Mo Hayder - Hanging Hill

She scraped at the earth beneath the tree with her bare fingers, burrowing through last year’s leaves, warm and flaky, getting dirt under her nails. The court she’d summoned in her head had weighed Kelvin against Sally as David Goldrab’s killer and had found there was no contest. Kelvin Burford had a record of violence; he’d worked for David, and had severe mental problems. Of course he had killed David. Of course it couldn’t have been the politely spoken, downtrodden housekeeper, with the nice accent and the teenage daughter in private school. And any way. There was evidence to prove it.

She found what she was searching for and sat back on her heels, resting it on her lap. The tin. She lifted it and blew off the earth. The few oddments inside rattled. David’s teeth. His ring. She opened the lid and stared at them. Steve had called from the departures lounge at Sea-Tac. He’d finished the meeting, caught four hours’ sleep in the hotel, then gone back to the airport and brought his flight back to England forward. It was going to Heathrow and was leaving Seattle in four hours. It would be early tomorrow morning before he was home. She’d told him about the lipstick at Kelvin’s house, how it must have been him who’d left the message on her seat.

‘But I told you. I can deal with it on my own. You didn’t need to cut it short.’

‘I know you can, but you don’t have to. There are things you’re going to have to do that I don’t want you to do alone.’

‘Things?’

‘Sally, you and I have already done things neither of us ever thought we could. And it’s not stopping now. We have to go on to the end of the road.’

We have to go on to the end of the road …

She knew what he meant. There were places at the gamekeeper’s cottage she could leave the teeth. She could bury them, or wait until Kelvin was out and get into the house. Hide them somewhere careful. A place he wouldn’t think to look, but a place the police would. And while she was there she could search the parts of the house she hadn’t been able to earlier – check there really were no photos of her and Steve in the parking space. It was what Zoë would do, something clever like this. Zoë would do it, she would survive.

She got to her feet, put the lid back on the tin, slid it inside her jacket, and felt for her car keys. If she didn’t do it now, she never would. She walked up the lane to the car, fast, her head down. Opened the door, threw the tin on to the passenger seat and swung inside. She started the engine and reversed up the drive, the familiar petrolly fumes coming in through the rattly back windows.

The boards outside creaked. Kelvin was walking leisurely along the landing, sauntering as if he was out in a park on a sunny day. He went to the front bedroom first. Zoë heard him throwing the boxes around. He was humming to himself. He had all the time in the world.

She grabbed the fleece, dragged it across the floorboards towards her and patted the pockets. Pulled out a mobile phone. Looked at it, her pulse racing. A white iPhone. It was Lorne’s. She put her head back, her heart thudding like a jack-hammer. She’d been right. Right. Those arguments she’d had with Ben and Deborah, that Lorne’s killer wasn’t a teenager, she’d been right . And she’d been right to circle Goldrab and the porn industry – Lorne had met Kelvin through either Goldrab or the nightclubs. There couldn’t be any other way a girl like her would have a connection to a man like Kelvin. God, Lorne, I’m sorry, she thought. For a while I lost sight of you. But you were there all along. I just never expected it to happen like this.

His footsteps stopped in the doorway. She tried the phone but the battery was dead, so she pushed it into the fleece pocket. She could see his blue Hunters in the doorway. Usually she’d be wearing a police radio, but she’d left it in the car. Stealthily she reached into her pocket for her own phone. The wellingtons came across the floor. Before she could even check the phone for a signal, Kelvin Burford crouched and his hands appeared, grabbing her ankles. She scrambled for the slats under the bed, dropping the phone in her haste. It skimmed across the floor, spinning, hitting the skirting-board. Kelvin braced one foot on the bed base to get leverage and pulled at her feet. She held on tight to the slats. He tugged again, and this time her grip weakened. The nail on her index finger tore away. She let go and he dragged her out, across the floor on her stomach, her T-shirt riding up.

He dropped her legs with a clatter. Instantly she slammed both hands on the floor, bunny-hopped to her feet and rounded on him, both hands out, her mouth open in a snarl. He stood against the wall, blinking at her, his hands half raised, as if he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not.

‘Fucker.’ She threw her hands at him, flapping them like birds. He reached up to keep them from his eyes, and she took the chance to bring her foot into his groin. She made contact, felt him begin to double over. He fell heavily against her, almost knocking her off balance, but she danced out of his way. He staggered a few steps forward, his head down as if he was going to ram the fireplace. She turned and clasped her hands together in a fist above his head, brought them down hard. She was aiming for the back of his neck but she got a point between his shoulder blades. He roared with pain, twisting and flailing with one hand to grab her leg. She wasn’t expecting that – you broke the first rule: never wait to see the effect of the punch, just get in there with the second . He got her behind the knee and pulled so fast that she lost her balance and went down on her back with a thud.

He dropped to his knees next to her, his expression almost bored, as if this was too tiring, too wearying to be bothered with, and punched her hard in the face. Her head was thrown sideways with the force. Something flew out of her nose. Then he got a handful of her hair and lifted her head off the floor – there was the tiny pop-popping noise of a hundred hair follicles being yanked out – raised his fist and hit her again.

He dropped her head to the floor again and she lay there, panting thickly, staring through bleary eyes at a place about ten inches from her face where a spatter of blood had appeared on the bottom of the door. There was a noise – a wah-wah sound, as if someone in the room was squeezing out the air. The light coming through the french windows seemed suddenly greasy and unsteady, as if it was being manipulated. She tried to lift a hand to her face, but it wouldn’t obey. It rose a short way then fell, like a piece of dead meat, and lay near her face as if it didn’t belong to her. Kelvin was moving around the room, breathing hard. His weight on the floorboards tested the joists under her – as if the floor was bending slightly wherever he went. She thought about Lorne’s face. The blood and the bruising. There was a tube of tennis balls in the next bedroom. How many gamekeepers played tennis, for Christ’s sake? How could she have been so fucking stupid ?

Kelvin grunted. He got his hands under her armpits and lifted her on to the bed. She lay on her side, breathing rapidly, still unable to move. There was a pool of blood on the floor where her head had just been, bright red, like the ink from the luminous pens they used in the office. A clump of hair too, with something white attached to it. Her skin, she realized.

‘I’m going to tie you up now. OK?’

She tried to move her legs. They wouldn’t budge. They just hung down over the edge of the bed, no life, no feeling. She understood what was going to happen now.

‘Come over here.’

He pushed her a little further onto the bed. She was shivering, cold and hot at the same time. Where his hands touched her they felt like warm muscle meeting glass.