Read Online The Last Voice You Hear by Mick Herron - Free Book Online Page B

the web. She closed her eyes, and opened them when someone said, ‘She doesn’t live here any more.’
    It took a moment to place the voice: where it came from; where it was. It came from Lancashire, and was currently in the shadows of the passage between Caroline’s house and the neighbour’s. This would be the neighbour.
    ‘Did you know Ms Daniels?’ she asked.
    ‘Who’s interested?’
    Zoë stepped forward, and as she did the streetlight popped into life. It should have been a moment to burst into song. Instead, she rested her palms flat upon the neighbour’s gate. ‘My name’s Zoë Boehm,’ she said. It was like talking into a void; sending words down a wishing well. The light above was a faint moth-glow which hadn’t yet blunted the shadows. Whoever was there, threat or promise, remained invisible. ‘I’m looking for somebody. I wonder if you can help.’
    ‘I’m somebody. Would I do?’
    ‘I can’t see you. You’re in the dark.’
    The woman – Zoë had got that far – moved forward. She wasn’t tall, and was maybe in her fifties, with a head shaved smooth as a nut. This lent her a pixie finish her clothing did nothing to counter: it looked like a dark green sack, tucked at the waist. Which must have had pockets, because she produced a lighter from one now, and used it on the tightly made roll-up fixed between her lips. In the lighter’s flare, her face was a vision of Emerald City.
    Smoke drifted Zoë’s way, delivering an instant nicotine stitch. She reached for her cigarettes. ‘So you knew Caroline Daniels.’
    ‘I lived next door to her for eight years.’
    ‘Is that a yes?’
    The woman laughed – a raw noise, like a tropical bird’s. ‘She kept to her own half of the drainpipe, Caroline did.’
    First name terms, though. Zoë said, ‘It must have been a shock.’
    The woman shrugged, or maybe a goose crossed her grave. ‘It happens. Shows us not to take it for granted. Life.’
    ‘It’s a fragile circumstance,’ Zoë agreed.
    ‘Well, you don’t want to go putting it in front of a moving train.’
    Somewhere down the road a real bird – not an owl – hooted.
    The woman took another step closer. Zoë hadn’t realized that the passage in which she’d been standing was raised. Now she’d stepped down, Zoë saw she was about four foot six. Your physical borders, Zoë thought: you got used to them pretty quick, but they were the first thing every stranger noticed. Unless you shaved your head.
    ‘Is it her man you’re after?’
    ‘What makes you say that?’
    ‘Who else would it be?’
    Zoë, unlit cigarette in hand, wondered if this was the day she took a job, and the first person she asked said oh, yeah, him , and gave her a working address.
    She said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d know where I might find him.’
    ‘Alan . . . something.’
    ‘Alan Talmadge. Do you know where I’d find him?’
    ‘I have no idea.’
    ‘Okay.’ She lit the cigarette. If work turned that easy, they wouldn’t call it work; they’d need another word.
    Lights in windows up and down the street had come on now; curtains were drawn, and various shadowplays were happening against their patterned backdrops. Only Caroline Daniels’ house looked forgotten.
    ‘He’s not been round for a while. But then, he wouldn’t be, would he?’
    ‘What was he like?’ asked Zoë.
    The woman tilted her head. ‘Never met him. Saw him in the garden, once. I assume it was him.’ A shrug. ‘He looked okay.’
    ‘Do you know how they met?’
    ‘I never asked.’ The woman bent, and squashed the end of her cigarette against a brick. ‘I suppose she’d have told me if I had. We do, don’t we? We like to boast about our little conquests.’
    ‘Is that what he was?’
    ‘She could hear wedding bells.’
    ‘She told you that?’
    ‘I just knew, that’s all.’
    Zoë thought: When you say I just know about something you can’t possibly have a clue about – like what somebody else is feeling – it