The Last Voice You Hear (21 page)

He smiled from a two-foot distance. The only barrier between them was a young Asian woman with a tiny jewel-stud through her nose.

What were her options? She could point and scream. But madwomen melted down in the Tube all the time. People pretended something else was happening, or watched to kill the time until their stop. What they didn’t do was anything about it. Never wedge yourself between a screamer and her psychosis.

Besides, she was Zoë Boehm. Never a screamer.

His teeth were small but sharp in his orcish smile, and was she imagining them flecked with white scum? In his eyes she recognized a look she associated with her own worst mornings. She couldn’t believe these people were indifferent to this; couldn’t sense a soul gone bad in their midst.

There was a change in the rhythms around them as the train slowed without reaching anywhere. The crowd swore silently. Knowledge hard-wired within it recognized which slowings-down meant stations, and which a ten-minute wait in the dark. The Asian woman sneezed loudly into her open hand. The train heaved to a halt, and lighting flickered.

It was as if he caused this too: trains to stop, lights to dim. And finding herself imagining so she squeezed the fist that held the carrier bag from the deli.
This man will not
do this to me.
He had the look of a late-night caller, a lurker on corners, and again she half-doubted he could be Tal-madge, because this was not a man to win a woman’s heart. Not a woman with history; one who knew her mind.

But who else could he be?

The sudden pull of motion would have had her on the floor, if there’d been room. Relief rippled the carriage like wind through leaves. The train shunted. Talmadge licked his lips, and she had the immediate disgusting thought that he’d like to lick hers. Her natural response –
In your
fucking dreams –
she swallowed. The train picked up speed. The young woman pressed closely against her as another man edged for the door. It helped, if this was your life, to know which side the platforms fell.

Light burst all around as the train smashed into the station.

It slowed, it stopped, doors opened. There was more traffic; more people alighting. It was easier to go with the flow, so she stepped out while passengers disembarked, her eyes never leaving might-be-Talmadge, who hovered by the open doors. She was boiling up inside, and the Zoë who’d stopped feeling anything slipped further from view. When those waiting climbed on board she climbed with them, pushing past Talmadge as if he were just another traveller, then swivelling to face the back of his head. She let her bag drop to the floor.

He turned as the beeps announced the closing of the doors. ‘Mind the gap,’ she said, and shoved him, hard. His face as he fell ran the cartoon gamut from fear to indignation to rage: he caught his balance by windmilling wildly on the platform –

she thought the doors would open again, but they didn’t –

then imagined him hopping on one foot then the other, shaking his fist at the vanishing train. Hieroglyphics sprouting in a bubble above his head . . .

‘You do realize,’ said a measured male voice in her ear, ‘that you could have killed that man?’

‘Then he shouldn’t have felt me up.’

‘Reclaim the Tube,’ said the Asian woman.

For a moment Zoë stepped into a sunlit meadow, its atmosphere rich with mown grass and lightly falling rain. And then she was back in captivity, crushed against these fellow subterraneans, the stink of stale tobacco on her clothes and theirs. And the train walloped back into darkness, and she picked up her carrier bag.

Adrenalin, when it went, took everything with it. Zoë slept on the bus back to Oxford. Dreams in a moving vehicle are shambolic, greasy affairs: in this one, Zoë pokes through a huge pile of junk with a sharp stick – garden rubbish, broken radios; the refuse from a thousand kitchen bins. She has to stop and rest every so often. Whatever she’s doing, it’s too much for her. And then the tip shifts, and he’s breaking out of the mess beneath her feet. She steps back while he emerges into light.
You’re Alan Talmadge
, is all she can think to say.
No I’m not
, he replies, and bares once more his weird unsuitable teeth. There’s music playing, and she recognizes the tune, but can’t for her life recall the words. She’s still trying when the bus reaches home; when its cessation of motion jolts her back into the real.

She almost left her shopping on board. She almost couldn’t remember what it was. Stepping out on the High, she was glad of her leather jacket for the hundredth time that day; the world was in between showers again – the rain tracking her from London. Yawning, she walked. Taxis were decadent. Zoë had never quite freed herself of the habit of thinking so.

As for everything else, it was easier not to think, because every thought had the stale, wasted air of the underground. Had it really been Talmadge she’d pushed? How had he followed her, without her noticing? Creepier still was the ease with which she’d done it: pushed him from the train, the way he’d pushed Caroline, pushed Victoria . . . Push came to shove, and that was the way of it. But you know, she decided, as she headed into Jericho, I don’t care. A man had stalked her, which only cowards and vermin did. She’d pushed him off a train. That seemed fair.

Turning off the main road, passing the fenced and empty children’s playground and a row of parked cars, she felt rain again: if the day had a theme, it was that Zoë was going to get wet. But she wasn’t far from her flat. She unzipped her jacket, and with her free hand probed her inside pocket for her keys. The streetlight up ahead was out. Civic souls made phone calls when this happened; Zoë, like most others, let them get on with it. Her carrier bag – which held pasta, olives, pimientos, oil, stuffed peppers, bread and anchovies – had grown heavier, but that was okay. She found her keys. Bob Poland stepped out of the shadows in front of her. ‘You’re not popular, are you, Zoë?’ he asked. ‘You dumb bitch. I told you your mouth would get you in trouble.’

She dropped her bag. Behind Bob, another shape appeared; the man from the Tube. There was someone behind her, too. It began raining in earnest.

Chapter Five

Direction of travel

i

Hands fell on her shoulders and forced her down; she twisted aside, kicked Poland in the leg, and would have run but the hands grabbed her again. And then she was squirming, and her jacket slipped from her shoulders as the man from the Tube reached for her with a meaty, thick-fingered paw which held her breast in the least sexual way Zoë had ever been touched. It pushed her against a car, one without an alarm, though she made up for this with a full-throated scream that drew everything to a halt for half a second – there were three of them; three of them and Poland. This she took in while screaming.

A door opened over the way.

‘What the
blue hell
’s going on?’

Poland, limping over, was already pulling out his warrant card; holding up one calming hand.

Zoë seized breath.

The man from the Tube – no
way
was this Alan Tal-madge – leaned and put his finger to her mouth. ‘Shut. Your fucking. Face.’

She bit him.

He swore and bunched his hand into a fist. It would have been so final, if he’d done what he intended – even in that moment, scared and furious, Zoë knew this. It would have ended her normal life, if she’d been hit as hard as he wanted to hit her.

The second man stepped between them. ‘Ross, are you out of your mind?’

He was talking to Tube-Man.

Squashed hard against the car, Zoë blinked. A door-handle clawed at her back.

A front door shut. Poland returned. The third man grabbed her left hand and cuffed her wrist before she knew what he was about. Oh Jesus, she thought, they’re all cops. Then Poland was in front of her, the others shifting aside as if he mattered. ‘I warned you about screwing with me,’ he said. He’d prepared this beforehand. No way was he not going to say it. ‘This didn’t have to happen.’

It surprised her but her voice was still there: it even sounded steady. ‘You’re a bastard, Bob. This comes round.

I promise.’

And he was doing it, the sad fuck, like he was taking part in his own private movie; tossing her a coin, which caught light from over his shoulder as he said his magic words: ‘Yeah, right. Call your lawyer.’

With her free hand she snatched the coin out of the air.

You’ll do that once too often . . .

He said, ‘Whatever you think she did, she did it. Don’t turn your back on her.’ Then he turned and walked away, leaving Zoë with the three of them.

Man Two, the one who’d stopped her being punched, said, ‘No more rough stuff. Let’s be calm. But we have to cuff you. Put your hand out.’

‘Fuck,’ said Ross. ‘You’re asking?’ Pushing him aside as he spoke; stretching for Zoë’s left hand, which she snatched from the third man, one bangle of the cuffs hanging free.

It was a tableau moment. Four frozen figures; none of them touching, though all of them reaching, and about to connect.

With her free hand, finger and thumb, Zoë flicked the coin as hard as she could into Ross’s eye, then ducked beneath his outstretched hand and ran.

Leaving pain. She had heard terrible sounds before – the worst was the silence after she’d shot a man; the way he died without making a noise, though the expression on his face, for the short time she’d left him with either of those things worth mentioning, had indicated his grave disappointment with the turn events were taking – but Ross’s cry was really bad, and bounced off the architecture all around as she hit the corner running. This would have the neighbourhood opening doors. Running without ever stopping was a good idea. There was no way she wanted to encounter Ross again in this life.

. . . Or any of them. They were policemen, but this was no arrest. This was . . .
blue hell.

But running without stopping was for champions. Zoë was a smoker. Boy, was she a smoker.

This wasn’t only about distance, though; it was about direction. As in a maze, you made choices everywhere, leaving behind you a puzzle of possibilities. Each available corner, she took. It was dark, and the rain had emptied the streets. She ran past a pub, its windows throwing rainbows on the pavement, and imagined laughter, beer, safety; then realized with something like pain that this was where she’d come with Jay, what, two nights ago? She could step inside and claim help. But they were policemen. Whatever else they were, they were policemen. So she kept running, stomping puddles, while air raged in and out and burnt her up – lungs were bags of air. Hers were punchbags. She’d been beating hell out of them so long, it was a wonder the idiot things still knew how to breathe.

Round the next corner she reached the bridge across the canal. It was accessed via a concrete stairwell, in which she rested a second and retched, while lightning flashed in her mind. This is how it is, then, when someone is trying to kill you . . . Like a lot in life, it was instantly comparable to everything else. That moment you step out of your depth, and feel the undertow’s tug, and something deep in your stomach respond. Or stand cliff-edge and understand the height you’re at, the depth you might fall. Or notice you’re not loved any more. Zoë felt white panic loom, and clamped down hard; tried to lock it in a box.

Breathing was murder; all the same, crouched in this nook, she almost felt safe – it was close and dark and she couldn’t be seen from the street. But the moment anyone arrived, it was a trap. Staying put wasn’t an option. The loose handcuff flapped from her left hand. She caught its loop in her fist, and gripped it like a knuckleduster. Learned how to breathe again:
in/out
. Then took the stairs at as much of a jump as she could manage, and raced over the bridge.

It almost felt like a game. That would be the inner Zoë; the one to whom things were funny, until they pissed her off. The stairs on the far side led down to darkness, and this was where the game came in: that notion of reaching a den; a place of safety. She sheltered a moment in the lee of the bridge. Canal boats were moored along the towpath. Bars of light escaped their windows to splash on the muddy, pitted path, almost seeming an extra obstacle, as treacherous as the upjutting edges of brick. Inside the boats was food, heat, television. Outside, rain fell cold and steady. She could bang on doors and summon help – they weren’t all tie-dyed and helpless, these water-folk; there was the odd ex-foundry worker among them: traditionally muscled; genetically wired to assist damsels. But it wasn’t help Zoë needed. It was a clean getaway.

She paused to look back at the bridge. No one was crossing. But there were only so many directions she could have taken. Sooner or later, they’d be coming her way.

And from here, there was only one direction left: down the canal. On the move again, she inventoried herself. She wore flat shoes, in which she could run; she wore jeans and a cotton top over a tee. Her leather jacket was history. A pair of handcuffs hung from her left wrist. She had no money; no plastic; no mobile. She probably had her usual penknife. She checked: she did.

But she didn’t have her car keys. Inasmuch as she had a plan, it was to loop through town, and reach her car. But Zoë didn’t have her car keys.

Rain was pasting her top to her body, and without shelter – soon – she’d be a helpless wet rag when they found her.

Beyond the boats, she picked up speed. Lights from across the canal reflected on the water, where they broke in the rain, and rippled into jigsaw shapes. A bramble snagged her, and she ripped free. Her breathing sounded louder than a train. She hadn’t had a cigarette in ten minutes. She wondered if that counted as giving up.

Then she heard something louder: the weight of a man hitting the towpath behind her, one big foot at a time.

Zoë turned. He was emerging from the dark, the rain, and she couldn’t tell which one he was, if it mattered. Twenty yards away, but easier to read every moment: wide chest, clenched fists . . .

There were some small things Zoë had learned about self-defence. The first was, a big angry man will kick the crap out of you every time.

She ran. There was no choice involved: you did
not
stand and fight when all that could happen was pain and broken teeth. But she was drowning on dry land, with the ground dragging at her every step she took, so she dropped to the ground instead, to make as small a target as possible; squeezed into a ball which the first thing he did was kick.

Her arm went instantly numb. But she barely had time to register this, as his attack sent her sprawling to the water’s edge. If she’d had trouble breathing before, this was new territory: an airlock. Nothing was reaching her lungs. He piled at her on all fours like a woolly beast. For a moment, she thought it was okay. Not that things were going to end happily, but that they were at least going to end: that this was better than alternatives lately dwelt on – the scalpels; the drawn-out treatments. But only for a moment. As soon as he grasped her leg, she knew she’d fight. She kicked, and the sudden spasm jerked everything back into motion; she swallowed air again, and her vision cleared. She was on her back, her head over the edge of the path, inches above the water; her left arm was frozen, but her right was operational, and her legs worked. What she’d kicked was his head, and he pulled back with an animal grunt of rage. Then his weight hit like a chimney collapsing, and she was on her back again, the force of collision ringing loud and clear in every numbered bone. This couldn’t last long. It was already almost over . . . She was further over the edge now. Her hair dipped into water, and there was time for panic to squeeze her heart before his hands were on her shoulder, on her chin, and her head went under . . .

So this is how it is, then, when someone is trying to kill you.

She’d clamped her mouth shut. You did this swimming; you did this in the
bath
; but against your will, it was different . . . A small detached part of Zoë kept on whirring like a black box.
This, too, will pass.
Lights whizzed and popped: her own New Year, exploding in the privacy of her brain. Then something melted in her head as he pulled her clear of the water; pulled her face so close to his own, they were near enough to kiss.

The black box told her this. Zoë’s eyes stayed firmly shut.

‘Calmer, bitch?’

He didn’t wait for an answer. She was back underwater immediately; those same lights flashing and bursting in her head.

And isolation and numbing cold and raw black nothingness.

His body locked her legs down. Nothing they did mattered. And her left arm was worse than useless; as limp as if she’d slept on it awkwardly . . . Odd that your last sensation might be one of vague pain, vague irritation, way out there in your second-best limb. That the last voice you’d hear would be calling you
bitch
. She batted at his head with her right hand, but it was like swatting a wall with a handkerchief.

. . . And again he pulled her free of the water, and the air she swallowed was almost too much; she felt like she might burst. He was speaking but her ears were full; she was too busy breathing; she had no fucking interest in his opinion. Besides, her right hand was being interesting: reaching into her jeans pocket; fishing out her penknife . . . He was pulling her to her feet; one fist on her collar; the other twisting her right breast, which was a whole new kind of pain. ‘You’re gunna behave, right?’ he seemed to think. Zoë sank the knife as deep as she could into his thigh, and he let go.

She wrenched it free. The blade wasn’t huge, but it had caught gristle and caused damage. She was lightheaded, streaming water; must have looked like a vengeful mermaid. Lights became brighter up the path as his scream brought people out of boats. Where’d they been when she’d needed them, cowards? He dropped to a crouch, hands wrapping his thigh, his mouth open wide – the scream was all finished, and he made a hoarse whisper as he tried to inhale.
Not good, is it?
Zoë wanted to ask, but she had no words. She turned and ran.

Or lolloped, anyway. A battered, breathless lunge from the lights. A voice rang after her, a woman’s voice, but women were far too sensible to chase violent strangers in the dark. Adrenalin pumped through Zoë, and her movements became fluid; began to resemble human activity. There was a humpbacked bridge ahead. She sped up on the downslope. Night vision kicked in; her breathing came easier. The penknife felt welded into her grip. She passed another canal boat. The light flickering through its curtains was the blue-grey ghost of television; some cop drama about riverside damage, knife fights, fugitives.

The energy violence had generated was wearing thin already. She needed warmth; she needed to get dry. Most of all, she needed to be far away. Her car would be a start, but she still didn’t have the keys. Life was a series of problems, of variable difficulty. She had stabbed a man in the leg. The memory was tucked into the muscles of her right arm, was throbbing in her wrist: the resistance his flesh had put up for a second; the scraping of cartilage.

And then she’d reached the road, and traffic, and people, but she was way past asking for help. She’d just committed mayhem on a policeman. Doglegging right, she sprinted over – all her movements felt faster than they were – then leaped down the steps to the path beside a pub. She was Bede’s sparrow: seconds of light and noise all she knew between two stretches of darkness. Then pain hit her side, and forced her to stop.

It was a stitch, bad enough that she leaned on her knees, short of breath, hurting all over. Her hair was plastered to her skull. She was wet and freezing and about to throw up; she was unsure if it was the cold, the wet or the violence sickening her, or simply the fact that you could now do this: run across a busy road wielding a knife, and have no one stop you.

But she didn’t throw up. When her vision cleared she had to reorient. She was between two roads. To her left ran the river; to her right was a bush-lined patch of green, with benches for the weary; beyond that, a high wall. Her option was to go forward. Meanwhile she was a target in a lamplit pool, outside which somebody now coughed. Zoë’s heart leaped in its cage; might have jumped free if not for her fierce intake of breath. It was a man, two yards away, watching her. How had she not seen him? Because he was one of the invisibles; he was one of the invisibles, and she recognized him now. He was the homeless man she’d interrupted at prayer the other day. The one who carried his life in a collection of laundry bags.