Smoke and Whispers

by Mick Herron

  She wanted to hit him. Hell, he was on the floor: she wanted to kick him. But held back, because that was a line she didn’t want to cross.

  Though she knew, in her secret heart, that it was a line she was glad Gerard had crossed already.

  She said, ‘Arimathea.’

  That caught his attention.

  ‘The orphanage. Did you think I didn’t know?’

  Wright pulled at the handcuff still wrapped around his wrist. ‘I’m not supposed to talk about it.’

  ‘You’re not . . . you’re what?’

  ‘I had to sign confidentiality agreements. If I talk – they could sue me.’

  Sarah dizzied with anger. ‘Is that what you told Gerard?’

  ‘He made me tell him things. He had no right.’

  She shook her head. Wright was an empty box, she thought, without knowing where the thought came from, or what it meant now it was here. Was just an empty box. She said, ‘You destroyed a life. Lives. Is there anything inside you, anything at all, that’s prepared to recognize that?’

  ‘My research is important. And there’s no proof, no documentation, that anything I did caused damage to – to that man’s wife. Or his son. None at all. The procedures were safe. I’d not have performed them if they weren’t. Do you think I’m a monster?’

  And he meant it. Jesus Christ, but he meant it.

  ‘I’m not interested in proof,’ she said. ‘Do you really think I – oh, fuck, I should have stayed away, shouldn’t I? Should have let him kill you. But he’s a good man, and he doesn’t deserve that. You do, but he doesn’t.’

  ‘What I’m doing will save lives.’

  ‘What you’re doing will make you rich. That’s all you’re interested in.’ She didn’t know that. It might not be true. She didn’t care. ‘And even if it does save lives – you’ve no right, you had no right, to do what you did to those children.’

  ‘You’ve no proof I did anything wrong.’

  ‘Really? You think there’s no proof? No documentation? What you did was covered up because it was in some people’s interests to do so.’ She was thinking on her feet. She wished he’d stop breathing. ‘Did you think that was written in stone? If the wind changes, you’ll be hung out to dry.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘And you really believe that? Because if you do, I might just let him kill you.’

  He said, ‘Nobody can prove I’ve done anything wrong,’ but he sounded less sure about it.

  Sarah said, ‘He’s very rich, you know. Well, of course you do. And the only reason he did what he did was because he wanted to feel his fists on you.’

  ‘He’s –’

  ‘I’m not finished. You really think, if he’d decided to take another route, you’d be a free man now?’

  An odd thing to say to a man looped in handcuffs, but he didn’t point out the contradiction.

  ‘And that doesn’t change just because he slapped you about. Now, you can call the police the moment you leave here, but can you guess what’ll happen? They’ll talk to Gerard. They’ll be very polite. And possibly they’ll politely arrest him. I imagine he’ll be in custody for all of twenty minutes, don’t you? And then there’ll be at least two years before any of this ends up in court. And during that time, every penny at Gerard’s disposal will be dedicated to establishing exactly what you did at Arimathea. How confident are you that he’ll fail?’

  John M. Wright said, ‘I want to go now.’

  ‘You’ll go when I say you can go.’

  Something lizardlike flickered when she said that. The same lizard that crawled the corridors of Abu Ghraib. But she blinked twice, and it went away.

  ‘The other children were paid off. Do you really think Gerard can’t afford to open their mouths? By the time your story’s heard in court, you’ll be the one in the dock, Wright.’

  He looked at her with baffled resentment. A man who really didn’t think other people should be allowed to interrupt his view.

  ‘You’re a creep. An animal. No, you’re worse than that. Animals don’t do what you’ve done. And sometime soon you’ll pay for the lives you’ve destroyed. But tonight you get to walk away, and you know why that is? It’s because I can’t stand the sight of you a moment longer. Now get the fuck out of here.’

  She threw the handcuff key. It bounced off his shoulder, and on to the floor. He scrabbled for it, fingers black.

  It took him some while to free his other wrist.

  When he’d managed she said, ‘Wright? Next time you turn up at ResearchWorks, you can expect a reception committee.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ he told her.

  ‘Keep practising that. Imagine saying it in front of cameras.’

  He glared at her with hatred, but with something else too. As if he really didn’t understand her. As if she were an obstacle to all that was true and good and desirable. And glaring back, she knew there’d never be a way of breaking through the walls that minds like his built. Like Talmadge, he was out of step with other people. The only music he’d ever hear was his own.

  She let him leave first. In darkness they made their way back into the auditorium, then round to the fire exit. When Wright pushed through the door and emerged into the lane, he looked back once and then ran, as if all this was something he could escape from. As if, by running, he might arrive at a place where he was someone else. She waited until his footsteps had diminished into nothingness, then bent and plucked the glove from the groove where it had held the door open. As she stepped outside the door slammed shut, its noise the finest she’d heard in a while.

  * * *

  Gerard was smoking at last, leaning back against the bricks and looking up at the sky. The rain had gone, and the clouds were chasing after it. The moon pulsed somewhere above them.

  She joined him. Stood to his right, so his smoke drifted away from her; still, she could smell its acrid heat. Strange that a man with so much money took his pleasure in such cheap cigars.

  She said, ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘It’s over. He’s not likely to make a fuss.’

  ‘Sarah. Believe me when I say I couldn’t give a fuck what kind of fuss he tries to make.’

  ‘You didn’t want to kill him.’

  ‘Evidently not.’

  ‘And I’m glad you didn’t.’

  He said, ‘Maybe so. But there’s nothing I want more than for that bastard to walk under a train. Soon. Very soon. Now will do.’

  ‘I don’t really think people get away with very much.’

  ‘Don’t you? Don’t you really?’

  ‘No, Gerard. I don’t.’

  ‘Well, it beats me what world you’re living in.’

  ‘He’s a shell, Gerard. He’s a man without a middle. Talking to him was like shouting down a well. You don’t think that’s a punishment?’

  ‘Sweet God above. That’s not a punishment. It’s a point of view.’

  Somewhere, streets away, a door closed loudly.

  Sarah ran a hand through her hair. She wondered what kind of a mess she looked like. Then wondered why that mattered.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ she said.

  ‘Letting him go?’

  ‘It’s what Buffy would have done,’ she said, before she could stop herself.

  Gerard opened his mouth, and closed it again. He took another toke on his cigar. Then said, ‘I’m sure I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Then let’s change the subject,’ she said. ‘You didn’t find Wright by yourself, did you? You had help. You hired Zoë Boehm.’

  He didn’t reply at first. Kept staring skywards, as if expecting a heavenly messenger to be dropping in soon. When he exhaled, it was as if he were talking cloud: a big language, not understood by the earthbound.

  ‘I lied about that,’ Gerard said at last. ‘About Zoë’s card.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I didn’t just find it. It was clipped to
the report she sent me.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘you only found out about it by sneaking into my room. So don’t mistake an admission for an apology.’

  Now that sounded more like Gerard.

  He said, ‘That’s what brought you here in the first place, isn’t it? Zoë.’

  ‘What happened to her, Gerard?’

  ‘I don’t know. Well, she did her job. She found Wright. Told me about Jack Gannon, his . . . sponsor. It was her who came up with the idea of the party. Gathering. Whatever you want to call it. I’d wanted a look at Wright without him knowing. That was her solution.’

  ‘She produced the list of local worthies.’

  ‘She got some local recruitment consultants to come up with it. Sarah – all that time, I never laid eyes on her. We spoke on the phone, or e-mailed. But I never met her. I didn’t lie to you about that.’

  ‘But you hired her because of me. I mean, I’m the reason you’d heard of her.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘And I came here to identify her body.’

  ‘Her body?’

  ‘Yes, Gerard. Her body.’

  ‘She’s dead?’

  ‘I did say body, Gerard.’

  ‘But I didn’t – I never – I assumed she’d just . . . I don’t know what I assumed. It didn’t matter to me. She’d found Wright. By the time I came north, she’d left. She’d done her job. It wasn’t as if I needed her to . . . Dead?’

  Sarah said, ‘That’s what it looks like.’

  She wondered that she could say the words so coldly, but after the day she’d had, she was wrung out. All she had was a wall to lean against, and a dark sky overhead in which one or two stars were showing. After the rain, these pinpricks of light. And soon enough would come the morning.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry she’s dead. But I don’t think that had anything to do with what she was doing for me.’

  ‘That’s good, Gerard. So long as your conscience is clear.’

  That reached a shriller pitch than she’d intended. Some of the higher notes whistled round the dark for a moment.

  She said, ‘So she was gone before you arrived at the Bolbec.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea where she went.’

  ‘None at all. The last communication I had with her was that list of names. A fortnight ago. Sarah –’

  ‘The body was found last week. But Zoë checked out of the hotel the week before. The previous night, there’d been a crowd in the Bolbec bar, apparently. That sound odd to you?’

  Gerard said, ‘It’s been quiet as a grave while I’ve been there.’ Then he thought about that, and added, ‘Sorry.’

  She shook her head. Gerard had his own problems. Tonight was like the lancing of a boil: a lot of nasty stuff had poured out, but that didn’t mean the healing was done. It meant it was beginning. And whatever had become of Zoë, he knew nothing about it. Because if Alan Talmadge hadn’t led Zoë here, he must have followed her. The job Zoë had done for Gerard had had nothing to do with it.

  A brief fizz released her from her thoughts. Gerard had tossed his cigar into a puddle. ‘What now?’ he said.

  He looked deflated. She wondered how long it had been since he’d asked anyone what he should do.

  ‘Sarah?’

  ‘I take it that’s your car?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, what you do is get in it and drive home.’ She put a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t flinch. ‘Paula needs you, Gerard. So does Zachary.’

  ‘He’ll never know what he needs.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he doesn’t need it.’

  She expected a harsh comeback to that. Was almost disappointed when none arrived.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I could do with a lift, since you ask.’

  ‘To where?’

  Anywhere, she thought . . . ‘Anywhere. Somewhere far away, where I can get home from.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now’s good.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose it is.’

  He patted his pockets for his car keys, and at that exact same moment, a phone buzzed.

  ‘Was that you or me?’ Gerard asked.

  ‘It was me.’

  She fished it out. One message received, her screen said. It would be Russ, she thought. Russ, who was awake at five in the morning, wondering where on earth she’d got to.

  But it wasn’t.

  ‘Anything important?’ Gerard asked.

  ‘You might say,’ she told him.

  It was from Zoë.

  17

  At the bar on The Sage Gateshead’s third floor Sarah was more or less on a level with the nearby Baltic’s viewing gallery, which in turn gave a great view of the Sage. She’d heard there were those who thought the very best view of the Sage was from inside it, but anyone who’d done hard time among the concrete bunkers of London’s South Bank would have laughed that off. Way down below, the Tyne shifted choppily. On its far bank stood the Courts buildings, and to her right, between Sage and Baltic, was the Gateshead Millennium Bridge; a graceful eyelash she’d yet to see drop. About the same distance upriver was its industrial older brother, the Swing Bridge, squatly supported by a jetty-like structure the water lapped at hungrily. And immediately below her, a large white H on the concrete apron was a helicopter landing pad for the naval base.

  And that was quite enough tourism, she knew, but Zoë was twenty minutes late, and Sarah herself had been early.

  Bar, 3rd floor, the Sage. 11.30. Z.

  As messages from beyond the grave went, it was hardly I am risen, but it would have to do. If the woman turned up to put some body behind it, Sarah would have no complaints.

  Though if she was pressed, the lack of seating might have been mentioned.

  She was leaning against the rail bordering the oval edge of the bar area – the bar itself was no more than a small counter between doors into Hall One – and from here could see right to ground level through the gap between the floor and the glass outer wall. When she arrived, there’d been a band playing near the café down there. Strange thing was, she’d seen half this band before, busking on Northumberland Street. This time the two brothers were performing with two other young men: fiddles, guitar and melodeon. Last Orders, a poster had proclaimed them. They looked like Arctic Monkeys gone folk, and had been joined by a female vocalist as Sarah watched, for a haunting song about whales.

  That had been forty-five minutes ago. Then the band had packed up, and a matinée performance had started inside the hall: A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Monitors over the doors showed an auditorium full of schoolchildren.

  She looked at her watch again. Zoë was still late, and there was still no sign of her.

  The text had been a reply, of sorts, to the message she’d left on Zoë’s voice mailbox in the early hours, at the Internet café:

  ‘I don’t know whether you’re listening to this. I don’t know whether you’re able to. But if you are . . . I need your help, Zoë. I think something really bad has happened, or is about to. And I need to stop it. But I don’t think I can do that on my own . . .’

  In the end, Sarah hadn’t needed Zoë’s help. But that didn’t defuse her smouldering sense that if she had done, it wouldn’t have been forthcoming . . . A sense itself smothered, in turn, by relief that Zoë was alive. Along with anger that she’d been alive all this time, and allowed Sarah to think otherwise.

  If you let it happen, conflicting emotions could cripple you.

  Take Russ, for example. She’d spoken to Russ at last. It hadn’t been a happy experience. He was forgivably pissed off about her extended absence; but less forgivably too pissed off to listen to the reasons for it. She’d had flashbacks to the derelict cinema while he’d been talking. I didn’t want to be with the spiders, she wanted to say. I’d rather have been with you. But because things happened the way things happened, she
found herself responding angrily instead. And then the conversation had been terminated, and it had been too late to say anything.

  She should call him now. It wasn’t really too late to say anything. But if she did, Zoë would turn up next moment, and then Sarah would have to disconnect and it would all be terrible again – With the thought, she scanned the level once more. But saw no sign of Zoë.

  Gerard had left. Was in London by now, or at the very least, in a traffic jam quite near it. He’d given her a lift to the railway station, and had hugged her quite hard on leaving . . . As for Wright, he might be wandering the back lanes near the cinema still, in a daze. Wondering what he’d done to deserve this.

  But she didn’t want to think about him.

  One day soon, she’d call Gerard. Make sure he was okay, or as okay as circumstances allowed. And she’d talk to Paula. Sarah would try to forget everything she’d ever thought she’d known about Paula – Hello! magazine; designer labels – and listen instead to the woman she was talking to. She would try to hear the music. And after that she’d talk to Gerard again, to discuss what to do about Wright; something that didn’t involve instant justice in a cobwebbed court. If nothing else, there were always newspapers. Even the worst papers would jump all over a story like his. Especially the worst papers.

  There was no way a rat like Wright could be allowed to get away with what he’d done.

  All of this she would do, as soon as everything else was over.

  She’d eaten breakfast after collecting her bag from the Internet café; had eaten two, in fact, to make up for however many meals she’d missed. After that she’d drifted around the quayside, cold and edgy, watching gulls bobbing on the water like they owned the place. She’d wondered where Zoë had been, and invented mental conversations with her. These always closed with Zoë’s abject apologies: pointless exercises in self-justification. But hard to resist all the same.

  Time dragged when all you had to do was kill it. This was hardly news. She’d been in the Sage for some while. Had checked her bag in at the cloakroom, exactly as if she was here for the matinée performance.