The Last Voice You Hear Read Online Free PDF

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. She 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