Hanging Hill

by Mo Hayder

  ‘OK. Call down. Tell them not to bother. I’ve got to drive through Hanging Hill in about twenty minutes. I’ll save them the hassle.’

  ‘You’re not getting all helpful on us, are you?’

  ‘Helpful? Christ, no.’ She patted her pockets, looking for her keys. ‘Like I said, I just happen to be going that way.’

  6

  The West Country got the first of the weather from the Atlantic. It got the first of the winds and the first of the Gulf Stream. Its job was to tame the systems for the rest of the country, to filter them out before they passed over to the powerful cities in the east. But the west had got used to waiting until last for the sun. Dawn took its time over Russia, over the Continent, creeping across France and over the ferries and small boats of the Channel, moving inland over London with its glass towers and steel buildings grazing the underside of the sky. By the time daylight found Bath it was weary of the land and anxious for the blue of the Atlantic. Evenings in Peppercorn Cottage were like fiestas, flame-coloured and long, but mornings seemed tired, half-hearted and flat, as if the light was only there because it had nowhere better to be.

  That Monday morning it was misty. Millie had gone to school and Sally and Steve had breakfast at the kitchen table, beside the window. Afterwards they sat there, not talking, just staring out at the garden and fields. On the table between them was an empty cafetière and an untouched plate of croissants. Neither of them had much appetite – since Thursday they’d both felt tired, constantly tired. Sally had taken Friday off work and Steve had postponed his trip to Seattle. It seemed neither of them had the energy for anything.

  A deer appeared outside, nosing the hedge at the bottom of the garden, its outline faint and blurred in the morning mist. Neither Sally nor Steve moved, but maybe it sensed them there – or maybe it could smell the traces of David Goldrab, reduced to ten knotted, bulging carrier bags – because, without warning, it startled, turned to look directly at the window, then bounded away.

  Sally got to her feet and went to the Welsh dresser. She took a small key from her pocket, unlocked a drawer and took out a tin, which she opened and carried to the table. It contained an assortment of objects: some photos; David Goldrab’s signet ring with the four diamonds and the emerald – one diamond for every million he’d made in profit, the emerald for when he’d hit five million; the keys to his house, bristling with electronic fobs, two solid gold dice hanging from the ring; and five teeth. Steve had chosen the ones that were the most distinctive and had been the most visible in the photos: two incisors, which were filled with white composite, and another three, all molars, with gold fillings across the crowns. Their fine sharp roots were dull and brown with blood. ‘I can’t keep these things here any longer. You never know, with Millie in the house.’

  ‘I’ll find somewhere to hide them. Somewhere safe.’

  ‘Are we … going ahead? You know, with—’ She bit her tongue. She’d nearly said Mooney. ‘With the people in London.’

  ‘I’m seeing them tomorrow. Then it will all be sorted.’ He looked at the date on his watch. ‘I was supposed to be coming home from America today.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m still going to have to make that trip. And soon. I’ve postponed it once, but I can’t again. I’ve got to keep going on with my life. We both do. We have to behave as if it never happened.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sally nodded. ‘I know that too. It’s OK.’ She pushed her chair back, got to her feet and began pulling on the HomeMaids tabard. When David had hired her, he’d asked the agency to adjust the days she and the Polish girls went in. Today was the day the management had chosen. There had been nothing in the news about David Goldrab, so she knew she had to go along to Lightpil House as if nothing had happened. If she cancelled, or did anything out of the ordinary, the police would be bound to turn their attention to her. The slight bruise on her cheek left from David pushing her into the boot lid had already disappeared. Really, there was no excuse now. ‘You go to America. I’ll be OK.’

  ‘Sally?’

  She looked up. ‘What?’

  ‘You know it’s all going to work itself out?’ In the morning light Steve’s face was older. His beard coming through made him look as if he’d lived a hard life for many years. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You made the best of a bad situation. And there isn’t going to be some sort of divine retribution for it. You won’t get punished. Do you believe me?’

  She closed her eyes. Then opened them slowly. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’

  7

  The moment Zoë crested the horizon on the lane at Lightpil House she knew Jacqui had been right and that something along the line had changed seriously for the London boy who’d come out west in the 1990s. The house on the other side of the wall looked more like a Mediterranean palace than anything else, with its white walls and balustraded terrace basking in the sun. David Goldrab must have discovered someone in Bath’s Planning Department on his porn mailing list to have got Lightpil House through the application. It was horrific. Truly horrific.

  She slowed about twenty yards from the front gates, pulled the Mondeo into a small layby and studied her reflection in the mirror on the sun visor. If he was at home he would never recognize her after all these years. But he might recall the name Zoë Benedict. In her pocket she had her own police warrant card, but there was a second one too, with the name Evie Nichols on it. She’d found it years ago, kicked under a table at a riotous police party. She should have done the right thing and given it back, but she hadn’t: she’d kept it all these years, sure one day it would come in handy. Anyway, she told herself, she was fairly sure she wasn’t going to need it. If phone calls were going unanswered Goldrab probably wasn’t there. Even so, she was shaking as she nosed the Mondeo forward to the gate, leaned out and pressed the buzzer.

  No one answered. She waited two minutes, then rang again. When still no one answered, she parked the car on the side of the lane and wandered along the perimeter fence until she found a gap in the hedge. She squeezed through, emerging in the garden, and stood on the lawn, brushing off her clothes, looking up at the house with its enormous windows and glass atrium. Lorne, she thought, did you ever stand in this garden? Or on that patio? Or behind one of those windows? Wouldn’t it be something if your life turned out to have this in common with mine, as well as all the rest?

  She went silently up the steps on to the huge sandstone terrace, and wandered along the back of the house, peering into the two-storey conservatory at the tall palms and the wicker furniture. The place was flooded with sunlight. She put a hand against the window to shade her eyes, and saw the filaments of the halogen lamps all lit, a newspaper discarded on one of the cushions. A little bud of curiosity opened in her. She went to the glass door and tried it. It was unlocked. She put her head inside, looking up at the glass ceiling, waiting for the familiar beep-beep-beep of an alarm system. But there was nothing.

  ‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Anyone home?’

  Silence. She sniffed. The air was stale and the house was hot, as if the heating had been left on. There was condensation on the ceiling panes of the atrium. Missing, huh? Missing? She ferreted around in her pockets and found a pair of latex gloves. Pulled them on and stepped inside, looking around at the huge space. Amazing, she thought. All this because people liked to watch other people having sex. She went into the huge kitchen and looked at all the gilt and marble and downlighting. Two glasses sat on the kitchen table, one half full of champagne. There was a half-eaten sandwich on a plate next to the fridge, going hard and grey. In the microwave oven she found a plate of pasta, also dried up and congealed. She opened the fridge and saw a bottle of champagne with no cork in it. She sifted through the other things in there – bottles of vitamins, cartons of orange juice, packets of bacon and sausages. There was a marble cheeseboard with four wedges of cheese on it, covered with clingfilm. She picked up a bag of salad and checked the date: 15 May. Yest
erday.

  ‘Hello?’ She stood in the hallway and called up the stairs. ‘Mr Goldrab?’

  No answer. She went up the marble staircase, her footsteps echoing round the hall, and checked all along the first floor, both wings of the house, opening doors and peering into rooms that looked as if they’d never been set foot in since the day the house was finished. There was a gym, a home cinema, a clawed bath with a tap in the shape of a swan, and a four-poster bed in one room that could have slept ten people. No David Goldrab. Back on the landing she noticed a glass case standing open, a picture of a night safari in the back of it. Two aluminium arms were mounted in the picture. It was a display cabinet. Empty. Zoë experimentally opened and closed the glass door, looking at the lock, then at the stand. Whatever was missing from it was important.

  She searched downstairs and still found no sign of him. Overlooking the back garden, an office was filled with banks of computers and DVD players – all black, red lights blinking from their shiny surfaces. A bespoke bookcase made of a reddish wood, maybe walnut, lined one wall, full of photos. There were two computers, each with a light on. When she touched the mouse of the first, the screen came to life. A spreadsheet with figures entered in three columns. The second PC also sprang to life with a quick nudge. This one showed an array of video icons. She peered at the titles: Bukkake in Gateshead; Bukkake in Mayfair. Bukkake – like Jacqui had said. Christ, she thought. Lorne, if I see your face in any of these, I promise I’ll find a way to keep it secret.

  She closed the blinds, sat down in the swivel chair, and began opening files, watching them with her elbows planted on the desk, her mouth tight. Jacqui had been right about how nasty bukkake was. None of it actually broke any laws that she could think of, but it was pretty disgusting nonetheless, and Zoë had a high threshold for things like this. She truly, truly hoped she wasn’t going to see Lorne staring back at her from the floor of one of these bear-pits.

  She was concentrating so hard on the faces of the girls that it wasn’t until the third video that she recognized the male star of the show. Jake the Peg. Jake the Peg! God, she thought, she could be as dumb as a bag of hammers sometimes. The whole station had been wondering how Jake had sharpened up his act lately – knowing he had to be up to something more than just dealing to the schoolkids. But a porn star? Old Peggie? No one had guessed that one. And no one would have guessed how he’d got his nickname. She gave a small, dry laugh. ‘So, Peggie,’ she murmured, looking at the screen, ‘that’s your secret.’ Christ, the world was a screwy place.

  Zoë spent two hours going through the hard drives with a fine-tooth comb and by the end of it she was about 99.9 per cent sure Lorne wasn’t in the videos. The faces of one or two actresses who’d made brief appearances weren’t completely distinct. She made notes of the frames they appeared in. The girls weren’t blonde, like Lorne, but she could have been wearing a wig. When someone from HQ came over to pick up the computers Zoë’d ask for those faces to be enhanced. She pushed the keyboard away and gave the swivel chair a push with her foot, making it twirl. The bookcases sped by, then the window, with a view over the lawns, the swimming-pool and the trees outside. All the DVDs and the computers.

  She brought the chair to a stop. Folded her arms and sat there, considering this situation. Half-eaten food? A computer like this left on standby with all the sensitive shit on it? Doors unlocked? Lights on and phone calls not answered? She didn’t know, just didn’t know, but if it wasn’t too good to be true, just too damned convenient for words, then the cop in Zoë would have guessed that Mr Goldrab, the only man who could link her back to that Bristol club, was no longer alive.

  8

  Even though their hours at David’s had been cut, the Polish girls were in a good mood that morning. Marysieńka was going on holiday with her bus driver boyfriend next week, and Danuta had met a nice Englishman in Back to Mine, a nightclub in the centre of Bath. He was tall and he had plenty of … She rubbed her fingers together. ‘If you got that,’ she told Sally, on the back seat, ‘then you don’t gotta have that.’ She held her hands apart about nine inches, then shortened the distance to two inches. ‘It don’t matter.’ Next to her Marysieńka let out a howl of laughter and banged the steering-wheel with the palm of her hand. ‘It really don’t matter!’ She laughed. ‘Don’t matter if you got a cocktail sausage down there.’

  The sun was high in the sky when they arrived at Lightpil House. They stopped the little pink Smart car in the gravel car park at the foot of the estate. Sally couldn’t take her eyes off the ground. But there was no blood left, no stain. Nothing. She got out and gazed up at the house. The place seemed much quieter than usual but, of course, that was because she knew. She followed the other women up the path. Danuta had taken off her high heels and put them in her cleaning kit so she could walk barefoot. Everywhere flowers were coming out – the fluffy purple balls of allium, and already some bleeding hearts, their white drooping flowers like little bells. You’d never guess what had happened here. It would be the last thing you’d picture.

  The utility-room door stood open, as it often did. They walked in, putting down their cleaning kits. The place was exactly as Sally had left it. Maybe cobwebs were already forming, growing on the ornate wall lamps, maybe dust was settling on the surfaces, the computers and huge TVs, but it all looked exactly the way it had been. The champagne glasses were still on the table where David and Jake had sat drinking.

  ‘No list,’ Danuta said, lifting a couple of newspapers and checking under them. ‘Bloody fat man, you didn’t leave a list.’

  ‘Dum-de-dum-de-dah,’ Marysieńka hummed. She went to the doorway and shouted into the hall, ‘Mr Goldrab?’

  Silence.

  ‘Mr Goldrab?’ She wandered to the bottom of the stairs, pulling on her rubber gloves, looking up to the landing. ‘You there?’ She waited a moment. When there was no answer she wandered back into the kitchen, shrugging. ‘Not here.’

  She flicked on the coffee-maker, opened the fridge, got out some milk and filled the frother while Danuta rummaged for mugs. Sally put her kit down and made a play of pulling things out, getting ready for a job that wasn’t going to happen. She was concentrating so hard on making it look natural that it took her a moment to realize the girls had gone quiet. They had stopped what they were doing and were standing, hands frozen on milk bottles and coffee cups, their faces turned to the door.

  When she turned she saw why. A woman was standing in the doorway. Very tall, dressed in jeans, her red hair loose across her shoulders, a police card thrust out at arm’s length. Sally stared at her, her heart doing a low, disorienting swoop in her chest.

  There was a moment’s silence. Then the woman lowered the card with a frown. ‘Sally?’ she said. ‘Sally?’

  9

  ‘Sally Cassidy.’ Zoë wrote the name. She’d interviewed both the Polish girls already and let them go. Now she and Sally were in her office, the door closed. ‘I’m using your married name.’

  ‘I’m not married any more.’

  ‘No.’ Zoë raised her head and studied her. Sally sat on the other side of the desk, her hands in her lap. She had her hair tied back, no makeup on, and she was wearing a little pink tabard with ‘HomeMaids’ emblazoned on it. In front of her was a Lucozade bottle one of the Polish girls had given her for the shock because she was taking it badly, Goldrab going missing. Her face was pale under the freckles, and her lips had a bluish tinge. ‘But I’ll still use it. Because I shouldn’t be interviewing you, you being my sister.’

  ‘OK. I understand.’

  Zoë put a line under the name. Then another. This was weird. So weird. ‘Sally,’ she said, ‘how long has it been now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Years. Must be.’

  ‘Must be.’

  ‘Yes. Well.’ She tapped her pen on the desk. ‘We don’t have to take all day about this. I’ll ask you the same questions I asked Danuta and Marysieńka. Then you can go.’

  ‘My a
nswers won’t be the same.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’ve been working for David privately. We had an arrangement.’

  ‘An arrangement?’

  ‘I didn’t tell the girls and I didn’t tell the agency, but yes. I worked for him and he was paying me direct.’

  ‘The girls said he cut their hours recently – changed their day?’

  ‘Yes, because I’d started working for him.’ Sally linked her hands on the table. ‘He didn’t need them.’

  Zoë’s eyes went to the hands, to the little finger on the right, which was crooked. You had to know it was there – it was just the faintest deviation in the joint, making the finger turn in on itself. She dragged her eyes away, concentrated on her notes. It would be so easy to go back to that hand, back to the accident and the moment her life had changed. She tapped her biro harder on the desk. One, two, three. Snapped herself back to the interview. ‘When you say working, what were you doing exactly?’

  ‘He called me the housekeeper. I was cleaning, like before, but I was doing admin for him too. I’ve only done a few days so far.’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Over how many days?’

  Sally hesitated. ‘One. Just the one.’

  ‘One. You don’t seem sure about that.’

  ‘No, I am sure. Quite sure.’

  ‘What day was it?’

  ‘Last Tuesday. A week ago.’

  ‘Tuesday. You’re certain it was Tuesday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you haven’t been back since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you worked for his business?’

  ‘For the house. I was paying bills, hiring people to do jobs around the place.’

  ‘Lightpil House is huge. The gardens – he must have needed someone to maintain them?’