Smoke and Whispers

by Mick Herron

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘Back to Walker, like,’ he said.

  She was pretty sure that’s what he said.

  Jack had called him: she’d got that much. It was worse than being abroad and not speaking the language – abroad, it didn’t matter if you were thought stupid. Ivy, back in the pub, had had enough of an accent that Sarah had needed her to repeat herself a few times, and some of her responses had relied on Ivy’s body language and raucous laugh. But this man, Jack’s driver: every time he opened his mouth, Sarah was lost. He had no trouble understanding her. But then, to hear someone speaking like Sarah, you only had to turn on the TV. To hear someone speaking like Jack’s driver, you had to get in the car.

  Which she presumed was returning to Walker, but the route rang no bells. She had, of course, been plastered last time. Now she was in that heightened state of not only being aware that she’d sobered up, but proud enough of the fact to be taking in minor details. They passed a large building with dozens of massive bobbin-like articles in its yard, miles of cable wrapped round them. Then another: this one with boarded-up windows.

  ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ she found herself asking.

  His grunt was affirmative, she was nearly sure.

  * * *

  Confirmation arrived within the minute. They turned off the industrial estate and came to a halt by a pair of iron gates set in a high fence which guarded no structure she could see. Low points of light to her left trembled as if frightened; they were, Sarah realized, reflections on the river. Higher lights were static. She was near the Tyne; could see clean across it. This must have been where a shipyard stood. Now it was a darkling plain of muddy roughland, at the far reaches of which stood four huge cranes and two smaller ones. More lights strung across their arms picked out ladders in the sky.

  The larger cranes took down the buildings, she thought. And now the smaller cranes take down the big ones. Like vultures turning on each other, once the carcass has been stripped clean.

  Small flames flickered, a few hundred yards away.

  ‘Jack’s in there?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  The gates had a section missing, where an entrance had been made with a crowbar. She crouched, and squeezed through the gap. He didn’t follow. On the other side she hesitated for a moment. Like a candle in a cathedral, the flickering campfire made everything darker.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Over here.’

  Her boots weren’t made for terrain like this. They were designed to be worn in wine bars, not for stumbling over rubble in a derelict shipyard. Even as she had the thought, she tripped and nearly fell, but caught herself in time.

  ‘You okay?’

  Jack, in front of the campfire, assumed alien proportions: his limbs made stringy and indistinct.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said.

  The air was cold and damp. The sky was far away, and the river too near. Sarah’s breath made clouds that the wind tore away. As she approached Jack, he resumed his normal dimensions. Behind him lurked a squat boxy shape, and her heart beat faster as it twitched.

  ‘Jack?’ she said. ‘What’s going on? Why are we here?’

  ‘All will be clear,’ he said.

  Afterwards, she’d ask herself why she hadn’t been frightened. And the only answer she could come up with was that her day had taken on a momentum all its own, and she had no option but to be carried along. She was a passenger of ongoing events. The fact that she’d set them in motion herself was a detail, that was all.

  The shape behind Jack was a wooden chair, part of an ordinary kitchen set. On it sat Barry. He was naked, and whiter than milk.

  ‘Jack –?’

  ‘Barry and I have been having words.’

  ‘What have you done to him?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything to him. Have I, Barry?’

  ‘N – no.’

  ‘Haven’t laid a finger on him.’

  Sarah took another step forward. Barry wouldn’t look at her. Instead he stared straight ahead, as if there were something lurking in the darkness he was keen to focus on.

  ‘Where are his clothes?’

  ‘Where are your clothes, Barry?’

  ‘The . . . the . . .’

  ‘Take your time.’

  ‘There. Over there. Where we came in.’

  No Australian twang here. This was local. This might never have travelled more than yards from the chair where it now sat.

  ‘Would you like me to fetch them for you?’ Jack asked.

  ‘I’m – no. No. I’m okay.’

  ‘Let him go,’ Sarah said.

  ‘You can go now, Barry.’

  ‘I’m okay,’ he said again.

  There wasn’t a mark on him Sarah could see. The firelight dancing on his body revealed no obvious breaks or bruises. And nothing pinned him to the chair. He just sat, not looking at her. Not looking at anything. He was shivering, but so would anyone: naked, in this cold air.

  ‘Barry wants to tell you a bit about himself.’

  ‘Barry wants ‘Jack, I –’

  ‘Don’t you, Barry?’

  Barry said, ‘Yes.’

  From a distance, Sarah thought, they must look like they were fixed in a bubble. A bubble of firelight, its reach barely extending a yard from Barry’s chair.

  ‘Go on, then.’

  Barry said, ‘My name’s Barry Malone. Born in Gates-head. Been from there all my life.’

  No faulting his logic.

  ‘Been in London, though. Past few years.’

  His voice shivered too. If he made his sentences any longer, words would break off.

  ‘Bar work mostly.’

  He still wouldn’t look at Sarah; nor at Jack. Skin like milk, Sarah thought again. His skin was white as milk.

  She said, ‘You’re not Australian.’

  He shook his head.

  Jack said, ‘Barry? What did we agree?’

  ‘Answer out loud,’ Barry said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Never even been there. Australia.’

  She couldn’t help asking. She ought to be calling a stop to this, but something about the last exchange suggested Jack wouldn’t hear of that. ‘So why did you pretend?’ she asked. It was little more than a whisper, but he heard.

  ‘Makes it easier,’ he said.

  ‘Getting the job,’ he said.

  Something skittered in the shadows, but Sarah barely flinched. A mouse. Hell, no: a rat. But what was a rat in the big scheme of things? She was talking to a naked man in a derelict shipyard. Half an hour ago, she’d have said he was a multiple murderer. But now he was just a naked man, looking and sounding less like Alan Talmadge than anyone else she’d met lately. John M. Wright, she thought. Was it just today she’d had lunch with John M. Wright? She’d find it easier to believe Wright was Talmadge than that this frightened lump was.

  In the circumstances, she wasn’t fussed about a nearby rat.

  ‘It’s easier,’ she said, ‘getting a job as a barman if they think you’re Australian?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just is.’

  Maybe this was what it was like with an actor you’d admired on stage. Performing, he’d been full of life, shining with every word. But catch him without a script, and it was like talking to an empty bottle.

  ‘You met Zoë,’ she said.

  He nodded.

  ‘Barry,’ Jack said softly.

  ‘Yes,’ Barry said. ‘Yes, I met her.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where I said. Bar. Bolbec Hotel.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘And what ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What kind of nothing?’

  ‘We talked. That’s all.’

  ‘What about?’

  He glanced at her for the first time since she’d walked into this circle of light. ‘Can’t remember. Nothing much. Whatever I said we talked about.
’

  She tried to remember – the usual stuff? Something like that. ‘And she checked out next day.’

  ‘I think so. Yeah.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen her since.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or heard from her.’

  ‘Nothing. No.’

  ‘Has anyone been looking for her?’

  ‘Only you.’

  ‘Did you see her with anyone else?’

  ‘No. But . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘That night in the bar. It got busy.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like the Bolbec.’

  ‘There was a crowd. Expecting free drinks. Don’t know what that was about.’

  ‘So she might have been talking to someone else?’

  ‘Might have. I was off my feet.’

  Somewhere on the far side of the river a car alarm sounded, its whoop whoop curving sudden circular slices out of the night.

  ‘But you didn’t see her with anyone in particular.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘No. Yes. I’m sure.’

  The alarm died mid-whoop.

  Sarah said, ‘Did you see me in the soap shop?’

  And now he looked at her again, confused. ‘Soap shop?’

  ‘I was there. When you came in.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I heard you talking to the girl on the counter.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘Your accent slipped,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Didn’t know you were there.’

  ‘Obviously. But when I came back into the hotel, you were different.’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘You acted different. Like I knew you were just pretending.’

  He shook his head. ‘Didn’t mean to.’

  ‘You told me to ring Zoë.’

  ‘So what?’

  So what indeed. She remembered the policeman, Fairfax, delivering something pompous and prepared: It wasn’t necessary to inform the staff that we’d found a body. If Barry was telling the truth now, he hadn’t known Zoë was dead. Which meant he’d hit a target in the dark, that was all. One stray comment about a phone call. The sort of thing anyone might say.

  She remembered sitting in her room, phone pressed to her ear. You’ve reached Zoë Boehm. Leave a message. It had convinced her Zoë was still out there, but it wasn’t proof of anything, was it? Maybe Zoë’s mobile had slipped from her pocket. Maybe it was lying at the bottom of the Tyne. But if so, would her answering service kick in? Sarah didn’t know.

  Barry said, ‘It was just something to say.’

  She’d almost forgotten about Jack, but he was there, hovering on the edge of darkness. It struck her that what he’d done was kidnapping; then, with slightly more force, that what they’d done was kidnapping. By asking these questions, she’d made herself part of Jack’s crime.

  But it was done. That was the point. Barry was here, however much he didn’t want to be. And as long as she was here too, she might as well find out what she needed to know.

  ‘What about Gerard? Gerard Inchon? Did he really check out in the middle of the night?’

  Barry nodded.

  ‘Barry,’ Jack said.

  ‘Aye,’ Barry said.

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘He just said he – said he was leaving, that’s all.’

  ‘But . . .’ Sarah trailed away. Gerard had been drunk. ‘But he was drunk,’ she said. ‘He could barely stand when I left him.’

  ‘Drunk, aye. But he could stand all right.’

  The Geordie fell strangely on her ear. Sarah still half-expected Barry’s voice to emerge all beach-body: tanned and trunked.

  A sudden gust blew sparks from the fire, and a scatter landed on Barry’s naked chest, where they died. He didn’t flinch. Perhaps he was glad of the warmth.

  ‘. . . Did he have luggage?’

  ‘He was already packed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘His bags were downstairs. He’d left them at reception.’

  Sarah stared. ‘You’re saying he planned it? When I spoke to him, he already knew he was going?’

  ‘Must’ve done.’

  She tried to cast her mind back: what had Gerard been like, apart from drunk? He’d been talking about Paula, about their son. Had said something heart-rendingly ugly: he looks like a ping-pong ball, balanced on an egg. Had that been just last night? It was like peering through a telescope with a Vaselined lens. Nothing about their encounter had suggested a man ready to take flight. She could accept that, after his confession, he might have wanted to put distance between them, but not that he’d already planned to do so. That would have meant he had a whole different agenda all along.

  But then, Sarah already knew Gerard had lied to her, didn’t she? About finding Zoë’s card. About not having been in touch with her, when it was clear that Zoë had drummed up the list of invitees to his soirée . . .

  ‘Sarah?’

  She blinked.

  Jack said, ‘Anything else?’

  She said, ‘Yesterday morning. Were you in his room?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did you sneak into Gerard’s room when he was out?’

  He shook his head.

  She said, ‘Last night. When he left. Did he say where he was going?’

  Barry said, ‘No.’

  ‘Did a taxi come for him?’

  ‘He was in a car.’

  ‘He was what?’

  ‘He arrived in a car. It was parked under the arch.’

  She said, ‘You let him drive? In the state he was in?’

  ‘How would I stop him?’

  He had a point. But not a good one. Sure, Gerard would have steamrollered anyone trying to prevent him doing what he wanted, but it would have been the work of seconds to pick up a phone once he’d gone. This wasn’t about tattling to the cops. It was about preventing a drunk mowing down pedestrians.

  Which hadn’t happened, evidently. Or not round here anyway.

  Sarah looked at Barry. His voice had grown stronger, though he shivered still. She wondered what he’d imagined Jack had been prepared to do to him. Wondered at the power of the Gannon name; that it cast such a shadow.

  His wasn’t the only one.

  She said, ‘Does the name Alan Talmadge mean anything to you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Talmadge. Alan Talmadge.’

  He said, ‘No. No, never heard of him.’

  She waited, as if there were another answer within him, aching to be heard. If so, it kept quiet. All of this, she thought – her panic in the rain; this nightmare interlude – it all came down to a young man thinking an Aussie accent would get him better bar work. Maybe attract better women. It put him somewhere near the park where Alan Talmadge liked to play. But it didn’t make him a killer.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she told him.

  He shrugged.

  Jack let him.

  ‘You should go now,’ she said. ‘Find your clothes. It’s cold.’

  Jack must have nodded at this, because Barry got to his feet. He opened his mouth as if to say more, but changed his mind. Without a backward glance, he walked barefoot away from them, over the stony, muddy ground, towards the gate where his clothes lay.

  It was like watching a ghost dematerialize.

  Jack said, ‘Did that clear things up much?’

  14

  The wind whistled through an invisible gap. Off in the distance, lights on cranes shimmered.

  ‘Who are you?’ Sarah said.

  To give Jack credit, he didn’t go coy.

  ‘I’m who you thought I was. The one you came to for help.’

  ‘Is that what I did?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘That’s what you did.’

  ‘And what about you, Jack? What did you do?’

  He reached inside his jacket. For a moment, she thought he was about to show her a weapon; an explanation of how he’d brought Barr
y here. But all he produced was a pack of cigarettes.

  ‘You don’t, do you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Sensible.’ But not so much that he followed her example.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything to him, Sarah. He did it to himself.’

  ‘What, he just stripped off his clothes and –’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘– sat down in that chair in the freezing cold, middle of nowhere, and waited for me to –’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘– show up? What do you mean, yes?’

  She spat the word. What did yes mean? And what kind of man was Jack? He was worse than the one she’d been running from.

  Jack said, ‘I mean, he did it all to himself. Okay, I brought him here. Collected him from the Bolbec. Tank drove. I sat in the back with Barry.’

  ‘And he was happy to come along for the ride.’

  ‘You know something? I’d not say happy. But he didn’t put up a fight.’

  ‘What would have happened if he had?’

  ‘He’d have lost.’ Jack inhaled. ‘But it didn’t come to that. All I had to do was tell him who I was.’

  ‘And who are you?’ she asked again.

  He shrugged; showed his palms. That’s what you did when you were open: look. Nothing up the sleeves. Just a cigarette burning between two fingers.

  ‘Jack Gannon. That’s who I am, Sarah. I make no secret of that.’

  ‘Son of Michael Gannon.’

  ‘That’s not a secret either.’

  ‘Well-known local gangster.’

  ‘Now then,’ he said. ‘He was never convicted of anything.’

  ‘Didn’t have to be, did he?’ Sarah said. ‘I walk into a pub in Walker, drop your name, and your pet gorilla’s there five minutes later. You might be straight as the day’s long, Jack, but you know damn well what weight your family carries.’

  Jack said, ‘So, Barry might have jumped to a conclusion or two.’

  ‘Might?’

  ‘What do you want me to say? That I told him I wouldn’t hurt him? You thought he was a killer, Sarah. You thought he murdered at least three women.’

  ‘Maybe he did.’

  ‘Get real. You just saw him. You think that’s a killer?’

  ‘Talmadge is a chameleon, Jack. Maybe we just saw him changing colour. You certainly provided quite a backdrop.’