Smoke and Whispers

by Mick Herron

  ‘Now that’s not polite. Turning down He pushed the money back her way.

  Something similar had happened the other evening, in the hotel bar. A drunk had tried to buy a piece of her attention. And even if Barry – Talmadge! – hadn’t smoothed him away, Sarah wouldn’t have been worried. You took this sort of thing in your stride. Accepted the drink or refused it, and tried not to give offence. Not because you didn’t want to give offence, but because you didn’t want a scene. It wasn’t like you didn’t get the practice.

  But that had been somewhere else; somewhere similar to places she knew and felt comfortable in. Here, she was on foreign ground. She’d known pubs like this in her youth, but only as part of a crowd. Force of numbers, plus teenage invulnerability, had rendered her oblivious to threat. Now, though, she was alone, off balance, and – she was beginning to suspect – down the wrong end of the city.

  ‘You’re kind. But I’m fine. Really.’

  He stared, as though she were speaking a different language.

  The barman had retreated to the far end of the counter. He knew damn well what was happening: he just didn’t care. There was a sly awareness to his posture; a trapped laugh he wasn’t releasing yet.

  Her unwelcome benefactor said, ‘Ye divvent want to be perched on a stool like a parrot, pet. Come away and sit on the sofa, like.’

  ‘I’m fine where I am.’

  ‘Just being friendly.’ His fist was wrapped round a gassy pint, its rim laced with froth. He smiled at Sarah as he raised it to his lips. The two events – the smile, the swallow – merged into a single ugly act.

  From where she sat, Sarah could see the door. The afternoon accordioned in her memory, its events squeezing into a single long mistake: from buying her lost umbrella to shopping for soap to taking that bus ride through the dark rain, whose every shadow belonged to Alan Talmadge. Somehow, all this had brought her through that door and dumped her on this stool. Somehow she’d wound up at the mercy of an export-swilling Lothario.

  She should get up and walk back out, but where would that leave her? In the rain again, lost among those shadows.

  As if to underscore her thoughts the weather made an assault on the pub’s windows, and the sound of rattling frames joined the clinking of drinks, the sharing of jokes, the TV’s mutterings; all the communal noise surrounding her, but which Sarah wasn’t part of. She felt trapped behind a pane of glass herself. Something preventing her from raising her voice to say: Take this man away. I came in here for shelter. Something whispering that even if she did so, nobody would hear, or take action.

  This man clearly wasn’t Alan Talmadge. But he was from the same tribe, even if he didn’t know it. He was further down the chain, that was all.

  ‘So what brings ye doon here?’

  ‘I got caught in the rain.’

  ‘Aye, it’s fockin’ brutal out.’

  She hadn’t tasted her drink yet. She picked it up now; mentally formed the words Please. Go away but didn’t say them. The whisky bit her throat. She didn’t drink spirits often. It wasn’t a pub, though, where you asked for a Sauvignon.

  She drank what you’re drinking, Barry had said. Always a good basis for friendship.

  In the absence of anything else . . .

  Zoë, she thought. What were you doing?

  ‘Come on, then. See that off, and wuh’ll have another.’

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘No offence. I just don’t want company right now.’

  ‘But Ah’ve paid for your drink, like.’

  The coins were still on the counter in front of her. Wordlessly, she slid them his way.

  ‘Ah divvent want your money, pet.’ This with an air of irritated explanation: a teacher faced with a dunce. ‘Just a smile and a chat. Is that too much to ask, like?’

  She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, he was still there.

  ‘Or are ye too fockin’ posh to smile?’

  He pushed the money back towards her – pushed it deliberately roughly. A coin dropped to the floor and rolled under a table. Sarah bit her lip.

  ‘Ye want it, ye’d better pick it up. Hadn’t ye?’

  She looked at him. That was a mistake. It didn’t matter how much you wanted to pacify, the straight look could be a threat to some men. Especially grey and frazzled men, stuck in a pub before the working day was out.

  ‘Gan on. Ah divvent mind watching ye crawl roond the floor.’

  There was a noise behind Sarah; a throaty rattle. Half a cough. Followed by words. ‘Trev? You’ve had your fun. Off you fuck, now. There’s a good lad.’

  It was the old woman on the next stool along, and she wasn’t even looking Trev’s way. Didn’t have to.

  He said, ‘Ah was just –’

  ‘The lady’s not interested. She stopped in out the rain. Pick her pound up and go sit down. I won’t ask twice.’

  And it was his turn to look at Sarah, and now he was the one hoping for understanding – Can you believe these old women get away with this? She didn’t alter her expression. But she looked away before he did, and took a sip of her drink.

  He slipped from his stool, and went foraging for the runaway pound.

  Sarah turned to the old woman, who hadn’t raised her head during the exchange. With a folded-over tabloid in front of her, she was stuck into Sudoku. Before Sarah could speak, a coin was pressed down into the space between them. The thumb doing the pressing wanted to drill it through the counter.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t . . . mention it.’

  Don’t fockin’ mention it, he meant.

  He removed himself to the corner he’d emerged from. Slunk back, Sarah wanted to say, but he didn’t; he swaggered, rather, as if he’d won on points in a romantic encounter.

  She guessed a man like that did a lot of rewriting of immediate history.

  ‘He meant no harm,’ the woman said.

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t.’

  Rain still beat the windows, but she thought she’d be leaving here regardless, just as soon as she’d finished her drink.

  ‘And it’s not like he imagined you were going to fall for him.’ The woman still didn’t look up from her paper. ‘The gap’s as visible from his side as yours.’

  Sarah put her glass down. ‘You think I’m a tourist?’

  ‘I think you came in out the rain.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘Just not sure what brought you here in the first place.’

  Sarah said, ‘I must have wandered across a checkpoint. When I got on the bus, I was in the twenty-first century.’

  ‘There’s your error. Walker’s still suffering through the twentieth.’

  At last she looked up, and Sarah saw her eyes for the first time: bright robin’s eyes in a face that might have been modelled from papier mâché. Not well modelled, either. Saggy lumps at her jaw and below her eyes looked like mistakes. Sarah tried not to stare at her moustache.

  She said, ‘So, what would you have done? If you’d had to ask twice?’

  The woman said, ‘Gary behind the bar there’s stepping out with our Derek’s Carol. Trevor doesn’t want to go crossing me if he wants to keep his local.’

  There was a family web Sarah didn’t want to get stuck on.

  ‘And last thing Trevor wants to lose is his local. Lad’s lost pretty much everything else.’

  The ‘lad’ must have been in his late fifties.

  Sarah said, ‘Is this where you tell me his sad story? So I grasp what a noble soul he is?’

  She might have saved her breath.

  ‘Once Armstrong’s went to the wall, that was his future used up. His wife found a better prospect. He gets four weeks a year at Christmas on the Post. Rest of the time, he’s in here.’

  ‘I get the picture.’

  ‘I’m not sure you do. What were you doing twenty year ago?’

  Those robin’s eyes had shifted somehow. Still bright, but predatory now.

  ‘Buying your
first house? Starting your first job?’

  ‘Not quite,’ she said. But not that far off, either.

  ‘Trevor was in here. Where do you think you’ll be twenty year from now?’

  ‘You’ve made your point,’ Sarah said. ‘Next time, I think I’ll just get wet.’

  The woman smiled at last. ‘Wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t make you feel worse. Truth is, Trevor was an arse-hole when he had work and a wife. Where he’ll be in twenty years is his problem.’

  ‘And what would your job be again?’

  ‘I’m the local busybody, dear. I’d’ve thought you’d’ve worked that out by now.’

  She picked up her drink – something Coke-coloured, that probably wasn’t – and drained the glass. Then winked at Sarah.

  Feeling she’d wandered out of one situation straight into another, Sarah suppressed a sigh. ‘Same again?’

  ‘That’d be grand, pet.’

  * * *

  Not a freeloader, though. She bought her round.

  She just liked to talk.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, pet. They’ve rebuilt this city from the ground up. They just forgot parts, that’s all.’

  Sarah said, ‘It’s a process. Not everything gets done at once.’

  She was on her third whisky. It was still raining. And the bar was still full, though most of the background noise had muffled to an ambient roar. Maybe that was the drink, insulating her.

  ‘And when they reach here, they’ll build more fancy housing where the yards used to be. But us who’ve lived here these forty year’ll not be moving into riverside flats.’

  ‘Ivy,’ she said. ‘Last thing you want is to be moving into any fancy new riverside flat.’

  ‘Aye. Be nice to be asked though, wouldn’t it?’

  She laughed a cackle of a laugh: raw and unabashed.

  When Trev had been hassling her, Sarah had suspected they’d had a secret audience. It wasn’t so secret now. Ivy played to a crowd.

  The door had opened a dozen times: always someone coming in; never anyone leaving. And every time, she’d had to look, just to make sure. And it had never been Barry. She was starting to believe it never would be.

  Which didn’t stop her looking.

  Ivy said, ‘You’ll be having another.’

  It wasn’t a question.

  Sarah said, ‘I should be going.’

  But she’d got it right first time: it wasn’t a question. Ivy had already given the nod to Barry behind the bar, who was stepping out with our Derek’s Carol.

  A warm fuzz was taking the edge off Sarah’s next big issue: what was she supposed to do now?

  Okay, so she’d given Alan Talmadge the slip. But all she had with her was her purse. She’d been going to call DS King, but that was before the warm fuzz had wrapped her: she’d need a good hard think before trying to outline the details of the day to a policeman. And besides, so many of those details remained shadows in the dark. Did she need to take another look at the body on the slab? Did she still think it was Zoë? Maybe it was. Maybe Talmadge had taken her mobile phone at the same time he’d taken her life.

  The door opened with a now familiar scrape, and she couldn’t help herself: she had to look. She knew it wouldn’t be Barry but she had to look.

  Ivy said, ‘Are you sure it’s just the rain you’re sheltering from?’

  Sarah said, ‘It’s bound to stop soon. It can’t keep this up forever.’

  ‘Only every time that door opens, you startle like a fawn.’

  Sarah couldn’t help wondering how many fawns Ivy had encountered on the streets of Walker. Even as she was thinking that, a bell was ringing: Walker. Why was the name familiar?

  ‘Or is Trevor not the only one been making himself a nuisance?’

  ‘Any given day,’ Sarah said, ‘we can safely assume Trevor’ll not be the only one doing that.’

  ‘You’re married, then.’

  She had to laugh. ‘I have been. Not any more.’

  ‘Turned out not what you expected?’

  Sarah said, ‘Not so much being married. More the husband.’

  ‘Aye, that’s a long road, once you start down it. Men who aren’t what they seem.’

  She supped her drink. Sarah still hadn’t identified it; ‘same again’ had done the trick. But Ivy seemed capable of drinking it forever without a visible twitch.

  . . . Men who aren’t what they seem, she thought. It certainly was a long road. Mark, her ex-husband, lived somewhere on it; along with, she sometimes thought, every man she’d met since. Which wasn’t always a bad thing. Russ was a darling, though hadn’t seemed so on first meeting, while Gerard had struck her as a monster. And while that was true enough – he was a monster – he was also human, as it turned out. But they were the mild examples. Barry loomed larger right now: a man who adopted the identity of friendly Australian barman as easily as he tossed a tea-towel over one shoulder. Nor was she the first woman to have been fooled. As Alan Talmadge, he had taken lives. Was it any wonder Sarah startled every time the door scraped open?

  And then there was Jack Gannon. A nice guy at a party, who turned out to be the son of the Godfather.

  Which was the connection, of course. The Gannons were a Walker family. This was their patch.

  Ivy said, ‘So that’s who you’re worried about?’

  For a moment, Sarah thought the old woman had read her mind and was talking about Jack. Then she respooled the thread of their conversation, and realized Ivy thought Sarah had an ex-husband on her tail.

  She shook her head. ‘He’s long gone.’

  ‘But someone isn’t.’

  Ivy wasn’t the police. She was an old soak in a pub. On the other hand, she had a pair of ears.

  Sarah said, ‘It’s a long story.’

  Ivy called to Gary, ‘When you’re ready, hen.’

  More drinks arrived.

  She wasn’t sure how long her story took. All she knew was that once she’d started there was no slowing; and that what poured forth was pure narrative, drained of emotion. No tears, not even when describing the body on the slab. But as she spoke a valve loosened, and the strain she’d been under since arriving in Newcastle eased. Even the rain seemed to relax; its onslaught on the windows calming to a patter that was mostly drowned by the hubbub inside.

  It was the kind of story that brought itself to an obvious conclusion. It ended with Sarah sitting on this barstool, now.

  For a while after she’d finished, the two women sat in silence. Ivy had been an unexpected listener. Their conversation so far had mostly involved her own story, which was not so much a linear narrative as a collage of details whose context Sarah had been expected to keep up with, the end result being a sort of pointillist biography; various unconnected dots adding up to a life, provided you viewed them through half-shut eyes. Perhaps, Sarah thought, Ivy wasn’t used to things happening to other people. Or didn’t accord them importance. But that was an impertinent conclusion, as well as a wrong one. Ivy listened. Ivy weighed things up. Ivy didn’t speak until she’d decided what she was going to say.

  Which was: ‘Well, bugger me.’

  Somehow, Sarah hadn’t been expecting that.

  ‘And every word of it gospel. Yes?’

  Sarah said, tightly, ‘Every word. Yes.’

  ‘Now, then. It’s a reasonable question.’

  Ivy drained her glass. Sarah had long lost count of how many that made. Her wallet was feeling light, though. As was her head.

  ‘This man, your Barry.’

  ‘He’s not my Barry.’

  ‘Pet, you’ve got to lighten up.’

  Which was the first time she’d been given that particular piece of advice by an octogenarian.

  ‘But he’s also this Talmadge feller.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah said. ‘I think so,’ she amended.

  ‘Who’s killed your women in the past.’

  Zoë’s women, she thought. Talmadge killed Zoë’s women, though Zoë never met
them either.

  She closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them, the bar swam in front of her. That’s it, she thought. No more to drink.

  As ever, that awareness arrived ten minutes after it might have been useful.

  Ivy, though. Ivy looked like she could keep drinking until the birthday after next.

  ‘And he knows I know,’ Sarah said. ‘Know who he is.’

  This struck her with some force, and she turned to make sure Barry hadn’t sneaked in while she’d been spilling her story. The room boomed before her eyes, then diminished into a miniature version of itself, full of small happy drinkers. She felt Ivy’s hand patting her arm, and then her vision was back to normal. She had the horrible feeling she was about to throw up.

  ‘Through the back, pet,’ Ivy said. She was pointing with an admirably straight arm. Back along the bar – near to where Trev still sat – then through a door marked Toliets. Or probably Toilets. ‘You’ll feel better after. That’s always the way.’

  As Sarah tested her legs on the floor, she heard Ivy say, ‘And there’s nowt to worry about. Not in here. Your man’ll never dare show his face in here.’

  The next five minutes were not among Sarah’s finest. When she re-showed herself in the bar, her face was white and still damp. The dispenser had been out of paper towels, and she’d had to do what she could with her hands. The taste of vomit lingered, and she dreaded to think what her breath smelled like. But there was a glass of water waiting on the bar, next to a mug of black coffee, and while she’d never subscribed to the idea that coffee was a cure for being drunk, she welcomed both. The water helped with the sour taste in her mouth, and the coffee scalded her tongue, but made her feel better.

  She began to say, ‘Ivy, I’m –’

  ‘Hush, man. I’d had your day, they’d need a crane to lift me off the floor.’

  ‘I haven’t eaten lately either, and –’

  ‘Well, I’d give that a while yet. Let’s not run before we can walk, eh?’

  Good advice. Even the thought of food made Sarah’s stomach threaten to heave again. But she felt better, that was true; and as drunken episodes go, she’d enacted worse. Her memory was intact, and she knew she hadn’t danced on the bar or shrieked with laughter. Up until feeling sick, she’d actually thought she was more or less sober.