The Last Voice You Hear (25 page)

‘I don’t have keys,’ she said.

He gave her a look. ‘I’ll think of something.’

The trees along the lane were hard, knotty and old; hawthorn, she thought, though her knowledge was not great. Was mostly made up, actually. She could identify all major brands of cigarette blind, though. ‘What do you do for shops?’

‘We get in the car and drive two miles that way.’

‘What about pubs and post offices?’

‘We get in the car and drive two miles that way.’

‘It would drive me crazy.’ This did not sound especially complimentary, she realized. ‘I’m sure it’s lovely most of the time.’

‘I suppose it depends what you’re used to.’

‘How did you make your money, Russell?’

‘Did Sarah not tell you?’

‘If she had, I wouldn’t need to ask.’

‘Well, then. I’ll leave it to her, I guess.’

Together, they walked a stretch of the perimeter, until Zoë noticed, shockingly, she was tired. Her arm still hurt; her whole body, in fact, felt racked, as if her bath had drawn new bruises to her surface. Russell must have gathered this – maybe she was walking stiffly – because their route took them back to the shed. He didn’t once ask for anything like detail. Nor did he make a big deal out of not doing so. He left her, telling her he’d wake her to eat in a few hours, and she stretched out on her bed once more. Then got up and rifled the pockets of the stinking overcoat she’d stolen and recovered her cigarettes. The box still held three, and after thinking about it for a second – two
miles
–
she lit one. There was doubtless a whole range of directives and nanny-type instructions about not smoking in confined wooden areas, but if she listened to good advice, she’d not be smoking in the first place.

Then, she slept.

When she opened her eyes again, she was not alone.

iv

Standing among the trees, he feels different – but then, he
usually feels different. A city block; a small town house; a leather
jacket – he slips into one as easily as another. What matters is
that his core being remains undiluted; burns brightly as it ever
did. He’s gone by different names; worn different outfits; different
hair. But his heart beats same as ever; even here, under
weirdly stunted trees.

Zoë’s car sits up the road. Speaking her name has that gorgeous,
tantric effect he can’t get enough of:
Zoë
. It tastes on his
tongue. And this is love: standing under trees alone, saying her
name out loud just to hear it get lost among the branches . . . The
moment he knew he’d found her – the moment the transmitter on
her car responded – was like the silent yes of tongues first
meeting; it was validation. Having traced her history in the
ether, he has written it on to the world. Though if he can do this,
so might others.

But before he can follow this thought to its conclusion, and
reach an estimate as to when those men might show up, he sees
movement through the trees, in the field near the shed. It is
curious how little it surprises him that this is an ostrich. But
then, at a certain stage in any affair – the anxious hours before
words are spoken – everything appears equally normal, equally
abnormal. Something to do with heightened awareness. It’s as if
he’s wearing a new, very effective, pair of spectacles; spectacles
which affect all the senses, not just vision. Colours are brighter.
Edges sharper. Ostriches happen. And the trees around him
murmur in the wind; he can nearly make out their meaning.

. . . Female ostriches, he’s read, can fall in love with their
human keepers; so much so that they fail to mate with other
ostriches. One of the reasons ostrich farming was a failure. An
ostrich in love drops to her knees, spreads her wings, and groans.
Apart from the wings, that wasn’t so different, was it? Love is
non-species specific, amusingly. And ostriches thwarted in love
can pine.

He has driven through the night to where Zoë’s friend Sarah
Tucker lives; here on the edge of the Peak District, where the air
breathes clean and the sky looks fresh. It didn’t take genius to
know that this was where she’d come. It didn’t take
love
. And
that’s where worry raises its head again: if it had taken love – if
only the truly connected could join these dots – he’d know she
was safe. As it is, anything could happen.

More movement: human this time. But nothing desperate yet.
When push comes to shove, he’ll know about it. He’s reached that
point before.

He remembers his mother after his father left; how her life
shrank until all it contained was the record player. She’d play her
songs over and over: the old songs. Except they were the new
songs at the time, of course.

‘Dance with me,’ she’d say.

And: ‘You’re my white knight, that’s what you are. My knight
in shining armour.’

She’d been forty-three. He’d sworn that would never happen
again; he’d never watch a woman fade away before his eyes. He
would take measures to prevent it. Even measures that seemed
harsh at the time.

And he remembers how Zoë looks when thinking hard; how
she grows disconnected from the world, as if plotting an escape
route from it.

Danger might come from any direction, but most likely, he
knows, from the road up above.

As for Zoë, he knows where she is.

She’s in the shed.

He tugs on the zipper of her jacket, and moves towards her.

v

When she opened her eyes again, she was not alone. Sarah Tucker sat by the bed. Sarah was wearing her hair shorter than last time Zoë had seen her, with blonde highlights that altered the shape of her face, the way an expensive haircut can. In this light she looked younger, too, which might have been happiness, or might just have been this light. She wore a grey skirt and jacket, so obviously hadn’t changed from her trip. Her weight, which she claimed variable, looked the right side of good. Zoë bit something back; she wasn’t sure what. That there were people she was glad to see, maybe.

‘Tell me,’ she said, without moving. ‘How did Russell make his money?’

Sarah said, ‘I knew there was a reason you’d turned up half dead in a hotwired car.’

‘Please don’t tell me it was a lottery win.’

‘That’s what he likes people to think. No, he wrote a book.’

‘. . . That’s not so terrible.’

‘I haven’t said which book yet. Did you ever come across, and I know you did because everybody did, did you ever come across that cartoon book, the male guide to female contraceptive devices?’

She groaned out loud. ‘Every loo in the country had that.’

‘
What Is This Thing Called, Love?
’

‘At least it didn’t feature a talking willy.’

‘At his lowest moments, that’s what keeps him going,’ said Sarah. ‘That and the stupid amount of money he made. Are you alive then, girl? It’s lovely to see you.’ She leaned forward, and Zoë barely hesitated before surrendering to her embrace.

For what felt like a long while she surrendered everything else, too; stopped being Zoë, with Zoë-sized problems, and shrank to a warm body, wearing this woman’s clothes, wrapped in this woman’s arms. It was an uncomplicated place to be.

‘Are you running?’ Sarah asked at last.

‘What, I can’t just drop in? I need an ulterior motive?’

Sarah didn’t bother to reply, which was fair. Zoë broke away and leaned against the wall. Sarah sat back, and the two women studied each other.

At last Zoë said, ‘Your ostrich seems very taken with your man.’

‘Gwyneth! Ha!’

‘Is that usual?’

‘Not uncommon apparently. It’s the real thing, too. Poor girl’s head over heels.’

‘And how about you?’

Sarah said, ‘We’re happy.’

‘That’s good. I’m glad.’

‘You make it sound like I just had nice weather or something.’

‘I’m not knocking it, Sarah. What do I know?’

‘You must have thought it would work with Joe, once.’

‘Maybe. The reason why escapes me now.’

‘He was a good man, Zoë. Don’t be hard on his memory.’

‘He was a good man in many ways. Not-to-be-married-to was one of them.’

‘Sounds like you’ve still got issues, Zee.’

Baleful was the word for the look Zoë gave her. ‘Don’t call me Zee.’

‘Sorry.’

‘And don’t say “issues”. Unless you’re talking about magazines.’

‘I’ve been editing a self-help book,’ Sarah confessed.

‘And I thought I had troubles.’ That made Sarah snort. Ever afterwards, whenever Zoë thought about Sarah, it was that snort she’d remember first. ‘So here you go again,’ she said. ‘Young love.’

‘I’m thirty-eight, Zoë. It’s not like I walked into it wide-eyed and legless. And love’s not so young, either.’

‘Two years is nothing. You’re probably still leaving notes for each other. Still wearing matching underwear.’

‘You don’t believe in happy ever after, do you?’

‘Sweety, I don’t even believe in once upon a time.’

‘God, woman, I bet you still go in bars on your own, and drink right up at the bar. And get pissed off when men chat you up.’

‘It’s a free country. I can drink where I like.’

‘There’s streetwise, then there’s stupid. It’s right to get angry you can’t walk down dark alleys without being attacked. But it’s stupid to walk down dark alleys.’

‘You’re probably right.’

Sarah brushed a lock of hair free of her face. ‘But that’s what you’ve been doing, isn’t it? Walking down dark alleys. What kind of trouble are you in, Zoë?’

So here they came to it. She thought about saying,
Maybe
it’s better you don’t know
, but had an instant flash of what the response would be.
Fuck off, Zoë. What kind of trouble are
you in?
Sarah had changed in the past few years, but Zoë would have been amazed if she hadn’t. On their first major encounter, Sarah Tucker had been on a cusp, and the very fact they’d had a second had shown which way she’d fallen. That first time, she’d been full of pills – surrounded by them – and if she wasn’t actually on suicide road, she wasn’t heading anywhere healthy. The next, she’d been sitting on a bench, staring out to sea. By then, both women had a better idea of what they’d wandered into, and by then, Sarah had made the choices that had formed the person she was today. There had been a missing child, and Sarah had decided to find her. Of the many things that threatened to thwart that intention, none had survived Sarah’s rediscovered sense of self.

She said, ‘It’s kind of a long story.’

‘I’m kind of not busy.’

‘I’m not avoiding it. Just warning you.’ Then Zoë sat up ramrod straight, as if attending a formal interview, and laid everything out, all that had happened since last Thursday morning, in exactly the order she could remember it, which was largely the order it happened. Sarah didn’t say a word until it was over; barely took her eyes from Zoë’s, in fact. And Zoë, in the telling, found things levelling out in her mind, as if she were just now formulating answers to questions she hadn’t finished asking yet.

Some of which must have been audible. When Zoë had finished Sarah sat in silence a while, thinking it through, then voiced Zoë’s thoughts. ‘These cops. They killed Sturrock.’

‘Charles Parsley Sturrock,’ said Zoë. ‘Yes. I think so.’

‘And Wensley saw it happen.’

‘It was on his patch. Yes, I expect that’s what happened.’

‘So they killed him too.’

Zoë opened her mouth, closed it, nodded. She was seeing Kid B, stomping out his nine-year-old venom as she drove Andrew Kite from his world.
Piss the fuck off
, she’d told him, but she hadn’t meant him to die. She wondered what they’d said to him, those cops, before they dropped him off that tower block. Definitely meaning him to die.

‘He tried to shake them down, didn’t he?’ Sarah asked.

‘He told Andrew he was coming into money. Yes, he tried to shake them down.’

‘Bastards.’

‘But why they’re after me, God knows. I talked to his grandfather. I was late for his inquest. That’s about it, really.’

Sarah said, ‘We do have our exciting moments, don’t we?’

‘I shouldn’t stay, Sarah. Coming here wasn’t brilliant. Anyone with an eye for research could work it out. Anyone online.’

‘You’re going nowhere till we’ve worked out what to do next. And we haven’t discussed the other one yet. Talmadge.’

‘The man who wasn’t there.’

‘Someone was there. Else those women would be alive.’

‘Unless they died by accident.’

‘But you don’t think that. Do you?’

‘I don’t know what I think,’ Zoë said. ‘Mostly, yeah, he’s real. I think. But when I got on that bus Monday morning, it was because I’d decided he wasn’t.’

‘But you thought it was him when that guy followed you on the Tube. You must have believed in him then.’

Zoë thought about it. ‘I believed in him when I couldn’t see him,’ she said at last. ‘When I knew I was being followed, but couldn’t spot him, I believed in him then. If he exists, that’s what he’s like. But once I saw this guy, I knew he wasn’t Talmadge. Too much of a bruiser.’

Too much of a cop.

‘The woman next door to Caroline . . .’

‘Alma Chapman.’

‘Alma. She saw him.’

‘She saw somebody, in Caroline’s garden. Okay, that probably was him. But there’s nothing solid to connect him to Victoria. It’s like the trail between the two was only there because I went looking for it. One of those optical illusions where it’s all corner-of-your-eye stuff. Once you concentrate, it’s gone.’

‘But if it’s real, he’s a murderer.’

‘Yes.’

They thought of murderers they had known. Sarah had found one in her kitchen once, but that was a different kitchen, some years ago.