Smoke and Whispers

by Mick Herron

  But before she could pursue that thought, she heard music coming to meet her; a distant whisper, but growing in volume. There was always music in city centres, most of it unwelcome. This was different. As she approached the cavernous entrance to the city’s monstrous mall she saw the musicians responsible: two young men and a woman, playing fiddles and a guitar. The males were twins by the look of them, and shared a joke as they played, while the woman, surely their sister, began a solo. The music, a reel of some sort, went swirling over the heads of the gathered crowd, and despite the February chill and the heavy grey sky, brought a touch of sunlight to the city street. The tune was as much the sound of an English summer as a lawn sprinkler, or Jonathan Agnew being more disappointed than angry.

  Sarah stood there, drinking it in. One tune finished and another began: this one slower and haunting, conjuring a cold and windswarmed beach on a northern coast. She could have listened all day, but supposed she shouldn’t. At last she left, but not before finding out that they were called XYZ. It wasn’t a name she’d forget.

  The rain was still holding off but she headed into the mall anyway, and looked at micro-umbrellas in the first clothing shop she came to. She’d scoffed, yesterday, at the idea that shopping could ease pain, but the guilty truth was that it could, a little. Force the mind to focus on making a choice, and it eased its grip on other subjects. She decided, at last, on a black design with a red pattern, then browsed the rest of the floor, looking at shoes she didn’t need and jackets she couldn’t afford. As if to rub it in that it was winter, there were summer tops on display too, and she fingered her way through a rack of them, their factory-fresh cotton a kiss on her fingertips.

  A shop assistant approached. ‘Can I be of any help at all?’

  ‘Just looking. Thanks.’

  ‘It’s a very popular line, this. Especially in black. It’s dead slimming, the black.’

  There were plenty of shops where such advice was a challenge: you withdrew or got your plastic out. But this girl offered it as if it were new information, the slimming properties of black having lately been uncovered by the sisterhood. For a moment, Sarah thought this was some kind of northern innocence, then realized it was simply that the girl was very young.

  ‘It is,’ she agreed. ‘Very. It doesn’t perform miracles, though.’

  And they laughed, and the girl left her to her devices, but as Sarah went to pay for the umbrella she mentally kicked herself for making that moment happen: the one in which women surrender to an image they were taught to have. Sarah wasn’t overweight. As for the girl in the shop, you could stick a stamp on her and post her home. So why did they do it?

  Zoë wouldn’t have joined in. Zoë wore black a lot – wore a famous black jacket – but that had nothing to do with wanting to appear slimmer. It was simply what she wore. Red tops, too. Black and red, like Sarah’s new umbrella.

  And there was that thought again, the one that had pricked her as she’d entered her PIN on the money machine. Identity wasn’t just the numbers you carried, and clothes are not the woman. The body on the slab had Zoë’s possessions and Zoë’s jacket, but did that mean it was Zoë? It had looked enough like her for those things to seem conclusive. But the convincer had been the jacket, not the body – the jacket which long ago had been taken by Alan Talmadge. Its presence proved Talmadge’s involvement. But had Sarah allowed that to cloud her identification?

  Taking her change, she wandered from the shop. This route into the heart of the mall was on a gradient, and she walked up it. She seemed to have done a lot of walking these past few days: less than she’d have done back home, perhaps, but city walking was more of an effort. You had to be wary of all the other people. There were always far too many people.

  An exit took her on to a walkway, which she followed until it left her looking down on the square that gave the mall its name, and was currently being developed. The railing was spangled with moisture. She stood, still thinking about Zoë’s jacket. Okay, so it didn’t prove Zoë was dead. But in that case, why hadn’t Zoë showed up, demonstrably undead? She must have known she was thought to have drowned. Apart from anything else, she’d be missing her wallet. So if she was still alive, she had good reason for staying hidden.

  Or was being kept hidden, of course. That was another possibility. That Zoë was still alive, but had no way of letting the world know.

  Sarah shivered. She’d ragged on Gerard yesterday for smoking, but the truth was, she’d been known to take the odd cigarette herself. She could do with one now.

  Down below, on the far side of the square, a woman rushed to catch a bus. It had started pulling away, but slowed for her, opened its doors, let her on. Then it shunted off on its journey. A happy ending, Sarah thought. Except, of course, that it was only an ending from Sarah’s point of view. On that moving bus, the story continued.

  But for someone else, it was well past over. Zoë or not, there’d been a woman on that slab; perhaps murdered in Zoë’s place. Fresh water in her lungs, and a river for a grave. Somewhere, a woman was missing. And Sarah thought of the Big Issue Gerard had paid for, with its columns of absent faces, and its enquiries hurled into the dark: Have you seen this woman? Have you seen this man? If the body wasn’t Zoë’s, there was a void somewhere else; a life that had been lived, and now wasn’t. There must surely be people with questions. Though Alan Talmadge, of course, had preyed on those least likely to be missed.

  If anything could chill the heart, it was this: that there were those who wouldn’t be missed.

  It was something else to tug on. Another loose thread. What she needed now was a session on the web.

  As Sarah made her way towards the stairs that would take her to the street below, she thought she caught a snatch of that music again; of the young band on the far side of the shopping centre. But she couldn’t have done. There were too many buildings in the way. She must be carrying the music in her head, she decided. But that was a good place to carry it.

  The rain was holding off as she made her way river-wards once more, new umbrella tightly folded in her hand.

  11

  Last night’s Internet café seemed the right destination, though Sarah had second thoughts before she’d gone a hundred yards. What were her chances of Googling a likely candidate for the body on the slab? Wouldn’t the police have found the woman first? What made Sarah think she could do better?

  Only that the police hadn’t been looking. The body had been carrying Zoë Boehm’s ID, and Sarah had identified it – her – as Zoë. So why would the police have looked elsewhere? All the evidence pointed in the same direction. And it wasn’t like Zoë had appeared anywhere else.

  Put that bluntly, what made Sarah think it wasn’t Zoë?

  She found herself at a junction she didn’t remember, and had to rustle through her bag for her A–Z. Being in a city was taking a toll; living in a room was fraying too. Her guide told her the hotel wasn’t far: drab, unwelcoming, cold and poorly lit. It would be easy to give up.

  Sarah allowed the thought to roost. If she left now, she could be home by supper: a brightly lit fire, a bottle of wine; Russ on the sofa. The knowledge that her own roof was over her head; that her office contained all she needed for her working life; that the two ostriches were outside, roaming their pen. Everything she’d made into a life, these past years. But the thought didn’t last. Russ would want to know what happened in the end, and there wasn’t an end yet. And while he would willingly trade that for her safe return, Sarah couldn’t.

  But still – that drab hotel room. Its unsatisfactory bathroom. Its paltry array of toiletries.

  She would stay, but would treat herself to a pampering. After a stint on the web she’d have a long warm soak in that unsatisfactory bath, and first she’d acquire the wherewithal to make that soak worthwhile

  It must have been a memory that prompted that decision, because here was the cosmetics shop she’d noticed yesterday with Gerard. It was one of those animal-friendly franchises
with Technicolor packaging, and prices scrawled in chalk on blackboards; the sort of place you wouldn’t be surprised to find had morphed into a female-friendly sex shop since your last visit. Returning the smile of the blonde in the smock at the till, Sarah went to browse the soaps, which enjoyed a back room to themselves: down two steps and through a bead curtain, like entering Ayesha’s cave. More soaps than you could wave a loofah at. All shapes and sizes, including a huge block for shaving slices off, like a cheese. And any colour you liked, so long as it glowed in the dark.

  Heaven.

  There was an ethic to this. There were two kinds of shopping. You came in armed and dangerous and bought everything in sight, or you restricted yourself to a single item, which took longer, but was peculiarly rewarding. This was one of the latter trips. A clock on the wall said 2.45. Okay, thought Sarah. Fifteen minutes. Let’s forget everything for fifteen minutes and choose ourselves some soap.

  She was absorbed in this task when the bell jangled in the outer half of the shop: someone coming in. She heard the smocked blonde’s bright greeting, and a man’s reply: ‘I’m after some moisturizer.’ Pause. ‘Not for me, like. For me girlfriend.’

  It was an odd thing about the Geordie lilt: lots of folk could imitate it, but almost no one faking it could catch its genuine warmth. Smiling, Sarah returned to her task. She’d almost decided on tangerine. It wasn’t exactly an out-there choice – not when guava-jelly soap was available – but she only had herself to please. One last scout round and, failing a message from on high, she’d go with what she was holding. Passing the bead curtain, she looked through it at the new customer. He had his back to her, examining something the assistant had produced. Moisturizer. He spoke again: she didn’t catch the words. Then he half turned, pulling his wallet from a pocket and he was Barry, from the hotel.

  Barry, who’d told her that everywhere you went, you found a Geordie and an Australian. And who appeared to be both himself.

  Sarah dropped her umbrella, dropped the soap, and Barry looked round as they hit the floor. She sank to her knees, retrieved the oblong block with her back to the curtain, and the blonde called out, ‘Everything all right in there?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, no, I was just –’ What did her voice sound like? To herself, it sounded strained: but would he recognize it? ‘I just dropped – it’s okay. I’m fine.’

  Another pause, followed by the mumble of a transaction being completed. The bell above the shop door jangled again, and then the blonde was there, professional concern on her face. ‘Can I help, like?’

  Numbly, Sarah showed her the dropped soap. It had a flattened edge where one curve should be.

  ‘Oh, put it back on the stand, man. Pick another one.’

  ‘This is fine,’ Sarah said. ‘It’ll be fine.’

  Somehow she paid; somehow she left. Out on the pavement, her new suspicions hit her like a headwind, and kicked the breath out of her. She had to lean against a wall. Alan Talmadge, Zoë had told her, wasn’t an easy man to build a picture of. A man who smuggled himself into the lives of older women; bringing them love, Zoë had speculated. And because love doesn’t last forever, or perhaps simply because there were other lonely women waiting, he had to move on after a while, and rather than leave broken hearts behind him, Alan Talmadge had ended lives.

  ‘If he can’t make a happy ending, he can at least make an ending.’

  This had happened twice that Zoë had known of, and nothing about those events suggested they were his first adventures. A woman had fallen from a crowded underground platform. Another had slipped into a ditch on a stormy night. It was pure accident, Zoë had told her, that she’d found a connection between the two deaths; the connection being Alan Talmadge, though he’d been using different names. And Zoë had encountered him in the flesh eventually, though she hadn’t known it at the time. She’d been looking for a fastidious man with longish hair, who would twist it round his finger when lost in thought. She’d encountered a buzz-cut matey type instead, who’d been following her for longer than she’d been looking for him.

  Not long after, Alan Talmadge had slipped off the map. Or so Zoë had thought at the time.

  Sarah was gripping her left hand in her right; digging her nails in as if that was all that was keeping her from falling over some unseen edge. And she had dropped the bag holding her soap.

  She scooped it up. Opened it briefly, and took a deep breath. The scent of tangerine whipped her away from a Tyneside street for a moment, then dumped her back. Escape wasn’t that simple.

  Barry was Alan Talmadge. It didn’t matter which side you looked at it from, that was the only answer.

  Slowly, Sarah started walking; barely aware she was doing so, much less conscious of where she was headed.

  Talmadge had slipped off everyone’s map but his own. Meanwhile, Zoë had always been on his. He’d followed her here; had taken a job at the Bolbec Hotel . . . She was my first customer, he’d told Sarah. Well, of course she was.

  So why hadn’t Zoë recognized him?

  Her steps faltered, stopped. Picked up.

  Of course Zoë had recognized him . . .

  He was – what was he? He wasn’t a master of disguise; that gave the wrong impression, Zoë had said. No, he was anonymous. The kind of man you looked through.

  But Zoë had encountered him before, Sarah thought. There was no way she could have looked him in the eye and not known him. No one was that anonymous.

  We talked a bit. She drank what you’re drinking.

  No, Zoë would have pegged him before he’d poured a drop. She’d have known who he was, word one.

  He’d wiped the counter as if he were method acting, Sarah remembered. Had been full of gestures a little too perfect; a little too studied.

  Except they hadn’t worried Sarah, had they? She’d noticed them, but they hadn’t worried her.

  And he spoke like an Australian – Wallaby Springs? – except when he was buying moisturizer with only a Geordie girl in earshot. Then he was northern too; so much so, Sarah had found herself thinking about the Geordie lilt’s genuine warmth.

  He was good, there was no denying it. But not good enough to fool Zoë twice.

  No: whatever had happened to Zoë – whether she was the woman in the water or not – she’d known what she’d got herself into. And it was more important to her than what she was doing for Gerard, or with Gerard, or despite Gerard . . . Here was a knot Sarah hadn’t yet untied. But for Zoë, it had been sliced through. Whatever had brought her here had faded into insignificance once Alan Talmadge reared his head. He was her unfinished business. He was the one who’d got away.

  And here was Sarah, turning under the railway arch; and there was the hotel up ahead.

  When she stepped into the lobby Barry was on reception, not the woman she’d been expecting, and this caused her heart to lose a beat – she stumbled, but caught her balance in time. Steady, she warned herself. Steady.

  ‘Afternoon there, Ms Tucker.’

  That antipodean twang again, which seemed to take a bite out of Tucker.

  ‘Barry.’

  ‘Been taking a wander?’

  ‘Yes. Just – here and there.’

  How about you? she almost asked. Popped out to do a little shopping?

  ‘Having a nice holiday?’

  ‘Could I have my key?’

  ‘But sure.’ He’d already plucked it from the rack. ‘You know, when you came in there, it was like a breath of spring.’

  ‘I don’t –’

  ‘Tangerines,’ he said. ‘I distinctly smelt tangerines.’ He nodded at her bag. It was plain brown paper, and could have come from anywhere. ‘Pick up some fruit on your wanderings?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. Not really.’

  And this must be what it was like when you were a mouse, and the cat had a paw either side of you. Big bright smile on its face, as if it intended you nothing but pleasure.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I meant to ask.’

  S
he’d already taken the key, and was measuring the distance between here and the stairs. ‘Ask what?’

  ‘About your friend. Zoë, right?’

  Something cold shifted position between Sarah’s shoulder blades. ‘What about her?’

  ‘The other night. You were wondering what we were discussing.’

  Sarah said, ‘It’s not important. It was just something to say, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I was wondering, why don’t you ask her?’

  She stared.

  He shrugged. ‘Women have better memories for that sort of thing.’

  ‘You’ve seen her?’

  ‘Why? Is she still around?’

  ‘I – I’m not sure. Have you seen her?’

  ‘Not since she checked out,’ Barry said. ‘Not since that evening we chatted.’ He picked up a pen, and rolled it between finger and thumb, but didn’t take his eyes from Sarah. ‘But I presume you’re in touch with her. Friends, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah said.

  ‘So give her a call.’ He winked. ‘Send her my regards, yeah?’ The phone rang then, as if it had heard its name mentioned. ‘Bolbec Hotel, can I help you?’

  The stairs welcomed Sarah like an old friend.

  In her room, she dropped the keys on the bed; put the bag of soap on the dresser. Barry hadn’t been wrong. Just carrying it in had charged the atmosphere: it was a small zesty bomb. But he must have known it wasn’t fruit. Real fruit didn’t smell like that: not in this half of the world.

  Give her a call. Send her my regards, yeah?

  Had he known it was Sarah in the shop?

  He hadn’t come through the bead curtain, and hadn’t been in sight when she’d left. But he’d heard her voice, even if she’d tried to sound different. And she was carrying this brown bag, which must have been like the one he’d been given for his moisturizer.