Hanging Hill

by Mo Hayder

  She took long, calming breaths. Began working it all out. But the travel and the last few sleepless nights got the better of her. Within five minutes she was asleep.

  She dreamed of the room again, the nursery with the snow falling outside. Except this time she was on the floor, feeling very small and very scared and, terrifyingly, Sally was standing above her. She was holding the broken hand over Zoë. It was wrecked, with bones sticking out at all angles, and the blood dripped out of it, rolling in fat plops on to Zoë’s face.

  She pushed her legs out, scrambling away from Sally, flipping herself over and stumbling for the door. Sally followed close behind, her hand raised. ‘No!’ she was crying. ‘Don’t go – don’t go!’

  But Zoë was out of the door, tumbling down the stairs, breaking into a run, pelting through the streets. It was Bristol, she realized. St Paul’s. Ahead she saw a doorway, a red light coming from it, a hand beckoning her. Hurry up, someone yelled. Hurry up! This is the way through. In here! And then, suddenly, she was standing on a stage, an audience looking expectantly up at her. In the front row were her parents, her first-form teacher and the superintendent. Do something, shouted the superintendant. Do something good. The lighting man frowned from the box at her, and at the back the maintenance man leaned on his broom, grinning up at her. Get on with it, someone yelled. Do something good. Someone was pushing her from behind. When she turned she saw David Goldrab, as a young man, London Tarn.

  Zoë, he said. Lovely to see you again, Zoë!

  She woke in the hotel room, her hands clutching the sides of the bed, her eyes wide. Her head was aching. She breathed in and out, in and out, staring at the headlights racing to and fro across the wall. After a while she rolled over. The display on the bedside table said 11:09. She groped for her phone – the signal was strong, but no one in that time had tried to call her or text. She wondered who she’d been hoping for. Ben? It was eleven o’clock. He and Debbie would be in bed, maybe sharing a nightcap or cocoa. Or something else.

  Debbie. Clean, clean, clean.

  She put the phone into her pocket, swung her legs off the bed, went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Then she straightened and considered her reflection. ‘Damn it,’ she hissed. ‘Damn it and fuck it to all hell.’

  She knew what she was going to do. She was going to go back to Mooney’s.

  23

  ‘Millie, go to bed.’ A hundred miles to the west, Sally sat at the kitchen table in Peppercorn Cottage, watching her daughter rummage in the fridge for a late-night snack. ‘You’ve got school in the morning. Go on. It’s late.’

  ‘Jesus.’ She gave her mother a disdainful look. ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re so messing with my head.’

  ‘I’m only asking you to go to bed.’

  ‘But you’re acting totally weird.’ She turned from the fridge with a carton of milk and gave the wine glass next to Sally’s elbow an accusatory nod. ‘And you’ve drunk tons. I mean tons.’

  Sally put a hand protectively over the glass. It was true: she’d drunk the whole bottle and it hadn’t changed a thing. Not a thing. Her head was still hard and taut, her heart racing. ‘Just pour a glass of milk,’ she said, in a controlled voice, ‘and take it to bed.’

  ‘And how come all the doors are locked? It’s like being in a prison. I mean, it’s not like he’s going to find us all the way out here, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘He doesn’t know where I live.’

  ‘Who doesn’t know where you live?’

  Millie blinked, as if she wasn’t quite sure whether she’d heard Sally right. ‘Jake, of course. You’ve paid him now. He’ll leave me alone.’

  Sally didn’t answer. The muscles under her ribs were aching, she’d been so scared all day. It was an effort to hold the panic locked inside. After a while she pushed the chair back and went to the pantry for another bottle of Steve’s wine. ‘Just pour the milk. Take it to your room. And leave the windows closed. It’s going to rain tonight.’

  Millie banged around the kitchen, getting a glass, pouring the milk. She slammed the carton down on the worktop and disappeared. Sally stood motionless in the pantry, listening to her clump off down the corridor, and slam her bedroom door. She took a breath, rested her head against the wall, and counted to ten.

  It was nearly nine hours since Steve’s plane had taken off in Bristol. Nine hours and it seemed like nine years. Nine centuries. Wearily, she pushed herself away from the door, uncorked the wine, carried it to the table and filled her glass. She sat down and checked the display on her mobile. Nothing. He’d be landing in fifty minutes. She’d left several messages on his voicemail. If he switched on his phone before he got into Immigration he’d get them all within the hour. He’d know something was wrong. She raised her eyes to the window, the lighted kitchen reflected in the dark panes. All the surfaces and cupboards and her own face, white as a moon, in the middle of it. Earlier, after picking up Millie from school, she’d gone round the house and locked all the doors and windows, closed all the curtains. But then the idea that someone could be standing unseen outside one of the windows had crept into her head and eventually she’d thrown the curtains open again. When it came to the choice of being watched or not being able to see what was happening outside, she’d chosen being watched.

  Watched …

  She’d been sure, so sure, that night that no one could be watching her and Steve in the garden. So how could it be? How could it be? What had she overlooked?

  She pulled the laptop towards her and opened Google. When Google Earth had first come out she and Millie used to spend hours looking at it – zooming in on friends’ houses, going into street view and taking virtual walks down streets they knew. Streets they didn’t know. Streets they might never visit. Now she zoomed it in on Peppercorn. The familiar double-pitched roof of the garage, the grey gables – three at back and front – the stone chimney and the thatch. The photo had been taken in midsummer and the trees were as fluffy and fat as dandelion clocks, casting short, puffy shadows on the lawn. She traced her finger across the screen in a huge circle around the cottage. There was nothing, no overlooking buildings. She zoomed the image out and still there was nothing. Just the familiar planting lines through the crops in the neighbouring fields.

  She pushed the computer away and sat for a while, a finger on her lips, thinking. She got up, switched off the light and went to stand at the window. There was nothing out there. No movement or change. Only the distant twinkle of cars on the motorway and the faint grey of the moon behind the clouds. She took off her shoes and padded silently down the corridor, into Millie’s room. She was asleep in bed, her breath coming evenly in and out, so she went back to the hallway, put on her wellingtons and a duffel coat and found the big, high-powered torch that Steve had insisted on buying her from Maplins, because he said it was craziness her being out in the middle of nowhere when there were power cuts all the time. Steve. God, she wished he was here now.

  Silently she let herself out of the back door. It was cool – very cool, almost cold after the unseasonable heat of the day. She stood for a moment looking around at the familiar surroundings, the great line of silver birch on the north perimeter, the patch of wood to the east, the top garden where a kiwi tree grew, its fruit hard and bitter. Her car was parked at the place she and Steve had stood six nights ago, shaking and sick with what they had done.

  She locked the door behind her and went to the car. She stood with her back to it and slowly, slowly, scanned the horizon. Nothing. She moved around the car and did the same on the other side. There was nothing there. No building or place someone could have stood and watched. She crossed the lawn to the flowerbed where she’d made the bonfire yesterday. The earth was still grey and luminous with the ash and she could smell the faintest trace of carbonized wood in the air. She hefted up the huge torch, switched it on and aimed the beam into the trees. She’d never used the light before and it was so p
owerful she could make out details hundreds of yards away. If it found glass, a window-pane she’d overlooked, it would flash back at her. She swept the torch across the fields, going in a wide circle up the side of the cottage, the garage, bumping over the hedgerows. She could see individual leaves and branches in the forest, the trees bending and whispering. In the copse at the top of the property the beam glanced across twin green spots. Eyes looking at her steadily. She came to a halt, her heart thudding. The eyes moved slightly, ducked a little, turned. It was just a deer, startled in the middle of grazing.

  Sally let out all her breath and lowered the torch. There was nothing – no building, no concealed layby or bird hide or tree-house or farm building. Nowhere someone could have hidden to watch what they’d done. And then something occurred to her. Something that should have been clear all along if she’d only been thinking straight. The car. Whoever had sent the message had chosen to put it in the car when it was parked at Steve’s. What did that mean? Why hadn’t they come to Peppercorn? Why go to the trouble of following her to Steve’s if …

  Of course. She switched off the torch, went fast across the lawn to the cottage. Unlocked the front door and, without taking off her wellingtons or switching on the lights, went into the kitchen and opened the laptop. The screen came to life – all the thick midsummer fields green and vibrant with light. She zoomed out, clawed the image to the left, moving north, pausing when she came to the faint, blurred line of the Caterpillar opposite Hanging Hill.

  ‘There,’ she breathed, sinking into her chair. ‘There.’

  The photograph had been taken in, she guessed, late June. A pinkish floating haze of poppies hung over the fields. Among them, Lightpil House – a huge yellow slash on the green, its fountains and terraces reflecting the sun. To its north the almost triangular wedge of the parking space where David Goldrab had died. To its south, near the perimeter, half hidden by towering poplars, the roof of a cottage.

  Whoever had left the note knew nothing about Peppercorn Cottage: they’d seen her at David’s. She’d thought they couldn’t be overlooked where the killing happened, but she hadn’t thought about the gardens of the houses at the top of Lightpil Lane. The bottom of the land attached to the cottage on the screen stretched along the northern wall of Lightpil House and came out at the bottom in a spoon shape, bordered by a low hedge. If someone had been standing there at the right time, if they had looked across the dip in the land …

  The phone rang in her pocket, making her jump. She snatched it out with trembling hands.

  ‘Steve. Steve?’

  ‘Christ, Sally, what the hell’s going on?’

  ‘It’s all gone wrong. I told you it would go wrong and it has.’

  ‘OK, OK, calm down. Now, first of all, we’re speaking on an international line. You know what I mean by that – can you hear it humming?’

  She took deep breaths, still staring at the cottage roof. ‘Yes,’ she said shakily, thinking of those vast domed listening stations. And Cheltenham GCHQ not far from here. Did phone calls really get monitored? Maybe in Steve’s job they did. ‘I think I know what you mean.’

  ‘Explain, carefully, what’s happened.’

  She licked her lips. ‘I got a message when I got back into the car. The lipstick I leaned on – it was a message. It said—’ She swallowed. ‘It said I wouldn’t get away with it.’

  There was a long silence at the end of the line as Steve digested this. ‘Right,’ he said, sounding as if he wasn’t just thousands of miles away but millions. In a different galaxy. ‘Right.’

  ‘But if anyone has … you know, witnessed anything, it wasn’t here at Pepp— at my place, so I don’t think they know where I am. It must have been at the …’ She hesitated. ‘The first place. I think they must have seen my car – and then they saw it outside your place and planted the message. I’ve looked at Google Earth and I think I know where they were standing …’

  ‘OK. I’m coming straight back. I’m not even going to leave the airport – I’ll just turn right around and get the first flight back. OK?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. You can’t.’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t want you to.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I mean it. I’m going to be OK.’

  ‘Well, I don’t care what you say, I’m coming back.’

  ‘No.’ This time her voice was so firm Steve went silent. ‘I really, really have to do this on my own. And, Steve, please don’t ask again.’

  24

  The air was colder now that it was past midnight, and the roads were almost empty. Gliding into London on the overpasses to the west was like a magic-carpet ride over an enchanted city. All the buildings were lit up like palaces. The Ark on Zoë’s right, bulging out over the road, the blue-tiled onion dome of a mosque on her left. She had to get into a single-lane queue for a while to go past a traffic stop in Paddington, with two police cars pulled over, their lights flashing, but apart from that nothing delayed her and she sailed on to Finchley.

  She stopped the bike, cut the engine and stood on tiptoe next to the brick wall at the end of the road. The Mooneys’ house blazed with light. Every window seemed to be open, voices and music floating out through the night. The music was so loud she imagined she could feel it in her feet. On the driveway someone was revving a motorbike engine. She was surprised the cops weren’t there because the neighbours couldn’t be putting up with this, but when she looked around at the silent houses, one or two with coach lamps on, the gates all locked, it occurred to her that people didn’t live there. It was one of those streets where the owners lived in Dubai or Hong Kong and only kept a London residence to impress business colleagues. It could be that the Mooneys’ was the only occupied house in the street. No wonder Jason was having a party.

  Cautiously she got on the bike again and started it. She drove slowly down the road, keeping her face forward, her eyes left. The gates to the Mooneys’ house stood open and seven large West Coast choppers were parked on the brick driveway. Behind them in the garage, lit like a tableau in a nativity scene, two men in sleeveless T-shirts stood drinking beer from cans and examining Jason’s Harley. They didn’t stop talking as she went by but one of the men lifted his head and followed her progress until she was out of sight.

  She got a hundred yards down the road and swung the Shovelhead into a U-turn, came back to the house and let it cruise into the driveway alongside all the choppers. She parked near the hosepipe, hooked up to the front wall as obvious as could be, then swung her leg off and wandered into the garage, tugging at her helmet.

  ‘All right?’ said the bigger of the T-shirts. ‘OK there?’

  ‘Guess.’ She ran her fingers wearily through her hair and walked past them. They didn’t stop her, so she continued on through the door she’d gone through earlier and into the house. Everything inside was different. Dominic Mooney’s lifestyle was being systematically trashed. Every piece of furniture was draped with bike leathers and helmets. The kitchen was full of people drinking beer; girls, with barbed-wire tats on their arms and stilettos under their skinny jeans, were perched on the counters. Someone else was using one of Mrs Mooney’s wooden spoons to beat out an imaginary drum track. Zoë wandered around, peering into rooms, counting the nose rings and the forehead studs and the number of feet in oily boots resting on the Mooneys’ nice sofas. Her parents hadn’t thrown a single party for her – not after what she’d done to Sally. Certainly they’d never have trusted her alone in the house while they were away.

  Jason she found in a bathroom on the first floor, lying fully dressed in the bath with a tin of Gaymer’s in one hand and an iPhone in the other, his head lolling on his shoulder, his mouth open. He was completely wasted.

  ‘Hello, Jason.’

  His eyes flew open. He shot forward in the bath, splashing cider everywhere. When he saw who it was he gathered himself, made a vague attempt to wipe the cider away. Pushed his hair off his fac
e. ‘Hello,’ he said, in a wavering voice. ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘I had to. I dropped the pipe grips in the garage.’

  ‘I know. I found them.’

  ‘Didn’t know if I’d be welcome.’

  He looked at her as if she perplexed him. ‘What did you want? What were you doing, sneaking around our back garden?’

  ‘I needed a pee, Jason. That was why I was round the back. And I’m sorry.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ he muttered, his mouth moving as if he was testing this excuse. Too pissed, though, to realize she could have just used the loo in the house, where she’d washed her hands. He shrugged. ‘Yeah – well, that’s cool, I s’pose.’

  ‘But, Jason, peeing on your mum’s roses kind of pales into insignificance when you look at the people down there drinking beer in your kitchen.’

  Jason stared up at her. ‘What are they doing? I told them a couple of beers and then it was goodbye.’

  ‘A couple of beers … Jason? Do you know how many people are down there?’

  ‘Five?’

  ‘Five? Try fifty.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Serious? Uh, ye-es. I mean serious to the point of you’d better think hard about halls of residence and getting a job to make it through your smarty-pants science degree. Because I don’t know any mummy and daddy sainted enough to ignore this mess. Have you looked downstairs? Seen the cigarette burns on the carpet?’

  ‘Burns? Shit.’ He scrambled out of the bath. ‘Did they get the guest towels?’

  ‘The guest towels are the least of your worries. It’s like happy hour at Wetherspoon’s.’

  Jason stood for a moment, his legs in their skinny jeans doing a little panicked dance. He was drenched with cider. ‘Is it that bad?’ He put his hands up to his face, gave her a look like that Munch painting you saw everywhere. The Scream. Horrified. Truly horrified. ‘What am I going to do? I didn’t ask them. I didn’t.’