Hanging Hill

by Mo Hayder

  Kelvin’s footsteps were in the hallway; she heard him on the stairs, bellowing, ‘Bitch! Bitch!’

  Good. Coming upstairs would cost him more time. With the sleeve of her sweater pulled down over her hand, she punched out the remaining slivers of glass and pushed her feet through. Then her hips. She heard Kelvin in the room, shouting and swearing, but she was gone, over the railings of the balcony, slithering down until she was dangling underneath it.

  ‘Do it,’ she hissed, looking at the ground, which seemed a million miles from her feet. ‘Do it.’

  Through the broken window she saw him appear in the doorway, his face contorted with rage. She let go of the railings and dropped. She landed on the weed-cracked concrete, her ankle twisting painfully under her. She stumbled, her knees making awful cracking noises as they hit the ground. But she was OK. She pushed herself up and ran. Kelvin was yelling somewhere inside the house, throwing furniture around in his fury. She pictured a shotgun being chambered as she flung herself into the trees, heading aimlessly into the forest.

  The trees didn’t quite have their full summer growth on them, and she could see a long way ahead. She could see the zigzaggy green splash of lawns. Maybe the edge of the estate that neighboured Goldrab’s. She pushed her wobbly legs on, breathing through her swollen mouth, crashing through dead wood and leaves, waxy green carpets of wild garlic in the corners of her eyes. Eventually the wood gave out to a sweep of grass so clipped and green it could have been a golf course. Beyond it she saw a pale Cotswold chippings driveway and a spectacular stone mansion basking in the sun, with turrets and stone urns on the parapets. A Land Rover stood in the driveway. She ran to it and tugged at the doors – locked – continued, breathing hard now, past another car, past cold frames and a walled garden where white peonies and early roses grew, each neatly labelled. The front door had a huge old knocker – a Jacob Marley – and she hammered on it, the noise echoing through the house and out across the grounds. She glanced anxiously over her shoulder up the lawn. There was no sign of Kelvin in the trees.

  ‘Hello?’ She opened the letterbox and yelled through it. ‘Anyone home?’

  No answer. She limped along the front of the house, catching sight of tasselled curtains inside the leaded windows, her reflection moving across them – hair all over the place, her nose swollen to twice its normal size. She rounded the corner and made her way past dustbins, a pile of sawn logs, two cans of oil. She hammered on the back door, put her hand up to shade her eyes and peered through the windows. She saw an elegant painted kitchen, a central island, an Aga. No lights or sound. She went back to the corner of the house, and as she did she saw him. Just a blur in the trees, his red and black shirt a patch of moving colour – running down to the lawn with his arms out at his sides. She turned and began to head towards the front of the house, to the driveway that led to the road. Immediately she saw her mistake – she’d be in the open on the driveway. She hesitated. There was a wheelie bin next to one of the dustbins. She opened it and looked inside. It was almost empty – just one tied carrier bag of rubbish at the bottom – and it was solidly placed against the wall. It didn’t move as she swung in one leg, then the other, landing in the bottom, reaching above her head to pull the lid closed.

  It was dark and warm in the bin. She couldn’t hear anything outside, just the hot percussive in and out of her own panting bouncing off the plastic walls. She wiped the sweat off her forehead and carefully lifted the carrier bag to her knees, silently using her fingernails to slit a hole in the plastic. Inside were the remains of a kid’s packed lunch – a couple of squashed drinks packets, a screwed-up ball of silver foil with crumbs on it, a wad of napkins printed with blue dinosaurs – and three baked-beans cans. She pulled the lid out of one of the cans and put it between her knees, crushing with all her might until it folded into two. Then she reversed it and folded it again. She did it three times before it split along the folded edge. She held it against her fingertip – sharp. It would work if she got the right angle.

  Footsteps sounded on the gravel. Kelvin. She held her breath, raised the tin lid in both hands above her head. He went past getting so close she could hear his breathing, a raspy, deep-barrelled noise. He wasn’t fit in spite of his job and his army background: the drink and the cigarettes had taken their toll. She could have outrun him, could have got to the road if she’d just had the confidence. She heard him go round the house twice, circling like a buzzard, passing so close to the bin she felt his clothing brush it. Then his footsteps disappeared towards the road.

  After a long time she dared to look out. The long, sun-baked drive led to two stone newels, the gates standing wide open. She was just in time to see him exit and stand in the lane, looking up, then back down the hill. He hesitated, then turned and began to walk in the direction of his cottage.

  When she was sure he had gone, she clambered out of the bin. She stood for a moment, unpicking the wad of dinosaur napkins, then carefully cleaned out the inside of a second beans can. She rinsed it under the garden tap, dried it with the napkins, pulled the knotted condom out of her pocket and dropped it in. She secured it by wadding a couple of napkins on top. Then she rinsed her hands again, splashed some cold water on her face, and began to hobble down the driveway towards the road. It was early afternoon. The sun had just begun its long descent from the top of the sky.

  33

  Sally sat at the open kitchen window, an untouched cup of coffee at her elbow, and stared out across the fields. The Caterpillar opposite Hanging Hill had its new leaves on, and the outline it cast against the midday sky was thick. One day it had been a line of skeletons, stretching their hands to the sky, and the next they’d fattened into trees. Just like that, summer was on its way.

  She picked up the phone and looked at it. No messages, no texts. Steve had already gone to the gate for his flight home. She unfolded the wet wipes, now dry, and flattened them on the table, tracing her fingers across the words.

  Evil bitch.

  There was a way of dealing with this. There was. She just couldn’t see it yet.

  The doorbell rang and she sat bolt upright. She hadn’t heard a car. There definitely hadn’t been a car. Hurriedly she folded the tissues, went to the window and leaned out. Standing on the porch with her back to the window was a woman, filthy dirty and dressed in torn jeans, hair straggling down her back.

  ‘Hello?’

  The woman turned, looked back at her without a word. Her face was bruised, her nose swollen; there was dried blood in her hair and on her face. Her eyes were dead black holes.

  ‘Zoë?’

  She shovelled the wipes into a drawer, slammed it closed, went into the hallway and unlocked the door. Zoë stood with one arm against the wall, her shoulders sagging, her head drooping. She gazed at Sally as if she was looking at her across a great, shattered expanse of desert. As if she’d found herself in a world so terrible that no one, no one, could ever adequately describe it.

  She tried to smile. A twitch at the corner of her mouth. ‘People keep telling me I should ask when I need help.’

  Sally was silent for a moment. Then she stepped on to the porch and put her arms around her sister. Zoë stood there stiffly. She was shivering.

  ‘Give me a bath, Sally. And something to drink. Will you? That’s all. I need a little money to get home, but I’ll pay it back.’

  Sally shook her head. She held Zoë out at arm’s length, studying her in the sunlight. Her nose was a bloodied ball. There were rivulets of blood running down her chin and her lips were swollen. She couldn’t meet Sally’s eyes.

  ‘Please don’t ask. Please. Just the bath.’

  ‘Come on.’

  She guided her inside, kicking the door closed, and helped her down the corridor. Zoë limped painfully along, grunting slightly with each step. In the bathroom Sally turned on the taps, then collected the towels Millie had left lying around that morning, and dumped them in the laundry basket.

  ‘Here.’ She put a clea
n towel around Zoë. ‘You’re shivering.’

  ‘I won’t outstay my welcome. I promise.’

  ‘Shut up.’ She switched on the heated towel rail, and brought flannels and clean towels from the airing cupboard. While the bath ran she went to the kitchen and prepared a tray with a tall jug of mineral water and a pot of coffee. Even as a child Zoë had drunk loads of coffee. Black and strong.

  Back in the bathroom Zoë had peeled off her clothes and was climbing into the bath. Sally put the tray on the window-sill and watched her. It was strange enough to see another woman’s naked body in her bathroom, but to see her own sister’s. To see all the skin and muscle and flesh that Zoë walked around in, the covering that she lived in day to day and was so used to she didn’t even look at. Not so different from Sally’s, with the dimples and the small pouches and sags and records of life, except that Zoë was so tall and slim. And something else – she was covered with injuries. Welts and cuts and bruises everywhere. Some looked old, some new. She winced as she settled in the bath, soaked a flannel and held it to her face. The nails on her right hand were broken and black with blood.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ Sally said. ‘More beautiful than I ever was. Mum and Dad always said you were the beautiful one.’

  There was a silence. Then Zoë began to cry. She pressed the flannel into her face, leaned forward and took long, convulsive breaths, her shoulders shaking and shuddering. Sally sat on the edge of the bath and put a hand on her sister’s naked back, looking at the vertebrae standing white and sharp under her skin. She waited for the spasms to slow. For the awful, racking sobs to fade.

  ‘It’s OK now. It’s OK.’

  ‘I was raped, Sally. I was.’

  Sally took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The man who killed Lorne Wood. He raped me – I got away. I’m supposed to be dead.’

  ‘The man who killed Lorne? But I thought Ralph Hernan—’

  Zoë shook her head. ‘It wasn’t him.’

  Sally didn’t move for a few moments. Then she reached for the towel. ‘You shouldn’t be in the bath. Get out. They have to test you.’

  ‘No.’ She pulled her knees up to her chin and hugged them. ‘No, Sally. I’m not going to the police.’

  ‘You’ve got to.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t.’ She dropped her forehead on to her knees and cried some more, shaking her head. ‘You think I’ve been strong and independent all my life, don’t you? But that’s wrong. I was stupid. When I left school I was stupid. All the money I got to travel the world? I told Mum and Dad I’d got a magazine to pay for it – that I was working for them.’

  ‘The travel magazine.’

  ‘Oh, God – it never existed. I got the money from doing stupid stuff.’

  ‘Stupid stuff,’ Sally said hollowly. She was thinking about the way Millie had got her money, from Jake. That had been stupid. ‘What stupid stuff?’

  ‘Nightclubs. You know the sort of thing. The sort of place David Goldrab would have hung around. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done and I regret it. Oh, Christ.’ She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, avoiding touching her nose. ‘I’ve spent the rest of my life regretting it. The rest of my life.’

  ‘You took your clothes off? Stripping? Or pole-dancing or something?’

  She nodded miserably.

  Sally frowned. ‘But that’s – that’s nothing. I thought you meant something really serious.’

  Zoë raised her tear-stained face, puzzled. Sally opened her hands apologetically. ‘Well, I can think of worse. It’s just …’ She faltered. ‘You? It seems so …’

  ‘I had to make some money fast. I had to get out of the house – you know why.’

  ‘But it’s the sort of thing someone would do if they …’ Sally groped for the word. ‘Well, if they didn’t much like themselves.’

  There was a beat of silence. Zoë’s face was rigid. Then Sally got it.

  ‘But, Zoë – how could you? I mean … you’re beautiful and brave and you’re clever. So clever.’

  ‘Please stop saying that.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Well, I’m not very clever now, am I? I’ve been raped and I can’t do a thing about it.’

  ‘You can. We’re going to report it.’

  ‘No! I can’t. I can’t go and report this bastard to them because …’ She shook her head. ‘He knows me, this guy. From the clubs – he used to work in one of them as a handyman. He gave me the creeps, the way he was always watching me. He’d use it in his defence. I’d have to stand up in the witness box and his fucking brief would point out to everyone that I used to …’ She wiped her eyes angrily. ‘I can’t tell them. I can’t say a thing.’

  Sally tapped her mouth thoughtfully with her fingernails. ‘There has to be a way. Who is he?’

  ‘You know him. You won’t remember him but we were at nursery school together, can you believe? Kelvin Burford. He—’

  She broke off. Sally had sat forward and was gaping at her, her mouth open. ‘You’re not joking? Are you?’

  ‘Of course I’m not jok— What is it?’

  ‘Good God.’ Sally stood up. ‘Good God. Kelvin?’

  ‘Yes. Christ almighty, Sally.’ Zoë rubbed the tears off her face and stared at her sister. ‘What the hell have I said?’

  34

  Zoë had drunk all the water and the coffee and life was coming back into her now that Kelvin was washed off her. She dried herself and carefully cleaned her face with tissues and cotton buds. She dabbed some antiseptic cream on the cuts, then put on a towelling robe she found hanging on the back of the door. She did it all without looking in the mirror. From time to time she opened the door a crack and peered out into the cottage, wondering where on earth Sally had gone, what was keeping her. What the hell had she said to make her jump up like that?

  After a long time there was a knock at the door. When Zoë opened it Sally was standing there in silence, holding an open bottle of wine and two glasses between her fingers. Her face was very white and serious.

  ‘Wine?’ said Zoë. ‘At two in the afternoon?’

  ‘I’ve decided to become an alcoholic. Just for the duration of my middle years.’ She filled a glass and rested it on the edge of the washbasin. ‘That’s yours.’

  Zoë took it and sat on the rim of the bath, studying her sister. Something had changed in her face. She was a different person from the one who’d opened the front door to her and run the bath. As if something important had happened in the ten minutes she’d been gone. ‘Come on, then, Sally. What is it?’

  There was a small pause. Then, without looking her in the eye, Sally pulled a handful of tissues out of her cardigan pocket. They were creased and dirty and had lipstick on them. She got down on the floor, pushed the bath mat away, and spread them out, making sure they were all lined up. Letters appeared – a phrase scribbled back to front. Zoë squinted and slowly made out the sentence: You won’t get away with it. Evil bitch. She shook her head, mystified. ‘I don’t get it. What’s this?’

  ‘Kelvin Burford. He wrote it on the seat of my car.’

  She squatted down. Read it again slowly. Her head began to throb. The lipstick was the same shade as the one Kelvin had used on Lorne. But that detail hadn’t been given out to the public. No one knew about the messages in lipstick. ‘What,’ she said slowly, ‘makes you think it was Kelvin?’

  ‘Because of what I found when I was at his house. This morning.’

  ‘You were there this morning? No – I was there this mor …’ Her voice faded. ‘I was there, not you.’

  ‘I was too. When you arrived I was in the back room. Did you knock?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s when I left.’

  ‘Hang on, hang on.’ She held up a hand. ‘Slowly now. Why were you there?’

  ‘He’s trying to blackmail me. I found the lipstick he used to write this in. He’s either blackmailing me or tr
ying to scare me into giving myself up to the police.’

  ‘Giving yourself up to the police?’

  Sally nodded at her sister. Her expression was sad – determined, and brave, but very sad too.

  ‘Sally? What the hell’s going on? What is it?’

  ‘I did it.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘David Goldrab. You want to know what happened to him, and I’m telling you. It was me. I killed him.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘I mean it. I killed him and I didn’t report it. Even though I should have. But I didn’t. And then …’ She rubbed her hands together nervously. ‘I had to get rid of the body.’

  Zoë snorted. ‘Wish I’d been there. I’d’ve helped. He’s an arse.’

  ‘No, Zoë. I really mean it.’

  Zoë became very still. She studied her sister’s face. Her eyes had lost their usual soft smudgy blueness. As if they’d cracked somehow, like marbles. There was something tough and proud in them. Zoë gave a hesitant, uncertain smile. ‘Sally?’

  ‘Everyone thought you were really independent and clever and smart. Well, everyone thought I was really mild and harmless. And stupid. But it turns out I’m not. I killed David Goldrab and I covered the whole thing up. It was me.’

  ‘No. No. This is—’

  ‘It was an accident. Sort of an accident. He attacked me when I was there working one day. I was on my own … It wasn’t what I meant to happen. But it was me all the same.’

  Zoë stared at her and Sally stared back. From the open window came the vaguely electronic-sounding twitter of a lark singing as it rose up through the air. Zoë thought about Jake the Peg, about Dominic Mooney. She thought of Jason sleeping on a sofa covered with coats. Lieutenant Colonel Watling and Captain Charlie Zhang and all the wrong turnings she’d taken. She bent her head, pressed her fingers to her eyelids, trying to get some clarity in her head. When she spoke her voice was thick. Unnaturally high.