No One Will Hear (Sam Williams Book 2)

by Joel Hames

  The phone rang, and it was Brooks-Powell on the other end. As if he’d known I was thinking about him, about our mutual past. And how had he even got my number?

  “Listen, Williams,” he said. That was the preamble. Listen. “I’ve been thinking. Lizzy was right.”

  I wondered what he was referring to. Surely not her obsession with her mother and the memoirs? I kept my mouth shut and let him continue.

  “I’m not going to pretend we haven’t had our difficulties, Williams. But we need to put that behind us. So I was wondering whether you’d like to come to dinner tomorrow night.”

  That was unexpected. I waited, again, and he came back with “Williams? Are you there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m here. Yes. That’d be lovely.”

  That’d be lovely? What was I thinking? Who was I kidding?

  “Bring your wife,” he added, and before I could think I’d replied.

  “My girlfriend. We’re not married.”

  “Fine. Bring your girlfriend. We’re in Kensington. I’ll text you the address. Come around seven if you can.”

  After I’d hung up I found myself listening to that short closing speech, with its fine and its bring your girlfriend and its we’re in Kensington, and hunting down traces of that superior Brooks-Powell I’d so detested. He was still there, I decided, for all the eye-rolling I’d found so amusing. I turned on the television – more news, it seemed the whole world was just one sad tale after another – and wondered what the following night would bring. Claire walked in – showered but back in her dressing gown – and I was about to tell her about our dinner date when she marched up to the television and turned it off. She turned to me and said “How can you think with all this bloody noise?” and strode straight back into the bedroom.

  All this bloody noise, I thought. You could write those words on my gravestone. As if on cue, the phone rang again.

  “Hello?” I said, expecting another Ukrainian or news editor or bastard.

  “Hello, Sam,” came the reply, and I felt the breath catch in my throat.

  I hadn’t heard that voice for a long time. I found my mind racing ahead of me, searching for some other voice, some similar voice, anyone it could be but the person I knew it was. I didn’t speak.

  “Sam?” he continued. “It’s Edward. Edward Trawden. I think you and I should have a chat.”

  10: How The Other Half Live

  “HELLO, TRAWDEN,” I replied. It felt inadequate, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “How have you been, Sam?”

  There was a hint of concern in his voice. Was it genuine? I remembered him, in the pub, celebrating his release, “Here’s to Robbie Evans,” a twisted little grin on his narrow mouth, but he’d been in prison for twenty years by then. For all I knew he’d been a sweet, mild-mannered gentleman before he’d gone in; for all I knew, the last decade outside had turned him back into one. He’d asked me a question, I realised, and I hadn’t answered.

  “Not so bad. You?”

  “Excellent. Just excellent.”

  Had I detested Trawden the way I remembered it, or was that just something that had been added after I’d seen the hell the Grimshaws were in? And it wasn’t even Trawden who’d put them there. There was that toast in the pub, that was real, I could hear the words as if he were whispering them in my ear right now, but he had all the reason in the world to think of himself back then. And perhaps, I reasoned, he’d been toasting Evans’ confession. Not the murder. I cast my mind back to earlier meetings with him, the interviews, the preparation. He’d been pleasant enough then, I thought.

  He was waiting for me to say something.

  “So what brings you to my phone?” I asked, with a sunniness I wasn’t feeling.

  “Well, I think you know that, don’t you?”

  I waited for him to go on. I hadn’t worked out how I felt about him, but I wasn’t going to make the conversation easy.

  “It’s Elizabeth, Sam. Elizabeth Maurier. The late. Your ex-boss. My redeemer. Turns out we’re in the same boat, you and I.”

  “Eh?”

  I’d decided to let him talk, to draw out the silences and see where they led, but the word slipped out before I could stop it.

  “Your good friend and mine. Detective Inspector Martins. Has that charming lady been trying to make things difficult for you?”

  I wondered how he knew, where he got his information, but this time I managed to stop my tongue before it gave me away. I waited. Trawden didn’t seem the slightest bit put out by my reticence.

  “Well, Sam, I gather she has been. I gather she wanted to talk to you. About various calls you’d received from la grande dame? I’m in the same position. A few calls from her ladyship and suddenly I’m a person of interest. The interest, thankfully, didn’t last long, and I presume the case is similar for your good self, but it reminded me, Sam. It reminded me of you. Of what you did for me.”

  Had he spoken like that in the past? All those linguistic trills, those verbal twists and turns? Had he been a client now, or a witness, I’d have been trying to find something underneath all that cleverness, the darkness the dazzle was meant to obscure, but some people, I knew, just spoke like that. Perhaps Trawden was one of them. Perhaps he was someone who adapted. Another trick he’d have learned inside. Be the man you need to be at the time. Play to your audience.

  “Anyway, Sam, I think you should come to see me. There’s someone I’d like you to meet. I think you’ll find him interesting. He might even be able to help you find some work.”

  Trawden was an unusual character, that was undeniable. And he wanted me to meet someone interesting, but he wasn’t saying who. I was intrigued, so much so that I forgot to tell him I didn’t need his help.

  “OK,” I said. “When and where?”

  “This afternoon. I’ll send a taxi for you. Don’t worry, I’ve got your address.”

  And my phone number, I thought. It seemed half the world had my phone number today. Claire was right. There was too much bloody noise.

  By the time Trawden’s taxi arrived I’d at least managed a rapprochement with Claire. And more. She emerged from the bedroom dressed – in yesterday’s clothes, I noticed, but that was an improvement on the dressing gown – and walked purposefully towards the sofa, where I sat waiting for whatever inexplicable onslaught she was about to deliver. Instead she smiled, leaned in and kissed me, and even muttered “sorry” on the way back up. I didn’t know what she was apologising for, really, or what had prompted the change of mood and how long it would last, so I sat quietly and smiled back at her as she pottered about the kitchen in silence.

  “Are you OK?” I said, as she pushed a mug of coffee into my hand and sat down beside me, her head resting lightly on my shoulder.

  “I’m fine. Drank a bit too much. Sorry about earlier. Can’t blame you for the headache. You weren’t even here.”

  I laughed, and then remembered what had happened while she’d been sleeping. “Brooks-Powell called.”

  She sat up sharply and looked into my eyes, incredulous.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Invited us to dinner tomorrow night.”

  “Think he’s planning on poisoning us?”

  This was the old Claire. She was back. Distance. The guaranteed cure for all ills. I let out a slow breath of relief and shrugged.

  “There are easier ways to get rid of me,” I said. “He lives in Kensington. He was at pains to point that out. I said yes, but I can always cancel if you don’t fancy it.”

  She frowned, that deep, furrowed face of concentration I’d fallen in love with months ago, and pushed a stray blonde strand away from her face.

  “Don’t do that. I’ve always wanted to dine with the devil. Bring the long spoons.”

  I laughed, and she leaned in and kissed me again. As I lifted my face away she grabbed my head and pulled me back in, and the weight of all those days of tension seemed to lift so suddenly I found myself
wondering whether it had been there at all. Even the Christmas tree seemed brighter, somehow – spritely and impish rather than forlorn and prematurely withered. She took my hand and guided it to her breast, and the three hours it had taken her to finally get dressed were undone in seconds.

  I wasn’t complaining.

  I was still putting on my trousers when the buzzer sounded and I was informed, in an unexpectedly refined accent, that my car had arrived. I cast a long look back at Claire, sprawled naked on the sofa with a look on her face that suggested the taxi had interrupted what would have been an afternoon to remember, and cursed Trawden’s timing.

  The accent wasn’t the only surprise. Instead of the dirty local cab I’d been expecting, there was a gleaming Mercedes and a grey-haired, middle-aged gentleman in a dark uniform beside it opening the door for me and announcing “Your car, sir.” It had been a while since anyone had called me sir. The Mercedes was clean inside, with a faint aroma of whisky and cigar smoke, which was nice, but still not as nice as the sofa and its occupant upstairs.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, as we steered in cocooned silence around Highbury Corner and towards the heart of London.

  “Pall Mall, sir,” came the reply. “It shouldn’t take too long.”

  “That’s nice. Any chance you can lose the prick behind?”

  I’d noticed him as we pulled away from the kerb, Rich bloody Hanover on his tiny bloody bike. He was wearing a helmet so I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was him and I hoped there was a bruise or two on it.

  “I wouldn’t worry, sir. He won’t be getting in where we’re headed.”

  I wondered where that might be, what was on Pall Mall and why Trawden would choose to meet me there. It didn’t seem like his sort of place. But I was learning new things about lots of people these days, or at least learning there were things about them I’d never have suspected. Perhaps Trawden was moving up in the world. Perhaps he’d been there a while.

  I sat back in silence and watched London slide by. It was raining, the streets teeming with umbrellas and heavy coats, the sky an unbroken greyish white that cast the city into a sombre grandeur somehow magnified by the gentle hum of the engine. This, I recalled, was how Elizabeth Maurier had liked to travel; she had cars enough, and a valid licence, but for journeys outside London she had always preferred to let someone else do the driving. Journeys to the families of clients in Milton Keynes council estates that looked like war zones. Journeys to the fringes of the city where owl-eyed barristers sat at home with great piles of paper and awaited their audience with the great lady. Journeys to her Oxfordshire home, where I’d once been picked up from the village railway station in a slender bullet of a car with Elizabeth beckoning from the back seat, smiling in a black dress bought specifically for the occasion.

  We drew to a halt outside a palatial building at the corner of Pall Mall and one of its lesser tributaries. The door opened beside me and there was Trawden, standing and smiling at me.

  “Sam!” he cried. “It’s been too long.”

  I took a few seconds longer to extricate my limbs from the car than I really needed, staring all the while at the man in front of me. He’d aged, certainly, but not by much; he seemed taller and somehow grander than he had when I’d last seen him, although this was probably down to the suit and tie he was wearing. The hair was grey – I tried to remember if it had been grey ten years ago, but I couldn’t quite picture the detail. The smile was slightly lop-sided, lifting half of his face and leaving the rest behind as if it were still contemplating its mood and didn’t yet want to commit to an expression.

  He held out a hand; I took it and saw he was looking at me and shaking his head.

  “This won’t do,” he said, and walked around the car to exchange a few words with the driver. The driver nodded and produced a small suitcase from the seat beside him, to Trawden’s obvious relief.

  “Here,” said Trawden. “It’s not normally the done thing, but you can change in the car. They won’t let you in wearing denim.”

  In where? I thought, as I opened the case and found myself gazing upon a full set of clothes – suit, shirt, tie. There were two pairs of identical shoes in different sizes. I wondered for a moment what I was letting myself in for, whether I should allow myself to be dressed by a man towards whom my feelings were ambivalent at best, but then I remembered the intriguing someone I was to meet, and the vague promise of work. I retreated back into the cocoon and emerged five minute later holding a small black bag with my own clothes in it, and attired more suitably for wherever it was we were going. As I closed the car door and glanced up I locked eyes with Hanover on the other side of the street. The helmet was gone. He stood there, phone in his hand with the camera aimed at me, at us, Sam Williams and Edward Trawden dressed to the nines outside a Mercedes on Pall Mall. I decided I didn’t care.

  “The Reform Club,” announced Trawden, looking me up and down with notably more appreciation than he had shown first time round. “Thank you, Collins, you can go now.”

  With that the driver nodded and merged seamlessly into the traffic. Trawden took my arm – I hesitated at the contact, but put up no resistance – and led me up a set of stone steps to an impressive black door guarded by a smiling, uniformed gentleman with a paunch and the face of a heavy drinker.

  “Mr Trawden, sir. Please come through. Lord Blennard is waiting for you and your guest in the Coffee Room.”

  Trawden stopped and moved to the side, waiting for me to step in front of him, but I was frozen to the spot.

  Blennard. I’d assumed Trawden was introducing me to a dodgy cop or a friend in a spot of bother, and if the Reform Club was an unlikely setting for that, it was an unlikely setting for anything involving me or Trawden or pretty much anyone I knew. But Lord Blennard made sense.

  Charlie Blennard. I’d never met the man, of course, but his name had been tossed around the office at Mauriers like loose change. Charlie says he doesn’t think it’ll get through the first reading. Charlie has a fascinating line on the Home Secretary. I’m off to see Charlie for lunch, so don’t expect me back before tomorrow, the last with a sly little wink that had me wondering on more than one occasion whether there was more to Elizabeth’s relationship with the old politician than wine and reminiscence. Charlie, Lord Blennard of Holden. The Man Who Would Be King. I roused my limbs and stepped inside, looking back over my shoulder to see Rich Hanover standing at the bottom of the steps and realising that was as far as he was going to get.

  The Coffee Room was more than the name suggested. A vast expanse of marble, pillars like elephants’ legs supporting the gallery, burgundy leather as far as the eye could see. A Christmas tree that looked as if it had been lifted whole from some ancient forest towered over an undergrowth of tables and chairs. Trawden’s hand was at my back, steering me gently towards a table at the far end of the room with a single occupant. I’d have recognised that face anywhere.

  And then I was in front of him and shaking his hand. He’d hauled himself out of his leather chair as we approached, and on his feet he was taller than I’d expected, lean, a broad smile on a broad, lightly-lined face, a sense of huge power and energy compressed into a human form.

  “Sam Williams? Delighted to meet you at last. Glad Collins got you here in one piece.”

  “Me too,” I replied, an adequate response to both his comments. “Nice place you’ve got here.” He gave a quiet chuckle as he turned his attention to Trawden. Before I knew it we were seated and a black-clad waiter had pressed a menu into my hand – more burgundy leather.

  “I hope you haven’t eaten, Sam,” said Blennard. “The food here is quite excellent, as Edward will no doubt attest.”

  Trawden nodded. I shrugged. I’d bolted a microwave chicken chow mein at eleven in lieu of breakfast. A decent meal wouldn’t kill me. Blennard was still smiling at me, and now we were all seated and he was no longer towering a foot over my head, there was so much in that smile I hadn’t seen. A sense of i
nclusion, comradeship. And a depth, too, in those dark brown eyes – I tended not to notice eyes, particularly not the eyes of octogenarians, but there was something compelling about Blennard.

  He’d been a powerful man, at one time. A key member of that select little coterie that had been mentored and drilled by Elizabeth’s father. A handful of cabinet positions, but never any of the major ones; Blennard had a tendency not to toe the line on the big calls, the foreign wars, the clampdowns on immigration, the sort of thing that endeared him to Elizabeth Maurier and the rose-tinted dreamers who frequented the Reform, I assumed. He’d resigned from his post on points of principle on more than one occasion. And, it suddenly struck me, he’d been one of those rare voices that championed Trawden. He’d probably brought the case to Elizabeth’s door. There was one connection brought into the light, at least.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why you’re here,” he said as I flicked through the menu.

  “Well, it’s no Kensal Kebabs, but it’ll do.” He chuckled again, and I continued, keen to get past the laughter and to the point. “You were a friend of Elizabeth’s. I don’t mean to be rude, but you could have summoned me any time. You’ve picked now, after she’s died – been killed, I should say. After I’ve been appointed to work on her memoirs. That’s supposed to be confidential, but I can’t believe you wouldn’t know it already. Anyway. That’s why.”

  He nodded.

  “Indeed. I knew her for most of her life, you know. Remarkable woman.”

  Remarkable woman. Dr Shapiro had said the same thing. And it was true, I supposed. She had been. And now she was dead, and nobody, it seemed, wanted to leave her alone.

  “Yes,” continued Blennard, although nobody had said anything for him to agree with. “Yes, I remember her as a child, as a teenager, I remember when she started that firm and the years building it into the extraordinary institution it became.”