Smoke & Whispers (14 page)

The door opened with a now familiar scrape, and she couldn’t help herself: she had to look. She knew it wouldn’t be Barry but she had to look.

Ivy said, ‘Are you sure it’s just the rain you’re sheltering from?’

Sarah said, ‘It’s bound to stop soon. It can’t keep this up forever.’

‘Only every time that door opens, you startle like a fawn.’

Sarah couldn’t help wondering how many fawns Ivy had encountered on the streets of Walker. Even as she was thinking that, a bell was ringing: Walker. Why was the name familiar?

‘Or is Trevor not the only one been making himself a nuisance?’

‘Any given day,’ Sarah said, ‘we can safely assume Trevor’ll not be the only one doing that.’

‘You’re married, then.’

She had to laugh. ‘I have been. Not any more.’

‘Turned out not what you expected?’

Sarah said, ‘Not so much being married. More the husband.’

‘Aye, that’s a long road, once you start down it. Men who aren’t what they seem.’

She supped her drink. Sarah still hadn’t identified it; ‘same again’ had done the trick. But Ivy seemed capable of drinking it forever without a visible twitch.

. . . Men who aren’t what they seem, she thought. It certainly was a long road. Mark, her ex-husband, lived somewhere on it; along with, she sometimes thought, every man she’d met since. Which wasn’t always a bad thing. Russ was a darling, though hadn’t seemed so on first meeting, while Gerard had struck her as a monster. And while that was true enough – he was a monster – he was also human, as it turned out. But they were the mild examples. Barry loomed larger right now: a man who adopted the identity of friendly Australian barman as easily as he tossed a tea-towel over one shoulder. Nor was she the first woman to have been fooled. As Alan Talmadge, he had taken lives. Was it any wonder Sarah startled every time the door scraped open?

And then there was Jack Gannon. A nice guy at a party, who turned out to be the son of the Godfather.

Which was the connection, of course. The Gannons were a Walker family. This was their patch.

Ivy said, ‘So that’s who you’re worried about?’

For a moment, Sarah thought the old woman had read her mind and was talking about Jack. Then she respooled the thread of their conversation, and realized Ivy thought Sarah had an ex-husband on her tail.

She shook her head. ‘He’s long gone.’

‘But someone isn’t.’

Ivy wasn’t the police. She was an old soak in a pub. On the other hand, she had a pair of ears.

Sarah said, ‘It’s a long story.’

Ivy called to Gary, ‘When you’re ready, hen.’

More drinks arrived.

She wasn’t sure how long her story took. All she knew was that once she’d started there was no slowing; and that what poured forth was pure narrative, drained of emotion. No tears, not even when describing the body on the slab. But as she spoke a valve loosened, and the strain she’d been under since arriving in Newcastle eased. Even the rain seemed to relax; its onslaught on the windows calming to a patter that was mostly drowned by the hubbub inside.

It was the kind of story that brought itself to an obvious conclusion. It ended with Sarah sitting on this barstool, now.

For a while after she’d finished, the two women sat in silence. Ivy had been an unexpected listener. Their conversation so far had mostly involved her own story, which was not so much a linear narrative as a collage of details whose context Sarah had been expected to keep up with, the end result being a sort of pointillist biography; various unconnected dots adding up to a life, provided you viewed them through half-shut eyes. Perhaps, Sarah thought, Ivy wasn’t used to things happening to other people. Or didn’t accord them importance. But that was an impertinent conclusion, as well as a wrong one. Ivy listened. Ivy weighed things up. Ivy didn’t speak until she’d decided what she was going to say.

Which was: ‘Well, bugger me.’

Somehow, Sarah hadn’t been expecting that.

‘And every word of it gospel. Yes?’

Sarah said, tightly, ‘Every word. Yes.’

‘Now, then. It’s a reasonable question.’

Ivy drained her glass. Sarah had long lost count of how many that made. Her wallet was feeling light, though. As was her head.

‘This man, your Barry.’

‘He’s not my Barry.’

‘Pet, you’ve got to lighten up.’

Which was the first time she’d been given that particular piece of advice by an octogenarian.

‘But he’s also this Talmadge feller.’

‘Yes,’ Sarah said. ‘I think so,’ she amended.

‘Who’s killed your women in the past.’

Zoë’s women, she thought. Talmadge killed Zoë’s women, though Zoë never met them either.

She closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them, the bar swam in front of her. That’s it, she thought. No more to drink.

As ever, that awareness arrived ten minutes after it might have been useful.

Ivy, though. Ivy looked like she could keep drinking until the birthday after next.

‘And he knows I know,’ Sarah said. ‘Know who he is.’

This struck her with some force, and she turned to make sure Barry hadn’t sneaked in while she’d been spilling her story. The room boomed before her eyes, then diminished into a miniature version of itself, full of small happy drinkers. She felt Ivy’s hand patting her arm, and then her vision was back to normal. She had the horrible feeling she was about to throw up.

‘Through the back, pet,’ Ivy said. She was pointing with an admirably straight arm. Back along the bar – near to where Trev still sat – then through a door marked
Toliets
. Or probably
Toilets
. ‘You’ll feel better after. That’s always the way.’

As Sarah tested her legs on the floor, she heard Ivy say, ‘And there’s nowt to worry about. Not in here. Your man’ll never dare show his face in here.’

The next five minutes were not among Sarah’s finest. When she re-showed herself in the bar, her face was white and still damp. The dispenser had been out of paper towels, and she’d had to do what she could with her hands. The taste of vomit lingered, and she dreaded to think what her breath smelled like. But there was a glass of water waiting on the bar, next to a mug of black coffee, and while she’d never subscribed to the idea that coffee was a cure for being drunk, she welcomed both. The water helped with the sour taste in her mouth, and the coffee scalded her tongue, but made her feel better.

She began to say, ‘Ivy, I’m –’

‘Hush, man. I’d had your day, they’d need a crane to lift me off the floor.’

‘I haven’t eaten lately either, and –’

‘Well, I’d give that a while yet. Let’s not run before we can walk, eh?’

Good advice. Even the thought of food made Sarah’s stomach threaten to heave again. But she felt better, that was true; and as drunken episodes go, she’d enacted worse. Her memory was intact, and she knew she hadn’t danced on the bar or shrieked with laughter. Up until feeling sick, she’d actually thought she was more or less sober.

Now all she wanted to do was close her eyes.

Ivy said, ‘You’ve not called the polis?’

‘The polis?’

‘The polis.’

The police, Sarah translated. She drank more water. Funny how having drunk too much made you thirsty. There were sound chemical reasons for this, but still: funny.

She said, ‘You know – right this minute? Right this minute, the last thing I want to do is talk to anyone.’

It was so tempting to close her eyes, and lay her head down on the bar. For all the noise and the heavy wet fug, she’d sleep so peacefully . . .

‘Maybe so, pet. But you can’t just leave it at that, can you now?’ Ivy seemed to be in charge of Sarah’s immediate future. ‘Not that I’m recommending the polis, like. We’ve little love round here for the blue.’ A fresh glass of her Coke-coloured drink had materialized in front of her. Gary was evidently under a standing instruction. ‘For all our Eileen’s youngest took the shilling ten years back. He’s a sergeant now.’

‘Ivy –’

‘So I made a phone call while you were freshening up. It’s clear you’re in more trouble than you know what to do with. And this Barry fella – I’d give him a good clip if he showed his face round here. But he’s not likely to do that now, is he?’

A good clip. One way of dealing with him. But other facts were struggling for clarification: ‘Ivy? You called who?’

‘Someone who’ll know what to do.’

Not Eileen’s youngest, by the sound of it. Maybe our Derek’s Carol. Sarah reached for her water, but she’d finished it last time, so picked up the coffee instead. It was still too hot to drink. The pub door opened, but Sarah didn’t turn. A more urgent question had occurred to her, having weaved its way through the whisky-smoke in her mind. ‘Ivy? What does “gan canny” mean?’

If Ivy were discombobulated by the change of direction, she didn’t show it. ‘Learning the lingo?’

‘I like,’ said Sarah, ‘to make the effort.’

Ivy said, ‘Our Derek’s pal Tezza, on the buses, he was from St Kitts. He used to say, “Be careful as you walk.” Instead of goodbye, like.’

‘Be careful as you walk,’ Sarah repeated.

‘Aye,’ Ivy told her. ‘That’s what “gan canny” means, pet.’

‘Be careful as you walk,’ she said again.

There was a man right behind her now, but it wasn’t Barry. Wasn’t Alan Talmadge. Looking at his reflection in the bar mirror, Sarah could say with some certainty that she’d never laid eyes on him in her life.

‘He’ll see you all right, pet,’ Ivy said. ‘No need to worry.’

‘I’m not,’ Sarah said.

Which was true. Whatever Ivy had in mind, Sarah knew it didn’t involve doing Sarah harm.

‘Gan canny, pet,’ Ivy said.

‘This the lassie?’ the man asked.

Ivy nodded.

‘Had away, then,’ he said, or something like it.

Sarah got to her feet, none too steadily. The man let her lead the way out of the bar. It was hard not to notice that everyone watched them leave, or that they stopped talking while they did so.

Outside it was dark and still wet. A car was parked at the kerb, hazards flashing. The man opened the door, and Sarah climbed into the back. Then he got into the front, and drove away.

13

‘More water?’

‘Thanks.’

He poured it from a jug. She was a world away from dead-end Walker. The armchair embraced her like a feather bed. She could easily close her eyes and swim into sleep.

‘Another Nurofen?’

‘Better not. Shouldn’t have had that first one.’ Her words stumbled. ‘Not after whisky.’

Jack Gannon said, ‘You’ll be fine. They put that warning stuff on the packets to cover themselves.’

The drive across town was already a blur. Her chauffeur had barely uttered a word, once he’d established that nothing he said met with comprehension. Sarah’s attempts at learning the lingo had juddered to a halt.

But there was quite some distance between here and where Jack had grown up, that was clear. This street was quiet, suburban, tree-lined; included, across the road, what was either a school or a convent, with ivy creeping in and out of the diamond pattern of its mesh fence. Tidy strips of grass lined both pavements.

Jack said, ‘Why go to Walker? Why drop my name in a pub? You could have called.’

‘I didn’t drop your name.’ She half-laughed. ‘Didn’t even know I was in Walker till I got there. And didn’t know you were someone whose name would be picked up that easily.’

‘No?’

She looked up. He was obviously sober; he came into focus within a second. His living room was a long uncluttered space, knocked through front to back, but he was close at hand, in the matching armchair. ‘Okay. I knew more about you than you revealed on first meeting. Or second.’

He said, ‘None of us can help our ancestry.’

‘Ivy asked me my story. I told her. You came into it, that’s all.’

Jack nodded. There was something different about him tonight. He was still tall and the same kind of thin steel cables were; still had neatly styled dark hair and acne-patched cheeks. But there was something different. Maybe it was to do with being on his own territory.

He said, ‘The Internet’s a sort of jungle pond, don’t you think? Jump into it, you never know what you’re going to find. Or what’s going to find you.’

You wouldn’t have to bend that too far out of shape to make it a threat. But he didn’t look threatening. More rueful, if anything. As if he was all too aware of the details an Internet trawl might drag into the light.

Sarah said, ‘I take everything I find on it with a pinch of salt.’

The image threatened to make her gag. Hurriedly, she took another gulp of water.

‘But you found some interesting facts nevertheless.’

‘About your father. Not about you.’

‘There’s always someone’ll tell you the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’

Sarah remembered the photograph of Michael Gannon she’d found: heavier than Jack, with an out-of-date moustache. One look, and she’d been sure he was guilty of all he’d been acquitted of.

Jack, though . . . First meeting, she’d liked Jack.

But did she like him enough to be alone with him in his house?

Things had happened too fast. She’d been too startled by what she’d learned about Barry; had backed into a corner she’d tried to drink herself out of. And now she was here, looking for safety. She could almost hear Zoë’s voice:
Safety? You don’t know the meaning of the word.
She should ask if she could make a phone call. She should speak to Russell; start organizing her departure from this city.

The time it took to think all this, the glass had grown heavy in her hand.

There was nothing spooky about this, though. Nothing underhand in the water. She was tired, that was all. Tired and still drunk.

Jack said, ‘That aside. This man Barry. From the hotel.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘What I heard from Ivy was a bit garbled.’

‘You know Ivy?’

‘I know a thousand like her. Grew up among them. Basically,’ he said, ‘they’re all my gran.’

She nodded. She could see how that worked.

‘He’s not who he seems to be,’ Jack said. ‘That much I got.’

‘He isn’t,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s not Australian, for a start.’

‘He’s not from Wallaby Springs?’ Jack said. ‘That’s disappointing.’

‘You didn’t believe that anyway,’ Sarah remembered.

‘But how bad does that make him? Maybe he just wanted to be interesting.’

‘Ivy didn’t tell you the rest?’

‘She said some stuff. I’d like to hear more.’

Sarah took a deep breath. Closed her eyes. The armchair wanted her to fall asleep: that was clear. ‘There was a man. A few years ago. He was killing women.’ She stopped. That seemed enough for now. More than enough, even.

After a moment Jack said, ‘And this is Barry?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re sure?’

She paused. ‘No. No, I’m not sure.’

‘But it’s possible enough for you to be seriously worried about it.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Seriously. That’s the word all right.’

Seriously seriously seriously. It threatened to follow her down through the plughole that was even now sucking her in.

Jack put his glass down. She hadn’t even noticed he’d been drinking. ‘You look like you could do with some sleep.’

‘What time is it?’ she asked.

‘Early.’ He looked at his watch and nodded, as if pleased that it agreed. ‘But you definitely need an hour’s kip. Come on. I’ll show you the spare.’

Maybe something showed on her face, because he gave her a thin-lipped smile. ‘It locks on the inside.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –’

‘That’s all right. You’ve had a rough time.’

But she said it again. ‘I’m sorry.’

He led her upstairs, into what was recognizably a spare; was too neat to be anything else. A candlestick fitted with clean candles sat on the mantelpiece, and nothing at all sat on the dresser. Best of all, though, it had a bed in it. She turned to thank him, but Jack was already closing the door. Sarah didn’t lock it. Nor did she bother getting undressed. Kicking her shoes off, she lay on top of the covers. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, three hours had passed, and the house was empty.

In the kitchen, she filled a glass from the tap, drained it, then filled it again. Ominously, she had no headache. In most circumstances, a free pass from a hangover would be a blessing, but it felt now like a pain postponed, as if Sarah’s future were laying traps. To counteract this, she acted as if the hangover had already arrived. So she drank three glasses of water, and took another pair of Nurofen from the pack on the counter. Then had another look for the note Jack had left, explaining where he’d gone. But it remained invisible.

Sarah found the phone, though, largely because it was unhidden. Sitting, she picked out three-quarters of her home number before pausing, then gently replacing the receiver. She desperately wanted to speak to Russ. But she couldn’t do so here, in a strange man’s house, with no explanation that wouldn’t leave Russ screaming with anxiety . . . She couldn’t cope with that. She’d talk to him once she’d left, which she’d do as soon as she’d worked out where to go.

Her bag was at the hotel, but she had her purse, which held her credit card. She’d go to the station. She’d leave the city. But as soon as she’d had the thought, she had a second, which was that leaving would give Barry all the time in the world to do exactly the same.

And one thing Alan Talmadge was good at was disappearing.

She was still by the phone when the hallway grew bright. Headlights crawled up the walls, collided on the ceiling, then abruptly died. Jack, she thought. The car had come right into the drive. It could hardly be anyone else. But the engine choked away, and nothing happened: no feet crunched on the path; no one came through the door. Her hand curled into a fist. Her nails bit into her palm.

Then she shook her head, to clear it of interference. There was a car outside. That was all. She wasn’t about to hide under a table. Before she could change her mind, she opened the front door. The car’s side window rolled down at her approach. Her reflection sank into the window’s recess, revealing the man who’d collected her from the pub.

‘Hello,’ she said.

He nodded.

‘Where’s Jack?’

‘Oot.’

Oot?

Out.

‘Did he . . . Did he say where?’

He nodded.

This was going to be a long conversation.

‘And could you tell me?’

He could and he did. She had to make him say it three times, though. It was unforgivably rude, but she could barely penetrate his accent. And he was making no concessions. Why should he?

At length, in possession of as much information as she was likely to glean, she thanked him and returned to the house. Should she have asked him in? It wasn’t her invitation to give. Anyway, he seemed happy enough in the car; like a bear in a mobile cave. And besides, in a sudden access of self-consciousness, she remembered how drunk she’d been when he’d collected her from the pub. Communication difficulties aside, she didn’t want that topic taking up space between them.

Front door closed, she leaned against it, treasuring its barrier-like properties. How did she feel? First things first: she felt better for sleep and painkillers. She wouldn’t call herself one hundred per cent. But then she hadn’t felt that since learning about Zoë; even less so since seeing that body on the slab.

Oot. On a message.
A word that carried a wealth of meaning up these parts: anything from nipping round the shops to undertaking a quest.
Not be long, like.
Which might mean five minutes or might mean an hour. What was Sarah supposed to do in the meantime? Grab something to eat, she thought.

Good answer.

In the fridge she found cold chicken and a jar of mayonnaise, and made herself a sandwich. Jack wouldn’t mind. Ten minutes later, she was considering making another, but that would involve finishing the chicken: maybe Jack would mind after all. So she went back into the sitting room, then got worried she could be seen from the car in the drive. She didn’t know the driver’s name – also unforgivably rude, come to think of it – and didn’t like the idea of being observed by him, so wandered into the adjoining room, where there was no possibility of observation. This turned out to be a study. Bookshelves naturally attracted Sarah, but a few moments with these let her down: rows of volumes called
Project Management
and
Deal-making Done Right
weren’t anything she wanted to browse. But there was a computer on a desk by the window. A light on the monitor indicated it was sleeping, and while it would have been pushing the boundaries to turn the thing on herself, if it was already on, that made a difference, yes? Besides, everyone knew you should shut a machine down when you weren’t using it. Standby was just another word for environmental damage.

When she moved the mouse, the screen came to life. No fancy image, either: just the generic Windows blue, and a few familiar icons.

She wasn’t here to creep his private folders, she told herself. She had no intention of doing that. She woke his Internet browser instead, and opened her e-mail account: work-related messages had come pouring in while she’d been away, not to mention a fair amount of spam, but nothing that couldn’t wait. Ignoring them, she sent off a message of her own: a quick one to Russ, telling him not to worry, that everything was okay. When the words were on the screen, they didn’t look enough. But she didn’t have time to polish: she pressed send, and hurled them into the void. Then closed her account down, and opened a search engine.

This was what she’d planned to do before her encounter with Barry derailed her. If that hadn’t been Zoë on the slab, it had been somebody else. And Sarah refused to believe this could happen – that you could be dumped and poured into a river – without causing ripples somewhere.

These days,
somewhere
was the Internet. If you couldn’t drag a body to the surface of the web, there was nothing left of it to drag.

The first few minutes were spent narrowing down search terms.
Missing
and
woman
were too broad; threw up too much bad poetry, too many Amazon pages. Zoë would have done this better, Sarah thought ruefully. Zoë would have aced this. After ten minutes she wandered into Jack’s kitchen and made a cup of coffee. The clock on the wall said it was coming up to eleven. The clock in her body shrugged, and accepted it. You had to accept the ruling of a higher power. Come to think of it, that was one of the rules for those regretting alcohol abuse.

She shook her head. Concentrate on the task in hand. Back at the screen she found a site dedicated to missing persons, and trawled it for giveaway words; words relating to middle-age. But it was mostly children who went missing; teenagers or younger, who’d gone off-reservation. They’d turn up, if ever, in runaway hostels, or when police sweeps netted underage prostitutes. She drank some coffee. It had gone cold: how long had she been sitting here? Time operated differently in front of a screen. Another link dragged her on to an archived news page, and she clattered her search terms into this one too, because she was too far down the rabbit hole to claw her way back to the surface. That was what the web really was. The rabbit hole. It turned us all into Alice: almost everything encountered there was weirdly familiar, but at a tangent to reality. It was a paranoid playground; a – Hang on.

She’d ploughed through a screen which had triggered something, and had to backbutton to discover what it was. A news story from mid-January, from one of the nationals:

Concern is growing about the whereabouts of Madeleine
Irving, 47, of Moseley, Birmingham, who has not returned from
holiday. Ms Irving, who is single, is believed by neighbours to
have been travelling in the Lake District over the New Year
period. It remains unclear whether she was accompanied.

The photograph took a moment to manifest, as if the ether itself were struggling to recall Madeleine’s image.
Is
believed by neighbours
. There was nothing wrong with keeping your travel plans to yourself. The picture shimmered into being; unfocused at first, then sharper, like a memory nudged into the light. Madeleine Irving had a pale face and dark curly hair, though a black-and-white headshot tended to exaggerate such distinctions; she wore thick glasses in a heavy frame that looked as much designed to hide behind as see through.
It remains unclear whether she was
accompanied
. She was forty-seven and single: just the type Alan Talmadge favoured. If you took the glasses away, she looked enough like Zoë to be taken for her in the right circumstances. If she’d been left in the water for a while, for example.