The Calling Read Online Free PDF Page B

tells her. ‘The dress thing. Their wives buy their ties.’
    ‘Racist,’ says Adam.
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    Adam withers a little, not much, crosses his arms, slumps in his chair, looks her in the eye. ‘That’s racist against men.’
    Zoe feels the corner of her mouth twist. She knows the futility of engaging this kid. After all, he’s here because he wants to be; he’s just trying to make the kind of obscure, self-defeating point adolescent boys seem compelled to make. But he’s still a prick.
    She says, ‘Sorry, what’s your name, again?’
    ‘Adam.’
    ‘Okay, Adam. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we step outside this room and conduct a spot poll. We’ll see how many men in this office – that’s about sixty-five per cent of the personnel by the way, and about eighty per cent of the senior partners – bought their own tie.’
    Adam grins like the triumph’s his. Zoe’s torn between giving up and laying into him.
    Then there’s a discreet tap at the door and Miriam, her PA, pops her head into the meeting room and mimes a phone call with thumb and little finger. She mouths the words: It’s John .
    Zoe thanks everyone for coming, gathers her notes, gives Adam a withering look and Stephanie an encouraging smile, and leaves.
    She hurries to her office and dials John’s number.
    ‘Zoe,’ he says.
    She can tell he’s outside. ‘Where are you?’
    ‘Right now? Next to a canal.’
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Looking at a dead pigeon trapped in a shopping trolley.’
    ‘Lovely.’
    ‘How’re you doing?’
    ‘Clive had me speak to the sixth formers.’
    ‘I told you he would.’
    ‘Well, he did. Arsehole that he is.’
    ‘Any progress on the Hattem thing?’
    The Hattem thing is Zoe’s biggest current case. She says, ‘I’ve got that bloke coming round later today, tomorrow maybe, wants to liaise about it.’
    ‘What bloke?’
    ‘Mark thingy. From Liberté Sans Frontière.’
    ‘Hippy?’
    ‘Trustafarian,’ she says, hating herself. ‘All ganja and yeah.’
    Luther laughs. ‘You’ll get through it.’
    ‘I hope so. I’m sorry I ever said yes to it.’
    She runs a hand through her hair, becomes aware that she’s dying for a cigarette.
    She holds her fringe in a bunch and tugs slightly, just enough so it hurts a bit.
    She’d been doing this since she was seven years old. It relieves stress. She doesn’t know why. Sometimes she worries she’ll get a bald patch, like one of those stressed parrots that yanks all the feathers from its body except the ones it can’t reach, so in the end it sits on its perch like an oven-ready chicken in a Halloween mask.
    She says, ‘Did you speak to Rose?’
    ‘I did. I did, yeah.’
    And now she knows why she’s tearing at her hair. It’s got nothing to do with the Hattem case. It’s John and his inability to say no to anyone except his wife.
    She says, ‘What happened?’
    ‘It’s difficult to talk about,’ he says. ‘Too many people around. But I can’t ask her today. I just can’t.’
    John knows when anyone else is lying, usually at a glance. The speed and conviction of it gives her the creeps sometimes. But he never knows when he’s lying to himself.
    ‘It’s a pretty bad one,’ he says.
    ‘They’re all bad ones,’ she says. ‘That’s the point.’
    Zoe’s ashamed as well as angry. And she’s resentful that John can do this to her – make her feel guilty for wanting a marriage.
    And here they are, like nightwatchmen patrolling the same ground, the same route, night after night after night.
    ‘I have to do this,’ he says. ‘Then I’ll talk to her.’
    ‘No you won’t.’
    ‘Zoe.’
    ‘You won’t, John. Because after this one there’ll be another one, and after that one there’ll be another. And then another one after that and it just goes on and on and on.’
    There’s a long silence.
    ‘Fucking Rose Teller,’ Zoe says. ‘That woman’s managed to fuck over more marriages than anyone I ever