by Mick Herron
‘What is it?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I don’t like to take pills,’ she said softly.
The lights cartwheeling in her head. Stan Laurel removing his face.
‘It’ll relax you, that’s all. It’s ninety-eight per cent herbal.’ He carried the teacup to the sink and rinsed it under the tap.
Ninety-eight per cent, leaving two. The precise figure, the transparent honesty of it, left the very small part of her untouched by the day’s tensions howling in scorn and hurling daggers at his back. Was she supposed to break down and cry again? Thank him for his maths? While her right hand curled and its nails bit her palm, her left took the pill and steered it to her mouth. She swallowed it without the water, her mouth still awash with her tears.
He left her then, and went to talk to Mark. She sat waiting for the pill to take effect; to feel its little blue wonder spread through her body. This didn’t seem to happen. But some degree of calm arrived, she thought from the sound of the rain, and little by little she felt the panic leave, and her stress level out to a straight, flat line. The front door opened, then shut. She was alone once more with her husband.
Who ushered her upstairs with a minimum of conversation. ‘You’re to have a bath,’ he said, as if he’d been the recipient of complicated medical advice. ‘Then get some rest.’
She wondered how much the doctor charged for his instructions. A million zillion pounds, her lazy brain decided. A million zillion trillion pounds.
Later, in bed, she found the energy to ask who the small shiny man had been.
‘Someone Simon knows,’ Mark said shortly. ‘He’ll be back in the morning. Simon, I mean.’
‘Why?’
‘For God’s sake, let’s just try and get some sleep.’
It came, in the end, easily enough, and was deep and entirely without dreams. She woke to a hand shaking her shoulder; the hand was Mark’s, and his other held a cup of coffee. ‘Take this now,’ he said, putting the cup on the bedside table, and placing beside it a small red capsule; identical in all other respects to the previous evening’s blue.
‘What’s it?’ she said, or tried to say. Her voice lost in the thick canyon of her throat.
‘Never mind what it is. You’re supposed to take it now.’
I’m not ill, she wanted to tell him.
‘You’ve been under a lot of stress. Look, I know it’s hard, darling. I wish I could stay with you, but it’s all so bloody hairy at work . . . I’ll call later. Simon’s coming at eleven. I’ve reset the alarm. Just take this before I go.’ He bent and kissed her.
It was only for the kindness in his voice that she took the pill.
She slept again, but woke before the alarm. She did feel better. The situation remained, but seemed a lot less urgent somehow; certainly yesterday’s anxiety had been siphoned off in the night. Nor had appetite replaced it; the muesli she’d been looking forward to was gravel in a bowl. She couldn’t remember her last meal. But it wouldn’t hurt to skip a few.
The kitchen was a mess; bits and pieces all topsy turvy. It didn’t seem to matter, though. She had another bath.
Simon turned up, indeed, at eleven. It took immense effort to get him in, sit him down, ask about coffee, do the kettle, and she had to force herself to focus while he made a phone call in response to his beeper. This was important, what was happening now. Something about drugs in her bathroom. Simon’s call was short, sharp, effective; when he hung up, the receiver made a noise like a cash register. This wasn’t a social occasion. She had to get a grip.
‘What happens now?’ Her voice sounded tinny in her ears, like a mono recording.
‘Your case is referred to the CPS. They decide whether or not to bring a prosecution.’
‘And will they?’
He sighed. ‘Does the name Lizbeth mean anything to you? Lizbeth Moss? A thirteen-year-old –’
Who had died last weekend after taking Ecstasy. Yes.
‘They’re not going to wag their fingers at you and leave it at that, Sarah. This Silvermann character, he was what, forty-something? Pushing pills to schoolkids? If he wasn’t dead, they’d crucify him.’
‘He didn’t do that,’ she whispered.
‘And there you go. You told the police you didn’t know him, and you know what? They don’t believe you. Now you’re defending him. What’s the story, Sarah?’
She didn’t reply.
‘They’ve got a waiter from the restaurant opposite Silver-mann’s says he saw you going in exactly when you say you did. But when they showed your photo to a couple of blokes working on the pavements down the road, they say they didn’t see you. They were on their tea break.’
He paused while this nonsense sunk in. Still, she didn’t respond.
‘But they recognized you anyway. They said you’d been there a couple of weeks back. Let’s add this up. You’re denying you ever met this man but they’ve got proof you passed him money and witnesses that you visited his premises. They’ve got coke they found here and more coke they picked up at Silvermann’s office, in a quantity large enough to suggest he was dealing. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes, Sarah. They think they’ve got this wrapped.’
He let that sink in while he drank his coffee. And in truth, it sank in easily enough: she felt amorphous, a human sponge. Everything he said, all it meant, she absorbed in an instant. It didn’t matter much, that was all. Joe was still dead.
She took a sip of her own coffee, but it was tasteless, watery. Simon didn’t seem to notice. The way his lips pulled back over his tiny teeth, you’d think he was enjoying the taste. Enjoying something.
‘Now, what we have to work out is exactly what happened.’
A response seemed required. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to tell me that.’
She didn’t have to tell him that. But not because it went without saying. Simon Smith was Mark’s friend, old buddy, and the Pals’ Act was operating here. She didn’t have to tell him she wasn’t guilty, because he didn’t much care either way.
‘But what you are going to have trouble denying is that you were found in possession of four grams of cocaine. Unless you’re going to suggest the police planted it.’ He waited, to see if the idea took root. ‘The SODDIT defence,’ he added helpfully. ‘Some Other Dude Did It.’
This is my life, she wanted to scream at him. This is not a joke. But that voice was very far off; in another county, perhaps.
‘Not that that’d go down very well. Let’s face it, you don’t exactly fall into the right demographic group for a police fit-up.’ He made a circular motion with his hand by his face; semaphoric shorthand for a wealth of race relations. ‘Which leaves us with your basic unanswered question. Unless you’re saying Mark put it there.’ A little light shone in his eyes here, as if the Pals’ Act had just been revoked, and replaced with something much more fun.
No. She wasn’t saying that.
The light went out. ‘Okay. You want my best advice? What Mark’s paying for. Tell ’em the coke was yours, quote Silver-mann as your source. Personal use only. Book yourself some therapy.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve been out of work, depressed, these things happen. It’s the noughties, nobody’ll bat an eyelid. Any other week of the year, I’d have them writing apologies while I slapped them with a writ for trespass. But less than a week after this kid gets iced taking a happy pill is not the time to ask the courts to take a progressive view of recreational drug use. So what we do is, we bend with the wind. It can’t have escaped you, bright woman, what the police are really after. They want someone they can hold up to the press, say This is the one did for Lizbeth Moss. Then it’s pats on the back all round, and everybody goes home early. Get it?’
She got it. She just didn’t quite believe it, that was all.
‘Trust me. If they can nail Silvermann as a source, it’ll take a lot of the heat off. This way you become his victim, same
as Lizbeth but luckier. You’re a nice, middle-class woman, they’ll go easy. Sort out a trick-cyclist, they like that. Shows good faith.’
‘But he didn’t do it,’ she whispered.
‘Silvermann killed himself, Sarah. The police can make that look like a signed confession. They’ve got a result here and they don’t want the waters muddied. Look, that stuff about possession, forget it. None of this’ll reach the courts. They try pressing the charge, I’ll ride a battering ram through that search they made, though I have to tell you it’d be a lot easier if you’d called me first. Still, under the bridge. What matters now is, you’ve got to give a little to get a lot. If they think you’ve got away with something, you’ll just put their backs up, and that kind of trouble you don’t want. Not if you’d like the rest of your life to consist of something other than parking tickets and nuisance phone calls. So give them the chance to be heroes, then you can melt into the background. Simple as that.’
Through the window, out in the street, Sarah watched a blackbird come down to land. It strutted up and down the garden wall, then came to a full stop, its gaze seemingly fixed on her. But you couldn’t really tell with birds, on account of their eyes being on the sides of their heads. It was an effort to concentrate on what Simon said. She had no trouble comprehending the enormity of it; it was just an effort, that was all. ‘I can’t do that to him.’
‘Joe is dead, Sarah. Sad but true. Look, if you mattered to him as much as he obviously did to you, he’d understand. You can’t help him now. But he can help you.’
Simon thought they’d been lovers. He was trying to keep the knowledge from his tone, but failing dismally. He thought they’d been lovers: did Mark think so too? Lovers and fellow druggies when, Jesus, she hadn’t used drugs for . . . hours.
He stood suddenly and clipped up his briefcase. She hadn’t even realized he’d unclipped it. It probably came as naturally to him as a cabbie turning the meter on. ‘It’s up to you, of course. Entirely up to you.’ There was a But coming. ‘But think about what I’ve said. I’ll call Mark later.’
Of course he would. That was what Old Pals were for.
Once he’d gone she tried to think about it, but much of what came to mind was outside the scope of Simon Smith’s understanding. If she closed her eyes she could still see Joe, his hands neatly arranged on the desk in front of him; the right clasping a wooden-handled razor blade. His shirt front stained by the passage of his blood. But while she could see it she had trouble believing; not just that he had taken his life, but that he was in fact dead and would remain so. What she half expected was the leap back from the grave, the ironic bow; the horrible silence of the onlookers breaking up as they realized that this death had been staged for their benefit, and rather than the final curtain was the prelude to an encore, to consist of the artist’s smug satisfaction at having hoodwinked the crowd. If she closed her eyes she could still see Joe; when she opened them, she hoped to be in Modern Art Oxford, watching guerilla theatre. Instead what she got was the shock of the now: she was here, at home, today. Bam bam bam! If he wasn’t dead then, he certainly was now.
And just as he’d been wiped out of this life, so, it seemed, had she been wiped from his.
For there was no trace of Sarah Trafford, née Tucker, in Silver-mann’s files. Was Joe the man to be slapdash about paperwork? She didn’t think so. It was true that he had not banked her cheque, but that came under a different heading: he might not get a thing done, but he’d have written down somewhere that he was supposed to do it. She could count the hours she’d spent with Joe on her fingers, but she knew him enough to know this; that there’d been a file with her name on it somewhere in his office. So somebody must have removed it, and this after killing Joe; it was the reason she knew he’d been murdered; why she’d never been fooled by the set-up. Joe had been killed; she had been warned. That was all they wanted to do at the moment: warn her. Whoever they were. And this was what passed for a warning; fixing her up as a loop in a drugs ring.
Gerard Inchon.
She yawned enormously. It was puzzling, this; one part of her mind was working step by step through the process that had killed Joe and left her in the trouble of her life, but most of her just wanted to lie down. She forced it further, though. Yes, Gerard Inchon had done this to her. Probably. The logic that put him into the frame escaped her for the moment, and it was true that she could not imagine him sneaking into her house, finding the purse, doping it up and concealing it in the bathroom. Or even, really, slitting Joe’s throat with Joe’s razor. Which only went to show, she yawned again, that he had an accomplice. More than one. Somewhere, he’d hidden Dinah Singleton. There must be people looking after the girl, unless she was dead too. This was as far as she could think at the moment. She really was wiped out.
But there was one more thing; something she had to pin down. The bottom line. The bottom line was, they had killed Joe. They’d kill her too, if she caused more trouble. There: a simple conclusion. The whole idea was, not to rock the boat. You’ll be wishing you were bored again. Soon. Trust me on this. Gerard again. They had hidden all trace of the search she’d made with Joe, just to show they could alter the truth. Now all she had to do was alter it too, and she could settle back into normality.
It wasn’t such a big thing. Joe was already dead.
An image came back to her then, of the man who’d shown up in the car park. The one everybody thought was dead. Michael Downey.
Now him, she could picture slitting Joe’s throat.
All she had to do was tarnish Joe’s name.
She wanted to weep but felt dried of tears, unequal to the effort demanded by grief. It was too much of a decision to take right now; besides, so much of it seemed to have been taken for her. She would rest now, and later think things through. Nothing in this world was so bad that a nap and a pill couldn’t ease its sting.
She slept; later, she set about making a stew. There was comfort in a routine performed times without number, and what would normally have taken twenty minutes took two hours. Then she watched the second part of a film on TV, and though characters jumbled in her mind, the soundtrack provided clues to the story. By the time Mark arrived, a shade earlier than normal, she was in pretty splendid fettle. Couldn’t remember, in fact, why she’d been so troubled before her rest.
‘Simon show all right?’
‘Yes, dear.’
He gave her an odd look. ‘Everything okay? You’re feeling all right?’
‘Yes. Great. Fine.’
Once they’d eaten, Mark spent a good while on the phone. He seemed distracted afterwards. Sarah cleared the dishes, though it didn’t feel like an urgent task. Habit, mostly. Much of her portion of stew she wrapped in paper and stuffed in the bin. Her appetite hadn’t returned. It wasn’t anything to worry about.
Later, in bed, Mark talked to her. ‘Did you take the pill?’
Another blue one: sitting on her bedside table when she returned from the bathroom. ‘Yes.’ She had.
He put his arms round her, pulled her close. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, muffled by his grasp.
‘But it’ll blow over. Simon’s got it in hand, he says. I’m glad you’re going with his advice. He’s good at what he does. Good man.’
So there it was. She’d taken the decision already. No need to worry.
‘This man – Silver?’
‘Silvermann.’
‘Silvermann. You and he, you weren’t . . .’
‘No.’
‘I thought . . .’ He expelled air slowly, though didn’t relax his grip. ‘Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what I thought. We’ll get through this. Promise me that?’
She promised.
‘You know what I don’t want? I don’t want you turning back into the girl you were when I first met you. Remember how you used to be?’
She remembered.
‘This drugs business, I thought maybe you were turning back into her.
The other Sarah Tucker. That’s the way I think of the girl you were then. The other Sarah Tucker.’
That wasn’t the other Sarah Tucker. This is the other one. That one was me!
‘Better now, though. Everything’s all right now.’
She could feel him growing against her. He rarely spoke about how they’d met, the times she’d cooled him off, but when he did, it invariably turned him on. It was as if, after all these years of making love, he still wanted to fuck the one who got away.
My diaphragm, she said. She could have sworn she said it aloud. I won’t be a minute.
Mark, it seemed, didn’t have a minute to spare.
III
Blue pills at night to ease Sarah’s fright. Red pills on waking to quiet her shaking. They worked, though soon this became less important than their function as reminders, little nudges, of the world that waited for her when she ceased to take them. The world she’d fallen off once already. As the days went that world grew fuzzy at the edges, but this might have been the aftereffects of shock rather than tranquillized stupor. So she told herself, and the calm the pills brought made it easier to believe. A spark of surviving cynicism flared into occasional life, to point out that anything the pills helped her believe was not to be trusted, but the voice itself hardly inspired faith; squeaking in the early hours, or while she was coming round from her afternoon nap. Mostly, she ignored it. Mostly, she got by.
Simon solved her problems. Police contact was minimal. She signed a statement saying that the cocaine in her possession had come from Joe Silvermann; that she had twice bought drugs from him; had met him in a pub. This co-operation, Simon assured her, effectively ended official interest in her. He smoothed a hand back over his pate as he spoke. He was the only man she had ever heard use the expression ‘totty’, and this was what she was thinking of when she failed utterly to thank him, leaving Mark to do so with that look of exasperated patience rapidly becoming his trademark. Little fragments of memory kept doing that; jolting loose at inappropriate times. Mostly, they were of no relevance. Sometimes they concerned Joe, but even these were usually painless.
