Mo Hayder: Hanging Hill

The colour crept across Sally’s face, the way it always did when she didn’t know what to say. She tried to keep her mind on the shirt – shaking it out, laying the collar flat, testing the button on the iron. It shot out a hissing jet of steam, making her jump a little.

David watched her in amusement. He used his feet on the worktop to jiggle the chair from side to side. ‘See, Sally, I think a quality girl like you deserves a proper job.’

‘What do you mean, “a proper job”?’

‘Let me explain. Let me give you a little bite-size lesson in David Goldrab. When I go out to work – not that I do have to much, these days, Gottze dank – but when I do , I have to deal with people. And hands-on deal with them, if you get my drift. So this is my retreat, the place I come for solitude, and the last thing I want is Shangri-La crowded with people – you can understand that, can’t you? I like my space. But I’ve got ten acres, and more than four thousand square feet of living space, and I don’t need to tell you a spread like that takes TLC. The outside’s sorted – the pool man comes every two weeks, and there’s some half-wit lives down at the cottage between this estate and the next. He deals with the pheasants, arranges a shoot for me if I’ve been stupid enough to invite people down from London. I leave them a list of jobs, like I do with you, pay their wages direct into their bank accounts, only have to speak to them by phone. Great. Except it’s not enough – because of the house. You only have to turn your back on it for a second and before you know it the place is falling in around you. Now call me a snob,’ he put a hand over his heart, a martyred look on his face, ‘but I can’t bear talking to the fucking yokels who come out here to do these jobs, dragging their disgusting knuckles along the floor and blinking their one fucking eye.’

He chucked more peanuts into his mouth, waved the champagne glass around.

‘I don’t want to have to even look at these monkeys. I want to sit upstairs, watching Britney Spears get her kit off on MTV, and be completely oblivious to the half-wit rodding my drains downstairs. Now that’s where you’d come in. I still want you to clean, but I also want you to go round the house every week and make a list of what needs to be done. Then I want you to organize it, monitor it, let the fuckers in, make them coffee – whatever their inbred little hearts desire, pay them and keep a record of what I’m forking out. Get my drift?’

‘Basically, you’re looking for a housekeeper?’

‘Yeah, well, don’t make it sound like “Basically, David, you’re looking for a dick-sucker.” I’m offering you twenty quid an hour – off the books. No tax. Six hours a week over two afternoons. Say, Tuesdays and Thursdays. After I give the agency my fifteen quid an hour for you, how much do you go home with – in your pocket?’

She lowered her eyes, embarrassed it was so little. ‘Four pounds an hour. They take emergency tax from me.’

‘See? You’d have to work five hours to earn what I’m offering you for one.’

Sally was silent for a moment, doing the sums. He was right. It was a lot of money. And she had free slots on both of those afternoons that she’d been wanting to fill for a long time.

‘Come on, Sally. Tell the agency you’re not available two afternoons a week and come to me instead.’ He tipped back his head and emptied the bag of nuts into his mouth. He crunched them up, swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You can wipe that look off your face. It ain’t a trick and I’m not proposing to you.’

‘What about them? Danuta and Marysieńka.’

‘I’ll knob them off. Tell the agent I don’t need a cleaner. I don’t associate with common little slappers like them anyway, their tits lolling out all over the place.’

‘But – they’re relying on it.’

David shrugged. He pushed with his feet and sent the chair back across the floor, making it twirl and spin. He came to a halt, gave her a grin. ‘You know what, Sally? You’re a good Christian woman and now you’ve put it like that I can see the error of my ways. The dumb Polacks are relying on the money, so I’ll do the right thing.’ He stood and went to the door. ‘I’ll call the agent, renegotiate our contract. I’ll complain about your work – say I want you off the job, the Polish tarts can stay.’ He winked. ‘Tell you what, I might even double their money. That should put a smile on their faces.’

‘I was cagey about discussing this in the field.’ The pathologist stood next to Ben and Zoë at the dissecting table in the hospital mortuary, looking down at Lorne Wood’s remains. The room was closed, a uniformed officer sitting outside the door, just one mortician and the photographer in attendance. ‘In my experience, a case like this? You limit the spread of information. Limit the people who know the details.’

The photographer moved around the body, taking it from every angle, coming in close on the tarpaulin, which was still drawn up to Lorne’s chest. Just as she’d been found. Zoë watched, her lips pursed. She had been here before, in this room, with this pathologist, but they’d always been straightforward murder cases. Horrific and tragic all of them, but uncomplicated – the victims, mostly, of bar fights gone wrong. Once a shotgun victim – a farmer’s wife. Of course, this wasn’t going to be anything like those cases.

When the photographer had taken all the necessary shots, the pathologist stood next to Lorne’s head, using a torch to look up into her nose, lifting both eyelids and shining the light into them.

‘What’s the blood?’ Zoë asked. ‘The stuff coming from her mouth.’

The pathologist frowned. He peeled back a tiny part of the tape and stood back so Zoë could peer down at it. The skin at the edges of Lorne’s mouth was stretched around the tennis ball. And the corners had indeed split – two bloodied cracks each about a centimetre long. Just as the CSM had said.

Zoë gave a small nod. ‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly. She straightened and took a step back.

‘I think the ball’s dislocated her jaw too.’ The pathologist put both hands under Lorne’s ears and felt it, his eyes on the ceiling. ‘Yup.’ He straightened. ‘Dislocated.’ He glanced up to get the photographer’s attention. ‘Do you want to get some shots of this while I’m holding the tape back a bit?’

There was silence in the room while the photographer worked. Zoë avoided looking at Ben and she guessed he wouldn’t be meeting her eyes either. Neither of them had said anything on the drive over, but she was sure his head would be full of the same things hers was – like, what was going on under that tarpaulin? The pathologist seemed to take an agonizingly long time with the photographer and with taking samples from Lorne’s hair and nails. It was an age before he went to the tarpaulin.

‘OK?’ he said, his eyes on Zoë and Ben’s faces. ‘Ready?’

They nodded.

He drew the tarp back slowly, and crumpled it into an evidence bag the mortician was holding out. Zoë and Ben remained motionless, staring at what was in front of them. Taking it all in.

She was dressed from the waist up in the grey Banksy T-shirt. Below that she was completely naked. Her legs had been opened and positioned in a frog shape, knees out to the sides, soles together. At first Zoë thought her abdomen and thighs were covered with red slashes. Then she saw they were marks made in a waxy reddish-orange substance. ‘What is that? Lipstick?’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ The pathologist pushed his glasses up his nose and leaned in, frowning. ‘It says something. Maybe you should – uh?’