Smoke and Whispers

by Mick Herron

  And now she checked her watch, and it was 11.55.

  ‘You’d think they’d open the bar, wouldn’t you?’

  She started, then recovered herself. It wasn’t Zoë, obviously.

  ‘Well . . . It’s a bit early.’

  ‘I didn’t mean for a drink. Just a cup of coffee, you know?’

  He was about her age, with neatly trimmed dark hair and rimless glasses, and wore a long dark raincoat. She hadn’t heard him approach. He’d come to a halt a careful three yards distant.

  She said, ‘Good point. Coffee wouldn’t hurt.’

  He smiled, then leaned on the rail and looked out at the riverside.

  Sarah checked left and right, but there was still no sign of Zoë.

  Outside, the skies were blue, or nearly blue, with no trace of yesterday’s unstoppable rain. It was cold, though. Next time, if there was a next time, she’d bring a warmer coat, even if it proved less stylish. And thinking so, she brushed again at a smear on her collar, which she must have picked up in the cinema, and which she didn’t care to analyse too carefully.

  ‘Do you have someone in there?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  The man had turned her way again, but was nodding towards Hall One. ‘Are you a parent? Lot of children in there.’

  ‘Oh, right. No, I’m just waiting for a friend.’

  ‘I’m not waiting on a lady,’ he said, and then, at Sarah’s confusion, added: ‘Stones song. Sorry. Bit of a fan.’

  ‘Right. Yeah, no. I remember that one.’

  He grinned, and she knew him. And then the moment passed.

  ‘. . . Something wrong?’

  ‘No, sorry. Just remembering something.’

  Though who she was remembering, she couldn’t have said.

  Sarah resumed her outward gaze. A chord had been struck, and she was trying to follow the reverberation back to its source. But it all became part of the larger cacophony of the past days: of trains arriving and cars hammering past; of noisy voices in bars, and scuttlings in the darkness. Of hiding behind locked doors while unknown men prowled on the other side.

  But that had been Jack Gannon. This man was no one she’d yet seen.

  She shook her head. Memory was playing tricks. Something had suggested something else, which had suggested something else again. She was tired, that was the problem. And Zoë was still not here. She reached for her mobile phone, whose battery was so low it couldn’t have more than a couple of minutes’ life in it. It was hard not to empathize. But she pulled Zoë’s name onscreen anyway, and pressed Call. She’d avoided this so far, as if to phone once more would be to push her luck. As if the fact that Zoë had answered once meant nothing, while a failure to answer a second time would definitively indicate her absence.

  During the moments it took her phone to respond, she glanced sideways at the waiting man. He seemed oblivious to her presence; had his back to the rail and was looking towards the monitor, presumably hoping for an indication that the performance was nearly over. He must be a parent. Lot of children in there. That was what she thought. And then in her ear, she heard Zoë’s phone ring.

  And two yards away, a tinny Stones riff buzzed in a pocket.

  Dah-dah – da-da-dah – da-da-da-da-da-dah-dah

  She watched, unbelieving, as he calmly reached inside his coat, and pulled out his mobile. Held it to his ear. Pressed Connect.

  The Stones died.

  At her ear she could hear the same ambient noises that rang around the hall.

  Into his phone the man said: ‘I changed her dial tone,’ and the words dopplered straight into her ear. ‘Told you I was a fan.’

  Sarah lowered her handset.

  ‘Don’t stress out,’ he told her. ‘It’s not a big issue.’

  And he smiled again, and she knew who he was.

  Because things sometimes happen in synch, a noise clattered round the lobbies and landings at precisely that moment: a tray spilt in the café downstairs. Crockery was broken. In pubs and bars, such accidents provoked a communal jeer; here, there was instead a respectful pause, before events resumed their normal course.

  Last time she’d seen this man he’d worn dirty blue jeans and a variety of shirts and sweaters, layered one on top of the other. His hair had been dead straw, and his face was grey from huddling in corners.

  He’d sold her a Big Issue on the instalment plan. Pay now, collect later.

  Looking back, she suspected that was a first.

  She said, ‘Where’s Zoë?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Where is she?’

  That note hit the glass, and bounced off it like candlelight. She was aware of it splintering around the high spaces; of people she couldn’t see pausing to wonder what was up. It made her bite her lip. As if public embarrassment remained a consideration.

  He leaned across to pat her hand. She withdrew it furiously.

  ‘What have you done with her?’

  ‘Please, Sarah. Don’t make a fuss. Not here.’ He gestured to the Hall behind him, as if Benjamin Britten might take offence. ‘If we’re going to talk, you have to stay calm.’

  Her mobile phone was in her hand. ‘The police,’ she said. ‘I could have the police here in minutes.’

  ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’

  The look on his face was one of genuine puzzlement.

  ‘What have you done with her?’ she said again, less sure of herself.

  ‘I haven’t done anything with her,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where she is. And I’m worried about her. Same as you.’

  Sarah opened her mouth, then wiped whatever she’d been about to say. ‘What do you mean, you’re worried about her – you’re – you’re you. You’re a killer. Don’t think I don’t know who you are.’

  Though she didn’t, in fact, know who he was. He was Alan Talmadge. But that wasn’t even his name.

  He said, ‘Now there, you see? You’ve been listening to Zoë. And she’s wrong about me, Sarah.’

  ‘She’s not wrong.’

  ‘She’s taken certain facts – facts capable of different interpretations – and she’s put them together and come up with this wild idea, this crazy story. But it’s not true, Sarah. I’m not the person she thinks I am.’

  ‘So who are you?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m what you see.’

  ‘So why the disguise – the homeless get-up? Why have you been hiding if you’ve nothing to hide?’

  ‘Do you always see things in such black and white?’

  ‘You’ve got her phone, for God’s sake – you’ve got Zoë’s phone. Where’s the grey in that?’

  An usher appeared from round the corner – that would have been the moment to make her voice heard; to shout, if not Rape, then something equally incendiary. But the woman carried on round the curved wall, and if Sarah raised her voice now, she might lose whatever chance was being offered to find out what happened to Zoë.

  He said, ‘There. That wasn’t difficult, was it?’

  Sarah looked at him.

  ‘Not shouting out, I mean.’

  She said, ‘You’ve got her phone.’

  ‘She left it behind.’

  ‘Zoë wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Why do you think I’m worried about her?’

  ‘She was at the Bolbec. She was in Newcastle, doing a job. And you followed her here.’

  He said, ‘You make it sound creepy. It wasn’t like I was stalking her. I wanted to make contact, that’s all. And I thought it best if I did that off home ground.’

  ‘So where’s home?’

  ‘This isn’t about me, Sarah. I just want to know Zoë’s all right.’

  ‘I’m not one of your lonely victims, Talmadge, or whatever you’re called today. I trust you as far as I could throw this building. You won’t tell me who you are, or where you come from, but I’m supposed to help you? Get a grip.’

  ‘I disguised myself, okay.’ He shrugged. ‘Zoë has certain ide
as about me. As we’ve established. But she’s wrong, Sarah. And it’s important to me that she realizes that.’

  His words, his being here – the very fact of him, when all she’d previously had to go on was Zoë’s stories. All of it, put together, amounted to a feeling like a slug crawling over her grave.

  ‘You were watching her.’

  ‘I was waiting for the right moment.’

  ‘You sent her an e-mail.’

  ‘. . . You’ve been looking at her e-mails?’

  Sarah said, ‘I’ve been looking everywhere I can. Because there’s a body on a slab up there’ – and here she pointed through the glass wall; over the river; towards the heart of the city – ‘and it was wearing Zoë’s clothes, and carrying Zoë’s wallet, and for all I know it was Zoë. Except if it was, you wouldn’t be here, would you?’

  He looked in the direction she’d pointed, as if the body might suddenly materialize, unshrouded, on the other side of the glass.

  Sarah said, ‘It was Madeleine, wasn’t it? Madeleine Irving.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Madeleine Irving,’ Sarah repeated, with less conviction. Madeleine Irving. A name she’d plucked from the ether. But when you got down to it, Madeleine was one of many, wasn’t she? One of many who went missing, looked for or not. It didn’t have to be her. It just had to not be Zoë.

  Though whoever it was, she’d once had a name.

  She said, ‘The woman – the woman in the water. You made it look like she was Zoë.’

  ‘I don’t know where you’re getting this from, Sarah.’

  ‘You’re making noises, but you’re not saying anything. There was a body. And you know it wasn’t Zoë’s. So you know whose it was. You put it there.’

  ‘I didn’t put anyone in the river, Sarah. I’m just looking for Zoë, same as you. She needs me.’

  ‘She needs you?’

  ‘Of course she does. She just doesn’t know it yet.’ He looked away, into the glassed distance. ‘She’s lonely, Sarah. It’s tipping her over the edge. Why would she do what she did, otherwise?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Talmadge shook his head.

  Sarah said, ‘She told me what you do.’ The words were coming out quietly, as if this were their secret, here in this public place. ‘You worm your way into women’s lives. Because they’re “lonely”. And then you kill them.’

  He was shaking his head again before she’d finished. ‘It’s fantasy. She seems to need a dark figure in her life, someone to unload all her bad stuff on to, as a way of keeping her real feelings hidden. She’s not much for self-analysis, is she? If this were happening to anyone else, she’d be the first to tell you what was really going on.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ Sarah said. ‘Enlighten me.’

  He looked at her, amusement glittering in his eyes. He was very smooth-cheeked. Professionally so. She imagined that, having finished with his homeless guise, he’d spent half a day getting a professional seeing-to: hair, nails, skin. It wasn’t simply that he looked different. It was that you’d never associate this man with the other.

  ‘I think you know,’ he said.

  ‘Did you talk to her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t make contact.’

  He bowed his head: one slight admission. ‘I sent that e-mail. But she was gone by then. From the hotel, I mean.’

  ‘But you were following her. Stalking her.’

  ‘You keep using that word.’

  ‘It keeps being true. How long were you hanging round the hotel?’

  ‘Just a few days.’ He smiled suddenly, and a naïve sincerity lit his eyes. If he could fake that, Sarah thought – if he could fake that: yes, he was dangerous. ‘I wanted to be near her, that’s all. Even if it meant being part of a crowd.’

  ‘Really? At the Bolbec?’ But she was remembering what Barry had said: There was a crowd. Expecting free drinks.

  Don’t know what that was about. She said, ‘You pulled some kind of fast one, didn’t you?’

  ‘I put up a few posters round town. It was no big thing. But – well, it guaranteed a few punters, you might say.’

  There was a growing commotion, as if a wave were pushing upriver, and it took Sarah a moment to understand that it was applause. The performance in Hall One had come to an end. On the monitor, the orchestra had taken to its feet, bowing acknowledgement to the clapping crowd. Even as she registered this, the door opened and the first of the erstwhile audience slipped out.

  ‘I hate that,’ Talmadge said. ‘It’s discourteous. They should stay where they are a few minutes. Let the players know they’re appreciated.’

  And now more people streamed out, the vast majority children, and the noise levels on the landing escalated.

  He said, ‘Well, it was good talking with you. When you see Zoë, tell her I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘We’re not finished yet –’

  But it seemed they were. With a nod and a smile that combined pleasure and regret, he moved away so deceptively swiftly that he was among the staircase-bound crowd before she fnished her sentence.

  She looked round, as if there were someone she could explain this moment to. Don’t let him get away, she could say. Don’t you realize who that is? But there was nobody there. Nobody, at any rate, with a moment to spare for Sarah.

  There were more doors into the auditorium to her right, all of them disgorging people. Sarah joined the stream, eyes locked on Talmadge’s back. He was at the top of the staircase already; had navigated himself into a clear channel where he could take the stairs two at a time without even appearing to be in a hurry. It was hard to believe that just two minutes ago, this building had been full of empty spaces. Now it was raucous and echoey; full to spilling with children who’d been trussed up inside an audience this past hour. Freedom had them bobbing around like balloons.

  But Talmadge towered above them, beanstalk-high.

  Don’t lose sight of him, Sarah, she told herself. That shouldn’t be too hard: just don’t lose – ‘Shit – oh god, sorry –’

  Eyes fixed on Talmadge, she’d stumbled over an infant, a boy.

  ‘I’m really sorry, are you all right?’

  An adult – a teacher – was zeroing in on her. ‘Excuse me, do you think you could watch where you’re going?’

  The boy was okay. The boy wasn’t crying. The adult, though, looked spoiling for a fight.

  ‘And I’d ask you to mind your language with so many young people around.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Right,’ Sarah said. She hurried round the group of children who were her immediate obstacle, but Talmadge was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Shit,’ she said again.

  The staircase was a swarming mass of movements: children mostly, chattering mostly; squawking in some instances. Adults dotted among them were making the kind of calmingly authoritative noises sheepdogs would make if they could talk. But none of the adults was Talmadge.

  The pestery teacher had caught up with her. ‘Do you really think that’s any way to –’

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ Sarah snapped. She scampered down the stairs, hoping to find Talmadge on the next level. But he was nowhere. How had he done that? She couldn’t have taken her eyes off him for more than a second, and whap! He was gone.

  There were more doorways into Hall One on this floor, with more children streaming from each. Talmadge could have slipped inside. It wouldn’t have taken a second.

  But hiding inside the auditorium would have narrowed his choices. Wouldn’t he head for the outside world? She took the next flight down, fetching up on ground level by the café. The ticket counters were to her right; there were loos either side. She wasn’t going to find him in a hurry if he was lurking in the Gents.

  Think, Sarah.

  Hours ago, in a previous life, she’d used her mobile to lure a shape from the shadows. That wasn’t going to work here. Half the people in sight had a mobile phone in their pocket. The rest had one in their hands. Even
‘Satisfaction’ wasn’t going to make itself heard among this lot.

  And standing on the spot wasn’t helping. Or was it? If you want to hide in a crowd, don’t push your way through it: find somewhere you can stand still without being noticed. Like a queue. She turned to those lining up at the café counter: not there. Then those leaning against the ticket counters; engaged in transactions, or just leafing through pamphlets. They included a lone man, and it might be Talmadge, but it wasn’t – already, though, his image was starting to fade, her memory superimposing upon it his earlier incarnation: dead-straw hair; face grey from huddling in corners. What colour coat had he been wearing? She couldn’t recall. Black. No, blue.

  She was holding her mobile, but couldn’t imagine anything useful to do with it. She could call the police, sure. Then spend the rest of the morning explaining what she was talking about.

  Somebody bumped into her and she turned, expecting that teacher again. But all she faced was a mumbled apology from a youngish man. She was standing in the middle of the hall, that was the trouble. There were people trying to go places, and she was in their way. She shook her head. Two minutes. It hadn’t taken two minutes: that was how much time had passed since she’d been standing three floors up, talking to Talmadge. And now he was gone.

  But Zoë was alive. That was worth hanging on to. She’d lost Talmadge, but Zoë was alive.

  Where she’d got to, and what she was doing there, were questions that could wait.

  Jamming her phone into her coat pocket, Sarah headed for the exit on the Millennium Bridge side. Large groups of schoolchildren were being corralled here and there in the wide lobby. She had to thread her way through them.

  On the other side of the curved glass walls, a boat made its way upriver, piloted by a man in a bright-green lifesaving jacket. Gulls rose squawking from the water at its approach, and on the far quay a small child, bulked to a sphere by its padded coat, pointed this out for its mother’s pleasure.

  There were people on the Millennium Bridge; some crossing; others just taking in the view. A major part of this was the Sage itself, the great glass slug behind Sarah. She fumbled with the collar of the coat, buttoning it in place. On the bridge, a woman’s shape lifted a hand to her ear.