by Mick Herron
‘Why would you think that?’
‘You seemed mistrustful. I might have said some rubbish.’
‘Is that why we’re here? So you can correct my first impression?’
‘Do you fence?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘You seem keen on duelling.’
‘I’ve never fenced,’ said Zoë. ‘I’ve done a bit of shooting.’
This seemed to amuse him.
She said, ‘So what’s the real Jay Harper like? Sensitive, concerned, mildly feminist?’
‘I’m just me. I’m not pretending to be anybody else.’ He drank some of his beer. ‘What’s it like, being a private detective?’
‘It’s a job.’
‘You don’t give much away, do you?’
‘That kind of goes with the job.’
‘What are you working on at the moment?’
‘I’m looking for somebody.’
‘Have you found him yet?’
‘What makes you think it’s a man?’
‘Fifty-fifty shot.’ He had tucked The Independent down the side of the sofa, from where half of Charles Parsley Sturrock’s face grinned out at her; one of those sardonic, hand-it-to-the-jury expressions he was specializing in circa 1993. Jay noticed her noticing. ‘That happened near where I work,’ he said. ‘Sturrock’s execution.’
‘You think that’s what it was?’
He shrugged. ‘Thieves falling out. The money never turned up, did it?’
‘I was kept out of the loop on that one.’
‘Have you ever been married, Zoë?’
‘Seamless switch.’
‘I’m just trying to get to know you.’
And since when did that work, Zoë wondered. When you had to try. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve been married.’
It was like that moment in any siege, she thought later, when you yield the first stone to the marauders. Give up one tiny part of the city, even if it’s hurled in anger, and next thing you know, the towers are tumbling down. Was that how it happened with Victoria and Caroline? Had they thought they were succumbing to love? And did it mean it wasn’t love, just because Talmadge killed them? There was a big just in that sentence. Jay Harper was looking at her as if she were missing her train, and Zoë bent to her wine again, already regretting the admission, the trivial surrender. But let it go a voice inside suggested. She had no idea if this were her inner Zoë, or Joe, or Sarah, or what. It was a long time since anyone had been interested, and that was the truth. Maybe she was just ready: ready to let go.
‘Talk to me,’ he said.
And now she found herself deep in a dream of a white room equipped with sleek medical machinery. We’ll have to fix you up with an appointment something a bit like a tannoy said. A fixture rang like a telephone, and woke her. She was drenched, everywhere; her cotton tee limp as a dishrag. Still it rang. The luminous hands by her bedside quietly informed her it was five past two. Nothing good happened suddenly in the single-figure hours. The late-night phone call was the weapon of stalkers and other perverts. Her feet almost lost balance on the firm, level floor, as if she were still on dream legs, which couldn’t handle reality.
When she lifted the receiver the sudden silence was like something breaking. ‘Hello?’
She could hear breathing, but not aggressive breathing. A ragged swallowing of air, as if whoever had been crying.
‘Hello?’
But there was only breathing, and beyond that, a freighted emptiness which sounded like the world outside.
Zoë hung up and returned to bed. There was probably a reason the phone was on the far side of the room. Closing her eyes she saw the white space again; heard its equipment begin to tick. Something small and lost, not quite pain, shifted in her breast. She’d drunk two glasses of wine: fewer than she’d wanted, but more than was sensible. Talk to me Jay had said, and she almost had. Almost talked as if she knew him well; as if he were more than a stranger in a bar. You might call it charm. The phone rang.
‘Hello?’
This time, she heard rain – not a downpour, but a gentle pattering of water on glass. But when she peeled the curtain with her free hand, there it was: rain brushing the window here and now.
‘I’m hanging up.’ You son of a bitch.
‘I didn’t know.’
‘. . . Didn’t know what?’
‘I didn’t know he was dead.’
She’d been right; there was rain down the line, too. Wherever he was, it wasn’t far, and he was out in the rain, talking to her.
She pulled the phone as far as the cord allowed, and sat. Her own abandoned warmth rose from her bed. Drenched in sweat, she was cooling fast. ‘Where are you, Andrew?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
This was what Zoë wanted: teenage drama. ‘Look, I meant what I said. It wasn’t your fault. And I could have handled it more sensitively.’
‘I don’t deserve sensitive.’
‘Oh –’ She’d been about to tell him to fuck off. Decided that was not a good direction. ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Bit.’
Great.
‘He was my friend.’
‘Right.’
‘He was my only real friend.’
‘No, Andrew. Those people you were with the other day, they’re your real friends. They’re where you belong. Understand?’
‘If I’d stayed with him, he wouldn’t be dead.’
‘No. If you’d stayed with him, you’d both be dead. You’d not have lasted six months. Sooner or later, he’d have turned on you himself. That’s the way it is.’
‘He was my friend.’
‘He was a street punk, and he was using you. He didn’t get a fair crack at life, true. But lots of people don’t, and they’re not all thieves and muggers.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘I don’t pretend to. Understanding’s overrated. Most of us settle for surviving. You had a tough lesson in that. Take it to heart.’
‘Who killed him?’
She sighed. Teenagers were impossible to avoid, and she’d heard this about them: they had their own agenda. Don’t bother telling them anything they’re not listening to. They wait for a gap and plough right on. Sometimes without waiting for the gap.
‘Nobody killed him.’
‘He can’t have just died. He was twelve.’
‘There was an accident. He fell.’
The wind kicked up. More rain hit the window. Zoë was trying to remember where the nearest cigarettes were, and worrying they’d turn out to be under lock and key in the local newsagent’s.
‘Fell where?’
A great height, she almost said.
‘What, was it off some building or something?’
‘A tower block.’
‘He didn’t like heights.’
‘No. Well.’ Sensible aversion, in the circumstances. It wasn’t like falling from one had done him any good.
‘He wouldn’t go somewhere he’d be so high, that’s all.’
‘That kind of depends on his plans,’ she said.
She had remembered there were cigarettes on the kitchen sill; a mostly used packet that had gone through the wash some days ago. They were likely to be dry by now. Or likely to become so, once she set fire to them.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I lied. It wasn’t an accident.’ She amended that. ‘Nobody thinks it was an accident.’
She heard, or thought she heard, that same sudden squall on his side of the line. With a map and the wind-speed and a weathervane, she could pinpoint exactly where he was, if she’d timed the interval. An interesting exercise in futility.
‘He killed himself.’ Andrew’s voice was flat, morbid; he wasn’t asking a question.
She answered him anyway: ‘That’s what they’re saying.
Yes.’
‘Why would he do that?’
Zoë thought: Why wouldn’t he?
‘He had his whole life in front of
him.’
‘There are those who’d call that reason enough,’ said Zoë. ‘He’d used up a lot of options.’
‘I spoke to him.’
‘Spoke to him when?’
‘He used to call me. Not often. Every six months or so?’
‘And say what?’
‘He wanted money.’
Of course he wanted money. ‘Did you send him any?’
‘He said he’d come looking if I didn’t. Said he could fuck me up no trouble.’
‘And this was your friend?’
‘You were right. I’d not have lasted ten minutes without him. Not on the streets of the city.’
‘Go home, Andrew. Go to bed. Maybe you’re right to feel guilty, I don’t know. But get over it, okay? Go home, go to bed. Get on with your life.’
‘Last time, he wasn’t asking for money.’
I really don’t care any more, she thought.
‘He said he was quids in. If I’d stuck with him, I’d really have it made.’
‘Andrew? He was a con-artist. No. He was a street thug. He was hoping to be a con-artist.’
Andrew, formerly Dig, said nothing.
‘Andrew?’
There was more rain, but it was hitting her bedroom window, that was all: in her ear was the dial tone. Just for one moment – something to do with the rain, with the dark; with the day she’d had and what she’d learned – it was the sound of every sundered relationship she’d ever known.
After a while, she got back into bed.
iv
These are the things he knows he knows: what she drinks, what she wears, how she moves. And these are the things he thinks he knows: that she grieves after dark, and carries sorrow whose weight sometimes catches her by surprise – when no one’s looking, her mask slips, to reveal the effort, the frank outrage, of a woman who’s learning that she’s not equal to everything life can throw. Though what she’s yet to learn too is that there’s never no one looking.
He has fixed a tracking device to the underside of her car.
And naturally, he has chased her down the web. She doesn’t enter chatrooms or post mad diatribes, but she’s a user (unlike Victoria) so there are footprints to be found. Besides, she’s a feature. Once, she killed a man. The details are fuzzy – the man was a neo-Nazi, an undercover policeman or a rogue government agent, depending on your source – but the fact is cold and blunt as paving slab: she took a life. What was once warm muscle and cardiac machinery, she turned to meat and bone. This was almost something they had in common, though the circumstances were different.
(He had wooed and won Victoria because her whole life cried out for it. It was that simple, and started by accident. Overcome by the need for shoes while far from home, he had been struck by the woman serving; by her air of . . . disappointment. It was no big thing to strike up conversation. What many people don’t understand is that lives are not locked boxes, but open easily to the right touch. He wooed and won her because that was what she wanted. And it made him happy and proud that for the last few months of her life, Victoria had known what it was to love and be loved. He had opened her ears to the music. Though when push came to shove, it ended, of course.)
. . . And these are the things he knows she knows: that he exists; that he is out here in the world. She doesn’t know his name. It was Alan Talmadge she was looking for in Caroline’s house, and Alan Talmadge no longer existed, just as Bryan Carter – whom Victoria loved – was no more either; both vanishing like a quick fade once their work was done. (He knows she knows about Bryan Carter, because he knows she went to Wallingford. He has fixed a tracking device to the underside of her car.) This makes life interesting. He would shy from the word challenge. This is not about conquest. It’s about love; about bringing love where it’s needed, to the lives of those who lack it.
(Once, walking by the river – on a cold evening, towards the end of their time together – Caroline had turned on him suddenly. You talk about love, she said. You say you love me. But what does that mean? What does love mean?
Nothing, he told her.
And even in the dark he saw her eyes come over weepy, as if, for all the harshness of her tone, she’d been looking for reaffirmation; for him to insist again that it was true, that he was true, that love could flourish. Even here. Even now. His blunt rejection robbed her of what she’d started to believe, and seeing that belief made him glad, although it meant their time was coming to an end.
In tennis, he said.
Tennis?
In tennis. Love. It means nothing.
But here and now, he added, it means us.
And he felt, in their linked fingers, a sigh pass through her like the ghost of sex.)
. . . These are the things he thinks she knows: that what she is lacking, he can give her. That that’s why she’s looking for him. And though she doesn’t know it yet, she’s found him now, or he’s found her. When push comes to shove, the difference barely matters.
In love, he’s found, push always comes to shove.
Chapter Four
Never no one looking
i
When the first thing you noticed in the morning was the weather, it set the tone for the day ahead. Monday morning was blue skies, but Zoë traced a stiff wind in the limbs of next door’s trees, and knew clouds might turn up out of nowhere. Spring days could turn to autumn. The lift your heart got might be the kind that dropped you at the next exit.
Sunday, she’d written to Amory Grayling, a report which didn’t mention Victoria Ingalls. It did, though, outline Zoë’s reasons for thinking ‘Alan Talmadge’ an assumed name. He was married, Zoë concluded, leaving Grayling to draw what he wanted from this – that people are not framed for good behaviour; that where men love they also lie, and that some men lie and call it love. These mild conclusions would be based on incomplete knowledge, but Grayling didn’t want to learn that Caroline had been pushed under that train. By this stage, he might no longer even want to find Talmadge – a guilty adulterer now; not a bereaved lover – but that was barely relevant. Zoë had made her own connections, to Caroline, to Victoria, and would keep pushing doors, regardless of what lay behind them.
When Bob Poland called, Monday morning, she’d been about to use the phone herself.
‘What did you say to Connor the other night?’
For a moment, she couldn’t remember who Connor was, let alone what she’d said to him when. ‘Why?’
‘He called me. He wants to know about you.’
‘Wants to know what?’
‘Where are you?’
Which was Poland asking, not Connor.
She was halfway into town – she had things to do – but she was curious as to what Tom Connor wanted. It was probably kneejerk – when you asked a policeman questions, you were by definition wasting police time. But it was better, too, to know what Poland’s answers had been.
He was drinking an americano in a café in the covered market.
‘Why were you interested in this kid?’
‘Hi, Bob.’
‘What was his name? Deepling?’
‘I’ll have the same. Thanks.’
He gave her a stare, but went to fetch it. Zoë watched him join the short queue, which was not quite short enough to forestall his impatience: she read this in the tightening of his shoulder muscles; in the thrumming of his fingers on his thigh. There was a violence in Bob Poland she’d never seen in action, and doubted she would. This would be all it amounted to: an annoyance with people in his way; an epithet spat at those unlikely to spit back. All the boring qualities of cowardice. Not that she underestimated this. When cowardice came to the boil, it could burn those who strayed too close. Poland liked to hear about it too: violence. He’d asked her more than once about shooting that man. Most people tiptoed round it: it was the elephant in the kitchen, the one nobody mentioned. But Poland wanted to know. He wanted to imagine the trigger, and what was happening at the other end. For this, among countless othe
r reasons, she never answered.
And besides, some experiences rendered you ineligible to discuss them. Your point of view became irrelevant: it was like trying to find magnetic north while standing at the pole. Evel Knievel was once asked what it was like, being in a coma. ‘How would I know?’ he’d replied. ‘I was in a fucking coma.’
When Poland returned she said, ‘His name was Wensley Deepman.’
‘Whatever. Kid took a header off the fortieth floor, right? Connor was wondering what made him important, on account of he was this half-caste punk looking at life indoors. What could I say? I don’t know what you’re up to.’
‘Because it’s not your business.’
‘That’s what I’m getting at. You want me onside, Zoë, you’ve got to keep me informed.’
‘What did you tell him?’
He said, ‘I’m a liaison officer, or did you forget? What’s it gunna look like I start telling him lies? You think I’d be trusted tomorrow?’
‘You think you’re trusted today?’
‘Your mouth’ll get you in trouble, Zoë. Sooner or later.’
‘I’d hate to think you were threatening me, Bob.’
Instead of answering, he drank his coffee. It occurred to her, she’d not seen him without alcohol to hand before.
Then he said, ‘Where’s this happening, anyway, somewhere in the Smoke? How come you’re involved?’
‘Nobody calls it the Smoke, Bob. Not in about fifty years.’
He used the fuck-off button on that. ‘So where’s the money?’
‘There is none.’
‘How’s that work?’
‘I’m not being paid, Bob. It was just . . .’ It was what? She could barely name it. ‘It was something happened a long time ago. I owe it to him.’
‘How can you owe a kid?’
‘I’d explain that, but I only talk human.’
‘Jesus.’ He picked up his cup, but it was empty. He put it down. ‘He wasn’t yours, was he?’
‘Wensley?’
‘He was half black, Connor said. Black your type?’
She looked at him. He smiled without it touching his eyes. ‘That would cover some ground, wouldn’t it? Zoë Boehm with a little lost boy. Explain why life’s so tragic.’