by Mick Herron
‘Why not?’
A wrestling match took place in the robot’s head: Sarah watched the coverage broadcast live on the robot’s face. The disinclination to give out information versus dealing the clinching blow to Sarah’s wants. The blow won.
‘The patient,’ she said, ‘is no longer in the hospital.’
The patient was no longer in the hospital. What did that mean: she’d been transferred, discharged, what? Abducted by aliens? ‘Are you actually in charge?’ Sarah asked. ‘I mean, who else can I speak to about this?’
The robot’s eyes narrowed to slits, the kind you find on coastal defence bunkers. The ones they fire cannons through. ‘I am in charge,’ she hissed. ‘Any enquiries you have will be dealt with by me.’
Sarah did not wait to hear it but turned and walked smartly out the front door, the best she could manage on the way being a wink at Dawn on Reception, pressganging the poor woman into an alliance against her horrible boss. Who was probably herself a harassed, overworked woman but there’d be time for rational sympathy later. At that moment, Sarah hoped the robot would soon step into a malfunctioning lift.
Out in the fresh air, she took a deep breath. It had been years since she’d smoked, but at times like this, of which there were thankfully few, she tended to monitor her stress receptors, putting that old chestnut about there being no such thing as an ex-smoker to the test. Everything seemed normal. No outraged nicotine centre screaming its shredded lungs out. She expelled air carefully, relieved that tobacco slavery was a thing of the past, and headed for the car.
Where a man leant against her driver’s door: long-haired, bearded; wearing shades today, but she recognized him. Anywhere but here and now – broad daylight, people, a hospital – she’d have screamed. You read about this: women finding strangers by their cars, wielding sob stories, looking for lifts. Afterwards, you’d know they had tools in their bags: saws and pliers, cutting knives. Never trust anybody you meet on the street. If Sarah had children, that would be lesson one. Never trust anybody you meet. But this man carried no bag, and his hands hung loosely by his sides, palms out, as if he were aware of the dangers flashing through her mind, and wanted them out of the way. He spoke first.
‘Who are you?’
Bloody cheek.
‘You were on the bridge, with the other women. Now you’re here. What do you want?’
‘I want my car,’ Sarah said. She had her keys in hand, prepared to throw them in his face. Or slash out; leave railway tracks down his bloody cheek.
‘I don’t mean to scare you. But you’re here for Dinah, aren’t you? Where is she?’
‘I want my car,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘Would you get out of the way?’
He didn’t move. ‘Are you a social worker?’
‘Fuck off!’ She moved round and opened the passenger door. He didn’t try to stop her. But he watched through the windscreen as she squeezed into the driving seat, and she wished she’d worn a longer skirt. She wound the window down. ‘And who are you?’
‘They’re friends of mine,’ he said.
‘The Singletons?’
‘All of them.’
‘There were only two,’ she said stupidly. Then he turned and walked off, his ponytail bouncing against his neck as he went. He didn’t look back. Whatever he’d wanted, she didn’t have.
Sarah’s hands were shaking, even once she’d taken a grip on the steering wheel. She felt, now it was over, that she’d spent the past five minutes being beaten up. The patient is no longer in the hospital. Where the patient was was no business of Sarah’s. But it could not be right, this humourless rejection of a simple enquiry; nor did she enjoy being lurked for in car parks, when all she wanted was to ascertain the fate of one orphaned child. A spurt of anger fuelled her into action, and she twisted the ignition key harshly. There were other uniforms, she thought, than the white one the robot wore. Not a natural-born police enthusiast, she at least recognized when matters fell within their jurisdiction. And as she reversed from her parking space the statue in the fountain stirred in the back of her mind, as if it could tell her a thing or two about survival, about resurrection; about how they did not always end in the happy ever after.
IV
The agency was sandwiched between a pub and a newsagent’s, and while the advert in Yellow Pages specified hi-tech, the reality did not run to a working doorbell. After pressing twice Sarah tried the door, which opened on a staircase leading up to a small landing, where a framed print of dreaming spires hung next to another door. The legend read Oxford Investigations, and below that, in upper case, Joseph Silvermann BA. She tapped on the glass. Maybe Joseph Silvermann BA was hard of hearing. When she pushed it, this door opened too – hard of hearing and short on locks – and Sarah found herself in what looked like a secretary’s room: a desk with a phone and intercom and electric console, and a couple of plastic chairs lined against the wall. A coat rack stood next to a closed connecting door, and more dreaming spires, taken from a different angle, brightened the wall. Through the door came voices, mostly a woman’s. It did not sound pleased. A male kept attempting a counterpoint, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying: it was just a bass stutter, poking through the gaps in the harangue.
‘– just try growing up, even. I mean Jesus Christ, you’re old enough. Or is that too much to ask?’
‘— — —’
‘Oh fuck off, Joe.’
Leaving suggested itself as a bright next move. The last thing she needed was a homegrown version of Moonlighting, especially after her brush-off from the regular cops. The police station was opposite the Crown and County Courts, a proximity helping foster the illusion that the law was efficient, travelled in short straight lines, and knew exactly where it was headed. There was a busy road to cross between the two, though, and maybe this accounted for the casualties along the way. Certainly Sarah’s experience suggested that justice was not so much abstract as unobtainable given the materials at hand, chief among these being the bored, or possibly stupid, desk sergeant who had taken the details she offered him and proceeded to put them together in a bewildering variety of ways, their common thread being his inability to come anywhere near the truth.
‘So it was your house that exploded, then.’
‘No. I live in the same street, that’s all.’
‘But your daughter was in the house.’
‘She’s not my daughter.’
Three-quarters of an hour of this, and she’d been transferred to a detective, or at any rate somebody without a uniform. Maybe one of the cleaning staff. But he had at least seemed aware of the existence of the Singletons, the fact that an explosion had occurred, and that the police were nominally looking into it. What he didn’t seem too keen on was complicating this knowledge with further details. He listened to Sarah’s story with barely suppressed boredom before the brush-off proper commenced.
‘If the child is no longer in the hospital, we have to assume that she was discharged.’
Brilliant. ‘Into whose care?’
‘You’d have to speak to Social Services about that.’
‘I’ve tried. Nobody seems to know.’
He sighed. ‘Ms Tucker, they’re hardly likely to have let her wander off on her own. If she’s not there any more, it’s because she’s been taken somewhere else. And if they won’t tell you where, it’s because they don’t regard it as any of your business.’
Which was as close as he came to saying he didn’t either, but near enough for there to be no mistake. Sarah could just see him opening a mental file on her, labelling it Nosy Neighbour, and shutting it again. So she kept pestering him long enough to be an actual nuisance, rather than merely irritating, then left abruptly when his phone started ringing.
And now she was in North Oxford, in the lobby of a private detective agency picked from the phone book, and the impulse that had carried her this far was waning now she’d arrived. What, she asked herself again, was Dinah Singleton to her? The ghost of a c
hild, a walking shadow; not even an actual absence in Sarah’s life, just the possibility of one. An invisible girl with whom she shared a knack for survival. What mattered was that she hadn’t slept last night for wondering about the girl; not all of her sleeplessness arising from a disinterested concern for the child’s welfare. A good part of it was consuming curiosity.
‘– last time, Joe, I mean it.’
‘— — —’
‘Yeah. I’ve heard it all before.’
The door opened and Sarah jumped. The woman that came through was taller than her, and older, with the kind of naturally curly hair that must have been a wow at eighteen but could get to be a nuisance in later life, when people thought you wore it like that to look younger. It was dark, very nearly black, and cropped so it fitted the woman’s head like a cap one size too small. Her face was laughter-lined around the eyes and mouth, but she wasn’t laughing now. Nor was she expecting company. She started when she registered Sarah, though recovered quickly. Her eyes, like her hair, were almost black, and looked properly sardonic when she spoke. ‘Well well well. A customer.’
‘The door was open.’
‘You looking for Joe?’
‘Is there any of him left?’
The woman laughed, without a trace of humour. ‘It bites. Let me guess. You’ve got a husband, he’s got a secretary. Am I getting warm?’
‘Actually, I want him to kill someone for me.’
‘Joe doesn’t do that. What he does is, he pines away in front of you. Bleeding hearts haemorrhage to death at the sight.’
‘You’re a big fan of his, then,’ Sarah said.
‘I’ve known him twenty years, man and boy. In that order. And the fact is, dear, Joe’s a bit of a case.’ She plucked a handbag from behind the desk and pulled a packet of cigarettes from it. ‘Zoë Boehm,’ she said. ‘By the way.’
‘Sarah Tucker.’
‘Delighted. Joe’s what you might call a hopeless romantic. He’s hopeless at everything, in fact. But I don’t mean to put you off. He’s a sucker for the right client, and you look his type.’
‘Which is?’
‘God, you know. Sort of doe-eyed and a bit helpless.’ She lit her cigarette with a disposable lighter. ‘You want one of these?’
‘No. And I’m not helpless.’
‘Good for you. Won’t help telling Joe, though. He tends to believe what he wants to believe.’
‘Some detective.’
‘He has his moments. Same as a puppy does. You keep throwing sticks long enough, he’s bound to bring one back eventually. Probably have hold of the wrong end, though.’ She opened the connecting door. ‘Incoming, Joe!’ Then she turned back to Sarah. ‘He’s all yours. But don’t be too hard on the silly sod. When he acts hurt, he’s usually not acting.’
‘Are you his secretary or his nanny?’
But Zoë Boehm had left.
For a moment, maybe two, Sarah was on the point of following. The signs indicated that Joe Silvermann was more in need of help than in any position to dispense it, and a new lame duck in her life she could do without. But backing out now would mean learning to live with unanswered questions, so of the available doors, she took the one leading into the office.
Most fictional private eyes Sarah had encountered were politically correct women who specialized in investigating crimes their friends and family members were wrongly accused of. The pages Joseph Silvermann had sprung from were the Yellow ones, and she assumed he’d be a little less witty, a little less fit, a lot less ethical and wholly unarmed. That said, she hadn’t known what to expect, so Joe in the flesh was neither a disappointment nor a relief. He was sitting behind a desk, and had greying, curly hair doing its best to surround a bald spot covering about half his head, and large features arranged in the usual way, but producing a face maybe kinder than you usually get. All told, that first sight of him awoke a nagging memory she couldn’t pin down for weeks: Joe Silvermann looked like the actor Judd Hirsch, who’d been in that old American show Taxi; not a dead ringer, but near enough. Part of it was the kindness.
After about maybe four seconds he looked up. He hadn’t been reading; just studying his desktop. ‘Has she gone?’
‘She’s, um, left. Yes.’
‘Think she’ll be back?’
‘It was hard to tell.’
‘She’ll be back.’ He looked down at his desk again, or at his hand, rather, which lay palm down on top of it. Maybe it was his fingernails he was studying. ‘Once every eight months she’s got it down to. It is July, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right. Eight months, give or take. That’s how often she flips her wig. Reads me the riot act then buggers off to London for a fortnight. She thinks I don’t know that’s where she goes. She wants me to think she’s got a lover stashed somewhere.’
‘Maybe there’s a lover stashed in London,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s a big place.’
‘She goes to shows,’ he said mournfully. ‘Les Miz. Buddy. She’s seen those five times each.’
‘You’d rather she had a lover?’
‘I’d rather she had taste. Pinter. Early Stoppard. Though I suppose she’d not have to pretend in that case.’ He stood suddenly and extended the hand he’d been perusing, as if deciding it had passed some kind of test. ‘Joseph Silvermann,’ he said. ‘You’d probably guessed that.’
She shook his hand. ‘Sarah Tucker.’
He was tall, it turned out, and bordering on heavy; possibly he still got away with people thinking it was muscle, but it was only a matter of time before they knew it was flab. ‘There’s a seat,’ he said, waving his hand at it. She took this as an invitation, and they both sat.
He relapsed into silence, this time studying Sarah instead of part of himself. It felt pretty phony; the Sherlock Holmes approach. Soon he’d tell her she’d been brought up in the North, bit her nails as a child, and had never been fond of dogs. Her expectations weren’t altogether dashed when he spoke.
‘You’re a graduate, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
He looked pleased. ‘Which college?’
‘Birmingham University.’
‘Oh, Birmingham. Yes, I’ve heard that’s very . . . Eng lit, was it?’
In Glit.
‘Yes.’
He looked pleased again. ‘I can usually tell.’ He got up to close the window. On the street below, work was starting up: two men with a jackhammer ripping a stretch of pavement, presumably for a very good reason. ‘I was at Oriel,’ he announced. ‘English, yes. Taught by Morris. You know him at all?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Retired now, of course. Well, dead actually. He wrote the book on the Romantics. Furious Lethargy. Wonderful man.’
‘Mr Silvermann, I –’
‘You probably don’t need the small talk. A lot of people need putting at ease, they come into my office. They’re gearing up to tell me things they can’t tell their closest friends, and it makes them nervous, so there I go with the small talk. But you don’t need it.’
‘Are you good at your job?’
‘Am I good at it?’ He turned to look at her. In the light from the window he looked younger. ‘I won’t lie. Philip Marlow, I’m not. But who is? Most of what I’m hired to do, I manage. I suppose that makes me good enough.’
‘And what’s that exactly?’
‘Wandering husbands, missing kids. I do some process serving. But I’ll be honest, a lot of it’s running credit checks, you do most of it over the phone. I might as well be selling insurance half the time. There’s days when it’s like watching wood warp. You haven’t made your mind up yet, have you?’
‘I’m thinking about it.’
‘You’ll find better if you look around. But that might mean Reading or Bicester. I’m handy.’
‘And you’ve an Oxford degree.’
‘It helps the networking.’ He produced from his pocket something which for an absurd moment she took to be a rape alarm, and
triggered it into his mouth. ‘Pollution,’ he apologized. ‘The air here, I find it hard to breathe. Would you like to tell me your problem, Ms Tucker?’
‘I want to find somebody.’
‘I can do that. It’s difficult to go missing, you know. Really completely missing. There’s so many records these days, you’re under surveillance wherever you go. Credit cards, traffic control. You’d need to be an expert.’
‘This is a four-year-old girl.’
‘Probably not ex-SAS then.’ He came back from the window and sat behind his desk again. ‘I’m sorry, that was in poor taste. The girl’s name?’
‘Dinah Singleton.’
‘She’s not your daughter.’
‘You sound sure of that.’
‘Daughters do go missing, even very small ones. But mothers don’t usually look to private investigators to find them.’
‘She’s a friend. A neighbour.’
He said, ‘Singleton.’
‘Not an immediate neighbour, actually. She lives up the road.’
‘I’ve read that name recently.’
‘Their house exploded.’
‘Of course. The house in South Oxford, yes? The adults present were killed. They must have been friends of yours. I’m sorry.’
‘I didn’t know them. That is, I didn’t know her. Nobody knows who he was.’
‘But you know the little girl.’
‘Yes,’ Sarah said. ‘Sort of,’ she amended.
Silvermann nodded. ‘A friend of your own children, perhaps?’
‘I don’t have children.’
‘And wish you did?’
‘What on earth –’
‘I apologize. I’m simply trying to get a grasp on the situation, Ms Tucker. A little girl is involved in a tragic incident. She has since, I take it, vanished from view. You wish to find her. I’m curious about your motives, that’s all. You say you sort of know her. You don’t really know her at all, do you?’
‘No.’
‘But it’s important to you that she be found.’
‘Of course it is.’
‘That hardly follows. Children vanish every day. Sometimes their own parents don’t care.’
