Mo Hayder - Hanging Hill

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve never done anything like it before?’

‘No. But when I’d done it I felt good. And I feel better. About everything. Look at me. I’m different.’

It was true, Zoë thought, she was different. As if the bones that had all her life lain deep under her soft, perfect skin had suddenly hefted themselves up to the surface and were pressing impatiently against it. All this time she’d been scared of Goldrab coming back when, in fact, he was dead. Very dead. And her own sister to thank for it. She gestured at the lipstick on the tissues. ‘This was on your car seat?’

‘On the passenger side.’

Zoë moved the tissues around with her finger. ‘That little boy we knew at nursery?’ she said, after a while. ‘Kelvin? He’s gone. You do know that, don’t you? You know that he’s a grown man, and whatever has happened to him, he’s dangerous and, worse than that, he’s insane.’

‘I know.’

‘And you understand that, whatever happens, we’re going to have to find a way of getting him locked up? Without me saying what’s happened to me – without you saying what happened with… with Goldrab.’

‘Yes.’

‘There are some things in his house that link him to Lorne.’

‘We could somehow tip the police off? Anonymously? Can you do that?’

‘You can. But it won’t be that easy. My guess is he’ll have hidden them all – destroyed them now that I’ve escaped. He’ll know the police aren’t far away.’

‘Oh,’ she said, deflated. ‘Then what?’

‘I don’t know.’ Zoë rubbed her ankle. It was aching from when she’d dropped off the balcony. ‘Not completely yet. But I’ve got some ideas.’

An odd, non-reflective sky hung over Kelvin’s cottage. As if the world sensed what lived there and wanted to blanket it. To suffocate it slowly. A few rooks cawed in the lime trees on the lane, and the mill stream babbled softly. The two women sat in Sally’s Ka, parked at the top of the lane next to Zoë’s car, abandoned this morning in her escape. They could see down past the hedgerow, with its new soft leaves, to the front of Kelvin’s cottage. It was deserted.

‘It’s what I expected.’ Next to her, Zoë took off the sunglasses Sally had lent her, tipped down the sun visor and checked her reflection in the mirror. She seemed in control but Sally knew it was an act. She used the cuff of the blouse – also Sally’s – to dab at a cut on her mouth. She was wearing a little of Sally’s makeup too – some concealer over the red and grey bruises that were already starting across her right cheekbone. Eventually she shook her head, as if her appearance was a losing battle, and closed the mirror. ‘It’s all gone wrong for him now because I survived. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. I was supposed to die. Now he’s scared. He’s on the run. It’s like I guessed – there won’t be any of Lorne’s things in there. Or mine.’

Sally bit her lip and leaned forward a little, anxiously scanning the scene. An apple tree on the other side of David Goldrab’s garden had dropped its blossom. It had blown in dirty white drifts along the lane and lay in complex scrawls around Kelvin’s derelict garage. She didn’t like this. Didn’t like it at all. When he’d been here, in the cottage, her fear at least had been contained in one place. Now it could be anywhere – anywhere out there. Like a virus released on the wind.

‘What about the photos though? If he’s got any evidence against me – photos or something – they might still be in there.’

‘I promise you, there’s nothing in that house. I went through it. There were pictures… but not of you. Anyway, he’s not organized enough to have done that. He’d have needed a long-range lens.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. I swear.’

Sally rubbed the goosebumps on her arms. ‘Plan B, then?’

‘Plan B it is. Just a few more hoops to jump through. Come on, let’s get a wriggle on.’

She climbed out, got into her Mondeo and started the engine. Sally followed in the Ka, driving slowly down to the cottage. They parked at the top of the driveway. They left the doors open, keys in the ignition – if Kelvin did reappear he couldn’t take both cars at once. They’d have a precious few seconds to start the engine of the other to make their escape. Anyway, Zoë insisted, he wasn’t going to show his face again. Not round here.

They wandered around the house, trying to find a way in. But he’d worked fast, and since Zoë had escaped he’d padlocked everything – Sally had never seen so many padlocks. Some of the windows had been nailed closed, there were planks hammered across the back and front doors, and the french windows in the first-floor room had been boarded up. They found a garage neither of them had noticed before. According to Zoë, Kelvin drove a Land Rover – she’d made a call in the police station and had its registration number on a scrap of paper in her pocket – but it wasn’t here now. There was just an oil stain on the floor and wheel tracks outside on the ground.

Zoë stopped near the mill. She squatted down and tugged at the rusty chain that wound through a grate covering a hole. She tested the padlock. It came open with a creak.

‘You do your thing,’ she told Sally. She dragged the chain out of the grate and lifted it off. ‘I’m going to check in there.’

She bent double and went in, disappearing from view. Sally watched her go. Then, with a glance around at the stillness, she pulled on the nitrile gloves Zoë had given her, and began to dig with the gardening fork they’d brought. The ground was soft, if stony, and soon she’d created a yellowish scar. She felt in the pocket of her duffel coat for the tin. Fingers trembling, she removed the lid and tipped out the contents. Planting the teeth had been Zoë’s suggestion, which was ironic, considering how Sally hadn’t done it earlier because she’d thought Zoë would have found a better way. Now Sally knew about the rapes, though, she’d changed her mind about doing the right thing by Kelvin. Zoë hadn’t asked how Sally had had the nerve to remove David’s teeth – how she’d managed to mastermind getting rid of his body all on her own, or whether someone else was involved. Sally had a feeling she knew, though.

Now she dropped the teeth into the hole and stirred them a little, letting them mingle with the soil. She filled in the hole, covered it crudely with the turf she’d dug out. Seeing those human teeth, with their fillings and vulnerable roots, she felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. You’re a monster, a voice said in her head. You’ve become a monster.

‘Empty.’ Zoë came out of the hole, doubled up, brushing cobwebs from her head. ‘Nothing. It’s an ice house.’ She rattled the padlock. Opened and closed it a couple of times. ‘I don’t know if this was locked before or not. I didn’t try.’

Sally straightened, pushed her hands into the small of her back and bent backwards a little to get the cricks from her muscles. ‘Why? Do you think there was something in there?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe something was. Gone now. Taken away in the Land Rover.’

‘What sort of thing?’

Zoë dusted her hands off. She touched her nose tentatively, and looked up. The clouds that all day had been loitering near the horizon had, in the last few minutes, slipped almost unnoticed across the sky, thinning themselves out in a flat, opaque blanket of grey. The air seemed to have dropped several degrees in temperature – almost as if winter had changed its mind and was coming back to claim the world.

‘Zoë?’

She turned her eyes to Sally’s. They were very dark and serious. ‘Nothing. Nothing for you to worry about.’