Smoke and Whispers

by Mick Herron

  She could have kissed him, but even in the hotspots, that might have been cause for concern. So she just smiled and thanked him, put her holdall down by one of the machines, and sat and booted up.

  Five minutes later, he returned to put a beautiful-smelling mug at her elbow. ‘You’re catching a train?’ he asked, nodding at her bag.

  ‘That was the plan,’ she said.

  ‘But you’ve changed your mind?’

  She looked at the screen she’d found. ‘I’ve had it changed for me,’ she said.

  There’d be no left-luggage facilities open. Not at this time. And few railway stations had lockers any more, for obvious reasons. But her new friend was happy to keep an eye on her bag, and wouldn’t think of taking payment.

  ‘But where are you going? How will you get there?’

  ‘I don’t suppose the Metro’s awake yet?’

  He smiled.

  ‘Could you call me a taxi?’

  ‘Call? I can whistle you one.’

  ‘Give me a few minutes? I need to make a call.’

  ‘Please. As long as you need.’

  And he retreated into his back room, so she could talk in private.

  He was as good as his word. A whistle was all it took. The taxi driver, an Irishman, was a friend of his, which meant Sarah was the taxi driver’s friend too. Perhaps she’d had it wrong about the 24/7 city. Perhaps whole communities were rubbing along in undetected harmony.

  ‘I’ll be back later. For my bag. And thank you.’

  ‘It’s no problem.’

  It was dark as they headed out of the city centre, but the promise of light to come was painted on the sky. She thought: I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen this side of a morning. Though she could remember being drunk earlier, which went some way towards explaining the growling sensations in her stomach.

  The streets were empty, and the journey took no time.

  ‘And you’re sure this is where you want to be, now?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said, paying the fare.

  ‘It’s awfully quiet.’

  ‘There’ll be someone to meet me. Really. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘If you’re sure, pet.’

  It wasn’t Irish, that pet. It must have rubbed off in his time behind the wheel.

  ‘I am. But thank you.’

  She watched while he did a three-point turn, and waved as he drove away. His car disappeared round a corner. Then she looked at the building over the road.

  Sarah had specified the Metro station as her destination. But it was the cinema she’d had in mind.

  At this time of morning, it looked no more inviting. The same security panels were bolted across its entrance; the same peeling whitewash daubed its walls. It still called itself a picture house. And from the row of blackened, book-sized windows at attic-level, no lights showed. Probably it was empty, she told herself. She kind of hoped so. But still, she crossed the road. Pushing the panel from which the padlock hung, she found little give to it. The noise – a hollow clang familiar from prison movies – echoed between cinema and station for a moment.

  If she tried that again, it wouldn’t be long before someone appeared to complain. That wouldn’t help anyone.

  Circling the building seemed an idea. There was a back lane to the left; reaching it, she saw a car parked halfway down. It turned out to be one of those hearse-shaped cars with a capacious boot. She had no idea what make Gerard drove, and wouldn’t have picked this out of a line-up.

  Something dashed from a shadow, and her heart leaped. But it was a cat, or that’s what she told herself. It was gone before she could be sure, but still: it was only a cat.

  The car was next to a pair of fire-exit doors which had no handles on this side. But they didn’t seem flush. Kneeling, Sarah found a glove wedged at the foot of the left-hand door, preventing it from locking. She pushed, and let herself into the cinema; into a corridor leading to another set of doors, presumably to the auditorium. And then the fire door closed, and what little light had filtered in from outside was gone.

  Quiet, too. Absolute silence. She reached for her mobile phone. This cast a feeble blue glow which was better than nothing. Its light didn’t reach as far as the walls, on which anything might be crawling. But it was best not to think about things that might be crawling.

  I could turn and walk out of here right now. Cross the road, and sit on a bench until the first Metro arrives. Ride it to the Central Station, then leave the city behind.

  Sarah thought, I could do all of that. But it would involve forgetting that the fire door had been propped open with a glove.

  She reached the door to the auditorium, and pushed it open.

  When it crashed to the floor, she almost wet herself.

  15

  The echo explored the dark spaces. It disturbed the spiders, and woke the ghosts.

  The other noise, a sudden shriek, Sarah made herself.

  Dust rose when the door hit the ground: an old filthiness that made her want to spit. So she spat. The light her mobile cast was useless now. All it illuminated were the tips of her own fingers; making them translucent, as if she were one of the woken ghosts.

  As the echoes clattered away silence returned, except for the noises her body made. Her breathing. The rustle of her clothes.

  Careful not to trip on the fallen door, she stepped into the pitch-black auditorium. The light switches Brian Harper had thrown the other day were in the lobby. There weren’t any nearby, or none her mobile’s glow could find.

  She could walk up to the lobby. The aisle couldn’t be more than a few feet away. Her eyes would grow accustomed to the gloom, and then she could make her way up there.

  Past those ropes of spiderweb. Past the dark ranks of seats, where grey things scuttled.

  It was useless. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t step further into the dark.

  A muddled noise, halfway between a bump and a whisper, slithered its way across the auditorium.

  ‘Gerard?’

  Her voice startled her. It was an unexpected visitor in this damp palace.

  There was no reply. Gerard, if he was here, didn’t want her to know.

  ‘Gerard!’ she called again.

  And this time, there was an answering scuttle, which didn’t sound human.

  Something fluttered past her face, and she yelped a curse, and swatted – it must have been a moth. But it had felt large, and she couldn’t stop the picture of a bat forming in her mind. In this picture, the bat had large pointy teeth.

  Okay. Enough. There was nothing keeping her here. If Gerard was hiding in this darkness, he was welcome to it.

  Though it wasn’t simply a matter of hiding. That was the trouble.

  But there were other, better ways of dealing with this than stumbling into a spiders’ lair. She could find Brian Harper, and bring him along with his key and a torch. Which might have awkward consequences if what she suspected were true, but that wasn’t her problem. Her problem was that she was nowhere she wanted to be, and that her mobile couldn’t keep the dark at bay.

  Her mobile . . . She was holding her mobile.

  Tchah!

  It was the work of seconds to call the number up. For another few moments her thumb hovered over the call button. Perhaps walking away was the best option after all. But the phone was in her hand, and her thumb had its own ideas. It made the call before she’d finished the argument.

  Almost immediately, in the darkness on the other side of the auditorium, a phone began to ring.

  She jumped: couldn’t help it. She’d been half expecting it, but still: she jumped.

  The ringing phone switched off midway through its second tone; but not before Sarah had caught the flash of light from its screen. It illuminated a vague shape, halfway up what must have been the furthest aisle. And then there was quiet again, except this time it was bracketed by interruptions. There’d been one noise. There’d soon be more.

  She said, ‘It’s a bit pointless p
retending you’re not there, isn’t it?’

  A sigh made its way across the darkness. As soon as she heard it, she wondered he’d been able to remain silent for so long.

  ‘Do you have a light?’ she asked.

  A torch snapped on. Pointing upwards, it momentarily turned Gerard’s features into a goblin mask. Then he aimed it at the floor, and used its beam to trace a path to where Sarah stood.

  In the fringes of its wavering light she could see the web draped over the collapsed seating, and the scuttling inside it. She swallowed, hard. A moment later, Gerard was in front of her.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’

  ‘You pretty much invited me.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. The last thing I wanted was company.’

  ‘You’re not going to pretend you’re here by yourself?’

  ‘I’m past pretending anything,’ he said. ‘This is where it all stops.’

  It was hard to tell with just the torch, but he looked slighter, somehow. A Gerard anything less than larger than life was strange to contemplate, but here he was: trembling like the light. His face a pale idea of its normal self.

  Into this face, he now inserted a cigar.

  ‘You’re not going to light that?’

  ‘What else do you imagine I’m about to do with it?’

  She bit back a suggestion. ‘Gerard, this place could go up like a pack of cards.’

  ‘Now there’s an interesting possibility.’

  ‘Where’s Wright?’

  ‘Who’s to say?’ Gerard asked. ‘Where’s right, where’s wrong? It’s so very confusing, this world of moral complexities, isn’t it?’

  ‘It doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘What doesn’t?’

  ‘Philosophy. Even the Christmas cracker kind.’

  He plucked the cigar from his mouth and returned it to his breast pocket. His suit must be filthy, she thought. No one upright could help but be a magnet for dirt in this place.

  No one upright.

  She said, ‘What have you done with him?’

  ‘I’m supposed to understand what you’re talking about?’

  ‘Don’t bother, Gerard. Like I said, I’d not be here if you didn’t want me.’

  ‘There’s something about a woman being so unequivocally sure of herself that just naturally makes me want to contradict her.’

  ‘You pretended you were drunk. Or drunker than you were. So you could tell me things you couldn’t bring yourself to say otherwise.’

  ‘Cheap psychology, Sarah. I’d expect better of you.’

  ‘It’s not cheap. It’s free.’

  He rolled his eyes. In the torchlight, the effect was straight out of Hammer.

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ she said. ‘You think that’s chance? I’m here because you brought me with you the other day.’

  ‘I thought you’d enjoy a trip to the cinema.’

  ‘Now who’s making unworthy comments?’

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  He sounded tired. She wondered how long he’d been here, in this dead pleasure dome, and why he hadn’t left hours ago. What was keeping him? What had he done?

  She had the awful feeling she was going to find out. That she’d arrived too late . . . That whatever had happened had happened hours ago, while she’d been in that pub, drinking her fears away.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘Well of course you do,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t be here otherwise. Remember?’

  ‘Gerard –’

  ‘So what did you plan to do? Save him?’

  ‘I hadn’t got as far as having a plan.’

  ‘Or did you hope to save me from myself? That sounds more like you, now I think of it. Little Sarah Tucker. Saving the world, one soul at a time.’

  ‘I came because I thought you needed me, Gerard. I couldn’t make the bits fit together any other way.’

  ‘Isn’t that sweet? Shame you’re too late.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  He shook his head. But she couldn’t tell if that was a response, or just a refusal to answer.

  She wished they could sit. But she doubted the seats would bear weight, even if they weren’t shrouded in cobweb and caked with dirt.

  She said, ‘I found some stuff out.’

  ‘Thank you. I’d got that far.’

  ‘On the Internet. About Wright. About his . . . research.’

  Gerard said, ‘Mentioned by name?’

  ‘Wright? No. No, he wasn’t. But the orphanage was.’

  ‘I forgot. You went there once, didn’t you?’

  She probably blushed, but it was too dark to tell. ‘The Arimathea Home. Not a name easily forgotten. You’re right, he wasn’t mentioned by name. But I knew it must be him. Asthma research? Using the children as . . .’

  ‘You can say guinea pigs,’ Gerard said. ‘It’s not like I’m easily offended.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Gerard.’

  ‘Do you know, I think the window for apologies closed long ago.’

  ‘I meant about the baby. About Paula. It was Wright’s fault, wasn’t it? She was one of the children he treated. With steroids, or . . . whatever.’

  ‘Or, indeed, whatever. He’s strangely reluctant to go into detail.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  Gerard said, ‘The Church claimed he was acting without its – do you know, I’m going to have to say blessing. That he was acting without its blessing. A claim that would carry more weight if the Church didn’t have form.’

  Sarah said, ‘I found some other stories.’

  ‘There’s a place in New York. A home for orphans born with HIV, run by Catholic charities. And there were medical trials going on, on children as young as three months, children with no traceable family – they were trialling experimental drugs. And they justified this by – well, fuck knows how.’ The torch wavered in his hands, then held firm. ‘There were huge companies involved. GlaxoSmithKline. Others.’

  ‘And something similar happened at Arimathea,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Something happened. But the story never broke like the New York one did. There were fewer children involved, and the drugs were less obviously . . . harmful. There was a stopper on it before the press got wind. Trust funds for the children. That was before any long-term issues came to light, of course.’ Gerard broke off; looked around, as if he couldn’t understand what he was doing here. Then he turned back. ‘There’ve been whispers since, but that’s all. Smoke and whispers. Nobody talks. The children – well, they’re in their thirties now. They could lose their trusts if they started ringing bells. And you’d be surprised how few of them married rich monsters like me.’

  ‘So Wright got away with it.’

  ‘Well, you won’t find his name attached to any of the rumours. But it was him. I showed Paula his photo. She stopped breathing.’

  ‘You could have taken it to the law.’

  He laughed. ‘Would you listen to yourself?’

  ‘Well, if not you, who? Christ, Gerard, you’ve got the money, you’ve got the weight, you’ve –’

  ‘She said no.’

  Sarah, who’d been gathering a head of steam, felt it whistle away into the darkness.

  ‘No way was she appearing in a court. Or before an inquiry. Or before anyone at all. And show pictures of our child, as if he were a . . . an exhibit.’ Gerard took the cigar from his pocket again. She wondered how many times he’d done that already. There was no taste of smoke in the damp, earthy air.

  ‘That was the first you knew of it, wasn’t it?’ she said, some kind of light showing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When Zachary was born.’

  A clanking sound made her jump. Something, somewhere, had rattled a pipe. But Gerard didn’t bat an eye. Perhaps he’d grown used to the building’s conversation. Nothing it said could surprise him any more.

  At last he said, ‘Paula hadn’t told me about it before then.’

  She found
nothing to say in reply.

  ‘Not even during the pregnancy. Of course, we knew things had gone badly wrong.’ A flash of the old Gerard made itself felt: ‘Even the NHS would have worked that much out. If we’d gone NHS. Which we didn’t.’

  ‘But you didn’t know why.’

  ‘You want to know what I thought? When I saw him, when I first saw him, I thought it was my fault. I’m not talking about God’s punishment, or anything ridiculous like that. I mean, quite simply, that it was my fault.’

  His eyes bore into her. Even in the dark, they managed that.

  ‘I’m used to taking responsibility for my actions.’

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘And that’s what this was. We’d put off having children. I wanted to wait until I’d established myself. Does that sound sane to you?’

  ‘Thousands of people do it, Gerard. Everybody tries to be in control of their own destiny.’

  ‘Don’t tell me the crap you think I want to hear. You’re better than that.’

  ‘I don’t have children, Gerard. You think I’m going to cast stones? Anyway, it wasn’t your fault, was it?’

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘What I really meant was, I wanted to use my energy building a business. Not spending nights juggling kids and mopping up sick. I thought there’d be time enough for that later.’

  ‘You weren’t wrong. There was no reason for you to think you were wrong.’

  ‘Paula’s younger than me. I doubt you’ve forgotten that. She didn’t mind waiting, or that’s what she said. I wonder, though. Whether she went along because she knew that’s what I wanted. And whether her tendency to do that has anything to do with being orphanage-raised.’

  Sarah said, awkwardly, ‘She’s never struck me as –’

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘We went through this the other day. You don’t know my wife. You only know what you think you know.’

  ‘And that makes me different from anyone else?’ It was a sudden flash of anger, gone as soon as released. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I don’t.’

  He shook his head. ‘I told her, anyway. When we found out. Told her it was my fault. That I couldn’t give her a healthy child, and that if she wanted to look elsewhere I’d not stand in her way, she could have all the money she needed – anything she wanted. But what she wanted was her baby.’