The Last Voice You Hear (18 page)

The bright sun caught the windscreen of a London coach pulling in, and its reflection smashed into supernova, dazzling her the way tears might. For a moment she could see nothing for the bright ghosts seared on to each retina: sunbursts and lavaspray. But slowly vision returned, and with it a little clarity of thought; a little insight. She was frightened of having cancer. That wasn’t outrageous: a lot of people were. But she was nearer than many, at this point in her life, to the reality. So much of the woman she’d continue to be, or grow into being, depended on the envelope that hadn’t arrived; the appointment she’d yet to keep. And what was she doing to hold that at bay? – she was dazzling herself with her own private sunburst; a distraction from the cold possibility of her near future. What, after all, did she know about Alan Talmadge? One CD on a dead woman’s player; one vinyl 45 among another’s lost possessions. All she knew was nothing. She was kidding herself. She had cancer.

And maybe it’s this that brings back the pricking at her neck. Maybe it’s nothing external at all, but a fear of what lies within. And as she stands, acting on a decision she hardly knows she’s made yet, the old words come back to her, cast in a different form: that she has nothing to fear but fear itself; that she has nothing to fear but herself.

ii

She doesn’t see me, he decides, because she’s not ready to see me
yet.

This is a satisfying explanation, as it covers many ponder-ables.
He has been watching her for days, and if what he’s read
is true – and he has no reason to disbelieve it; her appearance,
somehow, verifies her reputation – she should have noticed him:
this is her domain, her duty; she sees things others don’t, finds
things they have lost. That’s the story in those internetted
abstracts he’s uncovered; the mini-histories culled from tabloids
and the occasional official report, pasted on to the ether by men
with an interest in women who’ve taken life. So if she hasn’t seen
him, it’s because she’s not ready to. That explains her lack of
observation. Though it’s also a testament to the subtlety of his
approaches.

And he’s not immune to alternative possibilities. Perhaps she’s
distracted by an as-yet unrevealed heartbreak. That can take the
edge off a woman (he knows this), and there are men who’d
regard it as weakness, but he recognizes it for what it is: a
courage most men aren’t aware exists. Men hurt themselves
because they blunder into havoc unaware, but women walk wide-eyed
into the danger. That’s the difference. If she has a heartbreak,
he’ll find out what it is. He’s just getting started.

As for her, she’s moving; rising from her bench as if released
by a starting gun. And watching her, he’s aware of her body; not
just that she’s in good shape – note that he doesn’t add the
poisonous
for her age –
but that she houses various tensions
that exercise, always supposing she takes any, can’t reconcile.
She has set herself at an angle to the world, and this is part of
her allure; her willingness to go to battle to defend her right to
suffer. He finds this incredibly moving. And all the while she too
is moving, of course, and she moves right on to that London
coach.

He watches while she produces money, buys a ticket, chooses
a seat; becomes semi-anonymous behind metalwork and glass,
and for a moment, he imagines boarding, sitting next to her,
enjoying her reaction.
What are you doing here?
she’d ask.
Shouldn’t you be at work?
And he’d laugh it off, discover a
plausible reason, and they’d smile and joke all the way to the
city –

The bus is away, out of the station; a foul exhaust storm in its
wake, despite its company’s claims to the contrary. And then
only the cloud shows it was ever there; that and (he’d like to
pretend) a similar ghostly energy on the bench where she’d been
sitting; in the air she passed through, heading for the bus. This
was a spur of the moment decision. When she left her flat, she
had no plans beyond shopping. Don’t ask him why he’s sure of
this. It’s to do with the connection between them; the perfect
understanding she’s not yet aware of.

(This is one of his truths: that love is clairvoyance. Love means
knowing what happens next. Or at the very least, love is the
ability to improvise, so that when the unexpected happens next,
love is quick to catch up, and make as if it never faltered. Like
love knows what it’s doing all the time.)

The night he followed her from Caroline’s, he immersed himself
in researches into the small hours – her address gave him her
name gave him her job, her car, her history. Her whole life
unfolded in a pixel stream. And as knowledge gathered in his
head like bees, he kept recalling the way she’d looked, walking
home in the dark: a woman carrying a burden she had no
intention of dropping; no intention of anyone knowing about.
Nothing catches the heart like vulnerability unwittingly
revealed. This was the chorus of his thoughts, later, as he
attached the tracking device to her car’s undercarriage.

And now he is moving too, before his vigil attracts notice,
though he appreciates that that’s not likely, on this crowded
corner. And if it does, what of it? – he’s in love with a departing
passenger: that’s all the explanation necessary. Which is why the
songs last for ever, the ones that tell you that love satisfies
everybody; that love is the answer.

He checks his pocket for his mobile. There it is. He checks
around for unwarranted attention. There isn’t any. And he
knows that if he were a woman there wouldn’t have been this
same indifference; if he were a woman there’d have been sizings
up and markings down; there’d have been that almost-but-not-quite
inaudible muttering that follows a woman everywhere,
until she’s of an age to lay male interest to rest. But not for him;
for him, only the white noise of human traffic and motorized
locomotion. It’s not difficult, being invisible. It’s only exactly as
difficult as being charming, but in reverse. He leaves the bus
station. In the air all around him, in the sky above, in the
expressions of passing strangers, nothing happens.

iii

‘It’s now.’

‘What is?’

‘The inquest.’

‘Aren’t you going?’

He regarded her with a mournful face that put Zoë in mind of wet newspaper. Since Friday Joseph Deepman had lost an inch of height, as if he were one of those complicated buildings in the City that adjust their dimensions to fit the burdens they accommodate. And what he was accommodating was death. This hit her like a blow to the breast. Why had she just now noticed this? He was sheltering death, and not only his grandson’s; he was carrying his own as if it were a load of shopping that needed fetching up to the fourteenth floor, on a day the lifts were down. One word of permission, and he’d let that shopping fall. And she pictured the contents of a long life spilling from torn carrier bags down flight after flight of stairs: youth work marriage daughter grandson food drink lies. All tumbling into chaos at the bottom, while many landings above an empty husk relaxed at last.

He was waiting for a response, but the last question she’d heard was her own.

To cover her lapse she said, ‘Have you been eating?’

The words, in the hallway of his dismal flat, sounded like accusation. What are you chewing? Spit it out.

He shuffled into his kitchen. After a moment, Zoë followed.

More debris had accumulated since Chris’s attempt at clean-up on Friday, which at least answered her query. Two empty tins sat by the sink; one had held sausage and beans, the other beans. Sauce trimmed their rims like savoury lipstick. Her stomach threatened revolt, whether in hunger or disgust she wasn’t sure.

He said, ‘Why would anybody want me there?’

‘You’re his grandfather.’

He sighed, wetly. She’d have liked to grip his shoulders and shake life into him.

For something to do, she set the kettle boiling. It shook and rattled, like old-time rock and roll. ‘When did you last see him?’ This earned a blank look. ‘Wensley, Mr Deep-man. When was the last time you saw him?’

‘The day before.’

‘The day before he died?’

He nodded.

Zoë found cups, and rinsed them. ‘What was he doing for money?’

It was an unfamiliar sound, his next. She had to check to make sure. But it was true: he was laughing, if mirthlessly.

‘Same as always,’ he said, when the tremors ceased. ‘On the rob. Is that tea you’re making?’

‘It can be. He told somebody he was coming into money. How was that?’

‘Not likely to tell me, was he?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Deepman,’ she said with studied patience. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’

And it was his turn to regard her, as if he’d just noticed she had no great call to be here; that her questions were her own; that she might leave at any moment.

‘He told me nothing,’ he said at length. ‘Wensley . . . didn’t tell me nothing.’

Then, in a bewildering display of hostly control, he opened a cupboard and found teabags.

She put them in the cups, added hot water, and stared at the wall while they brewed. There was no window. Only the front room had windows, which gave out on the walkway: you could see sky, and the companion block across the way, but from inside you couldn’t see down. You could be scared of heights, and stay unbothered.

As if reading her mind, he said, ‘You get used to it. You could be underground, really. ’Stead of halfway up the sky.’

‘He didn’t like heights, did he?’

‘He never admitted being scared.’

She fished the bag from his mug, and added milk. He said, ‘But he didn’t like heights. No.’

Zoë said, ‘So . . .’

His blank stare told her she’d have to spell it out.

‘Mr Deepman. If he didn’t like heights, what was he doing on the roof of a tower block?’

‘I don’t know.’

Nobody knew anything. That’s why her job kept on going.

She had made herself tea, and she didn’t want tea. A small problem in the scale of things. ‘I spoke to a friend of his,’ she said after a moment. ‘He told me Wensley only came here when he needed somewhere to hide.’

Joseph Deepman gave this some thought. Whatever conclusion he reached expressed itself as a shrug.

‘So you’ve no idea who he might have been hiding from?’ she persisted. ‘The day before he died?’

‘You think somebody killed him?’

‘I don’t know what I think.’ She thought he was quicker than she’d given him credit for. ‘I’m just asking questions.’

‘You ask more than the police bothered.’

‘I don’t think the local cops were too fond of your grandson.’

‘Not only them.’ He looked down at his cup, then at the floor, as if he’d just become aware that he was standing up and drinking. ‘I want to sit.’

He carried his tea to the other room. Leaving hers by the sink, Zoë followed. When you acted on impulse, this was what you suffered: consequences. She’d boarded the bus in Oxford because it seemed the right thing to do at the time; because Alan Talmadge was less real than her own problems; because she wasn’t sure she wasn’t kidding herself in what she thought she knew about him. Wensley Deepman, though, had been indisputably alive; was indubitably dead. This was less a mystery to Zoë than a foregone conclusion, but it bothered her that Tom Connor had checked up on her. He’d established who she was on Saturday. Why had he talked to Bob Poland?

Deepman’s cup was balanced on the arm of his chair, and he was staring at the TV set, Zoë’s old set, though it was off. ‘He had no friends round here. There’re people glad he’s dead.’

Some kind of response seemed called for. Zoë, unable to think of one, stayed silent.

‘One of the neighbours, he had his pension from him once. Never spoken to me since.’

Between the tortured pronouns, Zoë saw frosty meetings on stairwells and in lifts; looks cast like daggers at retreating backs.

He lapsed into quiet again. Zoë was thinking: maybe the little bastard deserved it. On any ranking of the not-much-missed, Kid B scored about the same as Charles Parsley Sturrock. She shook away these probably vile thoughts, and noticed the empty bottle in the wastebin. Friday’s alcohol.

Association prompted, ‘Have you seen Chris?’

He looked at her blankly.

‘Chris? Who was here Friday?’

‘Oh. He said he’d come back. And he did.’

‘Since Friday?’

‘On Friday.’

Some conversations it was best to escape from as quickly as possible.

‘I have to go,’ she said. She was tired again. Last night’s sleep had been the usual aggravated nuisance, like hunting somebody through a viciously thorned maze.

‘You’re going to the inquest?’

‘That was not my intention.’

Strange how sentences came out formal when they least needed to be. No Fucking Way, she’d meant.

‘Somebody should be there.’

‘Somebody no doubt will be.’

On the walkway the chill wind slapped her sideways like a cardiac incident. It brought tears to her eyes, the way things used to do. She paused to catch breath, to get steady – to feel, perhaps, the icicle stab of the weather; to
punish
herself: what for? – and heard Joseph Deepman’s telephone ring inside his flat. So she wasn’t the only one spared him the odd thought. This ought to have eased whatever it was she carried, flight by flight, down fourteen floors, because the lifts were broken again.

On the street she looked round for her car, feeling a brief flare of fear-cum-outrage at its absence, before remembering she was on foot. There was barely a soul in sight – an elderly woman doing the cornershop shuffle; a man watching his unleashed dog crap on the pavement. The wind kicked hell out of an empty lunchbag. No way was she going to the bloody inquest, damn it. There was no obligation laid on her. She’d left no debts unpaid. Zoë felt the first heavy drops of rain begin to batter as she reached the junction, as she stood there for a full half-minute, with no idea where she was headed next.