No One Will Hear (Sam Williams Book 2)

by Joel Hames

  We moved into the dining room, Brooks-Powell, Claire and I. Melanie was in the kitchen. There were, I realised, no Christmas decorations. Each to their own.

  “Has she cooked dinner, then?” I asked, unable to mask my surprise.

  “Not just a pretty face,” he replied, with a grin. “Not just a rich one, either. Melanie won’t be long. She plans everything out to the second. Or at least, she tries to.”

  The grin had faded by the time he’d finished talking and we’d taken our seats. A vast oak table in a vast oak-panelled room with crystal in the chandeliers and crystal glasses and, for all I knew, crystals hidden in whatever it was Melanie was about to serve us. Claire sat opposite Brooks-Powell. I was beside her, opposite Melanie’s empty chair. Between us we occupied no more than a quarter of the table.

  A moment’s silence followed, broken by Claire’s “You have a beautiful house, you know.” She leaned forward as she spoke, a hint of breathlessness to her voice, and I realised with a start that she was flirting with him. With him. With David Brooks-Powell. While he shrugged and thanked her, I took a moment to work out how I felt about that.

  Fine. I felt absolutely fine. For all the difficulties we’d been going through lately, for all the confusion I’d felt over her long conversation and planned drink with Maloney, jealousy wasn’t an issue. She could flirt all she liked.

  Melanie entered the room with two plates and a smile, which vanished as she spotted the near-empty wine bottle in the middle of the table.

  “More wine, David,” she snapped, and returned to the kitchen. Brooks-Powell shook his head, slowly, and strolled off in the other direction. They came back at the same time, more plates and another bottle. Claire picked up her glass the moment it was filled and took a long gulp. Anything, I supposed, to take the edge off the atmosphere. I was rather enjoying that edge. Not that I objected to Brooks-Powell’s expensive wine, either.

  The starter was home-made crab tortellini, and as we settled in and started eating – it was good, a lot better than quails’ eggs – the edge began to fade. Brooks-Powell asked Claire about her journalism and she answered, guardedly at first, but slowly warming to her theme until the full tale of the murdered girls spilled out. I quizzed Melanie on the state of the economy and pretended to understand more than a tenth of what she said. I glanced over to Brooks-Powell as his wife was telling me about the long-term implications of the recent OPEC quota agreement, and Claire was going into fine detail on Yelena’s newly-discovered background. He was nodding and frowning in all the right places, inserting questions and prompts that went beyond the usual please, go on. I wondered whether I was doing as good a job of feigning interest as he was.

  But even murder and oil pall after a while. The conversation waned before the tortellini, and we were left with the tinkle of cutlery and the noise of a piano in the background. I hadn’t noticed the music until that point; the speakers were invisible, no doubt built into the walls.

  “Rachmaninov,” said Melanie, as if reading my mind. “I’m a huge fan. This is Richter’s famous 1959 performance of the second concerto.”

  The strings had swept in. I wasn’t familiar with the second concerto. Or any of the other concertos, for that matter. I nodded, much as I’d been nodding at OPEC. It was interesting music. Intense. Certainly not relaxing. We had fallen silent again, the four of us, each concentrating or pretending to concentrate on what we were hearing. I picked up my fork and it occurred to me that eating now, at this moment, when the music was all, might perhaps be an unforgiveable faux pas. It also occurred to me that I didn’t care.

  Brooks-Powell stole my thunder. I’d been watching him, as we were listening in silence, as I’d prepared to dive back into the tortellini, no matter the consequences. He’d tuned his expression neatly into Claire’s history of the dead girls, a light, interested frown gracing his brow, but now those lines had deepened and there was nothing light or interested about them.

  “For Christ’s sake, Melanie,” he said, and then he noticed us all staring at him and hastily rearranged his features into a smile. “Rachmaninov? For dinner? Can’t we have something a little lighter?”

  The smile wasn’t fooling any of us. Melanie’s voice was tight as she replied, tight and high, as though it were on the verge of shattering.

  “Certainly, dear. What would you prefer? Something we can all join in? Some musical theatre, perhaps?”

  I set down my fork. Claire picked up her glass, drained it again, reached for the bottle and poured herself another. Brooks-Powell just sat there, the smile still in place, staring at his wife. This went on for fifteen, maybe twenty seconds, and then Melanie shook her head and walked over to a cabinet in the corner of the room. A moment later Rachmaninov abruptly ceased, to be replaced by the more familiar tones of Jarvis Cocker.

  The remaining tortellini were consumed; the conversation resumed, Claire taking the initiative by reminiscing over her university days, listening to Pulp in pubs and clubs and not remembering any of the night before the morning after. I sensed Brooks-Powell would have a clearer memory of his own misdemeanours, but Melanie jumped whole-heartedly into the subject with a tale or two of her own. Nothing outrageous; nothing too risqué; just enough to soften her in my mind. We’d all been young once, I thought. Well, all except her husband.

  I pondered on that as Melanie cleared the plates away and returned with fresh ones piled high with boeuf bourguignon that smelled of thick, meaty heaven, and Brooks-Powell disappeared in search of a “decent” red, and Claire smiled at me and dragged her fingernails across the side of my thigh. She was definitely drunk, now, and in a good mood, but it was Brooks-Powell I was thinking about. He was unhappy, I realised. Perhaps he’d always been unhappy. But this marriage – I’d been watching it for less than two hours and it didn’t make for pleasant viewing. I doubted living it would be any nicer.

  The food tasted as good as it smelled, and Brooks-Powell’s red was more than decent, even I could tell that. But ten minutes into the main course Claire spilled a glass of it down her jumper and Melanie leapt from her table in horror, staring at her husband with a venom that suggested he had poisoned a guest rather than merely furnishing one with the means to stain a jumper.

  After a minute’s ineffectual dabbing, her expression changed. Mournful, now, and sympathetic; the demise of a pet, perhaps; the death knell on a promising career.

  “Let me see if I’ve got something you can wear,” she said, and the two of them disappeared from the room, leaving me alone with Brooks-Powell.

  13: Locusts

  WE SAT THERE, the two of us, diagonally opposite from one another, and I found myself unable to suppress a smile. He was looking at his plate, but then he glanced up and saw me, and frowned, and asked me what I was grinning about.

  I shrugged. There was no reason to lie.

  “If anyone had told me a month ago that I’d be sitting in David Brooks-Powell’s house having dinner with him, I’d have told them they were mad. And now look at us.”

  He gave a short laugh and lifted his glass.

  “Fair point, Williams. Fair point.”

  He stood to top up my wine, and when he sat down again it was in his wife’s place, opposite me.

  “So what do you think of all this?” he asked.

  It could have been anything, but I knew what he was talking about. Elizabeth Maurier. Lizzy Maurier. The past waking and swarming into the present. I remembered something about locusts; how they’d disappear, sleeping or living underground for years or even decades, and then suddenly return like a plague, all at once, in their millions. Buried, but not dead. I told Brooks-Powell, and he nodded and said “Cicadas.”

  “What?”

  “Cicadas, not locusts. But I take your point. I tried to put it all behind me too, you know. Not just last year. But further back. The things I did. The kind of person I was. I know you won’t believe me, but I’m not the same man. Haven’t been for years.”

  He was right; I didn’t
believe him. But it was the closest thing to an apology I was ever likely to get from David Brooks-Powell, so I wasn’t dismissing it entirely. I found myself nodding with a rueful smile, and wondering what things he was referring to, whether he meant me, whether he regretted it, whether it kept him awake at night. I doubted it.

  But still. He was trying to be honest, and I’d had a glass or two of wine. Without warning the desire to reciprocate in some way swept through me, so fiercely and so unexpectedly that it felt as though something had happened outside my mind, as though someone had entered the room and spoken my thoughts aloud.

  We were, I remembered, supposed to be working together. It was time for a leap of faith.

  “Can you keep something to yourself?” I said, and he nodded, and then checked the nod. “It has to stay between us, David.”

  I’d said his first name without thinking, and saw his eyebrows slide upwards in ill-concealed surprise.

  “Whatever it is, I have to tell my wife, Sam.” He smiled. “There are no secrets between us.”

  I thought perhaps there should be. However their relationship worked, it didn’t seem to be working well. But that was their business, and what I’d been planning on telling him was something I’d already told Claire, possibly against the instructions of DC Colman. If I couldn’t trust an evil lawyer and his fund manager wife, who could I trust?

  Claire and Melanie bounded into the room a moment later. Claire was still wearing the jumper, but the stain had disappeared. I stared at her, at it, at where it had been, for a full thirty seconds before the sound of giggling drew my gaze back up.

  “I told you he’d be confused,” said Claire.

  “I had the same top,” explained Melanie. I must have let my surprise show, because she laughed again and went on. “I don’t always wear little black dresses, Sam.”

  Brooks-Powell stood and returned to his place; we finished our food – outstanding to the last forkful – and I offered to help clear up.

  “Nonsense,” said Brooks-Powell, and carried everything away himself. I wondered whether I ought to reassess them, David and Melanie, what with the comparatively normal clothing and the home-cooked food and David Brooks-Powell on washing-up duty. But then I remembered that edge. Perhaps they’d just had a row. Perhaps there was something deeper.

  When he’d returned from the kitchen I decided it was time for that leap of faith, and told them about DI Martins’ board. I told it straight, very matter-of-fact, nothing inessential, but the deaths and the wounds and the organs and the blood, they were, I thought, essential, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit I rather enjoyed the open mouths and gasps the tale drew forth. When I finished there was a moment’s silence, and then Melanie asked me to go through the words and the wounds again.

  I counted them off on my fingers. Tongue, no one will hear. Eyes, no one will see. Nose, no one will smell. Fingers, no one will touch. Even without the photographic memory, I wouldn’t be forgetting that little list. I looked back up at Melanie, expecting more shock and disgust, but instead she was frowning in thought. Claire and Brooks-Powell were silent.

  “It doesn’t work,” said Melanie, finally, and we all turned to look at her.

  “What doesn’t work?” I asked.

  “The words. They don’t fit. Eyes, see. Nose, smell. Touch, fingers. They all go together. Eyes are the organ of sight. Nose is the organ of smell. Fingers are the organ of touch.”

  “Skin’s the organ of touch, dear,” interrupted Brooks-Powell, and his wife shook her head at him impatiently.

  “Well we should be grateful he didn’t skin that one, then. But fingers will do. They do touch, right? They feel. They’re part of the organ.”

  Claire, who’d remained silent, was suddenly nodding. “Yes, yes. I see it,” she said. I looked at Brooks-Powell and he looked back at me, mirroring my own blankness.

  “Don’t you get it?” continued Melanie, with a hint of impatience. “For no one will hear he should have cut off her ears.”

  “Or she,” said David, but this time she ignored him entirely.

  “Or, if the point was cutting out the tongue, he should have written no one will taste. I mean, that’s what the tongue does, right? Taste?”

  At that, I felt Claire’s hand on my leg again and remembered she was drunk. I was glad all the talk of severed organs hadn’t dampened her mood. Melanie was still talking.

  “It’s almost like he’s trying to trick us. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” nodded Claire, excitedly, her fingers still lightly tracing up and down my thigh. “Yes, that’s it. It does feel like that.” She gave a sharp and sudden squeeze and I held back a gasp. “David, would you agree?”

  Brooks-Powell merely nodded, and then changed the subject entirely.

  “So how was your dinner with Lizzy?” he asked, turning towards me. “I overheard her asking you, at her mother’s place.”

  “You wouldn’t have wanted to be there, believe me,” I replied, and explained everything that had happened, or almost everything. That “Put me to bed” stayed firmly under wraps. Brooks-Powell remembered the poetry, too.

  “Awful, wasn’t it? I remember she made me read one of them, once. Nonsense. I’ve read a lot of pretentious crap in my time but her stuff took the biscuit.”

  I couldn’t disagree.

  “Thing is, that’s what she’s saying herself, now,” I continued. “But I don’t think she believes it. I think she’s forcing herself to accept it because otherwise she has to admit her mother made her give up something she loved. And it’s all the same thing, she has to pretend her mother’s some kind of god, because if she doesn’t and there’s any suggestion the great Elizabeth Maurier could have been wrong about anything, then perhaps Lizzy shouldn’t have given up poetry, and perhaps she shouldn’t have become an academic, and perhaps she’s wasted the last ten, fifteen years of her life.”

  Brooks-Powell nodded, then grinned and said “But she was right about the poetry.”

  I grinned back.

  We span around the topic, Brooks-Powell and I, with Claire and Melanie silent for the most part but occasionally dropping a flash of insight into the conversation. We span carefully, though; all the leaps of faith in the world couldn’t make Elizabeth Maurier and her daughter a comfortable subject for the two of us. There were too many mines to avoid. I told them about the stew and the quails’ eggs, my realisation that Lizzy had never really left home, the boxes, the grief circle – that produced a guffaw from Brooks-Powell which provoked its own reproving glare from his wife. Brooks-Powell wondered aloud whether there might be something Platonic in Lizzy’s relationship with her mother, whether Lizzy was nothing but the shadow Elizabeth had projected onto the wall of a cave, a blurred, insubstantial version of the real thing. I nodded sagely, as if I knew what he were talking about, and brought up Connor, the mysterious entry in the mysterious diary that no one seemed to know anything about. I owned up to taking Lizzy’s files home and what I’d found while going through them, including the mysterious Dr Shapiro and our less-than-conclusive telephone call. Claire was no longer squeezing my thigh, but when I mentioned my planned visit to the man, she kicked me hard in my shin in the short silence that followed.

  I took the hint, grateful she wasn’t wearing heels. It seemed Claire’s interpretation of good manners demanded that I invite Brooks-Powell to come with me.

  “Want to come along, David?” I asked. “I’m going tomorrow morning. I doubt there’ll be much coming out of it, but you never know.”

  Brooks-Powell looked thoughtfully at me. He didn’t fancy a day stuck with Sam Williams any more than I fancied a day stuck with David Brooks-Powell, but neither of us could say it out loud. I wondered whether he’d be getting a kick too, and winced on his behalf. I’d noticed the four-inch heels on Melanie’s feet when she’d first stood up.

  “I’m tempted,” he began, finally, and convincingly enough that I almost believed him. “But I’ve got enough on my plate, to b
e honest. Why don’t you take this one and let me know if there’s anything we need to follow up on?”

  And there it was. A perfectly innocent comment, one I’d have made in much the same way had our positions been reversed, but my reaction was instant and visceral. Brooks-Powell was talking down to me, acting like my boss, belittling me by throwing a crumb of independence and authority my way, as if it were his to throw. He’d been like that from the start, his assumption of superiority worn so lightly than nobody other than me even seemed to notice it. And my jaw was set, my fists clenched, my mind racing with decades-old slights.

  He was watching me still, and he must have noticed my expression, because he spoke again before anyone else could interrupt and asked me how Lizzy had been when I left. I waited a moment and turned over my options, and decided there was nothing to gain by being offended and even less to gain by showing it.

  “Not great, to be honest. And she had this thing about the tongue, about her mother’s tongue being cut out, she had the weirdest notions about it all.”

  I explained her theory. Her idea that it was all about her, the tongue, that everyone knew it, that we were all talking about her, about her tongue, about her silence. Lizzy Maurier at the centre of everyone else’s universe.