by Mick Herron
Sarah struggled, scraped, passed by. With a handful of O-levels, ascended into the sixth form.
‘And Mr Silvermann’s body was behind the desk.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you touch anything, Mrs Trafford?’
‘You asked me this yesterday.’
‘And now I’m asking you today. Did you touch anything? Did you touch the body?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t touch the body.’
She hadn’t even touched the telephone. Had left Joe’s office and called the police from the pub on the corner.
‘And what were you doing there, Mrs Trafford? In a private detective’s office?’
There was a careful absence of sneer when he said private detective. In fact, Sarah thought, you only noticed the sneer at all because of the thoroughness with which it wasn’t there. She said, ‘I had . . . there was a job I wanted him to do.’
‘And what was the nature of this job?’
Which was policeman talk, she decided, for ‘And what was this job?’
‘Mrs Trafford?’
‘That’s private.’
He sighed. ‘We’re investigating a suspicious death. Nothing about it is private.’
‘Was he murdered?’
‘It’s a suspicious death,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll ask you again, Mrs Trafford, what was the nature of your business with Mr Silvermann?’
‘I wanted him to . . . follow somebody,’ she said.
‘And who might that be?’
‘My husband.’
‘Your husband,’ he said. ‘I see.’
The first time she blew the Other Sarah away was at a sixth form party in a huge terrace house on the north side of her home town. Somebody’s parents were away, and Sarah went because everybody went: it was that kind of party. There was a schizophrenic soundtrack – Led Zeppelin v. The Clash; Born to Run alternating with Rattus Norvegicus – and the punch was spiked with everything: by nine o’clock the back garden was full of vomit and thrashing bodies. Sarah was handed a roll-up – she’d smoked cigarettes before – and had already breathed it in before she realized it wasn’t tobacco. The music got softer after that, though a great deal more important, and she was filled with the wonderful sensation of having done something the Other Sarah wouldn’t, but which was much more fun than anything the Other Sarah did.
A boy she’d never met told her she had beautiful eyes, and she told him she wasn’t born yesterday, though it felt like a lie at the time. After a while they were in the bathroom together, looking for something he kept hidden in his trousers. Eventually they found it, though it wasn’t worth the bother.
Next day she was sick as a pig, and endured a fortnight’s torment before turning out unpregnant. She never saw the boy again. But still remembered those first few minutes of it: not the sex, the dope. It had felt like putting down something very heavy, something she’d been carrying round in her mind. It had felt like something she’d do again.
It was easier this way. It was almost certainly safer. What she should have done, she knew, was leave Joe’s office quietly, pretending it never happened; or, at least, that she’d never been there to see it. But there were other factors. The man outside the Italian restaurant, for a start; he’d seen her. And, more important, Joe himself, whom she had not been able to leave like an unmade bed, an unwrapped parcel, a dusty shelf.
She did not for a moment believe he had killed himself. Forget about the razor in his hand.
‘You suspected your husband of having an affair, and set about hiring a private detective to confirm this.’
‘It can’t be that unusual.’
Or original, he seemed to want to say. ‘But you never got to speak to Mr Silvermann yesterday, did you?’
‘No,’ she said honestly, offering silent thanks for that yesterday.
‘Or actually meet him.’
‘No.’
This was not denying Joe exactly. It was simply, she preferred to think, what he would have advised: Take care of yourself. Don’t get involved. Look what happened to me. My fault, Joe. I’m sorry, so very very –
‘In which case,’ the detective said, ‘you wouldn’t expect to appear in a case file of his, would you?’
Birmingham was a large, disappointing city, neither different enough from the one she’d left for her to feel she’d travelled any distance, nor similar enough to allow her to feel at home. The streets had the same grey rained-on air, though, and you never had to go far in any direction before reaching a betting shop or a row of boarded-up windows. Clusters of warehouses dotted the landscape like enemy settlements. This was where she had come to make sense of literature, or at least convince enough people that she had that they gave her a degree. Back then, this was still thought an advantage in the job market.
They put her in a hall of residence which contravened seventeen health and safety regulations, and armed her with timetables and reading lists, and no guidance whatsoever on how to be a grown-up. But she made this discovery: that every second person she met was scared witless, and desperately trying not to show it. It was the sort of perception that bestowed confidence. She began going out; crashed parties like everyone else. The Other Sarah Tucker, she left in her room.
Their first encounter was tediously banal. He was tall, blond, amused; with chinos, a white collarless shirt, a blue sweater draped over his shoulders, and the lazy good looks of a Test cricketer who never quite achieved his potential.
‘Some party,’ he said.
‘As in good or bad?’
‘Which would you prefer?’
Another poseur. She left him decorating the doorway and found another cup of sweet warm wine abandoned on a mantelpiece. The first rule of parties was, Never bring anything you’d drink yourself. The second was, Drink anything you find without cigarette ends floating in it.
‘My God, he spoke to you!’ This was Mandy, a round, spotty second year.
‘Who did?’
‘Mark Trafford!’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Who is he? Only the hunkiest piece of talent in the whole of Brum, that’s all. We are talking fit.’
‘Never heard of him,’ she lied.
‘But he’s gorgeous! Who did you think he was?’
‘I don’t know who I thought he was,’ Sarah said. ‘But he thinks he’s Jesus Christ.’
Sarah thought: Oh shit.
This was how it started: you told the first lie to minimize your involvement; the second followed from that. Then you found they’d known everything from the start, and basically were just keeping you talking while someone fetched the handcuffs. Joe would have kept records, that’s exactly what Joe would have done. This policeman already knew why she’d hired Joe; knew she’d seen him more than once.
Then she realized it hadn’t been a question.
They were in Sarah’s house. Yesterday, they’d talked to her at Joe’s, out in the waiting room, while inside the office a police pathologist had conducted the grisly routines expected of him. Then she’d been given a lift home. When this policeman – Ruskin was his name – had rung this morning, he’d said he had more questions. They’d turned out the same ones, though, until now.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said, that would explain why there’s no file on you. Though you’d have thought there’d be a note of the appointment.’
Relief washed over her, but soundlessly. She didn’t respond.
Ruskin had a sandy moustache which curled round the corners of his mouth, making him look deeply unhappy about something, and similar coloured hair arranged about an irrevocable parting. Maybe this was what he was unhappy about. He had two uniformed officers with him, which Sarah thought surplus; one of each gender, they sat on the sofa, not talking. Ruskin took his own notes. Presumably, with his name, in his job, in this city, he felt it incumbent to behave in a vaguely unorthodox fashion.
He sighed now, as if reminded about hair loss. ‘The thing is, Mrs Trafford, there are
one or two oddities about this business.’
‘You think he was murdered?’
‘No, I think he killed himself. I have no problem with that.’ His voice was harsh. ‘He had good reason.’
‘What on earth –’
‘We looked for a note, of course.’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t see one.’
‘There wasn’t one. This is interesting, though.’ He produced a folded slip of paper from nowhere; he magicked it out of the blue. ‘You never actually met him,’ he stated.
She tried to look blank.
‘In which case, Mrs Trafford,’ Ruskin went on, ‘how did he come to have a cheque of yours in his wallet?’
* * *
The next time she saw Mark Trafford he was in the Union bar, presiding over a discussion on Walter Benjamin: the critic as martyr. He wore the same amused expression, which she suspected only root canal would shift, and the air of a man who not only has the answers but knows in advance what the questions will be. He was drinking Perrier while all around had pints of bitter. Next shout, she guessed, the groupies would be on Perrier too. She took a seat nearby so she could eavesdrop, nursing a rum and Coke, and found to her surprise that Trafford remained silent unless called on to arbitrate, when he did so with gnomically vague utterance. He was marked down by all as a sure-fire first, but she classed him now as a bullshit artist. Though knew not a whit about Benjamin herself.
Her third rum and Coke arrived apparently of its own accord. By this time she was reading a film society handout listing all the black-and-white foreign movies she’d never wanted to see, and would now have an excellent opportunity to avoid as they were all showing in the same grubby little fleapit on the other side of town. She looked up to see that the alcohol was attached to Mark Trafford; setting it in front of her he asked, ‘Are you an admirer of Benjamin?’
‘Oh sure,’ she said. ‘I’m in favour of dead citics. There should be more of them.’
‘Would you like to join us?’
‘No.’
It was one of those nights – any day with a Y in it – which ended in a gathering in some unfortunate’s room: heading on for closing time, the bar had that tense atmosphere you probably get on the veldt when the lions draw straws to see which gazelle to have for dinner. Playing host meant no sleep till morning, and all your best records going walkabout. So it was a definite event when Trafford announced it was back to his place: the entire bar wound up at the house he shared with some other golden boys. In front of them all, when he asked her to dance she refused: she didn’t dance. Ever. She said. Then dragged a scrofulous chemist in an Oxfam-leather vest on to the floor for an energetic bop to It takes two. Trafford’s studied indifference made it worthwhile, though she had to dead-leg the chemist to get rid of him.
Afterwards, Trafford started sending notes: pseudily phrased suggestions that they meet for an espresso, or a cappuccino, though never just a coffee. She ignored them. When word got round that he was dating a third year well-hyped as an easy lay, she ignored that too. And there were parties to dance at, pubs to discover; there was a girl who knew a guy who knew this bloke he could always score dope from. Her work coasted along on a very average average because there was so much to do that wasn’t paperwork it would be criminal to ignore it. So every third night she got stoned; every second night she made it to the bar, where Mark’s coterie had a new game: trying to guess the title of his inevitable PhD. He had his eye on Oxford somebody told her, but she ignored that too. When they passed in the corridors they never spoke, but always another little note turned up the next day. A girl told her Mark Trafford was in love, though nobody knew who with. She ignored her. And then came the night of the Big Crash, when she almost ignored the rest of her life, and the holding pattern she’d fallen into crumpled while the Other Sarah Tucker laughed.
‘It was a deposit.’
‘It’s dated almost two weeks ago.’
So why hadn’t he cashed it, the stupid stupid fool? Dead fool.
‘There’s also a credit card slip for a similar sum, one hundred and fifty pounds, dated the previous week. Also a deposit, Mrs Trafford?’
‘All right,’ she said quietly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said all right. You’ve made your point.’
Ruskin glanced at his colleagues, then back at Sarah. ‘You know why we’re here.’ It wasn’t a question.
She was confused, worse than confused. She wanted them all away; she wanted to pick up the phone and reach Joe, who would assure her she’d been asleep for hours. That good old standby, it had all been a dream. Failing that, she still wanted them away.
Ruskin wasn’t going anywhere. ‘We searched his office, of course.’
‘But you didn’t find a note,’ she said wearily.
‘I think you know what we found.’
‘I haven’t,’ she said, ‘the faintest idea.’
‘We found certain controlled substances, Mrs Trafford. In quantities that would suggest your Mr Silvermann’s business didn’t stop at private snooping.’
She didn’t believe him. She believed him, but she didn’t believe him.
‘Heroin. Marijuana. MDMA. You know what they call that, Mrs Trafford?’
She nodded, numbly.
‘Yes, I thought you might. They call it Ecstasy. It’s the drug that killed young Lizbeth Moss at the weekend. And I rather think we’re going to find that your Mr Silvermann supplied young Lizbeth with the Ecstasy that killed her. You understand now what I mean by good reason?’
‘You’re wrong,’ she whispered.
‘Time will tell. Is that what the money was for, Mrs Trafford? Were you one of Mr Silvermann’s customers?’
She shook her head. You’re crazy was what she wanted to say, but she couldn’t wrap her tongue around the words. And was afraid, too, that it was she who was crazy.
‘Because I’ve been doing a little digging since yesterday, Mrs Trafford. And it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve had trouble with drugs. Would it?’
Sarah felt her past open up and swallow her alive.
It was another basement party. They were always popular. ‘Everybody has to go down, man. Now that’s what I call a party,’ some relict told her on the stairs: a relict in a T-shirt advocating the legalization and widespread use of soft drugs. A packet of Rothmans poked from his jeans pocket like an admission of defeat.
She passed him again hours later, on her way up.
It was her first time on LSD. Dope had long been her drug of choice. Speed was okay. Sometimes she’d do a line before a party or a dance; it injected a little craziness into an ordinary dull event. But it had its downside; it wasn’t mood altering so much as mood magnifying, and once when she’d taken it feeling low, she’d wound up suicidal. Dope was safer. It made you hazy and stupid and friendly, none of which she was the rest of the time. It was a nice place to visit, though she wouldn’t want to live there.
But until this evening, she’d never tried LSD.
Like most events of its kind, the party segregated early: dancers, drinkers, snoggers. The previous week, she’d spent so long with the second group she’d ended up in the third, so avoided catching anybody’s eye as she collected an unattended bottle of wine and joined Jane in a corner of the drinkers’ room. Jane was the only woman on her corridor she could stand. Malcolm, her boyfriend, supplied them both with dope.
‘Guys.’
‘Cool,’ said Malcolm. He passed his polystyrene cup. She filled it.
Jane, leaning against the wall, giggled. ‘Hello, Sarah. Sarahsarah-sarah.’
‘God, what’s she on?’
He mouthed something she didn’t catch.
(There’d been warnings, of course, from various authorities; even a policeman once, who had held a seminar on drug abuse. Attendance, being voluntary, had been minimal. More useful were the snippets of etiquette you picked up at parties; for instance, that somebody always stayed straight, to look after the oth
ers. In case of a bad trip . . . What could put you off drugs faster than anything, Sarah thought, was the bloody hippiespeak you had to use.)
‘You what?’
‘Acid.’
The negotiations took forever. Throughout them, Jane planet-hopped without moving a step; transfixed on the dancers – or on whatever it was she thought the dancers were – she looked like she was approaching a state of transcendental calm from a particularly interesting direction. Malcolm, though, wasn’t selling Sarah any.
‘It’s not the money, baby.’
(Some people still thought you could still say baby then.)
‘I’ll be okay. She’s okay.’
‘Everyone takes it different.’
‘I can look after myself.’
He shrugged.
‘I’ll stick with you guys.’
He shrugged again.
In the end, it was sheer persistence wore him down. Or so he’d have said. Sarah’s own take on Malcolm was, he didn’t have scruples as such, but he liked women begging him for favours. By rights, she should just kick him in the balls; this evening, though, she was grateful for the acid. Which looked just like a sugar cube.
‘It looks just like a –’
‘Christ, tell everybody. Just take it.’
She took it.
Nothing happened.
He told her it could take half an hour or so; that for guaranteed instant results, she should drop a laxative. For the next thirty-six minutes she counted down time, watching utterly ordinary people dancing to the most banal music ever. Her pulse remained normal. Her senses worked to rule. She’d had more of a rush from neat orange juice.
‘It was just a sugar cube.’
He shrugged. ‘What can I say? Some people, it’s a trip to Lake Placid. Just be thankful you’re not in the Palace of the Zombies.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘And you still owe me eight quid.’
‘You’ll get your money.’
‘God is in the details,’ Jane announced firmly.
They looked at her.
‘God is in the sideboard.’
‘What colour is he?’ Malcolm asked, with genuine curiosity.
