Turquoiselle (5 page)

The
gap which followed was not, he thought, as long as it had seemed to be at the
time. But there – in it as before, he could count the three choruses of the
machine.

And
then his own voice: “You mean about your mother.”

Carver
glanced at Latham. But Latham sat listening, relaxed yet intent, his chin on
his hand and the empty glass, of very polished crystal, resting carefully to
one side. He might have been concentrating on a world class radio play, one he
had pencilled in, as he might have said, because it was by a writer he greatly
liked, or about a subject that intrigued him.

Silvia
Dusa had done what she had accused Carver of doing. She had taken out with her,
and then activated, a 3P – a Third Person – the infallible Mantik recording
device which, allegedly, could even pick up conversation through the rush of
running water or a loudly played stereo.

Dusa
was spitting out her dislike of the mother now, her mother’s irrelevance,
filial fear or love, in this case, inapplicable. And then she said, as before,
“...when not thinking clearly. I have –
given
something to... someone.”

And
now Carver would calmly say, as
he
had done, “You need to talk to Jack
Stuart,”

But
instead Carver said something else.

Carver
said: “All right. You’d better tell me, then.”

And
after another pause, “Come on, Silvia. You wouldn’t have spoken to me in the
first place, would you, if you weren’t going to confide. Felt you had to. So
let’s get on with it, shall we? And I’ll see what I can do.”

Four

“You’re too
sure. It can’t be so straightforward. How could it be? No – I don’t. I can’t. I
shouldn’t have spoken. No. I – am sorry, I apologise. It was nothing,’’

“Don’t
be ridiculous, Silvia. It’s obviously something.”

“Nothing.
No. I was mistaken, Car.”

“You
can’t go back on it now.” (He heard the man who was him, confident and
persuasive, with a numbed aversion that did not amount to doubt). “Simply tell
me the rest. Oh come on, we’ve all done unwise things, from time to time. It
happens. We can sort it out, you and I.”

“No.
I see now, I must go to Jack Stuart–”

“Oh
God, Silvia, do you
really
think that?” (The man – himself – gently laughed.) “
Stuart
? He’ll hang
you. He is very able, at that.”

And
then the rising note of purely physical alarm in her voice, “Let me
go
.
Let
go
of me–” And a kind of scuffling quite discernible over the on-off
rumble of the path repairs. A bird gave a shrill alarm call, even its
retreating wings were to be heard. And then she hissed like a cat, or one of
those snakes the nicknamers said she hid in her black hair.

Both
of them were breathing quickly, as if they had been running together, or
hungrily kissing, or having sex. And then the disc roared into a huge chasm of
silence, and nothing else rose from it. It had, maybe, offered up enough.

Although,
of course, the sounds – machine, bird, voices, breath – went on playing.
Replaying.

“We’re
almost there, Mr Carver. There’s the church – houses – and the pub. The Bell,
isn’t it?”

“All
right. You can let me out here.”

“Er,
Mr Latham said all the way to your door, Mr Carver.”

“My
partner,” Carver said, “is ill. The noise of the car will disturb her.”

“Well,
Mr Carver, if it comes to that, I expect you will, too, when you go in – can’t
avoid it. And it’s a bloody windy night. Temperature’s dropped to 9. No, I’ll
drop you off up the lane, by your house. Nice and snug.”

What
did the Mantik cabby think Carver would do? Leap out and sprint for the woods?
Vanish in the vast wild terrain that so briefly surrounded this English suburban
village? He could do it, anyway, surely, once the cab had gone.

“Yes.
OK.”

And
“Let me
go
,” insisted the panting, struggling Dusa-voice in his skull. “Let
go
of me–”

“The
disc’s been tampered with, Mr Latham.”

“Oh,
come on, now, Carver. Don’t be a twat. 3P’s can’t be fiddled about with. That’s
the whole point of them. They can be used for all kinds of legit recording or
audio surveillance, or blocking of same. But once they have the record, that
is it. The old days of course were different. As they say, that was
then
.”

“I
didn’t speak to her the way I seem to be speaking on the disc.”

Latham,
non-vocal, pursed his lips.

“I
told her myself to go to Jack Stuart at once. I said I couldn’t help,
she
had to see to
it.”

“How
odd,” said Latham, in a quick, flighty, bantering way. “I wonder what it was
she
did
though. Or did
she let you in on it, Carver? After she turned the 3P off – or whatever happened
to it. It sounded to me rather as if it had been dropped. But then she must
just have grabbed it, mustn’t she, and run for cover. Was that it? Frustrating.
It must have been. Last straw. What you were doing, you were playing her along,
weren’t you, trying to tease it out of her. I can quite see that. Then you
could just have gone straight to Stuart yourself and spilled the full Heinz.
Yes?”

“No,”
Carver said stonily. He stared at Latham, into Latham’s pouchy clever eyes. “However
that disc was prepared – sampling, a backtrack from the park and then a voice
mimic for me, perhaps – I didn’t say anything about her telling me, and my
helping her out. I actively
discouraged
that. I told her
not
to tell me, to tell
only Stuart, and as quickly as she could. Or if she couldn’t face him, go to you.”

“Me.”

“Yes.”

“Well,”
Latham’s eyelids had gradually folded to half-closed, as Carver had seen them
do now and then over a drink, a steak, an ice-cream. “It’s an odd one, isn’t
it? What was it you suggested? And actor mimicking your voice? That’s a rare
thought. Normally detectible. And why? The disc,” Latham added softly, “was
found in her bag, on the floor of the Ladies. Luckily the thing was in its
casing, so the blood didn’t get into it. It could have been cleaned up. But mucky.”

Carver
had stopped talking. Latham did not believe him.

Understandably.
Third Persons
were
reckoned
impervious virtually to anything, no blood, no human meddling could eliminate
or distort their message. The very latest backroom science. And so, Carver was
lying.

Did
Latham therefore think Carver, having failed to get in on whatever tempting
treachery or idiocy Silvia Dusa had undertaken, had later killed her? How had
he done
that
, then? There
were no drugs in her system or marks elsewhere on her body. She had not been,
presumably, blind drunk. So Carver, perhaps sneaking in from the smoker’s
garden, had told her to sit back on the loo floor, put on plastic gloves, and
then neatly cut her wrist vein lengthways, without an objection, or a single
razorous slip.

He
imagined Latham would have to detain him, no doubt leaving him first to stew,
then suggesting Carver sleep over on the sixth floor, where there were a series
of cell-like bedrooms, used for the nocturnal sojourns of those on duty, on
watch, exhausted, or held in mild-mannered custody.

But
Latham merely suggested they go down to the foyer-hall, where Latham could
access transport, and Ken could arrange for Carver another fake cab.

“Oh,
just one last thing perhaps I ought to show you,” Latham remarked in a
throwaway style, as they descended to the third floor. The lift, already
programmed, halted. Carver noted Latham, as Jack Stuart was inclined to, seemed
to be repeating a lot of the same words –
just
,
last
. Did it mean something? Or was it
just
one
last
gambit to
induce, (or allay?) unease?

They
walked into one of the small side rooms. Latham hit the lights and woke the automatic
on the computer. The large screen brightened, and without pause flooded up the
static drowned image of a dead woman on a mortuary slab. Dusa,naturally.

How
young, how agonisingly un-grownup she looked. No, she was not in her forties. This
was a well developed teenager, sixteen, eighteen, perhaps. And how dead.

It
was a fact some corpses, for by now Carver had been shown, both on screen and
in photographs, several, could look startlingly youthful. But in converse cases
it went the other way – a sixty-year-old boy who had died of rat poison at the
age of twelve; a hag of seven left pristine but empty by the side-blast of a
bomb. They always shocked you. But the shock altered. After the very first, for
Carver, the impact was lessened. Not in any trite or pragmatic way. More as if
some shield was now flung up before and about him in the very second his brain
accepted what his eyes revealed.

She
had been beautiful, it was undeniable, Silvia Dusa. Decently covered by a
sheet, needing only her face and her left arm and wrist to be displayed, yet
the contours, valleys and soft full mounds of her body were explicit. Her black
hair, thick and vibrant enough still to have retained, in those moments of
visual capture, its luxuriance and scope, lay under her face, throat and
shoulders, the perfect backdrop: ebony under honey.

“A
waste,” said Latham. “A
true
waste. Still a virgin.” He spoke the leery words respectfully and with regret. “A
damned bloody shame.”

Acting
all this, one assumed. He would be studying Carver’s reactions.

Carver
said, emotionless yet grave, “What about her mother?”

“Oh
that. She didn’t have one. That is, the woman died years ago – ‘90’s, 80’s. In
Venice, I believe.
Death
In Venice
.
Just goes to show.”

They
stayed motionless and dumb before the icon of dead Silvia for another few
minutes. And reluctantly, but clinically, Carver took in the drained wrist,
with its rucked, red-black lesion. The skin, the opened vein, seemed strangely
frozen, a sort of meaty-ice had formed on and out of them.

“Let’s
see about cars,” said Latham.

The
screen sank through violet, the overhead lights through scarlet, to oblivion.

Outside
the wind kicked at the scaffolding. Like some giant hell-harp its poles and
joints twanged and plinged in impotent answering rage.

Carver made
coffee in the kitchen of his house. The fake cab was still parked, ticking and
unlit, outside in the lane, and exacerbating the security light. When Carver
turned off the downstairs house lights, the cab eventually roused itself and
drove smoothly off. He suspected it might nose back again later, as if
cruising, but did not bother with checking whether it checked on him.

When
next Carver drove himself, it went without saying, he could expect to be tailed.
But that could happen anyway, at any time. Mantik took care.

Why
had he been let go?

Why
not, if they thought he really was innocent, had just been rather naive in
attempting to lure the facts of Dusa’s misdemeanour out of her – only wanting
thereby to get her into bed.

(A
virgin. That had thrown him. More than his mistake on her age.)

They
would certainly have him back for an in-depth meeting, however. He could not
evade that. He had never had to undergo anything really serious in that line.
But now he would.

He
could not fathom what had happened with the Third Person, or the voice that was
his own yet was
not
his at all.

It
was all a game though, in its way. Everything. What was the Whitehall Mantik
office’s nickname for its staff? The
Enemies
. Which could indicate, demonstrably, they
were the enemies of designated adversaries, or of increepers and traitors, but
too of each other,
friendly
enemies in that
scenario – but all en garde, one against another. Ready at any time to duel, to
stitch up, to outwit and condemn. To punish.

Carver
went upstairs. It was late. Despite Donna’s absence he would not sleep in the
main bedroom. From the spare room he could, at an angle, glimpse the faint blue-green
sheen reflecting on the birch trees. The leaves were falling, thinner, routed
by the wind, which now had sunk. The window-glass felt cold to the touch,
despite the radiator below.

Was
that the cab-car cruising back outside? Probably.

He
went to bed in the dark, and dropped down into the fog of sleep, seeing, as he
did so, where a dead woman lay on a grey bare slab, but he only floated past
her, a swimmer deep in the lagoon, to the thick soft mud of unconsciousness
below.

Andy walked out
of Woolworths with the packet of toffees he had bought, the striped sort his
mother liked, and a tube of five coloured pencils in one of his jacket pockets.
In the other pocket was a small assortment of Woolworths delicacies, a rubber,
two biros – one blue and one red – a tiny gold action figure in a plastic
pouch, and a lipstick in a shade he believed was called
Firebrand
. This last was
also for his mother, and also bought.

It
was her birthday on Tuesday. He had no idea if she would like the lipstick, but
she always effusively said how lovely and thoughtful it was of him to save up
for a present for her from what she called his ‘dole’ – the money, mostly in
coins, she gave him when she could.

Andy
knew his mother, whose name was Sara, was not much interested in him. She had
lost
interest when
she and he got away from her boyfriend, his father, and the bullying and physical
violence ended. Not having to protect Andy anymore, however ineffectually,
seemed to turn off all maternal connection for Sara. But he had never been
close to her, or so it seemed to him, or would have done had he properly
considered it. He had never been close to anyone, except in the physical
proximity way – hugged and smothered, or thumped about, or – now – thumping in
turn, as Andy had been doing not long before, with Iain Cox. Cox was one of the
school bullies. One or two years older than Andy, thickset and thin-eyed, he
liked to take the piss, and/or take away your possessions. So Andy had used a
couple of techniques he had learned from watching his father with one of his
own weaker male cronies. Grabbing and twisting Cox’s balls, Andy had brought
him down, then knelt on his curled-over body, pummelling his thick-thin face
until Cox was whimpering. Andy, by now, did not often attend school. Cox had
been unlucky, and definitely wrong in his choice of victim.