by Mick Herron
Painless, too, were her nights; dreamfree and long-lasting. Mostly they began with Mark making love to her; she could not remember him so ardent since their early days, and even then, he’d often needed encouragement . . . More and more, in place of dreaming, she was wading back into her past: not the muddy, confused arena of the recent past, but her student days; the aftermath of her accident. The first few hours were a closed book, but the time in hospital seemed oddly fresh now, as if the current regime had opened doors in her mind she could step through like Alice through the glass. She replayed these times on waking. Sometimes they felt like the first days of her life.
She had been a very lucky girl. This is what she was told over and over, and where she once would have insisted on woman, she now accepted the demotion as another element in her humiliation; the insult they added to the injury she’d brought on herself. She had broken three important bones and four minor ones, when by rights she should have been dead; she had missed the iron railings when the combined laws of gravity and physics suggested she should have impaled herself at least twice. She looked like a human mnemonic, a living reminder of the colours of the rainbow. But the bruises would fade, and the only permanent scar lay on her upper left arm, usually hidden from view. For a while the doctors worried about other, hidden, scars, but she seemed to have suffered no brain damage. A counsellor was assigned, though, to remonstrate about drug abuse, and this Sarah suffered as meekly as she did all other treatment, though it was the least necessary. Her psychedelic period was on its way out; would be gone forever once the bruises vanished. She had discovered for herself that the immortality drugs bestowed was purely temporary. More importantly, she had convinced herself she would never be able to fly.
There were visitors. Because she had succeeded in making few friends that term – it had felt like a success at the time – she was swamped with callers during her first week: all the guilt-ridden types, mostly religious, who knew a cry for help when they saw one, and blamed themselves for not having been supportive. They included a tall, acne-scarred youth who had asked Sarah out back in October, and whom she had told to piss off; he arrived with a Welsh second year who was rather short, but otherwise a perfect match. They brought grapes, and sat holding hands while they ate them, and Sarah suspected she was being shown what she’d missed. Seven broken bones seemed a small price to pay.
But in the absence of a hospital-bed conversion, or at least an admission of romantic regret, the visits tailed off before a fortnight was out. Term had ended, and those who might be expected to have an at least theoretical interest in her well-being now had other calls on their time: exams to mark, parties to attend, important stuff like that. Her parents came, though, and wept by her bedside; whether for her injuries or her behaviour she could not tell. Her convalescence at home would no doubt clear that up once she was discharged, which would not, the doctors warned her, be for at least another fortnight. They thought it was a warning. It sounded to her like a reprieve. For two weeks she could lie in this administrative limbo, suspended in a pause between acts. All she had to do was whatever she was told, which would be nothing more taxing than drinking this, swallowing that; trying to get some sleep now, dear. Limbo was for those denied heaven. It was also a loophole for those otherwise destined for hell.
But on the first afternoon of the second week, Mark Trafford turned up; from a dream in which the words ‘ifor ostrape’ echoed like an ambulance siren, she woke to him by her bed, balancing about thirty books on his knee while making notes in a looseleaf binder. He looked like a parody of a bookworm, down to the scarf wrapped twice round his neck but still long enough for the ends to trail on the floor.
‘Why are you here?’ Even to herself, Sarah sounded underwater. I R OO EE? She cleared her throat and tried again.
‘Be quiet. I’m working.’
Charming. Whose bed was it anyway? She thought of a very smart remark in reply, but not until she’d fallen asleep again. Next time she woke he was gone, though he’d left the collected works of William Blake on her bedside table. At first she thought it was a gift, but when she saw the paper slips marking his places, she’d known he’d be back.
One way or the other, he never went away.
Red pills on waking to keep Sarah faking; blue pills at night, to see her all right . . . It was the twelfth morning after the crash – the fourteenth since Joe’s death – that she found where Mark kept the pills, and it only took this long because it had not occurred to her before to look for them. His warning that he’d be late home sparked it off. A little nudge of worry (you couldn’t call it panic) that he’d be very late, seriously late, which would leave her lacking her bluey. This was Mark’s word: bluey. He didn’t call the red ones reddies, presumably because that sounded ridiculous.
They were in his bedside cabinet. Two plastic tubs, each labelled with Mark’s name – not hers – above an indecipherable doctor’s signature and a wealth of ominously medical syllables, spelling out to the initiated exactly what they were. She took them downstairs, thinking she’d check them against the medical dictionary. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to her before that these things might not actually be doing her any good. Well, obviously they were doing her good, but they might not be doing her any good just the same. But the dictionary was not where it ought to be.
It didn’t matter. The urgency had passed; the point was, she wasn’t going to run out in a hurry. Sarah left the tubs on the sitting room floor, and went to make coffee: not because she wanted a cup, but because it was eleven o’clock, which was when people had coffee. It comforted her to keep routine in place.
Her neglected cup beside her, Sarah was back in the sitting room five minutes later, staring at the tubs. Light as babies’ rattles, the pair of them; it was how light they were encouraged her to open them up and count their contents. The little plastic arrow on the lid lined up with its counterpart on the tub. Still, she had to prise quite hard to release it, and when it came free it did so with a jerk that scattered pills across the floor; a wave of little red marbles, maybe similar to what you’d find in a baby’s rattle. Who knew?
The second opened easily, and she poured the blueys into a neat pile. When she’d gathered the reds, their pile was smaller, which probably meant there were a few escapees out there; under the sofa, smuggled into corners. A while now since she’d seen such places, pushing the Hoover round. Maybe later. For now, tidying up meant getting these pills in their tubs. She counted them first, though, and because she kept losing her place, lined them up in rows to do so. They looked like little soldiers, or possibly small bombs. It had been a while since she’d had thoughts about soldiers or bombs, but she was having one now.
The doorbell rang.
It felt like the very next thing: she was bent over the kitchen sink, vomiting, somebody holding her from behind, pressing bunched hands into her stomach, the taste in her mouth, underneath the acid vomit, of salt water, very salty water. She did not remember opening the door, though obviously she had done. Which had surely been a mistake, though this was the oddest form of attack she could –
‘And again.’
She was hauled upright, a glass pressed to her lips. Two fingers pinched her nose, and there was the salt water taste again, and another trip down to the sink, where, for all her retching, all that came up was the salty bloody water.
As a form of punishment, it was as effective as it was undignified. Sarah was already sorry, and promising that she would never do whatever it was she’d done again.
‘Okay, drink this.’
Plain water this time. Though her stomach trembled on the edge of another heave. Just in case.
‘You about to throw up?’
She shook her head.
‘It’s your floor.’ She was led to a chair where hands pressed on her shoulders, forcing her to sit. ‘Speak when you can.’
Words strangled in her mouth. She wanted to spit, but swallowed instead. It was her floor. ‘I wasn’t . . .’
>
‘You weren’t what?’
Another swallow. ‘I wasn’t going to take them.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Just . . .’ Just what? She couldn’t remember.
‘No harm in being on the safe side, though.’
‘Not to you,’ Sarah managed, sharing a little of the bile.
‘My, we are feeling better. Remember me?’
Sarah looked up, and the movement made her squint. Tears flashed into her eyes. She shook her head.
‘I’ll give you a clue. We only met the once. I was on my way out already.’
Dark curly hair, dark eyes, laughter lines. She wasn’t laughing now.
‘I think you got my husband killed, lady. Remember me yet?’ said Zoë Boehm.
‘So how was London?’
‘Not as nice as Paris.’
‘Joe thought –’
‘Joe thought he was a detective. There wasn’t a day went by he didn’t know where my credit card was. His mistake was assuming I was with it.’ Zoë lit a cigarette, and dumped her burnt match in the sink. ‘Joe wasn’t as good as he thought he was. Oh, he had a good telephone manner, and that Oxbridge kick impressed the middle classes, if not as much as it impressed him. Once in a while he’d find somebody who didn’t want to stay lost, and if one of the cleaning staff dipped into the petty cash, hell, Joe was your man. But he was operating with a serious handicap, Ms Tucker. He had the emotional age of a twelve-year-old. He was a bit of a fool, a bit of a liar, and he was the world’s softest touch, as I’m sure you found out for yourself.’
‘Some obituary.’
‘It’s not over. Because some things he didn’t do, Mrs Trafford, or whatever you’re called this week, and one of them was drugs. He didn’t use them. He didn’t sell them. Somebody killed Joe, and whoever it was planted that stuff on him. When I find him I’ll have him chopped up and fed to pigs. Him or her.’
‘You think it was me?’
‘What I think is, two weeks ago he was alive. He gets mixed up with you, and now he’s not. What I think is, when Joe boiled a kettle, he opened a file on it first. And there’s no paperwork on you in the office. Not a scrap.’
‘Maybe he forgot.’
‘Joe kept a list of the lists he kept. He was more likely to forget to put his trousers on. No, whoever killed him removed your file. Why do you think he did that, Mrs Trafford?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How fascinating. You told the police the day you found him was the first time you set foot in his office. Why’d you lie?’
‘I was scared.’
‘Of the police?’
‘Of everything.’
‘That’s your first clever thought. Because let’s face it, Ms Tucker, you’re short of friends. The cops think you’re a junkie, and nothing about the scene through there suggests you’re not. And that’s as good as it gets. Because if you didn’t kill Joe, you’ve got his killer to worry about.’ She dropped her cigarette into the glass of water where it died with a fizz. ‘And if you did kill him, you’ve got me.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You told the cops you bought coke from him. Why?’
‘I . . . don’t know.’
‘Somebody put pressure on?’
She tried to think that through. ‘It’s what . . . they wanted me to say.’
‘They?’
‘Everybody.’
Zoë nodded; was already lighting another cigarette. ‘That the same everybody got you eating tranks like Smarties?’
Her stomach felt raw; her head, oddly, was clearing. ‘Was he really your husband? He never said that.’
‘Surprise surprise,’ said Zoë drily. ‘We were growing apart. Separate prescriptions and everything, you know?’
She shook her head.
‘I can read, Tucker. Those pills through there, it’s your husband’s name on the tub. You open the door like it’s the night of the living dead, and have you looked in a mirror lately? Always assuming you still reflect. Now, either you’re doing this to yourself, which makes it a guilt trip, which makes you guilty, or somebody’s doing it to you. And like I said, it’s your husband’s name on the tubs. So where does he stand in this?’
‘Nowhere. He doesn’t stand anywhere.’
‘Sure. I never met a husband yet who wasn’t the innocent party.’
‘Speaking as a detective,’ Sarah managed.
‘Speaking as a woman.’
‘How long had you known him?’ It was true she was curious. But a change of topic wouldn’t hurt either. ‘Since college?’
‘Hah! Nearest Joe got to a college was parking on a double yellow line.’ But for the first time, Zoë Boehm looked fraught. Coming into strange houses, employing DIY suicide-prevention measures, none of that had fazed her. Talking about how she’d met her husband, that called on other reserves. ‘We married young,’ she said at last. ‘We were in love. Hell, we were kids.’
‘It didn’t last.’
‘It did for Joe. He was a kid till the day he died. Shit.’ Amazingly, she started to cry. ‘The stupid stupid bugger.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘He never had the slightest fucking notion. That there were people who might do him harm, that this stupid daydream of his might get him killed.’
Her own feelings were coming back to life now. Largely, they were physical: a raw acidity inside, and a tingling of the skin down her arms and legs as if from a rash. She was still in her dressing gown. It was only now that she realized this, along with the equally depressing fact that she’d been sick on it. Other than that, there was a large emotional numbness, though not of the anaesthetized type she’d grown used to. This was more like being trapped inside a balloon, which pretty soon would burst.
She strained at the edges. ‘It wasn’t daydreaming, Zoë. He was good at what he did.’
‘Oh, tell me about it.’ She sat on one of Sarah’s chairs and lit another cigarette, making no attempt to wipe her tears. Possibly she thought smoking would dry them. ‘Joe once got arrested looking for a lost dog, but even he couldn’t get killed checking out some errant husband’s office help.’
‘He was looking for a child.’
‘A specific one, I suppose. Yours?’
She shook her head.
‘Do I have to pull your toenails out?’
‘What did you do in the firm?’
‘Worked the phones, mostly. And no, I wasn’t his secretary. Ninety per cent of the job’s the phone. This kid could be in Alaska, I could find her without leaving the office. Happy?’
‘I want to be sure, that’s all. He’s dead, okay? You want me to point you in the same direction?’
‘It is a guilt trip.’
‘That doesn’t make me guilty.’ Her flash of anger expired, leaving her weary and next to tears. That was the trouble with emotions: once they started coming back, they chose their own order. ‘There was a bomb,’ she began at last. ‘Up the road. It pushed a house into the river.’
The high-pitched sirens, keening over the rooftops . . .
Zoë fanned cigarettes out on the table. She’d smoked two and a half of them before Sarah reached the end.
They were silent for a while; Zoë finishing her smoke; Sarah drinking tap water, her throat raw from speaking, retching and passive vice. She had told Zoë little about the events since Joe’s death, but her own state said all that.
‘You’re saying you’ve been warned off,’ the woman said at last.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Joe gets killed, you get warned off.’ She seemed to consider this sexist as much as anything else. ‘This guy, what was his name, Downey?’
‘Michael Downey.’
‘Six-footer, late thirties, well-built, stringy dark beard and a ponytail tied with a red rubber band. Carries a blue canvas bag over his shoulder. Wears a denim jacket. Warm?’
‘He wasn’t carrying a bag,’ Sarah said numbly.
‘Well, he was yesterday.’
‘I came by. You weren’t alone, you had a couple of visitors.’ Wigwam and Rufus, Sarah remembered. Wigwam doing a lot of creative enthusing about Sarah’s achievements, Sarah’s interior decorating skills, Sarah’s cookery; her attitude a warm amalgam of supportiveness and solicitude, with just the faintest hint of sympathy, as if Sarah had recently won only a small amount on the lottery, say, instead of having been arrested and so on. Rufus, true to form, had chosen an armchair and ceased to exist. It wasn’t so much that they were an odd couple; they were very nearly an impossible one. Faced with them yesterday, Sarah’s calm stupor had come close to shaking to bits. What happened happened, part of her wanted to scream. Let’s stop pretending it didn’t. But at least Wigwam cared. ‘In the afternoon?’
‘Friends, yes.’
‘He was watching the house.’
She could feel the balloon straining apart. ‘My house,’ she said flatly.
‘He’s not there now.’
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So if he’s not there now, where is he? Should she call the police? And tell them what?
‘You think he’s the one killed Joe,’ Zoë said.
She nodded, numb once more.
‘But you’ve no real reason to think so.’
‘Why else would he be watching? He gave the warning, he planted those drugs. Now he’s just keeping an eye to make sure . . .’
‘Make sure what? You don’t make a mad dash for freedom and justice? Round up the bad guys? Pardon me, Tucker, but you look like the only dashing you’re doing any time soon is to the bathroom.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘There’s just one thing you have to do.’
‘Oh, isn’t that wonderful. At last, somebody who can tell me what to do. Have you got a ticket with a number, or did you push in?’
Zoë Boehm said, ‘I’d forgotten, you bite. Sometime when you’re firing on all cylinders, we can exchange recipes. Meanwhile, what you do is, you do this. You call the police and tell them it was garbage, that statement about Joe selling drugs. It’s a simple thing. It’s called telling the truth.’
