by Mick Herron
‘Are you crazy? That’s exactly what this hairy lunatic doesn’t want me doing.’
‘Hell, Tucker, what’s he going to do? He kills you, they’ll actually start looking for him. Which he’s gone to some trouble to avoid, up to now.’
‘That’s a big comfort.’
‘This might come as a shock, but right now I’m more worried about the damage you did Joe’s reputation than I am about anything that might happen to you. You know damn well he wasn’t dealing, and it’s only the fact that you look about two steps from a boneyard that stops me holding you over a phone and choking it out of you. So why don’t you have a shower, get dressed, remember where you left your principles, and do the decent thing? Who knows, it might get to be a habit.’
The force of which took her breath away. Another new emotion, shame, came tumbling after the others. ‘I never . . . Yes . . . I didn’t think.’
‘Doesn’t look like you were given half a chance,’ Zoë muttered. She picked up her bag, hooked it over her shoulder. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘To check up,’ Sarah said numbly.
‘Oh, I’ll have done that long before then. But I’ll call you anyway.’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘Look, don’t feel too bad. It’s not that I blame you. Your position, I’d have done the same.’
Somehow, Sarah doubted it. One thing bothered her though. ‘If you loved him so much, why did you keep disappearing on him?’
‘Who said I loved him? That was over years ago.’
‘So why all this?’
‘Because when a woman’s partner gets killed, she has to do something about it. It doesn’t matter what she thought of him. She has to do something about it.’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘The Maltese Falcon,’ Zoë said. ‘Believe me, Joe’d have understood.’
IV
She left. Sarah sat once more, feeling sick, weak and hungry all at once. The hunger didn’t last. Most appetites seemed distant now, as if she could only focus on one point at a time, her current target being the retraction of her statement to the police – a necessary truth whose one saving grace was, it need not involve Simon Smith.
But though inevitable, it didn’t have to be immediate. She showered and dressed, and made herself eat a boiled egg; and while it was a strain not to be plucking at the curtains, checking for strangers in the street, she succeeded at this too. Then she sat with the newspaper cutting Joe had given her, retrieved from a jacket pocket. She had put Downey in his early forties when she’d first seen him, from the bridge. The more generous Zoë had him late thirties. And Zoë was right; he had been thirty-four at the time of his supposed death, making him thirty-eight now. The hair added years. But what did he want from her? He had been looking for Dinah too, but why did Joe have to die? A lot more questions hovered. None with obvious answers attached.
While she had the nerve, she made her call. Ruskin was unavailable. When would he be otherwise? About five, maybe six. She said she’d call back. Afterwards, she slipped into a waking doze. One of those almost-states, where the clock still ticks and traffic goes by, but inside everything comes to a halt. When the phone rang, she almost hit the ceiling.
‘You sound breathless.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Did I wake you?’
She glanced at the clock; it had just gone five. What am I, a baby? But she bit it back. ‘I’m okay, Mark. Really.’
‘Fine. Good. Just calling to remind you, I’ll be late back. A meeting with one of my accounts. Could be ten, even later. Don’t wait up.’
‘Mark?’
‘Yes?’
Down the wires the silence pulsed. All of it carried from one place to another at the speed of electricity.
‘You sure you’re all right?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Okay. Call Wigwam or somebody. Have company.’
Always the assumption that Wigwam was at her beck. It irritated her that he was probably right.
It would be forever before they’d speak again. She hung up not knowing this; dialled the police while she was at it. Ruskin was in.
‘You want to what?’
‘It wasn’t true.’
‘What makes you think I give a –’ There was a strangled arrest; the crash of a receiver being dropped, or maybe slammed. Then: ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you aware what a retraction will mean, Mrs Trafford? Have you taken legal advice on this?’
‘Why is it I need advice now when before you were quite happy to –’
‘Apart from the other implications. Wasting police time, that’s still an offence.’ They should lock up the whole bloody world, his tone implied. ‘Making false statements.’
‘It’s because I don’t want to –’
‘Not to mention the matter of the other charges that might still, might still, be levied against you. You’re into serious waters here, Mrs Trafford. You want to think very carefully before going any deeper.’
It had been on the news, she dimly recalled. The man who sold E to Lizbeth Betts. Pusher cheats justice. No wonder Ruskin was coming on like a shark.
‘Are you listening, Mrs Trafford? Can I make myself plainer?’
‘No, you listen to me. The statement I made, I made under duress. Duress. I’ll be at the station to make a fresh one tomorrow. Failing that, I’ll be calling a press conference. Your call, Inspector.’
Two could crash a phone.
For minutes afterwards she trembled on her feet; unable to move, unable to do anything. Except wonder, naturally, what precisely she had just done; and how, precisely, she would suffer the consequence.
She did not call Wigwam. Mark did that for her: she arrived a little after six thirty with a half-hearted attempt at just dropping in, which did not survive Sarah’s opening sally.
‘He said you sounded fraught. I think that was the word.’
‘He’s turning into my keeper!’
‘We’ve all been worried, Sarah,’ Wigwam said, without a hint of reproach.
It was the nearest she had come to making reference to Sarah’s troubles.
‘I have been,’ Sarah admitted now. ‘Fraught,’ she said.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Wigwam said. ‘And you can tell me all about it.’
But Sarah couldn’t. It was not that she didn’t want to; more that she wouldn’t know where to start. And felt, too, something of what it would be like to listen to a friend, however close, tell you they were at the centre of a giant conspiracy in which men with beards lurked, wishing them harm. You would have to love them very much not to feel enormous pity.
She countered a yawn. This terrible lethargy; it needed fighting. Needed shock.
Wigwam sensed Sarah backing away, but did not press her. Instead, she returned to Mark. ‘He called me from his office,’ she said, investing the location with an awesome significance: she really was impressed, the love. The nearest Wigwam had been to working in an office was dusting somebody else’s desk. ‘You could hear all sorts in the background.’
‘They were probably playing cricket,’ Sarah said.
‘It was his office.’
‘They do that,’ Sarah said. ‘Bins as wickets. Paper for balls. You hit the fax machine, it’s six and out.’
‘He sounded ever so busy.’
‘Maybe it was his turn to bowl.’ She was tired of this already. ‘Wigwam. He spends all day sitting in front of a green screen, making phone calls about money to other people in other banks. All of them sitting in front of the same green screen. Every day, you make more human contact than he does in a month.’
‘Oh, I like my jobs. But they’re not important.’
‘Neither’s his. It doesn’t add or subtract a single sou to the sum of human happiness.’
‘Would you rather he’d been a teacher?’ Wigwam asked, a little wistfully. Wigwam had wanted to be a teacher.
‘I’d rather he was happy,’ Sarah said. And
filled in all the blanks in her head: if he’d finished his doctorate, got the right fellowship, got stuck into his book . . .
Not married me, she thought with sudden clarity. To remind him of his promise.
And there was a thump on the doormat, as something dropped through the letterbox.
‘Bit late for the postman,’ Wigwam said. ‘Do you want to me to get it?’
‘It’ll be one of the free newspapers,’ Sarah said. Though it wasn’t, in fact, it was a letter; addressed to her in a hand she didn’t recognize, and amended by several others, since the original writer had transposed the house number. Try 217 had been added, along with Try 271. Postmarked two weeks earlier. Looking at it, holding it in her hand, Sarah felt her heart unaccountably sinking; as if she too had spent the last two weeks misaddressed, and was now back where she ought to be, which was not a good place at all.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ she lied absently.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’
‘Later. It’ll keep.’ But her mind was focused on it now, and for all Wigwam kept rattling on, Sarah heard barely a word.
‘Because of her Tai Chi lessons,’ Wigwam finished.
‘. . . I’m sorry, Wigwam. I was drifting.’
‘Caro’s looking after the babies,’ she began again. Wigwam always called her children babies. ‘But she has to leave at eight fifteen because of –’
‘Yes. I got that bit.’
‘So I’ll have to be back by then. But I’ll send Rufus round to keep you company.’
‘That’s okay.’
Wigwam’s face twisted into an awkward expression. ‘We – ell . . .’ she said.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Mark made me promise,’ she confessed, ‘I’d not leave you on your own.’
So what does he think I’ll get up to? her inner voice snarled. Mainline baking powder? And then thought: No, what he’s worried about is, I’ll not take my pill, I’ll start to be a nuisance, I’ll get into trouble.
I’m already in trouble.
She thought the letter meant trouble: that’s why she couldn’t keep her mind off it. So to calm Wigwam down, she agreed that Rufus could come round if he must, though she had work of her own to get on with – letters to write – and would absent herself while he settled in front of the telly. A scenario which made her want to gag, actually, but better by far than actually watching it with him, or talking to him; or anything, in fact, involving being in his presence. Not that she could express any of this to Wigwam. So instead she kept herself nodding and smiling, feeling long-slack muscles in her cheeks stretch to aching-point, while Wigwam ran through the local gossip one more time. All Sarah wanted was for Wigwam to go, so she could open the damn letter, and find the worst. Her best friend, whom she felt she hadn’t talked to for months, and all she wanted was for her to go.
Which she did, eventually.
‘You’re sure you’ll be all right?’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘I’m sure Mark won’t be too late.’
‘Wigwam. I’ll be fine.’
She closed the door gently but put the chain on, too, once Wigwam’s steps had echoed out of hearing.
In the sitting room she sat for a while with the letter in her lap. It was from Joe. She knew that already: didn’t know the handwriting, but knew it was from Joe. Too like him to get her address wrong. With anyone else, that would have been a nuisance; from the private detective, it was a kind of quiet joke. Joe once got arrested looking for somebody’s dog: hadn’t Zoë told her that? Couldn’t detect his way out of a paper bag; but she helped him out of the envelope, anyway; unfolded the first sheet and read it through twice:
Dear Sarah
I suppose what I should have remembered is, we all have to exorcize our own demons. Who am I to tell you to stop looking? No matter what it is you’re looking for. So this little girl, since she’s so important to you, I hope you find her, though I still think we went barking up a wrong tree yesterday. I shouldn’t have got angry, though. I told you I’d help: I should just help. Even if that means driving to Surrey on a fools’ errand. Better, I think, to start with the obvious. I enclose a copy of a letter I’ve sent to the Ministry of Defence. According to their press release, Thomas Singleton died four years ago, so how come he died again so recently? Perhaps they know nothing about it. If not, better they join in asking the questions, don’t you think? They’re much more likely to find the answers.
And wherever the answer to Singleton’s death lies, I think you’ll find his daughter there also. And if they do know all about it, they’ll understand that a few discreet answers now might save them a lot of press coverage later. They are great pragmatists these days, Sarah, the men in suits. All they need do is give a little, right? Save you causing more trouble.
I get the feeling you could cause a lot of trouble if you tried.
I’ll be in touch. Joe
The enclosed letter was as he said it was: a formal Dear Sir laying out the bare facts of Thomas Singleton’s death and his daughter’s disappearance; all neatly typed; every spelling in place. He’d even put his own reference number down. This, too, Sarah reflected, had been removed from his office files. Or Zoë would have found it; Sarah had the feeling that woman would find pretty much everything she put her mind to.
On a sudden impulse, the kind best acted upon immediately, she picked up the phone and called Directory Enquiries, or whatever they were called these days, and after a very short wait was given the phone number to go with the address Joe had sent the letter to. She wrote it on the letter itself in big red marker pen, the only kind near to hand. Maybe she would call. Not now, obviously. Other impulses were best slept upon; they had to be given time to go away. That was as far as she’d thought things through when she heard the rapping on the door – on the back door.
Which led nowhere. Which led to the back garden, and it was true you could squeeze past the hedgerow at the far end and reach the street behind through the side passage of the house they backed on to, but nobody did this, not even burglars. Sarah didn’t know the neighbours in that direction; wasn’t even sure the word ‘neighbours’ applied. All of which suggested an unwelcome presence, but unwelcome presences didn’t knock, and there was no getting round the fact that what she had to do now was stir herself, walk through to the kitchen, see who it was. It was Rufus.
Her reluctance mingled with relief, she let him in. The time it took her to reach the door, a number of horrors had ripped through her mind; none specific, but each shaded red, the colour of Joe’s shirt afterwards. Even Rufus was an improvement. She let him in, closing the glass-paned door behind him and turning its key once more.
‘Hello, Rufus.’
‘Sarah.’
‘Why the back way?’
He shrugged.
Even arriving alone, Rufus had the air of somebody tagging along. It bordered on spooky.
‘Wigwam said you needed company.’
‘I’m all right. Really.’
‘’Sno bother.’
He wandered through the kitchen, into the sitting room. It should not have been surprising that at a time like this Sarah should feel she didn’t know Rufus, because she didn’t. Times she’d made the effort to draw him out had been for Wigwam’s sake, and wholly unsuccessful. Mostly because Rufus wasn’t interested in anything. For all the impact he made, he might have remained in that limbo where all the people you’ve never met live.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.
‘Cheers.’
So now she had to make him a cup of tea.
She put the kettle on, rinsed a cup, thought about it, rinsed another. The idea of food still made her gag, but she had to get something inside her. Meanwhile Rufus called from the sitting room, ‘It’s started. I heard earlier.’
‘Started?’
‘The War.’
Thee not thuh. And War not war. There’d have been a glint in Ru
fus’s eye, too: war did that to boys. Last time, they’d played in sandpits on the TV news.
But she had nothing to say. Nothing to offer. They’d be striking each other dead in the East right now – more charred corpses soldered to their tanks – and she wanted to know nothing of it, an ignorance as easy to achieve as turning off a radio. They’d yet to pass a law demanding you were well informed. During wartime, that was the last law they’d pass.
The kettle boiled. She made the tea. She passed a cup to Rufus, who had come through from the sitting room, and who took it by the base, apparently not noticing how hot it was. He cleared a small space for it on top of the crowded fridge, then dragged his warm fingers through his hair, a gesture that recalled him pulling his mask off. But that had been when he was Stan Laurel, and now he was only Rufus.
‘She talks about you, you know. All the time.’
‘Wigwam?’
‘Before, it was how nice you are. Sarah says this. Sarah lent me that. These days, it’s Poor Sarah. All the time. Poor Sarah.’
‘She’s a good friend.’
‘She’s a soft touch. I can’t really imagine you two being pally.’
‘You don’t have to imagine it,’ she snapped. ‘It already happens.’
He grinned, pleased about scraping a nerve. And there was the malice she’d glimpsed when he’d frightened her in town: if he hated her so bloody much, why was he here anyway? Because Wigwam asked him? All he’d had to say was No.
He plucked a magnet from the door of the fridge, examined it and put it back. ‘Been resting up then, have you? After your bother with the cops.’
‘I don’t really want to talk about it.’
‘Suit yourself. What’s to talk about anyway? You’re scoring dope, you got caught. End of story.’
Sods’ Law, this, that now she really wanted him to blend into the wallpaper, he’d discovered he’d got a tongue.
‘Rufus –’
‘It’s okay. We’ve all been there.’
‘Look, Rufus, it’s kind of you to come round. But it’s really no problem. Mark’ll be back soon and I don’t want –’