Hanging Hill

  ‘Anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s going to rain again.’ Zoë looked up at the sky as they began to walk to the car. A little cloudy still. The moon was sending down a cool, diffuse light that gave everything monster outlines. ‘I really don’t.’ She fished in her pocket for her phone and pushed a key. ‘But I’ll need to tell Ben to make sure someone finds it ASAP.’

  Sally kept walking, watching her sister out of the corner of her eye. She sensed Ben was more than just a trusted friend to her.

  Then the call connected and she heard a man’s voice – Ben, she supposed – speaking excitedly. She heard the words ‘I was just about to call you,’ then something inaudible that made Zoë stop dead in her tracks. Sally paused too, and turned to her sister.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Zoë muttered into the phone. Her expression had changed completely. ‘A hundred per cent?’

  ‘What?’ Sally hissed. ‘What is it?’

  Zoë flapped a hand at her to be quiet. She turned away and walked a few steps in the opposite direction, her finger in her ear so she could hear better what Ben was saying. She listened for a while, then muttered a few short questions. When she hung up, she came back at a trot, beckoning to Sally to get back to the car.

  ‘Zoë?’ she said, breaking into a jog alongside her. ‘What?’

  ‘Ben’s in Gloucester docks.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Kelvin’s got a mate – a friend from the army who owns a barge moored there.’

  ‘A barge?’

  ‘We were looking for a barge right from the beginning. Thought there had been a houseboat here that night. This has to be the same one. It’s locked. Ben’s waiting for Gloucestershire Support Group boys to arrive and break in but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘He thinks there’s someone inside it. I think we’ve found him. I think we’ve found Kelvin.’

  42

  Sally drove fast up Lansdown Hill, Zoë in the passenger seat, drumming her fingers on the steering-wheel, glancing at the dashboard clock, calculating how long it would take to get to Gloucester. The traffic was thin now. It would take less than ten minutes to pick up Millie from the Sweetmans, then for Sally to drop Zoë off at her car. From there, with luck and a tailwind, Zoë could be at the docks within the hour.

  Her mind was racing. Had the barge simply motored away, on the night of Lorne’s killing, along the canal system? She scrabbled in her memory – trying to decide if the Kennet and Avon canal connected into Gloucester. She couldn’t recall – but she could remember that the Gloucester docks were less than a mile from the red-light areas of Barton Street and Midland Road. She wondered if Kelvin’s ‘army friend’ had taken the photo of that pile of dead bodies in Iraq, and what – what – would be on that barge? Her hand kept drifting to the pocket where her phone was, wanting to call Ben, because it seemed to her that whichever way she pictured the barge she also saw blood drifting away from it in the water, swirling in oily curlicues. She wanted to tell him to be careful, to wait until she got there.

  Sally indicated left and turned the car into Isabelle’s long driveway. Zoë’s phone rang, making her jump. She snatched it out of her pocket. It was Ben.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ He sounded rushed. Excited. She could hear he was walking. Could hear traffic going past him as if he was on a busy city road. ‘But, Zoë, where are you? Have you left yet?’

  ‘I’m just picking up my niece. I’ll be back at my car in five and on my way.’

  ‘No. Don’t come to Gloucester.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Shit.’ She sat back in her seat, deflated. She shot Sally a sideways glance as they bounced along the track. ‘Not there,’ she muttered. ‘Not there.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘How come, Ben?’

  ‘The support team kicked the door in. His mate was on board, pissed as a parrot, but he hasn’t seen Kelvin in weeks. The barge hasn’t been anywhere near Bath, hasn’t left Gloucester in over a year – the harbour master confirmed that. So I went back to the phone thing. You know I couldn’t get anything about his mobile, needed superintendent authority on that. Well, someone at BT owes me a favour and—’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Burford made several calls to a number in Solihull this lunchtime. Turns out his sister lives there.’

  ‘Solihull? That’s about – what? A forty-minute drive if you take the—’

  She broke off. Sally was slowing the car down and the headlights had picked out a vehicle, parked at an untidy angle up ahead in the driveway. A Land Rover.

  ‘That’s funny,’ Sally began, as Zoë leaned forward. ‘I thought Isabelle wasn’t—’

  ‘Stop!’

  Sally slammed on the brakes. She stared out of the windscreen at the mud-covered Land Rover. Zoë made frantic motioning signals. ‘Go back.’ She swivelled her head to look out of the back window. ‘Go on. Do it.’

  Sally slammed the gearstick into reverse and the car lurched back twenty yards, bumping over potholes and the grass verge. Ben’s voice was coming from the tinny little phone speaker. ‘Zoë? What’s happening?’

  ‘In there. Put it in there. Fast.’

  Sally jumped the car back another ten yards, shoving it in behind a row of laurels. She switched the engine off, and killed the headlights. Zoë sat forward in her seat, peering down the driveway.

  ‘Zoë?’

  She lifted the phone numbly, a ball of adrenalin clenched in her chest. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘We’re OK,’ she said dully. ‘But listen. I really don’t think Kelvin’s in Solihull.’

  43

  The Sweetmans’ house was big – a Victorian monstrosity, with three floors and a turret on the roof. There were lights on in some of the downstairs rooms and a window on the ground floor stood open. Zoë leaned out of the open passenger window and took in every detail. ‘Isabelle doesn’t know Kelvin.’ She wound up the window and turned to her sister. ‘Does she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s his Land Rover. That’s the registration the PNC gave me this afternoon.’

  Sally fumbled for her phone. Her face had gone pale. ‘He doesn’t know Isabelle, but he does know Millie.’

  ‘He knows Millie? How come?’

  She hit a fast-dial key and held it to her ear. ‘She was up at his house one afternoon.’

  ‘What the hell was she doing there?’

  ‘She was with me one day when I was working for David – but she knew Kelvin before. She and the others used to go up there. I think they used to torment him. Peter and Nial and Sophie and Millie. And Lorne too, probably, they all used to—’

  She put her finger to her lip. The phone must have been answered. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Shut her eyes and put her fingers against her forehead. ‘Uh, Millie,’ she said, after a moment or two. ‘It’s Mum. I’m at Nial’s. I need you to call me the moment you get this message. The moment.’ She hung up and dug her thumbnail into the space between her two front teeth. ‘The phone battery keeps running out. I’ve been meaning to replace it.’

  Zoë was staring at Sally’s face. ‘Sally? Did you just tell me they used to torment Kelvin? And that Lorne went up there too?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  She turned and gazed back at the Land Rover. What, she thought, if all along Lorne hadn’t met Kelvin through the clubs but through Millie’s gang and the days they used to go up to the cottage and torment him? She could imagine someone like Peter Cyrus doing it – she could imagine Kelvin’s rage. All like her. What if those words meant all the girls who’d been in that gang? The message in Sally’s car had been on the passenger side – where Millie would have been sitting, which meant it could have been directed at Millie, not Sally at all.

  ‘Shit,’ she hissed. ‘Call Nial.’

  ‘What?’ she said numbly. ‘Sorry?’


  ‘Just do it. Do it now.’

  Shakily Sally scrolled through her contacts. She found the number and dialled.

  ‘Put it on speaker.’

  She did, and the two women sat, heads together, looking at the display flashing. After four rings the call connected.

  There was a muffled noise at the other end. Then, clearly, someone breathing. A word, so slurred it was impossible to hear it. A male voice.

  ‘Nial?’ Sally whispered, horrified. ‘Nial?’

  More breathing. A noise. Like something soft being banged against glass. Then the phone went dead. Sally turned her eyes to her sister.

  ‘What was that noise?’ she murmured, her eyes watering with fear. ‘What the hell was that noise?’

  ‘Shit.’ Zoë slammed her hands on the dashboard. Her head dropped back against the seat. ‘Jesus, shit, I can’t believe this is happening.’ She turned in her seat and peered back up the track towards the main road. Gloucester was a good forty miles away. Ben wouldn’t be here for at least an hour. ‘OK. Let’s think.’ No way was she calling the police. She could just see Kelvin being hauled off by some Support Group officers and yelling out everything he knew about her and about Sally’s connection to Goldrab. She felt in her pockets. She’d left her expandable ASP baton in her car. All she had, tucked into her leather jacket, was the little CS gas spray canister issued to all officers. ‘Where do the family keep their tools?’

  But the shock had hit Sally. Her face was white and she had started to shake. ‘It means Kelvin’s got them,’ she said, her voice almost lapsing into hysteria. ‘Both of them.’

  ‘No.’ Zoë shook her head. ‘It doesn’t mean that at all.’

  ‘Yes, it does. You know it does. Millie’s not answering her phone. He’s done something to her. Call the police.’

  ‘Sally.’ She grabbed her sister’s arm. ‘Keep it together. You know why I’m not calling the police. Ben’s on his way and we can do this. We can.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ She put her face in her hands. ‘Oh, God, I can’t.’

  ‘We can. You’ve got to listen. OK? We need tools. Where do I look?’

  ‘There’s a garage, but …’ She waved vaguely behind her. ‘In the boot. There’ll be something in there. Oh God, he’s going to kill her.’

  Zoë got out of the car. What warmth had accumulated during the day now radiated up into the open sky, as if it wanted to reach the stars. It was freezing. Really and truly freezing. She left the car door wide open and went silently to the back, throwing cautious glances at the lights of the Sweetmans’ house shining through the trees. There wasn’t a sound. All she could hear in this lonely farm land was the vague hum of cars going by on the distant road. But what kept reverberating in her ears was the noise in the background of that phone call. Thud thud thud. What the hell had that been? She went through the contents of the boot quickly. A few DIY tools – a ball-pein hammer, a pair of long-handled shears and a chisel. A small axe.

  ‘Here.’ She grabbed the hammer for herself and carried the axe back to Sally, who took it dumbly, staring down at it as if she had no idea where it had come from or how it had got there.

  ‘Call me on your phone. On my work number.’

  She did as she was told, trembling. Zoë scooped the work phone out of her pocket and when it began to ring hit the Accept call button. ‘Don’t end the call, just leave the line open. That’s how we’re going to communicate.’ She pushed the phone back into the pocket of her gilet. ‘Now listen to me. Concentrate. Absolutely no chance Isabelle’s back? Or her husband?’

  ‘No. He’s in Dubai and she’s – I don’t know. I don’t know, I can’t remember, but miles away.’

  ‘Where’s the main living area?’

  ‘In the back. The kitchen.’

  ‘What’s on the next floor?’

  ‘I d-don’t know. Four bedrooms, I think. The front one on the left is Nial’s and that’s Sophie’s on the right. There’s a bathroom in between them.’ She looked woodenly at the axe and at the phone in her hand. Still linked to Zoë’s. ‘What’s going to happen, Zoë? What’re we going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to go into the house. We keep the line open. Don’t, whatever you do, speak to me. No matter what. But do listen. If it sounds like I’m in trouble, all bets are off. Kill this call and get straight on to the police. It’s the only way – we’ll deal with the fallout later.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’ Sally shook her head. Her teeth were chattering loudly. ‘Oh Christ oh Christ oh Christ.’

  44

  Over her two years in uniform, and then on occasion in CID, Zoë had done hundreds of searches, not knowing what to expect. She’d lost count of the stairwells she’d crept down, CS gas at the ready, the car boots she’d clicked open, not knowing what might explode out at her. She’d always been rock steady. Not even a waver. Even when a crack addict in St Jude’s had jumped out at her in a multi-storey car park waving a syringe in her face and screaming about the devil and Jesus and police cunts and what does your pussy smell like, beeatch? it hadn’t wobbled her. Tonight, though, she felt as if she was coming face to face with God. Or with the devil. As if the whole sky was pressing down on her, squeezing the air out of her lungs.

  The first thing she noticed when she got close to the house was that the front door was open. Just a crack, a tiny slice of the hall carpet visible. She dropped to a crouch with her back to the front wall. Somehow she’d pictured the house locked and shuttered, not open, like an invitation. She kept thinking of that awful sound, like meat being slapped against a wall.

  Tentatively she craned her neck and peered round the door. She could see an umbrella stand, a table. She reached out and pushed the door open. It swung back on its hinges. The hallway was empty. Nothing moved inside. The only noise was the electronic hum of a fridge from the last doorway on the right, where Sally had said the kitchen was.

  She hooked out the phone and whispered into it, ‘Don’t answer this, Sally. I’m at the front door, can’t hear anything inside. I’m going to go in now. I’ll be on the ground floor. Start counting slowly. I’ll speak to you again before you get to three hundred. If I don’t, make that call.’

  She returned the phone to her pocket, straightened and stood in the doorway. Trying to put height and weight into her shoulders. It wasn’t how you should enter premises, but police school and uniform seemed a lifetime ago and she had to struggle to recall the routine. She held the CS gas at arm’s length and took two steps into the hallway. Waited. Took two more. She stood at the door to the living room, put her head round it, gave it a quick glance, snapped her head back. Nothing. Just a lot of chairs and tables sitting in a silent circle, as if they were having a quiet conversation in the absence of their owners. Then the music room – empty too.

  She closed the doors – that much she did recall from training: close the rooms you’ve cleared – and continued down the hallway, checking, throwing switches, closing doors. By the time she got to the back of the house the ground floor was blazing with light. She lifted the phone to her mouth. ‘Nothing so far,’ she murmured. ‘I’m going upstairs. Start counting again.’

  The stairs creaked as she climbed, even though she tried to place her feet on the edges, where the boards were supported. This was an old house – it wasn’t neat and painted and scrubbed and nailed down. It had nicks and bumps and the bruises of a lifetime. On the landing, a paper Chinese lantern hanging from the ceiling moved slowly from side to side as she disturbed the air. There were six doors. She worked through them methodically, pushing the ones that were nearly closed with her toe, holding up the CS gas as they swung open. In each one she left the light burning, the door closed. It wasn’t until she came to the last bedroom, Nial’s, that she found any sign of Millie. There, heaped on the bed, were a pair of girl’s trainers and a sweater with Millie’s name stitched on the label inside. She picked it up and went back downstairs.

  The kitchen was the sort of middle-class kitchen you saw a lot in Bath,
with cabinets painted a dull leaden green and lots of garden flowers in plain, clouded-glass bottles on every window-sill. Double doors led outside to a garden that was invisible behind the reflection of the room. On the bleached oak island in the middle sat two school rucksacks, the name ‘Kingsmead’ on them. A tin marked ‘Cakes’ was open, a solitary cupcake inside, and there were two coffee cups in the sink. The tap dripped on them. A plinking punctuation to the silence.

  ‘You can come in now,’ she said, into her phone. ‘No one here.’

  She went to the table, where two opened cans of Stella Artois sat. She lifted one and shook it. Beer sloshed around on the inside. The drinks had just been left. Like the meals on the Mary Celeste. She saw a small door by the fridge, and when she tapped it with her foot it opened to reveal a utility room, with a sink, a washing-machine and the usual clutter – mops and buckets in the corner, a pair of secateurs on a hook on the wall. The door that led out of the room to the back caught her attention. It was ajar.

  She went to it and pushed it open. There was a step down on to a stone patio and beyond it a wide black expanse that must be the lawn. It was surrounded by trees, the sky blocked by their huge inky crowns, the branches moving almost imperceptibly against the blue clouds. She stood for a moment in the doorway, listening to the night. The gentle shush-shush of the leaves. The plink-plink of the tap dripping behind her.

  This house wasn’t far from Pollock’s Farm – in fact, the garden must back right on to it. She’d been called out here enough times to know. The last time had been in a thick autumn mist, the day old man Pollock’s body had been hauled out by men who’d been wearing protective suits, he was so decayed. She’d vowed never to come back to that godforsaken place. It wasn’t somewhere you’d want to be at any time, let alone on a night like tonight.