a noisy group of football fans, but this didn’t matter. She wouldn’t sleep anyway. It didn’t matter.
As the train crossed the bridge, Sarah saw tiny shadows moving inside the bright-lit flanks of the Sage; saw the oblong box of the Baltic, which in the dark resembled the mill it had once been. The eyelash curve of the Millennium Bridge, underlit in deep red, formed a trembling oval with its own reflection, through which the river ran. And further away, beyond the water’s bend, some of those lights in the sky would be cranes standing sentry over abandoned shipyards; yards that in time would blossom into spanking new apartment blocks, beneath whose windows the same river would keep on running, casting back the overhead lights as waterbound stars that twinkled black and white, and black and white.
‘Gan canny,’ Sarah whispered through the glass. Though whether her words were aimed at the river, at Zoë, or at herself, she couldn’t tell.
Acknowledgements
It’s a common complaint that authors take liberties with geography. In this instance, geography has taken liberties with the author. Some locations in this novel will have been redeveloped out of recognition by the time of publication – mostly, I hope, for the better – but they’re described the way I found them in the winter of 07/08.
The scenes set inside the derelict Jesmond Picture House were written before I saw Richard Shepherd’s spooky photographs of its interior. They can be viewed at http://www.shepy.co.uk/myphotos/main.php, and provide convincing evidence that I overdid the cobwebs.
Arimathea House does not exist. Incarnation Children’s Centre in New York does. Journalist Liam Scheff’s reports on what happened there suggested one of the main planks of this novel (http://www.altheal.org/toxicity/house.htm).
XYZ are Sarah Jones, Matthew Jones and David Jones (http://www.myspace.com/xyzfolk).
Last Orders are Matthew Jones, David Jones, Kevin Lees and Joe O’Connor, with Maz O’Connor providing vocals (http://www.myspace.com/lastordersfolk).
Love and thanks to my mother, to Anne and to Mick for some long city walks.
And thanks too to Tony Smith, for a little learning, a lot of software support, and at least eleven years of squash.
Mick Herron August 2008
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