The Last Voice You Hear (17 page)

‘Bit.’

Great.

‘He was my friend.’

‘Right.’

‘He was my only real friend.’

‘No, Andrew. Those people you were with the other day, they’re your real friends. They’re where you belong. Understand?’

‘If I’d stayed with him, he wouldn’t be dead.’

‘No. If you’d stayed with him, you’d both be dead. You’d not have lasted six months. Sooner or later, he’d have turned on you himself. That’s the way it is.’

‘He was my
friend
.’

‘He was a street punk, and he was using you. He didn’t get a fair crack at life, true. But lots of people don’t, and they’re not all thieves and muggers.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘I don’t pretend to. Understanding’s overrated. Most of us settle for surviving. You had a tough lesson in that. Take it to heart.’

‘Who killed him?’

She sighed. Teenagers were impossible to avoid, and she’d heard this about them: they had their own agenda. Don’t bother telling them anything they’re not listening to. They wait for a gap and plough right on. Sometimes without waiting for the gap.

‘Nobody killed him.’

‘He can’t have just
died
. He was twelve.’

‘There was an accident. He fell.’

The wind kicked up. More rain hit the window. Zoë was trying to remember where the nearest cigarettes were, and worrying they’d turn out to be under lock and key in the local newsagent’s.

‘Fell where?’

A great height, she almost said.

‘What, was it off some building or something?’

‘A tower block.’

‘He didn’t like heights.’

‘No. Well.’ Sensible aversion, in the circumstances. It wasn’t like falling from one had done him any good.

‘He wouldn’t go somewhere he’d be so high, that’s all.’

‘That kind of depends on his plans,’ she said.

She had remembered there were cigarettes on the kitchen sill; a mostly used packet that had gone through the wash some days ago. They were likely to be dry by now. Or likely to become so, once she set fire to them.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I lied. It wasn’t an accident.’ She amended that. ‘Nobody thinks it was an accident.’

She heard, or thought she heard, that same sudden squall on his side of the line. With a map and the wind-speed and a weathervane, she could pinpoint exactly where he was, if she’d timed the interval. An interesting exercise in futility.

‘He killed himself.’ Andrew’s voice was flat, morbid; he wasn’t asking a question.

She answered him anyway: ‘That’s what they’re saying.

Yes.’

‘Why would he do that?’

Zoë thought: Why wouldn’t he?

‘He had his whole life in front of him.’

‘There are those who’d call that reason enough,’ said Zoë. ‘He’d used up a lot of options.’

‘I spoke to him.’

‘Spoke to him when?’

‘He used to call me. Not often. Every six months or so?’

‘And say what?’

‘He wanted money.’

Of course he wanted money. ‘Did you send him any?’

‘He said he’d come looking if I didn’t. Said he could fuck me up no trouble.’

‘And this was your friend?’

‘You were right. I’d not have lasted ten minutes without him. Not on the streets of the city.’

‘Go home, Andrew. Go to bed. Maybe you’re right to feel guilty, I don’t know. But get over it, okay? Go home, go to bed. Get on with your life.’

‘Last time, he wasn’t asking for money.’

I really don’t care any more, she thought.

‘He said he was quids in. If I’d stuck with him, I’d really have it made.’

‘Andrew? He was a con-artist. No. He was a street thug. He was
hoping
to be a con-artist.’

Andrew, formerly Dig, said nothing.

‘Andrew?’

There was more rain, but it was hitting her bedroom window, that was all: in her ear was the dial tone. Just for one moment – something to do with the rain, with the dark; with the day she’d had and what she’d learned – it was the sound of every sundered relationship she’d ever known.

After a while, she got back into bed.

iv

These are the things he knows he knows: what she drinks, what
she wears, how she moves. And these are the things he thinks he
knows: that she grieves after dark, and carries sorrow whose
weight sometimes catches her by surprise – when no one’s
looking, her mask slips, to reveal the effort, the frank outrage, of
a woman who’s learning that she’s not equal to everything life
can throw. Though what she’s yet to learn too is that there’s
never no one looking.

He has fixed a tracking device to the underside of her car.

And naturally, he has chased her down the web. She doesn’t
enter chatrooms or post mad diatribes, but she’s a user (unlike
Victoria) so there are footprints to be found. Besides, she’s a
feature. Once, she killed a man. The details are fuzzy – the man
was a neo-Nazi, an undercover policeman or a rogue government
agent, depending on your source – but the fact is cold and blunt
as paving slab: she took a life. What was once warm muscle and
cardiac machinery, she turned to meat and bone. This was almost
something they had in common, though the circumstances were
different.

(He had wooed and won Victoria because her whole life cried
out for it. It was that simple, and started by accident. Overcome
by the need for shoes while far from home, he had been struck by
the woman serving; by her air of . . . disappointment. It was no
big thing to strike up conversation. What many people don’t
understand is that lives are not locked boxes, but open easily to
the right touch. He wooed and won her because that was what
she wanted. And it made him happy and proud that for the last
few months of her life, Victoria had known what it was to love
and be loved. He had opened her ears to the music. Though when
push came to shove, it ended, of course.)

. . . And these are the things he knows she knows: that he
exists; that he is out here in the world. She doesn’t know his
name. It was Alan Talmadge she was looking for in Caroline’s
house, and Alan Talmadge no longer existed, just as Bryan
Carter – whom Victoria loved – was no more either; both
vanishing like a quick fade once their work was done. (He knows
she knows about Bryan Carter, because he knows she went to
Wallingford. He has fixed a tracking device to the underside of
her car.) This makes life interesting. He would shy from the word
challenge
. This is not about conquest. It’s about love; about
bringing love where it’s needed, to the lives of those who
lack it.

(Once, walking by the river – on a cold evening, towards the
end of their time together – Caroline had turned on him suddenly.
You talk about love,
she said.
You say you love me. But what does that mean? What does love mean?

Nothing,
he told her.

And even in the dark he saw her eyes come over weepy, as if,
for all the harshness of her tone, she’d been looking for reaffirmation;
for him to insist again that it was true, that he was true,
that love could flourish. Even here. Even now. His blunt rejection
robbed her of what she’d started to believe, and seeing that
belief made him glad, although it meant their time was coming
to an end.

In tennis,
he said.

Tennis?

In tennis. Love. It means nothing.

But here and now,
he added,
it means us.

And he felt, in their linked fingers, a sigh pass through her like
the ghost of sex.)

. . . These are the things he thinks she knows: that what she
is lacking, he can give her. That that’s why she’s looking for him.
And though she doesn’t know it yet, she’s found him now, or he’s
found her. When push comes to shove, the difference barely
matters.

In love, he’s found, push always comes to shove.

Chapter Four

Never no one looking

i

When the first thing you noticed in the morning was the weather, it set the tone for the day ahead. Monday morning was blue skies, but Zoë traced a stiff wind in the limbs of next door’s trees, and knew clouds might turn up out of nowhere. Spring days could turn to autumn. The lift your heart got might be the kind that dropped you at the next exit.

Sunday, she’d written to Amory Grayling, a report which didn’t mention Victoria Ingalls. It did, though, outline Zoë’s reasons for thinking ‘Alan Talmadge’ an assumed name. He was married, Zoë concluded, leaving Grayling to draw what he wanted from this – that people are not framed for good behaviour; that where men love they also lie, and that some men lie and call it love. These mild conclusions would be based on incomplete knowledge, but Grayling didn’t want to learn that Caroline had been pushed under that train. By this stage, he might no longer even want to find Talmadge – a guilty adulterer now; not a bereaved lover – but that was barely relevant. Zoë had made her own connections, to Caroline, to Victoria, and would keep pushing doors, regardless of what lay behind them.

When Bob Poland called, Monday morning, she’d been about to use the phone herself.

‘What did you say to Connor the other night?’

For a moment, she couldn’t remember who Connor was, let alone what she’d said to him when. ‘Why?’

‘He called me. He wants to know about you.’

‘Wants to know what?’

‘Where are you?’

Which was Poland asking, not Connor.

She was halfway into town – she had things to do – but she was curious as to what Tom Connor wanted. It was probably kneejerk – when you asked a policeman questions, you were by definition wasting police time. But it was better, too, to know what Poland’s answers had been.

He was drinking an americano in a café in the covered market.

‘Why were you interested in this kid?’

‘Hi, Bob.’

‘What was his name? Deepling?’

‘I’ll have the same. Thanks.’

He gave her a stare, but went to fetch it. Zoë watched him join the short queue, which was not quite short enough to forestall his impatience: she read this in the tightening of his shoulder muscles; in the thrumming of his fingers on his thigh. There was a violence in Bob Poland she’d never seen in action, and doubted she would. This would be all it amounted to: an annoyance with people in his way; an epithet spat at those unlikely to spit back. All the boring qualities of cowardice. Not that she underestimated this. When cowardice came to the boil, it could burn those who strayed too close. Poland liked to hear about it too: violence. He’d asked her more than once about shooting that man. Most people tiptoed round it: it was the elephant in the kitchen, the one nobody mentioned. But Poland wanted to know. He wanted to imagine the trigger, and what was happening at the other end. For this, among countless other reasons, she never answered.

And besides, some experiences rendered you ineligible to discuss them. Your point of view became irrelevant: it was like trying to find magnetic north while standing at the pole. Evel Knievel was once asked what it was like, being in a coma. ‘How would I know?’ he’d replied. ‘I was in a fucking coma.’

When Poland returned she said, ‘His name was Wensley Deepman.’

‘Whatever. Kid took a header off the fortieth floor, right? Connor was wondering what made him important, on account of he was this half-caste punk looking at life indoors. What could I say? I don’t know what you’re up to.’

‘Because it’s not your business.’

‘That’s what I’m getting at. You want me onside, Zoë, you’ve got to keep me informed.’

‘What did you tell him?’

He said, ‘I’m a liaison officer, or did you forget? What’s it gunna look like I start telling him lies? You think I’d be trusted tomorrow?’

‘You think you’re trusted today?’

‘Your mouth’ll get you in trouble, Zoë. Sooner or later.’

‘I’d hate to think you were threatening me, Bob.’

Instead of answering, he drank his coffee. It occurred to her, she’d not seen him without alcohol to hand before.

Then he said, ‘Where’s this happening, anyway, somewhere in the Smoke? How come you’re involved?’

‘Nobody calls it the Smoke, Bob. Not in about fifty years.’

He used the fuck-off button on that. ‘So where’s the money?’

‘There is none.’

‘How’s that work?’

‘I’m not being paid, Bob. It was just . . .’ It was what? She could barely name it. ‘It was something happened a long time ago. I owe it to him.’

‘How can you owe a kid?’

‘I’d explain that, but I only talk human.’

‘Jesus.’ He picked up his cup, but it was empty. He put it down. ‘He wasn’t yours, was he?’

‘Wensley?’

‘He was half black, Connor said. Black your type?’

She looked at him. He smiled without it touching his eyes. ‘That would cover some ground, wouldn’t it? Zoë Boehm with a little lost boy. Explain why life’s so tragic.’

Part of the energy that had washed through her on Saturday came flooding back, now coloured as hate. Some experiences rendered you ineligible to discuss them, sure. But the practice helped, on the days you felt like murder.

The non-smile was still plastered to his face. He had stalker’s eyes, Bob Poland: how come she’d not registered this before?

He said, ‘You’re one of those people think you’re invulnerable. You always have done. But you want to be careful about screwing with me, Zoë.’

‘Trust me, Bob. Screwing, you and me are things that are never going to occur.’

It was the best she could manage off the cuff.

‘Bitch.’

She left, hatred pulsing through her veins. This was what it was like to be coming back to life: old emotions stirring, catching like barbed wire. The alleys of the covered market throstled with shoppers and would-be looters; a creep with a car salesman’s coat and a face that belonged on Gollum oozed past. Bob Poland had been part of her scenery so long, she’d forgotten he was venomous. Sometimes a good memory was more important than anything else. Remember to hate him.

There’d been something she’d planned to do, but it slipped her mind right now.

On Market Street the wind’s edge cut through leather. She turned towards Cornmarket, zipping her jacket, and felt in her pocket the familiar lump of her phone: talk to Andrew Kite. That’s what she’d been planning to do when Poland interrupted. Standing on the corner, her neck pricking as if she were being watched, she rang first his house, and got no reply, then the ersatz college he studied at. She had to pretend to be his aunt, but ascertained he was there. By now the pricking was worse, but when she turned, she saw only the usual crowds, the usual butchers’ vans; the usual homeless man with his newspapers clutched to his chest. Poland, she decided. That was his speed: to follow, to watch, but to shrink to the fucking shadows when she felt him. She lit a cigarette, and moved on.

And found herself in that alleyway again, waiting for Andrew to appear; smoking, and thinking about Alan Talmadge – where had he met Victoria and Caroline? Wherever he wanted, was the answer. Talmadge didn’t choose at random, he stalked. Talmadge was looking for women of a certain age, of a certain lifestyle, who had room in their lives for a man bringing little baggage – no books, no photographs; maybe soul music. Everything else was theirs. But then, most relationships involve one half providing the detail (the friends, the location) while the other slots in. It was conflict avoidance, as much as anything else. And when the woman has little background, and the man no being, what’s left is vacuum.

How easy would it have been for them to fall so hard? Very easy indeed.

Zoë ground her cigarette underfoot. They had been, she thought, walking invitations to a man with no morality, which would have been bad enough if all he’d wanted was sex. But he’d insisted, she supposed, on love. And what they’d have thought was what everybody thought: that they were the only people this had ever happened to, when they weren’t even the only people it had happened to with him. Love was recyclable, unfortunately.

. . . It didn’t matter, anyway. It didn’t matter how he’d met them. What mattered was what came after: we are in the realm of results, not causes. He preys on women. I know this, but can’t prove it. If she could, she’d take it to the police. But all she could point to was two women dead in accidents, and her reputation was not such that anyone would care.

The doors to the college opened and a pack of students emerged; somehow uniform, despite their individual striping. A clamorous number headed towards her; distracted, she almost missed Kite, who was heading the other way: jeans, blue-black fleece, QUIKSILVER backpack. She caught him before he reached the market square. ‘Andrew.’

His face was that same polite blank of Friday morning.

She said, ‘I’m not having a good day. You wanted to talk the other night. You want to talk more, talk now. Otherwise, next time you ring, I’ll hunt you down and feed you your mobile.’

And here he was: Dig, not Andrew Kite. The sly but frightened boy who could steal and run but was wholly out of his depth.

Less savagely, Zoë said, ‘Okay. I’m told I’m not that likeable. You want a coffee?’

He nodded, then cleared his throat. ‘Yeah.’

They walked to one of the less crowded cafés, and sat at a table in the bright cold sun. Zoë lit a cigarette, and absently offered him one, then caught herself; shrugged an apology. Before their orders came, he was talking about Wensley Deepman.

. . . She’d drunk so much coffee already she was zigzagging, or that was what it felt like, while Andrew Kite spilled all he’d ever known about Kid B: how they’d met, what Wez had said; all the ins and outs of being rough in the city. Their drinks came, and he kept talking. Kid B knew all the rules: that’s what Dig reckoned. Between the lines, Wez had been another punk wannabe, but to hear Dig they’d been Butch and Sundance, carving a hole in the wall. In his mind he was reliving grainy walls and neon puddles. Only when he’d wound down – when the words gave way to a middle-distance stare that might have been aimed at the gaggle of girls across the way, or possibly three years further – did Zoë say: ‘When did he call?’

‘Late at night, mostly.’

‘To your home?’

‘Once. ’Fore I gave him my moby number.’

(So his parents didn’t need to know.)

‘And he asked you for money.’

Fifty quid a go; the odd hundred, Andrew told her. Told her as if such sums were the usual ones; sums you couldn’t expect to be smaller; sums most teenagers could lay their hands on no problem.

‘Were there threats?’

Andrew said, ‘If I hadn’t sent it, he’d have come for it.’

Zoë wondered what that would have been like; a door opening on one world from another. From this safe present, Andrew looked back on his wild-side walk as if it allowed him a broader perspective than the children he moved among daily, cushioned by their parents’ love and money. He might even have been right. But he knew – it was obvious – that he was back where he belonged, and that when Zoë had brought him home, she’d been rescuing not relocating him.

‘Did he?’

‘No. I never saw him again.’

‘On Saturday,’ she said, ‘you told me he’d come into money.’

‘He said he knew where he could get some.’

‘Did he say where from?’

Andrew shook his head. ‘But it was a scam of some sort. Something dangerous.’

‘How do you know?’

He looked at her as if she were forty-four, and he only seventeen. ‘Because he was Wez.’

Right.

‘Did he ever talk about his grandfather?’

‘He mentioned him.’

‘What did he say?’

But Andrew couldn’t remember. It was too removed from anything that could matter: an old man, somebody else’s grandparent . . . As for Wensley, Wensley was an image, when he’d not been a voice on the phone; an emblem of something exciting Andrew had done once. The fact that he was dead was exciting too, Zoë suspected, though Andrew would never admit it.

‘He ever take you there?’

‘Wez only went when he needed to hide.’

Right, she thought again.

He said, ‘You know something funny? The day he died? It was my birthday.’

Zoë tried, but couldn’t think of what to say.

‘Ain’t life a bitch?’ Andrew asked, as if he’d rehearsed it often.

She watched him make his way across the square. A grown woman, easily in her thirties, looked back at him as they crossed. Then turned to notice Zoë noticing this, and smiled at being caught.

Zoë sat on a bench by the tourist office, watching buses dispense the morning’s travellers. There’d been a reason she’d come into town – groceries – but it was fading fast. Her other concerns divided neatly in two. She needed to know more about Alan Talmadge; enough that she could convince the world of what he was. But had to find him first. And then there was Wensley Deepman, who wouldn’t take much finding because he wasn’t going anywhere ever again. Who didn’t like heights, but had been on that roof by himself. Who’d found a way of making money, and boasted about it to Andrew Kite. She wondered if he’d boasted to anybody else.

It was about now she’d normally be lighting another cigarette. She’d had a vague resolve on waking, though, and while giving up wasn’t going to happen here and now, cutting back was worth thinking about. So was whatever it was she was doing.

Nobody reached Zoë’s age without formulating rules for life. Some were obvious – never trust a man with a sunlamp tan, or anyone who smiled while delivering bad news. Others were more to do with the way things were: that it was a hard world, with a sentimental streak a mile wide. That traffic slowed for nuns and ducklings. That everyone else took their chances.

That it was best not to get involved.

But this was a rule she’d broken before. Once, she’d done a brave thing, putting herself in danger to help a woman she barely knew. And afterwards, wondering why she’d taken that decision – to stand with Sarah Tucker rather than walk to safety – she’d known that beneath whatever rationalization she’d cite, whether of valour or morality, lay her sense of self. Whichever course she’d chosen, that was who she’d be for the rest of her life. The woman who’d stayed or the one who’d walked away. What she hadn’t realized was that being the one who’d stayed wouldn’t necessarily make her feel better afterwards. But either way, that Zoë had at least cared: cared about what people thought of her, and cared too about Sarah Tucker. She wouldn’t be pondering her choices on a bench outside the tourist office. She’d have felt no more for Wensley Deepman than this Zoë, but she’d have known what was right. In the long run, she was already involved – this Zoë/that Zoë. Both of them.