Mo Hayder - Hanging Hill

‘I don’t know. I didn’t hear him say he would.’

‘We found a crossbow in the utility room. You saw that this morning, didn’t you – saw where we found it?’

Sally nodded.

‘You don’t know how it came to be in there, do you?’ She was monitoring Sally’s fingers. They were tearing at the label now. ‘Seems a strange place to put a crossbow. And then leave all your doors open and go out for a drive.’

‘It was always on the stand on the landing. I used to clean the case.’

‘You never saw him use it?’

‘No.’

‘And you haven’t been back to Lightpil since last Tuesday? And you weren’t there Thursday, for example? That was the last time anyone spoke to him.’

She shook her head. Wrapped her arms around herself as if someone had suddenly opened the window.

‘What’s making you nervous, Sally? Why the nerves?’

‘What?’

‘You’re shaking.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are. You’re shaking like a leaf. And fidgeting.’

‘It’s been a shock.’

‘Goldrab going missing? The Lucozade’s supposed to help you with that. Isn’t it working?’

‘I didn’t expect to see you.’ She shivered, looked away again and hugged herself harder, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. ‘That’s all. Can I go now?’

Zoë didn’t speak for a moment or two. She twirled the pen thoughtfully. ‘I heard about the divorce,’ she said eventually. ‘Mum and Dad didn’t say, but you do hear things around this town, don’t you? I was sorry about it all.’

‘Yes. Well. That was a long time ago now.’

‘If you don’t mind me asking, why did you leave?’

‘I didn’t leave. He left me.’

Zoë stopped twirling the pen. ‘ He left you ?’

‘Yes. More than a year and a half ago.’

She didn’t know what to say. She studied her sister – really studied her. An attractive woman coming up for middle age, but no stunning beauty. Her hair had lost the pure, lemony blonde streaks of childhood and was coarser now. The clothing under the tabard, though nice, was well-worn and threadbare. She was working as a cleaner – a cleaner and housekeeper for a pornographer. Julian had left her and she was bringing up Millie alone. Out of nowhere, an enormous, awful wave came up inside Zoë. An overwhelming urge to stand and hug her sister.

She coughed. Pushed her hair out of her eyes.

‘Right.’ She handed Sally the statement. ‘If you’d just put a signature there, you can go. Told you it wouldn’t take long, didn’t I?’

When Sally had gone, Zoë sat staring into space. It was ten minutes before she shook herself, and began to think about Lorne and Goldrab again.

She started by doling out some tasks for her DCs. Then she leafed through her messages, checked her emails and put in a request to reclassify David Goldrab’s status as a misper. If he really was dead, the question remained: why? If he’d had a hand in Lorne’s death, could he have been killed because of it? In revenge? Lorne’s dad, maybe? Or had Goldrab known who Lorne’s killer was and died because he’d threatened to reveal what he knew? Or – and this was the eventuality she was struggling with – maybe Lorne’s connection to the porn industry really had stopped with the approach to Holden’s Agency and Goldrab’s disappearance was entirely unconnected. Either way she wouldn’t be completely at rest until she knew for sure he was dead – until she had seen his body on a slab in the mortuary, seen it cut down the middle the way Lorne’s had been. Perhaps then that jumpy thing in her would roll back a bit. Keep its peace.

But what about Sally? And all that had happened in their pasts? What would make that poisonous thorn go away? An apology? she thought, rubbing her knuckles. How the hell did you go about apologizing for something like that?

Another message popped up – this time from the high-tech unit who, in less than two hours, had cracked through the administrator password page on the CCTV and analysed the footage from the front of Lightpil House. She read the email quickly: the team had found no record of Goldrab leaving the house on the Thursday. He’d been out to the stables in the morning, had come back at ten and hadn’t been picked up by the CCTV camera since. Which must mean he’d exited through the side entrance not covered by the camera. What the team had found, however, was five-minute footage of a serious altercation that had taken place outside the house at about three p.m. that same day. She closed the office blinds again, and watched the segments of video they’d attached to the email. A suntanned young man next to a jeep, dodging crossbow bolts. Jake the Peg jumping like a monkey on hot coals.

Jake, she thought, tapping the screen. Jake the Peg. Sally was right, you naughty boy.

Jake the Peg’s home was on the road from Bath to Bristol and didn’t look as if it belonged to a porn star. Apart from the small security camera trained on the jeep that stood outside, it was an ordinary thirties house with metal lattice windows and deco-inspired stained-glass porches – the type of building that had survived the bombing during the war because it was part of the suburban sprawl and too remote from the vital organs of the city to have interested the Germans. Zoë pulled up at just after four o’clock to find the curtains still closed. She sat for a while, considering the house. It was a bit like her parents’ place had been. People who lived in a place like that shouldn’t have been able to afford to send two children to boarding-school. Not unless they had very good reason to separate them. Very good reason. Earlier today in the office Sally had looked broken. Really broken. Julian had left her . Not the other way round. That didn’t fit at all.

Zoë locked the car, went up the path, rang the bell and stood on the doorstep, listening for movement inside. After three or four minutes had elapsed she rang the bell again. This time there was a muffled thump, then someone called out, ‘Coming, coming.’

The boy who answered the door couldn’t have been much more than seventeen. But what he lacked in maturity he made up for in sass. Dusky brown – maybe from Vietnam or the Philippines – his hair was shaved at the sides and neck, with an area on top that had been teased into a small pompadour. He wore a gold chain and an iPhone holder velcroed to his upper arm. Aside from that, he was naked except for a pair of tight pink boxers, with ‘Wow’ printed across the crotch. When he saw Zoë’s warrant card he laid a hand on his chest as if to say this just wasn’t the sort of thing that happened to him every day – did anyone mind if he fainted?

‘Is Mr Drago here?’

‘No! Him asleep.’ He eyed the card warily. ‘You police?’

‘That’s right. What’s your name?’

‘Angel. Why?’

‘OK, Angel. I think I’ll come in, if you don’t mind.’

He tutted, but swivelled haughtily on his heels and disappeared into the house. She followed. The underpants, she saw, had ‘Kitty’ emblazoned on the buttocks.

If the place was a typical thirties house on the outside, inside it was anything but. The front room – where most families would have had a gas fire, a TV, a sofa – had been turned into a gym with lots of black and chrome equipment. One wall was painted lime green, with a blown-up black-and-white image of a young man looking coquettishly over his shoulder. The back room, which led out to the kitchen, was the living area, with sixties geometric wallpaper, suede furniture and different-coloured neon tubes suspended from the ceiling. It was very cold, but Angel didn’t seem to notice. He yelled up at the ceiling, ‘JAAAAKE. JAAAKE. Important you come now.’ Then he went into the little kitchenette and began making tea, breaking off every now and again to execute a demi-plié, holding the fridge handle to balance himself.