Hanging Hill

  Zoë sat at her desk with the door open so she could monitor the passageway. Her office was at the place where the corridor branched off to lead to the interview rooms. If Ralph was moved from the side office near the incident room where Ben was speaking to him, it meant they had gone against every one of her instincts, every one of her requests, and were interviewing him as a possible suspect in the murder. But the station was silent for a long time. Hours. God only knew what they were doing with him.

  She tried to concentrate on other tasks. She set up an intelligence request for missing women aged between sixteen and twenty-one. When she’d told Debbie that ‘all like her’ meant the killer was going to target girls like Lorne, she’d plucked it out of the air. But what if she hadn’t been so far off the mark? It was worth thinking about. Except that, looking at the screen, it wasn’t going to be easy – the result of the search was terrifying. Name after name after name. Of course she knew most of the girls on the list were probably alive and well and had simply lost contact with their families, or were avoiding them. A good proportion would have returned and the police not been notified. Even so there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. One person couldn’t work through all of those on their own. She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. Shit. If one of those names had belonged to a victim of Lorne’s killer and their body hadn’t been found, there was no earthly chance the police would pick up on it.

  At a quarter to ten Ben walked past, going fast, carrying a stack of files. He didn’t pay her any attention, but went into his office. She heard the door slam. She waited for a moment or two, then got up, went along the corridor and knocked on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me. Zoë.’

  A pause. A hesitation? Then, ‘Come in.’

  She pushed the door open. He was sitting at his desk, his elbows planted on either side of the stack of paperwork. He faced her but, she noticed, his eyes didn’t meet hers. There was a blank, polite smile pasted on his face. ‘What’s happening?’ she said.

  ‘With?’

  ‘You know what with. With Ralph. Are you still interviewing him? Did you get him an appropriate adult from Social Services?’

  ‘He’s seventeen. Doesn’t need one.’

  ‘I promised him his parents wouldn’t be involved. Not unless he agreed to it.’

  ‘Yes. And that’s what we’re working on. Him agreeing to it. They’re going to find out eventually.’

  Zoë let all the air out of her lungs. She came forward and sat on the chair opposite him. Ben eyed her, one of his eyebrows slightly raised, as if he really didn’t appreciate the way she was making herself at home. ‘It’s not him,’ she said. ‘It’s just not. He’s too young. Don’t you remember, all those courses – how these sorts of crimes take time to build? He’s just a kid. He nicely and neatly fits a profile you’ve been sold, but it’s a flawed profile. Please see that. It’s flawed.’

  Ben gave her a calm smile. ‘I like to think I’m too much of a professional to be trammelled by psychological profiling, flawed or not. That would be a huge mistake – remember what our trainers used to say? “To assume makes an ass out of you and me.”’

  Zoë sighed. ‘Come on, Ben – I know you too well.’

  He tapped his pen on the desk. ‘Ralph Hernandez is a person of interest. That’s all I can say at this point.’

  ‘A “person of interest”? Oh, for God’s sake – you are such a bloody moron it’s just not true.’

  ‘Am I, Zoë? Have you got any better leads than this?’

  ‘I gave you this “lead”. I handed it to you on a plate and I really, really thought you’d do the honourable thing. Just goes to show how much I know about the world, doesn’t it?’

  At that moment the door opened. Zoë swivelled round. Debbie was standing there, serene in her white lacy clothes. She had started to speak, but when she saw Zoë her face changed. ‘Aaah,’ she said apologetically. ‘Sorry.’ She held up a hand and backed out of the room. ‘Crap timing – not my strong point.’

  She closed the door. There was a moment’s silence. Then Zoë turned back to face Ben. She shook her head and gave a small, mirthless laugh. ‘Funny,’ she said. ‘You never usually let anyone in without knocking. Unless they’re … you know …’ She made her hands into a cup on the desk. ‘Unless they’re inner circle. Is she inner circle now?’

  Ben stared back at her stonily. ‘Have you got any better leads than Ralph Hernandez?’

  ‘So whatever she says you’ll believe it? You’ll convict that kid in there because of it?’

  ‘My alternative is what? Choosing anyone, any route, any lead, just anyone because they don’t fit the profile she drew up? I’ve been watching your inquiries, Zoë, and what it boils down to is that you’d rather let the killer go free than have Debbie be right. So who is worse? You or me?’

  Zoë’s face burned. ‘This is all because of whatever it was I said the other night, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Well, Ben, let’s be honest. One minute we were fine – doing fine. The next, everything’s gone. Just …’ she flattened her hand and mimed an aeroplane flying ‘… like that. Gone. And you’re hostile and distant, and, frankly, acting like a dickhead.’

  Ben gave her a cold look. ‘We’ve got no future, Zoë.’

  ‘What? Because I don’t pretend to give a shit about people I really don’t give a shit about? Because I don’t make a pantomime about how caring and simpatico I bloody am? Is that my sin?’

  ‘Why do you have to insist you’re bad?’

  ‘Because I am.’

  ‘Why do you insist you don’t care for anything?’

  ‘Because I don’t. Because I don’t care for anything and I don’t need anything.’

  ‘Well,’ he said quietly, ‘don’t jump all over me and make me feel small when I say this, but, Zoë, some people like to be needed.’

  ‘Like to be needed? Well, that’s not me.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘It’s not fucking bullshit.’ She pushed her chair back and leaned across the desk, putting her face close to his. ‘I drove around the world on my own. I don’t need you or anyone else. That’s why I’m solid and I’m efficient. And anyway …’ She took a breath. Tried to put a bit more width and height into her shoulders. ‘It doesn’t matter because next thing we know you’ll be having it off with Miss Cracker out there.’

  He held her gaze. He had still, clear green eyes. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I already am.’

  Zoë stared at him. Something inside her was falling away. Dropping and dropping down into the floor. ‘What?’ she murmured. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But it’s true.’

  She was motionless, absolutely speechless. The scars on her arms ached, made her want to rip her sleeves up, but she held herself steady. She wouldn’t let him know he’d poleaxed her.

  ‘OK,’ she managed to say. ‘Then I suppose it’s time I went.’

  He nodded. The politeness, the openness of the nod, was the worst of it. This wasn’t hurting him at all.

  ‘But I’m right about Ralph,’ she said. ‘One hundred per cent right. He didn’t kill Lorne.’

  ‘Of course, Zoë.’ He turned his computer screen around and put on his glasses. ‘You’re always right.’

  32

  Sally called the NHS helpline. The woman she spoke to said Steve should go to his GP, but Steve had looked carefully at the wound and said that would be overreacting, that really it was just a hole in the skin, nothing more. Together they disinfected and bandaged it, cleared up the blood and put the nail gun, chisels and hacksaw into the boot of her car ready for the DIY on her house. After that they got on with lunch – eating the tuna, picking through a bowlful of mango and raspberry sorbet, drinking coffee, and loading the dishwasher shoulder to shoulder, all without alluding to the conversation about David Goldrab. As if they’d decided, in a curious telepathic manner, to pr
etend it hadn’t happened. It wasn’t that they were solemn either – in fact, they were light-hearted, making jokes about Steve’s wound going gangrenous. How would it be if he lost his arm and had to walk around like Nelson for the rest of his life? Sally wondered if she’d dreamed the whole thing. If shady, raw acts like contract killings really happened, or if she’d somehow misunderstood what Steve was saying.

  She got a text from Millie, who said she was getting a lift home in Nial’s camper-van, and not to worry about coming to school, she’d see her at Peppercorn. She sounded happy, not nervous. Even so, Sally still made sure she was home by four thirty, waiting by the window in plenty of time to see Nial’s half-painted van trundling along the driveway. Peter was sitting on the back seat, shades on, one arm draped casually around Sophie’s shoulders. All of them were in summer school uniform, their hair gelled, spiked and decorated as much as they could get away with at Kingsmead. The van stopped and Millie got out without a word to the others. She slammed the door and strode up the path, her face like thunder.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  She walked straight past Sally, down the corridor, into the bedroom and slammed the door. When Sally padded softly after her and listened, she could hear muffled sobbing coming from inside. As if Millie was crying into the pillow. She opened the door, tiptoed in and sat on the end of the bed, resting her hand on Millie’s ankle. ‘Millie?’

  At first Sally thought she hadn’t heard. Then Millie sat up and threw herself at her mother, arms round her neck, head pressed against her chest, like a drowning victim. Sobbing as if her heart would break.

  ‘What on earth’s happened?’ Sally pushed her back so she could see her face. ‘Is it him? Jake? Did you see him?’

  ‘No,’ she sobbed. ‘No, Mum. I can’t handle it any more. Now he’s with Sophie of all people. She’s not even that pretty.’

  ‘Who’s not even that …?’ She thought about Sophie, with a dreamy look on her face in the back of the van, Peter’s arm around her. She remembered what Isabelle had said about Peter being in love with Lorne and how it had upset Millie. This was all about him. Half of her was bewildered that her daughter couldn’t see past Peter’s blond hair and height, couldn’t look into the future and see his beery red face at forty, his thick torso and rugby-club nights. The other half was relieved that this wasn’t anything to do with Jake. Or Lorne.

  ‘Hey.’ She kissed Millie’s head, smoothed her hair. ‘You know what I’ve always told you. It’s not what’s on the outside, it’s what’s on the inside.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. That’s just crap. No one looks on the inside. You’re just saying that because you’re old.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ She rested her chin on Millie’s head. Looked out at the fields and the trees and the clouds piled up like castles in the sky and tried to span her memory across the distance between fifteen and thirty-five. It didn’t seem an eternity. But when she put herself in Millie’s shoes and thought about her own mother fifteen years ago she saw how honest and clear that comment was. She let Millie cry, let her soak the front of her blouse.

  Eventually the sobs died down to the occasional hiccup and Millie straightened up, her bottom lip sticking out. She wiped her nose with her sleeve. ‘I don’t really like him. Honestly. I really don’t.’

  ‘Is that it? Is that all that’s upsetting you?’

  ‘All?’ Millie echoed. ‘All? Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it was nothing. I was just thinking – you’re so unhappy. Unsettled.’

  Millie shivered. ‘Yeah – it’s been such a bloody horrible day. Everything’s wrong. It’s been just pants.’

  ‘Everything?’

  She nodded miserably.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t think you want to know that.’

  ‘I do.’

  Millie gave a long-suffering sigh and stretched her blouse so the cuff came down over her knuckles and drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them. ‘OK – but I warned you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw Auntie Zoë.’

  Sally had opened her mouth to reply before what Millie had said sunk in. When it did she closed it. It was the last thing she’d expected. Zoë hadn’t been mentioned in their house for years. Years and years. In all of Millie’s lifetime they’d run into her twice – once in the high street, when Millie had been about five. That time Zoë had stopped and smiled at Millie, said, ‘You must be Millie,’ then looked at her watch, and added, ‘Well, got to go.’ The second time, two years later, the two women had simply nodded in acknowledgement and carried on their way. Afterwards Sally had been quiet for hours. These days, sometimes, she dreamed about Zoë – wondered what it would be like to see her again. Now she pushed the hair gently out of Millie’s face. She hadn’t even realized she knew Zoë’s name. ‘You mean you – uh – saw her walking down the street? Or you spoke to her?’

  ‘We went to see her at the police station. The head said we could take the morning off to do it. Nial and Peter and Ralph had something to tell her.’

  ‘Ralph? The Spanish one?’

  ‘He’s half Spanish. And he was seeing Lorne.’

  ‘Seeing her?’

  ‘Yes, and he tried to keep it secret. But it’s out now and it’s no big deal. I mean, he was seeing her, but he didn’t kill her, Mum. He didn’t have anything to do with it.’

  So Isabelle had been right, Sally thought. About the secrets. The whispering. She wondered how it could be that the children they’d given birth to could have gone from curly-haired toddlers sitting on their laps to complete human beings with secrets and codes and plans.

  ‘He stayed at the station. With Auntie Zoë. She was, like, so nice to him. So nice.’

  Sally heard the admiration in her voice. Unmistakable. She knew what it felt like to admire Zoë. ‘How is she? Zoë, I mean.’

  ‘She’s fine.’ Millie sniffed. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fine?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘How did she look?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Sally hesitated. ‘Is she tall? Years ago she always seemed quite tall to me.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Millie said. ‘She is. Really tall. Really, really tall. The way I’d like to be.’

  ‘What’s her hair like? She had amazing hair.’

  ‘Still has. It’s like mine – sort of reddy colour. A bit mad, actually – and it looked wet. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just wondering.’ She gave a small, rueful smile, then said, ‘She’s doing well in her job, I suppose. She’s really clever, you know. You’d never think we were related.’

  ‘She’s got her own office and stuff. She doesn’t seem the type to be in an office, though.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. She’s …’ Millie searched for the right word and failed to find it. ‘She’s just too cool to be in the police. That’s all. She’s just too cool.’

  33

  The most private ladies’ toilet at Bath police station was on the ground floor, just past the front office. Zoë walked through the foyer with her head lowered, in case anyone saw her, and pushed the door open. The toilets were empty. Just the smell of bleach and the vague plink-plink of a leaky cistern in one of the cubicles. She ignored her reflection and went straight along the line of doors, choosing the last one, furthest from the entrance. She went inside, closed the toilet lid, locked the door, pulled off her jacket and dropped it on the floor. She sat down, her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands.

  Actually, I already am …

  It was none of her business who Ben slept with. There had never been any promises like that. It had never been part of the deal. But it had never been part of the deal either that he’d freeze over the way he had. She’d known him for years. Years and years they’d worked together before they’d started sleeping together – he should know every inch of her personality by now. So what had changed? It couldn’t be that h
e’d got a glimpse inside her, seen the nasty dark thing she worked so hard to keep down. No, it couldn’t. She was sure he couldn’t see that. Then what?

  She dragged her sleeve up, rolled it tightly at the biceps, the way an addict would. She found a spare centimetre of skin and used the nails on her thumb and forefinger to find a demi-lune of flesh. She closed her eyes and dug them in. Harder and harder. The pain was like a sweet black thread moving through her body. Like a drug. She put her head back and breathed slowly while it moved up to her chest, wrapped itself round her lungs and heart and made everything go dark and still. The blood rose up in the pinched flesh and slid coldly down her arm to splash on to the white tiles. She didn’t let go. Just held it there. Held it and held it.

  And then, when she was sure the scream had been stopped, she dropped her hand. She opened her eyes and blinked at the white light, the blood all over her nails, the cold Formica of the toilet door.

  Ben was nothing. He didn’t matter. It would be a battle, but slowly it would pass. She was exhausted, wrung out with the case, and she needed space to breathe. She would take some time off work – God knew, she had enough time owing. She’d take the Shovelhead and disappear for a while. Sleep rough and drink Guinness out of the can. Forget the case, lose interest in who had killed Lorne, let the memory of that nightclub in Bristol be whipped out of her head by the slipstream on the motorway.

  She unravelled some toilet tissue and began to clean herself up. She bent over to wipe the blood off the floor and saw her wallet had spilled out of her jacket. She paused, the tissue wodged on the floor. Peeping out from one of the compartments was a curved pink sliver of card: the top of the business card she’d been given at Zebedee Juice.

  ‘Shit.’ She sat up again, leaning back against the cistern, the bloody tissue hanging limp in her hand, her head lolling. The fluorescent tubes pulsed on the ceiling above her. ‘OK, Lorne,’ she muttered. ‘OK. I’ll give you one more day. Twelve more hours. And then, I’m sorry, but I’m out of it.’