Mo Hayder - Hanging Hill

Zoë met Peter’s eyes. She jerked a thumb at the door. ‘Give us a few moments here?’ she mouthed. ‘Some privacy.’

The other two boys and the two girls exchanged glances. Then, as if they were a single organism, capable of reaching decisions without words, they filed out. In the corridor they stood with their hands in their pockets, each with one foot up against the wall. Like the cover of a Ramones album. It never went out of style to be skinny and sullen.

Zoë kicked the door closed, grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the window-sill and turned back to Ralph. He had slid down the wall and was in a little huddled squat, his hands over his face. ‘OK, OK.’ She crouched next to him, put a hand on his shoulder and felt the warmth of his skin through the thin shirt. The tremor of his breath coming in and out. ‘Look, you’ve done the right thing by coming to me.’ She handed him a tissue. He took it and crammed it against his face. ‘You can be proud of that.’

He nodded and wiped his nose. His breathing was thick and nasal.

‘But I need to get it all clear in my thoughts, Ralph. I asked you if something particular happened at Beckford’s Tower and that seemed to upset you.’

He nodded miserably. ‘We had an argument. She wanted to tell everyone about us and I…’ He had to take deep breaths to calm himself. ‘We split up. We split up and she said she never wanted to see me again and… And… And that’s what happened. And it’s all my fucking fault. All because I’m scared of my fucking parents.’

‘It’s not your fault, Ralph. It’s really not your fault.’

‘What’s going to happen? Do I have to go to court? Are my parents going to know about it? My father’ll be furious. He thinks lying should be counted as a mortal sin.’

She rested her arm on his shoulders. He really was just a little boy. She could see the faint white of his scalp at the neat parting of his black hair. ‘I think, Ralph, that most parents would be more concerned about your welfare. And that you’ve had the courage to tell the truth.’

‘Christ.’ He’d used up the tissues so he wiped his nose on the shoulder of his shirt. ‘I wish you were my mother.’

‘Oh, no, no. I’d be a terrible mother. You can trust me on that one. Now, coming here was a huge decision for you, but it was the right one. This information is really, really important. With it we can build a picture of what happened to Lorne. But there’s not a lot I can do with the information if I can’t share it with my colleagues. If I gave you a guarantee that nothing will be said to your parents until you’re happy for them to hear, would you come and tell the rest of the team? The ones who can make a difference? You could stop this happening again. To someone else.’

There was a silence. It took her a moment to realize he was nodding.

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 had dictated that all interviews of suspects had to take place in a specially designated room – well lit, well ventilated, soundproofed, with embedded recording facilities and access to a neutral ‘break-out’ space should the interviewee decide he or she didn’t like the way the interview was going. Councils around the country had had to dig deep to install PACE rooms – and at Bath police station there were two.

Zoë sat at her desk with the door open so she could monitor the passageway. Her office was at the place where the corridor branched off to lead to the interview rooms. If Ralph was moved from the side office near the incident room where Ben was speaking to him, it meant they had gone against every one of her instincts, every one of her requests, and were interviewing him as a possible suspect in the murder. But the station was silent for a long time. Hours. God only knew what they were doing with him.

She tried to concentrate on other tasks. She set up an intelligence request for missing women aged between sixteen and twenty-one. When she’d told Debbie that ‘all like her’ meant the killer was going to target girls like Lorne, she’d plucked it out of the air. But what if she hadn’t been so far off the mark? It was worth thinking about. Except that, looking at the screen, it wasn’t going to be easy – the result of the search was terrifying. Name after name after name. Of course she knew most of the girls on the list were probably alive and well and had simply lost contact with their families, or were avoiding them. A good proportion would have returned and the police not been notified. Even so there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. One person couldn’t work through all of those on their own. She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. Shit. If one of those names had belonged to a victim of Lorne’s killer and their body hadn’t been found, there was no earthly chance the police would pick up on it.

At a quarter to ten Ben walked past, going fast, carrying a stack of files. He didn’t pay her any attention, but went into his office. She heard the door slam. She waited for a moment or two, then got up, went along the corridor and knocked on the door.

‘Who is it?’

‘Me. Zoë.’

A pause. A hesitation? Then, ‘Come in.’

She pushed the door open. He was sitting at his desk, his elbows planted on either side of the stack of paperwork. He faced her but, she noticed, his eyes didn’t meet hers. There was a blank, polite smile pasted on his face. ‘What’s happening?’ she said.

‘With?’

‘You know what with. With Ralph. Are you still interviewing him? Did you get him an appropriate adult from Social Services?’

‘He’s seventeen. Doesn’t need one.’

‘I promised him his parents wouldn’t be involved. Not unless he agreed to it.’

‘Yes. And that’s what we’re working on. Him agreeing to it. They’re going to find out eventually.’

Zoë let all the air out of her lungs. She came forward and sat on the chair opposite him. Ben eyed her, one of his eyebrows slightly raised, as if he really didn’t appreciate the way she was making herself at home. ‘It’s not him,’ she said. ‘It’s just not. He’s too young . Don’t you remember, all those courses – how these sorts of crimes take time to build? He’s just a kid. He nicely and neatly fits a profile you’ve been sold, but it’s a flawed profile. Please see that. It’s flawed.’

Ben gave her a calm smile. ‘I like to think I’m too much of a professional to be trammelled by psychological profiling, flawed or not. That would be a huge mistake – remember what our trainers used to say? “To assume makes an ass out of you and me.”’

Zoë sighed. ‘Come on, Ben – I know you too well.’

He tapped his pen on the desk. ‘Ralph Hernandez is a person of interest. That’s all I can say at this point.’

‘A “person of interest”? Oh, for God’s sake – you are such a bloody moron it’s just not true.’

‘Am I, Zoë? Have you got any better leads than this?’

‘I gave you this “lead”. I handed it to you on a plate and I really, really thought you’d do the honourable thing. Just goes to show how much I know about the world, doesn’t it?’

At that moment the door opened. Zoë swivelled round. Debbie was standing there, serene in her white lacy clothes. She had started to speak, but when she saw Zoë her face changed. ‘Aaah,’ she said apologetically. ‘Sorry.’ She held up a hand and backed out of the room. ‘Crap timing – not my strong point.’

She closed the door. There was a moment’s silence. Then Zoë turned back to face Ben. She shook her head and gave a small, mirthless laugh. ‘Funny,’ she said. ‘You never usually let anyone in without knocking. Unless they’re… you know…’ She made her hands into a cup on the desk. ‘Unless they’re inner circle. Is she inner circle now?’