Mo Hayder - Hanging Hill

‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Now here.’

He lifted her numb legs and placed them on the sheets. She could see the veins in the whites of his eyes. An unhealthy yellowish film over the sclera. He smelt of woodsmoke and engine oil and dirty clothes. Zoë recalled the lines of blood running down Lorne’s cheeks. Her skin had split. Really split . ‘It’sh OK,’ she slurred.

He looked her in the eye, puzzled. ‘What?’

‘It’sh OK. You can do it to me.’

Kelvin kept his eyes on her, not expecting this. There was a white line on his lips, either from dried skin or toothpaste or spittle, she couldn’t be sure. If she died now Ben would see the marks – everyone would know she’d put up some resistance. You were supposed to fight, weren’t you? Fight for your honour. Except there were times that to win the war you had to lose the battle.

‘It’sh what I want.’

He lowered his chin and looked at her steadily.

‘I mean it.’

He sat on the bed, making the springs creak. ‘You what?’

‘I want it.’

He gave the sly grin he used to give her from the back of the audience, the one that made her sure the dirtiness in her was on the inside, deep, deep down, not something superficial she’d picked up from working in the club.

‘You want what?’

She gritted her teeth.

‘Say it. Say what you want.’

‘I want you to fuck me.’

‘Say, “ Kelvin , I want you to fuck me.”’

‘I want you to fuck me, Kelvin.’

‘No. Get it right. Say, “Kelvin, I really want you to fuck me.” Lick your lips when you say it. Like you used to.’

She held his eyes. The trembling was starting under her ribs. ‘Kelvin.’ She put her tongue between her lips. Shakily moved it across them. ‘I really want you to fuck me.’

He unlaced his boots and set them to one side. He stood and unsnapped the waterproof leggings, throwing them on to the floor. He unzipped his jeans and stepped out of them. He wasn’t wearing anything underneath. No underwear. She could see his red testicles and penis dangling under the plaid shirt. He went to the dressing-table and sorted idly through the items on there. Please not a tennis ball. Please not that …

He found instead a condom and split open the packet. She followed it with her eyes as he came back and sat on the bed. He wasn’t stupid: he wouldn’t leave a trace. It was what he’d done with Lorne.

He sat down on the bed and began fumbling with her trousers. She didn’t move – she couldn’t. He got the zip undone and slid the jeans off, dragging her knickers with them. She kept her teeth clenched tight. Tried to shrink all her thoughts into a tight, hard knot in the centre of her mind. He pulled her sweater off over her head and dragged her bottom to the edge of the bed. Her feet clunked dully back on the floor. He knelt in front of her and put on the condom. ‘Open your legs.’

The trembling under her ribs grew into a body-length spasm.

‘Open your legs.’

She managed to get them a small way apart and he used his knees to move them further, then pulled her closer and pushed himself inside her. He watched her closely while he worked at her, eyes on her face. She clamped her teeth together, and kept her eyes locked hard on a button on his breast pocket, holding them there, concentrating all the time on the tight place in her head. The feeling was coming back into her body now. She wished it wouldn’t, she wished she could feel nothing. The blood from her nose ran down the back of her throat. The blood in Lorne’s nose had congealed, blocked her nose. It had been what had killed her. What had Amy said in the barge? It seemed like an eternity ago. That rape was all about men and the way they secretly hated women?

Then, suddenly, it was over. He was finished. He pulled away from her and removed the condom. Tied it in a knot and dropped it on the floor. Then he sat on the bed next to her, almost companionably, reaching over, pushing a hand up inside her T-shirt to massage her breast. ‘You liked that. Didn’t you?’

She licked her lips. She could taste the blood. Salty, like sweat.

‘I said – did you enjoy that?’

She closed her eyes and nodded.

‘Your nose is bleeding.’

She raised a shaky hand, still weak, and wiped it. Kelvin stood and went out. She opened her eyes and blinked at the empty room. The tennis ball , she thought. Now he’s going to get the tennis ball . But when he reappeared next to the bed he was holding a towel. He handed it to her. She tried to sit up but failed. He pulled her upright and she sat there with the towel pressed on her nose. The feeling was coming back to her legs now, pricking like pins and needles.

‘I’d like to come back another time.’

‘What? What did you say?’

Once, years ago, Zoë had interviewed a rape victim. The girl had said the same thing to her attacker – she’d said afterwards, I really like you – can we do this again? He’d believed her and instead of hurting her, had let her go. Zoë swallowed more blood. Repeated it, louder this time: ‘I’d like to come back another time. For more.’

He frowned, genuinely perplexed. ‘You don’t think I’m going to let you go – not now – do you?’

It was Zoë’s face that stopped Sally. She’d got halfway up Hanging Hill, gripping the steering-wheel so hard her hands were white, leaning forward and staring out of the windscreen. The turning to Lightpil House and Kelvin’s cottage was up ahead but, as she indicated to turn, out of nowhere Zoë’s expression popped into her head. It was when she’d been standing at the table in the kitchen the day before yesterday, talking about patterns and the way we all connected to each other.

Sally faltered. Her foot twitched on the accelerator. She tried to picture Zoë with a tin full of a dead man’s teeth, driving into the countryside with them. To do what? Point the finger at someone innocent. She couldn’t conjure up the image. Just couldn’t. Clever as Zoë was, it wasn’t how she’d deal with this. And then Sally had a memory of Kelvin Burford at nursery school all those years ago – a fierce and sturdy little boy with the snot dried in crusts where he’d wiped it across his face, the feral sense of determination that stuck right out of his eyes whenever he looked at you.

As the turning to the gamekeeper’s cottage came up to meet her, she flicked the indicator off. She let the car sail past it, continuing on along the main road. Scared as she was of Kelvin, she couldn’t do something else this contorted. Whatever Steve said, she couldn’t go on spoiling the pattern.

No. There had to be another way.

‘What’s the matter?’ Kelvin had brought a bottle of cider up from the kitchen. He was standing at the window that looked out to the side of the house, unscrewing the bottle and pouring the contents into a cloudy glass. He lowered his chin and gave Zoë a long, measured look. ‘What’s the matter with you? You look weird.’

She lay in a curl against the bed head. She could no longer breathe through her nose: it had filled with compacted blood. Just like Lorne’s had. She kept thinking about that pile of bodies in Iraq. She kept thinking that if Kelvin had seen things like that on a day-to-day basis then Lorne’s death would have seemed like nothing.

All like her …

He knew Lorne as a stripper or topless model. The same way he’d known Zoë. Neither of them would matter much to someone this insane. They’d be just links in the sequence. The superintendent had laughed, and said, ‘You’re telling us there’s a pile of bodies somewhere?’ but Kelvin wouldn’t see any difference between a pile of dead women and a pile of dead Iraqi insurgents. And to fight it she had nothing. Clever, clever Zoë. Spiky and cold, yes, but you couldn’t take the clever out of her. Except now. When she just couldn’t find a clever solution to this.