Why We Die (34 page)

The room she needed was on the fifth floor. Zoë took the stairs, a knee-jerk reaction to being in a hospital, and grudgingly had to admit they were easier than they’d have been six months ago. Which wasn’t much recompense for not smoking, but you took what you could get. When she reached her level she pushed through swing doors to a corridor identical to the one five flights below. At the far end a man sat on a chair, and she headed towards him.

Thinking, as she did, about the money. Zoë thought she’d made peace with the money, but it still stirred occasionally; reminding her that it was gone, and that whatever she did next would have to involve acquiring some from somewhere . . . But that was a question everybody faced every day. Zoë had debts – and Zoë hated having debts – but worse things existed, among which would have been touching the money Katrina had killed Tim for. Most money came with strings attached, but there was a difference between knowing that and agreeing to be a puppet. And so she thought instead of the empty look on Katrina’s face as Win had taken her money away – a hundred-grand memory, that. Along with the one of Arkle opening his eyes just after the cops arrived, looking like a boy whose toys had been taken away. Trent, interestingly, had looked only relieved . . . And by then old man Blake had resumed vigil in his empty room; studying the wall for the secrets it hid. Maybe surfacing every so often to gaze through the window at the hearse that had once been part of his living, and was now a clue to his future.

And everybody else’s.

Zoë reached the man on the chair, and told him who she was. He asked for ID, checked a list and nodded. She went past him into the room, which was surprisingly quiet – she’d half expected a technological chorus to greet her; the beeps and chirrups of sci-fi machines, fending off the medieval silence which was all death had to offer. But the room was largely bare – the light was low; there was a single chair; the narrow window had a blind drawn over it. There was a bed, though, and on this bed lay Helen Coe; a much smaller figure than descriptions had suggested. But then, those who had described her had known her upright: a broad and baggy woman; a furious smoker, until the twenty-first century had hooked her. Cardigans, spectacles and shabby old raincoats . . . Now she lay wired to a drip, and the rise and fall of her sheet was so shallow, it was barely more than the memory of breath.

. . . Helen Coe had long been tired, Zoë had been told; would have liked to spend days relaxing between naps. The old story: a life too crammed with event to allow time for reflection. Well, Helen’s events had come to a halt, and rest was her foreseeable future. Zoë wondered if dreams were involved, and hoped, for Helen’s sake, they weren’t. Dreams were overrated.

The last dream Zoë remembered was one in which she wandered a corridor which kept turning corners, while lights flickered overhead, and drawers opened and closed almost noiselessly. But that part hadn’t been a dream. She’d been hearing Katrina in the spare room, searching Joe’s filing cabinets for whatever she needed. It hadn’t taken Zoë long to work out what Katrina had been after; not once she’d known that Katrina had skipped with the money.

My specialty
’
s
fi
nding people, not helping them disappear
.

But I bet you
’
ve got contacts . . .

Had she ever trusted Katrina? She wasn’t sure. She been blindsided by the money, certainly; Katrina had dazzled her more than Win . . . The stiletto rather than the blunt instrument. Though in the end, Win’s blunt instrument had proved effective enough. And Dennis – not taking kindly to being tricked – had smoothed the path.

Before sitting, Zoë put her fingers to the blind and tweezered two slats apart. Below, the streetlights were lit; endless chains stretching far as she could see, casting a pale orange glow on the underside of distant clouds. A fine rain cast a halo round every bulb, and dark figures walked beneath them: paired and singled; purposeful and vague; the coming of night dragging them out to search for the promises darkness held. Of all the metaphors for death, nightfall was the most comforting, because it was the most populated. When she’d lain in her coffin, Zoë had been alone, and it was a surprise to her – who’d always thought herself a solitary – that that was the hardest thing of all. That what she’d miss was the people; the crazy stupid beings who caused all the bother.

She sat on the one available chair, looked straight at Helen Coe’s blank unstirring features, and began telling it the whole way through: from Harold Sweeney’s call to Win taking the money from Katrina, before fading into London’s crowded hours.

It mattered to Zoë, though she wasn’t sure why, that this woman lodged in death’s doorway should hear the end of the story.