The Last Voice You Hear

by Mick Herron

  Smoke caught the back of her throat in a way that didn’t often happen; she had to lean against a wall as the fit passed. Bloody damn, she thought, when she could think, instead of cough. She must look like a derelict; as if she’d been sucking on a roll-up made from other people’s throwaways. She tossed it while she could still breathe, and it bounced, scattering sparks into the path of a cyclist, who gave her a look . . . She was past caring; visions of sterile white rooms were swimming into view again: We’ll have to fix you up with an appointment . . . She put one hand to her heart, but it felt normal.

  Whatever that is.

  . . . Panics came in different colours, but Zoë’s were always white. This white panic began with a lump in the breast. If anyone else had access to it, she thought she’d have to kill them . . . Because this was a vulnerability beyond sex, beyond her deepest, private thoughts; it made gynaecology look like amateur fumbling. She was not frightened of death, nor even of the different forms death took. She was frightened, though, of the pity of strangers; disgusted, too, at the weakness of a body that threw up unexpected lumps; that held for years, getting its owner from place to place, doing everything expected of it; producing pleasure and pain in more or less equal doses, attracting the admiration of lovers and strangers, and then coming up with a life-fucker like this . . . They talk about nursing a traitor to your bosom, but when your bosom itself turned traitor, language ran dry. Zoë wasn’t the first woman this had happened to, and wouldn’t be the last. But it was the first time it had happened to her.

  All of this rushing out of her, as if the day’s mantra, we’ll have to fix you up with an appointment, had rattled it loose at last; the storm generated by a doctor’s words, or not even by the words so much as the knowledge the words were coming – the knowledge that had fastened deep the morning three mornings ago she’d found the lump. We’ll have to fix you up with an appointment. Like one of those magic formulae, like open sesame, it took you into a world of wonder, except the wonder wasn’t what you wanted it to be; was more like everything you didn’t. She felt almost nothing, she remembered. She was rarely happy. She was rarely sad. She felt almost nothing. But that seemed to be coming to an end, and what she felt that moment was a massive, yawning nostalgia for the emptiness she’d been numbed by these few years; that, and a blinding horror of the intrusions ahead. Unless it was a false alarm, she told herself. This was always the standby of fools and cowards – it could easily be a false alarm.

  She waited, then, until it passed, which it did. This was what she relied on: the permanence of what lay beneath; the rock-solid knowledge of who she was, had always been. This was what would carry her through. Meanwhile, there was work to do. She took a deep breath – didn’t light a cigarette – and set off for Caroline Daniels’ house.

  Chapter Two

  Other people’s accidents

  i

  This was neither far nor hard to locate. She was still in earshot of the railway when she found herself beneath a streetlight that didn’t work, looking at a narrow two-storey house on a quiet road leading to a park; a house with a minimal patch of front yard, which contained nothing. This was where Caroline Daniels’ workday ended and her private life began, and having arrived, Zoë felt dead-ended. There was little more she could do tonight, bar head for home and hit the web. She closed her eyes, and opened them when someone said, ‘She doesn’t live here any more.’

  It took a moment to place the voice: where it came from; where it was. It came from Lancashire, and was currently in the shadows of the passage between Caroline’s house and the neighbour’s. This would be the neighbour.

  ‘Did you know Ms Daniels?’ she asked.

  ‘Who’s interested?’

  Zoë stepped forward, and as she did the streetlight popped into life. It should have been a moment to burst into song. Instead, she rested her palms flat upon the neighbour’s gate. ‘My name’s Zoë Boehm,’ she said. It was like talking into a void; sending words down a wishing well. The light above was a faint moth-glow which hadn’t yet blunted the shadows. Whoever was there, threat or promise, remained invisible. ‘I’m looking for somebody. I wonder if you can help.’

  ‘I’m somebody. Would I do?’

  ‘I can’t see you. You’re in the dark.’

  The woman – Zoë had got that far – moved forward. She wasn’t tall, and was maybe in her fifties, with a head shaved smooth as a nut. This lent her a pixie finish her clothing did nothing to counter: it looked like a dark green sack, tucked at the waist. Which must have had pockets, because she produced a lighter from one now, and used it on the tightly made roll-up fixed between her lips. In the lighter’s flare, her face was a vision of Emerald City.

  Smoke drifted Zoë’s way, delivering an instant nicotine stitch. She reached for her cigarettes. ‘So you knew Caroline Daniels.’

  ‘I lived next door to her for eight years.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  The woman laughed – a raw noise, like a tropical bird’s. ‘She kept to her own half of the drainpipe, Caroline did.’

  First name terms, though. Zoë said, ‘It must have been a shock.’

  The woman shrugged, or maybe a goose crossed her grave. ‘It happens. Shows us not to take it for granted. Life.’

  ‘It’s a fragile circumstance,’ Zoë agreed.

  ‘Well, you don’t want to go putting it in front of a moving train.’

  Somewhere down the road a real bird – not an owl – hooted.

  The woman took another step closer. Zoë hadn’t realized that the passage in which she’d been standing was raised. Now she’d stepped down, Zoë saw she was about four foot six. Your physical borders, Zoë thought: you got used to them pretty quick, but they were the first thing every stranger noticed. Unless you shaved your head.

  ‘Is it her man you’re after?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Who else would it be?’

  Zoë, unlit cigarette in hand, wondered if this was the day she took a job, and the first person she asked said oh, yeah, him, and gave her a working address.

  She said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d know where I might find him.’

  ‘Alan . . . something.’

  ‘Alan Talmadge. Do you know where I’d find him?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Okay.’ She lit the cigarette. If work turned that easy, they wouldn’t call it work; they’d need another word.

  Lights in windows up and down the street had come on now; curtains were drawn, and various shadowplays were happening against their patterned backdrops. Only Caroline Daniels’ house looked forgotten.

  ‘He’s not been round for a while. But then, he wouldn’t be, would he?’

  ‘What was he like?’ asked Zoë.

  The woman tilted her head. ‘Never met him. Saw him in the garden, once. I assume it was him.’ A shrug. ‘He looked okay.’

  ‘Do you know how they met?’

  ‘I never asked.’ The woman bent, and squashed the end of her cigarette against a brick. ‘I suppose she’d have told me if I had. We do, don’t we? We like to boast about our little conquests.’

  ‘Is that what he was?’

  ‘She could hear wedding bells.’

  ‘She told you that?’

  ‘I just knew, that’s all.’

  Zoë thought: When you say I just know about something you can’t possibly have a clue about – like what somebody else is feeling – it doesn’t mean you know, it means you’ve stopped thinking about it. You’ve reached the limits of your understanding, and that is all. But what she said was, ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘She was forty-three, dear,’ the woman said, and that dear was a harsh addition.

  Zoë tossed her cigarette so it bounced neatly down a drain. Forty-four, herself. She didn’t pretend not to take the woman’s meaning, but knew it didn’t apply to her.

  ‘You want to come in, don’t you?’ said the woman.

  ‘I was looking for a way to
ask,’ Zoë admitted.

  ‘What do you want with him when you find him?’

  ‘I just . . . Somebody wants to know that he’s all right,’ she said. ‘Somebody cares,’ she added.

  The woman gave this some consideration. ‘I suppose that’s not so common I can ignore it.’

  ‘I knew you’d see it that way,’ Zoë said, opening the gate.

  The woman’s name was Alma Chapman, and in the light of her kitchen, she was fiftyish for certain. This kitchen was small and cluttered; emphatically lived in. On its table sat a half-full ashtray and a half-empty bottle of gin, and neatly sandwiched between them was a paperback called DeTox In 28 Days. Zoë, largely held together by toxins, knew a lost cause when she saw one. Magneted to the fridge were two wedding photos; both featuring Alma, though with different grooms. Alma saw her notice. ‘Have you been married, dear?’

  ‘Once,’ she said.

  ‘Divorced?’

  ‘He died.’

  ‘They’re not terribly reliable, are they?’ She began rolling another cigarette. ‘He must have died young.’

  (He had died at his desk, when a vile man, now deceased, had cut his throat.)

  ‘Pressure of work, was it?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Alma looked to her photos. ‘I’m glad I married,’ she said. ‘And I’m glad I did it twice. One bad experience, I might have been unlucky. Two’s a policy basis.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a man-hater. Marriage, though, that’s taking it a little far.’ She turned back to Zoë. ‘You ever think of marrying again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should. You’re still young enough. You don’t think all men are bastards, do you?’

  ‘No, I think most people are bastards,’ said Zoë. ‘It leaves less room for error. You say you saw him in the garden?’

  ‘If it was him. Maybe Caroline snagged another towards the end. Like buses, sometimes, aren’t they?’

  ‘I’ve heard it said.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a conspiracy. Men show up occasionally, throw the odd fuck about, it keeps us from getting over them, and planning a revolution.’

  Zoë shrugged.

  ‘You’re not a believer.’

  ‘I think most conspiracy theories are invented by the government,’ said Zoë. ‘To spread paranoia and uncertainty among the masses. What did he look like?’

  ‘If it was him.’ She thought about it. ‘I didn’t get much of a look. He seemed ordinary. Hair a little long. He was standing by the pond, Caroline has a pond. Just standing staring at it. He was twirling his hair round his fingers, that’s why I remember it being long. Fair hair.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘I’m not good on ages. He was a grown-up. Who’s looking for him?’

  ‘Caroline’s boss.’

  ‘This is the one who cares?’

  ‘Seems to. I don’t suppose . . .’

  ‘You want to get in, don’t you?’

  ‘You have a key?’

  Alma Chapman said, ‘This could be one big wind-up, couldn’t it? You could be the coolest burglar ever. I’d look a right idiot then.’

  ‘Can’t argue with that,’ said Zoë.

  Alma gave a short laugh: a surprisingly tinkly one, like a dying coal fire. ‘I’ve got a key, yes. I suppose, legally, it’s her sister’s now, isn’t it?’

  ‘If that’s who she left it to.’

  ‘Next of kin. I expect so. Caroline was a stickler for doing things right.’

  Like leaving the spare with the neighbour, thought Zoë. ‘I think her boss is much the same.’

  Alma said, ‘You think something bad’s happened to him?’

  ‘Talmadge? No, not really. I think he’s just done a bunk.’

  ‘But there might be a clue next door.’

  ‘A clue would be good. Yes, I hope there’ll be a clue.’

  The woman gave it more thought, then opened a drawer in the dresser behind her, and produced a key, tagged clearly Next Door’s Front. She said, ‘I’m sorry she died.’

  Zoë nodded, and Alma passed her the key.

  ‘Still,’ she said, as Zoë stood. ‘All that business towards the end there. Finding her man. It must have done her poor heart good.’

  Zoë Boehm wasn’t big on the supernatural. Once, years ago, she had holidayed with friends in a borrowed apartment in Rome, and late each night they’d been woken by skitterings that came from all around them – underfoot, overhead: it was hard to tell. A ghost, her friends had agreed. A former occupant, haunted by nameless horrors. A dog, Zoë had countered. A well-trained pet in the apartment upstairs. The friends had preferred their theory. If you asked Zoë, the dog was the only thing round there not barking. But the main reason she didn’t believe in ghosts was that Joe wasn’t one, and he’d never been a man for a clean exit. If there’d been an obvious route back he’d have found it, if only to doublecheck he’d turned the heating off, and cancelled the milk.

  So as she turned the key and entered Caroline Daniels’ house, she wasn’t expecting ghosts, but all the same, uninvited notions crowded in . . . There were urban legends you couldn’t help hearing, even if you tried never to listen. The surgeon’s patient turning out to be her own child. The fireman cracking open the concertinaed car, to find the severed head of his twin. Sometimes what you thought was somebody else’s accident was your own. This was what the legends meant, and Zoë couldn’t argue. Here, now, entering the house, it was as if Caroline’s death had been a pretext allowing Zoë this experience: the cataloguing of a stranger’s effects; sifting through the detritus of unexpected foreclosure. It was a reminder that you couldn’t be sure of any of your tomorrows. We’ll have to fix you up with an . . . Enough. But endings happened suddenly, and you couldn’t be blamed if they caught you on the hop. Death was never more than a heartbeat away.

  For someone who had not expected to die, Caroline Daniels had left little mess.

  A Klimt print hung in the hall; the one that looked like a particularly tragic woman seen through a broken stained-glass window. Other than that there was a small table, and, on the mat, some unopened pieces of mail. This was part of the life-process that carries on regardless, the way hair appears to grow in the coffin. You sicken, you die, and the junk mail continues. Zoë piled it on the table, and moved into the house.

  A good part of her day had been Caroline Daniels’ – Zoë had caught her train, traced her steps; stood in her office while Chinese patterns climbed the building opposite. And now she’d walked the same route through the gathering dusk; had used the same key, or a reasonable copy thereof, to let herself into the same house, and she wondered whether the feelings that assaulted her now had ever touched Caroline Daniels at day’s end: that for all the journeying, nowhere had been reached – that it was all just killing time. You got through one day so you could get through the next. Though Caroline Daniels, of course, had found love at the end. Or a reasonable copy thereof.

  Alan Talmadge. He too would have left traces here, from the minutely intimate (flakes of skin and shed hair; fingerprints; the oils from his body’s corners) to the everyday portable: clothing, bathroom kit; the odd book or CD – the stuff you owned which was useful or necessary, and could easily wind up at your girlfriend’s. He had been in the picture six months. To a forensic scientist, he might as well have chiselled his initials on to every available surface. But Zoë was no forensic scientist; she was looking for those larger, more obvious signs of man.

  This is how she searched:

  First, the kitchen. Some men cook. The kitchen is compact, designed for single living, and puts Zoë in mind of a room you might find on a ship. Even the electric kettle is half-sized. There is a fridge-freezer, a cooker, a washing machine. On the window ledge a potted plant is dying. A further door, its top half ruffled glass, leads to a back garden invisible for the moment. Zoë takes the cupboards first, and finds cups, glasses, plates and bowls in one and various tinned good
s in another: soups, pulses, fruit in syrup, all with labels facing outwards. The lower cupboards hold pans and electrical appliances; bags of flour and cereals; cleaning materials – bleaches, scourers; a plastic washing-up bowl. In the drawers are cutlery and cooking utensils; also binliners, clothes pegs and vacuum-cleaner bags. In the herb-and-spice rack on the wall, none of the small glass jars is less than half full. The pans she finds are dark blue; a matching set.

  A tea towel hangs from the handle of a drawer. In drying, it has creased into cardboard folds, which retain their shape when Zoë lifts it.

  Nothing about the kitchen reads Alan Talmadge rather than Caroline Daniels.

  And the same with the rest of the house. Zoë moved through it with the growing feeling that there was nothing to find, though without picking up any sense that this was deliberate. There were no dust-free absences in bathroom cabinets, or empty halves of bedroom drawers. It was simply that the house was Caroline’s alone. Presumably Talmadge had grazed its surfaces as he visited, but he’d left no substantial luggage in his wake. Perhaps he too had an obsessively neat apartment somewhere, where no trace of Caroline Daniels survived. And all she had to do was find it.

  It was a bit odd, though. No toothbrush, no spare shirt, no unfinished paperback by the bed. Except, just six months in, reading in bed wouldn’t have been a priority.

  In a mirrored cupboard in the bathroom, she found a healthy collection of face creams and ointments in tubes and jars and bottles. Most related to complexion and anti-ageing; most, too, were designer branded – Christian Dior, L’Oréal – but there were also supermarket labels, as if Caroline Daniels had been prepared to try anything. All were less than half-used, like the spice jars in the kitchen. But whereas there, Zoë had had the impression that Caroline had not been a woman to run out of anything, here, it felt more as if she’d still been searching for something that would work. It was impossible not to draw a connection between Alan Talmadge’s arrival in her life and this interest in reversing time’s damages. Zoë closed the cupboard door.

  From its mirror, she stared back at herself. This both was and was not the face she’d always had. Presumably, below its surface, other, older faces were waiting to make their appearance, and no amount of magic lotion would hold them at bay for ever. Most days, she felt quite strongly that this did not matter at all.