Mo Hayder: Hanging Hill

‘Good.’ She took a long draw on the cigarette. ‘Nice to see the police doing something worthwhile instead of busting the innocent.’

‘I’m DI Benedict.’ Zoë put her hand out. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

The woman put the cigarette into her mouth and shook the hand. She peered at Zoë through the smoke, getting the measure of her. After a moment or two she seemed satisfied. ‘Amy,’ she said. ‘And him? Who’s he?’

‘DI Ben Parris.’ Ben offered his hand.

Amy shook it, eyeing him suspiciously. Then she took the cigarette out of her mouth and motioned for them to sit down. ‘No tea – generator died on me two weeks ago, and you really don’t want to see me doing my thing with the Primus stove.’

‘That’s OK. We won’t be long.’ Zoë pulled out her pocketbook. After all these years, with all the technology available, the force still liked everything noted in handwriting. Even so, she usually backed it up by recording everything on her iPhone. Technically she shouldn’t, not without asking permission, but she did it anyway. She’d developed a technique – a quick pass of the hand over her pocket, knew the keys without looking. Beep-beep with her fingers and she was recording, pretending with the notepad. ‘Our constable said you had something you wanted to talk about.’

‘Yes,’ said Amy. Her eyes were very intense, spiralled with broken veins. ‘I saw the body. Lots of us did.’

‘That was unfortunate,’ Ben said. ‘We do our utmost to preserve scenes. Sometimes we don’t manage it.’

‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘that you can see the soul leave the body? If you watch hard enough you’ll see it.’

Zoë lowered her face and pretended to write in her notepad. If Goodsy had brought them down here to hear about souls and spirits she’d kill him. ‘So – Amy. Did you see a soul? Leaving her body?’

She shook her head. ‘It had already gone. A long time ago.’

‘How long?’

‘When she died. Last night. They don’t hang around. It has to be the first half an hour.’

‘How do you know it was last night?’

‘Because of the bracelet.’

Ben raised an eyebrow. ‘The bracelet?’

‘She was wearing a bracelet. I saw it. When they found her body I saw the bracelet.’

Amy was right – Lorne had been wearing a bracelet. A dangly charm bracelet with a plated silver skull and miniature cutlery: a knife, fork and spoon. Also a lucky ‘16’, which she’d got for her birthday. It had been listed by her parents in the missing-persons report.

‘What about the bracelet? Why’s that important?’

‘Because I heard it. Last night.’ She took another deep drag, held it, then let it all out in a long, bluish stream. ‘You hear it all – sitting in here you hear every part of life. They all use the towpath, don’t they? You get the fights and the quarrels, the parties and the lovers. Mostly it’s just bike bells. Last night it was a girl with something dangling. Chink-chink, it went.’ She held up her finger and thumb, opened and closed them like a little beak. ‘Chink-chink.’

‘OK. And anything else?’

‘Apart from the chink-chink? Not much.’

‘Not much?’

‘No. Unless you count the conversation.’

‘The conversation?’ Ben said. ‘There was a conversation too?’

‘On the phone. You get used to knowing if it’s on the phone. At first, when I moved here, I used to think they were talking to a ghost – wandering along chit-chatting, no one answering. It took me ages to work it out. I don’t do technology – haven’t got a mobile phone and I won’t. Thank you very much.’ She gave a small, polite nod – as if Ben had offered her a free mobile and she’d been forced, graciously, to turn him down.

‘And you think it was Lorne?’

‘I’m sure it was.’

‘You didn’t see her?’

‘Just her feet. Wearing the same shoes as the ones that were next to her body. I saw those too, when they found her body. I take these things in.’

‘What time was this?’

‘A little before eight? It was quiet – the rush had finished. I’d say maybe seven thirty, seven forty-five?’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

Zoë and Ben exchanged glances. When Lorne had gone missing, the OIC – the officer in charge of the missing-persons case – had got historical cell site analysis on her phone, which revealed she’d had one phone conversation yesterday evening, with her friend – a call that finished at seven forty-five. That must be what Amy had overheard. Which gave them an accurate time for when Lorne was on the path.

‘Amy,’ Ben said, ‘did you hear what she was talking about?’

‘I heard one thing. Just one. She said, “Oh, God, I’ve had enough…”’

‘“Oh, God, I’ve had enough”?’

‘Yes.’

‘So she was upset?’

‘A bit fed up, maybe. But not crying or anything. Sad – but not scared.’

Ben wrote something down. ‘And she was definitely alone? You didn’t hear anyone else with her?’

‘No.’ Amy was clear. ‘She was alone.’

‘So she said, “Oh, God, I’ve had enough,” and then…’

‘Then she just walked on. Chink-chink-chink.’ Amy clenched the cigarette between her teeth, eyes screwed up against the smoke, and waved her hand back in the direction of the crime scene. ‘That way. Off to where it happened. I didn’t hear anything after that. Not until she turned up dead. Raped, too, I suppose. I mean, that’s what it’s usually about – men and the way they hate women.’

Raped, too, I suppose . Zoë glanced up out of the window, at the sun falling on the towpath, and wondered what was under the tarpaulin Lorne had been covered with. Truthfully, she’d like to find a way of wriggling out of the PM. She couldn’t, of course. Something like that would get around the force in no time.

They sat a bit longer and talked to Amy, but apart from the phone conversation, she didn’t have anything to add to the case. Eventually Ben got to his feet. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Thank you.’

Zoë rose and followed him. He’d already got to the deck and she was still in the galley when a loud, meaningful cough from behind stopped her. She turned and saw Amy smiling at her, a finger to her lips. ‘What?’

‘Him,’ Amy hissed, jabbing a finger at the deck. ‘There’s no point you wasting your time on him. He’s gay. You can see it from the way he wears his clothes.’

Zoë looked back to the staircase. Ben was waiting on deck in the sunlight, his shadow lying a short way down the stairs. She could see his shoes, well polished, expensive. His suit – which was probably off-the-peg M &S – he managed to wear as if it was Armani. Amy was right – he looked like something from an aftershave ad. ‘This isn’t something we should be talking about,’ she murmured. ‘Not under the circumstances.’

‘I know, but he is, isn’t he?’ Amy smiled. ‘Go on. He has to be.’

‘I really wouldn’t know. It’s not the sort of thing I’ve ever given any thought to. Now.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’m on my way. Thank you, Amy. You’ve given me a lot to think about.’

Sally tried not to work at the weekend, but the job she had on a Sunday paid well and wasn’t as lonely as the others, because the agency had teamed her with two other cleaners. Marysieńka and Danuta – two good-natured blondes from Gdańsk, who wore lots of foundation to work and had their nails done at the new Korean parlour on Westgate Street. They had the use of the agency’s pink-painted Honda Jazz with the HomeMaids logo in purple vinyl stuck on the side of the car. Marysieńka always drove – her boyfriend had a job with the First Bus Company and had taught her to negotiate British traffic like a rally driver. ‘The first rule,’ she maintained, ‘is he who hesitates gets fucked.’ That would make Danuta shriek with laughter as the little HomeMaids car shot out into traffic, forcing the sedate drivers of north Bath to slam on their brakes. The two Poles were nice girls who took cigarette breaks and sometimes smelt vaguely of fish and chips, as if maybe they shared a flat above a takeaway. Sally always imagined they talked about her when the day was finished – made promises to each other never to get that desperate, that downtrodden.