No One Will Hear (Sam Williams Book 2)

by Joel Hames

“And the stuff she was saying, some of it you wouldn’t believe. Greek myth. Shakespearean tragedy. Tereus and Philomel.”

  I glanced to my side and saw Claire grinning at my pronunciation. At least I’d got that right. I continued.

  “And there’s this tapestry – I don’t know the details, but she was drunk anyway, so it probably doesn’t matter. There’s this tapestry that the woman weaves, Philomel, to tell her story, but Elizabeth didn’t get to weave her tapestry, that’s what Lizzy thinks, when she’s not thinking that it’s her tapestry and her tongue. So that’s our job, David. Weaving Elizabeth Maurier’s tapestry. You any good at weaving?”

  Brooks-Powell was nodding at me, slowly, the considered slow nod of the man with weighty things on his mind, but I could see a hint of a smile, too. He knew I’d been angry – he might not have known why, but he’d seen the anger all right – and he knew I’d pulled back and saved us both an embarrassing scene.

  “It’s an interesting notion,” said Melanie, leaning back on her chair and staring at the ceiling. “I mean, this tongue thing. If it weren’t for all the other victims and the other body parts, I’d almost be inclined to go along with it. The transformation myth. Procne, Philomel, the nightingale. The severing of a tongue is such a resonant gesture, isn’t it? I mean, if you know the stories, you can’t do something like that without recalling them.” She looked back down, at three faces turned towards her wearing expressions of surprise shading into horror. “Not speaking from experience, of course,” she concluded, with a smile.

  “I suppose,” added Brooks-Powell, “she’s decided she’s the one who gets baked in a pie, too. When she’s not having her own tongue cut off. What a mess.”

  So Brooks-Powell knew it, too. And Melanie. And Claire, of course. The Shakespeare and the Ovid and the rest of it. They’d all been to the right school, I thought, and felt my face go tight again.

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that girl.” Brooks-Powell was still talking, eyes not on me and my angry jaw but on Claire, who was smiling back at him. “She’s repressed. That’s all it is. Totally repressed.”

  His wife snorted. I didn’t blame her. Repressed was a little facile for David Brooks-Powell, and whatever else his faults, being facile wasn’t one of them. A brief silence fell, another in an evening too often punctuated by them, but Claire’s smile hadn’t dropped a fraction. Behind that smile, drunk as she was, I thought I could see her thinking.

  “Have you told David about Trawden?” she asked, brightly and without warning, and the three of them leaned forward, grateful for the change of subject.

  “He called me yesterday. Asked me to meet him. So I did. Lunch. With him and Lord Blennard. At the Reform Club.”

  I was watching Brooks-Powell as I spoke, scrutinising his face for the slightest reaction. All he did was nod.

  “Charlie?” he said, still nodding. “How is the old fellow.”

  Of course he knew Blennard. They’d probably buggered each other behind the quad. I felt myself sinking, the alcohol and the anger and – I couldn’t deny it, not to myself – the jealousy, sinking to a point where I’d say something I couldn’t take back. I tried to haul myself back up. So what if he knew Blennard? He’d been at Mauriers a lot longer than I had; Blennard had been a close friend of Elizabeth’s. It would have been strange if they hadn’t met.

  As if reading my mind, he continued before I could say anything.

  “I’ve met him from time to time. With Elizabeth, of course. Never took me to the Reform, mind. Just the pub, or her office. Smart fellow.”

  “He’s got a brain all right,” I replied. A smile flew across Brooks-Powell’s face, there and gone again. I’d dragged myself back up again. This time, he’d helped. “The food was good, too. Thing is, I wasn’t really sure what they wanted. Blennard offered to help. I wouldn’t mind his help, but I don’t know what he’s planning on helping with.”

  “What about Trawden?” asked Brooks-Powell, and his wife shuddered beside him.

  “Never liked him. Not that I’ve met him, of course,” she said, “but what I’ve read. What I’ve seen on TV. You can be not guilty of murder and still be a frightening, horrible man.”

  Brooks-Powell gave a short low laugh. “My fault, I’m afraid. I really couldn’t stand the man. Didn’t trust him. Seems I’ve infected the wife.”

  I remembered his dislike of Trawden. I remembered him passing me in the office, asking how I was getting on with my child-killer, strolling jauntily off before I had the chance to compose a suitable riposte.

  “Yes,” I said, and considered whether I should go on. Claire was still smiling at Brooks-Powell. I went on. “Yes. I thought that was just jealousy. You know, because you didn’t get the case.”

  He laughed, again, this time louder and longer, and I wondered if I’d been too direct, but when he spoke the words were fair and reasonable and the voice much the same.

  “You’re right. I was jealous. Biggest thing Mauriers had done for years, and everyone wanting to carry Elizabeth’s bags. We were all after that case, you, me, Alison, even Elana. Remember Alison and Elana?”

  I hadn’t. I did now. It hadn’t just been me and Brooks-Powell, back at the beginning. There were four of us, all starting at Mauriers in the same month or two. Had they still been there when I left? I tried to picture them. Alison, a giant of a woman, an athlete, a university hockey player and a beer-drinker and a laugh like a horse. Elana I could hardly see. Small and dark and quiet. You’re supposed to look out for the quiet ones, but I never had.

  “So yes. I hated the bastard, because you were working on his case and I wasn’t. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t right,” concluded Brooks-Powell, and fixed me with a glare. But underneath the glare, he was smiling.

  “I think you probably were,” I said, and there was another silence, but an easier one.

  “It was difficult, wasn’t it?” he asked, eventually. Melanie had stepped outside to take a look at dessert, whatever that meant, and Claire was busy with her wine.

  “What was?”

  “Being open. Back then,” he replied. “Being honest.” Melanie had come back, and Brooks-Powell stared at her as she took her seat. “I mean, let’s just say mistakes were made, right? Everybody makes mistakes. You just have to live with them. You just have to try to get on.”

  Melanie was pouring herself a glass of wine and politely ignoring us, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off her as he spoke. I understood why. If he was going to bare his soul, or the closest thing he had to one, if he was going to take another step towards an apology, then he wouldn’t be wanting to look into the eyes of the man he’d wronged. I’d have done the same, in his place, if I’d had the guts to do the baring at all.

  “Enough of the serious stuff,” said Melanie, suddenly. “Apple crumble, anyone?”

  We didn’t leave for another three hours, during which the serious stuff faded into the background and the silences faded with them, or if they were there, we were too drunk to notice. For all the high finance and Rachmaninov, Melanie Golding was entertaining, a well of amusing anecdotes, in most of which she came off worst. Brooks-Powell – I was struggling to think of him as David, but managed to say it from time to time – was a decent host, liberal with the wine and the spirits, delicately guiding his guests back to the conversation when it seemed we might be flagging, not above sharing an embarrassing story of his own, to my surprise. Claire, of course, was full of embarrassing stories and rarely shied away from telling them. The only one who didn’t was me, but the last ten years of my life had been one long embarrassing story and there wasn’t much in it to laugh about. So I contented myself with laughing at the others, which they didn’t seem to mind, and then suddenly Claire was whispering something in my ear about a taxi and it was half past one and we were saying goodbye, and before the door closed on them I was kissing Melanie on the cheek and shaking Brooks-Powell’s hand and saying “Thank you” and meaning it.

  In the taxi, with the quiet murmur
of the radio and the lights of London sailing by, I wondered whether Claire was still in the thigh-stroking mood. I put my arm around her and drew her towards me. She looked up and smiled, and as I prepared to kiss her she said “She was right, you know.”

  I stopped myself. “Right about what?”

  “About misdirection. The victims. No one will hear and see and touch and whatever the hell they won’t do, because they’re dead now and they’re not likely to do much of anything at all. But she’s right. There’s a difference with the Maurier one. It feels wrong. It’s like –” she paused, her face creased with concentration. The mood, I realised, had shifted decisively. I waited.

  “Did you ever read The ABC Murders?” she asked.

  I shook my head. I’d never even heard of The ABC Murders.

  “Another Agatha Christie. Not Pocket Full of Rye this time. There’s a bunch of murders. And they’re all linked. Only it turns out they’re not. There’s just one important murder. The others are only there to hide it. It’s like hiding a tree. Where do you hide a tree?”

  “I don’t know. Where do you hide a tree?”

  “In a wood.”

  My mind was moving slowly, but I thought I could grasp what she was driving towards.

  “So,” I said, “so you’re telling me someone murdered Elizabeth Maurier and then murdered a bunch of other people just to throw the police off track?”

  She nodded, and then shook her head and laughed.

  “I’m being ridiculous, aren’t I? It doesn’t sound very likely. But your friend David’s a tricky one, isn’t he?”

  Another sharp turn. Drink, I remembered, did that with Claire. She’d run with an idea until she had another one.

  “I suppose so.” I didn’t know where this idea would lead. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out, handshake or no handshake.

  “You do realise he’s gay, don’t you?”

  Of all the things I might have been expecting, that wasn’t even on the list. I couldn’t think of a decent reply, instead stammering out “But he’s married!” in, I realised, a somewhat affronted tone of voice.

  “Like that means anything. Of course he’s gay. Remember Melanie took me upstairs, to get the jumper – oh that reminds me, I left mine there, I was going to get it washed and return hers, we’ll have to sort that out some other time. Anyway, I went upstairs and they’ve got separate bedrooms.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything either,” I said, my composure part way to recovery. “Couples do that. Sometimes,” I added, in case Claire decided it might be a good idea.

  “Yes, but remember what she said about musical theatre?”

  It rang a bell. I thought back. The start of dinner. The sharp little exchange about Rachmaninov. Yes.

  “And there was something else,” she continued. “At the end of the meal. He was talking about the past, and making mistakes, and just having to live with them. He was looking at her the whole time. He was talking about them, about their marriage, how it had all been one big mistake but they had to live with it. It was like we’d walked in halfway through someone else’s private conversation. He was apologising and admitting it and begging her not to leave him, that’s what he was doing.”

  I smiled at her and shook my head. Sometimes I wondered whether Claire might have a little too much imagination for a journalist. She looked up at me, a frown spreading across her face as she registered the expression on mine.

  “Sorry, Claire. It’s a great idea, but it’s not right. He was looking at her because he didn’t want to look at me, and the reason he didn’t want to look at me was that it was me he was apologising to.”

  The frown flipped into confusion, followed by incredulity.

  “What?”

  “All that stuff. Mauriers. When you went upstairs to get changed he came halfway to saying he was sorry. That little scene at the end of dinner, that was three-quarters.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “So you’re going to ignore the separate bedrooms and all that niggling between them when we arrived, he’s useless and aren’t you going to get drinks, and the Rachmaninov stuff, that’s all just coincidence, is it?”

  I shook my head again, realising even while I did it how patronising I must have looked. But I couldn’t stop myself.

  “No. It’s not coincidence. They’d had a row. Couples have rows. We’re having one now. Doesn’t mean I’m gay.”

  “So it all has to be about you, does it?”

  Now it was my turn for confusion. I ran through what she’d said and started to form the words to my reply, but I didn’t get past opening my mouth before she went on.

  “You really are a selfish bastard, Sam. Whatever’s going on, whatever the problem is, it’s always about you. You don’t listen, you don’t notice things, you don’t see what’s happening to other people even when it’s happening right in front of you. It’s always just the biggest noise, the loudest shout, the hottest case, and what the effect might be on you. What was it you told me? Don’t get too close? Fucking hell, Sam. You can’t even get outside your own head.” She’d built up the volume, but now she sighed and spoke quietly. “It might come as some surprise to you, but there is a world outside Sam bloody Williams. Quite a big one, as it happens. If you spoke to Adrian you’d understand.”

  For a moment I wondered what she was talking about, how she’d got from Brooks-Powell being gay to this, how she’d managed to drag her wretched life coach into a conversation about dinner, and then it clicked.

  Serena Hawkes. She was bringing up Serena, again. The lawyer in Manchester. The woman I’d spent hours each day with, the woman who’d sat in my car and poured her soul out to me, the woman who’d sat opposite me over a chicken jalfrezi and all but told me the truth.

  And I hadn’t seen it. Right in front of me, as Claire put it, and I hadn’t seen it at all. I hadn’t seen it, and Serena had blown the back of her head out right in front of me, and I didn’t need Claire reminding me of the fact every time she wanted to hurt me. I was more than capable of reminding myself.

  “That’s not exactly fair,” I began, reasonably enough, I thought, but Claire ignored me, leaned forward and asked the driver to turn the radio up. The news report had just begun. Murder all over the country, economic turmoil all over the world, court hearings, witnesses and deals, elections in places the powerful didn’t care about, wars in places they did. And Serena Hawkes had died and I hadn’t seen it coming.

  We arrived back at the flat ten minutes later, as the preview of the weekend’s football began. I unlocked the front door and shook my head, unseen, as Claire pushed past me and straight into the bathroom. I sighed, unheard, as she locked it behind her. I undressed and stared at the ceiling until she fell into bed beside me in her pyjamas and turned onto her side, her back towards me, breathing slow and deep and far too even for sleep. I began to drift, images of the evening tumbling through my brain, images of Serena Hawkes, handy-sized portraits of corpses in pools of their own blood. Words flew in and around the images, birds on the wing, words like Tongue and Ovid and Poem and Misdirection, phrases like Right in front of you and It was difficult and Put me to bed and Her mother’s shadow, and as the images began to blur and the words began to run together, I saw it.

  No one will hear.

  Elizabeth Maurier had died leaving something unsaid.

  14: A Nice Drive in the Country

  I WOKE BEFORE six. Claire lay beside me, still on her side, still facing away, still sleeping. My head was clear; despite the late night and all the wine, there was no pain, just a gentle thirst and a more urgent need to relieve myself.

  I visited the toilet and made myself a coffee and listened to the cats fighting outside and the early vans and lorries dragging the city into the light.

  Elizabeth Maurier had died leaving something unsaid.

  I wondered whether it was too early to call Brooks-Powell or Lizzy. I wondered whether I should call them at
all and decided probably not. It was a hunch. An idea, insubstantial enough to walk through and not even notice you were doing it. If it firmed up, I’d make the calls. If it didn’t, I’d watch it dissolve into nothing and no one else would ever know.

  Six o’clock. I sat down with the Maurier files and flicked through them once more, hoping to stumble across an answer that had eluded me the first three times, but the only thing that stood out was her strange dream and its teasing little accompaniment.

  I do feel a little guilty about ignoring Dr Shapiro.

  Half past six, and Claire stumbled from the bedroom in those winceyette pyjamas, stretched and threw a forlorn little smile my way.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Did I wake you? I’ll get you a coffee.”

  She ignored my question, took the coffee in silence and turned the television onto the news channel. Maureen Davies was anchoring. The Welsh one with the unconvincingly blonde hair. An American economist called Pauline Adams tried to predict the future course of global interest rates. Sergeant Paul Jenson of the Metropolitan Police Immigration Enforcement Liaison Unit explained the scope of the British role in preventing illegal mass migration in the Mediterranean. An angry woman named Bernadette wanted to let everyone know that the countryside was dying and it was the Government’s fault. After a while Claire picked up the remote control and muted the volume, but she didn’t get up or do anything. She sat there, cradling her cup and staring at the screen, until I reminded her that I’d be driving to Norfolk later and asked if she felt like coming with.

  “Forecast is decent,” I said. “Sunshine. Nice weather for a drive in the country, I thought.”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t think so. Think I’ll just stay here and sit tight.”

  “Right, then. Think I’ll get ready and head out.”

  She smiled at me and turned back to the television. That was it. A second’s worth of smile. I wondered what I needed to do to get her attention. I could strip off all my clothes and stand in front of her until she noticed me, but that coffee was still hot. I could tell her about my last-minute flash of insight into Elizabeth Maurier, but I had the feeling she’d heard enough about the Mauriers for a lifetime. I could say something nice about Adrian Chalmers, but then I’d have to spend the rest of the day washing my mouth.