Smoke & Whispers (10 page)

She didn’t look round. ‘Yes. Been making a nuisance of themselves?’

‘Seem to think I must want to join them. Seem to think I’d rather listen to them than sit by myself.’

‘I’m sure you put them wise.’

‘Where are you going?’

Sarah had regained her feet. Now she laughed. ‘Gerard? You’re definitely giving the vibe of someone who doesn’t want company.’

‘That’s for their benefit. Stay a bit. Finish your drink.’

She sat, glad she hadn’t needed to find her own reason for doing so.

He said, ‘Can’t get over that coincidence. Picking up your friend’s card.’

‘It’s a biggie, all right.’

‘What are the odds?’

He wasn’t slurring, but was woollier than she’d known him. She wondered if the bottle had been full when he’d started. Then added what he’d drunk at lunchtime, multiplied it by how much he’d put away last night, and decided it didn’t matter.

She said, ‘Higher than I’m comfortable with.’

‘You think there’s something funny going on?’

She was about to reply, but had a sudden flashback to the body on the slab, the leather jacket, the tray of possessions that didn’t matter any more. Her mouth filled, and she had to swallow. She lifted her glass to disguise the moment, but it didn’t work.

Gerard said, ‘What’s the matter? Lost touch with her?’

She hadn’t told Gerard that Zoë was dead. Events had intervened when they’d discussed her. So he didn’t know . . . unless he did.

Either way, she wasn’t about to tell him.

‘You might say that,’ she said.

She felt like she’d just made a dirty joke on her friend’s grave.

‘What was she doing here?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And where is she now?’

Sarah shrugged.

‘There’s a lot you’re not telling me, isn’t there?’

‘I think she stumbled over some of her own history.’

‘How very fascinating. Can you repeat that in English?’

‘Would you like a refill?’

And this was Barry, who’d arrived so quietly he might have been a butler. He had wine bottle in hand, and was tilting it towards Sarah’s glass; was pouring it before she had the chance to reply.

‘Sorry about the guys back there. They mean well.’

Gerard said, ‘Was there ever a phrase so geared to have you run away screaming?’

‘But you know what I mean.’

‘Thanks, Barry,’ Sarah said. ‘We do.’

‘Shall I leave the bottle?’ Sarah shook her head at the same moment Gerard nodded, so he gave a rueful grin and set it next to the whisky. ‘You don’t have to drink it all,’ he said.

‘That ever happen?’

But he was heading back to the bar.

‘He seems a nice bloke,’ Sarah said.

‘Naturally,’ Gerard said. ‘That’s his job.’ He leaned forward heavily, and replenished his glass with the precise movements of the visually impaired. ‘“Stumbled over her own history.” Meaning what?’

‘Something came out of her past. I think.’

‘What kind of something?’

‘There was a man. A couple of years ago.’

‘Oh God. Not one of
those
stories, is it?’

‘Gerard –’

‘Unmarried woman hitting the change. Then up rips some young heartbreaker and –’

‘Gerard? Shut up.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, without really saying it. ‘Floor’s yours.’

‘His name was Alan Talmadge. Some of the time anyway. And he wasn’t a heartbreaker, Gerard, he was a killer. He killed two women Zoë knew of.’

Sarah reached for her glass, hand shaking. Zoë had never adequately described Talmadge. Had referred to him, instead, through the effect he’d had on other people; on those women, not a million miles from Gerard’s brutal summing up, who’d allowed him to slip into their lives, and fill a space previously reserved for their own desperation. Lives he’d then ended.

Her wine felt colder, as if the temperature in the bar had dropped.

Gerard said, ‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Zoë was.’

‘His name doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘Should it?’

‘Killed two women? That’s as good as
Big Brother
for getting your name in the papers. And if it was only a couple of years –’

‘He was never caught.’

Gerard said, ‘Ah.’

‘Never even looked for, far as I know. The two women – they were thought to be accident victims. Zoë was sure they were murdered. But they both looked like accidents.’

Gerard said ‘Ah’ again, at a different pitch.

‘I believed her.’

‘Well, of course you did. You’re her friend.’

And oh joy, there it was: the male battle cry in all its naked vigour. Not
What would you know, bitch?
; nor even
Don’t worry your pretty head about it
. Just
Well, of course you
did
. Words to accompany a pat on the head.

‘You’d have believed her too.’

‘I dare say,’ Gerard said. ‘It doesn’t take much to convince me. Just hard, incontrovertible evidence.’

He made to drink, and looked down in surprise on finding his glass empty.

She emptied her own. ‘Did you really find her card?’

He looked left, then right, demonstrably wondering where this was coming from. Then at her. ‘I can show you if you like. ’Supstairs. In my room.’

‘Really.’

‘It’s upstairs,’ he said more clearly.

‘In your room, I heard you. That’s not what I meant. Did you really find it? Or did Zoë give it to you?’

‘You think I’ve met your friend?’

‘I’m asking if you did.’

‘No, Sarah. I didn’t meet her.’

Drunk or not, he gave her a solid, straight-eyed look saying that. He was, of course, a very rich businessman, not one of whom on this sweet earth ever got where he was without lying. But she didn’t think he lied.

She shook her head. Reached for the bottle, and splashed more wine into her glass. Then excused herself, and headed to the loo.

When she got back, Derek and his friend had gone. It was past eleven. Barry was emptying the till. ‘I’m supposed to close. But if you want anything –’

‘I don’t, thanks. And he shouldn’t.’

‘Well, if you need a hand . . .’ He did something with his eyebrows that conveyed the difficulty of steering heavy objects upstairs without help.

‘If it comes to that, he can sleep where he lands.’

Barry smiled a goodnight, and she returned to the fireplace.

The fire was dying, but still radiating a steady glow. It made the rest of the room feel darker, even more so when Barry turned the light over the bar off before leaving. Sarah picked up her glass. The wine stung her taste buds, as if she’d eaten a strawberry since her last sip. She looked at Gerard, who sat immobile, staring into the low flame. She couldn’t tell whether he’d drunk more in her absence.

‘Are you all right?’

His gaze left the fire and locked on her. It held no recognition.

‘Gerard?’

Somewhere, a door closed with a bang. She started. He didn’t.

‘Gerard?’

He said, ‘I have a son.’

She couldn’t have heard that right. She stared.

‘
We
have a son. He’s eight months old.’

‘Gerard.’ Even as she spoke, she knew her words would be wrong; that she was heading down a cul-de-sac it wouldn’t be easy to back out of. ‘That’s wonderful. That’s –’

‘He’s called Zachary.’ She might have been background static. Gerard wasn’t talking to her; he was talking to his glass, whose half-inch golden pool threw back images she couldn’t guess at. ‘Sometimes when I stand over his . . . his incubator, I imagine him smiling at me. Eight months, you’d expect a smile, wouldn’t you?’

The fire flickered, and shadows scampered into corners.

‘Something bad happened,’ Sarah said flatly.

‘He has no arms,’ Gerard said. ‘But then, he has no legs, either. You know what he looks like? He looks like a ping-pong ball balanced on a boiled egg. And I look at him, and I know I’m supposed to love him. And I do. I love him. But I want him to die. Because he’s not living a life, not in any sense you or I would recognize. He’ll never know what it’s like to . . . be ordinary. To walk by a river, or have a job, or drink brandy, or . . . or anything. Even stay in a crappy hotel like this. Anything can seem like a pleasure, if you compare it to a life utterly bereft of possibility.’

He put his glass down, and emptied the bottle into it. It was a measure beyond healthy. It was a measure on steroids.

She said, ‘Do they know …’

‘Do they know what?’

She’d never heard this from Gerard before: genuine aggression. He lived his life – that part she’d witnessed him living – wrongfooting the foolish and charming his targets, but aggression was new. ‘Why,’ she said. ‘Do they know why?’

‘It happens.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘It happens.’

The male wall. Tell her about it. Beyond this point, we don’t discuss.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

‘If I thought you were responsible, that wouldn’t be enough.’

For some reason, she found herself recalling what he’d said at lunchtime.
There you go
, he’d told John M. Wright.
The terrible vengeance of a righteous God. We can all learn something
from that
.

She looked for more words she already knew wouldn’t help. ‘There are –’

‘Don’t. Don’t tell me there are . . .
benefits
. Or procedures. Or no way of knowing about quality of life. Don’t tell me any of that self-serving platitudinous bullshit.’

‘I wasn’t going to.’

‘My son would be better off dead. That’s not self-pitying rationalization. He would be better. Off. Dead.’

His voice had risen, and for a moment afterwards an echo ricocheted around the bar, stirring ghosts of ancient conversations and long-forgotten sorrows.

Then he said, ‘I was a practising Catholic, did you know that?’

She nodded, but he wasn’t looking at her. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Paula still is. That’s the funny thing.’

‘You’ve lost your faith?’

And now he looked at her, with eyes that were dark absences. ‘Lose it? No, I didn’t lose it, Sarah. I nailed it to a tree and set fire to it.’

‘Gerard –’

‘I’d like to be alone now.’

She wanted to ask if he was sure, but he was sure. If she was Gerard, she’d be sure too.

He raised his glass to his lips. Shadows from the dying fire danced on the walls as she left.

9

Next morning she knocked on Gerard’s door, quietly, so as not to disturb him – why do we do that? She knocked again loudly, but there was no reply. Perhaps his hangover had woken him early, and he’d gone for a walk to shake it off. Or he was still in the bar. Or he’d hanged himself in his bathroom.

She’d never seen Gerard like he’d been last night. But then, she had lots of friends she’d never seen in that state. With Gerard, it was more a case of: she’d never imagined him as other than full-on Gerard. Annoyed, irritated, condescending: he could be all those things and still be Gerard of Oz, larger than life and louder than loud. But heartbreak turned out to be the man behind the curtain. She’d never imagined anything so ordinary pulling Gerard’s levers. Not that his heartbreak took an ordinary shape – his poor child, poor Zachary. Poor Paula. Poor all of them. But she had to remember, too, that none of this meant there wasn’t something else going on. Gerard could be crippled by sorrow, but that didn’t wipe out the Zoë connection.

You think I’ve met your friend? No, Sarah. I didn’t meet her.

But there was the list of names in his room; there was the Roleseekers e-mail in Zoë’s inbox. It was true Sarah had no proof the two lists were the same, but how many coincidences could one hotel hold?

I didn’t meet your friend
. But that didn’t mean they’d not been in contact.

She wondered how long it would take Vicky to unearth Zoë’s deleted correspondence.

She wondered other things too, as she made her way downstairs.

The woman who’d checked her in was on reception. Sarah still didn’t know her name, and it felt too late to ask. She said something about Barry instead. About how rare it was not to see him here.

‘He’ll be in later. Did you want him for something?’

There might have been, Sarah thought, a touch of a leer in that.

‘I’m sure you can manage,’ she said. ‘I’ll be staying another night.’

There were three others having breakfast, at different tables, so there was no conversation. Sarah ate a croissant, drank a cup of coffee, then another while texting Russ. She’d have called, but it would have felt like public speaking. In the end, the text mostly became a promise to speak to him later: there were too many words, too few abbreviations, for all she needed to tell him.

If she had to break it down to words of one syllable, though, it would be:
I can’t leave yet
. That would be to ring down the curtain before the stage business was over. It would mean turning her back on whatever Zoë had been caught up in, and while Zoë might have been elusive when it came to the common currency of friendship – birthday cards, phone calls; casual droppings-in – she’d have been first on the scene when Sarah needed help. It had happened before. Guns had been involved.

She hoped Russ would understand – she wasn’t sure he had last night, with beer under his belt. And there’d been that moment back home, when he’d worried she’d be
drawn into
whatever Zoë had been involved in. She’d feigned misunderstanding: what did
drawn into
mean? But it meant this. This was what it had always meant. That she’d be having breakfast alone in a last-chance hotel; text-ing Russ to tell him she’d not be returning yet.

There were grounds in the bottom of her coffee cup, but that was okay. That meant it was real. You couldn’t argue with proof like that.

Sarah put her phone away, returned to her room, and took it out again. The thread she’d started tugging at last night could do with another pull. She made the call quickly, before she could change her mind.

It took a few minutes to get through.

‘Ms Tucker? I thought you’d gone home.’

‘I decided to stay on a while, Inspector.’

‘So what can I do for you?’

Encouraging words, delivered in a guarded tone. This wasn’t an offer of help. It was an enquiry as to what she was up to.

She said, ‘Do you know anything about a family named Gannon?’

‘Do I
what
?’

‘A family named Gannon. They run a storage firm, used to be a haulage –’

‘Yes, I know what they run.’

She waited.

‘Ms Tucker? What’s this about, exactly?’

‘It’s just that I’ve met a man named Jack Gannon, and I . . .’ She paused. I what? ‘I heard he had some dodgy connections.’

Fairfax said, ‘You’re aware I’m a police officer?’

‘That’s why I rang.’

‘We get 999 calls from idiots whose TVs aren’t working. I don’t remember being asked to check out a prospective date before.’

‘He’s not –’

‘You’ve been of assistance, Ms Tucker, but that doesn’t put me at your beck and call. We’ll be in touch if there are developments in, in the other matter. Now excuse me, but I’m busy.’ He disconnected.

She sat stunned for a moment, and then guilt and shame flushed through her. Did he really think she’d called just to check on a new acquaintance’s standing, criminal or otherwise? That she was some, Christ, some
flibbertigibbet
who thought she had a hotline to the cops because she’d sat in a police car?

Blood pounding in her ears, Sarah wanted something to throw. But there was no big outdoors here; she couldn’t storm out and romp across the hillsides, kicking stones. She made do with viciously turning her phone off: one pointy stab of the finger. Then turned it on again, in case anyone called. Then went back up another flight of stairs, to knock on Gerard’s door.

Which was ajar.

Someone was moving inside, but she could tell it wasn’t Gerard. No one who’d drunk the quantity Gerard had put away last night would be capable of movement without lumbering. They wouldn’t be humming, either. Sarah pushed the door gently. The humming stopped.

‘Miss?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah said.

A young Indian woman was stripping the bed.

‘Ah . . . Did you want me to see to your room?’

‘No. No, I was looking for –’

But it was clear that the man she was looking for was no longer there. Yesterday’s clutter: those nests of charging cables; the briefcase, suitcase, laundry bag – all of it had gone. A vacuum cleaner stood by the bathroom door. The maid held a pillow; had paused in the act of coaxing it from its cotton slip.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Sarah said. ‘I have the wrong room.’

She returned to reception, where she rang the bell, because the woman was nowhere to be seen. Ten seconds later, she rang it again. She’d have rung it a third time, but the woman appeared: a little flustered; a bit pissed off, too, as if she didn’t appreciate the summons. Sarah would care about that later. Round about the time it occurred to her she was taking out Fairfax’s rebuff on an innocent party.

‘Has Mr Inchon checked out?’ she asked.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Inchon. You haven’t got that many guests. Has he checked out?’

‘Oh. Yes. Yes, he left early this morning.’

‘How early?’

‘Before I came on. I mean, pretty much the middle of the night. I suppose he had a flight to catch.’

‘A flight?’

‘I can’t think why else he’d leave at three thirty in the morning.’

The woman had recovered some poise. Her tone suggested she could actually think of a few good reasons, most of them standing in front of her.

‘Did he leave a message?’

‘A message for you?’

‘A message of any kind,’ Sarah said through gritted teeth.

The woman took her time. Looked through the few papers scattered on the desk; checked the pigeonholes behind her. She all but whistled while doing so. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Tucker. There doesn’t seem to be anything.’

‘I see.’

‘He didn’t push a note beneath your door?’

‘Well, if he had,’ Sarah began, but could see it wasn’t worth it. ‘No. Thanks.’

She left the desk, heading for the front door; realized almost immediately she had no special need to be heading that way, but couldn’t face pulling a U-turn under the receptionist’s scornful gaze. I’ve given her quite enough merriment for the moment, Sarah thought, and stepped on to the street coatless, into the path of a withering wind.

This really is not my best morning . . .

Gerard had gone home, she supposed. Last night’s conversation had brought that about; Gerard, in the cold light of morning, couldn’t face seeing her with pity in her eyes. Which was fair enough. Sarah was reasonably sure she’d have been able to regard him without a trace of visible concern, but it would have been there; the memory of a fireside conversation in which he’d opened his heart, and showed it in splinters. There were friendships which such a moment would have strengthened, but not the kind she and Gerard shared. She wasn’t even sure ‘friendship’ was the word. And while she was questioning terminology, ‘cold light of morning’ didn’t work either: there’d have been precious little light at three thirty. She was surprised Gerard had been able to stand, let alone pack.

Cold, though. There’d have been cold enough to go round. And plenty of it yet, come to that.

The
Big Issue
man was nowhere to be seen. Office hours, though, didn’t apply. As she stood there, a detail occurred to her: Gerard had checked out before the woman had come on duty. So who checked him out? It must have been Barry. Poor guy. He’d closed the bar; probably hoped to see his shift out having a nap in the office. But instead had to deal with a drunken Gerard, who would no doubt have had a complicated bill to deconstruct, and probably wasn’t in the best of moods.

What was it Barry had said about his job?
It beats flipping
burgers.
Probably he’d reconsidered that, back in the early hours.

As she re-entered the hotel, her phone rang.

She answered it climbing the stairs.

‘Ms Tucker?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s DS King. From yesterday morning.’

‘Yes.’ She felt her vocal cords tighten: what now? An official reprimand for misuse of police time?

‘The boss said you’d rung.’

‘It’s not important.’

‘I doubt you’d have called if it wasn’t. He goes off the deep end sometimes, but, well, you know. It’s a stressful job.’

‘Give him my commiserations.’

‘So he mentioned it to me. That’s his way of making sure he wasn’t too hasty.’

‘So why didn’t he call back himself?’

‘Now that, that’s not his way. So. Jack Gannon. How’d you come across him?’

She took a breath.

‘Ms Tucker?’

‘I met him at the hotel. In the bar.’

‘That’s the same hotel Ms Boehm was staying?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you don’t think that’s a coincidence.’

‘You’re aware that Zoë – that Ms Boehm was a private detective?’

‘We’d established that, yes.’

‘Good for you. I think she was up here on a job of some kind. I think that job involved Mr Gannon.’

‘Who was her client?’

‘I don’t know.’

She could have given him Gerard – if Gannon was involved, so was Gerard. But something held her back. Call it loyalty; that plus the knowledge that she’d misjudged Gerard in the past. He deserved a hearing before she threw him to a wolf.

‘She was investigating criminal activity?’

‘I don’t know what she was investigating.’

‘Because the reason we have a police force in this country –’

‘I know why we have a police force, Sergeant. I don’t know what Zoë was doing. But it seems likely that whatever it was, it had something to do with Jack Gannon.’

‘And you thought we should know.’

‘I thought Inspector Fairfax might be interested. It turned out he wasn’t.’

‘He gets a little uptight when he thinks people are trying to do his job.’

‘If I was interested in impersonating a police officer, I’d wait till I was needed, then make myself scarce.’

He said, quite mildly, ‘I suspect your stereotype’s out of date.’

Sarah took a breath. She’d reached the landing, down the corridor from her room. ‘Whatever. The point is, I found out what little I know inside five minutes on the web. It’s not as if I blundered into a top secret investigation.’

His silence sounded like a point conceded.

‘Tell your boss I’m sorry I bothered him.’

He said, ‘The Gannons are a well-known Walker firm. I’m not talking about haulage. Back in the seventies and eighties, when Michael Gannon was ruling the roost, they were basically your North Tyneside crimelords. Mostly robbery, mostly big delivery – if a lorryload of fags or booze got knocked over, it was the Gannons behind it. They also supplied fruit machines to local clubs, along with door security and working girls. You didn’t get involved in after-hours entertainment from Wallsend to Benton without rendering unto the Gannons, if you catch my drift. One or two tried, and found out what the blunt end of a closed shop feels like.’

‘Gannon was tried for kidnapping and assault.’

‘Among other things.’

‘So that was then. What about now?’

‘Michael G’s still among the living, but he had a series of strokes in the early nineties. The eldest son, Tony, tried his shoes on, but was hampered by being a stupid dick-head, pardon my Dutch, and spent five years contemplating his misdeeds in Durham. By the time he came out, the other brothers had, ah, diversified their interests. Gangstering’s not the prospect it used to be. I like to pretend that’s not because I’ve joined the force since, but you can’t argue with the facts.’

‘Your modesty does you credit. And Jack Gannon’s behind their shift into legitimate business?’

King said, ‘He’s never broken any laws we’ve found out about. But the way I look at it, the money he’s investing, the business he’s helping run – all that capital came out of crime. Doesn’t matter how often it’s been washed, it’s dirty money.’

‘Have you met him?’

‘I have, as a matter of fact. At a charity auction, raising funds for a police cadets’ gym. He bid large for a painting my three-year-old nephew could have done. Only he’d have called it colouring, not art.’

‘What did you think of him?’

‘I thought he was a charming man.’

‘And?’

‘And I don’t like charming men. I always wonder what they’ve got to hide.’

‘That makes your boss an open book.’

He said, ‘I think that theme’s run its course. Anyway, the Gannons. Like I say, Jack’s never broken any laws we’ve heard about.’ He paused, giving himself room for a shrug. ‘If Ms Boehm was investigating him, she knew something we didn’t.’