The Last Voice You Hear (16 page)

It lay barely examined on the seat beside her. She didn’t need to examine it: the fact that it existed was enough. It wasn’t proof of anything, not to anybody else; to Zoë, it was all the proof she needed.

As I walk this land of broken dreams
I have visions of many things

She didn’t know she knew the words. But there was this about pop music: it crept into you like mist under an ill-fitting door, until words you didn’t know you knew had taken up residence – words like
love
,
heartbreak
,
forever
. People her age spent years having poetry hammered into them at school, and emerged without a couplet intact. But each and every one knew what followed ‘I’ll never dance with another.’

But happiness is just an illusion
Filled with sadness and confusion

What becomes of the brokenhearted
Who had love that’s now departed
I know I’ve got to find
Some kind of peace of mind, baby . . .

Jimmy Ruffin. Motown Records. 1966. She couldn’t begin to remember last time she’d seen a seven-inch single in a paper sleeve; it was like something recovered from a time capsule, meant to remind you what you’d been doing while Armstrong walked the moon. And it had been tucked into Victoria Ingalls’ record collection, as out of place as a cat in a kennel. Zoë, looking for Caroline Daniels, had found this instead: two jigsaw pieces that didn’t lock together. Now, instead of stubbing it in the ashtray, she tossed her cigarette through the open window and saw in her rearview sparks scatter the dark road behind her.
I know I’ve got to find some kind of peace of mind.
It was always a mistake to look for solutions in a lyric, but there was a point here, that was true. Peace of mind. Easier sung than found.

And now that I know this, she was asking herself, what am I going to do?

Her flat was in darkness. There was no wine in her fridge. Zoë couldn’t remember finishing a bottle, but then, couldn’t remember starting one either. She put the record on her desk, then in afterthought in a drawer instead, which she locked. It wasn’t terribly late yet; it felt terribly late, but wasn’t. Not too late to drink coffee, but coffee wasn’t what she needed. Alan Talmadge, she thought. She spoke the words aloud, to hear a killer’s name in the open air. ‘Alan Talmadge.’ Which wasn’t his name. She felt absurd, as if she’d essayed a satanic rite; uttered a fiendish name to conjure evil. What did she do with what she knew? Which wasn’t quite suspicion – felt like certainty – but boiled down to less than conjecture (this song, that song; two tunes in two wrong places).

She had a man friend, though . . . I saw him leaving her flat.

We do, don’t we? We like to boast about our little conquests . . .

. . . It was still coursing through her veins; that life-force she’d generated performing the break-in. She said his not-name aloud again. ‘Alan Talmadge.’ I’m going to find you. Proof or no proof: I know you’re out there, whoever you are. Sitting at her desk, in the pool of light her anglepoise cast, her index finger made a pile of the scatter of paperclips it found; a slow methodical gathering she was barely aware of. I know what you do. I’ll find you. Trust me.

The phone rang.

So on edge, so alive she was, it might have killed her.

She picked up, spoke her name, and in the moment before the silence broke wondered if she’d conjured Tal-madge out of the ether, by discovering what he did. A cigarette called to her, but it was trapped in her jacket pocket, on the far side of the room.

‘Zoë? It’s Jay, Zoë. Jay Harper? We met –’

‘I remember.’

I’m talking about women, they’re single, they’re looking at
forty, they might as well be carrying neon signs.

‘Zoë?’

‘But I don’t remember giving you my number.’

‘You’re in the book. I don’t remember you saying you were a private eye.’

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘It goes to show, we have unfinished business.’

Her finger disrupted the tidy pile it had made of the paperclips. ‘You can’t be finding things that difficult.’

‘Difficult?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I’m not ringing you because I like a
challenge
, Zoë. What would that make me?’ He didn’t leave a pause. It wasn’t really a question. ‘I enjoyed your company. I’d like to see you again. That’s all.’

At the heart of the paperclip pile she found a tightly rolled ball of silver foil. Hardly aiming – choosing a target, but not looking at it – Zoë flicked, hard. It missed the door handle by barely an inch.

‘You keep going silent.’

She sighed. ‘Jay. I must have ten years on you, and that’s adding five to what you think you’re getting away with.

You seriously imagine I need that kind of grief?’

‘So how old do I think I’m getting away with? Twenty-two?’

‘Nice try.’

‘All I’m asking is, a drink? Seriously, Zoë, you strike me as more used to giving grief than getting it. You’ve nothing to worry about where I’m concerned.’

That had the air of famous last words, she thought: the kind that get said by somebody else. Like
This isn’t going to
hurt, much
, or
It’s all right, I’ll catch you
.

‘I’ll make it easy. I’ll tell you where I am right now.’ He told her: a pub, one she knew well. This was because it was five minutes’ walk away. ‘And unless you save me from myself, I’ll be here until kicking out. Which, given my regrettably unmacho capacity for alcohol, means I’ll get hopelessly drunk, sleep in tomorrow, miss my train, miss a
very
serious meeting, and lose my job. Which will be your fault.’

‘So no pressure, then –’

‘Later.’

– and he was gone, like that. She was listening to a dial tone.

It’s Sunday tomorrow, she thought.

And: Not a chance, she also thought . . . She spread her hand, and swiped the paperclips across the desk, on to the floor, into the wastebin. There was a tingling at her finger- tips, at her toes, the roots of her hair – none of the obvious sexual playgrounds, but if her body thought it was fooling her, it had another think coming. Not a chance, she thought again, but she wasn’t even kidding herself.

There were various reasons Zoë liked this pub, among them its blackboard listing available cocktails: Guinness and bitter, bitter shandy, lager top. In the back room, where there was a sofa and an armchair, she found Jay Harper, who’d bagged the sofa. A pint glass, almost full, sat in front of him. He was reading
The Independent
.

‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.’

There was a piano, and, on the walls, photos of obscure jazz performers, along with ancient revue bills, and vinyl recordings from best-forgotten eras, such as the polka craze of the fifties. A young man on the piano stool was studying sheet music, while two women talked quietly in a nook. A drift of crushed monkey-nut shells littered the floor. ‘Well, you don’t look dangerously intoxicated.’

‘Don’t underestimate this stuff. It’s called Monks’ Brain Mortilyzer, or something. More than a pint, and you’re technically dead.’

‘Sounds tempting. But I’ll stick to wine.’

While he fetched it, she claimed the armchair, trying not to wonder what had brought her here. Wine, but not only wine. The body, after all, was a traitor. But wasn’t this research, of a sort? – it brought her closer to Caroline, to Victoria, and might bring insight into their story. Though largely, they’d always remain mysterious to her. Sometimes, it was as if other people had minds of their own. And the most unlikely among them ran on kamikaze hearts.

. . . And the body, anyway, was a traitor . . . The thought hollowed her out, dried her mouth; she had forgotten for whole hours thoughts of envelopes and examinations and
we’ll have to fix you up with an appointment
. . . Murder and love had edged out cancer, but only for a while, only for a while. There was probably an equation awaiting calcula- tion; some very precise formula which would balance these extremes. For the moment, cancer was winning; it had swamped Alan Talmadge and his murderous loves, and everything around her grew larger of a sudden, while noises boomed as if the room had become a sound tunnel. She very badly needed a drink. Because the body was a traitor. And then Jay was back, handing her a glass which she took without a word. She had her first large swallow before he’d even sat down.

He looked at her. ‘Bad day, or just thrilled to see me?’

‘You have no idea.’

‘How thrilled –’

‘The day I’ve had.’

He sat, and resumed his pint. In this light Jay seemed older than he had in the bright bar; it should have been the other way round, but somehow the softer context was hard on him, and didn’t let him get away with much. She decided she preferred this. Pubs were realer than bars. Here, Jay looked like he worked for a living. He was relaxing, but obviously had a life to relax from. ‘Want to tell me about it?’ he asked.

‘Not really.’

‘It’s going to be a long evening.’

‘I didn’t mean to come,’ she told him. ‘I’m not sure why I did.’

‘So long as you’re here.’

Reaching for a cigarette was easier than replying.

He said, ‘I think you got the wrong idea about me last night.’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘You seemed mistrustful. I might have said some rubbish.’

‘Is that why we’re here? So you can correct my first impression?’

‘Do you fence?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘You seem keen on duelling.’

‘I’ve never fenced,’ said Zoë. ‘I’ve done a bit of shooting.’

This seemed to amuse him.

She said, ‘So what’s the real Jay Harper like? Sensitive, concerned, mildly feminist?’

‘I’m just me. I’m not pretending to be anybody else.’ He drank some of his beer. ‘What’s it like, being a private detective?’

‘It’s a job.’

‘You don’t give much away, do you?’

‘That kind of goes with the job.’

‘What are you working on at the moment?’

‘I’m looking for somebody.’

‘Have you found him yet?’

‘What makes you think it’s a man?’

‘Fifty-fifty shot.’ He had tucked
The Independent
down the side of the sofa, from where half of Charles Parsley Sturrock’s face grinned out at her; one of those sardonic, hand-it-to-the-jury expressions he was specializing in circa 1993. Jay noticed her noticing. ‘That happened near where I work,’ he said. ‘Sturrock’s execution.’

‘You think that’s what it was?’

He shrugged. ‘Thieves falling out. The money never turned up, did it?’

‘I was kept out of the loop on that one.’

‘Have you ever been married, Zoë?’

‘Seamless switch.’

‘I’m just trying to get to know you.’

And since when did that work, Zoë wondered. When you had to try. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve been married.’

It was like that moment in any siege, she thought later, when you yield the first stone to the marauders. Give up one tiny part of the city, even if it’s hurled in anger, and next thing you know, the towers are tumbling down. Was that how it happened with Victoria and Caroline? Had they thought they were succumbing to love? And did it mean it wasn’t love, just because Talmadge killed them? There was a big
just
in that sentence. Jay Harper was looking at her as if she were missing her train, and Zoë bent to her wine again, already regretting the admission, the trivial surrender. But
let it go
a voice inside suggested. She had no idea if this were her inner Zoë, or Joe, or Sarah, or what. It was a long time since anyone had been interested, and that was the truth. Maybe she was just ready: ready to let go.

‘Talk to me,’ he said.

And now she found herself deep in a dream of a white room equipped with sleek medical machinery.
We’ll have to
fix you up with an appointment
something a bit like a tannoy said. A fixture rang like a telephone, and woke her. She was drenched, everywhere; her cotton tee limp as a dishrag. Still it rang. The luminous hands by her bedside quietly informed her it was five past two. Nothing good happened suddenly in the single-figure hours. The late-night phone call was the weapon of stalkers and other perverts. Her feet almost lost balance on the firm, level floor, as if she were still on dream legs, which couldn’t handle reality.

When she lifted the receiver the sudden silence was like something breaking. ‘Hello?’

She could hear breathing, but not aggressive breathing. A ragged swallowing of air, as if whoever had been crying.

‘Hello?’

But there was only breathing, and beyond that, a freighted emptiness which sounded like the world outside.

Zoë hung up and returned to bed. There was probably a reason the phone was on the far side of the room. Closing her eyes she saw the white space again; heard its equipment begin to tick. Something small and lost, not quite pain, shifted in her breast. She’d drunk two glasses of wine: fewer than she’d wanted, but more than was sensible.
Talk to me
Jay had said, and she almost had. Almost talked as if she knew him well; as if he were more than a stranger in a bar. You might call it charm. The phone rang.

‘Hello?’

This time, she heard rain – not a downpour, but a gentle pattering of water on glass. But when she peeled the curtain with her free hand, there it was: rain brushing the window here and now.

‘I’m hanging up.’
You son of a bitch
.

‘I didn’t know.’

‘. . . Didn’t know what?’

‘I didn’t know he was dead.’

She’d been right; there was rain down the line, too. Wherever he was, it wasn’t far, and he was out in the rain, talking to her.

She pulled the phone as far as the cord allowed, and sat. Her own abandoned warmth rose from her bed. Drenched in sweat, she was cooling fast. ‘Where are you, Andrew?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

This was what Zoë wanted: teenage drama. ‘Look, I meant what I said. It wasn’t your fault. And I could have handled it more sensitively.’

‘I don’t deserve sensitive.’

‘Oh –’ She’d been about to tell him to fuck off. Decided that was not a good direction. ‘Have you been drinking?’