The Last Voice You Hear by Mick Herron Page A

fault.) For as long as she’d known him, he’d harboured a dream of being a private eye, and there had been in him this quality that over the years she’d defined in turn as steadfastness, whimsy, pigheadedness and bullshit that had kept the dream alive even when the reality demonstrably sucked. Process serving. Credit checks. It was work, if you didn’t know it was glamorous, you could mistake for the daily drudge: work done over the phone or in front of a monitor; work done murdering countless hours outside strangers’ houses, hoping they’d not turn violent when you served them. Work that called for patience and shorthand, neither of which Joe had in great supply. So he’d kept his dream alive by hiding it where reality couldn’t touch it; Zoë, meanwhile, kept the office alive with credit checks and process serving, and kept her sanity by blowing off to Paris once in a while. They were still man and wife when she made that last trip, but were no longer cleaving to each other – were doing, in fact, the exact opposite. She would cut her last ties with Joe; go back to college, convert her law degree. But before she could do that, somebody cut Joe’s throat instead.
    A couple of months later she was meeting Poland, and law college was a bunch of prospectuses gathering dust on a shelf.
    What he’d said first, after taking the top off his lager, was: ‘Joe talked about you. A lot.’
    ‘Did he really.’
    ‘He reckoned you were ace. He reckoned there was nobody you couldn’t find or turn inside out without leaving your desk.’
    ‘Did you know Joe well?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Then you know he was full of shit.’
    ‘My point is, Mrs Silvermann –’
    ‘Boehm. Ms Boehm.’
    ‘My point is, Zoë, if you plan to carry on without him . . .’ He put his glass down and repeated himself. ‘You’re going to need someone like me.’
    She still remembered that moment. They were sitting in a pub garden; the sun was shining; a loose piece of guttering hung from the roof – details. Somewhere nearby a TV showcased a Mexican soap. It was 3.45 p.m. Joe was dead, as was the man who’d killed him. And Zoë had encountered a borderline case who’d announced his intention of shooting her, mistakenly confident she wouldn’t shoot first. After that, somehow, law school was out of the question. But it was only listening to Bob Poland that she knew she was stuck in Joe’s dream.
    ‘And why’s that?’ she said.
    ‘You’re wondering what use a friendly policeman could be?’
    ‘I’m wondering how expensive he gets.’
    ‘Joe always got his money’s worth.’
    ‘Joe bought batteries from street traders. He wasn’t the best judge of value.’
    ‘He ever get a speeding ticket while he knew me?’
    ‘You know what I heard? I heard the system’s so up-stuffed they let eighty per cent of the fines go hang, because they can’t process them before the deadline.’
    ‘You’re a cynical woman.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    He laughed. ‘You’re one of those people, you’ve got like a tortoise mentality, don’t you? I don’t mean slow. I mean like totally armoured. You’re one of those people carries your defences wherever you go.’
    And he was one of those people who said ‘one of those people’ a lot, as if he’d already sorted everybody into neat categories.
    ‘I do a lot of liaison work,’ he told her. ‘I’ve contacts in every force south of the border. See how handy that might be?’
    ‘And what does it cost?’
    ‘Whatever works.’
    ‘I think we’re finished here.’
    He put his hands up. ‘Can’t blame me for trying.’
    She could if she wanted. They batted sums of money about, then Zoë made the mistake of asking what happened, she paid him upfront and he didn’t deliver? He grinned a tooth-heavy grin, and separated a coin from the change in front of him. When he tossed it her way she snapped it from the air like a lizard catching lunch, but the grin didn’t waver, and the line came out pat: ‘Call