Mo Hayder - Hanging Hill

‘Put the axe down,’ Zoë said. ‘Put it down.’

Slowly she lowered it. ‘That’s hers,’ she said, staring at the sweater Zoë was holding. ‘It’s the only one she’s got. She’ll be freezing without it.’

Zoë held the phone out. ‘And this?’

Sally leaned over to peer at it. She gave a small twitch when she saw what it was and closed her eyes. She put her hand out to the wall, as if she was going to faint.

‘Sally? Sally? Come on – keep it together.’

Sally blinked. She saw her sister’s face close to hers. Behind her the little utility room was swaying, the colours bleary. She kept remembering Millie on the tarot card, her face, smudged and smeared and ruined. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and her voice sounded miles away. ‘I’m sorry. I got it all so wrong.’

‘Call Nial.’

Isabelle had been right that the tarot was a warning, but it hadn’t been about Jake. It had been a warning about this: all along she’d been warned about tonight.

‘Hey,’ Zoë hissed. ‘Did you hear what I said? Call him.’

‘Yes. Yes.’ She pulled out her phone and tried to dial but her fingers didn’t seem to work. They seemed to be miles away – miles and miles away, as if her arms were very long.

‘Give it to me.’

Zoë grabbed the phone, put it on speaker and dialled Nial’s number. The ringing was distant and lonely. Like part of the invisible dark world out there, funnelling through this tiny channel to reach them. This time there was no answer. It rang four times. Five. Then it went to answerphone.

Zoë shook her head. She took the phone off speaker and dialled again, this time putting it in her pocket and holding it tight against her hip. She took a step out on to the patio, her eyes fixed on the trees.

‘What is it?’ Sally murmured. ‘What’s going on?’

Zoë put a finger to her mouth. ‘Listen.’

Sally came to stand next to her sister and listened to the breathless night. Now she could hear it – a phone ringing faintly in the darkness. It was coming from somewhere far beyond the trees at the bottom of the garden. But just as she thought she’d got an exact direction on it, the ringing stopped. The answerphone again. Quickly Zoë scrabbled the phone out of her pocket and dialled again. The ghostly ringing came again, floating up from the darkness.

‘Pollock’s Farm,’ Zoë murmured.

Sally’s heart sank even lower. She thought about the acres of abandoned land. The decaying farm machinery. The drop and the deserted house at the bottom of it where a man had lain rotting for week after week. ‘God, no,’ she murmured. ‘That’s where they are. Isn’t it?’

‘Come on. Let’s go.’

They checked in the garage and found a huge dragon lamp with a rubberized handle, like the one Steve had bought Sally – it seemed a million years ago. Zoë switched it on to check the battery was charged – it sent a blinding white circle on to the wall, making both women squint. She used a canvas strap to loop it around her neck, and then they went around collecting everything they could carry. Zoë had the hammer in her belt, CS gas in her back pocket, and a large mallet – the type for knocking in fence posts – in her right hand. Sally carried a chisel in the pocket of her coat and the axe in one hand. In the other she had a child’s windup torch – the sort that worked on a dynamo. She couldn’t stop her teeth chattering. Her bones felt like water – for anything she’d just stop here and curl up on the ground and pretend none of it was happening. But when you couldn’t bear the thoughts, the only thing to do was to act. To keep moving.

They set off along the path towards the farm. Zoë went in front, her back straight, the big torch beam flittering through the trees that bent around the path, the branches overhead. To the left this forest stretched as far as Hanging Hill, and to the right it continued for almost a mile, then on the outskirts of Bath began to give way to houses, playing fields, a rugby club, its spectral white goal posts rising above the hedge line. As the trees thinned out, the women stopped. Zoë switched off the dragon light and they stood in silence surveying what lay in front of them. The fields were paler than the woods, the dried remains of the dead crops like a mist hovering above the land. Here and there were dotted the shadows of broken machinery and burned-out car carcasses. At the far end the dark shapes of the old decaying silage bales were outlined against the horizon, silent and still as sleeping beasts. Beyond them, invisible to the uninitiated, was the drop into the quarry.

Zoë fished out the phone and dialled the number again. This time the noise was much louder. There wasn’t any question where it was coming from. The other side of the silage. The quarry where Pollock’s house was.

The moon broke free from its cloud cover as they crossed the farm and for a moment it was so bright they seemed to be under a giant spotlight. Two lonely figures casting long blue shadows where they walked, feet shushing the dead corn. They came through the gate at the top of the quarry and slowly, using their hands to steady themselves against the trees, joined the zigzag path, which meandered through thick trees down the cliff edge. At the foot of the path they paused. The valley floor stretched away, serene and motionless. To their right was the house. It was in darkness, but the moonlight picked out its shape and reflected off the broken windows in the top floor.

Zoë dialled Nial again. There was a pause, then it clicked through. This time the noise was so close it made them both jump. It was coming from the house, floating out across the frigid air like a plea. It rang five, six times, and went into answerphone.

‘Come on,’ she mouthed. ‘Come on.’

They went, single file, heads lowered. The house stood with its back just a few yards from the quarry wall – as if it had fallen from the top and landed there, miraculously upright. It was rendered and roofed, but since Zoë was last here it had been used by the meths addicts and now it had the feel of something built by the army as a training range, with its doorways stripped to the brick, a great pool of weed-pocked rainwater on the cracked concrete it stood on. Everything had been covered with graffiti – even the quarry wall behind it. There were a few grilles on the windows, but most had been wrenched off and scattered on the ground to rot.

The women got to the side of the house, and squatted, their backs to the filthy wall, while Zoë dialled the number again. They held their breath, listening. The ringing was coming from inside the house, at ground level, somewhere near the back. Zoë cut the call and pushed the phone into her pocket. She held her breath and listened again. This time she heard something else, coming from the same place inside the house. The noise, the rhythmic noise they’d heard on the phone. Like something soft being banged against glass.

She wiped her forehead. ‘Christ. Christ.’

‘Hey,’ Sally whispered suddenly. ‘We’ve got to keep going.’

Zoë shot her a look. Sally’s eyes were clear, and her face was remarkably composed. Zoë got some strength from her expression. She took a moment, then nodded. She picked up the hammer and torch. ‘Come on.’

Together they moved along the edge of the house, stopping at the corner, just ten inches from the front door. Zoë leaned her head back against the wall, took a few deep breaths, then swivelled, put her head into the doorway. She jerked back.

‘Anything?’

She shook her head. ‘But I can’t see properly,’ she murmured. ‘It’s too dark. I’ve got to use this.’ She licked her lips, looked down and flicked the ready switch on the dragon light. ‘It’ll blind anyone in there. But only for about twenty seconds. Then they’re going to know we’re here. Are you ready for that?’