The Last Voice You Hear Page 3

  ‘Caroline’s death was an accident.’

  ‘. . . I see.’

  ‘She fell from a crowded platform. In the underground, I mean. It happens, Ms Boehm. They tell you to mind the gap and hold the handrail, but every so often the system comes unstuck. Most systems do. Especially those involving crowds.’

  She wasn’t sure what response that expected, and merely nodded, so he’d know she was paying attention.

  There was a knock and the young Asian woman returned carrying a tray with coffee, milk, biscuits. Amory Grayling thanked her in a tone suggesting he usually remembered this courtesy. Meanwhile Zoë, for no reason, felt her mind leave the building. She was standing by her car, loading one cuffed boy into the back, while Kid B hawked and swore in infant venom at her wheels. Piss the fuck off, she’d told him. He must have been all of nine years old: a pre-adolescent wreck trying to make his voice heard over the feedback of his own short life. Piss the fuck off.

  She came back to the kind of space in a conversation which indicates something’s been missed. ‘Just milk. Thanks.’ It was a good guess. Then she said, ‘Tell me about her.’

  ‘Caroline Daniels worked for me for twenty years. Twenty-two years.’ The Asian woman had gone, either on silent runners or Zoë’s mental absences were disturbingly thorough. ‘Not always here, I can tell you.’

  ‘This building, you mean.’

  ‘Nothing like. When I started, that is, when Caroline started working for me, I was with another firm. It was a good, steady job – hers, I mean. She was my secretary, but she wasn’t employed by me, she was the firm’s. When I left, she came with me. That’s the sort of person she was. She was loyal, Ms Boehm. She was a very loyal woman.’

  Zoë thought: maybe the original firm would have had a different slant on that. But she said nothing.

  And now this newer business – Pullman Grayling Kirk – was a going concern, and had been for eighteen years. Zoë had checked them out; their website was one of those just-barely informative areas, keener on graphics and mission statements than fact, but she’d found enough references to be satisfied of the important details: Pullman’s existed, made money, and was successful enough that Grayling was unlikely to stiff her on the bill. Providing management services was what their scrolling text promised: essentially they troubleshot ailing businesses, specializing in the light industrial end of the spectrum, and happy to boast they could turn a £10 million deficit round inside half a year and save jobs while they were about it, though Zoë guessed this was probably at the expense of other jobs, which would turn out expendable. But maybe she was wrong about that. Maybe Pullman’s people wore white hats, and circled their wagons round small businesses, defending them from evil asset-strippers. It didn’t seem to especially matter right at the moment, though went on long enough for her to finish her coffee.

  What mattered more was what she learned about Caroline Daniels, who had been with Pullman’s all those eighteen years; who had been forty-three when she died – a shade younger than Zoë – and had lived in Oxford.

  ‘She commuted, then.’

  ‘Uncomplainingly. She liked Oxford. Always said she’d rather live there and have the journey.’

  ‘That must have been tough on her family.’

  ‘She never married.’

  As epitaphs go, this bordered on obituary.

  Zoë became conscious of her empty coffee cup, and leaned across to place it on the desk. ‘Did she have a partner? Boyfriend, girlfriend?’

  He might have flinched a little at ‘girlfriend’. ‘That’s what I want to talk to you about.’

  There had been a boyfriend. It had been a recent development. Amory Grayling held on to his cup, though it too was empty, while he told her. There had been a boyfriend since about the previous November, and maybe a little earlier. He had certainly been on the scene by Christmas. Prior to that was speculation, but it was difficult for a man not to notice such things: an increased lightness about her; a new softness. Something in the way she moved, Grayling turned out not to be too embarrassed to say. Caroline developed a tendency to hum under her breath, and to move her lips slightly, but in a happy way, when she thought herself unobserved, as if rehearsing lines for later. Zoë, listening to this, wondered if Amory Grayling had been in love with Caroline Daniels himself, or was simply, as seemed more likely, a touch miffed that she’d found someone.

  ‘Did you ask about him?’

  ‘Not at first. I didn’t think it was my business.’

  ‘But she offered the information.’

  ‘After Christmas, yes, I suppose so. I asked her how her break had been, and she kept saying “we” – we did this, we did that. It would have been churlish not to ask.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Alan. Alan Talmadge.’

  He was assuming the spelling, but Zoë made a note of it anyway. No obvious variation occurred.

  ‘But you never met him.’

  ‘No.’

  She wasn’t sure where this was going. It seemed he wasn’t either, for he veered away suddenly; began talking about the day of Caroline Daniels’ death – her unusual lateness: it was true the trains delayed her at times, but she always called in when that happened. It seemed to him now that he’d had the sensation there had been phones ringing, unanswered, all that morning. Two police officers had turned up shortly before lunch. Grayling had arranged cover by then: there was another woman in Caroline Daniels’ office, pulling away at the loose threads of Caroline Daniels’ job. Of the officers, the male had been sympathetic. The female, he recalled, had found it worthwhile to emphasize the disarrangements caused on the City line.

  ‘Disarrangements,’ he said. ‘I remember thinking at the time what an ugly word to use.’

  ‘This was at Paddington?’

  ‘That’s right. She must have used that platform hundreds of times. Quite possibly thousands. And one day there’s a crush, and . . .’ He didn’t finish the thought. Didn’t have to. After a moment, he said, ‘Every so often it happens, and you read about it, and nobody ever thinks it’ll happen to them. But that’s who all the people are it’s ever happened to. They’re people who read about it happening to somebody else once, and never thought it would happen to them.’ He became silent. Zoë said nothing. She was remembering reading in a newspaper about a couple whose tiny child had drowned in their ornamental pond. And even at the time of reading, she’d been remembering another report, maybe two weeks previously, of exactly the same thing happening somewhere else, to somebody else. And she’d wondered if that second couple had read the report of the first drowning, and thanked God it hadn’t happened to them.

  At length he said, ‘There’s a sister, and I’d met her occasionally. I offered to help with . . . arrangements, and she let me do so. It was the least I could do.’

  Zoë said nothing.

  ‘There was a cremation, in Oxford. She wasn’t religious, and those were the instructions she’d left. She was . . . organized, I suppose you could say.’

  She said, ‘And Talmadge wasn’t there.’

  He looked at her sharply. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘You said you’d never met him.’

  ‘Oh. So I did.’

  ‘Had they broken up?’

  ‘No. Not that I know of. And I think I’d have known. I think Caroline would have . . . I think I’d have been able to tell.’

  ‘She’d have been upset.’

  He sighed. ‘Ms Boehm. In all the years I’d known her, in all the years she’d worked for me, I was never aware of Caroline having a boyfriend. And while she was never an unhappy person, I don’t remember her humming around the office before. So yes, she’d have been upset. And I’d have noticed.’

  Zoë was thinking of all the ways upset people might find of making their feelings known, and coming up with few more extreme than landing in front of a Tube train.

  ‘And I can tell what you’re thinking. And no, she wouldn’t have done that either. Sh
e wasn’t religious. But she had firm principles, and suicide would have offended them. She thought it was . . . She thought it an insult, somehow. I know what she meant by that. But please don’t ask me to explain.’

  She didn’t need him to. Which did not mean she was in agreement, quite.

  She said, ‘Did the sister know about Talmadge?’

  ‘Terry? Yes. Caroline had mentioned him. But they hadn’t met.’

  ‘Were they living together?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But they were lovers, there’s no doubt about that. Caroline told Terry as much.’ He paused. ‘He was younger than her. That’s something else she told Terry.’

  ‘Did she say how old he was?’

  ‘No. She was forty-three. He could have been younger than her and still been forty himself.’ Grayling noticed he was holding his cup, and put it down as suddenly as if it had grown hot. ‘I can’t . . . I don’t really think he could have been terribly younger than her. Late thirties at most, probably.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Zoë, though she suspected she probably knew.

  Amory Grayling said, ‘She was a fine woman and I both liked and respected her very much indeed. I trusted her absolutely. We might have begun as employer-employee, but we became friends years ago.’

  ‘But,’ said Zoë.

  ‘She was not what you’d call the world’s most . . . She was not physically an attractive woman, Ms Boehm. Not by the standards we’re encouraged to adopt.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’ve long thought physical beauty overrated.’

  ‘So have I.’

  This apparent accord, which both knew for a lie, silenced them a moment.

  Then Zoë said, ‘So. They met, they were lovers. Caroline dies in an accident. And Talmadge doesn’t show up at the funeral.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Was he notified?’

  ‘I had no means of doing so. No number, no address. But he couldn’t not have known what happened. I mean, thinking about it, there is no way he could have remained unaware of her death.’

  This was true. He would have had to have really not wanted to know to successfully maintain such ignorance.

  She said, ‘What is it you want me to do, Mr Grayling?’

  ‘I want you to find him.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘It’s a matter of . . . I suppose it’s a matter of unfinished business. You could even call it a debt, of sorts.’

  She didn’t reply.

  He said, ‘Caroline never left an untidy desk. Not in twenty-two years.’

  And Zoë, who’d messed a few in her time, nodded, as if she’d just had a glimpse of what truly pained him.

  iii

  On the pavement, she lit a cigarette. A group of shirt-sleeved men and jacketed women were doing likewise on the steps of the building opposite: there was probably a new word, or a recent one at any rate, to describe this group behaviour. ‘Smoking’ would do for now. And this was something she was now starting to think about promising herself she was going to stop soon: or so, at any rate, she reminded herself.

  When she glanced up, she saw that the pictograms lately reflected there had risen; the column was only two reflections tall now, as the upper pair had escaped into the sky: a trick of light and angles, she supposed; to do with the way the earth moves, but buildings mostly don’t. And she wondered where a reflection went when there was nothing for it to project upon, and whether the air was full of the ghosts of things that had almost happened, but lacked foundation. But this was whimsy, and she had no time for that. One of the smokers opposite sketched her half a wave as she tucked the lighter into her pocket, but she pretended not to notice, and moved on round the corner.

  There was now a job to do. It wouldn’t necessarily prove difficult.

  What potentially made the difference was whether Talmadge had meant to vanish.

  It was Zoë’s experience that finding people was harder when they didn’t know they were missing. There was a whole category of people liable to fall off the edge of the world; whose grip on contemporary reality, never marvellous to begin with, was weakened further by what, to others, might appear no more than the average slights – and then they were gone. They didn’t know where they were going, so wouldn’t recognize it when they got there, and left no clues as to where it was. Often, theirs wasn’t a journey so much as an act of divestment; a shedding of all that had anchored them in the first place: mortgages and bank accounts, mobile phones and credit cards, enmities and friendships – something snapped, or something else got stronger. It was hard to know whether it was pull or repulsion acting on them, because these were the ones who were never found, so never answered the questions. And she thought again of the man by the canal whose prayers she’d interrupted; who carried his history in a collection of laundry bags. Impossible to tell if he was lost on purpose, or missing by accident; or whether, after enough time had passed, it made the slightest difference.

  . . . Because things happened, she told herself. Volition, intention, desire, regret – sometimes these took a back seat, and events just got on with it. Not everything had somebody responsible.

  It was important to remember this, as she crossed the road at the traffic lights. That there was no conceivable pattern of belief, for example, under which anything that had happened to Wensley Deepman in the years since she’d encountered him – all the missing parts of the story which it hardly took genius to fill in – could be laid at Zoë’s feet. She had had a job to do and had done it. Wensley, either way, was background colour; an extra in a story about how Zoë had gone to London to bring back Andrew Kite; or perhaps one in which Andrew Kite had gone to London and somebody had brought him back. Wherever you stood, nobody was giving Kid B top billing. Piss the fuck off she’d told him, but she hadn’t meant him to die.

  This wasn’t guilt she was feeling. It was an awareness of an absence of guilt that she might once have felt, when things were different.

  She needed coffee. From an obscure need to punish herself, Zoë walked past the branded outlets to an extreme-looking dive on a corner with road-spatter scaling its outside walls, whose misted windows made it clear what lay within: stained formica tables, plastic chairs, and scuffed lino. It also contained the biggest spider plant she’d ever seen. She sat in what was nearly its shade, while her coffee, which was too hot and too weak, cooled. Against the wall opposite an old man with indescribable eyebrows and a throat raggy as a tortoise’s chewed on a roll-up. In front of her eyes, its mouse-turd of ash dropped into his mug of tea, and her hands, which had automatically gone seeking her cigarettes already, quit their hunt.

  It ought, she thought, to have been raining outside, but it wasn’t.

  Caroline Daniels, though, was the job in hand. She tried to clear her mind of the unwanted image of a nine-year-old kid making his pass for her valuables – that brilliant pair of bricks she’d secreted – leaning into her so clumsily she’d had to drop her shoulder to let the bag fall into his hand, then push against his foot to achieve her stumble . . . This wasn’t what she was supposed to be thinking about. When starting on a job, Joe had always said, first evaluate the client. He’d been clueless, Joe, most of the time; stealing what he thought he knew from that black-and-white fiction that gave detection a bad name. But it was a mental exercise, if nothing else; something to keep her from that picture of Kid B lifting her bag, then stepping off the edge of a gap three years wide and a lifetime deep . . .

  Amory Grayling . . .

  – Yes, Joe.

  When she’d been younger, she’d have had less trouble with Amory Grayling; would have pegged as good or bad his reasons for wanting to find Talmadge, and filed him accordingly. Life had become more complicated. Now, she couldn’t even be sure that Grayling himself knew what he was about. Amory Grayling had been Caroline Daniels’ employer and her friend, had viewed her with respect and affection, and had taken her for granted for twenty-two years. She’d doubtless been a
paragon as a secretary, and doubtless too been a little in love with her boss. And maybe he’d never taken advantage of that, but it was a racing certainty the knowledge had given him ego-comfort over the years . . . And suddenly, she’d found a man. This wasn’t, perhaps, the most astounding development, but Zoë pictured Grayling’s puzzlement anyway . . . Maybe she was being unfair. But over and above the personal – no matter whom these women yearned for from afar – men liked, she suspected, the idea of single women; of single women no longer in first youth. It was less to do with there being an available pool than with simple market economy. To women who lacked, but wanted, men, men were blue-chip stock, valued for their wit, their charm, their opinions. Women no longer in those straits were less likely to overlook their nasal hair, their corpulence, their lack of tact.

  She thought: but maybe I’m wrong; maybe Grayling simply cared, and still cares, and worries that Caroline’s lover is distraught, and in need of attention. Nobody should grieve alone, some thought. For Zoë, solitude and grief were necessary partners, but she was aware that some well-meaning people felt otherwise. It would be nice to believe there were good motives for doing things, things like paying Zoë to do her job. But she didn’t need to dwell on that long before deciding that the main thing, after all, was that she was paid to do her job, and since Grayling had written a cheque, perhaps she ought get on with it.

  So she left the café, with this idea taking root: that she should trace Caroline Daniels’ steps home, as she’d traced them so far to her office. The woman’s working day had finished at 5.45: it wasn’t difficult to work out which train she’d have caught. Zoë might find someone who’d known her. We were all shocked by the news. And tell me, how’s Alan? This wasn’t likely. But it was the nature of the trade to play the odds, and besides, it gave her the rest of the day in London. She’d passed a sign a minute down the road, pointing the way to the local library. Before second thoughts set in, or better judgement, she was headed that way, thinking: Ten minutes. It was ten minutes out of her life. Lay your ghosts while you have the chance. That wasn’t something she remembered Joe ever saying, but it was his voice that formed the thought in her head, or so she decided, and while it wasn’t true that it was always a joy to remember him, or that she could ever pretend he was anything like a constant presence, it was nice to reflect she’d have him to blame when this turned out a mistake. Which chain of thought occupied her all the way to the library.